Shadowcroft's Academy for Dungeons Chapter 23

Logan enjoyed his victory for three days, until the next Core Calisthenics class. Chadrigoth hacked off his left arm with a broadsword while Magmarty watched, quietly chuckling with satisfaction. The earth elemental’s trash talk was subdued because Logan had reduced him to a rocky mound of mushrooms. Chadrigoth, on the other hand, seemed bound and determined to prove that Logan was just as worthless as ever. And unlike Magmarty, who was about as dumb as the rocks he was made from, the Abyss Lord was whip smart. 

He kept his distance when necessary, and always kept an eye out for spore clouds. Often, Chadrigoth would hide behind an invisible wall while he let his hellion imps do his dirty work for him. The little fiends would come leaping out of the Abyss Lord’s flames, reeking of sulfur while they gnashed their obsidian-black teeth. As a high-ranked B-Class dungeon core, Chadrigoth could fill the field with his minions. A small army willing to do his bidding with a thought or the flick of a wrist.

Logan never stood a chance. And yet, since evolving into a Shroomian Acolyte, Logan had picked up some nasty new spore colonies to add to his ever-expanding list of abilities. 

After consulting with Inga, he’d chosen a level-one Blister Wart Proto-Spore Culture and a level-two mushroom set called Gem-Studded Puffballs, which had real promise. Roughly the size of a human skull, the puffballs were a beautiful amethyst color and studded with brilliant multicolored spikes that looked like gemstones. Beautiful, except that they exploded like claymore mines at the slightest provocation, blasting out fragments of crystalline glass. He also unlocked his first level-three proto-spore slot, which he’d filled with his first minions! Spore Wargs. Those vicious little critters were as mean as half-starved junkyard Dobermans.

Even with the Spore Wargs, though, Logan couldn’t hold a flame against Chadrigoth. Besides, his minions were an ace in the hole. No one had seen them, save Inga, and Logan intended to keep it that way. Never knew when having a trick up the sleeve might come in handy.

Of course, Chadrigoth pounded him into the ground. Still, he wasn’t too concerned, because in half of a year, he had progressed to an Iron Trunk dungeon core. If he kept up this pace, he might reach Heartwood by the time he graduated.

The next few weeks passed in a blur of work and training. 

Six days a week, the Terrible Twelfth was up early, out to the Akros Coliseum in bitter cold, cultivating. Seven days a week, they closed down the Codex Athenaeum, studying. Every Monday, Logan and Inga spent the night in the Tartarucha Cells, murdering Sir Rosencrantz Brandybutter in new and interesting ways. They refined their dungeon, worked and reworked the layout, honed the traps, and drilled down on their fighting style. That last was the most important part. Inga could handle herself in a brawl, but even as a Shroomian Acolyte Logan was pretty squishy in the battle department. Harden had evolved into Exoskeleton, which was nice, but he was still too slow and clunky to do any real damage.

Thanks to his level-two Braincap Mushrooms, however, Logan could attach spores to Inga’s minions and take them over. Learning to do battle as a centipede with a hundred legs was an entirely odd experience. 

During school hours, they sat through Shadowcroft’s ponderous, rambling discussions on ethics and duty, and did their best not to doze off during Professor Nekhbet’s bone-dry history lectures. Well, everyone except Inga; if anything, she was even more smitten with him than she’d been at the beginning of the school year. Professor Crucible’s classes were challenging but also interesting, and Treacle was leaps and bounds ahead of the other students in the class. Professor Crucible had even begrudgingly said, “Nice work, son,” once. Only once, but that was practically an award from him. Rockheart’s course continued to be lessons in suffering—lessons that Logan endured with as much good cheer as he could manage. 

Professor Arketa took them on field trips to most of the dungeons on Arborea. The Blasted Barrows was one crypt-like dungeon in the low hills to the west of Vralkag. The Bone Vaults were the other. While they were drier than the forest dungeons, there was still enough moisture for Logan to grow his fungi. There were a couple of dungeons, though, which would be brutal for him to tackle. One was the Bloodrock, in the Heckish Hills, while the real challenge would be the SandScream—one of two desert dungeons. While a handful of fungi could adapt to desert conditions, most couldn’t. The SandScream was all about the sand and the rock, and the deeper you went, the hotter it got, unlike most caverns, which were a constant temperature. 

The dungeon was aptly named—you either got sand in your eye or you felt like screaming because of the heat. There was an Anakin Skywalker joke in there somewhere, but the place was almost too awful for humor.

Even the Chaos Oasis, another dungeon nestled deep in the World Forge Wastes, would be easier for a fungaloid. That place had water and some plant life, though not much. Logan didn’t know if his spores would even take to palm trees.

Visiting the Arborean dungeons was fun—especially for Marko, who soaked up the lessons like a sponge—but Logan and the Terrible Twelfth were far more interested in their first off-world field trip.

They’d be going with a big group, led by Rockheart and Professor Arketa, which meant they’d be there with Chadrigoth as well as Ed the Rot Troll. Those two couldn’t be more different. Unless you were talking about Inga and Marko. The more the astral moth studied, the more the satyr slacked off, until even Treacle was worried. Then again, Treacle was basically the living embodiment of existential dread.

Whatever Marko’s history, it was clear that he wasn’t going to stress about anything. Worse, the Gelatinous Knight was proving to be a terrible influence on the satyr. GK had a work ethic similar to Marko’s, but GK was also a highly ranked B-Class cultivator who would almost certainly pass the Winnowing with flying colors.

Logan suspected Marko’s issues were somehow tied into the past he was so insistent on avoiding, but Marko wasn’t talking and Logan didn’t want to push too hard.

It was mid-February when the four cohorts going on the field trip met at the BYE Portal across the lake. They appeared there, on a weed-filled patch of gray stones that surrounded a silver-colored tree as thick as a redwood. Only it wasn’t a tree. On closer inspection, the bark, branches, and leaves were the very tip of a limb that dropped down through a hole in the world.

To the west, across the waters of Loch Endless, stood Castle Shadowcroft. The sun was shining on the soaring ramparts as well as the library windows set in the cliffsides below the main keep.

Loch Endless looked especially cold, with little whitecaps traveling across its surface. All the dungeon cores came wearing their warmest clan robes. The wind was bitter. The dry red and gold leaves of the tree clattered, and Logan kept expecting them to drop. They never did though. According to Nekhbet, the dead leaves stayed connected year-round, but they leaked Morta Apothos during the fall and winter months.

Logan was spellbound.

He wandered around the ancient tree’s limb, brushing it with his thick, three-fingered hands. He could feel the Apothos coming off it in waves—Vita—and so much of it. He drifted over to the edge of a low wall and saw the rest of the limb descending into the swirling mists of wherever they were.

As impossible as it seemed, the realm of Arborea was flat. Which was terrible in its own way because it meant there was a dimension in existence where the Flat-Earthers were at least partially correct. 

A bunch of students, including the other members of the Terrible Twelfth, were clustered by the water gushing from the lake, cascading over the edge of the world and into the endless abyss beyond. It was momentous waterfall, so beautiful and so strange. Why didn’t the lake drain out completely? And where did the water go? Did it simply fall forever?

Logan couldn’t even hazard a guess to the answers.

Across the channel was the Bogbottom Swamp, though most students at the school, and even most of the professors, referred to it as the Boogerbottom Swamp. Logan and Marko called it the Boogerbottom to annoy Inga. Worked every time.

Rockheart clapped his hands together, instantly drawing in the gazes of the milling students like a magnet. Everyone knew that when Rockheart spoke, you listened. “Yes, yes, I know, you are captivated by the beauty. But focus. We are going to Eritreus to see a real dungeon core in action. We have no time to tarry.”

The students gathered around the gargoyle-griffin as well as the other chaperone, Arketa the Hellgazer. For once, Rockheart wore something other than his stone skin—he had a golden scarf with red borders that matched Professor Arketa’s outfit. She was decked out in the Vermillion Phoenix’s clan colors. Her headscarf matched her dress, both a rich red, while her gloves matched her shoes, the deepest of blacks.

Her headscarf bulged for a second—an unruly serpent, no doubt—but she smoothed out the disturbance with a practiced hand. She then smiled from behind her dark sunglasses. “Well, this is exciting.” She caught Logan looking. “Good morning, Mr. Murray. I do like your new form.” She motioned to the thick chitin plates covering random parts of him. “I will say, your asymmetry is daring.”

Marko laughed because he’d said something similar.

Rockheart cleared his throat loudly and touched the bark of the tree branch. “Thanks to Arketa, you’ve all taken trips from the DIE Pavilion. This will be a similar experience, though perhaps a bit more... turbulent. We’ll be going to the Slaughter Pits of Kyvandry Spencer. It’s one of several S-Class dungeons on Eritreus.”

“Kyvandry Spencer?” Inga glowed. “He’s a blade ghoul. He was one of Inkboon’s primary sources for the various tortured undead guardian forms. I’m very excited to see him in action.” She was nearly bouncing on the balls of her feet in anticipation.

And maybe it was well-deserved anticipation since even Chadrigoth and his cronies seemed impressed.

They shuffled forward one by one and touched the tree. Logan was near the end of the line, so he watched in fascination as each guardian glimmered briefly in a wave of energy before vanishing, whisked away to another world. He also checked his gear while he waited. 

Not that he had much gear to check—unlike some of the other guardians. Chadrigoth had a veritable arsenal already, and his rune-etched ebony armor looked like it was made for an underworld god. Logan had a pair of rough linen pants held up by a cracked leather belt. That was pretty much it, although he had managed to craft a simple leather sheath for his pitted dagger in Professor Crucible’s class, and it hung on his side. Unfortunately, his pitted dagger looked more like one of Haven’s Home’s famed butter knives in his newly evolved hands. Better than nothing, though. That done, he double-checked his silver shield, secured to his back, one last time. The shield was more of a buckler in his larger hands, but, with its magical force field, it was still the single best piece of gear he owned.

Finally, it was Logan’s turn to transport. He took a deep breath and stepped forward, but Arketa’s hand flashed out and caught his wrist before he could touch the activation rune. “Try to focus on a single spot,” the gorgon professor said. “The trip can be very disorienting, especially at your current level.” 

Logan nodded and offered her a quick smile and a thanks. He slapped his hand down on the rune deeply embedded into the wood. How bad can it be? he thought. 

A spike of energy shot through his arm and into his body like a jolt of lightning, and the ground dropped out from beneath his feet while his stomach leapt up into his throat. One moment he was falling only to be flying the next, while every color known to man—and several known only to mushrooms—washed over him in a wave of tie dye and stained glass. His eyes bulged in his head as his arms and legs stretched and contorted in impossible ways. He flipped, spun, and suddenly was surrounded by fun house mirror versions of himself. Some short and squat, others tall and willowy. 

Others were far more horrifying. Visions of himself with three heads or a hundred arms. Versions with antlers, wings, plated scorpion stingers. 

Eventually those vanished, swallowed up by the void of creation, and Logan managed to glimpse the vastness of the universe. An endless blanket of crushed velvet, studded with stars, planets, and the swirl of whole galaxies—all interspersed by tubes of chaotic light snaking across the cosmos. And there, like a shadow, was the Tree of Souls, connecting those living worlds, bright with Apothos, to each other. Planets like Mercury and Venus weren’t connected, but those worlds heavy with life, like Earth, hung from the shadowy tree like ripe fruit.

The wild ride of sensation and color ended as quickly as it started, and Logan abruptly found himself standing at the entrance of the famed Slaughter Pits. It took him a full thirty seconds to realize he was shrieking at the top of his lungs. 

“That will be quite enough, Mr. Murray,” Rockheart growled. He leaned over and whispered into Logan’s ear, “Please comport yourself with a little dignity, if not for your own sake, then for the sake of our House.” 

Logan snapped his jaws shut and said a silent thank you to Professor Arketa. At least she’d tried to warn him. As the world stopped spinning like a top hat, Logan took a minute to get his bearings. It always paid to have some measure of situational awareness. They stood on the rocky crags of a wasteland mountain range. Hateful black clouds ruled the lightning-strewn sky. Thunder boomed like the world was about to break. A vicious wind blew in the foul stink of a Death Valley blood bank without air-conditioning.

They stood on a ledge next to a blank, rocky wall. Half-hidden stairs, treacherous at best, descended to a foul-looking river below. Next to the river was what looked like a long-dead tree growing up the side of the cliff. It looked dead, but it wasn’t—it was part of the Tree of Souls, and it could take them back to Arborea.

However blasted the landscape, Logan was thrilled to be on another world, and one so rich with Apothos. He felt the thirteen Apothine energies thrumming in the air, and when he cycled Apothos from his core to his eyes, he couldn’t help but gasp at the swirls of primal energy blowing in the wind. Painting the air itself. Inga’s mnemonic came back to him: I make coffee and tea for Grandfather Tiberius and make lemonade under the Velveeta moon. Ignis. Magma. Corrosivus. Toxicus. Fulgur. Glacies. Terra. Aqua. Mallus. Luminosus. Umbra. Vita. Morta.

It did work wonders.

Arketa had brought an umbrella, which she raised high above her head. “Welcome to Eritreus, though this isn’t one of the more scenic areas, I assure you. However, this is one of the most famous dungeons in the entire realm. And the Radiant Shields of Infinity—one of the five most powerful dungeoneer guilds across all the multiverse—has sent hundreds if not thousands of raiders to their deaths trying to take the Slaughter Pits.”

Logan had learned about the dungeoneer guilds in his History of the Tree of Souls class. Radiant Shields of Infinity. The Sun Fist. The Sages of the Golden Thread. The Hermetic Order of Davos. The Scarlet Paradox. The Glorious Sunrise of the Golden Dawn, also known as the GSGD—two different groups of raiders, both who liked sunrises, apparently, had decided to join together. Neither wanted to abandon their name, and so they had embraced the redundancy.

There were hundreds, maybe even thousands of guilds—all started by entrepreneurial dungeoneers who had the will and hubris to charge money to would-be raiders in the guise of helping them save the universe from evil monsters lurking in dungeons. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Rockheart nodded. “Yes, we’ll be taking the back way to the inner sanctum.” He touched the blank wall, tracing an elaborate pattern with his stone talon. A crack opened, and that crack split wider until it would allow even the biggest among them—Chadrigoth and Magmarty—to pass unhindered. They entered a room filled with crouching hatchet ghasts, vicious undead creatures, human-shaped, with axes where hands should’ve been. They had massive fanged maws but no eyes to speak of.

A dozen of them stood amongst the remains of raiders, all long dead. Rusted armor, broken swords, and decaying wizard robes dotted the floor. They didn’t attack but motioned to a twisting corridor that led to another corridor, which went past a gruesome torture chamber lit by flickering candelabras, which led to a long ladder going down, down, down to the second level. The whole place smelled liked dried blood and coffin dust.

Logan could feel the Morta Apothos gathering around him, battering at his skin, desperately burrowing toward his core. It wanted to be consumed. It was nice, cool, dark…yes, he could find a nice home in a place like this. The hatchet ghasts were a little grisly for his tastes, but then he was a mushroom man who digested unwary adventurers in acid pits. At this point he was well beyond casting stones—besides, if his time at Shadowcroft had taught him anything, it was that looks meant absolutely nothing. 

Some of these hatchet-handed horror shows were probably perfectly nice over a couple of pints.

Arketa nodded at the aesthetics. “Yes, I like this room. It’s classic undead dungeon material with the minions to match. And don’t anyone worry. All the traps have been turned off and the minions tamed for us. For the raiders?” She tapped her bottom lip, a sly grin stretching across her face. “Now that is a different story.”

Through a labyrinth of nightmare rooms, narrow hallways, and broken-stepped staircases, they finally reached the inner sanctum of the Slaughter Pits. The central room was the Buckingham Palace of underground torture chambers. Chains, complete with jagged hooks, hung from the ceiling. There were racks, iron maidens, and rusted spikes everywhere. The central pedestal, surrounded by hooks, knives, and all things pointy, looked like a newly used butcher’s block. On all four sides of the pedestal hung long, serrated daggers. Each one had a hilt studded with a different gemstone. Those were obvious magic items and definite lures. 

A glossy onyx gemstone, powering the dungeon, floated above the grisly altar.

From out of the shadows shambled a guardian form of truly horrific proportions. He was a bloated zombie with a big sloping scarred belly the color of a blind worm. Rotten leather overalls, like an 19th century Liverpool butcher’s, mercifully covered some of that bloat. Instead of a left hand, he had a collection of knives sprouting from his wrist. He was bald, with terrible slashes across his scalp. His ears looked like they’d been hacked off with a chainsaw. Rusty barbed wire had been wound around his head and covered his eyes. How did that thing see? Its sense of smell couldn’t be too good since it had a tiny nose resting above a huge mouth. Underneath flabby lips were yellow teeth like a shark in need of an orthodontist. Any dentist would run screaming. 

Hell, anyone sane would run screaming. Period. End of story.

The big-bellied zombie raised an oversized coffee cup. On it was printed: YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE CRAZY TO WORK HERE BUT IT HELPS. He sipped loudly. “Yullis, Arketa, good to see you guys. Do these poor students know what they’re in for? Anyone try and talk them out of the life?”

“Now, now, Kyvandry,” Arketa said, smiling. “Stay positive.”

“I’m positive that today isn’t going to be much of a show. Like most days.” The zombie sighed, then chuckled. “You little dungeon cores think it’s all cocktail parties and saving the Tree of Souls, but it’s mostly middle-management headaches.”

Rockheart cleared his throat.

The blade ghoul laughed. “Sorry, Yullis, I’ll stick with the party line. Lo, yond dungeon cores, it is up to us to keep holy the Tree of Souls and smite unto thee any dungeoneer who comes a-dungeoneering. See? I still know the party line.”

Inga elbowed Logan in the side. “You’re staring.”

Even with that warning, Logan couldn’t stop. The zombie was at least seven feet tall and must’ve weighed a thousand pounds. He came forward on huge slapping feet. He grinned at Logan and sipped his coffee. “Wow, fungaloid, that choice took some sack. I’m Kyvandry Spencer. Do you do those Opal Truffles? My uncle Elliott makes a mean mushroom soup. I’m basically dead, but the taste of that dang soup brought me back to life for several delicious seconds.”

Logan’s mouth never felt dryer. He was both disgusted and a bit starstruck. “You’re the blade ghoul that worked with Immelda Inkboon? I’m Logan Murray. It’s great to meet you.”

Kyvandry hooked his coffee cup on one of his steak-knife fingers and stuck out a big mitt. “Great to meet you, Logan. Seriously, anyone try and talk you out of this gig?”

Treacle, standing behind Logan, sighed. “It was either this or death. Or we could become wandering monsters. Though that might happen anyway,” he muttered darkly.

Logan found Kyvandry’s hand cold and rubbery. It matched his own because mushrooms and decay went together like almond butter and vegans.

The blade ghoul laughed heartily. “The Winnowing! They’re still doing that? Gods above and below but Shadowcroft hasn’t changed a bit.”

“How was it working with Inkboon?” Inga asked, wings buzzing. One of her many tells.

“Immelda?” The blade ghoul clicked his knife fingers together. “We had some great times together. Wine, butter, butter knives… we did the cutlery tour of Haven’s Home. We didn’t sleep for a week.”

Inga smacked Logan’s arm. “See? And you teased me about reading that book on bread knives.”

“I stand corrected,” Logan said, mystified.

“Mr. Spencer,” Rockheart growled. “Please, you must be concerned. You have active raiders in your dungeon!”

“Geesh, it’s always Mr. Business with you.” The blade ghoul charged over, clearly wanting to put Rockheart into a headlock.

The gargoyle moved back and spread his wings. “Now, Mr. Spencer, I’m not just another student. In fact, I’m the academy’s rector prime.”

“No way!” Kyvandry erupted. “Skip put you in charge? Well, old Flower Skull has been busy lately, running around, fundraising, and recruiting.”

Marko’s mouth fell open. “Skip Shadowcroft? We know what the S stands for!”

Chadrigoth flamed and shadowed his way forward to introduce himself to the blade ghoul, who took time to meet all the students. He lingered with Arketa, kissing her hand, which made the Hellgazer laugh and roll her eyes. Maybe. It was hard to tell because of the dark sunglasses.

“That’s enough,” Rockheart said a little pointedly.

Arketa laughed. “Now, Yullis, you know that Kyvandry has always been such a flirt.” She then sobered. “K, we are here on business. We want to show our freshmen how you deal with dungeoneers. We’d rather not miss a single kill.”

Kyvandry shrugged. “Too late for that. I got lucky, killed one on the first level. They managed to circumnavigate some rooms to get to level three. Not that I’m worried. If they do manage to survive the third level, there’s big plot twist on the fourth floor. As in my buddy Rosie, an abattoir ogre, who likes to twist the heads off raiders.” He sighed, smiled, and wiped a tear from under the barbed wire digging into his eye sockets.

“Probably won’t need Rosie. Presently, I have two dozen torture orcs ready to descend on the raiders. Not sure I’ll need them, since they’re five seconds from butchering each other. I hate it when heroes murder each other. I get my fair share of the Apothos, but still, it’s kinda disappointing. I like doing the slaughtering. I have the knives for it.” He motioned to the four daggers on his altar.

The floating black gem flashed. A holographic scene was painted in the air above them, and Logan was reminded of Shadowcroft’s light show back on his first day dead.

An image resolved in the air like a dream. Five raiders stood in a medieval kitchen. It was a scorched stone room full of ovens, meat hooks, blood sausages hanging from the ceiling, and bundles of herbs tied together. A fire roared in an enormous stone hearth, and on it, something turned on a spit, juices dripping into the flames. Was it a pig? Logan winced. Yeah, he didn’t think so.

Picking out the character classes of the dungeoneers was easy: the first in was obviously a tank, with her thick plate mail, glimmering with runes, and a tower shield big enough to cover a child. She was built like a Valkyrie juiced up on gorilla steroids. Then, there was a powerful magic-user with a gnarled staff, an oiled black beard, and ornate gem-encrusted robes that screamed warlock or wizard. A leather-armored rogue equipped with two short swords shadowed the tank—probably searching for traps. Bring up the rear was a chivalric cleric with chain mail and mace, and a weaselly-looking guy with a moustache who held a bow with an arrow nocked. Hanging from his shoulder was a lute. Bard. Bingo.

“These clowns are delusions. Those patches there mark them as members of the Tremblecloaks. Not even a top one hundred guild. These jokers are B-Class Azure Branch cultivators with eyes that are bigger than their stomach. Even if every one of them were A-Classers, they never should’ve come here. This is firmly an S-Class dungeon.” Kyvandry scratched his big decaying belly and shook his head. “That’s the third-floor kitchen. Notice that body turning on the spit? It’s mostly for show, we don’t eat the bodies, but the aesthetic of your dungeon is very important. Remember, it’s crucial to demoralize the raiders as much as you can. Actually, that’s probably the most interesting part of the job… you know, the psychological torment you can inflict on these pests.”

Marko nodded. “Yeah, K, I keep telling my buddies it’s all about the aesthetics of the dungeon. It’s the art.”

Kyvandry clacked his knife fingers. “Hey, goat boy, Arketa can call me K. For a satyr like you? It’s Mr. Spencer, sir.”

“Sorry,” Marko said. “And I prefer goat man.”

“Sure you do, junior!” The blade ghoul laughed. “I’m just kidding. I had a satyr buddy who did well, went the Liber Pater route, and his dungeons were magnificent. He and his garden of living statues killed so many dungeoneers.” Kyvandry lifted a hand. “Wait. Listen.”

“We will not turn back!” a voice echoed through the room.

“But that’s Canarom on the spit!” another voice boomed in horror.

The dungeoneers were shouting, and from the sound of it, they were several bad seconds away from turning their weapons on each other.

Keep Reading Here: Chapter Twenty-Four