The Dark Lord of Crafting

Gastard and I moved in opposite directions, and the wyvern came down between us. I ducked under the sweep of its wing and jabbed my torch in its face. The beast recoiled, its eyes squeezing shut, and then a gust of wind knocked me flat on my back. It came from nowhere, so sudden and fierce that it was like I'd somehow stumbled into a hurricane, and it was over just as quickly. Beleth was doing something with his hands, weaving his fingers in an intricate pattern, and muttering in an alien tongue. The wyvern opened its jagged toothed maw, preparing to bite, then jerked away when Gastard tried to take its head off.

"Sorcery, demon?" He cried. "It will not avail you!" It sounded like a quote. The phrase could have come straight out of the religious book I'd absorbed to learn Sprache.

The wyvern batted him with a wing, and he stumbled, but he had provided me with a chance to get back on my feet. I lunged, intending to ram my sword into its ribcage, and another rush of air turned me aside. It wasn't as strong as the last one, but the gust continued past me and caused Gastard to spin like a dancer. The wyvern snapped forward, its jaws clamping around my helmet, and the metal crunched. I lashed out instinctively and felt my blade bite into its stubby neck. It let go, shrieking in pain, and Beleth slid down out of his saddle.

The demon moved with startling swiftness, and his hand crackled like a taser as he slapped it against my chest plate. The metal vibrated, heating instantly, and I felt the electricity prickling my skin all across my body. It stung, but it was still better than direct contact. Beleth ducked under my sword and slapped my helmet. The crackle was deafening, and my neck and jaw spasmed. He grabbed my sword arm before I could recover, and the electric assault continued. The iron covering my skin buzzed, and I went rigid. Every muscle in my body contracted at once.

At least it wasn't a lot of damage. Either the demon wasn't trying to kill me or he was trying to do it slow.

"Too young," he said, "too weak."

Gastard was going one on one with the wyvern. It was bleeding from the neck, and he had dealt it wounds to its wings, but they were minor. He saw my predicament and turned his back on the beast to execute a perfect thrust at Beleth's back. The demon's whiskers twitched, and he twisted to one side. The tip of Gastard's sword dinked against my breastplate, but the distraction was sufficient for Beleth's grip to weaken, and I ripped my arm out of his grasp.

The wyvern clamped its jaws around Gastard's shoulder, picked him up, and tossed him like a toy. My companion landed ten feet away, rolling nearly to the ramparts, his sword lost in the flight. Beleth's fingers were writing a new pattern in the air as he stepped back.

"You, I do not need to keep," he said, his eyes locking on Gastard as electricity crackled purple and white around his hands.

I rushed forward to attack him, and the wyvern shouldered its way in front of me. My joints felt loose and wrong, and my muscles ached, but I jabbed Kevin's blade under its wing, and the scales parted. It shrieked again, snapping at me, and I narrowly avoided having my entire arm disappear in its cavernous jaws. With a desperate sidestroke, my blade cut across the side of its head, exposing the skull beneath the skin, and it reared up on its hind legs. Its wings stretched out, vast and dark, as it prepared to leap. Rushing forward, I thrust up under its rib cage, piercing deep, and it lost its strength. The wyvern fell forward, and as I withdrew my blade, it came down half on top of me.

Its weight put me down again, and though it hadn’t completely pinned me, I had to struggle to flip over and pull my legs out from under its chest. Beleth's voice raised, his words harsh and discordant, and I glanced up to see Gastard rising to his feet. A jagged white line flashed between the demon and my friend, burning itself into my retinas, and thunder rolled over the tower-top.

Gastard collapsed, a scorch mark on his chest, and did not move. I cursed, fumbling to get a proper grip on my blade and scramble up.

"Have you seen enough?" Beleth asked, as casually as if we had met while out for a stroll. "You owe me a mount, but the Dark Lord will reward me if I bring him a willing Survivor." He was looking at my sword.

He knew the name of my class. It was the same as Kevin's, so the demon was probably more aware of my capabilities than I was. I followed his gaze. The red mote within the diamond on the end of its pommel was larger than before. Was that because I had used it to kill the wyvern? It was interesting, but not something I could investigate at the moment. Beleth had used a full on lightning bolt against Gastard. My ears were still ringing, but he had only tased me. He had to know that if he killed me, I would come back to life somewhere else, so he either needed me cooperating or incapacitated, but alive.

The wyvern's corpse was between us. Overhead, the harpies were cawing excitedly. A phantom had appeared, and it was trying to get away from the mob. My torch had rolled away somewhere, but I doubted it was powerful enough to do more than annoy the demon. Kevin's sword, however, seemed to worry him. I planted one foot on the wyvern's back and propelled myself forward, swinging with both hands.

Beleth evaded easily, his bright eyes narrowing, and his hands crackled once more. I kept swinging, inelegant, untrained, and desperate. The demon was being careful, keeping out of my reach, waiting for an opportunity to grab me again.

I kicked him in the chest.

He caught my foot. Beleth was faster and stronger than me, a better fighter. His ears perked up, and I could see the triumph in his eyes as he grabbed my boot. Electricity crackled from his hands, coursing over the mottled leather. My boots were to one piece in my set that I hadn't replaced with iron, and leather was far less of a conductor. I felt a tingle, and hopping on one foot, swung my sword up and around in an artless windmill that would have made Gastard gag if he witnessed it. Given the awkward position I was in, there wasn't as much force behind the stroke as there could have been, but the end of my blade sliced down across his wrist, nearly severing it.

The demon hissed, releasing me as he jumped back. A line of pink light, like an immaterial flow of blood, stretched from the wound on his wrist to the tip of my sword. The light snaked down the blade and dove into the gem planted in its pommel, which glowed with a new and fierce radiance.

"Holy balls," I said. "Did I just eat your soul?"

Beleth's eyes widened as he gripped his wrist, and the flow of light tapered off, replaced by the more mundane drip of dark blood. He spun on his heel and sprinted for the platform jutting from the edge of the tower, and I chased after him. The demon would have been gone in a second, his swift feet propelling him in a flash, had Celaeno not intercepted him. The massive bird swooped down as Beleth reached the boiling basin, and her talons dug into his scalp.

He ripped himself away, spinning, and caught the harpy in a swirl of wind that snapped one of her wings and smashed her down into the stones of the roof. Beleth had pressed his wounded hand into his chest, and was casting spells with the other as I caught up to him. I threw myself forward, thrusting my sword ahead of me with both hands, jumping like I thought I could fly like superman. The next concentrated gust ripped across my back, the effect missing me by inches, and my blade poked into the front of his tunic. His leather resisted, allowing for only the shallowest puncture as the force of the blow pushed him back a step and I fell flat on my face.

The gem swallowed another thin tendril of light, and rather than take advantage of my landing, Beleth ran the rest of the distance to the end of the platform and jumped off. Scrambling up, my joints aching, and my muscles sore, I followed his example. The Feather Fall enchantment on my boots slowed my descent for the first fifteen feet, catching me like a parachute, and I had a couple of seconds to watch Beleth land nimbly on the bridge below. His fall had been delayed as well, the wind magic, or whatever he was using, allowing him to drop without risk of injury.

My enchantment, as it turned out, was limited by distance. It had come from a level one book, so there were definitely more powerful effects out there, but I didn't have access to them. My gentle descent cut into an actual dead drop about ten feet up from the bridge. Beleth looked up in time to see me coming down on top of him.

If I had been more prepared, I would have had my sword in position to impale him, but the unceremonious failure of Feather Fall caught me by surprise. One of my boots hit him in the shoulder, an accidental dropkick, and I ended up on my back, stunned by the impact. The Protection enchantment on my cuirass helped to cushion the collision, but my helmet still rang against the stones, and the sword went clattering from my hand.

A moment later, Beleth was standing over me. The night seemed to darken around him, all but his eyes, which shone as bright as candles. He kicked me back down when I tried to sit up, and I heard the clomp of boots as soldiers surrounded us. The landing had knocked the air out of my lungs, and I was struggling to take a breath.

"You didn't have to suffer," Beleth said, his voice a purr, "but now I will make sure you do."

Dark shapes were blotting out the stars. Harpies, the entire flock, descended on the bridge, slamming into Beleth and the soldiers alike. Redroad had no railing, and one soldier tumbled off as the others scrambled to fight off the incoming birds. Beleth turned in time to grab one harpy by its wings, but with only one hand, he wasn't able to prevent it from snapping at his face with his beak.

I rolled over, my gaze darting around in search of the sword, and it was hard to miss. The diamond was a pink flame atop the shadowy stones as I crawled to retrieve it. Electricity crackled behind me, and a harpy croaked. The surrounding bridge was chaos, wings and beaks and blades, shouting men and shrieking harpies. My head was still ringing, but they'd given me a chance to recover.

Beleth dropped a charred, smoking harpy, and a smell that was nothing like cooking chicken filled the air. I slashed below his tunic, the leather of his leggings was thinner, and the blade cut clean through. He yowled, very much like a cat, and stumbled toward the verge of the bridge. The diamond glowed brighter.

A Dargothian charged me, his face etched with hatred beneath an iron helm, and a harp swooped in to seize his arm, pulling him off balance and to one side. I had no idea why they were helping me, but I wasn't about to question my good fortune. Beleth ducked under my next swing, and his claws came out, jabbing up under my visor and into my chin, but there was no electric discharge. It still hurt.

We were too close for me to strike with my sword, so I head butted him, my helmet crashing into his furry face.

He snarled, ripping my helmet up off of my face, and I took a step back, giving me enough room to swing. His tunic absorbed the slash, and his claws raked across my cheek, taking another heart with them. But he was weaker than before, slower, and with blood running down my face, I jammed my sword through the stiff leather covering his abdomen and pierced his belly. Crimson light poured out, illuminating us both, and his legs went out from under him. Leaning over his body, I used my weight to press the blade deeper, and his mouth opened in a wail.

The light continued to grow, pulsing like a living thing, devoured by the bottomless hunger of the diamond. As the last tendrils of his essence vanished into the gem, Beleth went still. Only a handful of soldiers had been around us on the bridge, and the harpies quickly overwhelmed them, but as I looked up, I saw another squad approaching, jogging in double time, with zombies shuffling in behind them.

I tore my sword out of the demon's stomach and jumped off the bridge.