“The truth is, all of you—even the most powerful among your number—are replaceable, one grain of sand on an endless seashore of souls. There are no special snowflakes at Shadowcroft, only motes in an endless avalanche that crushes our enemies. You do not matter. The Tree of Souls matters, and to that end, I will do everything within my power to weed out the fit from the weak. Let there be no doubt, this is a school for winners. Time will tell which of you don’t belong here.” He scanned the crowd, gaze resting especially long on Logan. “And that time starts now! By standing in this room, you’ve already passed through the Reaper. Now... Now comes the Threshing. Prepare to fight for your life.”
Logan didn’t like the sound of that. “What’s the Threshing?” he asked himself out loud.
The nearby minotaur heard him, ears twitching manically. The bull man sighed like he’d just crashed his first car, gotten fired from a great job, and dropped his ice cream cone.
“It’s our first solo dungeon run in our new guardian forms,” he replied, sounding for all the world like Eeyore’s clinically depressed little brother. “Don’t tell me your name,” he said, raising a calloused hand. “I don’t care, and I don’t want to know it. You’re probably going to die, and I know I will. That would be funny... me living and you dying.”
Logan went to protest, but then the itching on his stomach turned into a searing burn. He jerked up his short little shirt to see a gleaming ruby where his belly button should’ve been. It was about the size of his shroomy fist and reminded him of the gems in those old Troll dolls.
Logan gently touched the gemstone. The minute he did, he was sent reeling back into the void—third verse same as the first. This time, however, there was no pain.
And just like that, Logan found himself excited. A solo dungeon run? He was going into an actual dungeon. Awesome! Too bad he was doing it as a pizza topping.
Chapter Seven
LOGAN FOUND HIMSELF in a classic dungeon hallway with only one way to go. He padded forward slowly and silently on his fat Gumby feet. He had to move slowly, of course, because his little mushroom frame simply wasn’t built for speed; it was obviously built for sitting around on rotten trees and germinating. He metaphorically gritted his teeth—unfortunately, he was missing teeth too, so he’d be gumming all his food for a while. He was determined to show both Shadowcroft and this new gargoyle professor that he belonged here. This fungaloid was going places in the academy, even if he had to take his sweet time getting there.
The dungeon itself was all rough gray stone and flickering torchlight that did little to dispel the gloomy pockets of shadow. Not a fun place to be, but there was a certain thrill in the notion that he was in a real dungeon. One with monsters and traps. One with loot. Or so he hoped. While he walked, he tried to pull up his fungaloid character sheet, but he couldn’t quite figure out the trick of the thing. There were no buttons to click or icons floating in the corner of his eye, and all his verbal commands—open character sheet, examine core, stats—accomplished nothing.
He was sure he could do it, since he’d seen an overview in Shadowcroft’s plush office, but he didn’t have the fancy crystalline viewing screen to help him, and Shadowcroft hadn’t exactly given him a tutorial. Nope. He was in here, barreling headfirst toward death, without even a rudimentary idea of how the controls worked. But sometimes the only way to win was to button mash, and he could button mash with the best of ’em if it came right down to it. Not ideal, but he was a survivor.
Eventually, the twisting hallway spit him out into an octagonal chamber that vaguely reminded him of a Catholic cathedral. Vaulted ceiling, intricate pillars, carved stone featuring freakish gargoyles and other monstrous creatures, and even stained-glass masterpieces that glowed with otherworldly light. Ahead were three heavy doors studded with brass rivets, all in different colors, all emblazoned with their own unique crest. The first was brilliant electric blue with three spiked horns braided together to form an odd wheel. The second was the color of spilled blood and engraved with a series of three interlocking triangles that looked oddly familiar. The last was a brilliant golden door with a pair of stylized raven heads facing away from each other.
Above the three doors was a central stained-glass window, a kaleidoscope of color, with a cryptic poem running across the glass:
The TRIPLE HORNS calls to the scholar blue, a scholar true, gifted with wit
The THRICE-BRANDED TRIANGLE calls to the mighty dressed in red, wed to battle, married to grit
The DOUBLE-FACED RAVEN sings for the gold, for the lucky, for the bold, for those who will act instead of sit
The way out is through the ONYX DOOR, across the trickery rooms, through the danger doors, for those bound for glory instead of the pit.
Logan stood there, staring up at the poem, mulling it over, looking at it this way and that. Clearly, the poem was the key, or at least the instructions for moving forward. He folded his arms and frowned, rereading the script for a third time. He’d taken an intro lit class over at the community college, but he’d nearly flunked the poetry section. All those haikus, ballads, and sonnets did nothing for him. Nothing against them, but he preferred his literature to be more of the pulp variety. Knights riding dinosaurs fighting aliens were far more interesting than red roses and tears falling like April rain.
Still, this seemed simple enough. The way out was through an onyx door. To get there, he’d have to go through a variety of dungeon rooms, and they seemed to come in three flavors. One door for combat, one for puzzles—or maybe wits?—and another for... the lucky? Or maybe the bold. Perhaps both?
Logan wasn’t entirely sure. But he knew how he could find out. He could look.
He headed over to the blue door inscribed with the Triple Horn symbol. The room he suspected was for puzzles, wits, and logic challenges. Since it was possible that once he opened a door the others would automatically lock, he chose the one he felt most likely to be able to defeat. Combat was certainly not his strongest suit at the moment, and he wasn’t known to be particularly lucky—recently being eaten by a mimic reinforced that notion. So, wits it was. He licked thick, spongy lips and pressed his hand against the door. There was no visible lock or knob, but the door swung silently inward.
On the other side was a room that looked equal parts fire hazard and Temple of Doom. Thick, colored ceramic tiles, all inscribed with char-black arrows, covered the floor at seemingly random intervals. Positioned throughout the room on glassy onyx squares were hulking bronze dragon statues that spewed gouts of flickering yellow-orange fire. As he watched, the statues groaned and creaked, rotating to vomit their flame in different directions. There were two doors leading out: a golden door on the far side of the room and a crimson door, positioned against the left-hand wall.
Even though Logan wasn’t particularly good with poetry, he was a savvy enough gamer to know what needed to happen here. Use the arrow tiles to navigate the ever-shifting maze without getting charbroiled. Problem was, as a fungaloid, he was basically a walking soup mix, so one misstep and this would likely be the last room he ever saw. Just the idea of fire made him think of dried shitake mushrooms. Backtracking, he headed over to the next door in the octagonal riddle chamber: the crimson with its three interlocking triangles.