Shadowcroft Academy Year 2 - Chapter Thirty-Seven

The next night, Logan and the Terrible Twelfth had created the perfect trap for Melvin in the Submerged Hell.

Logan had bonded with the rest of his cohort, so that they would be able to communicated instantaneously and at a distance. He and Inga had taken over the dungeon. Both their gems floated above the inner sanctum’s pedestal. They’d reduced the number of water features dramatically, and now little murky streams flowed where there were once torrents. They kept a few thin waterfalls of brackish water to liven up the place.

Logan hadn’t packed the rooms with mushrooms, but he’d added a few patches here and there, as if they were just getting started. They’d also removed yellow ribbon blocking the entrance and extended a staircase up to the surface, creating a little dock to make it even easier for the kitchen ghast to make his way in.

Treacle created a boat that ran on his AFS Core Improvement. Treacle would keep his distance and follow Melvin into the Submerged Hell, alerting them the second the ghast got into range. From there, the minotaur would trail at a safe distance, ready to unleash mechanized hell if the ghast so much as twitched a finger wrong or tried to retreat before they ambushed him. Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that. Unlike most dungeons, they hadn’t loaded this one with a thousand rooms or endless traps—they wanted him to make it to the Inner Sanctum and they’d practically rolled out the red carpet for him.

Logan and Inga hid behind a little trickle of water, in one of the mushroom patches.

As for Marko… well, he was the bait. Out of all the Terrible Twelfth, he seemed the most ridiculous and the most vulnerable. Marko had jumped on the idea of being a goatish damsel in distress. He’d even decided to put on a silk dress with ample petticoats—Marko insisted that was a method actor, and needed to be in the right “headspace” to play the role. But petticoats and corset aside, Marko was ready to tangle. He’d decorated the sanctum walls with living art work, and set up ambient lightning which cast deep pools of shadow—shadows he could draw deadly, Lovecraftian horrors from. Plus, he had Steve just in case everything else fell to pieces.

They’d drafted a carefully worded message to Melvin, asking him to come and help Marko with a few things, including a bad batch of cherry triangles some lesser cook had baked. They’d also dropped more than a few hints that Marko would be alone.

The trap was all set, and it wasn’t long before the ghast came waddling straight into it like rabbit headed for a snare.

Logan used the power of the dungeon to watch the ghast from overhead; he didn’t seem even remotely concerned and never even bothered with a backward glance toward Treacle. Melvin was awfully oblivious for a diabolical killer. He also didn’t look the part, in his oversized shoes, chef’s whites, and black fedora, topping off the ensemble. But that just went to show that you couldn’t judge a book by its cover.

“Greetings and salutations, Marko Laskarelis!” he said, with a hearty boom. “That is an interesting outfit you have on there.” The ghast paused eyeing Marko’s ridiculous getup.

“But I totally make it work right?” Marko said. “I really feel like the petticoats work great with my figure.”

“I am extremely confused by why you’re wearing it,” Melvin said, “but you’re not wrong good sir, or should I say m’lady. I’m equally confused about why you’re here or why you invited me here, of all places, but who am I to question a mysterious rendezvous with Shadowcroft’s most popular student? Honestly, I’m just glad to be able to help. I feel I may have…” he faltered and glanced down at his oversized shoes. “Well, I’m afraid I may have soured things with Logan like milk left too long in the sun. I have a bit of a temper and I’m afraid I may have pushed things.” He seemed to brightened. “But maybe I can make things right yet. So, I am at your disposal. How can I be of service, hmm?”

Marko’s ears seemed to droop a little and his eyes darted to Logan and Inga, hiding in a patch of overgrown mushroom. <Are we sure this is the right guy,> he sent.

<Who else could it be?> Logan sent back. <We follow the plan, plain as that.>

<Yeah, okay. Cool. Game face on.>

Marko cleared his throat and fixed Melvin with a wide smile. “I really appreciate you coming down here, man. I hate to be so secretive, but I got a bad case of the munchies and tried to duplicate your cheery triangles.” He held out the basket as an offering. “I know I shouldn’t have, but they’re so good and I was so drunk, and I just wanted some of the sweet, sweet pastry. Thing is, I botched it somehow. Wrong kind of cherries, I think.”

Melvin recoiled at the sight of the pastries and audibly hissed. Then his eyes darted to the pedestal and cookbook resting on top.

“You snooped,” he growled. “Inga put you up to this, didn’t she? I told her not to track down my cookbook, but she couldn’t leave well enough alone. No, not Inga. She can’t bear to not know something. She has to go digging up my past, even though it is deeply embarrassing.” The kitchen ghast reached one hand into his kitchen whites and miraculously withdrew the mall katana. “Well, you might think I’m dumb, but I’m not. Come on out Logan and Inga, I know you’re both in here, controlling the dungeon. I’m not stupid, no matter what you think of me.”

Before they could move, Melvin stretched out his left hand and summoned his Pop-Tart golem. That hulking creature stood head and shoulders over Melvin, a murder-machine of puff pastry and icing. Slung across its chest was a bandolier of exploding popovers and it clutched a rolling pin club in one doughy hand, ready for battle. Logan remembered the molten chocolate inside its doughy skin. The creature was formidable, no matter how comical it may have looked.

Treacle clomped in behind Melvin, his hooves shaking the ground with every step. He was covered in full mechanize armor, like some sort of rural bull-headed Iron Man. Lightning arced across the steel. Twin blades snapped out of his massive gauntlets. Goggles covered his eyes as more energy crackled between his sharp horns. With the AFS enhancements, Treacle was nearly as tall as the Pop Tart golem. Honestly, Treacle looked every bit the dungeoneer-destroying minotaur he was. He snorted out a little steam to complete the effect.

“That’s enough, Melvin,” Treacle said slowly, “this doesn’t need to come to a fight. Give us a chance to talk, answer a few questions—if you have nothing to hide, nothing bad will happen. Well, except we’ll all still be alive. No one can avoid the pain of existence.”

Inga and Logan used the momentary distraction to break out of the mushroom patch and take up defensive position, effectively hemming Melvin in—cutting off any chance he had at escaping. Inga touched down beside Marko and summoned her chrysalis swords along with a handful of her most powerful minions, who spread out in a semicircle around her. Logan positioned himself near the pedestal, clad in his bulky chitin armor, ruby shield on one arm, silver short sword clutched in his right hand.

It was a show of force, all right, but Logan knew that Melvin was armed with deadly pastries, and he wasn’t afraid to use them.

The kitchen ghast grimaced, his hand tightening around the hilt of his sword as he regarded them. “I’m not a murderer! Look, I wrote that cookbook at a dark time in my life—that’s why I didn’t want Inga to find it. It’s not a confession letter, it’s an embarrassment and I knew Inga was smart enough to figure out my encryption. But I never killed anyone listed in those pages, including Verminaxx. He stole one of my prized recipes, so I certainly considered it, but I never did it. If you must know, he’s running a successful kitchen-based dungeon on Bharoosh, though he had to rebrand himself as Johnny Cabinet because he wanted to go kitchen and not dragon lair. You can check the dungeon directory if you don’t believe me. Besides, if I really had murder him, do you really think Ji-Soo would’ve let me leave the Pink Ring of Awoo alive?”

Logan shook his head and squinted at the kitchen ghast. “I’m sorry, Melvin, but the murders all point to you. You’ve been acting extremely suspicious all year and the annotated cookbook certainly didn’t do you any favors. Not too mention, there’s the whole thing with the Southern Fried Phoenix.

“Yeah, dude,” Marko said. “Frying phoenixes? Not cool.”

Melvin lost his patience. “I also have satyr kabobs in there. I told you, I was in a dark place, and some of it was a joke. I do like goat meat, but not sentient goat meat.” Melvin took a deep breath and swelled like a balloon, growing a couple of feet in an instant. Pudgy fingers quickly undid the buttons on his chef’s coat, revealing the horrifying sarlacc belly pit concealed beneath. Logan knew they needed to tread carefully. Melvin was at least a B-Class dungeon—possibly even an A class. Who knew what tricks he had up his sleeves, or hidden away in his stomach?

“Oh, and what about the starred recipes?” Inga asked. “Those four recipes matched the Cardinal Dungeons. Dungeons that have corresponded to two killings and one attempted murder. You also had means and opportunity. You were on Arborea when the professor was killed over the summer. You were also there when Ed the Rot Troll was killed. And Tet smelled the cherry triangles. All of that couldn’t be coincidence.”

Melvin spat out his disgust. “Circumstantial evidence, Miss Smartypants. Or are you Miss Suspicious? Either way, there is no way you’re going to survive the new line of special millennium tableware coming out this summer on Eritrea. I don’t need to hurt you. The new line of butter knives will snap your mind like a twig.”

“Ha!” Inga screamed. “I’ve been reading all about them in The Weekly Threek. I am fully prepared for the summer forks. Fully and completely prepared, villain!” She triggered her Metamorphosis ability in anger. In the blink of an eye, her slender guardian form gave way to the enormous metal caterpillar, covered in spikes and with mandibles that could easily decapitate a man. She filled half the room with her sheer bulk. Black water went pouring down her silver armor.

Logan stepped between Melvin and the giant steel worm. This was getting out of control and Melvin had a point—so far their evidence was circumstantial. They couldn’t come out swinging unless they were one-hundred percent sure. And Logan wasn’t. Not yet.

“Before we lose control, why would you come down into the Submerged Hell, after hours, if you weren’t here to break the third seal?” he asked.

“Seals? Like water dogs? Why are we talking about ocean hounds?” Melvin ask. His belly mouth flexed open and closed in agitation. Tentacles writhed within, ready to fight.

Melvin’s answer through Logan for a second. The ghast looked genuinely confused by Logan’s question. “Fine, just tell us this Melvin, why did you transfer here? Really? Why? You said something about getting close to us, monitoring us, something. What’s your story?”

Melvin grinned using his face mouth. “And you think I’m the socially awkward one. I’m definitely a heck of a lot smarter than you schmoes. It should be obvious by now! I came here to partner with you, Logan. Duh. I’m a kitchen ghast. I do kitchen-based dungeons. When I heard there was a fungaloid growing Opal Truffles and God’s Eye Caps, I transferred her immediately. And, when I heard Inga had a love for silverware, I knew it was potential match made in heaven!

“The three of us, symbiotically bonded. We could start a dungeon second to none! Murder was never on my mind, only the wonderful creations we could’ve made together.” He paused and glanced around. “But murder is certainly on my mind now.” He lifted his fingers to his lips then let out a piercing whistle that echoed down the cavernous passageway. “If my cookbook taught you anything about me, it should be that I hold grudges. You better believe I do.”

That was certainly true.

Was it possible that everything Melvin had just said was the truth? It didn’t explain all of the circumstantial evidence that placed him at the various crime scenes, but his answer certainly was a plausible explanation. Maybe… Maybe they were wrong.

Before Logan could ask another question, he felt the presence of an abyss lord, an earth golem buddy, and an elven lich queen. “We have company, people.”

Inga was more specific. “Chadrigoth and the First Cohort have just entered the Submerged Hell.”

Melvin grinned and scattered donut mines across the floor. He then summoned his Bear Claws. “That’s right. After Logan accused me of murder, I figured you guys might play vigilante. I wanted to fix things, but I figured it might go this way. Trust but verify, I always say. Everything about this felt off, so I brought in my real friends as backup.”

There was only one entrance into the inner sanctum, and in seconds, they had thrown every minion they had to guard it. Marko’s mannequins, Treacle’s robotic creations, Inga’s bugs, and Logan’s mushrooms.

But it was too late.

Chadrigoth came storming in with the other members of the First Cohort, all bringing their best minions into the fight. Hellion Imps screeched through the passageways and tore into Treacle’s Ugknot Calflings overwhelming them with hellfire and melting their component parts in a matter of seconds. The Unleashed Spawn screamed hurling sulphureous hellfire on Logan’s mushroom warriors.

Jimi Magmarty had a variety of lava and rock-based monsters, including screaming mag-pies, built entirely from magma, who threw molten rock all over Inga’s insect warriors, including her new Golden Centipede Spartan. They’d grown a lot over the past year, but in a straight up head-to-head fight, they were badly outmatched and it showed. The difference between a low ranked B-Class like Logan and a high-ranked B-Class like Chadrigoth was an ocean of difference.

Still, though, the Terrible Twelfth wasn’t ready to roll over and call it quits.

Marko brought forth shadows to fight, but they were attacked by Lady Elesiel’s undead elven troops. Ghost met shadow in a weird battle between heroic darkness and spectral light.

The satyr got ready to do some hypnotic dancing, his hooves clacking out a manic rhythm, but a nudge from one of Magmarty’s mag-pies sent him stumbling onto a donut bomb. The subsequent explosion sent him flying ass over tea-kettle, his arms pinwheeling madly.

Logan wasn’t sure it was a fight to the death, as far as Melvin was concerned, since it seemed like they had made a huge mistake with the kitchen ghast. However, when it came to the First Cohort, Chadrigoth had tried to kill them twice. What was one more time?

Logan quickly dispatched a Kurrybooboo to heal Marko, then turned to find himself crossing swords with Melvin himself. And boy oh boy was that mall katana was a sharp. Not to mention the fact that Melvin was a master warrior, despite his doughy appearance. The ghast was uncannily nimble and flowed through stance after stance in a kata of baked death.

Logan fought frantically, doing everything he could to keep from being hacked apart by the ghast’s blade. “Look, Melvin, this wasn’t personal.  Someone is killing people and the evidence all points to you. If you’re really telling the truth than this is all just a big misunderstanding. No need for this to get violent.”

“Tell that to whatever weird Urothling afterlife you believe in, mushroom. For you have made Melvin your enemy. And a Melvin never forgets. And never forgives!”

With a snarl, the ghast launched into a lightning-fast series of attacks, slashing, lunging, spinning with impossible grace, his blade a whirl of steel. Logan tried his best to turn each attack, but in seconds it was clear he was no match for the enraged monster. Melvin brought his katana around in a wicked arc and Logan tried to counter and lost his sword arm for his troubles. Melvin dropped low and brought the edge of his blade slicing clean through Logan’s left leg, just below the knee. He fell to the floor with a grunt. And this time, his severed limbs didn’t sprout into spore wargs.

His luck had run out it seemed.

Melvin brought his sword high overhead and brought it screaming down, aimed at Logan’s core.

At the last minute, Melvin pulled back and merely tapped Logan’s gem. The kitchen ghast shook his head. “It was the fedora, wasn’t it? That’s why you hated me. It’s only a hat, man. It’s only a—”

Before he could finish, Noodle Doodle sideswiped the ghast from the left driving his poisonous spikes right Melvin’s exposed gut. The pair of them tumbled away in a tangle of snapping teeth and flailing limbs. Logan ripped his gaze away from the scene and watched in disbelief as one of Marko’s Eldritch Horrors tore apart one Melvin’s bear claws with dark tentacles attached to a many-mouthed abomination.

The battlefield was chaos and madness—gore splattered everywhere and bloody pieces of minions strewn across the rocky stone floor. Surprisingly, however, it smelled just like pies coming out of an oven.

Fighting a kitchen ghast did come with definite bonuses.

While it smelled like heaven, it sounded like hell. Minions screamed and mewled. Chadrigoth was screaming obscenities at them. The worst by far, though, was Marko. The satyr strummed his lute, and it made Logan want to grow ears so he could stab out his own ear drums. The notes, slightly off key and eerily creepy crawled along Logan’s arms and sent shivers running through his body.

There was a shriek and the entire room erupted in a cloud of brilliant light—it was coming from Melvin’s gemstone, a white jewel concealed underneath his belly mouth. Thin fissures raced across the surface of his gem. He’d just been attacked, but there was so much going on—so many minions and guardians fighting—it was impossible to tell what happened or who had struck the blow.

A knot formed in Logan’s throat as runes appeared on the floor as if fueled by the light pouring out of Melvin’s core. All that light coalesced into the form of a glittering, crystalline tiger shape. But, as fast as it had appeared, the Crystal Tiger vanished.

Melvin’s gem flared one more time then guttered and darkened as he dropped to the floor.

Logan used his good arm to drag himself across the gore covered ground.

Apothos dribbled from Melvin’s destroyed gem out onto the floor, igniting the secret Bharooshian runes. Some were drawn on, probably from Tet’s attack, but others had been set into the floor all along—most likely from the being who’d created the Cardinal Dungeons and locked the power source behind the seals.

Melvin’s eyes still had a glimmer of life in them. His fedora had fallen to the floor. The kitchen ghast used the last of his energy to pick it up and hand it to Logan. His voice came out in a croak. “I lied before. I do forgive you, Logan… Just… wished I’d baked you my Opal Truffle samosas… They would’ve been so good.”

Melvin smiled one last time and then his eyes went dark. As dark as his shattered gem.

“Enough!” boomed a gruff voice.

Skip Shadowcroft himself ambled into the dungeon surrounded by a literal forest of minions, everything from living rose-bush warriors to flower-covered furies to gnarled trees with blocky fists as large a car engine.

Everyone in the room stopped fighting, including Marko, who was right on the verge of hitting Chadrigoth in the face with his lute. Which was good, since the attack probably would’ve destroyed the artifact, and it wouldn’t have done much against Chadrigoth. Despite the carnage everywhere, the rest of Logan’s friends appeared to be alive and kicking. Everyone except Melvin.

Logan clutched the fedora in his one hand and stared into Melvin’s dead face. All the clues had pointed at Melvin, but the fact was, they’d made a huge mistake—a mistake that just might have dire consequences.

Logan had never seen Shadowcroft so angry.

Angry trees were the worst. Just ask Isengard.