Shadowcroft Academy Year 2 - Chapter Twelve

Prince Chadrigoth of the Diabolus Diaboli, of the Eritreus Elite, stood with the First Cohort in the massive entryway of the Mines of Madness. The walls were chiseled stone, any moisture frozen into ice. Various mine carts, rusted and useless, lay beside piles of yellow dirt and rough stone. The whole cavern was hundreds of feet high and hundreds of feet wide—large enough even to accommodate his size and ambition.

Chadrigoth should’ve been in a better mood, since the Grimjour Peaks nodes were some of his favorite on Arborea. One of the better dungeons to be sure, though still not on par with the Winterdark Halls. A place of fire and ice perfectly tailored to his aesthetic. They reminded him of The Weeping Hell where his father, blah, blah, blah, Mr. Famous lived. Big halls, tall columns, sculptures, custom friezes, and tons of cold stone and dark shadows and crimson caves flickering from magma rivers running through the guts of the realm. It would be a fitting place for a demon of shadows and fire.

However, Ed the Rot Troll’s death bothered him. Not that he cared Ed was dead.

The abyss lord couldn’t give two flames about that worthless dungeon core. Ed was a stupid blight and the world was a better place for his absence. Rather, he was bothered by the fact that his secret plan wasn’t going as well as he would’ve hoped. Even in death Ed was somehow bothersome. And all the while, he had to listen to the professors and students praise the Terrible Twelfth. It was Logan Murry this, and Inga Thora Therian that. And isn’t Marko Laskarelis so funny? And isn’t Treacle Glimmerstupid so talented?

Those fools.

Chadrigoth found himself wreathed in angry flames, so much so, that he blackened Magmarty a bit.

Lady Elesiel stretched out two pale hands to warm herself on the abyss lord’s shadowy flames. That’s right—he was hot enough to warm up an elven lich queen.

A loud voice filled the cavernous entryway, making the train tracks vibrate.

It didn’t come from an Aldaleeran bullboom, but emanated from the tiny blond fairy wearing polished golden armor, a leather combat kilt, and sandals that wrapped up and around her petite calves. She had a buckler strapped to her back and a short gladius riding at her hip. The blade was small enough that Chadrigoth could pick his teeth with it, yet despite her rather diminutive size, he wouldn’t dare to cross her. Professor Zuzanna Zantho fluttered in front of them, arms crossed, golden sparkles fountaining up from her whirring dragonfly wings.

“Stand down, abyss lord. Everyone will come to attention now, and don’t make me ask twice.”

Marko, standing with his loser cohort, brightened.

“Hey, it’s that fairy,” the moronic satyr blathered. “Hey, fairy!” The fool waved. As did his stupid floor boss, Steve. The mannequin was easily the most charming member of the Terrible Twelfth, which said everything that needed saying.

Chadrigoth couldn’t help but grin. “Oh, this is going to be good,” he muttered under his breath.

The gold dust raining down from her translucent wings, swirled together and morphed into an enormous hand. Stronger than steel, the conjured pixie-dust hand latched onto the satyr’s tunic, yanking goat boy off his hooves. His eyes widened in terror. A second sparkling hand appeared, and it slapped Marko once, twice, three times.

Both hands vanished in a fizzle of golden magic and Marko went crashing to the cold stone floor.

“Maggots!” Professor shouted, “you will not talk in my class. You will not even think of talking over me. If you have a question, you will wait until the end of my lecture, and if I deem your question worthy, I will answer it. There are no such things as stupid questions, just stupid people. DO NOT BE STUPID.”

The thunder of Zantho’s voice was no joke, and neither was her power. She’d spent centuries hunting down rogue dungeons. There wasn’t a core in the First Realm that wasn’t chilled by the stories of the Fairy Fetch and her bloodthirst for crushing cores. She was the boogeyman that haunted the shadows and waited for wayward dungeons to step out of line.

Logan was so weak, the thunderous boom knocked him to the ground. The mannequin spun from the fury and fell in a tangle of squeaking limbs.

Chuddles, the awkward buffoon who made the delectable pastries, helped them all stand while Inga Thora Therian blinked in dumb shock. Their oafish minotaur companion continued chewing his cud placidly. He, at least, had the good grace not to embrace himself outright.

“You will form two rows, six cores in the front and seven behind,” Professor Zantho barked. “You will stand at parade rest while I give my lecture! You will listen to every word, maggots. Is that clear?”

“Ma’am, yes, ma’am,” they all called.

In a burst of movement, the students quickly sorted themselves into rows with the First Cohort in the front and the Terrible Twelfth in the back along with Chuddles. The Ninth Circle—composed of an ice imp, a snow golem, a gecko behemoth, and a rather generic lady-in-white ghost—filled out the remainder of the positions. Chadrigoth would tolerate the presence of the Ninth Circle, but he wouldn’t bother to learn their names. A waste of time as far as he was concerned.

As for Chuddles, he didn’t seem to be part of a cohort. Was he auditing Professor Zantho’s class? It seemed likely since he was a transfer student, but Chadrigoth still wasn’t entirely certain how he fit into the scheme of things. That would be rectified in time.

Professor Zantho flitted back and forth, keeping her mad-dog eyes locked on them, her hands clasped behind her back below her shield. “Welcome to Offensive Dungeon Design—the single most important class you will take this year. So important, in fact, that your overall final standings will be heavily weighted by your performance in this course. So it would behoove you to pay attention and not screw anything up!”

She paused, tiny brow furrowing as she stared daggers at everyone.

“Good,” she grunted. “Now, there is a popular and common misconception that Dungeons are primarily reactionary entities. That we sit in our little hidey holes and wait for trouble to come to us. That as Guardians, we’re somehow trapped inside the Dungeons we inhabit. Well, I’m here to tell you that kind of thinking is as wrong as it comes. It is quite common to perform offensive raids and it is essential to know who to defend yourself from the predatory raids of hostile dungeons. Dueling dungeons, we call it.”

Zantho stopped. She fluttered through the first row and stopped at the second. Chadrigoth didn’t turn around completely, but he was able to see the Fairy Fetch point a tiny little finger at Logan. “You, Mr. Murray, have a confused look on your repulsive face. Normally, I wouldn’t have interrupted my exceptionally fine lecture to address your confusion. However, your performance last year in the final exam has made me soft. Tell me. What is your question, maggot?”

“I’m sorry,” that fool Logan blurted out, “I’m just so confused.”

Of course he was confused, Chadrigoth thought, the fool was from some backwater dumping ground of a world.

“Isn’t that exactly what Dungeons do?” the idiotic mushroom asked. “We can’t just leave our dungeon, right? And a dungeon is a location—it can’t grow legs and walk around. Or did I miss something last year? And how in the world do dungeons duel? I mean unless they’re like right next to each other, I guess.”

Chadrigoth waited for the inevitable explosion but it never came. Instead, the fairy chuckled.

“Mr. Murray, I forgot that you’re from Uroth—a world on one of the far branches of the Theta Arcturus. You folk don’t even know about Apothos, so I’m not surprised. I’ll try to break it down into even smaller pieces. The first thing you need to understand, is you are NOT your dungeon. You are a core, defending a specific node. But look at you.” She waved a hand at him. “Walking around without a dungeon. That’s because your essence is in your core. Your core can, at times, connect with a dungeon node, but you are still separate. That’s what wandering monsters are: cores without proper dungeons. It’s best to think about the Dungeon itself as immobile armor that helps protect the real you—your core.”

The information was all so first level. Sometimes Chadrigoth thought he was wasting his time at Shadowcroft. Chadrigoth’s oldest brother, Toddrick, certainly thought that his little brother was stupid for attending the school. How often had Toddrick bragged that he’d upped his rank, on his own, in his own dungeon on the ice world of Gloogig. And how many times did Toddrick talk about how cold it was there? And how he processed so much Glacies Apothos that he pooped snow cones. Whatever.

Still, Chadrigoth stood at parade rest and didn’t show the professor any kind of emotion.

“But it’s important to remember that you don’t need that armor to survive. There are times and circumstances that warrant you leaving behind a node. Sometimes temporarily, other times permanently. Let’s say, for example, that a town springs up next to your dungeon. Sometimes those towns become an existential threat, and you must eliminate them with extreme prejudice. And sometimes the best defense is a good offense. Leave the dungeon with your army of minions in tow and crush them mercilessly before they can crush you.

“But there are dangers in it. If you leave a dungeon with your Guardian Form intact, you must have your core with you. And a core without a dungeon to protect it is always in grave danger. There’s also the very real fear that your minions will abandon you. Bonding with a dungeon location amplifies your power—let’s you draw and cycle from the Tree of Souls through the Celestial Node. And that amplified power keeps your creatures in check. Those nodes are the reason Endogenous Apothos Manifestations are even possible. Exogenous Apothos Manifestations—items that can leave the dungeon—are much more difficult to create.”

“So your minions can just abandon you?” Logan asked, sounding stupefied at the notion.

“Indeed they can,” the pixie said somberly. “That is why you need to learn the ins and outs of AOI, or Area of Influence. When you connected to the Dungeon Inner Sanctum, your AOI will encompass the entirety of the dungeon plus some amount of territory in a radius outside the dungeon proper. But even when operating without a dungeon, you have an AOI—albeit a far smaller one. That is what allows you to summon your minions here in Arborea. But if you send your minions too far afield its possible they will simply fall apart or go wild and give you the slip. You can reduce the risk by utilizing your guardian form and by strategically deploying your floor bosses as platoon leaders. Those bosses will drastically increase your AOI when outside a dungeon. Does that make sense, Mr. Murry?”

“Starting to,” he replied.

Chadrigoth rolled his eyes.

Logan frowned.“But it still doesn’t answer the question about Dueling Dungeons.”

“We’ll cover that topic a lot more in the second half of the year—after you get down the basics. But for now, all you need to know is this. Sometimes Dungeons go bad. They go rogue. And they are far more dangerous than any mere raider. In this class, you will learn how to eliminate towns, capture large encampments, and yes, even battle hostile dungeons. Now, Mr. Murry, will you wipe that confused, mother-loving look off your face?”

“Ma’am, yes, ma’am,” Mr. Mushroom barked.

The fairy nodded. “I will not bore you with very much more talk. You will learn far more by doing and failing than by succeeding in listening. And so, we’ll start our course with something I love more than mother’s Forevergreen Festival brownies. We will start with war. You will be learning how to actively manage your troop movements within your AOI. And Mr. Murry, since you were bold enough to stand there with a moronic look on your face, you can go first. Of course, you do have an admirable advantage because of your symbiotic connection, so why don’t you and Ms. Therian come forward. As for your opponent?”

Chadrigoth raised a huge hand. “I would like to kill the moth and the mushroom.”

The goat boy couldn’t help but chuckle, “And that will be the name of my memoir about my Shadowcroft experience. The Moth and the Mushroom: My Time with Greatness. Or should I call it… Of Hooves and Horns?”

He kept his voice just soft enough not to draw the ire of the fairy.

Professor Zantho flew over, right into the abyss lord’s face, getting close enough he could smell the gleam of her armor.

“Nonsense, you horned maggot,” she finally said after a careful inspection. “Even combined, the moth and the mushroom are no match for you. I said we would start with a war, not a massacre.”

The fairy spun away in a shower of fragrant magic dust.

She drifted over to Her Lady Elesiel of Everstar. “I’m thinking you’ll do fine against them, dead girl. I have heard it said that the only good elf is a dead elf, but then, I’ve had some bad experiences with some wood eleven raiders back in the day. Get your undead ass in gear, Lady Elesiel, because it’s fightin’ time.”

An evil smile twisted Elesiel’s lips. “It will be my pleasure to break them both.”

Chadrigoth laughed. It was a risk, but he couldn’t help rumble laughter. “Go get ‘em babe.”

The abyss lord hadn’t needed to worry about talking, though. The professor preoccupied with that moron, Marko. She was currently using her astronomically powerful glitter abilities to knock the crap out of the satyr again.

“You will not, goat boy, bandy about titles in my class while I am teaching,” she growled. “I heard every word. For the record, I would go with Of Hooves and Horns. It ain’t half bad.”