Shadowcroft Academy For Dungeons: Year Two, page 29
Tet snapped her fingers, and some of that dust hardened into Sand Spears, which she used to impale the last two dire wolves. Arfgar and his summoned monsters were no more, but the price had been costly. Tet had lost all her Mew Serpents, and only Noodle was still standing along with three of the Kurrybooboos. Logan had a new influx of energy, but it would be a while before he could conjure new minions. He would have to use what he had to finish the job—though Tet still had a few tricks tucked up the bandages of her cat mummy’s sleeves.
Logan and two of his little glowy mushroom healers ran and leapt onto Noodle’s back. They went racing off into the night with Tet loping along beside. On her shoulders was another Kurrybooboo, who raised a hand, eyes glittering and happy.
The minute Logan and Tet were in range, the Khopesh Beetle and the waddlers resumed their scuttling run toward the last of their objectives—the Unlikely Unicorn.
The place had emptied out a long time ago because of the pandemonium. Destroying this last inn would be simple. Logan and Tet were going to pass their exam with ease.
Until in a blinding flash of light, Sir Rosencrantz Brandybutter teleported in front of the inn’s doors. He held a long sword made not of steel but of conjured flame—like Arfgar’s shield and magical battle-ax, that flaming sword was new.
Sir Brandybutter’s tower shield also ignited in flames. Around him flaming angels appeared, a half dozen of them, blazing warriors with white wings and red-hot blades. It seemed Professor Zantho had really leaned into fire for Brandybutter. The eyes of the fire angels were hollow shadows in the middle of their gaunt faces. Snow hit them and sizzled away. The sheer amount of heat made Logan take a step back on instinct.
Mariah couldn’t contain her surprised squeal. “Hot damn!”
“Looks like the party is over, chaps.” Brandybutter slammed the visor of his helmet closed. “By Jove, you aren’t destroying this inn. And all I have to do is hold you until my comrades come, which shan’t be long. They are hotfooting over as we speak. Do you get my jest? Hotfooting?”
“Leave the puns to us, Rosencrantz,” Logan growled.
“Agreed, there is already far too much wordplay for my taste,” Tet said as she casually tossed out two balls of old, yellowed bandages. The balls landed and bounced, quickly unraveling only to reform themselves into a pair of giant Mummified Baasts. The hulking cat mummies raised their khopeshes and slowly advanced toward the fire angels with deadly feline grace.
Logan had figured they would have any number of fights on their hands, and he’d planned accordingly. Still, as powerful as the Baasts were, they were basically made of old dust and gauze—not exactly the most flame-resistant materials on the planet. But the Kurrybooboos leapt into action, bouncing around the Baasts’ stomping feet, ready to unleash their healing power.
The angels met the Baasts head-on in a flurry of clanging swords and flashing spells. For every burn or slash, the Kurrybooboos channeled healing Apothos into Tet’s minions. In a matter of seconds, the mummy cats were able to cut apart two of the fire angels, but there was no way they were going to survive all four. But that was okay—really, they just needed to buy Logan and Tet a little more time. Long enough to deal with Brandybutter directly.
From the right flank, the Khopesh Beetle charged in, trailing a line of waddlers behind. They hit Sir Brandybutter hard, trying to overpower him with sheer numbers. Bury him beneath a mound of fungaloid flesh. But the cavalier was quicker on his feet than Logan had ever seen. He easily batted away the beetle’s khopesh mandibles with his flaming blade, then smacked the beetle in the face with his shield, driving it back. The monster bug did not like fire.
Logan thrust his sword straight out and used some of his newly gained Apothos to conjure Ghoul’s Snare beneath the cavalier’s feet. Energy surged out from his core and black tendrils of fungus sprouted from the dirt, wrapping around one of Brandybutter’s ankles. It wasn’t much, but it was just enough to slow and distract the cavalier. The waddlers surged forward, wrapping themselves around his legs. They overwhelmed Brandybutter, driving him to the ground, where they used their Crimson Coral weapons to beat on his helmet and armor. It should’ve been the end of him, but no. His armor seemed impenetrable.
And that wasn’t all. Even on the ground, the cavalier fought as ferociously as a cornered wolverine. He slammed his sword onto his shield. An inferno of energy erupted from his armor, blasting the waddlers off him and turning them into crispy mushrooms, blackened and inedible. Mariah Carey let out a little peep before flopping onto her face.
Brandybutter scrambled to his feet, his armor glowing like it had just come off the forge. The smell of burnt mushrooms danced on the air. “If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought stroganoff was on the menu.”
This updated inferno cavalier wasn’t to be trifled with. Any thought of trying to go toe to toe with Brandybutter fled Logan’s mind. Even in his newly evolved form, Logan was no match for the kind of power the cavalier was slinging. Not only was he strong and fast, but clearly Professor Zantho had made sure that type matchup would favor the dungeoneer. Instead, Logan retreated toward the dark of a nearby alley. The second he was free from the fray, he sent his consciousness zipping into the Khopesh Beetle.
The world reeled around him as he took a minute to get accustomed to the size and power of the monstrous tank. Still, inhabiting the beetle was a hundred times easier than maneuvering one of Tet’s centipedes. Namely because the centipede had a hundred times more legs.
“Not this time, beastie,” Brandybutter said, advancing in his glowing red armor. “As soon as I put you to bed, I’ll deal with that mushroom man.”
No matter how tough the Khopesh Beetle, Logan knew it wouldn’t be a match for Brandybutter. Again, Professor Zantho had designed this town to defeat him and Tet both. Fine. Logan didn’t need the knight dead. He just needed that inn destroyed—that was the objective and anything else was just gravy on top. Controlling the Khopesh Beetle, Logan drove the big body forward, barreling into the inferno cavalier and pushing him back through the doors of the place.
Brandybutter slashed at the monster bug, and though Logan felt the damage, it wasn’t as painful as he would’ve thought. A Kurrybooboo lighted onto Logan’s shoulder and sent a wave of healing relief down through Logan’s chitin. Brandybutter’s eyes narrowed as the wounds littering the beetle’s armored torso healed, and then his gaze shifted to the puffball of light.
“Not on my watch, old boy,” the cavalier said. He backpedaled and clanged his sword against his shield. A clarion note rang out and a halo of searing fire enveloped Logan, flash-frying the Kurrybooboo and melting the Khopesh Beetle’s face off in the process. His sword mandibles turned to goo on the floor.
Worse, the inferno cavalier seemed to have ultimate control over his flames. Not a single chair or table was scorched.
Logan found himself back in his guardian form. The Khopesh Beetle was gone.
Tet was a blur of speed, though, and she dashed inside the tavern. She leapt over the bar and started hurling bottles of booze at the knight. He broke the first bottle with his sword, but the liquor struck the wall and burst into brilliant flame. The next bottle smashed into his burning armor and spit still more fire. Even when he batted a bottle out of the air, the alcohol splashed onto a wall, spreading the blaze. Half the inn was already gone thanks to the beetle’s attack, and with the flames running wild, the rest wouldn’t last long.
Out front, the Mummified Baasts were keeping the fire angels busy, and one Kurrybooboo remained. Logan called it to him while he saddled up Noodle. The little glowing mushroom man floated down behind Logan, chirring contentedly despite the chaos and battle all around. They had a very cheery disposition, Logan was finding.
One mummy cat fell, slashed apart and set to the torch, and the other wasn’t far behind.
The cat woman burst out of a window in a spray of glass while Brandybutter howled, “Betrayed by my own flames! Oh, the irony!”
Logan, Tet, and the last of their minions escaped the town through the southern gate as the blaze spread through the snowy night. Like before, Logan rode Noodle and Tet ran alongside them, easily keeping pace. The glow from the Kurrybooboo lit their way.
The other simulated dungeoneers—Sir Mediocritus, Hallsee the Sad, Mimsy, Feathers, and Daggers McFinn—might make it to the inns, but the objectives were already smoking and gone.
In the fields outside the city, Logan turned to Tet as they watched the orange tongues lick the night sky. He raised a hand. “Give me four.”
She slapped his hand with hers, making sure her claws were retraced. “Here is five.”
“I’ll keep the change.” Logan grinned.
The feline sandmaster sighed happily. “I don’t know what that means.”
Professor Zantho fluttered out of the darkness in a spray of gleaming sparks. She landed on a nearby boulder with her arms crossed and a scowl tattooed across her face. “Fine, maggots,” she growled. “Looks like you both passed without a single civilian casualty. And, to top it off, you killed Arfgar, who I had pumped up with magical items and druidic summoning. You didn’t do too bad with Brandybutter, either,” she admitted begrudgingly, “and he was a massively heavy hitter. I made sure of that. Congratulations.”
The last remaining Kurrybooboo flung himself up into the air to hug the Fairy Fetch, but she drew her sword and cut the mushroom in half. The pieces thumped to the ground. She let her lips curl in a rare grin. “I don’t go in for the mushy stuff. Keep your mushrooms to yourself, fungaloid.” She paused and canted her head to one side. “All things considered, though... Not bad, you two. Not bad.”
Tet smiled and hugged Logan. It looked like the cat woman didn’t mind the mushy stuff at all.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Logan was flying high on cloud nine. He’d started the year off struggling, but ever since his trip to the Sacred Hollow, things had been running like a well-oiled machine. It was true that a few dungeon cores in the Crystal Tiger clan had done exceptionally well and had advanced, which had pushed the Crystal Tigers back to the top of the leaderboard. However, the Azure Dragon clan was close behind, and the Vermillion Phoenix and the Onyx Tortoise clans weren’t out of the running. They still had half the year for the scores to change.
Logan had to wait until all of his friends had passed their midterms before they could really celebrate the sacking of Vralkag.
Friday night, they went to Enrico’s, which made sense, since of course they would want to party in Vralkag after they’d destroyed various parts of it. They sat at Marko’s special table, and each of them took turns recounting their efforts.
Tet decided to join their group, which didn’t make Chadrigoth very happy. He was sitting at his table with the rest of the First Cohort, scowling at Logan and his friends while he angrily nursed a Dragonbane Stout.
Strangely, Melvin was sitting with the First Cohort. It was amazing that Chadrigoth would tolerate the awkward kitchen ghast, but Tet said that the abyss lord liked how much praise Melvin laid at the feet of the holy First Cohort and their awesomeness. Melvin was eating a big pile of fried shrimp. From Enrico’s yelling, it seemed Melvin had offered the four-armed innkeeper some help with his food, and the innkeeper was having none of that.
At first, Tet kept glancing over at Chadrigoth, Melvin, and the First Cohort. It was like she felt obligated to sit with them, but then the feline sandmaster relaxed as Inga told them about her midterm.
For Inga, it had been easy. In her Metamorphosis form—a giant heavy metal caterpillar—she took out the Game of Bones Tavern like an angry Kaiju rampaging through Hong Kong. That drew the dungeoneers to her while her Golden Centipedes, Tsuki Ants, and Spike Flies hit the Unlikely Unicorn. She’d enlisted her floor-boss, Roy Boy the Golden Centipede Spartan, to help her sack both the dungeoneers and the inns. At the same time, she’d dispatched her newly unlocked Lunar Horrors to decimate the guildhall. Inga had customized her Lunar Horrors into three fuzzy, flying mini-tanks that took out a few dungeoneers, including Arfgar of the Hill People.
That paved the way for Inga and the rest of her insect army to come scuttling up to the guildhall and tear it down to the foundation.
Treacle had opted for a different approach.
He set traps around the guildhall, a variety of electrical pressure plates and explosive trip wires. Then he invaded the guildhall with his crossbow-horned mechanical bull and a whole battalion of steampunk creatures along with his fleshier minions, the Ugknot Calflings. Once they secured the guildhall, they waited for the dungeoneers to come and flush him out. The traps outside eliminated the majority of the raiders with grisly efficiency, and Treacle took care of the others who were laying siege to the guildhall. Treacle had been smart. He’d put up a big show of force at first, but then retreated into the cellar with only a skeleton crew left to guard the hall itself.
Treacle then used his boon from the Sacred Hollow trip—his AFS core was able to power a digging machine that tunneled them under the city. The Augmented Fulgur Stone really got the auger spinning. Once he and his more important minions were out, he used a larger version of Sphere of Striking to demolish the building, bringing it down on the dungeoneers inside. One last alchemic bomb set the place ablaze with an unquenchable Uloxium fire. Then it was a simple matter of taking out the inns. He emerged from underground right in front of the Unlikely Unicorn to kill off the spattering of low-level defenders. Treacle demolished the place with a few well-placed explosive charges before doing the same to the Game of Bones.
Marko stood up and lifted a flagon of mead—he wasn’t partaking in Enrico’s latest flavor of Liverkill, lemonade bacon grease. “Treac, I have to say, that was a brilliant strategy. Turning the guildhall into a fortress and then totally mole-manning it under the streets. Awesome. But I think I have you beat. I basically scared everyone out of Vralkag. Me and Steve and the Jeff Luden lute.”
Steven turned his featureless plastic face to them, squeaking eerily.
Marko nodded and patted the lute in his pocket. “You can say that again, Steve. Me and this little baby put the fear of the Old Ones into them. And my sound class really helped. I started out slow, which is the best way to build ambiance. Just a few distant screams carried by the wind. I sprinkled in some muffled pleas for help, then overlaid that with the lute’s haunting music, really putting them on edge. Once everyone was awake and fully creeped out, I added in scampering footsteps, the giggle of ghostly children—even live children are terrifying, amiright or amiright?—then boom, minor-key lullabies.
“Then I conjured a little swirling mist to cover my movements and started placing the mannequins in various places in the city. My plaster-faced buddies never moved, right? They were just suddenly... there. I knew I only had three hours. Dang, I wish I had, you know, weeks to do this, but the artist must work within the confines of the medium. To speed things along, I set up carnivorous murals throughout the town. Eerie paintings of blank-faced demons breaking forth from the bowels of hell to devour Vralkag. Some of my best work to date, honestly. Sort of playing up that whole ‘Hell hath come for thy children, wicked people of Vralkag’ angle.
“Anyone who came out to investigate the sounds got snatched up by the paintings. Admittedly, a lot more civilian casualties than I expected. Turns out people in haunted villages do strangely idiotic things. This poor woman heard giggling children, then left behind the protection of her house to investigate a darkened barn filled with flesh-eating monsters. The whole time I was internally screaming at her—like, why would you do that? Don’t go in there! That’s where the bad sounds are coming from. But she just walked right into it. The whole town was like that.”
“That is horrible,” Logan said.
“Right?” Marko shot back. “I mean, if they didn’t have that little self-preservation instinct, they probably had it coming. I really am being too hard on myself.”
“That’s not what I meant—” Logan started to say.
“Hey, I get it. I did what I had to do. Trust me, I won’t be losing any sleep. Especially not after a few more flagons of ale. But at any rate, eventually the dungeoneers started mobilizing. I used my Ventriloquist ability to mimic the voices of the missing townspeople and lure the adventurers into dark alleys. Then Steve and my other mannequins shellacked them. It was like the horror stories in Sangretta, about the house that eats the wedding party, one drunk guy at a time. Though, I certainly I did my part with my trio of magical throwing daggers and a sword or two. I can fight, you know.”
He raised his fists and blinked his goat eyes. “But not much. I turned the fountain in front of the mayor’s house into a mimic, and that started eating people as well. But the best was how my Luden lute enhances my Shadow Betrayal. It was night, so lots of shadows, as you can imagine. All I can say, there were some huge tentacles that came out of the darkness and those creepy tentacles were merciless. By the time I was done, the town was empty, the dungeoneers freaked out and ran, and then I just burned the inns and guildhall down. It was bloody and awesome. I went with that old warfare saying, ‘Women and children first.’”
Inga turned pale. “That’s not for warfare, Marko. That’s the people you save first. Women and children.”
Marko put a hand in front of his face. “Oops.”
Inga excused herself and went for the door.
Logan knew something was wrong, had been all night. He slid out of the booth. He heard some hisses and insults from Chadrigoth and his cronies, but Logan ignored them. He hoped there wouldn’t be another fight. Scratch that. He hoped Chadrigoth did start something. Logan would grow Eyelash Stinkhorn in the abyss lord’s nostrils.
