Shadowcroft Year 3 - Chapter Twenty-Six

Shellex Aldabra and the rest of Lupine Fury found themselves in a long corridor—four doors on the left, four doors on the right for a total of eight doors. All were a bright pink and looked exactly like bubblegum. A sign, canted at an odd angle, declared the corridor the “Delicious Hallway of Bubblegum Doorways.” Shellex wasn’t about to see if they were actually gum. He just hoped they didn’t lash out with stretchy tentacles. So far that hadn’t happened, but there was no telling what might happen in a place like this.

Between the doors were alcoves, and each alcove hosted a different statue of the mushroom factory owner, showcasing him in various heroic poses that Shellex was having trouble taking seriously. The little toadstool fungaloid looked too cute and happy. However, appearances could be deceiving, especially in a dungeon.

Dravena squinted. “I’ll check out the left, but the way is likely to the right. To the right! Mark my words, mammals! Come on, Shellex! Only mammals should get hurt. You and I are too good! Too good!” It was a lot of words and a lot of squawking.

Shellex had a bandage from his satchel wrapped snuggly around his head. “Scout ahead, Dravena! But be careful. The centipede receptionist got away. I would imagine we might run into him again—unless he’s bleeding to death somewhere. We can only hope.”

The crow woman fluttered off down a hallway, the eyes above her beak darting left and right. Her daggers dangled from both belt and bandolier.

The tortoise turned to take care of his wounded.

Hellmutt’s helm flashed, and his wounds were healed. “I am very shocked by that battle. It is a miracle, Leiblings, that someone vasn’t killed. I find this place shocking. Very very shocking. Everything is so absurdly ridiculous, yet deadly. Shocking! Danke Schoen, Petula, for providing us a much-needed escape. However unsavory.”

The skunk woman giggled. “Savor it, Mr. Bear, because I’m stinky with victory.”

Rothchild had a bad gash on his upper chest. “That battle was a rough one. I’m glad I have my porcupine quills. Otherwise, a bug would’ve eaten me. I could do with a little healing? Hellmutt, care to help me out?”

Ugh, he talked so slowly.

Hellmutt trundled over and looked at the blood oozing down the porcupine shifter’s chest.

The werebear gave it a few sniffs before moving over to study Shellex’s face. “Shellex is more strategically important, Liebling. His vound isn’t as bad, but I shall heal him vith that in mind. Then I shall save my services for more dire times.”

“Oh… come… on…,” Rothchild complained slowly. “We mammals. Should stick together. And it really… hurts!”

Petula pulled out a bottle of green fluid. She handed it to the porcupine shifter. “Sip this. It’ll help a little. But only a little. And it won’t taste good.”

Rothchild sipped it, and his wound closed, though it stayed an ugly red color, clearly infected. He gave the vial back to the skunk girl with an appreciative nod.

She gazed at the wound. “Wait until the pus comes. It heals. But it also infects. I like the smell of infection. Is that wrong?”

Rothchild slowly closed his eyes. “Great. So I stop bleeding. But I risk death. And I smell. This is depressing. Let’s keep on.” Long pause. “Going.”

Hellmutt touched Shellex. When that great helm glowed, the tortoise shifter felt all of his wounds heal. He’d had a headache, but that was gone now too.

They didn’t need a cleric because they had the huge werebear and his helmet.

Dravena came soaring back into the corridor just as Hellmutt finished his work. “Left is offices and filing cabinets. Might’ve found a bit of loot but not a lot. Let’s go right, right, right!” She landed and gave Rothchild’s wound a long look. “Ouch. Glad I’m not hurt, you dumb mammal.”

The porcupine shifter’s quills bristled in frustration. “Shellex. You go first. Are we not going?”

The tortoise shifter stuffed his bloody bandage back into his satchel. “We are. Sorry, Rothchild, but the bear decides who he heals.” In the end, Shellex knew the porcupine shifter’s life wasn’t all that important. He was expendable. Petula, though, was another story.

Rothchild scowled. “Great. That’s just.” Long pause. “Great.”

Petula sent a cloud of glowing stink down a hallway, to give them light. Shellex tried to breathe through his mouth to avoid the stench. Gah! That was even worse. Now, the nasty taste filled his mouth instead. There was just no winning sometimes.

Dravena was right behind Hellmutt as they made their way down a hallway. There was more wallpaper showing more paintings of happy children eating candy, but the farther down the corridor they went, the more demonic the children began to look. Their teeth were rotten. Their skin was a sickly gray as the first signs of decay started to show. The candies had little faces that seemed to be screaming for help. It was creepy.

Would those paintings come alive? Hellmutt had once run a dungeon with living paintings. It got so bad that he’d had Petula fry every room before they entered. She’d prepped by eating day-old Bharooshian burritos they’d bought off a street vendor before entering the Hell-Oh Portal.

Dravena grabbed Shellex’s wrist. “Those dumb mammals can’t know, but I found a little treasure.” From a pouch, she pulled a Chrysalis Jewel and held it for a second in a feathery fist before secreting it away again. “I’ll split it with you.”

The crow woman’s black eyes glinted.

Shellex sighed. “Let’s just survive this first. The mammals aren’t so bad.”

“Porky’s gonna die!” Dravena tried to whisper it, but ended up cawing that last word. She then giggled, before taking to wing, and flying down the passageway, breaking ranks as usual. Shellex wasn’t going to stop her. He knew where she kept her loot. If she died, he’d get that diamond-studded cocoon. Let her take all the risks she wanted.

The tortoise shifter entered went through the archway and into an underground cavern. He saw there were four more archways—all the corridors connected the Delicious Hallway of Bubblegum Doors to what a sign claimed was the Grand Cavern Staircase and Fun Land.

The cavern looked like the top of a toddler’s birthday cake. There were ruby red rock stalactites hanging from the ceiling, looking sharp and deadly and recently licked.

A thick, frosting-coated stairwell dropped down through the cavern. Sugar crystal green moss filled the gaps between the stairs and rock candy walls.

Surrounding the base of the cakey spiral staircase was a moat of bubbling black goo, which ever so slowly ate away at bits of candy and cake. The moat was fed by a snaking river of black sludge which curved out of view. Way down at the bottom, Shellex could see a candy boat moored on a lollipop dock, which jutted out into the black goop. Shellex didn’t like the look of that boat, not one bit.

He and the Lupine Fury had avoided the black goo in the reception room, and they needed to do the same thing here. That muck looked dangerous.

He could worry about the sludge and the boat latter. For the time being, they had to focus on getting past the odd staircase. This was another kill room, without a doubt.

He started down the steps, gripping his ax.

The frosting under his boots was like half-frozen mud. It was holding him up, but he figured it would turn to sludge at some point. Those stalactites were also going to drop, and at the worst possible moment. The signs were all there.

Rothchild Sharps followed with his bow ready. He was pale, fighting through the pain of infection.

Petula took two steps in the cake, then made a face. “My shoes are getting dirty.” She giggled as she let out a long squeak of flatulence. A smelly patch of low-clinging ground fog appeared in front of her. She stepped onto the stink, which was potent enough to physically support her weight. That way, she could ride down the stairwell on her own cloud.

Meanwhile, Dravena flew coasted high above the stairs, weaving in and out of the stalactites. She chittered and cawed and then yelled. “Dropsies! Dumb dropsies! Of course, of course, of course! Dropsies dropping! And enemies!”

The stalactites broke free from the ceiling with a thunderous crack and fell like oversized spears.

Petula, though, swept her stink cloud out from under her feet. She flung it up with a flick of her tail, expanding it as it drifted upward, so that it covered her teammates.

The stalactites smashed against the stinky shield spell, though it meant Petula wound up knee deep in cake—not just cake, but a cake trap—white frosting covered deep yellow cake that was blisteringly hot. Shellex, likewise, found himself knee deep in undercooked cake, but thanks to his scaly exterior the heat was little more than a nuisance. Not so for poor Petula. She howled in a combination of anger and discomfort. She was mad. Furious.

Good. An angry skunk was a dangerous skunk, and they needed Petula at her best.

From hidden caves came a host of huge moths, which fluttered down on dusty wings. Their eyes glowed. Their antennae were barbed whips of suffering. Their legs ended in sharp chitinous spikes. Those things looked like battle moths, created for one purpose—death.

The moths would’ve been bad, but they weren’t alone. On their backs were pint-sized mushroom warriors covered in the speckled jawbreaker armor, just like the receptionist had worn. Instead of spiked arm weapons, these little mushroom warriors carried long white-and-green spears. The smell of mint joined Petula’s stench, which somehow made everything worse.

Dravena flung daggers into the back of one of the mushroom warriors, killing the creature without much trouble at all. They had strength in numbers, but they were weak overall. The crow woman touched down on the back of one of the battle moths and drove her biggest dagger into the thing’s head. She leapt off the corpse as it went crashing down into the cake.

Shellex couldn’t watch long, because he found himself under attack. A wintermint spear stabbed into his shoulder, and his whole arm went numb from the cold. That was bad. What wasn’t so bad was that a minty-fresh taste filling Shellex’s mouth. That helped get Petula’s yuck off his tongue, and it made the whole place smell so much better. So it was a win/lose kind of situation.

Before his attacker could flutter off, Shellex bashed the moth out of the air with his ax, killing it, and throwing the rider.

The mushroom man was light enough that he didn’t sink into the frosting. Instead, he skated across it, spear raised, coming at the tortoise shifter with remarkable speed.

Shellex prepped himself for another minting—

A flurry of quill arrows peppered the mushroom warrior, dropping him in seconds.

That settled it. If the porcupine archer survived the battle, Shellex would force Hellmutt to heal him. It was the least he could do.

As for the werebear, he had rushed down the steps like an avalanche until he too was mired in the oven-hot cake. But like Shellex, his hide was so thick that he barely seemed to feel the heat. He was also big enough to get most of his bulk up and out of the overly sweet pastry. He opened his fanged mouth and unleashed his breath weapon, a blast of pure destructive Apothos energy, gleaming as bright and golden as his claws and teeth. It struck a swooping moth and its rider, disintegrating them both on the spot.

Petula squeaked out another poisonous cloud and with paws raised, directing the gaseous blast into a cluster of their winged foes. Several moths passed out from the reek, though the mushrooms seemed largely unaffected. Shellex supposed that made a certain sense, considering the fungus men were creatures of rot and decay already. Without their mounts, however, they careened downward, slamming into the cake steps or landed in the brown, burbling bog.

A dozen enemies still remained.

They swooped down, a whirlwind of wings, antenna, and wintermint spears.

Shellex dove headfirst into the cake, taking the spears and moth legs on his shell. He was mostly unharmed, but one of the moths whipped his exposed neck with its barbed antennae. The pain lanced through his body and ignited a surge of rage within the tortoise shifter.

The instant the attack was over, Shellex rose up, blood and cake dripping from his neck. He chopped a mushroom man in two before reversing his grip and splitting the skull of a moth with his war ax.

Shellex knew that if they didn’t get down to those docks, all of them might die mired in the fondant frosting.

Petula, once again, saved the day.

She ignited her stink cloud above them and the room churned with fire. Before the preternatural blaze could consume them all, she conjured another shield cloud of stink. She shaped it into a wide slide, that would take them over the burbling moat of goo and down to the dock.

While the moths and their riders frantically tried to avoid the flaming cloud of death above, Shellex shouted orders. “Rothchild, Hellmutt, Petula! Ride that slide down to the bottom. Dravena, get to that boat, I’ll give you cover.”

None of his party argued, especially not the crow woman. She pirouetted mid-air, folded in wings in tight against her sides, and dive headfirst like a missile. She touched down on the boat before the rest of the part had even managed to get onto the slide. Not totally surprising, since Dravena cared about herself first and foremost.

There was simply no honor among thieves or dungeoneers.

The tortoise shifter thought about using his final form, the true expression of his tortoiseness, but no, things weren’t as dire as that.

Shellex did grow a foot taller and expanded his shell out a few feet, to really block the attacks, as the rest of his party went sliding down Petula’s stink cloud all the way to the bottom of the cavern and onto the lollipop docks.

Then Shellex leapt onto his back and careened down faster than all of them. At the last minute, Petula drew her cloud back to her and Shellex skidded through the thick frosting and molten cake until the friction finally stopped him.

He flipped onto his arms and legs and scurried across the millions of lollipops which composed the dock. A few of the paper sticks poked him, but they were more annoying than dangerous. That was a mistake on the part of the dungeon core—those paper sticks should’ve been spikes.

Shellex made it onto the boat with Rothchild firing quill after quill—he had an infinite amount of arrows thanks to his porcupine powers. Hellmutt roared, launching out another lance of golden energy. Lastly, Petula took out a few more of the moths with another inferno stinkbomb.

Dravena quickly unmoored them and the candy boat went sweeping down the chocolate river, caught in an unseen current.

That was when Shellex noticed three things. One, the boat was made from a million little round candies, all glued together. Two, the chocolate river seemed like it was as hot as magma still in the tube. And, three, at the front of the boat stood a statue of tall, slender mushroom woman holding a wintermint spear. She hadn’t attacked them, so she was probably just a statue, like the statue in the fountain back in the reception room. Still, the figure put a bad feeling in the pit of the tortoise shifter’s belly.

The longer she didn’t move, the more they ignored her.

The chocolate river carved its way through the face of the rock candy. As they drifted further and further from the cake room, the walls began to shift and change color, going from rusty red to a kaleidoscope of greens and blues, violets, pinks, and oranges. The tunnel wasn’t growing any narrower, but they had to be careful. There had to be a trap on the boat somewhere.

Shellex needed his team healthy. He pointed a claw at Rothchild. “Hellmutt, heal that porcupine. Now!”

“What of your vounds, Leibling?” the werebear asked.

Shellex shrugged. “I’ll be fine. Just heal him.”

“Thank my sharp butt,” Rothchild cursed. “I’m not.” Gulp. “Feeling too well.”

Suddenly, Shellex wasn’t either.

They had Petula’s glowing death perfume to light the way, but the colors of the ceiling weren’t right. The candy glowed too brightly and Shellex felt dizzy. Suddenly, it was like he could hear the colors. Or see faces in the skunk shifter’s smells.

“Are you all feeling…” Shellex started to say.

Dravena was up at the bow, holding onto the mushroom woman statue for dear life. “Drugs! Drugs! Drugs! Gimme drugs, drugs, drugs. Taking your life away?”

She then fell onto her back, laughing.

Shellex joined her in laughing. He wasn’t sure why, but something was absolutely hilarious.

Hellmutt roared and danced, which made the entire boat sway.

Petula nearly fell into the lava chocolate because she was cackling like a mad woman, clutching at her sides as tears streamed down her cheeks.

Shellex wasn’t sure what was going on, but it was pretty clear that Dravena was right. Drugs were involved. Lots of drugs. Well, if they did all die, at least they’d die laughing he thought. Then he laughed even harder.