The storm had a purpose. Under the sky of Dargoth, mobs did not despawn during the day. Bojack and I exited the valley together, giving me a broader impression of the landscape than I'd gotten looking through the diamond barriers. The country was uneven; the land rising and falling, punctuated by the scattered knuckles and spikes of jagged rock formations. Fungal colonies sprawled in place of forests, breaking up the brown and grey earth with sickly shades of purple and red.

"How does anyone live here?" I asked. "Aren't those mushrooms deadly?"

Monsters milled around us, grunting and hooting. I'd taken off my mask and discarded the skin cloak, but the zombies nearby made no move to attack me, and the phantoms swimming in the air appeared almost playful. I couldn't forget that it was the demon's influence keeping the mobs peaceful. Every one of these creatures was an aggressive predator.

"This is Golgoth," Bojack said, absently pushing aside a zombie that shambled too close. "Humans live within cities and fortresses warded against the wart spores. There are other regions the sun touches. They would look more hospitable to you. But this is our foothold in the world. The storm rises from Mount Doom."

I resisted the urge to facepalm upon hearing that Kevin had actually called his base Mount Doom. When had he been born? Lord of the Rings was published in the fifties, but Kevin had been here for centuries. Either Mizu had sent him back in time, or there was some serious dilation going on between Plana and Earth.

"How far are we from the Wastes?"

"Not so far as the taiva flies."

The natural question died on my lips as three wyverns curved around the cliffs. Their wings were immense, but with bodies as big as horses, there was no way their flight was completely natural. They came down a comfortable distance away from the mob of mobs around us, and a rider dismounted from the lead beast.

He was obviously a demon, the most inhuman example that I had seen. His head was lopsided and soft, mottled like the skin of an octopus, and a short curtain of tentacles hung down over his mouth. A long-sleeved robe mostly hid his body and hands, and the fingers peeking out from under the dark cloth looked boneless and slick.

The newcomer and Bojack exchanged a few words in the same guttural tongue he had used to cast his spell, and the cephalopod turned his gaze on me. His eyes were the size of saucers, glossy blue. He seemed to size me up for a moment, then dismiss me entirely. A bubbly noise issued from behind the tentacles,

"This is Vepar," Bojack said, "one of our conspirators."

The assembled mobs, zombies, phantoms, and the lone horse-hound, began to move. They weren't as organized as an army of soldiers would have been, but they were all pointed in the same direction, the column of smoke on the horizon that I now knew to be Mount Doom. The troll carried the Anchor over to the wyverns and deposited it beside the lead before following the crowd.

After another terse exchange I couldn't understand, Vepar went with the mobs.

“This tribute will go to the Dark Lord," Bojack said, "so for the time being, neither he nor my kin will know that there had been any change here. But the deception will not hold forever. We must hurry."

As we approached the wyverns, one of them yawned, revealing a maw lined with dull triangular teeth. They would have a bite like a shark, and I doubted zombie leathers would offer anything in the way of protection. Bojack waved his hand, and the trio lowered their angular heads. He lifted the Anchor and strapped it atop the largest of the three.

"Mount that one," he said, pointing at the third and smallest of the wyverns. "It is the most docile."

As if to contradict him, the beast used its knife-like talons to scrape deep furrows in the soil, but its head remained bowed. There was no saddle, but the creature was equipped with a harness and a set of straps that I could use to tie myself on. The thought of riding one of these monsters did not fill me with excitement, but if it got us out of Dargoth that much faster, I was happy to do it. The beast lowered its body to allow me to climb up, and I took a position behind its wings. I had barely finished figuring out the ties when Bojack hopped atop the last wyvern and all three began flapping their wings.

They didn't lift straight up, instead taking off at a lope as they gathered the wind and began to fly. I bounced up and down on the wyvern's back, feeling the tension in the straps and praying that they held as we rose. As the ground dropped away, I felt my stomach drop with it. While heights didn't terrify me, I had never been the sort of person to hang off ledges for fun.

The wind rushed by my ears, and its heavy wingbeats found a steady rhythm. This wasn't a leisurely horse ride. Bojack and I would not be chatting along the way, and the wyverns separated as we ascended, giving each other plenty of room to maneuver. As we approached the low-hanging clouds, the sky was anything but peaceful.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Crimson tendrils flashed amid the roiling storm, tracing a skeletal hand, but the lightning came and went without the accompaniment of thunder. The wyverns picked up speed, and soon the earth slid underneath us as we left the valley behind. Twisting in my harness to get a good look at the cage that had held me for the past five months, I drew in a sharp breath.

It really was a giant diamond box, encasing both cliffs as large as a football stadium. Under the dark sky, the structure was barely visible, one end illuminated by the lone torch, the rest blushing as lightning flashed once more.

How could there be that much diamond in one world, let alone all in one place? If he'd crafted it himself, the time investment for placing all those blocks alone was staggering. I didn't even try to do the math. It would have taken years.

Kevin had sent a machine to dig through the mountain, so it was likely he had ways of automating large-scale builds as well. That was a trick I needed to learn.

We reached the Wastes in a few hours.

The wyverns were tireless and carried us at a pace that couldn't have been matched by the fastest horses in Drom taking turns to bear us. Most of Dargoth was barren, but we had passed over a handful of towers constructed after the fashion of the way-stations, and at one point I thought I'd seen a black city in the embrace of a distant mountain range.

The desert was bright in comparison, as the storm halted along its edge. As if I had needed any more proof that the clouds were not of natural origin, here it was. The edge of the storm was a nearly perfect line running beside the sands.

A way-station, and Redroad beyond it, had already come into clear view as the wyverns began their descent. The tower was identical to the one that I had hijacked what was now literally a hundred lifetimes ago. Our landing was surprisingly elegant. Though the wyverns seemed like they shouldn't have been able to fly, they were masters of their element, and came down as gently as doves.

As soon as we were on the ground, I worked at the knots holding my legs and waist in place. They had tightened during our journey, and I had to spend several minutes working at them while the wyvern underneath me grew increasingly agitated. By the time I slid off its back, it was hissing like an angry lizard.

"Sorry," I said. "I'd give you a treat if I had one."

It bared its teeth at me, and I realized I did have something. The materials I'd gathered in the valley weren't of any value. Leather and stone could be found anywhere, and they wouldn't serve to craft the tools I needed now, but I'd kept the coins out of habit. I worked one out from my leggings and slapped it into my palm.

Plep.

A slab of zombie meat appeared in my palm, hanging out over the edges of my hand like a porterhouse steak that had gone very, very bad.

The wyvern reacted so suddenly that I had to drop the meat for fear of losing my hand at the wrist, and its toothy maw darted out to snatch the snack before it hit the ground. The meat disappeared down its gullet, and the beast eyed me curiously, as if wondering how many more slabs I could cause to appear.

One moment, its eyes were beady and black and anything but friendly. The next, they softened, a faint green line appearing around its pupils. It looked confused.

Had I just tamed this wyvern? In Minecraft, not all animals could be tamed. For those that could, however, all you had to do was give them the right kind of food. If you gave bones to wolves, they would follow you around and defend you from mobs. I'd definitely fed a horse before, and nothing special had happened. I hadn't bothered experimenting with other animals. The harpies had accepted food from me as well, and though they were my allies, they were anything but tame.

Maybe I had imagined that its eyes hadn't had any color in them before.

"Sit." I said.

The wyvern hissed at me.

"What are you doing?" Bojack had long finished untying the Anchor, and he was holding it with visible effort.

"Just feeding him," I said. "He deserved it."

Bojack muttered a word in his demonic tongue that caused the wyverns to take off as a unit. I was a little disappointed to see them go. When monsters weren't trying to eat you, they were kind of nice.

"Do you still have your mask?" The demon asked.

"Yeah, why?"

"Put it on. The soldiers will believe you to be an advanced Koroshai."

Ugh. "You mean like Bill."

"The same."

I did as he asked, and we took the ramp that led up to the back gate of the waystation. It was better manned than the other had been. There were faces watching up from the arrow slits. But I didn't think we were in any danger. Bojack might have been low-ranked, but he was still a demon, and they served directly under Kevin.

"How does that work, anyway? Do zombies level up from eating people?"

"Lesser entities can accrue essence," Bojack said, laboring under the weight of the Anchor. It had to be significantly heavier than a granite block if it was giving him trouble. He was at least as strong as I was. "They do not advance as easily as a hero, but they all have higher forms."

That was something to worry about. Though if I became the Dark Lord, mobs wouldn't be a threat to me anymore. They would be a tool.

I quickly grabbed onto that train of thought and tossed it to the back of my mind. What was I thinking? This thing with Bojack was going to be as temporary as I could make it. The demons were here to destroy the world, and I was here to protect it. While the idea of having a horde of monsters at my beck and call had its appeal, what would I even use them for? Subjugating humanity?

Coexistence wasn't an option when one side was trying to turn the planet into a hellscape, so it would be nice and comfy for the devil when he got here.

Chains clanked as the gate lifted, and a group of Dargothians welcomed us in identical iron suits. We didn't stay long. Bojack started giving orders as soon as we were inside the main hall, and the soldiers rushed to accommodate him. They kept a few horses for running messages between the way-stations, and we took all of them. The animals weren't big enough to carry the demon, but the soldiers rigged up a sled for the Anchor in a matter of minutes. I barely had enough time to ask for waterskins. The soldiers didn't question the request, though it had to have struck them as unusual for a koroshai to be thirsty, and soon we were exiting the other side of the waystation and on our way to Drom.