Shadowcroft Academy Year 2 - Chapter Thirty-Six

Logan and the gang spent the next ten days on pins and needles. It wasn’t clear if Rockheart had actually talked to Chadrigoth or not. It wasn’t like anything changed as far as that situation was concerned. Chadrigoth ignored him, but there, the feeling was mutual.

Melvin did a lot of ignoring as well. He now spent all of his time with the First Cohort, which seemed to tickle the abyss lord, Jimi Magmarty, and Lady Elesiel. It was like they had won the dork in a socially awkward contest of some kind. Marko and Treacle had tried to reach out, but not even Marko could charm the kitchen ghast.

And it wasn’t like it was a trade—Melvin for Tet-Akhat, since the cat woman was spending most of her time alone, studying, and working with Professor Rainsap on healing her wounded core. Despite Logan’s earlier dislike of the hippie naga, he had to admit that the unorthodox professor did have some rather interesting techniques to pass on.

As for Logan, Marko, and Treacle, they were doing everything they could do help Inga, who had turned into a Bharooshian rune scholar, seemingly overnight. She worked tirelessly on both unraveling the runes in Melvin’s weird cookbook as well as digging into a little of the history of Bharoosh itself. Before it became a hub for Apothos energy and the home of the Nightfall University, it had undergone a cataclysm ten thousand years prior, which roughly squared with what they had learned about the battle between the Four Celestial Ancestors and William of the Scales.

Also, Melvin’s recipe for cherry triangles was in the cookbook, but some of the ingredients seemed to be made up. For example, there were no such thing as strangle cherries, and yet, as far as Inga could tell, that was a required ingredient. She’d even gone into the kitchen to make the cherry triangles.

That was an example of Inga’s ADD in action. She’d been struggling to finish The Stone Hermeneutic, and they took turns sitting with her and shaking her when the book put her to sleep. Marko was quite sure they could use the tedious book as a weapon in some way.

A week later, Inga—hair a mess, dark circles under her eyes, and her antennae drooping—sat with a pile of books in the Golden Serpent Hall. She’d given up on the library because she couldn’t drink coffee there, and Inga needed coffee to complete her studies, which she punctuated by reading more of the gossip magazines out of Eritrea. Those were bad. Worse? She’d bought herself a subscription to The Weekly Threek, a magazine which had any number of articles on Eritrean cutlery as well as centerfolds of different designs of oneks, twoks, threeks, and forks. In Logan’s mind, this was a definite problem.

The silverware wasn’t a break for Inga, it was an obsession. Logan wondered if they offered cutlery rehab somewhere.

Logan bid her a goodnight and left her there in the Golden Serpent Hall, reading. He was halfway to his room when she reached out to him using their Symbiotic connection.

<I think I’ve finally crack it. I’m on way to the Cruelwood now to test my theory. Go get Marko and Treacle and meet me down there. I have my books, and I hope you don’t mind, but I grabbed your Ring of Pockets. I needed the extra-dimensional space.>

Logan reached and felt for that ring. Yep. It was gone.

<Wait. Inga. This is a terrible idea. You have to wait for us. You getting killed in the Cruelwood won’t help us. And why are you stealing my stuff?>

<The risk of death is low, I think. Whoever is responsible for this has already gotten what they wanted from the Cruelwood Dungeon, so it’s unlikely that they’ll revisit the scene of the crime. It should be fine, and honestly I don’t want to wait for you to rouse Marko. I saw him drinking earlier and who knows how long it will take to get him into walking shape. As for my thievery, I already told you, Logan, I needed the ring to carry more books.>

<I guess a better question is how did you steal my ring?>

The response was immediate. <Remember when I read you the paragraph from the fourth appendix in The Stone Hermeneutic? It put you right to sleep. That was when I pilfered the ring. I do apologize. I’ve been a bit focused. And my focus has a way of destroying my morality. Come quickly.>

Logan sped up and threw himself into the Ladder Hole and then leapt off a rung and used his Pneumacity power. He went floating upward and landed on Marko’s doorstep. He rapped frantically on the door, praying the satyr was there.

Thankfully, Marko was home, along with Steve. Marko knuckled sleep out of his eyes then swiped a hand across his nose. After a moment, the goat man offered Logan a sleepy grin. “Hey, just getting a little Friday evening nap before I headed out to Vralkag. But from the look on your fungal face, I think something is going down.”

Logan quickly filled Marko in as they grabbed Treacle from his room—the minotaur was busily tinkering an arm cannon augment—then they three of them were running like mad for the DIE Pavilion. Inga had sounded sure of herself that the threat was minimal, but Logan had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. The DIE portal dumped them in a verdant forest, the pine trees looming all around them. Dead ahead was the entrance to the Cruelwood. The night was warm, the sky a wash of stars, though Logan was pretty sure they were just there for decoration.

The Cruelwood’s entrance was nestled under a behemoth of a tree with tangle of thick roots creeping over mossy stone steps. There was bright yellow silk ribbon stretched from root to root, warning away potential intruders, but it was obvious that someone had pushed through it.

Logan slipped under the ribbon. The place had lots of moisture, and it was chilly, which Logan liked.

Logan didn’t need light, but Treacle activated a set of brilliant arc lights, inset into the tips if his horns. Bright beams of white cut through the darkness, splashing off the floors and walls, lighting the way for him and Marko. As for Steve, the mannequin squeaked along after his master.

Logan hurried down the steps, taking them two at a times. <Talk to me, Inga,> he sent. <We’re here and headed down.>

It took a minute, and those long seconds seemed to stretch into an eternity. Inga finally replied, breaking the tension building in Logan’s chest. <Great. Bless my beak, I’m just getting things set up. I have notes from Melvin’s cookbook. I’m pretty sure he’s behind the attacks. I mean, just wait until I tell you—>

Abruptly, her voice was gone from Logan’s mind.

A horrible feeling filled him. With a thought, he snapped on his armor and summoned both his short swords. Of course, he didn’t have his shield because Inga had his Ring of Pockets. He felt a little angry about that—but Inga had been scattered recently. He’d have to forgive her.

He hurried forward through the empty stone corridors, past root-filled rooms, and pits of brimming with moss and murk. Honestly, it was a perfect dungeon for him.

“Hey! Wait up!” Marko shouted.

Treacle’s droning words echoed through the halls. “Sure, Marko, just leave the minotaur. I’m sure the mushroom is much more fun.”

“You’re great, Treacle, no, really,” Marko yelled over one shoulder, still running. “Steve was just telling me how much he admires you.”

Logan turned on his Pneumacity and went sliding down steps and drifting over abyss-like cracks. If anything happened to Inga, he was fairly certain he’d feel it. He knew he might be running headlong into a trap, but he didn’t care. He raced into the inner sanctum, swords raised and ready. His gills leaked any number of spores. If anyone wanted to hurt his Inga, he was going to hurt them first.

The walls of Cruelwood’s inner sanctum were covered in twisting, gnarled roots with little pools of brackish water, caught in holes in the stone. It had changed since Logan had first seen it, when he’d come here with Professor Arketa. But they were always changing around the dungeons for one class or another.

Inga stood with a basket of cherry triangles hanging from the crook of one arm. Books were piled on the sanctum’s pedestal, but the biggest and strangest was Melvin’s cookbook, cracked open and stuffed with bookmarks.

Inga’s core gem spun lazily in mid-air over the books.

Her guardian forms eyes gleamed like moonlight on a pond. “Logan, good, you’re here. Marko, Steve, and Treacle will be here any minute. There is a great deal of Apothos energy in this dungeon, but there should be, since this is one of the Cardinal Dungeons. Once we’re done, perhaps I’ll write my own book on Cardinal Dungeon Theory—one that will not be so dry.”

Steve came lumbering in on squeaking joints. The mannequin bent over, hands on his rusted metal knee joints, creaking as if he was gasping for breath.

He turned his head, clearly confused by something, and then went squeaking back out of the room.

It was like he’d never shown up at all.

Inga went on. “The Apothos signature of the crime scene is still here, though you’d need to know how to calibrate the energy to unlock the mystery. Luckily, that was in the fourth appendix of The Stone Hermeneutic. That was the paragraph that put you to sleep.”

Logan winced. “Fourth appendix. Right.”

Inga’s gem flashed, and a gleam of true excitement glimmered in her eyes. “Pluck my back feathers! This is so exciting! Watch now.”

Ethereal silver light danced and swirled around the room; straight ahead the ghostly figure of an undead guardian form manifested. It was like watching a memory. The guardian was lying face down in the middle of the floor right in the center of a runic circle, pulsing with glowing red sigils. The pools reflected the light.

Steven came running back in a moment later. This time, Marko and Treacle were with him.

Marko wasn’t in very good shape, and he’d been sprinting, so he went staggering across the floor. He fell onto his back right next to the glowing corpse of the undead core. “Oh, that was a run. I napped to save my energy for partying, not running. Totally different muscle groups.”

Treacle’s horn lights flickered off as he surveyed in inner sanctum. “Thanks for waiting for us,” he grunted. “I suppose if you both had been killed, we could’ve avenged you. Or helped, you know, save you, so you didn’t die in the first place. That’s the better plan. But what do I know?”

“Dear Treacle, you are such a sweetheart, but never fear, we aren’t going to die!” Inga insisted.

Marko turned to his side to gaze into the rubbery gray flesh, hollow cheeks, and deep-set eyes of the necro-ghoul dungeon core. “Hey, that’s Ozzy! Hey, Oz, is it me, or do you look more dead than usual?”

Of course, Thozz Grimemaw’s corpse didn’t say a word. His gem was shattered, and the ghostly memory of Apothos leaked out and dripped onto a certain rune on the floor. Or at least it had been when the professor had been killed the previous summer.

Marko sat up and leaned back on his arms. “Hey, why is my buddy Ozzy glowing?”

Logan marched over. “I’m sorry, I feel like I’m missing something. That’s the dead professor,” he said, pointing at the glowing corpse. “You’re saying you knew him?”

Marko reached out a hand, and Logan drew up. “Ozzy’s not a professor. Wait…” he trailed off. “Actually, that would explain a lot. He talked about unlocking doors. Or cages. Something. He wasn’t that much fun when he wasn’t singing. Luckily, he mostly came to the Wayfarer Inn to sing happy drinking songs and to complain about elf stuff. He was an elf before he died. His name had three, count ‘em three, Ys. And he talked about all these stupid spells and incantations. He was working on some sort of massive ritual revival spell thing.”

Treacle covered his cow face with both hands.

Inga marched over and smacked Marko’s head. “And you’re just now telling us?”

Steve squeaked over and also smacked Marko.

The satyr raised his furry hands to protect himself. “Hey, whoah. Uncalled for. How was I supposed to know that my drinking buddy Ozzy was the same dude who died in this dungeon? I mean, it wasn’t like we were that close. For example, if Treacle died… wait… bad example. If Logan died, I would totally know. Or Inga. Or the guy who makes the cherry triangles. If that guy bit the dust, I would totally get a dustpan.”

Treacle shook his head sadly. “If I died, no one would notice. You have Steve. He’s really the fourth member of the cohort.”

Inga raised a defiant finger. “That is not true, Treacle. We tolerate Steve. We love you.”

“Sure you do.” Morose sighs followed.

Marko playfully punched the minotaur’s arm. “I was kidding, Treac. If you died, I’d totally know in three to four business days. If you died on a weekend, I’d know by like Wednesday. Thursday at the very latest.”

Logan drew both the satyr and the minotaur over to the pedestal.

Inga joined them and motioned to the book with her basket of pastries. “We’re still missing a few pieces, but this is definitely starting to make more sense now. Melvin had a recipe for Spicy Eastern Dragon Balls, and the Apothos signatures here are for the Azure Dragon. The symbols here match the symbols in his book. And did you know that the Azure Dragon, also known as Vilhelm Audax, was originally from Bharoosh? So was William of the Scales.”

“Billy Scales was from Bharoosh?” Marko asked in surprise. “Ozzy was always talking about this Billy Scales character. It seems he was like this wickedly powerful dungeoneer a zillion years ago. Good ol’ Ozzy—”

“Thozz Grimemaw,” Treacle corrected.

“The dead guy was saying that a single dungeoneer, as powerful as Billy Scales could destroy whole limbs of the Tree of Souls. He was bad. Like really bad. As much as Jeff Luden was good? Well, William of the Scales was equally as bad.”

Logan was a little annoyed. Marko had been sitting on some valuable info they could’ve used, and now he was chattering away non-stop.

“What other recipes are there?” Logan asked.

It was like Inga hadn’t heard the question. “Spicy Eastern Dragon Balls are from a continent east of Nightfall University. You need actual dragon meat for them, so it’s not like you could just take chicken and add peppers.”

“Other recipes, Inga?” Logan asked.

Even though Inga’s consciousness was in her gem, her guardian form nodded. “Right. Melvin also had a Southern Fried Phoenix recipe. The Blasted Barrows, the southern dungeon where Ed was killed, matches the Vermillion Phoenix. And under Melvin’s desserts, where I found the cherry triangles, he had a recipe for Western Sugar Crystals—that matches the Submerged Hell and it’s special to the Crystal Tiger. Lastly, Northern Turtle Soup, which you guessed it, is the northernmost dungeon, the Bloodrock, which is sacred to the Onyx Tortoise. Supposedly, the recipes are all based on the continents of Bharoosh, but each of them are starred.”

Marko made a face. “I’ve had turtle soup. Not a fan. I like turtles too much. This guy is sick.”

Inga quickly leafed through the pages. “Oh, it gets better. Melvin included all these notes in his cookbook, but they were encrypted. It took me a bit to break the code, but I eventually did because of my extensive knowledge of codes and runes. I know why he encrypted the notes—he wouldn’t want people reading them. For example, under the Spicy Eastern Dragon Balls he wrote, ‘Young dragon tenderloins work best—I could kill Verminaxx on Tull. I hate him. He made fun of me. They say revenge is cold, but I will serve up my vengeance hot and greasy, with a spicy chili sauce.’”

Treacle snorted. “Let me guess. Verminaxx on Tull disappeared.”

“Yes!” Inga nearly shouted. “There is no one named Verminaxx running a dragon’s lair anywhere. And if you read through these recipes, he has all these enemies. I confirmed some were killed, but others I’m not sure about. I couldn’t find information on some of these, but his cookbook was a list of the people he wanted to kill and eat. He’s insane. Completely insane. And I’m telling you, there is no such thing as strangle cherries.”

Inga put the basket down on the book. “Here. All of you. I made some of his cherry triangles, and they’re close, but they’re still not right. I made them with choke cherries, but they were all I could find.”

They all tasted the pastries. Logan thought they were fine, but Marko got mad. “This villain. Using fictitious cherries. Does his madness have no end?”

“We’re going to end it,” Inga said fiercely. “But I confirmed that the Apothine energies in the Cardinal Dungeons match the four Celestial Ancestors. Which match his starred recipes.”

She pushed aside the basket, and it nearly fell, but Logan caught it.

Inga then laid The Stone Hermeneutic on top of Melvin’s cookbook. “We all know that Shadowcroft Academy for Dungeons was the first of its kind, but that isn’t the only reason it’s so unique. Shadowcroft is also the only dungeon academy that exists inside its own pocket dimension. The Stone Hermeneutic suggest it is actually one massive dungeon, which would make the headmaster the dungeon core. More interesting still, there was a little detail I missed early on.” She pulled out her impossibly thick copy of The Stone Hermeneutic and flipped to the very back of the book. She tapped on the page with one slender finger.

Logan’s eyes widened as he read what was there. “The author dedicated the book to Thozz Grimemaw?” He said, equal parts statement and question.

“Who’s that?” Marko asked.

Steven smacked his head again.

Logan was glad.

Inga’s guardian core was shaking with excitement. “Yes indeed. The dedication wasn’t in the front, which is why I didn’t think to look for it initially, but there was a whole page at the back, after the fourth appendix. I also checked, and that last person to check the book out, before me, was Professor Grimemaw.”

“Makes sense,” Marko said, bobbing his head. “Ozzy could make friends fast.”

Inga waved his jokes away. “I also found a piece of parchment tucked away in the back of the book. Ozzy’s notes. I mean, Professor Grimemaw—may he find an eternal home in the Tree of Souls. He thought that the entire realm, all the dungeons but especially the Cardinal Dungeons, were guarding a tremendously powerful but potentially dangerous source of Apothos. Could it be the explosion of energy when the Four Celestial Ancestors killed William of the Scales? That would make sense. Regardless, Ozzy believed that there were Four Cardinal Seals that acted as a locking mechanism to keep this power contained. He believed he could unlock those seals. I think Grimemaw was working on a book—Madam Gammy thought he was at any rate.”

Marko nodded. “Sure. Write a book. Make a fortune. Become famous. Retire to Eritrea and buy silverware for every season.”

Treacle tried to put the brakes on that conversation. “No, Inga, don’t get distracted. Forget that he mentioned silverware.”

“Thanks, Treac,” Logan finished off the mediocre pastry. “Okay, so why was this professor going to unlock the four cages. Or break the seals. Or break open the doors. To what end?”

Inga touched the pages of the books. “Presumably to consume the power for himself. But it seems things went terribly awry when he activated the seal and it somehow resulted in his death. He must have shared his research with someone, who turned on him. But it couldn’t have been Chadrigoth—he was off world when the first murder happened. And while Chadrigoth is a certainty capable of this, I don’t think he’s behind any of it. But Melvin? Not only do we have his cookbook, which shows he’s a vengeful psychopath, but he also knew about the Cardinal Dungeons. Professor Nekhbet just mentioned that when we talked to them after the field trip. And people smelled the cherry pastries. Also, Melvin transferred during the summer. He would’ve been here. It all adds up.”

Inga must’ve seen the look on Logan’s face.

Her antennae twisted toward him. “Yes, Melvin saved you. Fine. But should I go into detail about his satyr kabobs? Or his stuffed fungaloid mushrooms? And he has a minotaur tartar recipe, which he claims is a joke, but the notes, definitively point to some guy named Barry Goldenhorns, a minotaur, who Melvin wants to eat.”

“And eat them raw apparently,” Treacle said gloomily.

Marko clopped back and forth on his hooves, thinking, while Steven squeaked after him, mirroring his restless pacing. “If Melvin is our murderer, I find it just this side of heartbreaking. I was really starting to like that weirdo. So what do we do now?”

Inga swept her gem back into her guardian form. The runes on the floor, the body of the dead professor, all vanished. For a second, the room was dark, or at least Logan had the impression it was dark. He could see just fine.

Treacle’s horn lights flashed on.

Inga began pulling her books back into the Ring of Pockets—the tomes disappeared, one at a time. “Well, Melvin has broken the seals on two of the dungeons—this dungeon and the southern dungeon. To open the seals, you need to shatter a dungeon core’s soul gem. You can’t see the evidence, but I assure you, two of the locks are broken. Professor Arketa must’ve picked through this place with a fine-tooth comb. She wouldn’t have found anything out of place. Why would she? Whoever created the Cardinal Dungeons wouldn’t want their true nature known. They wanted to keep the Apothos trapped for some reason.”

Logan knew what they had to do. “Melvin failed with the Submerged Hell. Tet survived.”

“That’s right.” Inga stuffed the last book into the ring. “One more thing about Melvin’s starred recipes. In a traditional Bharooshian feast, you have the spicy dragon balls first, then the southern fried phoenix, and the crystal candies act as a palate cleanser. You eat the delicacy last, and that would be the Turtle Soup Dungeon in the north.”

“Please, Inga,” Marko exhaled in fake frustration. “Can we just call things by their real names?”

“Fine. It’s the Bloodrock.”

The Bloodrock was a mountain dungeon in the Heckish Hills of the World Forge Wastes. They’d walked by it a hundred times on their way to Professor Crucible’s crafting class.

Inga continued. “I think the spell is called the Evocation of the Golden Chains. He would need to break the third and fourth seals, to free the power source.”

Logan wasn’t going to let that happen. “Maybe we can stop it before it ever gets that far. We need to lure Melvin into the Submerged Hell, and try to get him to break the third seal. If we can do that, we’ll have proof that he’s behind it and then we’ll be able to go to Rockheart and lay out our theory. Here’s what I’m thinking...”

While he told them his plan, Logan mind wandered to all their unanswered questions. Who had created the seals in the Cardinal Dungeons, why had no one known about them, and what was this mysterious power source? Lastly, while Inga’s research was excellent, it hadn’t explained that strange chanting that Tet heard—Will Yum Yum Yum. That had to be what Melvin thought of his own food—yum, yum, yum.

Or was it Will Yum as in William of the Scales?

Logan wasn’t sure about that, but he was certain that Melvin deserved an Academy Award for his performance in the Dry Desert on his homeworld of Bharoosh. And to think, Logan felt bad for hurting Melvin’s feelings. It had all been a ruse the entire time. Melvin wasn’t there to be friends with Logan and the Terrible Twelfth.

Hard to be friends with someone who wanted to kill you, marinate you, and serve you up with a nice chianti.