Shadowcroft Year 3 - Chapter Six

A NEW SHADOWCROFT CHAPTER EVERY MONDAY!

“You’re not serious, Marko, are you?” Inga stopped in the middle of the stony corridor on their way to their next class, Cruelty Incorporated: The Business of Destruction.

Marko shrugged. “What? You can’t be mad that I didn’t take your suggestion on my elective. I’m liking our alchemy class. I just wanted something a bit different, ya know?”

Logan took that moment to retrieve the ball of twine from his interspatial Ring of Pockets. It had taken a week, but he’d finally found one end of the twine, and he was trying to thread it back through the snarl. But when he did that, he ended up tightening another part of the ball. So far, it had proven to be an extremely frustrating—maddening even—exercise, but he just knew he needed to have patience. Eventually he would figure out the lesson.

Treacle lingered nearby, casually chewing on some hay. Listening to him munch hay and cud was so much better than the constant clacking of his jawbreaker. However, Treacle had a bad habit of holding the candy in his fingers while he ate his actual food. It wasn’t sanitary and that was coming from Logan would literally dissolve rotten food in an open pit for nutrition.

Additionally, Inga was deeply concerned about his dental hygiene. All that jawbreaking couldn’t be good for him. Logan had a bit of concern as well for Treacle’s multiple stomachs. Would the sugar mess up his system?

“Something different?” Inga roared in exasperation. “It’s clown school. Clown school, Marko!”

Marko raised a furry finger. “You are mistaken, madam. It’s clown college, thank you very much. Nick Nicklewise’s Clown College and Travelling Variety Dungeon of Terrific Techniques. See? Clown college.”

This was the first Inga was hearing about it. “And that’s going to be your off-world elective next semester? At where again? At this Nick Nicklewise’s school?”

“Actually, Inga, if you must know, Nick keeps his cost down by letting himself be hosted at other schools. This year, the program is at Saudrian’s School of Guardians.”

Inga recoiled in physical disgust. “Saudrian’s? It’s barely accredited. And even now, they’re on probation. The Council of Dungeons is seriously considering demoting them to a minor institute.”

“Which is why I’m not going to Saudrian’s, Inga,” Marko said. “I’m going to a highly reputable clown college hostedby Saudrian’s. Nick’s a good guy. We exchanged some letters. It’s going to be so much fun!”

“Fun!” Inga whirled on Logan. “Tell him we’re not here to have fun. We’re here to save the flippin’ universe!”

“Multiverse,” Treacle muttered. “All possible worlds.” He swallowed his hay. He then stuck his jawbreaker, which was now full of lint, back into his mouth. The clacking started once again. Worse, Treacle kept pulling pieces of lint out of his mouth.

“Say something, Logan!” Inga demanded, hands planted on her hips.

Logan let out a happy shriek. “Yes. I got two inches of twine undone!”

Inga tapped her foot and glared at him in reply.

Logan slipped the ball of twine back into his Ring of Pockets. “Inga, look, Marko knows what he’s doing. He’s taking our cultivation class seriously. He’s been cleaning bathrooms. Sure, his choices aren’t always the best when it comes to Apothos usage, but we can help him.”

Marko grinned. “Thank you, Logan. And, Inga, I guarantee that my studies in advanced harlequinometry will be just as useful as your silverware class.”

Inga flushed, her pale face turning momentarily red. She then took a deep breath, and claimed her frazzled nerves. “I suppose an argument could be made that my silverware saved our lives, Arborea, and perhaps the entire multiverse. So we’ll see, Marko. We. Shall. See.”

Treacle made a gross sucking sound while he worked the jawbreaker. “Harlequinometry isn’t a word.”

Logan got his friends moving toward their dungeoneering class.

Marko patted Inga on the back. “All I’m saying is that I need a little fun in my life. I know you like your paper blizzard, but cleaning the bathrooms is terrible—the exact, polar opposite of fun. I don’t know if you guys know this or not, but on Sangretta, I was royalty. I was the bad boy heir apparent, three times removed from the crown prince, but hey, that didn’t matter because I was super popular. In all the tabloids. And so rich. And handsome. I’m not bragging. All I’m saying is that I have never cleaned a toilet in my life. Did I make fun of the poor schmoes who had to clean toilets? Yes, but not when they could hear me. I was a man of the people.”

Yes, they knew all of that.

Still, Logan thought Inga was overreacting. “Inga, are you sure this isn’t about your own cultivation task?”

“Maybe.” Inga wrinkled her forehead. “Normally, I would love the complexity of an audit, finding a place for all the numbers, checking the math, coming up with organization schemes, all of that. In theory, this should be an amazing opportunity. But this is five hundred years’ worth of receipts, reports, and travel expenses. A lot of the people I’d need to talk to are literally dead. It’s a lot. But sleep is for the annoyingly sane, isn’t it?”

This time, it was Logan that stopped them. “Listen guys, I know our P.A.I.N. cultivation class isn’t a whole lot of fun, but it’s totally going to be worth it.”

“How can you say that?” Marko asked. “It’s cleaning toilets, Logan. In no universe can that be worth it in the end.”

“I’m telling you guys, this whole thing is just like this old bit from The Karate Kid.” He held up a hand. “And yeah, I know that is a culturally specific reference that no one here understands. It’s from this movie, where the karate kid does all these chores for his teacher. Only, the chores help him learn valuable martial arts techniques and ultimately win this big tournament in the end. It’s this whole thing. Every single thing we’re doing is going to pay off, I promise you. I’m not sure how exactly, but it will.”

Marko grinned. “So let me draw you a scenario. We get involved in some big mystery like last year, right? And Inga finds financial records from five hundred years ago that solves everything. Or, maybe, we have to face this super powerful dungeoneer near the end of the year, and bam, he turns out to be a living drain blockage. Like living hair. For some reason, I find myself pulling hair out of a lot of drains.”

Inga’s face brightened. “And maybe at the center of Logan’s ball of twine, there’s this magical ball of energy that will allow him to tie another knot in his Apothos core.”

Logan loved the looks of hope on his friends faces. Except for Treacle, who looked more depressed than ever.

Logan, though, soldiered on. “Right, exactly. I mean, the ball of twine is kind of on the nose, since I’m literally unraveling a knot. But it will help me. Like Treacle’s jawbreaker will help him. It’s a Jovian Jabberknot. Again, so on the nose. You heard Rockheart. All the cultivation teachers and Shadowcroft gave us these weird tasks for a reason.’

Treacle took the jawbreaker out. Spit dripped on the floor. “This candy gives me such bad ingestion. I’m in constant pain.”

But Marko’s suddenly high hopes would not be dashed. “But at the center might be a tincture that’ll upgrade you to a B-Class cultivator. I’m with Logan on this.”

“It’s just like last year,” Logan said, nodding. “I thought Professor Moonbow was out of his hippie mind. But his cultivation technique changed everything for me. We just have to be patient.”

“Or we’ll all go insane,” Treacle added. “Either way, I will find sweet release from the pain.”

That was worrisome, but Logan got them to class. To be honest, he was curious about Marko’s clown college. He could imagine all sorts of things. They’d all have to wait until after the Forevergreen Festival break before they’d know if Marko was totally wasting his time.

They didn’t really hurry to their dungeoneer class because the professor was always late. Sometimes five minutes late. Sometimes ten. One time, he showed up ten minutes before the class ended.

His name was Professor Kobold. He was, in fact, a kobold. He should’ve been rather fearsome, since he was basically a miniature dragon. But instead of being fearsome, he was mostly just sad. He wore a brown suit with the tie undone to the third button of his unbuttoned and untucked shirt. He had the aroma of stale cigarettes and newsprint. He had a watch, which he checked frequently. When he wasn’t sleeping. Incidentally, he slept a lot.

The classroom was bare except for a single strange film projector which seemed to be run on steam. It didn’t use normal movie reels. Instead, it cast light through a crystal.

The room was always a bit cold and damp, which Logan liked, but then the first thing the professor would do when he entered was throw some coal in the firebox below the projector. That would add some heat to the room. Sometimes it got so warm that Marko fell asleep.

Then Professor Kobold would go to the desk at the front of the room and pull down  a white roll up screen, which would covered the chalkboard. They’d never used the chalkboard—not once. It was always the screen. Always the projector.

The dragon man cleared his throat as took his positioned at the front of the room and started on rollout. There were only sixteen dungeon cores in the class—four cohorts, with four students each.

You could easily count the cores quickly, and yet, Professor Kobold opened a dull black binder and took up a pencil. He generally breathed some flames on the pencil before he started. Then he took roll. “Franklin Aarnog.”

Franklin, a Toad King, was the leader of the New Franklin Four. Two of the old members of the Franklin Four had been killed during their first year. The Pyro Ifrit, known as a Wishcaster, had survived. That was Ippo Gifter. The other two members of the New Franklin Four was a vampire with purple hair and spidery black veins named Acheron and Shurgur Eve, a beastly fly woman with huge eyes and buzzing wings.

Filling out the rest of the class roster was the Mummy’s Curse Cohort, lead by Alphonse the Spice Mummy, and the Dreaded Delta Talons. That cohort was led by a lizard man with gleaming steel talons named Thrit Intok. He was joined by a skeleton with rubies for eyes, a pig-headed warrior with an oversized warhammer, and an oddly cherubic looking baby called a Crib Demon, who was small but deceptively powerful.

His name was Chucky Chubbs.

The skeleton was Mhadrac Deathgaze.

Last but not least, the porkine hammer-wielder was Jacqueline Squealie.

Logan knew because Professor Kobold went through every single name at the beginning of every single class. It was as inevitable as the roll down white screen and the crystalline projector.

Marko raised his hand. “Uh, Professor, you don’t need to—”

Professor Kobold didn’t respond. He kept on reading names until the dungeon core in question replied with a hearty “here!”

“Marko Laskarelis?”

“Here. But, professor, maybe…”

“Logan Murray?”

“Here.”

Once roll call was finally done, Professor Kobold climbed up a little stepping stool to get to the film projector. He checked some gauges, to see if the pressure was good, and then he slipped a new crystal into the back of the projector. There would be whirring sound and then a flickering image would appear on the screen. Meanwhile, Professor Kobold headed to a desk in the back, where he placed his dragony head on his arms to sleep.

Marko’s eyes brightened. “Man, am I loving this class! Everything except for the rollcall. But you win some, you lose some, amiright?”

On the screen, a black and white figure appeared; he was a middle-aged man in a suit and appeared to be holding a cigarette. He had two horns jutting from his skull. “Hello, I’m Devil McClure. You might remember me from such educational videos as Assassin Raiders: The Silent Killers. Rogues and You: Sprung Traps are Dumb Traps. Or Paladins: Where Arrogance, Brutal Murder, and Healing Spells Meet. If you’re watching this, I’m assuming you’ve already seen the first five parts of Cruelty Incorporated: The Business of Destruction. This is part six. Get ready for some history.”

There was a break for some bad audio and a worse soundtrack that showcased various dungeon cores in inner sanctums and cartoonishly evil dungeoneers running amok.

Then Devil McClure was back, casually strolling through a city filled with towering, sparkling buildings.

“This is Aurora, one of the capital cities of Eritreus. As you probably know, Eritreus is rich with Apothos and some of the best dungeon cores in all of creation are stationed here. Kyvandry Spencer’s Slaughter Pits, for one.”

A much younger looking Kyvandry—a horrific blade ghoul in a blood splattered butcher’s apron—gave them the thumbs up. Behind him were his proud minions: abattoir ogres, hulking hook wretches, and the lightning-fast demonic knifelings.

Then the video slowly panned back to Devil McClure.

He launched into exacting detail about dungeoneering guilds, their history, and the purpose of their existence. The video played, and the second it was over, Professor Kobold let out a long sigh and reluctantly pulled himself from. In utter silence, he retrieved the crystal, bled the pressure from the steam engine projector, then left the room without another word. He didn’t even bother asking if they had any questions.

“It’s like he’s the worst substitute teacher of all time,” Logan said, watching the door slam shut behind the Kobold. “Are you sure he’s the real teacher for this class?”

“He is,” Inga said in clear disapproval. “I’ve checked on more than one occasion.”

Mhadrac Deathgaze, the ruby-eyed skeleton, always took such careful notes. “So let me get this straight. Someone named Marky Softscale was actually a dungeon core that graduated from Shadowcroft, but then  later went on to start The Scarlet Paradox. That’s wild. I just don’t get it. I mean, how can dungeon cores can go rogue? Don’t they know they are killing worlds?”

“Oh, they know,” Inga said. “Once I realized that we would mostly be watching the famous Devil McClure video crystals, I decided to get summaries. He’ll go over the five main ways that dungeoneers justify their actions. For Marky Softscale, he dodged the Arcandor Initiative, and one of the ways he stayed alive was starting the guild. He had other dungeoneers working for him, so he only left his guildhall very infrequently. And he still ended up dead, though that was after the video crystals were all produced.”

“What are the five ways dungeoneers justified their actions?” Mhadrac asked.

Inga opened her DCG, or Dungeon Core Grimoire, and paged through her notes. “Let’s see… Well, we did cover some of this in our History of the Tree of Souls classour first year. The most popular justification is that there is an infinite amount of Apothos, and so draining celestial nodes has no affect. Some believe having less Apothos actually helps planets. A common Appeal to Ignorance argument. There is no evidence of that, of course, but most dungeoneers don’t do much research into this.

“Then there is the ‘Cattle Wagon’ fallacy, which basically espouses the principle, everyone else is doing it, so why shouldn’t I? Many dungeoneers don’t realize what they are doing is destructive and surely if it were really so bad, there wouldn’t be so many people who participate in the system. And for those few who do believe that raiding dungeons and harvesting Apothos is harmful, they believe they aren’t in a position to make any meaningful difference. The truly powerful dungeoneers, though, know exactly what they are doing. They think that they will become powerful enough that that can transcend all of reality. They will, in essence, become gods themselves, and that they’ll start their own universes.”

Chucky Chubbs swung his little devil-headed rattle. “You should teach this class, Inga. You know everything.”

Inga blushed. “Not everything. I do find this interesting. The guilds are important because they organize the raiders into groups that are far more effective than they would be otherwise. And they are profitable, both in the treasure they gather, the money they make, and the Apothos they steal.”

Thrit Intok, the lizard man, hissed. “Why is there a guild called the Glorious Sunrise of the Golden Dawn. Isn’t that redundant?”

“The GSGD?” Inga riffled through more pages. “It seems the name came from a merger between two different groups, the Glorious Sunrise and the Golden Dawn. Neither wanted to change their name, so they combined them.”

Logan pulled out his ball of twine to work at the knots. He found it calming in a maddeningly frustrating way. “Hey, Inga, are we ever going to talk about dungeoneers who realize what they are doing is evil and stop?”

“Actually, there are several examples of that,” she replied. “Believe it or not, but there are even dungeoneers who work for the Council of Dungeons in various capacities. I know the Department of Universal Dungeon Efficiency has an audit team that is made up of former dungeoneers. So it’s not all bad news. Although, in the interest of fairness and total transparency, it is mostly bad news.”

Treacle looked interested. “I used to think like that too—get caught up in the endless cycle of crushing despair and existential dread. Now I’m starting to see it a little like this jawbreaker. Terrible on the outside. But if you get a little deeper? Still terrible. But below that? Terrible. But eventually you get to a point where it isn’t terrible. At least I think so. I haven’t made it that far yet. Point is, it can’t all be bad. Probably. Unless it is. Oh no… I’m starting to feel the existential dread coming on again. We’re all doomed, aren’t we Inga?”

Inga realized everyone was staring. She fidgeted, clearly nervous. “We’re not all doomed. But the problem is, most dungeoneers really believe that killing monsters is the right thing to do. And there’s not anything anyone can say to convince them otherwise. The more powerful they become, they more addicted they become to that power. Like dungeon cores, dungeoneers also have magical cores rely on Apothos for spells, special abilities, and combat skills. They don’t have gem cores, though, so they can’t take over an inner sanctum, but as they gain power, they see immortality within reach. That’s a powerful motivator.”

Logan didn’t want to contribute to Treacle’s mounting worry—the guy was just starting to have a little faith in the world—but secretly he had to admit it sounded pretty bleak. But he couldn’t think about all of that. About the vastness of the universe or all the problems arrayed against the Tree of Souls. He had to focus the here and now. On that year, growing in power, and returning to Earth. Because Earth was a perfect example of a world that was withering. Yes, there was a lot of technology there, but most of the magic was gone. Worlds couldn’t exist on iPhones and laptops alone.

Maybe Logan couldn’t save all of reality, but it was possible he could save his home. That was what he was fighting for, he reminded himself. But even that was a ways down the road. Right this second, he had only one thing to worry about—surviving his Tournament Class.