The Dark Lord of Crafting

I couldn’t exactly run in my snowshoes, but I was shuffle-sliding as fast as I could. Despite my limited pace, I could still keep ahead of the zombies. They started spawning shortly after I landed, but they were not sprinters by any means. The phantoms, however, had no trouble catching me.

I’d put on my leather mask to protect my face, and I was grateful for it as the first phantom swooped in under the bridge and slapped my cheek with its tail as it went by. With sword in hand, I kept sliding forward, dividing my attention between getting to the tower as quickly as I could and guarding against the next dive.

The phantom’s cry rang high and clear as it came in again, and it rolled to one side to avoid my swing, swimming weightlessly around me. I kept moving, and we repeated our little dance a few more times. It was hurting my progress, and before long, a zombie had spawned directly in my path.

We shuffled toward each other, and I brought my sword around in a wide arc that terminated in the side of its skull as it moved in for a lunge. The creature's moan cut short, but the distraction gave the phantom the chance it needed. Its small body rammed into my back at top speed, and I stumbled. As convenient as the snowshoes were, they were awkward, and one of them came off my boot as I fell forward onto the dead zombie.

The phantom's tail spike clinked against the backplate of my cuirass, and I rolled off of the zombie, erratically waving my sword hoping to ward it off. It floated up, and I got back to my feet, ducking as a second one zoomed in. If this kept up, I would never make it to the tower.

The first phantom was rising and falling, its wide, pale wings undulating, threatening to drive into me again the moment I looked away. Keeping my eyes locked on its flexing mouthparts, I reached back for the end of the torch sticking up out of my pack. I’d stuffed it in headfirst to mute its glow, but when I drew it out, pure white light illuminated the surrounding sand and the underside of the bridge.

The Eternal Torch had lived up to its name. It had been shining since we left the mine. As I pressed it forward, the phantom flipped end over end like it was being pushed by an invisible hand. Its partner took a sharp turn out of a dive, avoiding the light. They weren’t bursting into flames, but the Shadowbane enchantment had an effect. I would have to thank Esmelda whenever we got back.

Sheathing the sword, I bent down to tear my other boot out of the remaining snowshoe. It had been nice while it lasted, but I needed to run. The sand sucked at my feet, but I powered through, sprinting up a small dune and sliding down its other slope, holding my torch up as I went.

The Dargothians already knew there was someone here, but I would have preferred not to make my location so obvious. Even concealed by the bridge, there was no way anyone who was looking would miss a light source bobbing through the desert at night. I kept running.

Gastard and his horse were within sight, standing close to the base of the tower beneath a ramp that connected it to the bridge. There were windows cut into the stone about fifteen feet up defenders could use to drop or shoot down at someone approaching from the ground, but no one was attacking Gastard, and no arrows came whizzing through the night. My breath was coming fast and heavy, and my legs felt like lead, but I pushed through, keeping up the pace until I was within a few paces of Gastard.

He had his bow out, and as I came close, he loosed an arrow over my shoulder. Glancing back, I saw a zombie reeling after being struck in the neck. It staggered but didn’t stop, and he fired again.

I jabbed the torch into the sand and felt around in my pack for the medallion that represented my pick. The light had kept me safe so far, but if a troll appeared, I knew it would barrel right through.

“Did you succeed?” Gastard asked, aiming for a phantom further out.

“We’ll see,” I said, choosing a random spot on the wall and tapping with my pick. It was possible to rush the mining process by tapping faster, so I held onto the pick with both hands and shook my arms like I was having spasms. The tower was crafted from a darker stone than the road, deep gray granite, and slate. Cracks formed soon after I began attacking the rock, and soon the first block had popped out, then a second. Assuming the army was still stuck on the bridge, we were a few miles ahead of them. The garrison may not have realized anything strange was going on yet unless they had seen the light, but no shouts or alarm bells were ringing in the tower.

If a zombie got too close, Gastard took care of it, and after a few minutes, I’d cut out a shallow channel into the wall of the tower. Making it large enough for Marie to squeeze in after us slowed the job, but for better or for worse, we were keeping the horse.

The wall was so thick; it made me wonder if the entire base of the tower was solid stone. Once I’d carved out enough room for us all to cram inside, I sidled past the horse to grab the torch and placed new stones in the entrance to keep the monsters out. It would slow down our exit if we needed to make one, but we wouldn’t get anywhere if we had to deal with mobs coming in behind us.

“Another coffin?” Gastard said.

“Maybe.” If we waited out the night we wouldn’t have to worry about spawns, but who knew what the demon might do with that time? “I’m going to keep digging. If we’re lucky, no one will be hanging around in the basement.”

“Unless that is where they sleep.” The torchlight put Gastard’s blue eyes in shadow, but he didn’t sound afraid.

The wall turned out to be twelve feet thick, and I mined my way through into a darkened chamber. It was a well. Light reflected off of the surface of a large pool at the center of the room.

Kevin had to get credit for his eye as an architect. The internal structure was interesting, the walls and floors patterned with a variety of light and dark stones, and it wasn’t as gloomy and overbearing as it appeared from the outside. A catwalk circled the chamber above us, a place for defenders to stand at the windows, but no one appeared to be on duty. Aside from the well, shelving and crates of supplies lined the walls. Food for the garrison, it didn’t look like it would have been enough to feed a town’s worth of lillits for very long.

Every moment we stood still in a large, shadowy space was an opportunity for mobs to appear. After taking in our surroundings, we hurried to the stairs leading to the next level. It was wide enough for Marie, though Gastard had to lead her carefully, and we found ourselves at a locked door.

Aside from fabric, I’d never tried harvesting something someone else had made. But the door looked just like the ones I could craft. Wood planks, a wooden handle, and wooden hinges. I switched my pick out for an ax, and after about twenty seconds of nicking the wood with its blade, the entire thing converted into a medallion, exposing a short hall and more stairs beyond.

There was a door along the hall, and rather than check it, I simply blocked it off with red granite so we could go on. The hallway wasn’t well-lit, and as I crafted the barrier, a zombie slipped into the world at the edge of the torchlight. It was crouching, its long skin flaps draped over the floor, and it raised its hands toward me like a supplicant. Its mouth opened in a low rasp as it pulled its arms back, unwilling to suffer the light.

Marie whinnied, and I quickly finished stacking the blocks. As we moved forward, with me at the front, the zombie continued to withdraw from the torche’s influence, allowing itself to be herded up the stairs.

A voice filtered down from above.

“Was that a horse?”

“Like hell it was. Let me sleep.”

“There’s light.”

Gastard's sword scraped out of its sheathe. The stairs curved around the side of the tower, so we could not see its end. But there was light above as well, and it cast the silhouette of a man along the curve of the wall.

“Paul, is that you?”

The zombie was a lot more interested in the voices than it was in me. It went down on its hands and crawled up the steps faster than I’d ever seen one of them move. Its hungry groan echoed in the tight passage, swiftly replaced by a shriek.

“Koroshai!”

As I charged up the winding staircase, the clamor from above grew more frantic. The stone steps echoed with the heavy thuds of our boots, the clip of Marie’s hooves, and the shouting from above. Gastard’s breathing was audible behind me, his armor clinking with each step. Somehow, the horse was keeping pace, following without further guidance from its master, holding the rear.

The scene ahead of us was utter chaos. We burst into a half-empty barracks, dimly lit by flickering torches mounted on the walls. Soldiers, roused from their sleep by the commotion, scrambled to arm themselves. The sounds of clattering equipment and shouted orders filled the room.

In the channel between the bunks, a lone, unarmed soldier struggled desperately against the zombie that had preceded us up the stairs. The creature, its skin flaps trailing on the ground, pushed the soldier back against a bedframe. The soldier's face twisted in terror as he tried to fend off the advancing undead with nothing but his bare hands.

I froze. This was what we wanted. The defenders were unprepared. We couldn’t have been handed a softer target than a group of men out of uniform and distracted by a zombie. But I had never killed a person before, and though logically I knew these men would try to kill me shortly, for the moment, they were strangers in distress. My ax hung at my side, and I felt rooted in place, unable to move.

Gastard brushed past me with a grim determination etched on his face. His movements were fluid, reacting to the chaos with a cold calculation. I watched, my heart pounding in my chest, as he approached the nearest soldier.

The man looked up at Gastard’s approach, confusion written across his sunburnt features. He might have been in his twenties, his skin clear except for a small scar on the right side of his mouth. He was kneeling over a box at the end of his bunk, its lid raised to reveal a folded uniform and a leather belt with a knife still in its sheath. His hands froze over the belt, caught like a rabbit faced by a predator.

With a swift, brutal motion, Gastard's blade cut through the air, striking the soldier down. The young man crumpled to the ground, his eyes wide with shock and pain, not even making a sound.

“Intruder!” someone shouted. One of the other men had gotten their hands on a dagger and was hacking the zombie off of its victim. Having retrieved their weapons, three men moved in on Gastard; a halberd, a sword, and a knife. I stepped toward them, only to be confronted with an assailant of my own.

“The hell are you?” He swore, his broad, muscular frame at odds with a narrow head. His only armor was a sleeping tunic, but he had a dagger in his hand, and he wasn’t waiting for an answer before he used it.

The soldier lunged at me, the dagger angling toward my throat. Instinctively, I raised my ax to knock it aside. It felt heavy, as did my breastplate, the straps digging into my shoulders. It had been a long day, and a long night, and adrenaline or not, I was exhausted.

The soldier's dagger scraped against the shaft of my ax. He was bigger than me, but not as strong as I expected. There was an opportunity for me to chop into his shoulder. It wouldn’t be a big swing, but his tunic was no protection. I hesitated, and he slashed my arm, cutting deep.

I was too used to fighting zombies. They were slow and clumsy, and didn’t use weapons. The sudden pain pulled me out of my head, and I stepped to one side so that his next stroke scraped across my chest plate.

My right arm wasn’t gripping properly, but I brought the ax around with my left, and it bit into his shoulder, striking bone.

He cried out, backing off a step before lunging for my throat again. I swiped, intending to deflect the knife like before, but the edge of my ax connected with his wrist instead, and his weapon clattered to the floor.

He fled.

The encounter had lasted less than a minute, but that was a long time in a melee, and Gastard was facing off with three men to my one. He had been using the bunks to limit their ability to surround him.

The soldier with the halberd was both the most and least threatening. His weapon’s reach gave him an advantage at range, but crippled him when Gastard closed the distance between them. The soldier tried a thrust, missing by inches as Gastard twisted to one side and stepped in past the head of the weapon. His sword flashed, piercing the man’s belly while simultaneously blocking an overhand blow from the swordsman. He was using the shield I had given him, and the circle of wood absorbed the stroke without complaint.

Letting the halberdier fall, Gastard slapped the knife wielder with the flat of his blade and hopped onto a cot, giving himself an unstable high ground. The man who had been attacked by the zombie was clutching a bite wound on his face and crying. Not an immediate issue. Rather than chase after the one who had attacked me, I focused on helping Gastard. He was on the defensive, fending off two blades at once, but his opponents were as occupied as he was.

I buried my ax in the swordsman’s back, and a moment later, Gastard had finished the other as well.

“More will come,” he said. There was only one exit apart from the stairwell, the door that my opponent had fled through. Four men were dead, one had run, and the sixth was having some kind of panic attack. A quick look around told me there were at least twenty beds in the barracks.

“I’m blocking the door.” I’d harvested hundreds of red granite coins from the road, so crafting another small wall would barely dip into my supply. My right arm felt cold and numb, and I was a little woozy. The crying man went silent, and I didn’t turn to see what Gastard had done, but a moment later, he was at my side.

His blonde hair was dark and matted with sweat. There was blood on his face, but it wasn’t his.

“Are you giving up?” He said as the door vanished behind a final granite block.

“No,” I said, “I’m going into the walls. We’re going to troll these guys.”

He didn’t question my turn of phrase, but frowned down at my arm.

“That cut is deep. It needs to be bound, and even then, it will impair you.”

I didn’t want to look too closely at my arm. It was a mess, and another half-heart had ticked away from the bleeding in the interval since I was cut.

“No worries,” I said, “I’ve got beets.”