Shadowcroft Academy Year 2 - Chapter Forty-Six

Logan watched as Steve and his strike team considered the trap room.

The ornate puzzle box sat on a central pedestal that consisted of skulls carved out of the red stone. The skulls had been Chadrigoth’s idea. Logan missed Marko—he would’ve done something a bit more creative with the materials. But you worked with the tools at hand and Chadrigoth was nothing if not one giant tool.

Across the way was the door out, a massive gate of iron bars, locked with powerful magic connected to the box on the pedestal. Above the gate, etched into the stone, was what the completed puzzle box looked like. There was a hole in the wall next to the gate—an obvious place to put the box once you solved it.

Steve sheathed his sword and slung his shield across his back, then he folded his lanky arms and considered the box for a thin moment. Finally, he sent the X-Man Spartan Centipede over to the pedestal. “Hey, Roy, go and pick up that box and see what happens.”

The centipede warrior retracted his claws and scurried forward on his many bronze-reinforced legs and plucked the box off the skull altar. He held it up and wiggled it at Steve, who waited with the rest of the strike team—as far away from the box as possible.

A second later, a stone block slid down, sealing them in the trap room.

Steve didn’t seem to care. He titled his head. He still had the painted-on mouth and face, and the rough drawing on the lips turned downward. “Roy you can twist the box, right?”

The centipede chittered at him and fumbled at the box.

“The right, Roy,” Steve said. “Twist it to the right.”

“Hey, dummy!” Chadrigoth’s guardian form called through gate on the eastern side of the room. “Yeah, Stevie, I’m talking to you. There’s no way you’re going to figure out this trap without killing most of your minions.”

<Chadrigoth, what are you doing?> Logan sent in horror.

<I got this, bro,> he shot back. <I’m gonna get in his head and freak him out. Mind games.>

“Ugh,” Steve groaned. “The abyss lord. Do us all a favor and don’t talk. I’ll kill you in a minute. Might as well break both your gems. Boom. The seal will be gone. And I’ll be back, baby.”

Chadrigoth stood there with one claw resting on the bars. “Back from where? Who are you really?”

Steve’s features twisted in annoyance. “What happened to not talking? Not sure if you can see this or not, but I’m sort of in the middle of solving  your stupid puzzle. Exposition will likely come later. Right before I crack your core like an Aldaleeran walnut. Yes, that right!” He called out, this time to the Centipede. “Keep twisting it, Roy!”

Chadrigoth leapt back.

The spartan centipede spun one side of the puzzle box and something clicked into place. The entire room groaned, stone grinding against stone, as the walls and floor shifted and turned, suddenly matching the action of the puzzle box. Logan with a certain smug satisfaction as Steve and his soldiers tumbled down and smashed against the floor which had been a wall not a second before. The exit had also moved, the iron gate now faced a blank wall—there was no way out save to solve the box.

Roy leapt onto the skull altar, still clutching the box in humanoid hands, and latched onto the pedestal with his powerful segmented legs. Without waiting for direction from Steve, Roy Boy gave the box another twist, this time aligning a series of glimmering crimson runes. That was a big mistake. Bone spikes, sharper than a surgeon’s scalpel, erupted out of the puzzle box and matching spikes—though far larger—snapped down from the ceiling.

Steve screamed, “Roy, stop!”

Too late. The room shuddered and the ceiling became the floor. The moth mannequins dove in a flurry, narrowly catching Steve like a pop fly before he careened into the spikes. The lunar dummies also managed to seize a few of the Cthulhu headed crossbowman, but the rest found themselves impaled on sharpened yellowed bone. Even better, those bone spikes had been coated with Chadrigoth’s Putrid Wound poison. Rancid corruption would spread through their bodies, rotting their organs and turning whatever passed for blood into thick sludge. They wouldn’t survive long.

The big buggy minotaur tanks were too heavy to catch. Two slammed into the spikes, though one of the minions was smart and was able to latch onto the gate with two of his tentacles. He hung there, hooves dangled a few feet over the bone spears, looking miserable.

Steve had his moth mannequin drop him off at the skull altar. “Oh, this is good one, I have to say. I’m kinda impressed!”

The villainous floor boss had lost some of his troops, but he still had a bunch waiting on the steps outside the trap room on the western side, ready for their boss to solve the puzzle box and let them through.

It took a bit, but Steve had obviously done his fair share of trap rooms before. He had his people cling to the gate, so they could hold on, while he tried various turns. One twist revealed more spikes, another spun the room, and a third fired poisonous darts from out of the wall. Unfortunately, no one was hurt by them.

Roy Boy held Steve until he finished the puzzle box. The spikes retracted and the room rotated until the eastern gate was back to where it had been at the beginning, facing the hallway. One last little adjustment and the box in Steve’s hand perfectly mirrored the picture on the wall. Steve then tossed the box to a moth mannequin who slid it home into the hole in the wall next to the gate. The bars retracted into the wall and the stone slab behind them slid upward, so the rest of Steve’s army could come through. Logan grimaced. There were still so many monsters left!

A hot wind blew through the empty hallway—on that breeze was unnerving demonic laughter from Chadrigoth. “Fools, you solved the puzzle, but sealed your fate. Come forward and die!”

<How was that, Logan? Pretty good laugh, right?>

<Not bad,> Logan sent. <But we need to stay focused. This is our chance to stop them. You ready, abyss lord?>

<I’m so ready, Logan. Personal combat is where I shine. Totally time to unleash the Circle of Torment!>

<Like that energy. Keep it going.>

Logan watched as Steve clambered onto Roy Boy and rode him down the corridor until they came to crumbling stone ledge overlooking the lava river down below. From all appearances, there didn’t seem to be anything to be afraid of. The lunar moth mannequins, the chitin-covered Calflings, and Cthulhu headed crossbowman followed in a rush. The aerial support took wing while the crossbowman and Calflings lingered on the ledge, waiting on orders from Steve.

Steve pointed his Crimson Coral sword to other side of the narrow bridge. “Onward to victory, mindless idiots!”

Roy Boy’s centipede feet scurried halfway across the bridge until they hit one of Chadrigoth’s invisible wall; a simple Soul Barrier, which was one of Chadrigoth’s racial skills. They crashed into it, and that’s when the Unleashed Pit Spawn descended from shadowy nooks and crannies overhead, claws ripping into the crossbow dummies and sending them into the river below. A few were able to grab the Spawn with their tentacle heads, but then the Spawn flew into the walls, crushing the dummies, or bashing them into the bridge itself.

Hellion imps scurried out like a swarm of angry cockroaches from their hiding places along the side of the ravine. The imps chittered and screamed as they swamped the beefy Calflings in a mass of wriggling demonic bodies. Those imps just might do to the Calflings what they’d done to the spiders. Too bad Steve had additional reinforcements. More lightning spike flies and Tsuki ants skittered into view, a moving carpet of legs, wings, spikes, and pincers that quickly engulfed the Hellion Imps and the Pit Spawn. They weren’t all that powerful individually, but in mass they were a force of nature.

Chadrigoth swooped in on outstretched wings like an avenging angel and touched down lightly on the bridge directly behind Steve and Roy Boy. He carried a curled Hellblaze whip in one hand and wielded an almost comically oversized shadow sword in the other. He looked like an anime protagonist preparing for a final boss fight. Steve and Roy were trapped between Chadrigoth and his invisible Soul Barrier.

Steve cackled. “Okay, this is pretty great. I mean, for guys still in school, this is almost impressive. As in, I almost don’t want to kill you just for your sheer moxie. Only almost, though. And unfortunately for you mooks I’ve run dungeons, in all kinds of ways, for you, know, thousands of years.” Steve vaulted from the ledge and a moth mannequin swooped low and caught him and they went flying away.

While the mannequin made his escape, Roy Boy charged Chadrigoth in a mass of clicking legs and flashing claws. The abyss lord cracked his molten whip, but Roy Boy was fast and slipped beneath the length of flame. Now inside Chadrigoth’s guard, the Spartan centipede reared back and drove his Crimson Coral claws into the abyss lord’s chest. Roy didn’t stop but scurried around until it was on the abyss lord’s back, slashing up Chadrigoth’s wings.

Their lava room strategy had been good, but not good enough. Steve had come with a ton of troops, and he’d kept a surprisingly level head. Logan and Chadrigoth had one more weapon in their arsenal, though. A weapon Logan was hoping Steve didn’t know anything about. Logan reached out with mind and found the collection of Defylers that were hiding in secret rooms hidden by Mucal Film, colored red to match the Bloodrock.

Five of the six round demons burst from their hiding places on the western side of the ravine—the idea was that they’d be able to hit flank Steve’s forces from the side and rear, but Steve’s minion were currently scattered everywhere all at once.

The Defylers were daunting things that floated around without any visible means of propulsion, defying all the unknown laws of physics. Logan had called them imitation Wal-Mart Beholders, which Chadrigoth took as a complement. They didn’t have time to fully discuss what all that meant, but it didn’t matter.

Logan slipped his consciousness into one of the unwieldy creatures and immediately regretted it. He’d ridden shotgun inside of Spore Wargs, Centaur Centipedes, and even Tet’s cat minions, but this was like nothing he’d ever experienced before. For one, he was having trouble seeing—which was odd since he had thirteen eyes, twelve of which were on long eyestalks that jutted out from his round body. He had one large central eye, but he had to concentrate on using it. H could see through the other twelve eyes, though their main function was to shoot bolts of putrid corruption.

Logan didn’t have a variety to death rays, he just had the disease. But there were two nice things about the Defylers—one, their name involved a pun—def-EYE-lers. Ha. The other nice thing? They could fly. Only, Logan was having trouble with that part, too.

He backed up into the wall, hit an eyestalk against the stone as he spun around, but finally figured out how to pilot the thing out of its hiding space. He zoomed out over the ravine, which smelled of sulfur and burning rock; a wall of intense heat rose up from the river, jets of hot air making it hard to navigate. He swerved left to try and avoid an incoming crossbow bolt, but then his vision went wonky, and he suddenly found himself seeing a dozen views of the battle. The crossbow bolt went wide, but Logan ended up spinning through the air until he crashed into the Spartan Centipede like a wrecking ball.

He did get off one good shot. A festering orb of green disease burst from an eye stalk and hit Roy’s helmet, pitting the metal in some places and causing it to rust away to almost nothing in other spots.

That was all that Chadrigoth needed. The demon reached over his shoulder, grabbed the minion in his claws, and hurled it into his Soul Wall.

Chadrigoth lowered his head and rammed his horns into the Spartan Centipede as Logan flew around, finally getting a handle on both the weird shape of the body as well as the physics—or lack thereof—of being able to fly around as a disembodied eye, top heavy with eyestalks.

<You’re disease proof, right Chadrigoth?> Logan sent.

<Against my own creatures? Absolutely. It’s part of my Fiendish Resistance.>

That was all Logan needed to hear. He opened up all twelve of his eyestalks and blasted Roy Boy with the actual plague. The Spartan Centipede squealed as its bronze armor disintegrated and the flesh underneath erupted in boils, its flesh putrefying in real time. Diseased and impaled, Roy slumped forward, the life finally going out of its inhuman eyes. The abyss lord ripped the insect warrior in half and threw both parts off the bridge and into the lava below.

The other five Defylers were engaging the lunar moth mannequins in acrobatic dog fights—banking, diving, rolling, plague bursts spraying out like machine gun fire. A battle for survival. The lightning spike flies slammed into one of the floating eyes, arcs of golden-white Fulgur Apothos frying it on the spot. The creature spun, disoriented and half-dead, and toppled into the lava, giving out one final screech.

A moth mannequin darted past the doomed monster and sank its mace into the eye of another Defyler, sending out a gout of green, vicious fluid. The Defylers were powerful at a distance but didn’t do well up close and personal. In seconds, two of the monsters were out of the fight.

The other Defylers fired back with dozens of rancid blasts. The buggy Calflings caught many of the diseased bolts with their numerous shields. Corruption clawed across the metal, leaving rust behind, but the steel was too thick to eat through. The Cthulhu-headed crossbow mannequins took cover behind the tanks and loosed a storm of bolts in retaliation.

Logan felt arrows slam into his round body, one, two, three.

Logan spun to see the Cthulhu dummies already reloading. He unleashed a wave of pestilence. His toxic green bolts killed a couple of exposed archers while others dove behind the armored Calflings.

Two of the tanks stormed the bridge with shields and swords and spears and flails and one even looked to be carrying a literal kitchen sink for reasons Logan couldn’t quite understand.

Chadrigoth stood his ground and cracked his Hellblaze whip like a lion tamer. The tongue of fire landed against a kite shield and exploded. Molten metal sprayed out like rain, biting into the nearby Calflings. The bovines mooed in pain, metal slag eating through buggy armor and flesh. The abyss lord activated Abyssal Bloodrage—a crimson halo surrounding him—and brought his big shadow sword down onto the monsters, lopping off arms, tentacles, and heads.

The abyss lord then found Logan’s Defyler and gave him a happy thumbs up. That guy had changed. A second later, Chadrigoth was swamped by Tsuki ants. The bugs had crawled out from underneath the bridge. The blue demon stomped and slapped at the ants covering him, but there were just so many of them.

Inga’s insect attack wasn’t over. Lightning spike flies swarmed Logan’s Defyler. Between the spikes, which felt like stepping on a Lego, and the lightning, which fried his central eye, Logan was too wounded to stay in the air.

As he fell, Logan saw Steve and some of his heavy-hitting Calflings race past Chadrigoth, angling for the next room. The dummy left the death bridge behind and bolted into the next chamber—another new addition. The Shame Maze. It would take a bit for them to solve it, but Steve still had dozens of minions.

Chadrigoth gave up stomping and used some kind of mass fire ability, which burned through a ton of Apothos, though it was damned effective. Charbroiled ants fell away in droves, little more than smoldering husks.

With the death of his hijacked Defyler, Logan’s consciousness returned to his core, floating above the pedestal. <Chadrigoth, you’ve got to get back to the inner sanctum to hold it. This whole game ends if Steve gets to our gems.>

Chadrigoth could hardly fly, his wings were so torn up, but he was able to take a running leap off the bridge and land on the eastern ledge. He quickly disappeared into the hidden entrance of a secret passageway that would return him back to the inner sanctum. The last of their minions followed, which sadly wasn’t much. Two Defylers, a Dungeonaut, a pair of Unleashed Pit Spawn, and a handful of Hellion Imps. Logan had a few more forces left in reserve—a platoon of Waddlers, a trio of Spore Wargs, and six Kurrybooboos, to aid the wounded. It hardly seemed like enough manpower—or monster-power, rather—to win the day.

Hopefully the Shame Maze would thin out Steve’s pack. Or, at least make them too depressed to carry on with life.

Logan focused as Steve and companion slipped into the twisting, mirror-like corridors of the maze. He wanted to really listen to everything that happened in there, but he couldn’t dawdled too long—they had to launch the offensive potion of their dungeon duel. Still, Logan couldn’t resist. He wanted to get a quick sneak peek at Steve’s inner demons, and that was exactly what the Shame Maze revealed. It forced you to confront the very worst parts about yourself. What kind of skeletons did ol’ Steve have hanging in the closet?