Shadowcroft's Academy for Dungeons Chapter 35

Yullis Rockheart faltered the moment he stepped into the SandScream—nothing was as he expected it to be. He squinted his stolen feline eyes, ears laid back against his head in agitation. Absently he adjusted the leather jerkin armor hanging over the truly awful red pants and studied the entryway. He’d anticipated a desert lord dungeon, a pyramid tomb of scarabs and a mummy or three. Standard stuff, for someone unfamiliar to working with dusty earth and shifting dunes.

There was none of that, however.

There was sand, to be sure, spilling onto the floor and narrowing the wide corridor, but neither sarcophagi nor scarabs. Instead, at the front of the hallway was an archway where grisly piles of dead giant centipedes rotted into mere husks. They created a slop of fungal growth on the floor, but that wasn’t all. Little puppet creatures stood in the stinking filth, covered in jeweled mushrooms—those would be the fungaloid’s Gem-Studded Puffballs. Garish paint had been splashed at the top of the arch, splashes of color, along with more mushrooms. The words were clear, however inane the script.

Welcome to the Mad Party of the Dark Muse’s Depravity!

An entry room was an important statement in a dungeon. Rockheart was of the mind that the entryway was meant to be welcoming in its way—to lure the prospective dungeoneers deeper into the labyrinth, before springing shut the jaws of defeat. That was the way Arketa taught the introductory Underground Feng Shui course, which naturally meant most first-years employed those same tactics in their Winnowing final. Yet, there was no reason to do so. These dungeoneers didn’t need to be enticed—they were running the dungeon as a matter of survival—so putting them at ease was wasted effort.

The four troublesome cores had been smart to realize that.

Erejam stood with this gnarled staff, the tip glowing and making his oiled black beard seem even more oily. His jewel-encrusted robes glimmered. He frowned as he read the name of the dungeon. “The Dark Muse. So, there will be artwork. Artwork displeases me.”

The Vampiric Runecaster shot Rockheart a glance. “Feel free to use your talons, Tearclaw, to rip apart any paintings we find.”

Rockheart nodded. He was trying not to talk. It was a good thing that the cat man he was impersonating hadn’t spoken much before he’d assumed his identity. He’d had to alleviate the fears of the other raiders when he’d returned, but he’d won their confidence with ease. He’d spent more years as a professor than most of them had been alive—he knew all the words to speak. All the lies to whisper. He was giving intel, he’d said. Apparently, the gargoyle has a vendetta against whatever dungeon we’re running. He wants us to succeed. And he says it’ll be worth our time if we can win.

They were fools, easily manipulated with a few words.

“Gods but this place is awful,” the rogue, Flynn Corry, said, glancing around at the nightmarish dungeon entrance. The man stood in fashionable clothes, with no apparent weapons or armor. Except for the eight rings sparkling up his fingers. Three of which were magical and would give him both armor and weapons. For now, he looked like he might be attending the after-party of an elegant ball put on for some young bit of royalty on Eritreus. “Puts my teeth on edge.”

The thief wasn’t wrong. Truly unsettling work, and Rockheart was grudgingly appreciative of the mastery at play. The rector prime turned his gaze away from the room and took stock of the rest of his comrades, wondering if they would have the skills and power to finish the task.

Orem Leadblade, a dwarven Earthbinder in heavy plate mail, stood ready to fight with both an enchanted stone hammer and a shield crafted from crystalline glass. Ekli Oreniel, a half-elven Wood Warden, held up her rune-etched scimitar, which cast watery blue light across the ground. Their heavy hitter was a half-orc Blademaster called Lyndagg the Skinner. She had an armory worth of obsidian knives sheathed on every part of her sleek ebony armor, striking against her green skin. Besides her knives, she had a curved sword riding one hip and a wicked serrated buckler strapped to one beefy forearm.

They were certainly formidable in appearance, though in truth, those four were only C-Class raiders. All highly ranked, true, but C-Class Iron Trunks, nonetheless. Only Erejam and Rockheart were B-Class. Still, these were the most dangerous of the lot—if they couldn’t beat Logan and his ragtag crew of misfits… Well, that didn’t bear thinking on.

Flynn Corry adjusted his well-coiffed hair, making sure it was as dashing as ever. “Well, I’m not sure what’s going on here, but I’m glad we have two Azure Branch cultivators with us. Especially the great Linraist Erejam.” He tipped his head toward the Vampiric Runecaster. “How many times have you survived the Slaughter Pits?”

Erejam scowled. “More times than I can count. Nasty place, the Slaughter Pits. Each time, though, I delve farther in. Unlock more of its secrets. I will be victorious one day.”

“I have no doubts on the matter, good sir,” the rogue agreed. “But first, you’re going to get us out of this mess, right? You and Tearclaw?”

“Of course,” the Runecaster said. “This is an odd sort of place, but it holds no danger to one such as myself.”

Lyndagg banged her scimitar on her shield. “Well then, why do we tarry? This talk does nothing. And I, for one, am not afraid of dead bugs and a jester’s puppets!”

From somewhere in the darkness beyond the archway, a slow rhythm started. Closer, far closer, an eerie disembodied flute started piping a maddening tune.

The eyes of the two white-faced puppets suddenly gleamed scarlet. Red swirls painted their cheeks, giving them a weirdly cheery appearance. The puppets, only a few feet tall, shivered to life in strange herky-jerky movements. Both danced out of the slop and started to sing along with the tune.

Welcome you!

Welcome to…

The mad party of the dark muse singing!

The mad party of the dark muse bringing…

Death and darkness to all you heroes

We’ll kill you quick and then have beer, ohs!

The puppets danced closer to the party.

At the mention of beer, Rockheart rolled his feline eyes, ears twitching in disgust. The rhyme was forced, and so very, very Marko Laskarelis.

Before Rockheart could cast a spell that would perfectly imitate Tearclaw’s Ferox sorcery, Erejam summoned living shadows from the air. A trio of twisted creatures with blazing purple eyes, conjured with Umbra Affinity, then given the semblance of life through stolen Vita Apothos. Vampiric Runecasters were a mishmash of Summoners and Blood Elementalists with a number of potent abilities—Shadow Life, among the most basic. The Runecaster flung the shadow demons at the puppets. The impish shades struck the puppets with tearing claws and inky-black teeth.

The Gem-Studded Puffballs exploded, obliterating the attack shadows and spewing their deadly crystalline shards into the air.

Erejam called forth a blood shield with a flick of his hand, preventing the glass shrapnel from getting anywhere even close to the rest of the raiders.

An insane voice broke from the darkness beyond. “My darling little darlings are dead! You will join them before long. Now come into the darkness, my friends, for there are more songs to be sung! And more fun to be had!”

The voice belonged to Marko, though it was twisted, strange. Echoing and unnatural.

Rockheart sneered even as a feeling of dread filled his belly. “The dungeon is trying to demoralize us,” he said. “We can’t let this fool frighten us.”

Erejam strode forward on supremely confident feet. “Never. I saw those puffballs on the puppets right away. This is a contemptuous attempt at a trap. They have no idea who they are dealing with. We are the best of the Tremblecloaks, the very finest new dungeoneering guild in Aurora and on Eritreus!”

That was laughable. The Tremblecloaks were nothing more than a bunch of upstarts. However, Erejam wasn’t wrong. They managed to capture the best the guild had to offer. Too bad the guild’s standards were so… substandard. Save for the sorcerer, who truly was powerful.

Erejam pushed even further into the entry chamber, raising his gnarled staff overhead in defiance. He turned, offering his back to the dungeon in a display of complete contempt. “I am a Vampiric Runecaster! I can draw the power out of their very blood. I can summon shadows that will kill and kill again. I can divide my form to confuse and confound my enemies even while stripping the flesh from their bones with my all-consuming sorcery! I am death incarnate. I have no equal!” he crowed, throwing his head back.

He had a perfect view as the ceiling opened up above him and disgorged a truly deadly surprise.

Erejam let out a startled squawk as a gigantic steel-encrusted caterpillar—twenty feet long, as thick as the dwarf was wide, and covered in mercurial spikes—dropped with an audible thud. The chrome larva’s spikes ripped through Erejam even as the sheer weight of the thing crushed him into meat paste.

And just like that, in the blink of an eye, the party had lost one of their Azure Branch cultivators.

Rockheart was dumbfounded. Truly.

This was the astral moth, using her Metamorphosis ability, right away, in the first room! He’d expected them to divide their dungeon into four floors, where each core would be a floor boss. Simple, straightforward, and practical given the circumstances and time restrictions. But no, they had committed one of their most powerful resources early and most unexpectedly… A bold move, yet one that had paid off. They had removed Erejam—arguably the most powerful of the actual raiders—from the equation before the man could do more than sling a handful of spells.

Orem Leadblade howled, “By my beard! A fight, and this is a dungeon boss, or else I’m an elf!” He waded forward with the half-orc skinner by his side.

Orem dug his fingers into the ground, and it parted for him like hot butter. He scooped up a boulder that must’ve weighed half a ton and slammed it into the side of Inga’s head as though he were tossing around a feather pillow. Such was the power of an Earthbinder. The great metal worm reeled from the blow and Orem followed up, leaping forward to bash in her skull with his wicked hammer. Inga thrashed her head left at the last moment, goring him with her mandibles. She nearly eviscerated the man, but suffered a grievous wound for her not inconsiderable efforts.

Orem dropped, alive but in pain, clutching at his ruined belly.

Lyndagg had used the Earthbinder’s attack to maneuver around the guardian. She shot in like an arrow, peppering Inga’s side with a wave of Apothos-conjured Glacies daggers. Green blood splashed against the wall in a sheet. Even badly wounded, Inga fought on, swinging her head toward the half-orc like a battering ram. Lyndagg brought her shield screaming forward, catching the astral moth’s deadly spikes on her buckler. Swiveling, the Blademaster smacked off one of the caterpillar’s mandibles. Then, in a flash, Lyndagg dashed up one of the piles of sand, leapt, and brought her jigsaw sword down, carving through the caterpillar’s thick hide like a surgeon’s scalpel through silk.

One of Flynn Corry’s rings flashed, and ornate armor appeared, covering his clothes perfectly in bands of hardened black lacquer and soft but sturdy leather. Another ring flashed and two silver, rune-etched short swords filled his hands. He didn’t rush forward, though. He yelled at Rockheart. “Tearclaw, you should probably do something, eh? This is a straight-up fight, and I’m not too good at those. I prefer a nice, safe back to stab!”

“Coward,” Rockheart spat.

The thief was right though—he should act. It was just endlessly amusing to watch the astral moth so thoroughly thwart the raiders. He had no love for dungeoneers of any stripe. Still, he was on a mission, he reminded himself. With a flick of his hand, he threw golden glowing claw missiles into the caterpillar, sizzling her undulating flesh and melting her chrome spikes in a wave of searing heat.

Inga turned and tried to get at Lyndagg once more with her one good mandible, but she mistakenly exposed her belly in the process.

Ekli Oreniel seized the opportunity to slash through Inga’s underside, spraying the room with more of the sludgy green blood.

Inga then did something unexpected. More twists in a long line of twists.

She straightened, retreated, and used her bulky tail to push a mound of sand aside. A section of sandstone slid back into the wall. Below was a fungaloid’s digestive pit. She was bleeding out—nearly dead—but somehow still managed to shove Linraist Erejam’s body into the black fluid, which immediately started to bubble and churn.

She let out an insectile screech as Lyndagg drove her sword into her side, over and over again. Meanwhile, Ekli continued to slash with her scimitar, carving great gashes into her unprotected belly. Even Flynn Corry rushed forward, dancing around her spikes and mandibles, laying into her with twirling silver blades. As for Rockheart, he saved his spells. This fight was as good as over and the astral moth had won the skirmish, no matter what happened now.

After a few more moments of fruitless fighting, the metal caterpillar slumped forward, life draining from her inhuman eyes. Even with her guardian form gone, Rockheart knew Inga’s core would continue to float on the pedestal in the inner sanctum, feeding Logan both Apothos and intel.

Still, the Terrible Twelfth had just lost their best dungeon boss…