Kronke moved past Cal and flew up onto the motionless steel balls filling the entire rectangular room. Cal was terrified that Gwen was dead, but his mouth still watered at the smell of Kronke’s passing. The troll’s new ability wasn’t called Aroma Float for nothing.

A second later, Kronke let out a happy yell. “Gwen! You okay! You look okay. Dusty is all.”

Helga scrambled past Cal and tried to get onto the orb, but she was too short. She sighed. “Calcannis, my friend, could ye give me a lift up?”

Cal thought about putting his hands under the barbarian halfling’s armpits, but then thought against it. Better to, uh, yeah, boost her up in other ways. The Ruby Staff as he used his TK Oh! Ability to lift the interior decorator off the floor and onto the orbs. From there, she bounded across the balls with ease.

That left Cal alone with the goat, the sink, and the coffee machine.

Fullgeers spoke in a hiss of cappuccino steam. “Am I to be left here? I will not fit through there. Perhaps having a rear guard would be a good idea. In case the bats come back.”

Cal didn’t know what to say. He was glad to hear Gwen call out. “I’m okay. And Karl is a bit banged up, but he made it as well. I have bad news, though. As in we have to kill my father levels of bad news. It’s Weavelord all right.”

Cal didn’t like leaving Hurricane, but getting away from Fullgeers would be nice. That coffee machine was so dark and bitter. There was a certain amount of irony there.

The heroic elven accountant didn’t waste Apothos by using his staff. He braced himself on the wall and climbed up the orb in front of him. The hallway across the way was open, and strangely, it seemed to be a natural cavern. He’d been in DUDE’S basement before and hadn’t seen any caves. That had to be new.

He crawled, rather awkwardly, across the spheres until he reached where the wall had been smashed. The bare rock had been covered by the same plastic wood paneling he’d seen before. But in the space, he saw the black and white squares of a chess board inside of a room with yellow paisley wallpaper. At this point, there weren’t any chess pieces. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling. The hair was hot and stagnant.

Gwen brushed some sweat-heavy hair out of her eyes. “Dave loves chess, Eritrean chess, the full Hawthorne configuration with the old Hawthorne pieces.”

Kronke leaned over Helga as all three of them gazed into the room.

The physics spheres had bashed a hole in one wall. There were doors out of the room—one close by to their left and one directly across the room, about fifty feet away. Karl the Geezer Freezer was wedged between the sphere and the wall, laying on his door. He was still alive but silent for the moment. The shrimp blimp floated near the ceiling in the room.

Helga grimaced. “The paneling was bad enough. But did he have to add the wallpaper? My apologies, brave Gwenivere, but yer father’s taste is atrocious.”

Gwen shrugged. “No need to apologize for me. But this whole place is a copy of Edna Trujillo’s basement. She was a family friend. Lived one street over from us. Had a whole collection of Aldaleeran pinball machines. And I bet you a million gold pieces, we’ll find a mural around here somewhere. A Sangretta sunset scene, beach, ocean, a sun or two. This is me… sighing.”

Cal knew his friend was trying to be tough, but this was weighing on her.

She shook it off. “Whatever. Doesn’t matter. We just need to get past this room. Do we need to go back and get—”

She was cut off as Hurricane leapt onto the orbs behind them and went bringing across the balls, with Daphne still attached, until both had reached the end of the corridor where they stood.

Hurricane bleated.

Daphne yelled at them. “I’M NOT GOING TO BE LEFT BEHIND! FULLGEERS IS FINE SITTING THIS ONE OUT. HE’S POOPED. BUT I’M READY AND RARING TO GO! WHAT’S THAT DOWN THERE? CHESS? I HATED CHESS WHEN I WAS FULLY ALIVE. HATE IT EVEN MORE NOW!”

Gwen had her hands over her ears. When she dropped them, she shook her head. “Daphne, babe, you need to use your indoor voice. Or not talk. You’re killing me.”

Helga lifted a hand. “Enough. My question. Do we nae go into the chess room, so we can backtrack to the hallway. It’s a natural passageway into the very rock. This whole place is different now. It was but a series of plain concrete corridors and storage rooms, and yet, now, it is so very different.”

Cal still had his Triple A spell running, though he couldn’t get a read on the chess room until he entered it. However, entering it would probably trigger whatever deviltry was in there. “Wait now. We don’t know the layout of this place, but we might’ve created a shortcut. I say we try this room and try lure Weavelord out. He hasn’t warned us away, and I would think, he’d be yelling at us every step of the way.”

“I’D YELL BACK!” Daphne erupted.

Gwen grunted. “Ouch. Yeah, I agree with you, boss man. If my father chose the Hawthorne configuration, he’d probably be playing by Pelton rules. You put your pieces on, one at a time, across the board. If you move a piece, the other player can add their own piece. One of us should go down there, but it’s important that you don’t leave your square. Or I bet another piece will appear.”

Cal was about to volunteer, since he’d be able to scan the room, but someone bigger beat him to the punch.

“Kronke do it! Kronke help out!” Kronke slid down the orb and onto the chess board.

Gwen winced. “Don’t touch the board, Kronke! Use your flight!”

But it was too late.

There was a flash as the entire board lid up. Across the way, a figure appeared—it was a heavily muscled man in a leather harness with enormous leather boots. Chains hung from his wrists. His hairy chest was visible, but even hairier was his head. Instead of a normal human head, he had the head of a spider—all eight legs under his chin that tipped a nightmare face with a mouth filled with fangs.

“That’s a castle prisoner,” Gwen said. “Well, it’s a spider sapiens dressed up as a castle’s prisoner.”

“What’s a castle prisoner?” Cal asked. “Isn’t that a rook?”

Gwen shook her head. “Not in Eritrean chess and not with the Hawthrone configuration. There are a whole variety of different pieces not found on your normal board. But they should follow the normal rules. Take the prisoner. He should only be able to move vertically and horizontally.”

No one told the chess piece that. The leather-bound spider-head came racing across the board, going for Kronke, who stepped forward. When he did, the board lit up again, and another piece appeared, right next to him. This huge guy was also bound in leather, and he had the spider head, but he also wore a large, high-peaked silver metal hat. He gripped a long silver pole with a large hook on it. Electricity arced off both the pole and the hat.

“A lightning bishop?” Gwen activated her wings and took flight. “Kronke is going to need help!”

Kronke was hit by lightning, making him stagger backward. The minute he touched the square, another arachnid inspired figure appeared, though this was the size of a horse, an eight-legged, horse-sized man. Legs of a spider. Torso of a man. His two human hands held a long lance.

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It charged across the board.

While most accountants had a soft spot in their hearts for chess, Cal found it strangely baffling. But he knew that new piece had to be a knight, though it wasn’t moving like a knight. It came racing at them.

The fight was on. Cal hated fighting.

As did Gwen. It was a testament to her love of Kronke that she had chosen to fly into the room on her steampunk wings, hurling her silverware. “I remember now. My dumb, murderous father talked about his Spidertaurs at one point. These are Spidertaurs!”

Helga let out a cry and slid down the ball and onto the board. “Hurricane. To me!”

“AND DAPHNE MAKES THREE!”

The minute the battle goat with the sink attachment struck the chess board floor, another collection of Spidertaurs came out, including one strange woman in a flowing gown. At first glance, she looked like she might be a normal human queen, except she had large arachnids for feet and hands. The spidery hands and feet didn’t really match her white gown or her glittering golden crown. She had a normal enough face, except she had far too many eyes, no lips, and fangs instead of teeth. The palms of the spider woman’s hands also had fang-filled mouths on them, and all the fangs dripped venom.

“Queen on the board!” Cal shouted.

Gwen grunted. “That’s not the queen. She’s the slipper princess. In the Pelton rules, she’s not that powerful. Too bad there’s not been a slipper invented that could fit her literal spider feet. Spiders for feet? What the heck?”

As his team moved across the board, other Spidertaurs emerged from the flashing squares. Cal saw the pattern. “Gwen’s right. If you move, new pieces form on the board. You have to stick with a single square. Kronke, take flight.”

Kronke’s Reaper Cloak swirled around him as he rose off the board, filling the room with the smell of his Aroma Float.

Meanwhile, Gwen soared through the room, tossing spoons this way and that, and while she wasn’t going to kill any of the monsters, she was distracting them at critical moments. The big horse knight spider had been about to lance Kronke in his unmentionables when a well flung salad tong made the monster flinch.

Kronke chopped off a few legs. Problem was, the Spidertaur had plenty of limbs left.

Helga, atop Hurricane, let out a grunt of pain. The castle prisoner was whipping her with his length of chains. The head legs on the monsters were unnerving, but all those eyes on his face were in some ways worse.

Hurricane spun, and Daphne let loose her corrosive water which blinded the castle prisoner long enough for Helga to bash him with her crowbar.

But if moving brought more monsters, that might slow Helga and her goat down, but it wasn’t going to stop them completely. Helga unholstered her musket and fired a shot into the electric bishop, hitting the thing right in the head. The piece vanished from the board.

Cal stood still on a square, when the princess came charging at him, trying to get the fangs on her spider hands into him. Cal was driven back one, two, three squares. Three new chess pieces appeared.

He waited for the spider princess to charge, and he struck her as hard as he could with the Ruby Staff. Staff Smack engaged automatically. The big ruby gem on top flashed, and the princess let out a scream as she vanished. Combat might not be so bad if he could pulverize his appointments with a single swipe. Thank you, Staff Smack.

However, the damage had been done. Three new monsters appeared. Luckily, they were pawns, which were simple spider-headed soldiers, each armed with a sword and shield. They were scrawny and far smaller than the castle prisoner.

They leapt into the air, dragging Kronke down onto a square.

That made another electric bishop appear. The new piece threw lighting into the troll paladin, knocking him back into still another square, bringing forth another Spidertaur. This one was another knight, which scurried across the board, long lancer aimed at Helga and Hurricane.

Helga stayed in her square. She had her musket, but she wasn’t going to be able to load it in time. Daphne was too busy hosing down spiderhead pawns to see the charging Spidertaur.

Gwen’s blimp turned its antennae cannons on the spider knight, but it dodged the missiles.

Cal was forced into action. He flung forth the brightest Beguiling Data Visualization spell he could, throwing the blinding graphs into the charging Spidertaur’s eyes. It was enough to distract the monster. The lance missed Helga. Hurricane rammed his horns into the Spidertaur’s body, breaking a few legs.

The spider knight used its other legs to shove Hurricane off his hooves. Helga leapt free but Daphne wailed as they went sliding across the board, going over three squares, which brought three more monsters.

Including a woman in a very professional business suit with a briefcase. She was rather shapely and undoubtedly beautiful. From the neck down. Too bad she had the head of a spider, a Daddy-Longlegs to be precise. Those long limbs made her a thousand times more creepy and hideous.

“That’s the queen administrator!” Gwen yelled. “Well, Dave’s version of her. Watch out. She can attack other squares without moving. Normally, she has a bow not a briefcase, but, uh, yeah, we’re through the looking glass here, people!”

The spidery queen administrator opened the briefcase and papers whipped into the air, folding in on themselves until they went streaking away. Paper aeroflyers. But these had razor sharp edges. The papercuts would be as deadly as any arrow.

The aeroflyers struck Helga, slicing her up. Blood flowed.

Cal threw a ruby-red shield in front of Helga. “Hey! There are more monsters than pieces. I’m counting three knights and not just the two. No fair!”

Gwen flew near him. “The Hawthorne configuration doesn’t have a limit on pieces. Games last days. Let Shrimpie grab you, Cal. I don’t think any of these pieces can fly.”

The blimp came closer, growing to its maximum size. The five pairs of arms grabbed Cal, scooping him off the board.

He watched as the queen administrator flung her razor-sharp aeroflyers at Kronke, though the troll simply spun about and let his flowing pink cloak take all the damage. After the future attack, the troll struck back.

The troll triggered his area of effect attack. Copies of the pink scythe went spinning away from him, wiping out a bunch of their enemies, including the three Spidertaurs. The chess pieces might be deadly, but they were super easy to kill.

Kronke tossed a ghostly copy of his scythe at the queen, but more paper leapt from the briefcase, taking the damage instead of her.

Karl’s gem flashed. “Hey, guys! I can help! Elf boy! Pick me up and get me in position. I’m feeling frosty!”

“Do it, Cal!” Gwen called as she hurled a serving spoon at the queen, who ducked the attack.

Hanging from the blimp, Cal turned off the shield from protecting Helga, who rose grimly, her blood dripping on the floor.

The elven accountant then lifted the battered freezer into the air with his TK Oh! ability. The ceiling was high enough, he could easily get it above one of the spider knights, coming around to charge at Helga. Another joined them. Both of those lances were going to turn the poor barbarian halfling into a pincushion.

Until Karl dropped his payload. Three meals—a pepperoni pocket, a sausage biscuit, and some chicken alfredo—hit with devastating effect. The frozen food shrapnel took out both knights and one of the electric bishops.

Helga had reloaded. Musket on her shoulder, she blew a lightning bishop’s head off his shoulders.

They were doing well, and since they weren’t moving to new squares, no new monsters were appearing. And yet, Helga, Hurricane, and Daphne were ten squares away from the exit.

And they still had the queen administrator, a wounded knight, and three pawns to deal with.

Kronke handled the knight with another spectral fling of his scythe.

Ca had to ignore Shrimpie’s metal arms biting into his armpits as he directed Karl over the pawns. One exploding Hungry Hombre meal later and the pawns were gone.

Only the queen remained, protected by both her maelstrom of razor aeroflyers.

Cal tried to get Karl over her, but she swept her paper onto his gem, blinding the geezer freezer. “I can’t see!”

“Now, Karl!” Gwen yelled. “Trust me!”

Karl emptied a box of popsicles onto her. They hit here, there, everywhere, until the queen administrator was destroyed by one orange popsicle that clattered to her feet before exploding. The queen’s size twelve pumps, black, low heel, were obliterated. Cal thought the shoes might’ve been Paula Ru originals.

Papers from her briefcase rained down. The masthead looked familiar. Those were Total Apothos Potential reports! Old TAP reports by the looks of them.

“Why weren’t those filed?” Cal asked.

But then Karl tumbled out of his grasp.

The Ruby Staff winked off. It was out of charges for the moment.

Luckily, Kronke swept down, caught the freezer by the door, and flung it out of the room and into the hall across from where they’d entered. The freezer bounced down the hallway, Karl grunting and screaming every time he crashed to the floor.

At least the entire room smelled like baking oatmeal and raisin cookies.

Kronke then landed in the hall. “Karl! Kronke sorry! But Kronke so tired! So much Aroma Flying make Kronke super hungry!”

Cal relaxed some. The monsters were dead. Yes, the unfiled TAP reports were vexing, but at least they weren’t fighting for their lives.

Gwen landed in the hallway and retracted her wings.

She then flew the blimp over, so she could ease Cal off of Shrimpie’s arms. Cal found himself standing in the hallway.

Helga, Hurricane, and Daphne remained stranded on the board. The halfling stood on one square and her goat/sink combo stood on another.

Gwen gestured at them. “Don’t move. I’ll have Shrimpie go and grab Helga, Hurricane, and the sink.”

“MY NAME IS DAPHNE!” The sink yelled. “KARL, ARE YOU ALL RIGHT? KARL! SPEAK TO ME!”

They heard the freezer dimly from down the hallway.

“Karl will be fine,” Gwen said. “He’s one tough freezer. Which begs the question. If you guys are still so powerful, why are you still stuck in DUDE’s breakroom? What’s your deal?”

Cal was also curious. Too bad they were stuck in the middle of an enemy dungeon and fighting for their lives.

Was the Web Wizard really their boss?

If so, would they have to kill Weavelord? It would make coming to work on Monday super awkward.