On the other side of the door was a long hallway with the same green shag carpet as the rec room. The walls were heavily textured drywall, poorly painted brown. Speckled splotches marked the edges of the popcorn ceiling.

Kronke led the way as the Reaper Knight while Helga, Hurricane, and Daphne acted as the rear guard.

Cal didn’t like the Morta surrounding both the pink cloak and the scythe. That couldn’t be good for the troll, who was an equal mix of Vita and Aer. Still, Kronke seemed as happy and pleasant as ever.

Gwen’s blimp floated just behind Kronke.

Karl’s gem flashed on his freezer door. “I just hope Fullgeers is okay back in that corridor. We three have been together a long time. No need to voice your worry, Daphne. I know. I know.”

“Yeah,” Gwen said. “Let’s keep the chatter down. We don’t really want to broadcast that we’re on our way into the Inner Sanctum.”

“He knows,” Cal replied. “He has to know. He’s just not saying anything. That’s as strange as everything else we’ve seen. Why would Weavelord not be insulting us every step of the way?”

Helga’s face darkened. “Perhaps the shame of his villainy has silenced his tongue. Perhaps he fears the death he will find at our hands.”

“Or maybe it’s a good sign.” Gwen groaned. “Ugh, Helga, this whole situation is forcing me to be the optimistic one. I’m the sarcastic girl, remember? Not Miss Sunshine.”

Kronke came to the end of the hallway. Instead of a door, there were sliding vinyl curtains that locked with a little clip.

Gwen had her wand out. “No traps. But Kronke, open those sliding curtain door things before Helga sees them. They are hideous. I’m sure there is a beaded curtain around her somewhere.”

“Beaded curtains?” Helga growled. “Dang hippies.”

Gwen glanced at her. “Hurry, Kronke. The natives are getting restless.”

Kronke tried to open the little hook, but couldn’t, and then used his Stronk ability to tear the curtains off their tracks. He flung them away into the dungeon. Cal couldn’t blame him. Doors on tracks were inherently frustrating.

Beyond the curtains was a ledge, high above a very strange inner sanctum. Cal wasn’t sure what he was looking at. It was some sort of game or field, which seemed to include giant silver balls, not unlike the physics pendulum toy trap, but two of the balls were locked in cages.

If unlocked, the balls would roll down metal tracks. There were metal tracks everywhere over a maze of bumpers. Way down at the bottom, about a hundred yards away, were flippers on either side of a black hole. Directly in front of the hole was the pedestal, which Cal had mistaken for a bumper. But no, there was Weavelord’s core gem floating there, absorbing Apothos. Keeping with the spider dungeon theme, webs were everywhere—near a bumper, under the metal tracks, filling the corners. Any one of those webs could hold either Weavelord’s minions or the Spidercrat himself.

Kronke leaned out and looked up. “Maybe Cal come see.”

Cal went and joined the troll. The entryway where they stood was in the middle of a vast bright sign, lit by any number of Apothos bulbs, that had a picture of Weavelord in a triumphant pose, sitting on a throne, surrounded by pretty Spidertaurs, There were some boney spider things in the picture as well and the gigantic worm thing hanging from a beam by a length of silk.

Gwen fixed her goggles into place. “Hey, guys, step aside so I can send Shrimpie and Karl out there to take a peek at things.”

Kronke and Cal moved to the side. The shrimp blimp chugged out into the vast room. Again, there was no way the cave should be able to exist, not with the ceiling above and the floor below.

Gwen let out a hiss. “Oh, it’s Dave all right. His inner sanctum is a giant pinball machine.”

Cal wasn’t sure what that was. He cast his Triple A spell and moved to the edge. All of the Apothos flowing down to the gem was powering the lights and the complicated mechanics of the machine. Those flippers could move, and there was a spring-coiled plunger next to the flipper.

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In that dark hole, there had to be a monster, lurking.

He checked the description.

<<<>>>

Triple A Enhanced Initial Results – Room Scan

Room Type: Inner Sanctum

Room Name: The Webs of the Pinball Wizard

Room Purpose: To Protect the Celestial Node and to possibly get a little nostalgic.

Room Description: The dungeon lord isn’t just the Web Wizard, he’s also the Pinball Wizard! What is pinball? It’s a classic game that had its heyday decades ago but was replaced by Plimpkinny Pachinko. Now you can only find machines in the basement of collectors. The collectors generally have three or four, or in this case, one huge one.

Silver balls come shooting out, and they hit obstacles, like the bumpers, or get knocked onto the tracks, and there are special places where you can unlock other silver balls, so the huge balls are everywhere, rolling all around all at once.

There are also monsters here because yeah, this is the inner sanctum, and its main jobs is to kill people who dare to invade it.

Note: Notice the ladder to your left. That’s where the fun begins. Go done the ladder and then watch out. There’s light! There’s noise! There are giant silver pinballs everywhere!

Minion Description: Don’t kid yourself. There are minions. If you get anywhere near the pedestal, you’ll see ‘em. Also, you see those bits of web balls everywhere. Two guesses what’s inside those web balls. Yeah. Probably minions. If monsters are there, I think they might be called Dweebers.

Trap Description: This whole setup seems like a trap. Where is the Pinballing Web Wizard? What’s in that dark hole at the bottom near the pedestal?

Treasure Description: Can you put a price tag on nostalgia?

Apothos Usage Effectiveness: Error (Hostile dungeon detected! There are secrets things happening! So many secrets!)

Challenge Level Rating: Surprisingly powerful for a C-Class. Probably B-Class. Hard to tell. Because of all the, you know, secrets.

Manifestation Type: Endogenous Manifestations Galore! None of this stuff can leave because it’s too big to fit through the door. For another, space and time are being stretched by the newly created Celestial Nodes!

<<<>>>

Gwen spoke even as she piloted her blimp. “I see your eyes are glowing, Cal. Give us some info. Where is my father? Why is he being so quiet?”

“He’s here,” Cal said. “And he has minions. I’m not understanding this pinball game. What’s the point?”

Gwen wrinkled her nose. “To score points and to keep the ball from going into that hole at the bottom of the field. And to steal time from your family because my father played pinball so much. Between you and me, I find Plimpkinny Pachinko machines more interesting. Since they were made by gnomes, there’s the real possibility of candy. And I’ll take candy over points any day. Should I start dropping cold bombs?”

Karl’s voice was so loud in her earpieces that Cal could hear it. “I only have so much cold left, girl. And I’m running low on frozen food. I can drop a few more pepperoni pockets. How can people eat those things?”

Kronke whispered to his scythe. “We kill soon, Pinkerton. No worry. We chop and chop and chop good. No, they friends, Pinkerton. Kronke can’t murder his friends. We go over that.”

Gwen shot Cal a look. “Uh, okay, that’s not ominous. I say we send Kronke in, since he’s almost invulnerable, and I think he’d handle an ambush really well. Has the Ruby Staff recharged enough to bring Helga and the gang down?”

Cal saw the Apothos collecting around the ruby, replenishing it. It only had a bit of charge, but it was better than nothing. “I think so. Let go down and I can…”

But Kronke was already flying down from the pinball machine’s backboard. He wasn’t gone but a minute when silken fingers shot up from three of the web pockets. The webs latched onto Kronke and dragged him down from the air.

Cal looked down to see that the web clumps hid cannons operated by driders wearing button-up shirts with short sleeves and ties along with pocket protectors. Every one of the spider-bodied guys had humanish faces with small eyes hidden by thick-rimmed glasses below receding hairlines. They were the dorkiest driders in all of creation. Those were the Dweebers.

Some of the Dweebers were pulling the troll out of the air with their web cannons, while others stood by, short swords ready. They were small but well-armed.

Gwen activated her wings and went soaring out, heading out to help Kronke. She dodged more web cannon silk, and she was doing well, until a dozen flying, flaming spiders came drifting down from the ceiling, heading straight toward her.

For now, Shrimpie and Karl floated in the distance. The geezer freezer wasn’t over a target, so he saved his ammo.

Cal had to get the rest of Audit Team Six down onto the playfield. He prayed that the Ruby Staff had the juice.

He clambered down the ladder and slid the last fifteen feet down to the bottom. He then charged away, turned, and lifted Hurricane and her riders off the ledge in the middle of the brightly colored glowing board above.

Down, down, down the three of them went, bathed in a glowing red light.

Cal heard an ear-splitting thunk near the bottom of the sloped inner sanctum followed by the thunder of a ball rolling. It might kill him at any moment, but he couldn’t lose his focus, or his friends would fall to their deaths. His Ruby Staff started to flicker on and off, and it finally ran out of charge when the battle goat was about five feet off the floor. Luckily, Hurricane landed unhurt. He was strong and used to jumping, though the extra weight couldn’t have felt very good.

The entire playfield shuddered. More rolling thunder. Music started—some kind of battle song made from the beeps and boops of the machine. A second later, a giant silver ball came racing out of the chute at the top of the playfield, speeding toward Cal, Helga, and the gang.

What kind of gaming hell was this pinball nonsense?