In the cube farm down from the break room, Cal found Kronke standing near their office cubicles where he’d piled all the boxes for filing—Box A through Z back around to double AA and so on. The troll paladin’s enormous two-handed mace leaned against a cubicle, and he’d removed his helmet to reveal his enormous nose and buzzed black hair.

Behind Kronke, a window overlooked the central courtyard, a lush garden filled with flowerbeds, climbing vines, and fountains celebrating the feats of legendary dungeon accountants. A lesser branch of the Tree of Souls grew there, which was their BYE (Branches that Yield Everywhere) portal that gave them quick access to the different worlds where they conducted their dungeon audits.

On the opposite side of the courtyard were the Department dormitories where he and his team lived, at least for now. Corporate housing was optional but cheap enough to afford on their paltry government salaries. The world might be called Tedium, but the steady flow of visitors, tourists, government employees, and VIPs had shot real estate prices through the roof. Cal also thought it was important that he and the rest of Audit Team Six stay close to the Department bureaucrats until they proved themselves.

Kronke raised a hand. “Hello, Cal. Helga and Hurricane went to filing room. Me looking for papers to file. Only find boxes. You find cookies?”

“Plenty of cookies,” Cal replied as he hefted his bag, “but no coffee. Fullgeers was feeling exceptionally persnickety today. Black licorice was involved, I’m afraid.”

Kronke gave him a long look. “You troubled. Me can see you troubled. And it not just black licorice.”

“Let’s just focus on the filing. The papers are in the boxes, big guy. Look for Box A. That’s the one Weavelord wanted us to finish before we stopped for the night.”

Kronke whipped the massive boxes around like they didn’t weigh a thing. In short order, the troll found Box A, stuck it into the crook of his arm, and rummaged around inside with one hand. He came out with a single sheet of paper. “Where this one go, Cal?”

Cal slipped the page out of Kronke’s fingers. “We can do that part, Kronke. Thanks for finding the box. Sorry you got stuck filing instead of going to the retreat.”

“Me sad that work changed. Me like dungeon work.”

Cal sighed. “Me, too. Come on. We have the box. Let’s head for the filing room.”

Kronke carried the box and followed Cal, their footsteps echoing down a hallway that was half polished river stone and half beige sheetrock.

“Is much quiet,” Kronke said.

“It’s late, and everyone’s gone to the retreat,” Cal said.

At the end of the hall, an archway loomed. Cal had never actually set foot in the file vault. All of his paperwork went to Weavelord. After that, Cal assumed it simply became part of the geologic strata of papers covering his manager’s desk.

But it made sense that eventually, it had to end up somewhere. The Department of Universal Dungeon Efficiency had been in operation for ten thousand years, founded right around the time that the university system started. The Council of Dungeons needed to hold dungeon cores accountable after they graduated, and thus, the Department was formed. And shortly after that, the paperwork began.

As they stepped through the archway into a vast warehouse, Cal stopped in shock.

Rather than neatly organized ranks of cabinets, the room looked like a flea market and a library had done battle with a Tornado Elemental and lost. Mountains of paper teetered precariously between mismatched bookcases, grey steel filing cabinets, and card catalogs, all bursting with papers. Here and there, racks made of crisscrossed boards overflowed with scrolls. Ten thousand years of disorganized paperwork rose around him like the walls of a prison cell.

“We are never going to get out of here,” Cal said. They had to find a way back into the Department’s good graces.

“Cal not gonna file that?” Kronke asked.

Cal looked down at his hand, where he’d crumpled the piece of paper in frustration. “Oops.” He tried to flatten it against the corner of a nearby cabinet.

A Dust Bunny streaked out from under a shelf, slid to a stop, squeaked at them in surprise, then vanished back into the warren. A second later, a small red stapler clattered after it in hot pursuit.

Hurricane looked on with mild disinterest as he chewed a dusty old memo. Helga had tied up the battle goat in a corner near her, hopefully away from any important papers. The goat’s gluttony resulted from a powerful enchantment. When he ate an item, the goat could process the Apothos and transfer it to Helga. But his lack of discretion when choosing what to snack on sometimes got them in real hot water.

Helga, who’d been busy clearing off a table, gave them a wave. As they got closer, it changed into a despairing gesture indicating the disaster surrounding them. “Looks like we may be here a good long while.”

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Cal pulled out his bag of snacks and began setting out small, neatly wrapped packages on the table. “Maybe some cookies will help.”

Kronke sat the file box down on the table with a thud and stared eagerly at the dozens of cookies Cal had unpacked. Then his gaze returned to the mess. “We gonna need more cookies than that.”

As she grabbed a snickerdoodle, Helga shrugged. “If we even bother with all this. Are ye sure this is worth it, lad?”

“What do you mean?” Cal asked.

“Tae me, this all seems pointless. If it hasn’t been filed in millennia, why would it make any difference now? This does nothin’ tae protect the Tree of Souls, and ye know it. We could just walk away. Weavelord doesn’t deserve any loyalty from us. We could tell him to take this job and shove it.”

“Where Weavelord shove job?” Kronke asked, brow furrowed in confusion.

Cal handed Kronke a chocolate chip cookie the size of a dinner plate, and the troll made happy noises as he munched with gusto.

With Kronke distracted, Cal responded to Helga’s suggestion. “I don’t want to be here either, but I haven’t given up hope yet. I’m still committed to the Tree of Souls, if not so much to Weavelord. Even though he threw us under the wagon wheel—”

“Not literally,” Helga reassured a concerned-looking Kronke.

“—I think he’ll get over it,” Cal continued. “We just need a chance to prove ourselves.”

“We could go private, become contractors,” she said. “Some dungeons pay consultants tae help with proper Apothos use. An’ it pays well.”

He shook his head. “Everyone would know we left here as failures. If we can’t even get other audit teams to respect us, can you imagine how well we’d do going around knocking on dungeon entrances and asking them if they need a little help? We need to build a resume, first.”

Helga chewed on that, a sour look on her face until she nodded in agreement, then picked up a handful of paper. “You’re right. So, we’ll file. We’ll file like the wind. We shall file so well that there will be songs sung of our filing feats. Aye, there might be paper cuts, and aye, we might bleed, but every page shall have a home. Information will be easy to find. It will be glorious! This I swear!”

Kronke, moved by her impassioned speech, chimed in, “Yes! Glorious filing!” He bent and picked up another piece of paper. “Where go, Cal?”

Hurricane leapt for the paper in Kronke’s hand. He would have seized it if he hadn’t been brought up short by the leash, which was fastened to a sturdy metal shelf.

Mind racing, Cal surveyed the mess surrounding them. “That, Kronke, is an excellent question. We were told to file Box A, but we can’t put anything in its place if we don’t know how the room is organized.”

“Might as well toss it up and let the winds take the papers where they will,” Helga said. “Wouldn’t be any more or less organized than this is already, and we’d be done in two shakes of Hurricane’s tail.”

Cal slowly spun, taking in the disaster of a room like it was a challenge. While his brothers and sisters were learning to cast fireballs or summon demons, he’d found that he adored information in all forms. Actually, in a very real sense, he’d been born to file. Something began to emerge from the chaos. “There’s a pattern here.”

“Ye’ve got to be kidding me,” the halfling snorted. “Me da’s tangled back hair had more of a pattern.”

“Ten thousand years,” Cal muttered. “Ten sets of shelves, with tables in between.”

“Kronke have ten fingers,” the paladin said, wiggling them and dropping his piece of paper.

Helga snatched it out of the air before Hurricane got to it. “Lots of things come in tens. Doesn’t make a pattern.”

“But it is,” Cal insisted. “And the different types of wood that make up the bookcases correspond to the number of dungeon academies. I’d bet a month’s pay that the dark ebony shelves are for Shadowcroft. As obsessed as everyone here is about where they graduated from, I bet everything’s filed by the auditee’s alma mater.”

A bit of investigation showed Cal was right. The area nearest the door held the oldest files, so Kronke moved their box and table down to the far end of the room, and they all got to work.

Helga sorted the papers, laying them out on the bare stone ground, well away from Hurricane. Soon they began distributing the files from Box A across the section of files farthest from the door, with occasional runs to older sections to file audits on a handful of the oldest dungeons.

Kronke wasn’t much help sorting files, but when they needed to shift the contents of an entire shelf to make room, he could move everything at once in his long, powerful arms.

An hour later they took a cookie break. Kronke sighed deeply, blowing crumbs across the table. Hurricane’s long tongue desperately stretched out to lick them up. “Me miss Gwen. She part of team.”

“I know, big guy,” Cal said around a mouthful of sugar. He patted the troll’s arm. “I’ll go talk to her in a bit.”

“She was spittin’ mad at Weavelord,” Helga said as she tipped her chair back. “I wonder what got her goat?”

Her battle goat bleated, and she waved at him. “Not you.” She tossed over a bag of oats, and he immediately stuck his nose inside, chomping loudly.

Cal had some thoughts on why Gwen was touchy around Weavelord, but he didn’t share them. Gwen’s secrets were her own to keep.

Suddenly a click echoed through the room and the lights flickered out, leaving the file vault dimly lit by an exit sign.

Helga let out a yelp as her precariously balanced chair fell backward. But Hurricane had tossed her often enough that she gracefully turned it into a back somersault. She rose to her feet. “What was that?”

“It’s late,” Cal said. “The lights go off automatically at night. I think there’s some kind of motion sensor, and we stopped moving around.” Cal often worked late and kind of enjoyed the feeling of an empty office.

Kronke waved one big hand in the air. “Come back, lights!”

Nothing happened.

“I’ll go get the switch,” Cal offered.

Helga hopped onto Hurricane. “I’ll go with ye. Need to stretch me legs a little.”

Ignoring the irony, Cal led the way. His heightened elven senses came in handy as he carefully wound through the maze of shelves.

The hallway past the archway was dark as well. The whole wing had gone dark. That didn’t bother Cal, but the clattering sound like someone dumping a drawer of cutlery onto the ground made him nearly jump out of his skin. Helga yanked her favorite crowbar from its sheath on the battle goat’s saddle. “Who goes there?”

Lights flashed on in the hallway, then in the filing room as Perkle Tinkletwerp, a Gadget Gnome dungeon core, zoomed into the room on his steam-powered scooter. The gadgets hanging from his belt clanged and rattled. “Thank the Tree someone’s still here. Is Weavelord with you? I have a terrible problem. A terrible problem indeed!”