“And you had better get used to beatings.” Rockheart straightened, smoothing out his stony feathers. He turned and walked on eagle talons and lion claws back to the track where the First Cohort sat.
Logan yelled after him. “I’ll do you one better, Professor. I’m getting so I like the beatings. They’re forcing me to really improve at directing my Apothos through my meridians. I can heal myself now.”
“But you still need Ned and Zed to put your limbs back on,” Rockheart growled over one shoulder, irritated at the gall of the little fungaloid. And also at himself for allowing this miscreant to get under his skin.
“You’re not wrong,” the fungaloid said with a sigh. “But once I hit Iron Trunk, Rank 5, I’ll unlock Replicate.”
“Assuming you make it to Iron Trunk,” Rockheart sneered. “Now, who here wants to give Logan his next lesson in humility?” he asked the First Cohort.
“I’ll do it!” the satyr yelled happily. The others of the Terrible Twelfth had come forward. The doomhounds and the full hellhounds had run back into their kennels.
Logan squinted at his friend.
The satyr gave him a big toothy grin. “I’ll be gentle in my beatings, almost loving in the way I’ll tear you limb from limb.”
“Really?” Rockheart asked a bit too eagerly. The fungaloid would surely fail without the support of his cohort.
“Ha, gotcha!” the satyr laughed, slapping at his fur-covered knee. “No way. Logan is my buddy, the most fungi to ever fun it up in an attic. You should see his room. It’s a mushroom mansion.”
“No puns!” Rockheart thundered.
Chadrigoth stood. “I’ll give him his daily pounding, Professor. Poor guy. I kinda feel sorry for him, and then, like magic, I don’t.” He paused and stared coolly at each member of the Terrible Twelfth in turn. “I could care less about any of these dweebs.”
Inga wrinkled her forehead in thought. “A dweeb is a boring, studious, or socially inept person.”
Treacle raised his hand. “Boring.”
Logan followed. “Studious.”
Inga sighed. “Socially inept.”
Marko laughed. “Ha! I’m not a dweeb! Just a drinking goat with a party problem. Or is that a party goat with drinking problem? Heavy drinker with a goat problem?”
The fungaloid stepped forward. “How about I choose my opponent?” He walked in front of the First Cohort.
Tet-Akhat licked the back of her hand and fastidiously smoothed the fur on her cat face. “Don’t choose me. I’m not in the mood to tear you apart, mushroom guy.”
“Hey, Tet, do you know my name?” Logan asked.
“I don’t. Sorry.”
“I shall eviscerate this little person,” Lady Elesiel offered. The green fires in her hauntingly dark eyes flared.
“Here’s my problem,” Logan said. “Chadrigoth is too flame-y. Mushrooms don’t like fire. Tet is too fast. Lady Elesiel is too undead for me. Or is it not undead enough? Either way, I want Magmarty. I think under the right conditions, I might be able to take him.”
The earth elemental got to his feet, shedding a few pebbles and leaking mud from the cracks in his body.
“My pleasure.” He opened his mouth and let out a roar of fire. “You forget. I’m both Terra and Magma, stupid shroom.”
Logan shed a weak rain of pearlescent spores and hardened his exterior form. Magmarty paused for a second, eyed the cloud, and then walked right through it. Nothing happened. However, it did buy Logan the second he needed to draw the rusty dagger from the sheath on his little belt. Logan darted in low, hoping to drive the blade into the behemoth’s knee.
Not a chance. The fight was over before it began.
Magmarty reached down and grabbed the fungaloid in one meaty hand, scooping him into the air and shaking him like a rag doll. Instead of stopping—having made his point—the earth elemental ever so casually tore the arms off the mushroom man like a sadistic toddler with a daddy longlegs. The elemental hurled what was left of Logan to the ground.
The rosebush medics came running to fix him up.
Rockheart went and stood over him. “You might succeed in your other classes. You might impress people with your antics in the Tartarucha Cells. But if you can’t win a fight, alone, with only your own powers, then it would be better for you to fall prey to the Winnowing. Not better for you, personally, but better for the universe.”
Logan laughed weakly, a somewhat crushed mushroom lying in the dirt. “You keep telling me that, and I keep coming back for more. Wait until next week, Professor. For a second there, I had Magmarty right where I wanted him.”
Rockheart didn’t find this weak creature amusing in the slightest. If he had been in any other clan, Rockheart wouldn’t have cared. But Logan was part of the Azure Dragon, the finest clan at the school. The gargoyle-griffin wasn’t about to suffer four years with this annoyingly plucky nuisance. Four years of him and his lackeys smearing the clan’s good reputation and costing them points and leaderboard position.
No. Even if Logan somehow survived his freshman year, Rockheart was determined that the fungaloid would not be coming back to this esteemed academy. The universe needed wandering monsters, too, and that fate was all that the inept toadstool deserved.
Rockheart might not wait that long. Could he somehow get rid of the Terrible Twelfth on his own? It had been done before.
He turned away from the students, rubbing his rocky chin, pondering his options.
Chapter Nineteen
LOGAN AND THE REST of the Terrible Twelfth sat in their crafting class, far across Arborea, nestled deep in the fiery expanse known as the Heckish Hills.
Professor Crucible’s classroom was about half a mile away from the entrance of the Bloodrock dungeon. In theory, not a terribly far distance to navigate. In reality, however, it was half a mile of sheer terror and near-certain death. A series of stone corridors, steep narrow stairs, and bridges spanned deep gorges with rivers of lava glowing far below. The Heckish Hills were all about the lava. The place stank of sulfur and felt like an oven on perpetual cleaning mode.
Logan had to peel off his coat and scarf, both blue and gold and slightly imbued with magic to keep his mushroom form cool. He liked it cold, but not freezing—anything below thirty-two degrees or above eighty-six degrees Fahrenheit was dangerous for a fungal entity.
Luckily, Crucible’s workshop was more cave than classroom, so it was relatively cool. Stalactites reached down while craggy stalagmites crawled their way upward. Some walls leaked water, while others were scalding hot to the touch. Open pits burned with green flame, giving the place an otherworldly feel, while also making it far hotter than Logan would’ve liked. One whole wall was a workbench, carved out of the stone itself, covered with tools categorized and organized by height, weight, color, and functionality. Not that tools were critical. They were creating objects out of Apothos itself—the tools simply made the process easier.
The professor called them Foci.
Opposite the immense wall of tools was an abrupt cliff face that dropped off into a yawning pit with no bottom in sight. Definitely not Logan’s aesthetic, but it fit the professor to a T.
Logan tucked himself into a gloomy corner and stood in a few inches of water, which trickled down and disappeared into the cracks of the wall. Marko lingered nearby, because Marko didn’t care about school, but he loved his friends. Inga sat with Treacle, way up front, as close to the teacher as they could get.