Shadowcroft Year 3 - Chapter Forty-One

That Monday morning, Logan was once again on full display because for the third time, he walked the hallowed halls wearing a completely different body. He woke to find a letter from Professor Rick that had been delivered at some point in the night.

The professor was very relieved that Logan had pulled through. Rick also asked that Logan not talk about the Symbiotic bond that had skyrocketed most of the class several ranks. Rick also let Logan that Yeez was in a bad way, and most likely, Logan would be getting visit from him. The misfit mushrooms were making sure to tell everyone at Nightfall University that Logan might be a Jade Leaf cultivator now, but that he was as unsteady as a newborn colt. Good. If anything would draw Lou Shador to him, it would be that message—Logan would be an easy kill that would give the dungeoneer a ton of Apothos.

After breakfast, Logan and the Terrible Twelfth were on their way to Professor Kobold’s classroom for another worthless lesson in Cruelty Incorporated. The real cruelty wasn’t the raiders they were studying. It was the class itself—so boring and useless. The PSA films were a complete waste of time. They’d watched one talking about how slimes needed to clean up after themselves on campus. Too bad the Gelatinous Knight wasn’t in attendance.

Marko yawned as they walked through the corridors. He’d stayed up too late tidying bathrooms. “Okay, Logan, buddy, all I’m saying is that you’re copying me. I have mime walls, and suddenly you have fungus walls. And I have a beret that controls people against their will, and you have the same ability. I know I’m awesome, bro, but you really need to work on being your own person. Imitation isn’t going to get you to S-Rank.”

Inga blasted Marko with a breeze from her wings. “That is such pish. By my beak, we are all fighting together. It’s unfortunate when we have any overlap, but it’s also unavoidable. By and large, Dungeon Cores aren’t meant to function together, so there’s bond to be some similarities, especially where utility skills are concerned.”

Treacle wasn’t taking any of it seriously. “Until Logan can sing, we truly don’t have to worry about him stealing Marko’s powers.”

“Ha!” the satyr said. “What about the Tuning Fork Mushroom? I rest my case.”

Logan was going to move on. “Anyway, so, I have this replicate ability, right? Well, it was pretty powerful before. Any severed limb—”

Marko stopped in the hallway. “No, we went through all your skills last night! It took literally forever.”

Inga scowled. “No, it didn’t. Your circus tent was a bit too much, given that we were only practicing. Let Logan finish.”

“I’ll keep it short,” Logan said. “At B-Class, I had a 10% chance of my severed limbs transforming into a Spore Warg.”

“This is our life now,” Treacle groused. “Discussing severed limbs.”

Marko’s mood changed like a Colorado afternoon storm. “Actually, my curiosity is piqued now. I didn’t think I want to talk about severed limbs, but it turns out I’m here for it. Now tell me more, my fungaloid brother from another mother.”

“Glad you asked, buddy. So at A-Class, my lost body parts have a 20% chance of transforming into a Spore Warg, a 10% chance of transforming into a Deathcap, and a 5% chance of transforming into a Mycotic Shamble. I can’t get a Deathcap now, because it’s not one of my proto-spore cultures, but at some point, I will. And get this, the Soul Staff of Sporing increases the probability of each by 10%. So a third of the time, severed limbs will become a spore warg. It’s pretty sick.”

They reached the classroom before Logan could tell them about his updated spore halo. They sat down next to the movie projector. When the other three cohorts came in—the New Franklin Four, the Mummy’s Curse, and the Dreaded Delta Talons—all looked at him in a combination of shock and surprise.

The crib demon, Chucky Chubbs, stood on his desk, leaning against his baby carrier. “Nice, Logan. The blue suits you. And what are those sparkles? They seem so… what’s a good word.”

“Otherwordly?” Alphonse the spice mummy offered.

Chucky laughed. “Yeah, otherworldly. Nice. You know, we’re all pulling for you and the Terrible Twelfth. I just wish this class was…” he lowered his voice. “Better.”

Logan shrugged then thanked them for the well-wishes.

Professor Kobold came charging in. The little dragon man in the rumpled suit went to the front of the classroom carrying his battered leather briefcase. He snapped it open the on the desk and pulled out the class roster. “We’re going to take roll now. Then we have a film. You know the routine. Let’s get the show on the road.” He made a little let’s-get-along-with-it gesture with one hand.

Inga stood up. “Not today, Professor. Today, we have to talk about Lou Shador and the Glow Brigade.”

Professor Kobold slowly closed his notebook. He sighed as if he’d just made the most important decision of his life. “Sit down, Therian, Inga Thosa. I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this. But you’re right. I can’t put it off. I should’ve come to you right away. It’s just, I had some interest from some really powerful producers.”

Inga sat down, a confused look flashing across her face. “Excuse me? What producers?”

“Production company,” Professor Kobold said, correcting her. “You might not have noticed, but I’m kind of a Devil McClure super fan. I have all of his work. He wrote and directed the PSAs. He’s so brilliant. Anyway, I thought, maybe, I could follow in his footsteps by pursuing my dream and I really thought it was all coming together.”

He dropped the roster and pulled out a huge hunk of papers. “I wrote a screenplay, I’ve been working on it all year during class. And you’ll never guess who stars in it. It’s going to break my NDA, but I don’t care. This is your life on the line and you deserve to know.”

Marko sat there, looking a bit pale, and he didn’t even have his mime makeup. He had his beret, but he’d ditched the mime costume for his normal clothes including a jaunty vest that matched the jaunty beret. He blinked his weird goat eyes, his gaze strangely blank. “What’s the name of it, Professor.”

“Threat Level Scarlet,” Professor Kobold said. “Because he became the co-owner of the Scarlet Paradox, along with Hiro “Hardclaw” Shirazi. Get it?”

Marko’s smile was five miles wide. “This is the greatest day of my life. Tell me we can do a dramatic reading. Oh please, tell me I get to read the words you so painstakingly wrote.”

“Instead of teaching his bleeding class,” Inga whispered under her breath.

Professor Kobold nodded. “You betcha, Laskarelis. You’ve all been so patient. I can’t tell you how little sleep I’ve gotten this year. I had three rounds of full re-writes, worked with script doctor, and then we had a deal. It fell through, and then another deal was in the works when their planet was destroyed during the Semi-Finals. That’s right. It was Angleria. Nice fish people. Bad business choices. I know they got mad tax breaks living on a giant fish, but it was never going to end well. Anyway, all that said, I hope that what I wrote can help you. It’s based on research I’ve been doing for years. Literally years.”

Inga got madder at madder at each word.

Logan couldn’t blame her. Their professor had basically abandoned his class to work on his screenplay. That was absolutely par for the course where Shadowcroft Academy was concerned, but it didn’t take the sting out of the revelation.

Treacle had his arms crossed, and he was frowning deeply.

Marko, on the other hand, couldn’t stop grinning.

Inga kept her voice to an angry simmer. “Could you have stopped the massacre during the Semi-Finals? Four dungeon guardians died!”

Professor Kobold shook his head vehemently. “No way. I had no idea. Lou Shador has dropped off my radar completely nowadays. Even my spies in Aurora, on Eritreus, don’t know where he is. Believe me, I would’ve told you everything if I hadn’t been muzzled by the non-disclosure agreement. Even now, I’m risking the deal to help you. You all won’t rat me out, will you?”

“Only if you let us read your work!” Marko leapt to his hooves. He raced up to the front of the class. “You’re Mr. Audio Visual. Can we somehow project the script page by page?”

Mhadrac Deathgaze, the ruby-eyed skeleton in the Dreaded Delta Talons cohort raised a bony hand. “I can. My rubies can synthesize the pages and display them through my core gem.”

They got everything set up. Mhadrac would look at the page and project it on the screen just like any undead overhead projector.

Naturally, Professor Kobold chose parts for people. Marko was going to be the hero, Bat Chesterton, a special agent working for the Council of Dungeons and the Arcandor Initiative. Bat Chesterton had a license to kill. With that license in his pocket, the assassin set out to take on some of the most bloodthirsty dungeoneers in the universe… Lou Shador and Glow Brigade, who were planning on blowing up one of the government buildings on Tedium.

Bat Chesterton was a vampiric bat dungeon core with a tragic past. The details were a little murky—part of it was Bat dealing with his ruined relationships and trying to deal with his drinking problem. Had he been real, he would’ve fit in great with the Backstories.

Marko connected deeply and executed the part to perfection.

The other part was Lou Shador recruiting his Glow Brigade.

Logan took notes because he had a bit part as Bat Chesterton’s boss at the Arcandor Initiative, Shouter Yellington. Inga was cast against type as the love interest, Ms. Slinky B. Gorgeous. She had a surprising amount of lines.

Professor Kobold had video crystals from the Semi-Finals, and he played them on the main movie project. The whole class proved to be invaluable, which shouldn’t have been that surprising. Just when Logan thought the Shadowcroft Academy was a complete waste of time, he’d get some brilliant lesson that completely changed how he saw everything. Their teaching methods were as insane as they were dangerous, but more often than not they ended up paying major dividends.

Professor Kobold excused them from them their other classes that morning, so they had a good four hours for the read through.

The big takeaways?

Lou Shador had grappling powers, a magic cloak, and odd bandages wrapped around his hands and wrists that acted as sentient tenacles. He also wore a colorful mask that appeared to give him some significant power boosts—just like Logan’s shiny new staff. They had footage from the Semi-Finals, though it had been grainy and hard to see what was going on. Lou also had minions he could summon, vast crowds of beast people or, at least, that’s how it looked on tape. In Kobold’s screenplay, he called them Shadorkin.

In the end, Shador seemed like a monk or some similar class. He didn’t use weapons, but he could do all sorts of things—sound attacks, summoned weapons, and explosive area of affect stomps. It was all pretty straightforward, though from all accounts he was a powerhouse, not to be underestimated.

The Glow Brigade was far less straightforward and one hundred percent more bizarre.

Cruelli DeKill specialized as the group archer. She had long, multi-colored pig tails the stuck out from beneath a spiky helmet. Despite being ranged support, she wore heavy armor, and she seemed to be able to fly. Her powers were mostly her magical arrows, though she could summon minions of her own. It was rather surprising that these heroes had similar abilities to dungeon cores. There was something familiar about Cruelli, though. If she didn’t have the power of flight, and if she didn’t have a bow, she might have just been some badass woman from a roller derby team.

But that couldn’t be, right. Right?

Logan had his doubts because the other members of the Glow Brigade seemed to have come straight from Earth as well.

The second member of the Glow Bridage, Grand Jester, seemed like a DnD rogue wearing bad Harley Quinn cosplay. She had a giant mace, painted in clown colors, and she could cause a lot of chaos—loud noises, sneaking around, getting incredibly lucky.

Marko, of course, was immediately smitten with the character. He’d gone to clown college. She was an evil clown woman. It was love at first sight.

The Glow Brigade’s healer was a woman named Hawt Tawpic. She wore huge Tripp NYC pants, lots of makeup, and a small army of chains, which she could use to deadly affect. Speaking of chains, she could summon spiked chains like it was Hellraiser day at your local mall. She was a teenage goth queen who wanted to string up her enemies and use her bloodmagic to heal her friends. Yeah, vampiric healer. It seemed to be a thing.

In Professor Kobold’s screenplay, Edna of the Three Rings was the good girl, gone bad, who wielded the powerful magics contained in her ancient grimoire… Except her grimoire was actually a magical three-ring binder. She was a college student, needing extra money, and that’s why she joined the Glow Brigade. She was so sweet, especially when voiced by Shurgur Eve, the fly woman demon core. Shurgur Eve was a natural actress. She brought Edna’s innocent nature to life with aplomb.

From the Semi-Finals footage, Edna had powers kind of like Shang Chi of ten rings fame. Only, she had three rings. She seemed to have advanced origami powers, creating minions out of sheets of paper. She could also create paper hurricanes to blind her foes.

Logan had to stop making notes during the dark moment at the end of the second act. He found himself tearing up. Professor Kobold was a truly terrible teacher, but he could write tragedy like no one’s business. Bat Chesterton had relapsed, Slinky B. Gorgeous had left him, and his best friend and floor boss, Besty Buddington, died just as Lou Shador was storming through the dungeon Bat had created in an office building to protect the vital work of the Council of Dungeons.

Logan had to pause his notes again during the third-act climax, when Bat and Lou faced off. Bat had to pull out his Q factor, a magical mirror Besty Buddington had given him, to trap Lou Shador forever. In the end, Bat saved the day and the screenplay concluded with he and Slinky B. Gorgeous standing at the gravesite of their friend with the Tree of Souls in the background. All things considered it was pretty awesome. Certainly better than Thor: The Dark World, even if it was the most historically accurate MCU movie.

Marko couldn’t stop crying. “It’s just so beautiful.”

Professor Kobold blushed, which wasn’t easy for a dragon man to do. “Thanks, Mr. Laskarelis. Thank you all for being patient with me. I’ll continue to do some research this week, make some tweaks, and offer any guidance I can. I believe in you, Logan. I think you and the Terrible Twelfth are going to do just fine.”

Logan got a lump in his throat. “Thanks, Professor.”

***

That week, the whole school rallied behind Logan and the Terrible Twelfth. There were flowers at the door of their suite. People bought Marko drinks. Inga got sweets by the bucketload. Admirers gifted Treacle special hay. And everyone and their brother chipped in to give Logan all the garbage he could digest. There was some delicious bits of mold that he could truly appreciate.

Even Professor Suresh the Merciless jumped in on the love fest. A lot of it came from the fact that Logan was A-Class now. Suresh might’ve been an arrogant butthead, but in the end, he respected power. And as the first fungaloid in living memory to ascend to Jade Leaf, there was no longer any denying that Logan was a powerhouse. Plus, he didn’t want to miss out on saying he taught the illustrious Logan Murray and the Terrible Twelfth.

Suresh dropped the First Cohort and the Ninth Circle from the class, so he could really focus on the Terrible Twelfth’s plan. He thought the two dungeon idea was great—a fake dungeon up top to lull them in and the real dungeon buried underneath to take them out.

Lou Shador would come in, thinking that Logan and his friends were morons, until the trap snapped close, and the dungeoneer found himself facing the Shadowcroft Academy’s best.

They were so busy that Logan hadn’t had time to go over his new spore halo abilities, augmented by his nifty new staff, which was the envy of the school. An actual part of the Tree of Souls? Even Skip Shadowcroft hadn’t believed it until he held it in his hands and confirmed the veracity of Logan’s bold clams.

Shadowcroft himself wasn’t looking too good. His normally grassy hair had more yellow in it than usual and the flowers which typically sprouted from his skull looked withered. The audit, even with Inga’s help, was wearing on him considerably. However, Shadowcroft wasn’t about to let tax professionals get him down. He actually hugged Logan and said, “You’re alive, Mr. Murray, and you’re doing truly wonderful things. I always knew you would thrive here, despite your lowly beginnings.”

Logan used that same line with Yeez Tee, who showed up standing outside the Azure Dragon dormitory with an audio crystal held over his head—blasting out a dramatic song about the power of love and friendship.

Logan went down and the two had a bonding moment.

Yeez knew if Logan died, he’d go back to his loner rebel ways, and he didn’t think he handle that. Not again. He’d been hurt too deeply and too often. Logan reassured him that he wasn’t going to die, and that even if he did, Yeez had ranked up, found a family with the misfit mushrooms, and he shouldn’t give hope.

Yeez left Arborea with the idea of spirit de corps rooted deeply in his heart. Not to mention a few Symbiotic spores growing on his Zorro hat and the cape. Logan had a plan for the loner rebel looking for a family…

That Friday, Professor Kobold arrived with some rather surprising information. Not that Logan was too surprised by anything at this point. Lou Shador and his Glow Brigade had obviously spent some time on Uroth, also known as Earth. Still, Logan found Lou Shador strange. Every aspect of him was strange. But it was a strangeness that Logan was going to use.

However, he hoped that before he annihilated the raider, he learned why Lou Shador had chosen such a peculiar path.

The weekend hit, and Inga worked through it, on that dumb tax audit.

Sunday night, Logan was getting ready for bed, when someone knocked on the door.

Logan went and opened it. There stood the headmaster, Skip Shadowcroft, with Yullis Rockheart and Suresh the Merciful in tow. All of them looked tired and rumpled. Rockheart must’ve dressed quickly because his plum ascot didn’t match his periwinkle smoking jacket—an unthinkable fashion faux that Rockheart would never make unless under duress of some sort. Suresh hadn’t quite combed his normally luxurious fur all that well, so he had several cow licks. On a rakshasa, would those be known as dog licks?

“It’s time,” Shadowcroft said, his green hair completely yellow and wilted now. “Two celestial nodes have finally appeared. Oh, Logan, I fear that we’ve made a grave mistake not canceling this competition. But it’s too late to turn back now, I fear. Are you ready?”

Logan had never been more ready for anything in his life. It was time to shine like bioluminescent fungal sludge on last week’s egg salad. It was time to put an end to Lou Shador and his reign of terror once and for all…