Cal noticed something new in the second-level reception area. Dave had placed a big banner there that read: Happy Occasion! We wish you luck! You’re going to need it! And underneath that, Welcome to the Death Pits of the Office Party!

It was a nice touch.

Kelly Ryan’s chair and her little makeup table were still there, pushed into a corner. That was a little odd, but everything about Kelly Ryan was odd.

Cal kept on walking.

Large portions of Inke’s dungeons which had reverted back into storage areas or had returned to blank rooms. He carefully walked through the Folding Chair Folly and pushed through the steel doors and into the Unhappy Hour.

On the wall between the two doors was now a classy bar, all polished wood and brass fixtures with a mirrored-wall and glass shelves holding a ton of booze. Around the room were round tables with little chairs on them, all surrounding the central pedestal, which looked like a beer keg. At first, Cal thought the place looked good, but then he saw how it was thrown together, much how a low-level party planner could turn a warehouse into a one-night casino for charity. However, the soft lighting was perfect because it hid the webs in the ceiling holding aloft the filing cabinets.

Dave waved at him from behind the bar. As the bartender of the Unhappy Hour, he’d turned his suit black, which made his red tie pop.

Cal kept going—through the Deathday Party Room, past the Twin Newton Cradles trap chamber, and through the Grill Gauntlet where several spider-headed men in “Kiss the Cook” aprons milled about.

Cal thought about the typical office party. There was something uncomfortable and sad about eating catered food—always mediocre—with co-workers at a party that you were being forced to attend. Yes, you could probably say no, but then people would talk, and you wouldn’t be seen as a team player, and you might lose your job over it. If you were too enthusiastic, or if you were too inebriated, people would gossip their heads off. Either way, office parties were generally awkward occasions. The Fiscalia, though, had seemed different. The food hadn’t been mediocre, and everyone had been smiling. It had felt like a true Celebration. Too bad it had probably ended in tragedy.

Cal found Helga napping on Hurricane, while Kronke stared down at the ghostly statues standing on the steps, motionless. So far, the statues hadn’t moved.

Cal didn’t blame the halfling for sleeping. It was nearly 9 a.m., and they hadn’t slept a wink. With zero chances of sleep any time soon, Cal found the situation strangely invigorating. The adrenaline helped.

At noon, they had to report to Ji-Soo. They thought about reaching out early. Instead, they wanted to collect more information, maybe even capture Amorfo’s inner sanctum, before contacting the Arcandor Initiative.

Cal nodded at the troll. “Kronke, Gwen needs you. I’ll stay here with Helga. I want to see what her Funk Soul Matrix looks like.”

The troll grinned, came over and hugged Cal, and then disappeared down the hallway. There was no way the Pink Reaper was going to corrupt him. He really was a saint. Or so Cal hoped.

Helga cracked open an eye. “You come to take a gander at my soul, Calcannis? Well, get to it. By the way, I wasn’t sleeping. Just giving Hurricane and Kronke a chance to take watch. He’s a good boy.”

Hurricane bleated, and then gave Cal a long, worried look.

Cal folded his arms. “What’s going on with you, Helga? You’re not okay, so don’t pretend you are. This is very uncomfortable for me. There’s a reason I went into accounting and not human resources. I find resources of the human kind baffling. Numbers never cry.”

Helga sat resting her musket on Hurricane’s saddle. “Ye think talking about what happened to me afore all this will help me? What good would it do? It’s over and done with. Me Cousin Olga is dead. And I…I watched her die. And did nae a thing to help her. By my mother’s lumbago. I did nothing. “

Cal knew enough about interpersonal communication to know that Helga wanted to talk about this for a while now. It had been eating at her since Mimi’s dungeon, when she’d alluded to her dark history.

Cal stayed silent. How could he encourage her?

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

No clue.

“Fine!” the halfling yelled. “You won’t leave me alone until I tell you. Though it hurts me.”

Cal kept quiet. Maybe if he didn’t say anything, she’d keep talking.

Helga slammed her musket into her sheath and pulled out the crowbar. She brandished. “Ye do nae care if it hurts me. Ye want to hear of my shame out of a sick sense of curiosity. I’ll tell ye, ye bastard. I’ll tell ye.”

Cal was more confused than ever.

“Don’t rush!” Helga slipped off Hurricane and went down a few steps. “If only Amorfo Deuce would come walking up those steps, for his gaze would turn me to stone. Then I would nae feel the shame of that dark day. It was after Kronke told me of the true nature of the multiverse, that the Tree of Souls gave life to worlds, and it was the dungeoneers that were destroying the Celestial Nodes to murder whole planets. I did nae believe him. I felt justified in the monsters I killed, and I was driven to become even more powerful. To kill more monsters. To allay the fears of normal folk who despise those unnatural places that seemed so…unnatural.”

Cal finally found something to say. “You didn’t immediately join with Kronke? I thought you did.”

Helga turned and her shoulders shook once. “Nay. If only I did. If only I’d listened to him. But no. I thought he was daft and left him. My Cousin Olga, and a crew of halflings from the Boot Peninsula on Harknuckle, found a Celestial Node, crypts underneath a blasted church. It seemed like an evil place to me. So I went. I didn’t want to believe Kronke, and yet, when I stood there, I noticed certain things. The white blossoms on the trees, raining down on the breezes, in the graveyard outside the church. It was beautiful.

“Other details moved me. The crumbling steps. The friezes on the walls. It told a story of loss, of the Crypt Leech’s doomed love and tragic love. It was the monster warning us away, and I told her that, but Olga wouldn’t listen. My cousin wanted the Leech’s Ring, a powerful magic item that would take Apothos from friend or foe. It was a powerful lure, and so down we went. We battled various undead insect monsters, and they were fearsome. The grave worms were the size of our whole bodies, and they’d come wriggling out of a room full of coffins buried in the floor.

“At the same time, the coffins themselves were so gorgeously carved. It was a symphony of design, and right then, I knew, that Kronke was right. If only I would’ve turned around, then, I wouldn’t have had to watch what happened in the inner sanctum.”

Cal could guess the outcome, and it pained him. Still, he asked, “What happened in the inner sanctum?”

“The Crypt Leech was there, and she was huge, a blob of flesh surrounding her pedestal, which was a tomb, in the middle of a vast cavern, carved from the rock. We’d barely made it down there with our lives. I knew we needed to turn back.

“Before the Crypt Leech attacked, I asked for her name. It was Alice. Then I asked if she was defending the Tree of Souls. She said, ‘Aye, I am. And if ye know about the Tree of Souls, then ye’ll stay your hand in this fight. Or better yet, leave now, and never return!’”

Helga turned to face him, tears on her face. “Alice, the Crypt Leech, she spat on the ground, and the spittle formed into a woman warrior, kind of like Otis’s mucus golems now that I think of it. The warrior woman wore the Leech’s Ring, and though she had a sword of hardened spit, that ring was her real weapon.

“I told my kin we needed to flee, but Olga would heed nae such talk. She surged forward along with the rest of our relations.

“And I stood back. And I watched as spit warrior pulled the Apothos from them, one after another, while the big leech ate them up. Olga managed to get to the spit warrior, but my cousin got a sword in the heart for her efforts. The whole battle barely took five minutes. I’d told them to stop, but did I try hard enough? If I had turned around, would they have followed me? Who can say? But after the battle…massacre more like, Alice re-absorbed her spit warrior and then eyed me. She told me to run while I could.

“Run I did. Back to Kronke. And to this life I live now. It was a hard lesson, boyo, I learned that day. About the price of stubbornness. About blindness that can kill. And about betrayal. I betrayed my own flesh and blood. I did nae help them in their last moments. Should’ve tried harder.”

Cal saw the pain on her face, and he shook his head. “No, Helga. It wasn’t your fault. You tried to talk them out of it. If I know you, and I do, you would’ve done everything to get them to turn around, especially when the dungeon was difficult. All of that wasn’t on you. It was on them. I’m sorry you had to watch them die, I am, but now I see why you’re so committed to the cause. It’s why you’re such a great interior decorator and auditor. Because you paid a high price to be here.”

“The highest,” Helga said quietly. “And perhaps, this time, I’ll not just have to watch my family get slain, but I shall have to do the slaying. For the AT1 are part of my Department family, and it kills me to raise a hand against him. That don’t matter none, though, for I will kill them. Every bleeding one of them.”

Cal could see that Helga was serious. She was all in. And if they had to take out Amorfo, Cardi, and Barb, she would be the one to lay down the lethal blow. At the same time, killing them just might kill the halfling’s heart as well.

Helga sniffled. “Enough talk. Let’s look at my soul, lad, such as it is. Let’s see what we can use against Amorfo. And let us hope my new magic, or Kronke’s cookie smell, can undo the Vanilla Master’s vile sorcery. I doubt very much Dave has another rock tumbler.”

Cal went down to the top of the steps and reached out a hand.

Helga took it and allowed him to pull her back onto the landing.

Still, those statues gazed up at them. Not moving. But were they listening? Was the Vanilla Master.

Part of Cal hoped he was because Helga’s story promised death and destruction to any who opposed them. They’d all paid a high price to protect the Tree of Souls, and they weren’t going to let one thousand, two hundred, and seventy-three worlds die without a fight.