Cal anxiously scanned the dimly lit office. The Weavelord enjoyed catching them off guard by greeting them from a hiding place among the calendars and thick spiderwebs that covered the ceiling and walls.

The Weavelord, originally human, had transformed into an arachnoid dungeon core after dying and being recruited to protect the Tree of Souls. He was a Spidercrat, to be exact. Bottom half was arachnid. Top half was bureaucrat. He liked cheap suits and metal filing cabinets. He insisted they use his dungeon core name, but his original name was Dave.

A high-pitched throat clearing dragged Cal’s attention away from the dark corners of the office to the desk in the center. Piles of paper completely covered its surface. Cal had been in the office before and accepted the mess as part of the landscape.

From behind the papers, the Weavelord glared at him. He was about the size of a large dog, so he stood on his chair to appear taller. His dungeon core gem, a piece of obsidian, was embedded high on his abdomen.

Four pairs of black eyes started above his cheeks and extended into his thinning hair, gleaming behind eyeglasses of differing thicknesses. All eight eyes were filled with rage.

In a frosty tone, the Weavelord asked, “So, Mr. Illudere, can you tell me why we lost a node on Smaugonia this morning?”

“Oh, no.” Cal wilted. This was the worst-case scenario. Losing a Celestial Node was a disaster, especially on a world with so few of them.

“Oh, yes.” The Weavelord rose on his eight legs, trying and failing to tower over Cal. “Ramsey the Dragon’s gem core was shattered, and the Celestial Node he guarded has failed. You started this audit on Monday. Here we are on Friday, and Smaugonia has lost fifty percent of its Apothos. Fifty percent!”

Veins appeared on their boss’s forehead. “You should’ve marched in here the minute you got back from the audit. We could’ve assigned a strike team to help Ramsey. Instead, he’s dead, and we lost another node. A critical node! Do you even care about the Tree of Souls?”

Tension filled the room until it was broken by Kronke’s low rumble. “Are there cookies?” the troll asked quietly.

“Not now, Kronke,” Gwen hissed.

Cal suffered under his boss’s glare for a moment, but his gaze fell on the mountains of paperwork on the desk, and anger built in his chest. His boss could easily have lost their TAP report in the mess. He straightened his shoulders and defended his team. “Mr. Weavelord, we followed procedure, which is clearly laid out in section 3.1.11 of the DUDE handbook. Our TAP report was submitted on time—”

“Nay, it was several hours early,” Helga interrupted. The anger in the halfling’s voice agitated Hurricane, who tugged against his leash, hooves clattering.

Cal continued, “—it was marked urgent and sent in the high-priority delivery queue. We included a cover sheet stressing the severity of the situation.

“Also, sir, multiple times, we have suggested auditors should be able to assist the dungeon in emergency situations, making changes on the fly without having to wait for authorization. We were going to implement a plan to upgrade—”

“Always with the excuses.” The Weavelord cut him off. “You knew you should have come directly to me and you chose not to, and I know exactly why.” He jabbed one claw-tipped leg at each of them. “You’re all former dungeoneers. Obviously you didn’t care if your friends killed Ramsey. What is it your kind always say? ‘Survival of the fittest,’ or ‘The Tree is too vast to even notice the loss of one little dungeon.’ And that’s if you even admit the Tree exists.”

He crawled halfway onto the desk, his eyes glinting with apoplectic rage, and Cal took an involuntary step back.

“Letting you be part of this department was a terrible idea. Your heart was never in the fight. You just don’t care about the Tree of Souls.”

Of course their past had come up. It always did. While the Weavelord said he didn’t discriminate, he always looked down on them. The five other audit teams were university-trained dungeon cores, not former dungeon raiders, and the Weavelord never questioned their allegiance to the Tree of Souls.

“Kronke care. Kronke pray Keyblarr to bless Ramsey.” The big green-skinned paladin’s brow was furrowed as deeply as a farmer’s field.

Helga protested, “We discovered the problem, sir, and we documented it properly! By my father’s ball-peen hammer, I would’ve protected that node myself. But it’s the Department’s policy that all combat is to be authorized by your office.” She glanced around the room. “By my hairy feet, your office is one webby mess.”

Helga tried to shove Cal out of the way, but even as a thin elven mage, he was able to keep the minuscule halfling barbarian from going for the Weavelord’s throat. Or thorax. With difficulty, Cal kept himself interposed between Helga and their boss. He spluttered, “Look, Mr. Weavelord—”

“It’s not Mr. Weavelord. It’s not ‘the’ Weavelord. It’s just Weavelord!” their boss shouted.

With effort, Cal kept his voice calm and tried again. “Weavelord, we did our best with the restrictions placed on us. We didn’t just write our TAP report and leave. We immediately pointed the problem out to Ramsey himself.”

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Helga let out a huff. “Aye, a garden-themed dungeon was a disastrous idea, especially fer a dragon. A garden is no proper lure! A dragon should nae hoard carrots, celery, and apples.” The mention of apples made Hurricane hop excitedly, and she had to calm him down.

Gwen laughed. “No adventurer is going to show up for a salad bar. He just needed gold. Simple. Or steal a princess. The raiders come to rescue her, and you eat them. But no, Ramsey fell in love with kale. Who loves kale?” She made a disgusted face. “It’s like eating a kitchen scrubby.”

Weavelord pointed two legs at the rogue. “No. You will not say one word in my office.” Their boss harbored a powerful resentment toward Gwen.

The feeling was mutual. She clamped her jaws shut, and her face flushed red.

All eight of Weavelord’s eyes snapped back to Cal. “We knew Ramsey was going to be a problem when he was still in Intro to Dungeon Design at Nightfall University. That’s my alma mater, you know.”

The dungeon core university system spanned the multiverse and trained dungeon cores to fabricate intricate, deadly labyrinths to protect Celestial Nodes. Their boss wouldn’t let them forget that he’d gone to one of the best.

Weavelord closed half of his eyes. “He still had those terrible minions, didn’t he? Animated watering cans, pitchfork peasants, and dancing rakes. He could never even come up with a decent scarecrow.”

“If you had read the report, you’d know,” Gwen muttered.

Luckily, their boss didn’t hear her.

“Yes,” Cal said. “His minion choice wasn’t the best. He could’ve done Dracanos, Killbolds, or Ragelings, but he found them unsettling. The real problem was his Apothos usage. Now, if you’ll look at my data representations, you’ll see why we wanted to act right away.”

Cal cast his Triple I spell—Ignorable Informational Image. Apothos drained from his core as light erupted in his hands to appear in the air between him and his boss. While other elven illusionists might’ve wasted their time fashioning monsters or making duplicates of themselves, Cal had perfected various ways to show data: spreading sheets of information out into grids, powering his points with graphs, and unfolding a world of data in front of him. He was even close to mastering the dreaded pivot table.

He pointed to the flowing lines of information. “He was getting a great deal of Apothos from his node, that’s Figure A, but he was squandering it on his plants, as you can see in Figure B. And Helga pointed out that his trellises, pergolas, arbors, and gazebos were far too flamboyant, more suited to a wedding venue than a small farm.”

“The whole place made me eyes hurt,” the halfling barbarian muttered.

“They weren’t even trapped,” Gwen added. “So inefficient.”

Cal hurried on, trying to keep Weavelord’s attention on him before he could blow up again. “The Return on Apothos Investment, or ROAI, was well into the negative. His dungeon was going to fail. We knew it was going to fail. You should’ve—” Cal shut up, but not quickly enough.

Weavelord’s voice dropped to a low growl. “Oh, please tell me. What should I have done?”

Gwen stormed forward. “You shouldn’t have micromanaged us, Dave. But you want us to fail, don’t you?”

As his Apothos ran empty, Cal let his data light show flicker out. Unlike the rest of his team, he was only an E-Class accounting clerk, a Deep Root Cultivator, only one step above your run-of-the-mill person with no Apothos whatsoever.

Weavelord’s many legs went rigid. His eight eyes were wide. He might’ve been drooling venom. “I’m not Dave, Ms. Copperblade. I’m Weavelord. We are not discussing our past, and that’s final.”

Before Cal could draw another breath and defend them any further, Weavelord slammed a signed piece of paper down on the desk in front of them. “You four are hereby removed from active duty. I’m placing you on administrative leave until the universities let out in the summer, at which time we will find true dungeon cores to replace you. They, at least, understand the value of what we’re fighting for. Until then, you’ll be filing. That’s something that not even you can screw up. Be grateful you still have a role here at all.”

Weavelord skittered all the way onto his desk, waving his front four legs threateningly while his humanoid arms folded over his chest. “Oh, and if you want to stay employed even that long, you’ll begin filing immediately. Your weekend plans are canceled, and that includes the retreat.”

Gwen exploded. “We didn’t screw up, Dave. You did! You lost our TAP report, and now you’re throwing us under the bus. Well, fine. If you don’t want former dungeoneers helping you, maybe I’ll just go back to destroying Celestial Nodes until I cultivate my core up to SSS tier.” She brushed her hair out of her face, eyes flashing. “But even a god-level core still wouldn’t be good enough for you, would it?”

She turned and stomped out of the office, swerving around Kronke and Helga, who were staring at her open-mouthed. Unfortunately, her leather Boots of Silent Striding took most of the drama out of her exit.

Kronke looked at Weavelord, then at the door. “This place heavy with sadness. No cookie. No familial love and respect. Kronke leaves with a weeping heart.” The troll paladin stooped through the doorway, his shoulders slumped.

Helga threw up her hands. “By my mother’s bunions, discipline us when we fail. A heavy hand can be a just hand. But not this time. Come, Hurricane.” Before she left, the halfling barbarian turned back over her shoulder. “Weavelord, your use of spiderwebs is haphazard and inefficient, and your desk is placed improperly. I suspect your lack of feng shui is why you are so unhappy. How might Cal put it? Ah, yes. ‘You are well into the negative.’”

With a final huff, she spun Hurricane around and rode the goat out of the room. He was chewing on some papers. He could be sneaky for a goat. On the plus side, that meant less filing for Cal and his team.

“Audit Team Six could’ve been your best team, Weavelord.” Cal shook his head in disappointment. “I’ll talk to Gwen and the others. We’ll do office work, for now. But the Department needs to change their standard operating procedures. I have a multi-point presentation that I can…”

He trailed off, his explanation shriveled by the fury on the Spidercrat’s face.

Weavelord’s voice was a lesson in whispered rage. “We are done discussing this, Mr. Illudere. In the other room, you’ll start on Box A, and I’ll need that filed before you and Audit Team Six go home for the weekend, and it had better be perfect. I’ll be leaving for the retreat, but I expect to see you four back here early on Monday morning. Now, get out of my office.”

Kronke might not have been the sharpest tool in the shed, but he was wise. There was indeed a heaviness to the room, and it was devoid of love, familial or otherwise.

With his team bereft of their higher purpose, and his hopes of making friends at the retreat shattered, Cal turned and left to find what was left of his team.

Cal didn’t know what the future held, but he had serious doubts any of them could go on working for the Department of Universal Dungeon Efficiency much longer, even as worlds shriveled and died at the hands of greedy dungeoneers.