Noctarii returned from the chamber below, the shadow fae happy to be back with the students and a bit breathless. “Yep, just as that crazy dungeon asshole said, we’ve got ourselves a serious monster down there. It sort of looks like a really fat human, or if two really fat humans were stuffed on top of one another maybe having sex. I don’t know. What I’m trying to say is that it’s naked, it’s got two heads, but I didn’t see it’s goblinmaker. Did I mention it’s a goblin? Or at least goblin-related. A troll? Maybe. They are anatomically—”

“We got it.” Kanda summoned her drake. She crouched before the creature and placed her hand on the side of its head. Kitty’s forked tongue seemed to lick at her face as she spoke to it.

Noctarii swiveled from Kanda and Kitty back to Alistair and the other Fledglings. Squish! Ziggy bristled at how quickly he moved. “Relax, slime. I’m just not used to seeing lizards licking things around here. I will leave the following chamber for you all to solve, but believe me, shit is bad down there.”

“Noted,” Alistair told the shadow fae, “but stay close.”

“I always do!”

Kitty scurried off down the stairs, the drake’s big tail lashing side to side..

[Your drake is so fat. Look at that fat drake run. It’s pathetic.]

“Shut up, Tarnis.” Kanda turned back to the others. “Let’s deal with it and move on. We’re getting closer.” She gestured to the walls surrounding the stairs that lead it down. Veins of mana pulsed even brighter now, illuminating the space to the point that Alistair no longer had to use his skill to see in the dark.

The group heard a terrifying shriek upon reaching the next chamber, one that came from a pair of heads that had grown off the towering bulbous body of a Level Twenty Oni Tyrant.

The heads screeched in unison, their nostrils flaring open even as they beat back Kanda’s drake with a big club. “We smell infant blood! We smell… feedlings!”

A message came in from Juno just as Alistair pointed his wand at the Oni-Tyrant.

Juno: Holy shit that thing sounds terrifying!

“In our mouths, feedlings!”

“Ziggy, keep Juno back,” Alistair said.

Squish! the slime responded as it forceable kept Juno near the entrance.

“On me, everyone.” Kanda conjured a large sword made of light, which rushed forward on its own accord, slashing at the goblin and its thick skin. Next to her, Zola went for her new attack by summoning a spectral fighter, which also engaged the Oni-Tyrant alongside Kitty the drake.

Ghost: What are you waiting for?

Alistair had wanted to use his new Rain of Blades spell, but with all the activity he decided to keep it basic with Resonant Strike.

Zap!

The monstrous goblin took the hit and leapt forward, directly onto Kanda’s drake, body slamming the big lizard to the ground. Nocatrii rushed forward firing arrows, which didn’t seem like they were going to do anything until he was able to hit the goblin in three of its four beady black eyes.

Ghost: Wait. Wait, wait, wait! This is how we should be using Noctarii. Blind our opponents. He could jump out of the shadow and do so, and then we do the rest.

Alistair: Something tells me that it’s not always going to be that easy. Perhaps the thing is susceptible to shadow bolts.

Ghost: We could always have Nocatrii accidentally shoot someone in the eye on campus to see the extent of his power?

Alistair: Let’s not.

Ghost: Then try your own shadow skill. We’ve rehearsed it before. This could be the perfect place to try it.

Shadow Play was a strange spell. It allowed Alistair to use his wand as a sort of paintbrush to modify the shadows in the area, allowing him to do a number of things, from extending the shadows themselves to creating something that resembled a weapon. Alistair had tried this in a Resonant Room, and he was even able to get the bladed shadows to fall like a guillotine.

But he hadn’t really worked on it much in the field.

“Better now than never,” he said under his breath as he pointed his wand at the Oni Tyrant. He shifted up, pooling some of the shadows from the ceiling as the monster roared in agony at the loss of its vision.

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“Ours eyes! The feedlings took our eyes!”

As Zola’s spectral combatant continued to engage, and Kitty rolled out of the way now that the goblin was stumbling around trying to catch its balance, Alistair took hold of a scythe-like bit of shadow. He brought it down onto the monster, cutting its arm off.

“What was that?!” Kanda asked him.

“It’s vulnerable to shadows. Do you have any shadow abilities?”

“Aside from Daisy, no.”

[Use Forbidden Cards, and our deal is off. Your friend will forever remain faceless!]

Kanda ignored Tarnis as she instructed her drake to continue to distract the goblin. She summoned Fiera. “Use your light to make stronger shadows,” she told the fox.

“Understood!” Fiera hopped to a corner of the chamber. In the same way that Alistair was able to paint with shadows, the blazekitsune was able to do so with light, which only increased the power of the shadow weapon as Alister cleaved into the Oni Tyrant yet again.

[Wait!]

Tarnis’s shout came at just the same time as the two-headed goblin’s other arm fell off its body, blood squirting from the wound as it dropped to its knees.

“What is it now?” Kanda asked.

[I want this one. Capture the adorable little Tyrant for me!]

“I don’t have an empty slot,” she told him.

Juno: Did that crazed fucker really call this thing adorable?

[Capture it now, Skyward! That is an order!]

“I already told you, I don’t have an empty slot!” Kanda said, increasingly agitated at the dungeon architect.

[Lies! Capture it. This would be a great boss for the new inevitable round of brazen and bastardly Fledglings.]

“I have a slot,” Zola said as the Oni Tyrant groaned in pain.

“I smell… own blood… feedlings…”

[Good, I’ll take the slot of a Houseless.]

“Not so fast,” Zola told Tarnis, her wand at the ready even though she couldn’t fire at him. “If I transport the Oni Tyrant back to the Academy for you, then you need to do something for me. For us.”

[This isn’t a negotiation!]

“Of course, it is,” Kanda said. “Everything in life isn’t a negotiation.”

Ghost: Get in there and be part of this. Why are you just standing back? Also, Kanda is right. Everything is a negotiation. From sex to murder. Never forget that.

Alistair: I’m going to ignore you for a moment.

Ghost: It was a good comment and you know it.

[What is it you want? Is it money? I will gladly pay for the Oni Tyrant. I haven’t seen one of this size before. How beautiful. How large and adorable! I was unaware they could get this large. Fascinating, really.]

Zola spoke again: “We need to know how to cure Juno’s facelessness. No more tricks, Tarnis. It doesn’t matter how we clear out the rest of this dungeon. You will get your core and the Oni Tyrant. That is my offer.”

[You’re giving up?]

“What part of what I just said is giving up? We don’t want to play any more games here,” Zola said, and yet again, Alistair could recognize in the way she spoke that she would one day make a great battledeck mage. It wasn’t just her confidence, it was her genuine hope to solve a problem. “I’m serious, Tarnis, enough of this nonsense.”

The dungeon architect groaned.

[I really hate you all!]

“How about this? You tell us what we need to know, and we will continue to clear the chambers without usage of our Forbidden Cards,” Kanda offered. “Which was our deal originally, one that you have yet to live up to.”

[Because it’s easy. It’s so easy. How can you not see it? The solution is right in front of you. There. I said it. I was going to make you wait until you brought the Oni Tyrant back to me, but no, you want to make things easy. I get that, because in the next chamber, whew, I was able to peek ahead and it is not going to be an easy fight. Nothing like this. Which means you might actually need the other Fledgling.]

“What are you trying to say?” Ghost asked, taking over Alistair’s body. “Spit it out.”

Alistair: Hey!

Ghost: Let me handle this.

[I’m trying to say approach the Oni Tyrant, stick your sticky little fingers in its open arm wound, get some nice bit of guts—its anatomy doesn’t quite work like that, but this one sure is fleshy, so there’s definitely some there—and smear it on the Fledgling’s face. You wanted a cure? That’s the cure.]

“Smear goblin guts on my face?” Juno asked in muffled horror.

Rather than say anything to Tarnis, Ghost stepped over to the goblin and kept his wand drawn, even though he couldn’t technically use it.

The two headed goblin puckered both of its lips. “Let me… have a taste…”

“Shut up.” Ghost brought the wand under one of the Oni Tyrant’s chin as if he were prepared to blast through to the back of its skull. Keeping it there, he plunged his hand into the open wound where its arm should be, grabbed as much viscera as he could, and pulled some of it out.

Zola brought a hand over her mouth, but otherwise didn’t move, her wand still pointed at the goblin. Kanda just stood there, dumbstruck by whom she now knew was Ghost.

“This will work, Wraith,” Ghost told Juno as he approached. “Hold still.”

Ghost smeared goblin flesh over Juno’s face, the transformation almost instant. By the time Ghost pulled his hand away and dropped some of the viscera onto the ground, Juno’s face had returned, only now it was covered in goblin blood.

“Fuck…” Juno said, a big grin taking shape. “And you called me Wraith. Nice.”

[Are you happy?]

“No, we won’t be happy until we’re out of the wretched hellhole,” Ghost said. “How many more chambers until we reach the dungeon core?”

[You are a strange one, orphan.]

Ghost: Fire a shot at the Oni Tyrant just so he knows we can kill it.

Zap!

Alistair took over and did just that. The blast traced over what was left of the goblin’s shoulder and the beast whimpered.

[No, no, no. Don’t kill it!]

Ghost regained control. “Next time, I explode its head. Tell me what I need to know.”

[Fine! Fine, you wicked little twat, fine! Two more chambers. The next one has a high level monster that had been festering down here for a while. I hope it kills you. I really do. After that, you’ll have the dungeon core. Get the Oni Tyrant now, before it dies, and don’t make me…]

“Don’t make you what?” Ghost asked.

[Just get the goblin and the dungeon core and be done with this madness!]