Helga ended her explosive scream and shouted at Kronke. “And it’ll be even sadder if we have to kill ‘em, won’t it? Won’t it? Murder our own boss ‘cause he lost the plot. Turned evil on us. Because maybe the multiverse does nae like goodness. Nae at all.”
Helga plucked her crowbar off of hurricane’s saddle and leapt onto the Foosball table. “And this cursed game brings out the evil in everyone! Nay, nae today, Foosball. Nae today!” With one big swing, she sent a dozen little Foos ball guys flying.
Cal was so shocked by the outburst that he felt his Triple A hiccup.
Daphne erupted. “IT’S NOT LIKE THAT! THE TREE OF SOULS IS GOOD AND LOVES GOODNESS AND LIFE AND LOVE! I’VE FELT THAT FOR EVERY MINUTE OF MY LIFE, WHEN I WAS ALIVE, WHEN I WAS A DUNGEON GUARDIAN, AND NOW THAT I’M BOUND TO THIS SINK, IT’S ALL GOOD AND BLESSED. IT’S BLESSDED, DAMMIT. AND WE DON’T KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON WITH WEAVELORD!”
Karl’s gem flashed. “Daphne is right. If a little freakin’ loud. I’ve been listening to you young people, to all your theories, and you know what the flippin’ bottom line is? We don’t know squat. And I don’t think Weavelord is the type to turn. Something else is going on. So let’s keep our tempers, shall we? If anyone should be losing it, it should be. I’m the one who keeps getting beaten up. And here I thought my retirement would be comfortable, just keeping things frozen, needling employees to eat the lunches they packed, and hanging with my friends, who I love.”
“LOVE YOU TOO, KARL!” Daphne yelled. “AND I CAN SHOUT AS MUCH AS I WANT. I WAS QUIET FOR A SUPER LONG TIME!”
Cal had enjoyed the sink’s restraint, while she’d had it.
Helga gripped her crowbar with both hands. Her knuckles were white. “I apologize for the outburst. I do. It the cursed shag carpet, it is.”
Kronke floated over, avoiding the tiger traps, and swept Helga up to give her a big hug. He then set her back down on the battle goat.
Helga seemed a bit more clam. “Give us a bit of quiet now, Daphne. My nerves cannae handle her shouting.”
Gwen was frowning, tapping her bottom lip. “Wait. Karl. Is this retirement? Or is this a punishment? How did you guys get to be, uh, kitchen appliances.”
“TELL ‘EM, KARL! SOMEONE WANTS ME TO BE QUIET.”
Helga sighed. Hurricane bleated miserably.
Karl took over. “Fullgeers, Daphne, and I, were a part of an audit team several hundred years ago. We were freakin’ awesome. But as you guys know, auditing ain’t too safe.” The freezer geezer actually snorted. A little cloud of cold puffed out of his core gem. “Too much paperwork and someone is bound to get hurt. Add in unimaginable power and the promise of immortality, and things can go south fast.”
“YOU’RE GOING TO TALK ABOUT PHIL, AREN’T YOU? PHIL PHAIRY! HE WAS OUR BOSS! AND THAT CORNER OFFICE WAS HIS. THERE’S A REASON WHY IT’S DESERTED!”
Helga gave Gwen a long look. “Can you nae do something about her, Gwenivere? If nothing else, do it for my nerves.”
Kronke put his huge hands delicately over the halfling’s ears.
Gwen winced. “It’s a binary sort of situation. A toggle. On or off. Can’t mess with the volume.”
“I’M NOT THAT LOUD.”
Hurricane then sighed. Goat sighs are the most heartbreaking.
Cal realized they had a goldmine of information in front of them—ancient dungeon cores who might help them unravel some of the mysteries.
Karl continued. “Yeah, Daphne, Phil Phairy. Oh boy. He was upper management, a Vice President of Finance and a Fairy Fetch, like Professor Zazannah Zantho who teaches at Shadowcroft. He was A-Class, and impressive. Nicest guy. Except when he tried to kill us. He did kill Staevis—that was our interior decorator. Phil wanted immortality, and he went with us on an audit with some BS story about evaluations. No, it was to get close to the Heart Dungeon core that had this immortality egg—it was his lure. Caladrius was a Dire Pigeon. Like a Dire wolf, only more pigeon-y. Caladrius could lay an egg that, once scrambled, gave you immortality.”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
There was no way Daphne was going to stay quiet. “YOU ALL WOULD’VE LOVED STAEVIS! HE WAS SO SWEET!”
Karl continued. “Anyway, Phil snaps, grabs Caladrius’s egg and cracks Caladrius’s core. Phil doesn’t stop there. He’s going on about living forever, and killing his employees would be worth it, and I think he had a treatise on the benefits of capitalism. Was that right, Daphne? Don’t answer that. We want to be kind to the well-dressed halfling and her goat buddy. Long story short, he tears through me, Daphne, and Fullgeers, and it’s only about that time the CFO of the entire Department shows up. S-Class. Bonaventure Brown. Quite a guy. Quite a guy. Now there’s the type of quality dungeon guardian you don’t see nowadays.”
Cal put up a hand. “Wait. Brown. Did he wear a brown suit? He was an auditor, right? At some point. Maybe a thousand years ago.”
“DANG STRAIGHT SKPPY! AFTER A SUCCESFUL CAREER AS A DUNGEON CORE, MR. BROWN WENT INTO THE ACCOUNTING BUSINESS. STARTED AT THE BOTTOM AND WORKED HIS WAY TO THE TOP OF THE ENTIRE DEPARMENT!”
Luckily, Kronke’s hands were still over Helga’s ears.
“What happened to Mr. Brown?” Cal asked. “After Mimi told us about meeting him, I searched for his TAP reports, but I couldn’t find them. And there was no record of Naraka’s Omega Audit. I know he did it. He worked alone, didn’t he?”
“He did,” Karl agreed. “That might have been his undoing. It seems Bonaventura Brown wasn’t his real name. He had this checkered past, quite a character, and he was relieved of duty. Turns out he had a bunch of names and professions. I have to say, I liked Mr. Brown. He saved our lives. And he was the one who gave us the choice to be bound to the appliances. Some kind of power balance thing.”
“A Karmic Korrection?” Cal asked.
Karl’s gem remained dark for several long moments. “Might’ve been. It’s hard to remember. We’d been brought back from Caladrius’s dungeon, we were in the infirmary, and I was woozy. I do know that Mr. Bown was dealing with forces far beyond your normal finance executive. Way beyond.”
“HE’S THE DIVINE AUDITOR!” Daphne thundered. “JUST LIKE THE LEGENDS SAY!”
“Oh, that’s poppycock! The Divine Auditor is a myth. Brown was just a CFO who got too big for his britches!” Karl yelled back. “I liked him, but you can’t go around giving out fake names and lying about your jobs. You haveta have some integrity, especially in dungeon accounting!”
Cal’s mind was spinning, and he knew they had to hurry, but at the same time, this seemed important. He’d often wondered about the breakroom cores, but no one had seemed to know much about them. And Karl had always been far too surly to talk to.
Cal had to know. “Are you three immortal now?”
“Don’t think so,” Karl said. “We lose a bit of Apothos each year. At some point, we’ll get too weak to go on. Then we’ll probably just give up the goat. Uh, sorry, Hurricane.”
The battle goat bleated and then found some playing cards to eat off a nearby poker table.
Gwen was strangely quiet. She was listening, though, carefully, as she toyed with her rope.
Cal was putting things together in his mind, though he had so many questions. “It was Mr. Brown’s magic that saved you and bound you to the appliances. What his class?”
“Don’t know,” Karl admitted. “He always just looked human. And we weren’t privy to a lot of the information.”
Gwen waved. “All this. Sure. Fascinating. But hey, Cal, what about the Apothos flow? Your buddy who writes the descriptions wanted you to take a gander. Whatcha see?”
Cal shifted his gaze around the room and saw the flow of the Apothine energies roaring around the room. They were coalescing nearby, which meant one thing. They were right next door to the inner sanctum.
He had the sense that the swinging pendulum spheres had provided them with a much-needed shortcut. Thank goodness. “The inner sanctum should be the next room over. That should give us some answers. But after we confront Weavelord, we need to go investigate Phil Phairy’s corner office.”
Karl swung back and forth under the blimp as Gwen flew him across the room and toward another cheap door. “Mr. Brown moved into that office right after he killed Phil. Might be cursed. ‘Cause it wasn’t too much longer after that when Brown got fired.”
“SO MUCH DRAMA, AMIRIGHT?” Daphne laughed. “THIS AIN’T THE FIRST TIME THE DEPARTMENT HAS HAD ISSUES WITH ROGUE ACCOUNTANTS. WHEN YOU AUDIT THE ABYSS, THE ABYSS AUDITS YOU BACK!”
“It’s red tape,” Gwen whispered to herself. “You wind up strangling yourself with it.
Cal vehemently disagreed, but he kept quiet.
Before they left the room, Gwen nodded at Helga. “You good?”
Helga nodded. “I would suspect I’m feeling like ye are, Gwenivere. Nae good. But we’ll make it through this. We always have. We always will. Betrayals be danged.”
Those last three words—betrayals be danged—came out in a growl.
Cal felt the minutes draining away.
The hours had passed in a flash. They now had less than twenty minutes to report back to the Arcandor Initiative and to stop Ji-Soo from NUKEing the daylights out of them.