The Dark Lord of Crafting

In Maincraft, there was something called the deep dark, and you could find ancient cities there, as well as some uniquely dangerous mobs. But I’d never seen any evidence that the environments in Plana would conform to the tropes of the game. The hall below the bubble chamber had been crafted, there was no doubt about that. The stonework was perfect and fitted together without mortar or sealant of any kind. The only reason you could tell where one block ended and the next began was because they had beveled edges. The ceiling was basalt, but the floor and the walls of the hall were constructed from a polished, bluish-green stone.

I’d constructed a ladder and attached it to the opening I’d made in the chamber above, and Gastard had gone down first. The hall stretched fifty feet in either direction. One side ended on a regular cave wall, presumably where construction had ceased. The other ended on an iron door that had been left open. Faint light emanated from the room beyond.

I looked up at Esmelda, her heart-shaped face peeking over the edge of the opening. “You’re not going to follow us, right?”

“Of course not,” she said. “You’re the one who can return to life. If anything, Gastard should be waiting up here with me.”

I could tell she meant to be playful, but it was a good point. Even if dying did cost me something immaterial, there was no comparison to the risk of actual permanent death. I could manage a few shamblers on my own, and if there was something worse than that down here, Gastard could very well lose his life. One look at his face told me he was not going to entertain the idea of staying behind while I went exploring. We went forward cautiously, with torches and swords, listening for the sound of moans and shuffling feet.

“At least let me go first,” I said, moving ahead of Gastard to the door. I ducked my head in to glance on either side of the entrance, and seeing no monsters, stepped through.

It was a big room, twenty feet high, and at least fifty feet to a side, with the center dominated by a dais supporting what I could only describe as a stargate. That movie had come out when I was a child, and I’d never watched the spinoff series that followed it, but the archetype of what a Stargate looked like was deeply embedded in my subconscious, and I knew what it was when I saw it.

"Captain’s log. Yog-Sothoth has entered the building."

“What?” Gastard said, close to my back. “What are you saying?”

My journal wasn’t open, so the comment wouldn’t even be recorded, it was just a habit. The room was largely constructed of the same aquamarine-colored rock as the passage, except for the stargate, which looked like it had been crafted out of obsidian. A big hoop of it. Each corner of the dais was lit by a pale blue, crystalline block that glowed with a light slightly dimmer than a torch.

“Sorry,” I said, “just talking to myself.”

We walked around the dais. There were two other doors, both iron, but one wall sported an arch and an open tunnel that led off into darkness.

“There might be more monsters down there,” I said. “I think this room is just close enough to where I slept that they could spawn down here.”

Gastard was focused on the stargate. He raised his torch, and the light reflected off its glassy surface, which was etched with runes in the same style as the elder sign on my hand.

“What is this?” He said.

“I think it's a portal,” I said. It wasn’t just that it looked like a stargate. In the game, you could construct a Nether Portal out of obsidian, and stepping through it would take you to the Nether, which was basically hell. A land of lava, skeletons, and ghosts where you couldn’t sleep and water would instantly evaporate. There were some materials there you couldn’t get anywhere else. Blazes only spawned in the Nether, and killing them got you blaze rods, which were required to craft brewing stands and a few other things for the late game. But I wasn’t looking forward to a visit.

“A portal to what?” Gastard asked.

‘Hopefully, somewhere nice,” I said. “Do you want to check out the other hallways before we mess with it?”

He nodded, and we went for the arch first. The other doors were closed, so if there were monsters down here, that was the most likely place to find them. Had Kevin built this place, abandoning it after he made his home in Dargoth? Or was this something left behind by the same person who had put the obsidian block beside my spawn point? I liked to think there were other people like me around, or had been, but the heroes Esmelda and Tipple had told me about had all had different power sets.

The passage beyond the arch went on for thirty paces or so before turning at a ninety-degree angle. It smelled stale and dusty, but there was something else underneath that I couldn’t place, maybe the lingering swampiness of the shamblers we had killed. Our footsteps were loud in the semi-darkness, echoing off of the walls. A door waited at the bend, but it was shut, so we passed by it to continue down the passage, which ended on a second arch after another thirty paces. We had arrived at a library.

A room of stone shelves filled with hundreds of books. Tables ran down the center, with rows of shelves arranged perpendicular to us down either side. It was a kind of treasure trove I’d never imagined I’d stumble across. Equipment, rare materials, sure. A chest full of gold coins might have been nice. But with my ability, I would be able to digest all the knowledge these tomes contained regardless of the language it was written in. This facility had belonged to a crafter like me, so I could be forgiven for assuming their contents would be relevant. Instructions, recipes, enchantments. The secrets of the System which had been so frustratingly opaque might have been about to be revealed.

We had both stopped under the arch to admire the library as far as our torches allowed. As I prepared to venture deeper, a husky grunt echoed in the chamber, emanating from the still-darkened section behind the last shelves. Gastard raised his sword, and a monster knuckled into view. Huge, horny hands and a squat, heavily muscled frame. At the edge of the torchlight, only its outline was visible, but its head dropped forward, a long snout lined with nothing but canines.

“Gotte above,” Gastard swore.

“Run,” I said the word and threw my torch at the same time. The burning stick smacked the troll in the face, and it drew back, more baffled than hurt. I sprinted down the hall for all I was worth. A part of me was afraid Gastard would try to fight it. As skilled as he was, I did not believe that was a contest he could win. It had been strong enough to smash open my shelter, and by all accounts, its skin was as good as armor.

A second later, the sound of his boots mingled with that of mine slapping against the stone floor, and I would have breathed a sigh of relief if I hadn’t already been hyperventilating. I was running so hard I nearly slammed into the wall at the bend. My sword scraped along the stone as I turned because I was running with my arm behind me like I thought I was a ninja. The troll’s howl reverberated down the hall, and it thundered after us.

Over a long distance, I was sure it would have caught us. But we had a few seconds head start, and it had an even worse time taking the corner than I had. I reached the main chamber and kept going to the door we had entered from, sliding through and turning to see Gastard at my heels. The troll pounded into the room behind him, running on its fists like a gorilla. It looked even bigger than last time, if it was even the same monster.

Gastard made it a few steps past me and spun on his heel, his sword up and ready once more, a look of grim determination on his face. The troll hooted, beat its chest, and charged. I slammed the door.

It didn’t have a lock, but there was a built-in bar on a swivel that I pulled down into a bracket attached to the frame. The troll arrived with a boom, and the door shook, but it didn’t dent or bend. It pounded its fist once, twice, and then stopped. I could hear it grunting on the other side.

“A koloss,” Gastard said, not relaxing his stance. “It was just as I imagined.”

The monster had been so large, that it might not have been able to fit through the opening even if it could break down the door, but that wasn’t something I was willing to bet our lives on. If we left it down here, that would mean the library, and whatever other treasures this place contained, would remain beyond my reach. This wasn’t an opportunity I was willing to give up to avoid having to deal with one big monster.

“Gastard,” I said, “I have an idea.”

He finally lowered his blade. “The eyes, throat, and mouth are soft,” he said. “You use a spear to blind it while I fend it off.”

“What? No. I want to get above it.”

His brow furrowed. “Above? How will we be able to cut it down from above?”

“We aren’t going to cut it down,” I said, “just work with me.”

I slid my pack off my shoulder and retrieved the medallions that represented a shovel and pick. I’d gotten into the habit of converting them whenever they weren’t in use. “I’m going to dig up to the roof of that chamber, and we can shoot it from there.”

Gastard shook his head. “Arrows will not pierce its hide.”

“Then I’ll think of something else.”

With Gastard watching me, the mining process felt slow and ridiculous. I tapped at the wall with my pick for ten seconds, and the first block disappeared. Then onto the next and the next. It was slower than it would have been in the game, but still supernaturally expedient compared to how long it would have taken a team of miners to do the same thing without a drilling rig.

By the time I’d hollowed out the first step up and space enough for one of us to stand in, it was clear that this project was going to take several hours. Fortunately, it was still early in the day.

“I’ll speak with Esmelda,” Gastard said.

I focused on my project, and I was already several feet up into the wall when they returned together. Esmelda came to the bottom.

“Are you alright?” She asked.

“Yeah,” I said, still tapping, “we ran away before it could do anything.”

She didn’t look convinced. “We could go back,” she said. “You came here for iron. If you seal this place, we can return when you are better prepared.”

“I’m prepared enough,” I said. “I have no intention of sword fighting that thing. But we should be able to wear it down if it can’t get to us.”

The door thumped, and she jumped, bringing her hands up to cover her face.

“Will it hold?”

“Probably,” I said. “It couldn’t bust up the coffin, and whoever made this place was a way more experienced crafter than I am. That door might have been made with trolls and worse in mind.”

She spared a dubious glance at the barrier in question. “That’s optimistic,” she said.

I kept mining.