“Not helping!” Marko said with real concern. The satyr scooped Logan up. “We’ll take him back to our room. Out of my way, Chadrigoth.”
Logan couldn’t talk, and he couldn’t open his eyes. Everything depended on his absolute concentration. Thank goodness he’d spent months cultivating.
He wasn’t sure how long he stayed like that—time was slippery as he further refined his core. Snatches of imagery would float in and out of his consciousness as he worked, just as they had when he processed the bloom. Some of those images were from his past life. He watched himself clamber over the high tower on the Nasty Nick obstacle course and run the night raid at Camp Mackall. He envisioned the time he broke his arm in four places and when he’d woken up in the hospital, his leg missing. But there were also glimpses of faraway lands he was sure he’d never visited. Places with towering horrors, cascading emerald waterfalls, and untamed swatches of jungle.
Branded across each vision was the image of a stately golden fungus as tall as a man.
At some point, Logan woke up in darkness, not having slept, but fallen into a trance, moving the energy through his body. Normally, he would’ve gotten the knot when he’d progressed to Iron Trunk. Inkboon’s gift had given him both the knot and Rapid Growth early—a fact that had likely saved his life during his first ascension.
He cracked his eyes open and found himself in Marko’s bed. A little fire burned in his stove, not too much, so the room was cold. Inga lay sleeping with her head on the Treacle’s thigh, her wings wrapped around her shoulders like a blanket.
Marko had pulled up a chair—the one that Logan had crafted. He sat, elbows on his knees, head down. The satyr spoke in a low voice. “It’s after midnight, Logan. Happy Forevergreen Festival. By the wine god’s bad liver, I hate Forevergreen.” He faltered, running a hand through his shaggy locks. “You know, Logan, there’s something I have to tell you.”
A hard crust of black fungus covered him and moving was impossible. So was talking. He could only listen.
The satyr let out a deep breath. “I’m a guy who knows how to have a lot of friends. I’m not so good at having good friends, though. So the Terrible Twelfth is important to me. I might not show it, but it is.” Marko laughed a little. “I liked you right away. You’re funny. That’s important. You know what’s more important? You’re focused, and you’re nice. You care about other people. That’s rare.” He deflated a little, slouching forward, chin resting on one palm.
“Take me for instance. I don’t even know GK’s real name. I guess it’s just easier not to care. It’s just easier to keep the party going, keep the music playing, because when the music stops? Well, then I have to get real. Then I have to remember. And that hurts, man. You have no idea how much that hurts. At some point I’ll tell you what happened. Maybe you can help me make sense of it.”
Marko raised his head. “Until then? Get better, Logan. We need you. Inga might be the brains of the operation, but you’re the heart and soul of this team. And, for what it’s worth, I know you’re worried that Treacle and I are jealous of this Symbiosis thing you have with Inga. We’re not. We’re good. I think we’re both resigned to our fates.”
Logan wanted to reach out, wanted to move, but all he could do was slip back into cultivation, channeling his Apothos through his body as it went through monumental changes. He was turning into something. What that something was? He had no idea.
He did know that he couldn’t lose heart. He had to prove to Marko and Treacle that they weren’t destined to fail. After all, the worst student at the school, an E-Class cultivator, had just taken apart a B-Class dungeon core. At the Shadowcroft Academy, anything was possible.
Chapter Twenty-Two
LOGAN FINALLY FOUND sleep, deep and dreamless. He’d slept like that before, but not since his time in Iraq. True, he’d worked some grueling hours in his landscaping business, but nothing had compared to coming in after a three-day patrol, then collapsing onto his lumpy mattress, body worn out and mind broken from the prolonged stress and anxiety. Those had been difficult days, but he’d never slept sounder.
He woke with a start to a warm room smelling of food, his friends eating. Inga was in her reading chair, with a lamp burning over her head. She had a tray balanced on her lap, with a plate full of colorful cookies and a glass of chocolate milk.
Treacle’s tray had three kinds of grass: red, green, and blue. The minotaur sighed. “I don’t like the blue grass. But it’s good for me, so I eat it. Every meal is such a chore.”
Marko had a huge goblet of mead and a big turkey leg. He saw Logan’s eyes open. “Hey! Our guy is awake! And so very yellow!”
Logan pulled himself up and noticed his hands, which were big and wide with three long, thick fingers. They looked like teenage mutant ninja turtle hands except he was the color of a lemon. Apparently, when life gives you lemons, those lemons also occasionally dyed you neon yellow. Around him was the black husk of the cast-off crust from his evolutionary cocoon.
Logan grimaced. Being a mushroom had its perks at times, but it could also be pretty gross. “Sorry, Marko, I’ll wash your sheets for you.”
The satyr wrinkled his goat nose. “What? You don’t wash sheets. Is that even a thing?”
Inga sighed. “You’re so disgusting.”
Marko waved his bird leg around. “Kidding! Kind of. Not really. How you feel, buddy?”
Logan’s yellow feet were off the bed, and they were also very TMNT, three thick toes dipped in C-3PO paint. He was wearing a pair of Marko’s linen pants.
Wait. How could he fit in Marko’s pants?
Logan slid off the end and stood. He raised his arms. His forearms were thicker than his biceps. Then he noticed the golden ridges of hard chitin lining his body. That hard skin would give his rubbery body some much-needed solidity. Interesting. Certain parts of his body had been reinforced with what looked like additional layers of overlapping plates of fungal mail: The lower portion of his left leg, his left shoulder and forearm, and the knuckles of his right hand. All places that he’d sustained serious trauma back in the real world. It seemed the Iron Trunk transformation had not only made him stronger overall but had actually turned his greatest weaknesses into strengths.
Incredible.
He touched his cap and felt the hard ridges up there as well. His head was less round and more flouncy, like he was wearing a yellow sun hat. He gazed down at his friends. “I’m huge! I grew like five feet!”
“Two feet, short stuff,” Marko said. “Not that tall. But I like the new look.”
“I need a mirror!” Logan touched his face and felt a little nose and thin lips. He had lips again!
Marko shuffled through some drawers and gave him a mirror.
Logan instantly recognized the regal yellow mushroom from his visions. It was him. Or he was it. At least partially. He also saw that, in some ways, he had his old face back, but now he was a golden yellow mushroom man, thinner than his old Toadstool form, but with bigger hands and feet. The change was striking, but not altogether unwelcome. He was less cute toadstool and more fearsome dungeon core, which was certainly a nice change.