“Yeah, that sucked.” Shaggy grumbled as he bit into one of Roald’s candy bars.

“Least it didn’t look as bad as last time.” Rita said.

Shaggy nodded as he chewed through the chocolate bar. The final trap ward and floating necrotic runes had still melted and decayed his skin. But it was a shorter bout of pain then the first time he had to do it. Now Ephemara and Chromia were back to studying the next set of wards embedded in the floor. They had been at it for a short while now though and Shaggy was afraid they were going to be stymied. Although that wasn’t the most annoying part.

“Come on! What’s taking so long?” Roald whined from his chair chewing on a bag of chips.

The young teen had sent his robots up to the houses kitchen to get him more and he was eating them with gusto. Shaggy even thought the boy seemed kind of smug about it. But apparently the young Technopath didn’t have a lot of patience. They had barely been waiting thirty minutes but he had been whining for fifteen of them.

Chromia sighed audibly, but didn’t turn around. “Listen you little brat, we are working off of our combined limited knowledge of magic, your shitty notes on magic-”

“Which are really shitty.” Ephemara interrupted.

“And we are trying to mess with the one ward in this room that can summon your brother. So excuse the fuck out of us if we want to get it right.”

“...they’re not shitty notes,” Roald grumbled around a mouthful of chips.

Shaggy ignored Roald and asked. “Anything I can do to help? Feeling like a punching bag.”

“That is your fighting style, boss.” Ephemara said and Shaggy saw both Cekrass and Rita both nod.

“Hey! I don’t have a punching bag fighting style.”

“No, but you rush in.” Cekrass rumbled. “Unafraid of being hurt.”

“It makes sense. If I had his healing, I wouldn’t worry about being hurt either.” Chromia added.

Shaggy barked a laugh. “I don’t want to hear that from the metal woman.”

Chromia snorted and continued to study the ward on the floor. Shaggy sighed and walked over to the wall. Blobby was still leaning against it. Guns still swirling in its body. Shaggy was pretty sure that the blob alien was sleeping. The way Blobby’s body rose and fell cemented that thought. Shaggy put his back to the wall and sat down.

He yawned and closed his eyes for a few seconds. But the next thing he knew Rita was gently shaking him awake. Falling asleep in-game was always a weird experience. It was functionally no different than sleeping in the real world, but it could still disorient you pretty badly. More so when the person waking you up doesn’t look like your wife.

“Whoa there, boss” Rita said as Shaggy jerked backward. “The girls say they think they have an idea. They want to run it by you.”

Shaggy grunted and wiped the digital sleep from his eyes. “Yeah, got it. I’ll see whats up.”

He stood and walked across the large room to the two woman who were standing and staring down at the rune. Cekrass and Roald had moved to the side of the room and were lazing against the wall. As Shaggy approached, Ephemara turned around a gave a cocky grin.

“Boss, we have an idea.”

“A bad idea.” Chromia added.

Shaggy shrugged his arms. “Okay, bad ideas are still ideas. What do you got?”

Ephemara took a big breath before she pointed down at the ward on the floor. Shaggy glanced at the golden color etchings scrawled into the floor. The magic writing was contained within a golden circle that pulsed with magical energy. Chromia tapped his shoulder and pointed upward at an identical ward in the ceiling. Shaggy nodded to show that he got it. The two wards were connected.

“The two of them form an invisible wall that crosses the room right in front of where we are standing. If we cross it, then an alarm will trigger and we will have Donnie Raks coming right for us as fast as he can.” Chromia explained.

“But we were thinking what if we dropped the top ward onto the bottom one? Maybe it’ll create some kind of feedback loop and short circuit the thing entirely.”

“Or it will trigger the alarm and we will have to make a break for it.”

Shaggy nodded as he glanced at the two wards. “Okay, so how do we drop the thing and will we know if the alarm is triggered? Is it silent?”

Both women shrugged their shoulders and Shaggy turned to Roald who was napping in his automated chair. Shaggy waved a hand at Cekrass and the big lizard banged an arm against the boy’s chair.

“Snort… Huh… wha? What do you want? Don’t you know it’s bad luck to ruin my beauty sleep?”

“Yeah, yeah kid. Whatever. Now get over here and answer some questions.”

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Ugh! You all are still studying this? Just run in already, You’ll fight the golems, I’ll open the safe and we can get out of here.”

Shaggy shook his head. “While I have always loved the brute force approach, we can’t do that this time. Your brother is way too powerful. So we need to be as stealthy as possible. So do you know if this ward is a silent or loud? Also how fast can you get that vault door open?”

Roald snorted. “I can get that door open in five seconds flat. Also the ward is, or at least was, silent. Last time I tripped it.”

Shaggy rubbed a hand down his face. Chromia and Ephemara glared at the teenager. “You’ve tripped the ward before?”

“Well not me, personally, but I had a minion or two try the wards out. Just to see what they did.”

“Wait so if we trip this, then your brother is just going to think it’s you trying to get into the vault again?” Chromia asked.

Roald nodded looking slightly confused. “Yeah. He’ll probably send one of his goons to check on it though.”

“Better than the big guy himself.” Ephemara said looking like she wanted to make a run at the vault.

Shaggy shook his head. “Ease up, Ephe. We still should try your idea. It’s just now we know that we won’t have to deal with Donnie.”

“Something that would’ve been nice to know forty minutes ago.” Chromia growled staring daggers at Roald.

The boy gulped nervously, but Shaggy asked another question. “So how do we drop it? Ephemara can you get up there or are we asking Blobby to do their...blob thing?

Ephemara pointed her chin at the blue alien. They were still laying against the far wall laid slightly flat. “Definitely Blobby. I can’t phase if I am in a wall.”

“I got it, boss” Rita called moving toward Blobby.

Shaggy wasn’t sure how you shook a formless shape awake, but he was more than happy to let Rita try. Meanwhile he glanced just beyond the Alarm wards and toward the final wards and vault door. There were three wards, all carved into the floor and all glowing slightly green against the grey stone of the floor.

“Do we know what those do?”

Ephemara raised Roald’s notebook. “That’s one of the few things he documented a lot of. They ARE Summoning Wards but we don’t know what plane they are attached to. So it could be anything.”

“But the green color could denote a fae realm or something similar.” Chromia added.

“Okay. So we drop the ward, short out the alarm, trigger the summoning, fight off a bunch of elves and shit, and junior here rushes the door to open it.” Shaggy abbreviated.

Roald looked like he wanted to say something about the ‘junior comment’ but Ephemara spoke up.

“Essentially. But are you going to trust him to go into the vault himself?” She shot the teenage shit a hateful glare.

“Nope. That’s why you are avoiding the summoning fight and following him in. Keep him honest.”

Ephemara gave him a two finger salute as Rita walked over with a wobbly Blobby. Shaggy glanced over at Cekrass to see the big lizard man setting everyone's bags of ammo and weapons near the entrance to the vault. Shaggy grinned. The pack bond was great at letting his pack know his needs. Cekrass quickly joined them as Ephemara and Chromia explained to Blobby what they wanted done. The blob person seemed to wriggle in thought before he asked a question.

“~Traps in the ceiling?~”

“Not that we can tell.”

“Nor anything documented.”

“I also never saw anything get put in. It’s just the vault itself that is warded against tunneling. But this ante-chamber should be clear.” Roald said, trying to be a part of the conversation.

Blobby wriggled again before they made a beeline for the nearest wall. Shaggy moved out of the things way and called out.

“Be careful. If shit seems hinky, you bail.”

Blobby extended and waved a tentacle in affirmation. Once they reached the wall, they flattened their body against it and waved themselves left and right. Eventually they seemed to find what they were looking for and their whole form was sucked into a crack in the wall. Shaggy waited to see if they popped back out. For all they knew beyond the stone walls was just more concrete. But whatever was behind the walls was porous enough for Blobby to wriggle their way through.

After glancing around at everyone, Shaggy grew his claws and waited. “So as it drops we charge at the next set of wards and trigger them.”

Everyone else nodded. Chromia transformed, Rita drew here sword, Cekrass cracked his knuckles and Ephemara drew her new alien pistol. Meanwhile Roald was...digging into the seat of his chair?

Shaggy raised an eyebrow at the boy as he shifted left and right trying to get at something he was sitting on. They others noticed his gaze and turned to look as well. Finally Roald seemed to find what he was looking for and held up a small black box triumphantly. Once he realized everyone was staring at him, his already pink cheeks went even more pink.

“Was that lost in your ass?” Shaggy said as the other all started to laugh.

“NO!” Roald cried indignantly.

Shaggy nodded “Uh-huh, okay.”

“It wasn’t!”

“Totally believe you.”

“Shut up!”

CRASH!!

The laughing grew louder until it was interrupted by a loud crash. Blobby had gotten the ceiling ward loose and both of them crashed down right on top of the bottom ward. There was a moment of stunned silence until Shaggy rushed forward toward the wards. It didn’t matter if the alarm was on now, they just had to be quick. But as Shaggy, Chromia, and Roald, of all people, were just stepping on the summoning wards. They found themselves tossed back by some unseen force.

Shaggy had to catch himself as he slid back into Rita. He noticed that whatever pulse of magic had hit them had also knocked Ephemara visible again. He looked at the summoning wards which were now buried under three giant...trees.

“What the fuck?”