Shadowcroft Academy Year 2 - Chapter Thirteen

Logan and Inga moved forward, a little worried about what this psycho fairy would do to them. Professor Zantho had been made for boot camp movies—she was the stereo-typical drill sergeant in miniature Amazon armor.

Lady Elesiel also stepped from the ranks.

“Good luck, Logan!” Melvin called.

Chadrigoth’s corresponding laughter brimmed with malice.

Logan rolled his eyes and brushed off the remark not even bothering with a reply. Logan had been an underdog fighting for his place from the second he’d gotten to Shadowcroft Academy—this was no different. Win, lose, or draw, he was going to fight with everything he had.

The Fairy Fetch buzzed in front of them. “The game is capture the sanctum. The first guardian to join their cores to the Mines of Madness dungeon will win. There’s a couple restrictions. One, you won’t be using the tactical capabilities of guardian forms, only your minions, to accomplish this task. Now, before you ask, yes. Eventually we will incorporate dungeon elements like obstacles, terrain elements, and trap rooms—but for now you need to learn how to properly utilize and control your minions.”

Professor Zantho snapped her fingers. In a shower of gold dust, a man-shaped figure tromped forward bearing a small chest enormous hands. The sparkle golem set the coffer down, opened the lid, then removed three silver bracelets. With surprisingly nimble fingers, the conjured golem snapped one on Logan’s wrist before moving on to Inga and Lady Elesiel.

“Two, the Negation Bracelets have been created to limit your abilities, so there will be no cheating. Minions only. I find that young guardians tend to rely too heavily on their spells and abilities, but remember, the best dungeon is a dungeon where you never have to come face to face with a dungeoneer. The guardian form is a last-ditch defense. With that said, if you want to risk your cores in melee, well, this ain’t kindy-garten, maggots. This is big girl school. Go at it if you’re so inclined—but don’t come whining to me if something bad happens. Remember, here at Shadowcroft we rigidly adhere to Cemoyre’s Constant: only the fit survive. Any questions?” the maniacal fairy growl, arms crossed.

From the warning glint in her eyes, she didn’t want questions. That was pretty clear.

The silver bracelet chaffed around his wrist and it exuded a terrible energy—it was like breathing through a wet cloth—but more than that, it was interfering with Logan’s Core function. He processed Apothos like always, grinding away using the Boundless Wheel technique, but it felt like someone had sliced his core in two. Logan tried to access his spore abilities, but nothing happened. There would be no pollinic affliction or athlete’s foot. No Narcotic Ecstasy or exploding gem-studded puffballs. Heck, he couldn’t even harden his chitin. He was limited to his symbiosis with Inga and basic minion manufacturing and management.

A tight thread of panic built inside his chest, but he suppressed the feeling.

If he and Inga could stay focused and keep their heads on straight, they had a chance. Lady Elesiel was going through the same disorientation, Logan reminded himself, so she would be just as vulnerable to panic as they were. And in some ways they had the advantage here—because Logan’s guardian form was rather weak, he’d learned to lean heavily on Inga’s minions. He also had one other ace tucked away up his sleeves. Not that he actually had sleeves.

“Players, create your minions and bosses!” Professor Zantho shouted.

Both Logan and Inga used their joint Apothos to shape the monsters they’d crafted during their minion class with Professor Hellgazer. For Logan, that was his spiked and fanged Blistering Death Warg—a big bat-eared beast with red-spotted mushrooms growing out of its back. For Inga, it was her brand new floor boss, a Golden Centipede Spartan. A truly weird and terrifying creature. It had the upper torso of a man—though covered in heavy golden chitin—while its lower body was that of a centipede with its hundreds of scuttling legs. It carried a long bone spear in one hand and bore a heavy chitin round shield in the other. Unnatural red eyes glowed under a horse-hair crested helmet.

Small, ghostly green mushrooms dotted the Golden Centipede Spartan. Innocuous little things, those mushrooms, but they might just help them win this game.

Scuttling around the Centipede Spartan were a half-dozen smaller centipedes, with waggling antennas and razor-sharp mandibles. With a thought, Inga also brought forth a dozen Spike Flies, going big rather than numerous. They were big basketball-sized creatures with huge eyes, whirring wings, and barbed spikes jutting out in every direction. Each and every one of them were dotted with the green mushroom colonies.

Logan managed to get another two spore warg out of his core along with a half-dozen skullcap waddlers, who looked pathetic if not downright comical next to the fearsome fiends around them.

Lady Elesiel of Everstar laughed and created not one but three floor bosses.

One was a hulking skeleton armed with a gleaming golden mace, which matched the inlay of golden runes marking every bone. An ornate golden mask covered the skeleton’s skull. It was basically the most gorgeous skeleton Logan had ever seen. The thing was as much art as it was monster. Belonged in a museum or a gallery, but certainly not tromping around the Mines of Madness.

Marko audibly gasped at the beauty.

A dozen other metal-encrusted skeletons appeared—their bones covered in silver sigils—each wielding a silver flail in one hand and a silver kite shield in the other.

The other floor boss manifested out of thin air, a spectral elven maiden with flowing white hair and a long flowing gown to match. She was pretty in a kind of Haunting of Hill House way. Morta energy fountained out of her empty eye sockets and ran down her cheeks in twin tracks. Her hands ended in black Morta claws as long as short swords. She was like an ambidextrous Freddy Kruger with delusions of grandeur. A dozen ghostly maidens appeared around her, only these ladies in waiting gripped platinum daggers in their pale fists. Two daggers each.

If Lady Elesiel had stopped there, she would’ve given Inga and Logan a run for their money. But, of course, she didn’t.

The last boss she summoned was a tall, rotting woman, an elven cheerleader zombie if there ever was one. Seven feet of lean muscle, she wore a sleeveless top with a V neck in the colors of Azure Dragon Clan. Like the top, her jaunty skirt showed a bit too much mottled skin on her desiccated frame. A sheathed platinum sword hung at her side, with blue and gold ribbons attached to the pommel. A recurved bow, slung across her back, was also festooned with colorful streams. Great. So instead of pom-poms, this undead cheerleader carried festive medieval weapons. Two other undead elven sword maidens appeared beside her in a flash, a brunette and redhead, shorter than the blonde, but armed with the same deadly gear.

Lady Elesiel must’ve seen the awe on Logan’s face. “One blond to rule them all, one blond to find them, one blond to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them. Princess Scream, can you give them a sample of your power?”

The blond cheerleader zombie opened her half-rotted mouth and let out a shriek that knocked over a few of Logan’s waddlers.

On waddler, taller and thinner than the others, managed to stay on her feet. Mariah Carey blinked and proclaimed in a high, frightened voice, “Panic now? Or panic later?”

“Later,” Logan breathed, bracing himself.

Two questions raced through his mind: one, how in the world were they going to beat her? And, two, how did she know about Lord of the Rings? The Ashvattha Universe was a strange place indeed, Logan was finding—some things seemed to transcend earth and permeate all of the universe. Not for the first time, Logan wonder if those stories and truths didn’t actually originate from elsewhere in the universe, only winding up on Earth after everyone else had experienced them. Kind of like how new movies always played in the biggest and best cities before eventually trickling down to mom-and-pop theaters in backwater Kansas.

Was earth the universal equivalent of backwater Kansas? There was no time to ponder that particular conundrum.

Noodle Doodle went and nosed up a couple of waddlers, then turned and gave Lady Elesiel and her retinue of undead terrors a deep chested woof. Noodle wasn’t scared.

“Roy Boy, get ready,” Inga called to her Centipede Spartan.

Logan made a face. “You finally settled on a name and you went with Roy Boy?”

“Is Noodle Doodle any better?” Inga asked, arching a delicate eyebrow.

“Eh. Fine. Good point.”

A line of sparkling gold dust appeared across the tracks in front of them. Those tracks, in turn, led into a wide corridor in the vast rock wall, angling down into darkness.

Professor Zantho barked out a laugh. “You all better get ready. When the Juggernaut Train reaches the starting mark on the floor, the lesson will begin. Get to the sanctum. Also, word of warning, I activated all the mining carts—just to make things interesting.”

“I think it’s interesting enough without the carts,” Inga whispered.

Logan lightly punched her arm. “We’ll do fine. It’s even. Her thirty against our thirty. Plus, we have an advantage.”

Inga didn’t stop frowning. “I’m not sure what advantage we could possibly have and I also feel as though your math is subtly misleading. Three undead elven princesses, thirteen dagger ghosts, and thirteen sigil skeletons. That’s thirty including her guardian form. You have three wargs and six waddlers. I have six centipedes and twelve spike files. With Roy Boy, me, and you, we have thirty.” She frowned, glancing at the enemy troops. “You are technicallycorrect—the best kind of correct, I will admit—but I must say, her forces are far impressive.”

Lady Elesiel’s undead squad let out a series of intimidating shrieks.

One of the waddlers squeaked out a nervous fart.

That was embarrassing.

A thundering rattle behind them drew every eye. A huge train car rolled down the massive rails, metal grinding on metal, wheels sparking in flashes of orange and gold. The Juggernaut Train Car would slide between their squads before it hit the starting line.

“Welcome to the Mines of Madness!” Professor Zantho roared, brandishing her miniature sword and shield. The second the Juggernaut Car hit the starting line, she slammed her sword on her shield. The ring echoed through the cavern, reverberating off the cavernous ceiling.

Thanks to the position of the Juggernaut Cart, Logan and Inga couldn’t attack any of Lady Elesiel’s squad, but she couldn’t attack them either.

Instead, it would be race to the entryway to get there before the Juggernaut Car reached the opening.

Logan threw himself onto Noodle’s back. “Waddlers, mount up!”

Good thing his little skullcaps were so tiny. In a rush of stumpy limbs, they piled onto the other wargs, three each. The fungal hounds took off in a mad gallop with Mariah yelping the whole way.

Inga unfurled her wings. Flanked by Spike Flies, she soared toward the entrance. Her centipedes raced on their many legs, and Roy Boy led the swarm. Logan and Inga had the speed, but Lady Elesiel had ghosts and projectile weapons.

Spectral arrows skittered across the floor from the zombie cheerleaders. The dagger ghosts streaked like banshees behind them, leaving hazy green afterimages in their wake. But Logan and Inga made it into the wide corridor first. The massive tracks ended in a T-Junction.

Inga shouted above the thunder of the train cart. “To the right, Logan. I memorized the basic layout of Arborea’s dungeons.”

Logan loved Inga, always so smart and diligent.

Logan riding Noodle charged down more tracks. A mining cart came zooming toward them on tracks far smaller than the ones leading into the dungeon. Logan’s Spore Wargs, weighted down by their riders, barely avoided the clacking cart.

There was clanking machinery designed to lift the smaller carts and dump their contents into the bigger one. Thankfully, Logan’s mushroom crew were short enough to duck under the contraptions, but Inga and her Spike Flies had to weave around the rusted arms and cables. Inga was quick and nimble and so were her flying minions, but it still cost precious seconds. Seconds they didn’t have to lose, especially since the dagger ghosts sailed through the labyrinth of rusted metal as though it wasn’t there at all. One of the benefits of being a specter, it seemed.

Logan crouched low on Noddle Doddles back and dug his heels into the hound’s sides, urging it to move fast. Together, Logan and Inga’s raced down the sloping mining shaft until they came to another junction, where a train of carts screamed across the tracks like banshees, effectively blocking their way. Logan and Inga turned as ones, their minds in perfect synchronization. It would take time to get their troops past the impromptu barrier, which meant they needed to find a way to slow down Lady Elesiel’s formidable front-line fighter.

The problem was, they had to face the dagger ghosts, who could phase in and out of existence. How could you kill something you couldn’t even hit? Logan wasn’t sure, but he knew they needed to try something.

“Waddlers!” Logan shouted. “To arms!”

The little skullcaps shivered as they summoned malformed shields and small bulbous cudgels made of hardened fungal chitin. They continued to tremble as the ghosts descended, led by the sword-fingered floor boss.

Logan pointed. “Inga, hit them with the Spike Flies, just to see if we can hurt those things.”

Inga thrust both hands out and a wave of basketball devil-thorns kamikazed into the ranks of the ghosts. The first wave passed harmless through the noncorporal bodies. The ghosts lashed out with silver daggers as the second wave dove. Their bladed weapons were deadly, dropping three of the flies in an instant. When the ghosts attacked, however, their bodies became solid. The spectral maidens dropped to the ground for a minute, before floating upwards.

Logan made a fist. “So they’re vulnerable when they attack. Good. We have to thin out their ranks while we can.”

Inga scowled. “The skeletons and those dead girls are closing the distance quite quickly.” The train of mining carts continued to clack behind them in an endless stream.

“We need a Phalanx,” Logan said. “Waddlers, take formation!” The pudgy mushroom men formed ranks, pressing my shoulder to shoulder, their shields overlapping. What they really needed was some pikes or spears to form a proper shield wall, but the crude cudgels would have to do. Logan grinned as the golden centipedes slipped among their ranks rearing up and thrusting razor-tipped legs out between the gaps in the shields. Not pikes, exactly, but close.

Roy Boy charged forward with shield in hand, keeping his thorax low to the ground. Time to pull out his secret weapon…