The Dark Lord of Crafting

Watching the remaining zombies burst into flames was immensely satisfying. My goal had been to clear them out before the sun rose so I could make it back to Gastard, but more kept spawning, and I got slower and slower as the night wore on. Whenever I felt like I was about to drop, I downed another radish and got my wind back. It wasn't enough. My back and forth with the zombies became a grim dance, darting out and in, striking without allowing them a chance to grab me. Unlike the trolls, they could never push through their aversion to the light, which kept me relatively safe, but it was still a grind. The lillits weren’t able to all get to safety, and the soldiers still on the bridge had cut them off from using my steps to come up and down.

When all the monsters were gone, I walked closer to the bridge, only to have someone shoot an arrow at me. Whatever the protocol was for Dargothian soldiers who saw their general get killed, we were still enemies. I had to retreat. My head ached in a way that no amount of radishes could save me from. Circling around to the back of the way station, I stopped to take stock of my materials. I'd lost several item medallions besides the raw resources, but I had more than enough left to get started from scratch.

Five minutes got me a work table and a new set of tools, then I laddered my way up to the exit of the way station. I axed my way through the big double doors and was met by the wall I'd thrown up the day before to prevent soldiers from escaping through this side. Mining out a porthole, I looked within. The main hall was dim, illuminated only by the constricted light that seeped in through arrow slits. The trolls were keeping out of the illuminated sections, napping like a family after Thanksgiving.

Soldiers lay strewn across the floor, their bodies twisted and broken. From what I could see of the trolls, they had suffered a host of minor injuries, but there wasn't much unenchanted weapons could do against their thick hide. When Beleth died, the soldiers trapped in the tower had endured a rampage. I mined out a doorway and started shouting at the trolls.

"Wake up!" They stirred, grunting. "Come and get me, you stupid gorillas!"

It was unlikely that they understood they were being insulted, but when their gazes fell on me, they sprang up, hooting and thumping out threat displays. I ran, and they chased me. It didn't take them long to cross the hall, and only a few moments more to squeeze through the opening. Fifty yards down the road, I glanced back to see them thundering in pursuit. For about three seconds, I thought they were going to catch up and beat me into oblivion. The trolls were moving twice as fast as I was, and I veered closer to the edge of the bridge, preparing to jump.

Silver fire exploded into life along their broad backs, racing down their limbs and covering their canine snouts. As one, they realized their mistake, skittered to a halt, and sought to escape back inside the darkness of the tower. They were dust before they reached the opening.

Inside, many soldiers were still alive. A man moaned, asking for my help, and I walked by him. Their helmets were like mine, though they lacked visors, and I picked one up that had rolled away from its original owner. He no longer needed it.

I expected Gastard to be dead, but when I ascended to the top of the tower, I found him sitting up with his back against a crenelation. He'd taken off his helmet, and his head was drooping to one side. Burns marked his face, and he was unconscious, but still breathing. The rest of the roof was clear except for the body of the harpy that Beleth had blown into the stones the night before. My mind raced. What were you supposed to do in this situation? Getting him out of his armor would be problematic. It wasn't like I could cut it off, and moving him around when I didn't know the extent of his injuries seemed like a terrible idea.

"Gastard," I said, kneeling in front of him, and he didn't respond. I touched the uninjured side of his face, and his eyelids flickered. At the very least, he needed to be out of the sun. Rather than move him, I crafted an overhang of planks to give him some shade while I thought about what to do next. While my medical knowledge bordered on the non-existent, there was an entire village of lillits out there. Someone among them had to be whatever passed for a doctor in this setting.

I used a shovel to harvest enough of the sand from the entrance for me to get out onto the ramp. There were no soldiers under the overhang, though they were watching from further out when I appeared. A gaggle of harpies was camping Beleth's body. One of them was larger than the others, with violet eyes and a few silver feathers in her crown. She stretched to her full height, nearly as tall as I was, and cawed at me.

"Hey," I said. "What's your name?"

"Celaeno." She said.

"Are you uh…related to the other Celaeno?"

The harpy nodded. "She was my mother, the matriarch of the flock. Now that she has passed, I have taken her name."

"I'm sorry," I said. How sentimental were these birds? Hopefully, this would not turn into some kind of blood feud with her blaming me for her mother's death. "She saved me. All of you did. Thank you for your help."

Her feathers fluffed up proudly, and she bobbed her head at the demon's body. "He was your kill. Will you share him with us?"

"Have at it," I said. If that was all they asked of me, I was getting off easy. Now that we were at the same altitude, the Dargothians didn't bother trying to shoot. Maybe that had been someone going rogue, because one of them was approaching his hands out and empty. He glanced uneasily at the overhang, and then at the harpies hungrily pecking at his former boss. His broad mouth set in a hard line as he took off his helmet and held it against his side, stopping ten paces ahead of me.

"My name is Dra'Vin," he said. “Who are you? Who do you serve?"

His tone was aggressive, but he hadn't immediately tried to kill me, which I took as a good sign. The Dargothians were in a difficult position. They'd seen their advance group disappear into the tower, never to return. Then the monsters had gone amok, and they had no way of knowing if I was the only magical boy in their way. The soldiers had a fraction of their original numbers to work with, and they had to realize that their hold over the lillits was tenuous at best.

"We don't work for anyone," I said. "We took this tower for ourselves. Are you ready to surrender?"

The soldier's grip on his sword intensified. They'd seen me take on trolls and a chimera. For all this man knew, I was a lot more threatening than I actually was. I'd come out with a magic torch in one hand and a magic sword in the other, both glowing in the shade. There wasn't anyone else in the tower, aside from Gastard, who was far from fighting shape. But I wanted to give him the idea that I was not the only superpowered individual running around, that there was someone even scarier who'd sent me out to take care of his light work. If nothing else, it would certainly appear as if I had control of the harpies, even though they had acted on their own initiative.

His eyes narrowed. "What terms?"

That was easy.

"Are you an officer? Who's in charge after Beleth?"

"Command has fallen to me." He straightened his back, his hand moving dangerously close to the hilt at his hip.

"Give up your weapons," I said. "If you do, I'll allow all of your men to go free. But this tower is ours, and so are your captives."

He didn’t like that news. “This way station belongs to the Dark Lord of Dargoth. The same goes for the lillits."

"Then he can come get them himself, or send a bigger army. What does he want with the lillits, anyway?"

"The Dark Lord's mind is his own. We live to serve his will, not to question it." His eyes drifted back to the harpies, who were ignoring our conversation in favor of getting at all of Beleth's soft bits. The soldier's mouth twitched. The demon could have told me what this was all about, but he would not be talking.

"Your general is dead," I said. "You can surrender and go home, or die on this bridge. But we've claimed this place for ourselves, and we'll be keeping all the loot, those little people included."

“What are they to you?" He asked. It was a delicate issue. If I let on how important their safety was, they became a liability. The Dargothians could put swords to necks and demand they be allowed to continue on their way.

"Subjects," I said. "Slaves. You don't know us yet, and neither does Kevin. You can take a message back to him for me. There's a new Dark Lord, and the free kingdoms belong to us."

His eyes widened at the use of Kevin's name, and his face went slack. "You are declaring yourself his equal? Who are you to dare?"

"The gods chose me." That shut him up, and it was technically true. I pointed the torch at him. "Are you going to surrender or not?"

He met my eyes and froze. His face drained of color. A moment later, Dra'vin returned to his squad to talk things over with them while I hung out with the harpies. The way they were eating the demon had the air of a ceremony. After Celaeno had gotten her piece, she pulled back to regulate the others. They had torn open his leather armor, and after taking a turn at pecking the demon's flesh, each harpy would fly off to make room for another. The flock was always in motion, so it was hard to get an exact count, but it was more than thirty. Apart from his head, which was all cat, Beleth's body looked human, at least before they got to it.

"Does eating monsters not make you sick?" I asked Celaeno.

Her throat rattled. "It makes us strong."

"But you're from Plana, right? I mean, you didn't come from Bedlam."

"That is so." Her voice wasn't as smooth as her mother's. It sounded husky.

"Why did you help me?"

Her head tilted to one side, regarding me with violet eyes. "Matriarchs, my mother and I, see far. We have waited for someone like you to come. We saw it in our dreams."

What was with everyone having ominous dreams? Couldn't Mizu talk to people anymore directly than that? "You mean someone with powers like mine? What do you expect me to do?"

"We served the other, long, long ago. Then he made friends of our prey and cast us aside. We have wandered since."

"Your prey, like the phantoms?"

"Those," she bobbed her head, "and others. I dreamed of tasting demon flesh and thought it would remain a dream."

Creepy, but okay. "Your mother said she wouldn't help me. What made her change her mind?"

"We could not be sure you were the one we had waited for, but you fought the demon, and you share the magic of the one who betrayed us. She decided, and we followed her."

"What happens next?" I asked. "I'm not going to stay here. What do you want from me?"

"We will follow you, and every night shall be a feast." She clearly relished the thought. If it meant having a flock of bodyguards, I was all for them coming with me. If they wanted to eat the mobs that spawned around me at night, a few harpy homies could only make my life easier.

Dargothians were gathering at the front of the lillits column, and for a few minutes, I had to wonder if they were preparing to come at me all together. I edged closer to the entrance, ready to clamber back up the sand into the more defensible alley if they charged. Dra'vin separated himself from the group and addressed me from a safe distance.

"Are any of our men still alive in there?" He asked.

"Some," I said. “The trolls messed them up pretty bad."

"Will you allow us to take them with us?"

"No problem. Does this mean you're surrendering?"

Dra'vin squared his shoulders, taking a moment to steel himself before approaching closer to the harpies, who were between us. He drew his sword, and the birds looked at him sharply, their hackles raising, before he laid it down on the stones of the ramp.

“Great,“ I said, “I'll clear the sand."