James A. Hunter
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Shadowcroft Year 3 - Chapter Fifty-One
🕑 Added 2023-01-13 18:00:01 +0000 UTCShador stood in the ring as his rabid fanlings chased after the cores floating over the fleeing card table.
Logan lay at the wrestler’s feet while the odiferous ropes slowly squeezed him to death.
He’d become a connoisseur of nasty smells, and yet, both the wrestler and the ropes disgusted him on a deep, visceral level. He struggled against his bounds, but he was completely immobile. Every time he tried to break free, a chair would smack him in the face for his trouble. Lou Shador was powerful, without a doubt. But this wasn’t just his power at work.
There was powerful fungal magic in the air. Some if it was Logan’s, but most of it wasn’t. Dark, otherworldly spores loitered in the air like storm clouds, drastically repressing his own powers. He reached out with this thoughts, trying to force his consciousness into another body, but he felt an impassable wall of mental resistance form around him.
At the same time, there was a story to Lou Shador’s smell. Images flashed through Logan’s head, of a lost dungeoneer walking around dazed in Venice Beach. A name came to him. Ted Shadie. That was Lou Shador’s real name. Well, in his dungeoneers class, Logan had heard about a promising young raider named Tedder Shadie. It was the same guy.
Shador had spent a ton of time in California, but at some point, he’d gone north. To San Francisco. Then to Oregon. What was in Oregon? Besides hippies and gas station attendants who insisted on pumping your gas for you.
Then Logan heard laughter… Billy Scales. It was Billy Scales laughing, and that laughter turned into a chorus of mirth.
A moment later, the laughter and the images swirled away.
“Protect the gem stones,” Logan thundered at the top of his lungs. The microphone, dangling overhead, picked up the sound and broadcast it through the stadium. “Whatever you do, don’t let him get to that table!”
He might not have been able to control his minions telepathically, but they were smart enough to do what needed with a little guidance. A pair of Myotic Shambles charged forward, flanking the pedestal, and absorbing the worst of the blunt-force chair trauma on their backs. Stone, candy, and hardened fungal chitin went flying, yet they held fast. The Shambles were quickly joined by a trio of Destroying Angels, who turned their powerful Morta magics on the screaming fanlings.
They two armies clashed as chains and baseball bats met fungal fists and rancid death Apothos.
Mariah Carey’s blunderbuss exploded, and that single jawbreaker took down a rabid fanling—some muscular guy in a Southern Rock Rules T-shirt and a luchador mask. When his head exploded, the forty-five pound barbell bludgeon fell to the floor with a resounding clang.
Fanlings then descended on poor Mariah, smacking her with dumbbells.
She let out a final scream. “It’s pronounced Lynyrd Skynyrd,” as she went under.
Shador stood over Logan. “You did pretty good against me, brother, but now, it’s time to put an end to this fight.”
“That’s okay, Ted,” Logan snapped. “I’m sure you were the underdog at one time. Is that how you got yourself to Earth? Whether it be bloodthirsty raiders, or heroic dodgeball players, Earth, and Americans in particular, love a good underdog story.”
“Don’t need to tell you a thing.” Shador hauled Logan to his feet, and got him in a headlock. His cool new wizard hat lay on the ground as Logan found himself face to armpit. It was more gross than painful. Still the ropes tightened around him like a noose. His guardian form wouldn’t hold together much longer. Although his fungaloid spore abilities were severally limited, he still had one ace tucked away up his sleeve. With a thought and an effort of will, Logan summoned his Soul Staff of Sporing from his Ring of Pockets It appeared in one hand—offering him his last chance at salvation. Logan channeled his Apothos into the staff and tried desperately to summon a fungal wall.
No dice.
Before Logan could finish, Shador raised Logan over his head, then slammed him onto the canvas with bone breaking force. The only thing that saved Logan was that as a fungaloid he didn’t actually have bones.
Or did he?
He felt his bones break. It must’ve been one of Shador’s abilities. The jagged pain was real enough. Then it was another slam when Shador came down on him with a pointed elbow to the face.
If Logan had had teeth, they would’ve fallen like chiclets. And not the exploding kind.
Again, Logan tried to grow fungal walls under the ring, but as the mushrooms blossomed, Shador took his staff and hurled it across the room. Right into the last row of seats on the upper deck. “You’re done.”
Logan found his head between Shador’s thighs. The odors in the air didn’t improve there. A squeeze later, flames burst out of his legs, bathing Logan in terrible, all-consuming heat.
Fire was such a bummer.
As the agony hit him like a hammer, Logan had to wonder—who had a flaming thigh power?
Scorched, bruised, broken, squeezed to the point of agony, Logan found himself on his back getting pummeled over and over in the face. Punching wasn’t allowed in wrestling, but Lou Shador was the kind of guy to break any rule he didn’t agree with!
It was illegal to hit your opponent with your hands, elbows, knees, and head. Kicking was also prohibited unless performing a foot sweep.
Just the same, Logan’s world became big hairy knuckles.
Then Shador leapt away, and like anime villain, hung in the air. “Nice knowing you, Logan Murray. No. That’s a laugh. It was nice killing you, brother. Don’t need to bother with your guardian form ‘cause the reops got you. Gonna go crack your core now and get the good stuff. Oh yeah!”
Shador wheeled around and went zipping across the arena, making a bead for the scurrying card table with the core gems spinning over it. The wrestler drove a fist through the skull of one of Logan’s Mycotic Shambles, which was impressive because they had humongous heads. Shador’s thighs became infernos, and the other Shamble erupted into flames. Shador lashed out with an axe kick. His foot turned into a literal axe blade in the process, effortlessly hacking off one of the poor mushroom giant’s legs.
The table tried to flee, but Shador was just too fast. The masked menace grabbed the legs and ripped them off at the joint. The table top clattered to the floor—though the gem stones continued to circle above.
A few Markalo waddlers bought them precious time, but it was clear that they were all in real trouble.
Two of the clown mushrooms didn’t even bother with their hatchets but simply spray-painted Shador’s knees while four of the Markabooboos—the disturbingly sexy nurse mushrooms—grabbed the table and ran with it through the stands.
Shador quickly dispatched the Markalo’s then resumed his chase. It was only a matter of time before he caught their gems and ended the fight for good.
<Logan!> A chorus of voices sounded off in his head. It was the frantic cries of his friends. <Stop him! We’re almost there!>
<Don’t let it end this way!> Marko added. <I don’t want to die in a dungeon with “Slam Fest” as any part of the name. I kinda expected to drown in a barrel of liverkill in Vralkag.>
One of Logan’s eyes had been burned shut by scorching flames. He had a nasty taste in his mouth and the stench of Shador’s B.O. lingered in his senses. Logan glanced down, and he saw a section of the rope had come loose, even while most of the rope had tightened. Without Treacle’s haiku armor, he’d have been squeezed into pieces by now.
Logan had spent months on his ball of twine, and he saw that the loose section of rope could be the key to unraveling the whole thing if he lost his armor and worked fast. Dismissing his armor was a huge gamble, but doing nothing was an even bigger gamble. This is what he’d trained for. An impossible situation. Dire consequences. A tangled ball of rope. This was his moment to shine. Muttering the same haiku, he dispelled Treacle’s armor. It dissipated like morning fog in the hot sun and instantly the ropes pulled even tighter. So tight that they ripped through one of Logan’s legs.
The leg squirmed and bucked, rapidly growing limbs of its own—transforming into a snarling Spore Warg, thanks to Logan’s regenerate ability. Even with the oppressive spore cloud hovering above him, at this range, he could still control the beast with his thoughts. The Warg locked its jaws around the rope and tugged, shaking his head as he pulled. That life or death game of tug of war created just enough slack for Logan to get his arms free. He grabbed one end of the rope, fed it through a small loop, and undid the knots with ease.
This was simple compared to the twine. Ha!
He was free in a second. He raised a hand. He didn’t know if he could summon his staff, but if Thor could do it, so could he. Marvel’s god of thunder was basically an A-Class hero with a sacred weapon. Well, so was Logan Murray.
He found the wrestler reaching for the card-table pedestal, clutched in the hands of the fleeing Markabooboos. It was now or never.
He pressed his eyes closed and reached outward with his will. As a dungeon core, he had a unique bond with the Tree of Souls, and the staff was simply a sliver of the Tree. Even without seeing, he could feel its energy signature, thrumming and pulsing from the coliseum stands. He sent out a tether of invisible energy and called the staff, called the energy beating within the weapon to return to him.
There was a rattle as the staff flashed across the room and found a home in Logan’s fingers. He opened his eyes with a grin. Then, with a renewed burst of hope, Logan drew in a hurricane of Apothos from his friends. He channeled the surge of power through his core and into the staff. The weapon acted as a conduit, shaping the ungodly amount of raw energy, transforming it into a wall of fungus that manifest directly above Shador. The living wall came crashing down on the wrestler like a 7-Eleven falling out of the sky.
It attack was so strange and unexpected that the wrestler wasn’t ready for it. Shador glanced up at the last second. He surged forward but was too late and abruptly found himself buried under the writhing mass of mushrooms.
That allowed the Markabooboos to get the table back into the ring mere seconds before the rabid fanlings tore into them with baseball bats and barbells. With Lou Shador momentarily out of commission, the oppressive presence lingering in the air seemed to ease up. Logan reached out with his thoughts. The last of Logan’s Shambles and Destroying Angels rushed forward at his command, throwing themselves against the onrushing wall of rabid fanlings.
The two sides collided in a roar like thunder and sheer pandemonium erupted outside the ring—but the table and its gemstones were safe for the time being. That was the important thing.
Shador finally shook off the fungal wall that had just clobbered him and transformed once more into the familiar shape of a human cannonball. He went shooting down toward the ring like Mario Kart’s Bullet Bill in Battle Mode.
Logan conjured another fungal wall to block his path, but it was too late.
Shador burst through like a wrecking ball. He plowed into Logan’s chest, knocking him across the ring and into the ropes on the far side. Stars danced across Logan’s vision and the world seemed to wobble uncertainly beneath his feet. Clearly the masked luchador had used some sort of stun attack. By the time Logan regained his balance, he found himself wrapped up like a Christmas present—this time in one of the wrestler’s wrist wrap tentacles. Shador closed the distance in a blink and reared back with his right fist, ready to punch out Logan’s other eye. “You’re in the danger zone, brother! You put on quite the show, but now it’s time to bow down to the king.”
Logan’s physical eyes were completely swollen shut, but thankfully his fungal vision allowed him to see with the halo of invisible spores that constantly circled him.
The luchador reared back and was about repeat the brutal pummeling. But this time Logan didn’t have his reinforced candy armor—there was no way he would survive the beating…
Luckily, the cavalry had come.
A fully restored Treacle burst into the room from the fifth level, falling and shooting with twin jawbreaker machine gun arms at the same time.
Shador retraced his wrist tentacles and tried to use his red cloak as a rudimentary shield, but the cape was so thrashed, it did little to stop the jawbreakers. The luchador staggered back under the onslaught. Bright red welts appeared across his chest, arms, and legs. The jaw breakers couldn’t break the skin, but the sheer volume of them was taking its own toll. As Logan often said, quantity had a quality all of its own.
Logan lay on the floor, glad to have his guardian form still in one piece. Mostly. There was that missing leg to consider. Nothing new there.
Marko’s CCP carriage burst out of the fourth level—it looked like the medieval version of a Fast and Furious movie—with Marko playing the role of Dom Toretto. He sat in the driver’s seat along with several Markalos, who looked relatively calm given the fact that they were in a carriage falling five stories to unforgiving seats and concrete below. But that was because Marko was a master of gravity magic, thanks to his Gravitatious Clownocity ability. Marko leapt out of the window while the car was still midair and used an invisible, mimed rope to swing to safety with his minions in tow.
As for the carriage, he turned it into an impromptu asteroid filled to burst with deadly pies of all flavors and assortments. Getting all the way down with the clown, he used the unstoppable power of juggling to drop the carriage on Shador. The ridiculous clown car exploded on impact. A fireball rose up, engulfing Lou Shador and shaking the dungeon. A wave of colorful, animal balloons floated upward before popping and raining down acid on the dungeoneer below.
Logan had to admit that Marko’s time in clown college had been time well spent indeed.
As the smoke and fire clear, Logan caught sight of Lou Shador. The wrestler was still alive, but he’d definitely seen better days. His leotard was in tatters thanks to acid, the thick hair covering his body had been burned away in the flames, and welts covered every inch of his body. It honestly looked like he gone ten rounds with a swarm of angry wasps.
And speaking of angry bugs…
Inga fluttered out of her level via a secret tunnel, her body restored. On her back were the Kurrybooboos that healed her. She immediately unleashed a merciless barrage of Moonlances on the remaining rabid fanlings.
Marko and his clownish minions touched down on the arena floor and turned their attention on Lou Shador’s fanlings, who were still frantically trying to get into the ring despite Inga’s best efforts. Then Marko started to dance. His hooves clopped in a rhythmic, almost hypnotic, beat and suddenly the fanlings went still. They stared, slack jawed and completely entranced by his performance. They didn’t even seem to notice as the Markalos went to work with their hatchets, cleaving limbs and slicing throats.
Brutal. It was like a bad night in Chicago near the Union Center during a monster truck rally gone wrong.
Logan got to his feet dizzy, hurting, and half-dead. But half-dead wasn’t all dead. He stumbled toward the card-table laying on its broken legs. He was still missing a leg, so he had to use his staff for balance as he tottered across the ring. He turned, gripping his staff, and prepared to defend the pedestal with his last breath. He’d done his job. He’d given his Kurrybooboos time to heal the guardian forms of his friends, and now all he needed to do was make sure that the gemstones stayed safe.
While Marko and Inga dealt with the fanlings, Treacle reached the ring.
He broke his fall with telescoping metal legs that took the brunt of the impact. The mechanical leg extensions quickly retracted as the candy-coated minotaur charged across the ring with a thunderous roar. His Cavity Smasher flipped out of his forearm and into his palm. “Hope you have a good dental hygienist on call,” he said, before smashing the wrestler in the face with the weapon.
Shador reeled drunkenly and spat out teeth, which were already rotting. He tried to use wraps tentacles, but Treacle taffied them down with his taffy cannon. The sweet smell of the candy tried to dispel the terrible stink wafting off the doomed dungeoneer, but the reek was only getting worse with every hit the luchador took. His body odor attack was clearly working in overdrive.
Marko called from across the room. “Whew! I’ve been cleaning toilets all year long, and I’ve never smelled anything that nasty. Logan, buddy, what did you eat?”
“It’s not me!” Logan protested. But he had been eating. His Kurrybooboos had not only healed his friends, they’d also dragged the bodies of the Glow Brigade members into the digestion pits, hidden away in the bathrooms scattered across the dungeon.
Shador spat out more teeth. “I ain’t goin’ out like this, brother.” Then he showed off a new skill, some kind of sound attack, and it struck Treacle, snapping off a horn and flinging his cavity smasher out of his grip. The more Shador talked, the more powerful he became. “I was born to win, and win big, baby. I was taught by the best, so you’ll die like the rest. I will never let anyone say I wasn’t the worst raider they’ve ever fought. And I’ll deal with you trolls, with you idiots, with you weaklings like I deal with my morning bowel movement. By flushing you all away!”
The first row of seats turned to dust by the wrestler’s righteous rage. Parts of the arena crumbled.
A wave of raw concussive force hurled Logan back and sent his staff flying.
Lou Shador smiled like a Tik Tok influencer with twenty million views. “Feel the wrath of my Full Media Meltdown!”
He then started chanting. “I’m number one! I’m number one!” Those six words shattered the ring and sent Treacle tumbling into the stands.
Inga came soaring down with four Chrysalis swords ready to rend the wrestler’s flesh. She never had the chance. Another “I’m number one!” hit her like an artillery strike and sent her spinning down into the seats.
Shador stormed over grabbed the fungaloid by both arms. With a sadistic smile, the masked wrestler yanked the limbs off one at a time. “I’ve had enough of you, brother! I’ve had enough of all your dumb craziness. What kind of dungeon cores are you?!”
Chadrigoth teleported in behind the wrestler. “The terrible kind.”
Before Lou Shador could even blink, the A-Class Ascended Torment Lord drove his sword straight through Lou Shador’s heart. The black blade punched effortlessly through his back and exploded out from his front, bright streaks of crimson lining the edge of the weapon and dribbling down onto the ring. Shador’s eyes went wide in utter unbelief behind the slit of his mask. He sputtered, frothy blood coating his lips.
“Oh no, brother…”
His body went slack as the words left his mouth and the life drained from his body. Logan felt the blast of Apothos from the wrestler’s death until Chadrigoth sucked the energy into his core. That sword was all kinds of Stormbringer, minus the genocidal albino wizard king. Even as an A-Class, Jade-Leaf Cultivator, the raw surge of Apothos would’ve destroyed the Ascended Torment Lord—burnt his core to a crisp—but thankfully, Chadrigoth wasn’t alone. The energy passed through him and into Logan’s core. The strain was still immense, but Logan’s core had been purpose built to handle this type of strain.
With the luchador gone, his minions fell to the ground and turned to ash. Gone as quickly as they’d come. In the distance, there was the last few notes of his hype song—a sad minor-chord version—before it too vanished. All the bad smells vanished as well. A sweet relief even for Logan. The man’s BO had been epic and easily the nastiest fight of Logan’s life.
The entire dungeon was quiet for a minute.
Thanks to the surge of Apothos roaring through him, Logan had already regrown his missing legs. He was also elbow deep in the process of regrowing his arms. Little stumps with wriggling baby fingers were already taking shape. He pointed a tiny new finger at Marko. “Hey, I heard what you said before. Why didn’t you like the title of our dungeon? It was a Slam Fest, baby. The ultimate Slam Fest.”
Marko sauntered up flanked by the survivors of his Crazy Clown Posse. “Some notes, Logan. First, you can’t do both Slam and Fest. Is it a Slam? Or is it a Fest? Doing both? Show some restraint. Secondly, not sure if the fest part was accurate at all. Was there festing? Was their feasting? A little, thanks to me, but this, in no way, was any kind of festival. The name was inaccurate, but everything else was so amazingly awesome!” The satyr danced a little jig. The happy kind. Not the murder-y kind.
Inga glided in swept Logan into a tight hug.
Treacle trudged over from the stands and joined them in the ring, looking alive though a bit worse for the wear.
Chadrigoth sheathed his black blade and joined them. “Pretty good, fungus,” he said with a lopsided smile. “Pretty good. And that whole quip I did before I killed the bad guy? Not to brag, but the Tree of Souls suggested it while I was having my visions. It all came back to me before I teleported. What did you think?
“Awesome. Totally awesome.” Logan reached out his arms. “Bring it in, best friend.”
Both Marko and Chadrigoth rushed over as well, and Inga used all four of her arms to wrapped them up in a giant group. They’d done it again. It’d been close, but they’d overcome the impossible once again. And although none of them could’ve accomplished such a Herculean feat on their own, together there was nothing that could stop them. Well, almost nothing.
Logan couldn’t help but think about the dark presence he’d felt during his confrontation with the Shadow Billy Scales and then again while squaring off against Lou Shador. There was something dangerous out there in the vastness of the universe. Something powerful. Or had been powerful once and was now in hiding. Logan wasn’t sure what it all meant, but he had a strong feeling that he would find the answers in a place no one but him suspected.
It was time for him to head back to Earth.
But he pushed thoughts of the malignant presence and a return trip to his home world away. For today, they’d beaten back the dark and it was important to celebrate the victories as they came. And this certainly qualified. It wasn’t twenty minutes later that Tet appeared on the sands of the coliseum above. She called down into the MothalMania 39. “Greetings to the dungeon. I bring rather interesting news!”
“What kind of news?”
Marko clapped his hands. “A surprise? I love surprises!”
Comments
Luke DeMink
Very dramatic and it was a true back and forth fight. I love it!
