Cal lifted his voice. “Amorfo! It’s Audit Team Six. We think you’re being controlled by an entity called the Vanilla Master. He’s not on your side. Remember the oath you took to DUDE and to the Council of Dungeons? We don't want to hurt you!”

Nothing answered him, but Cal didn’t think anyone would. He turned. “Hey, Helga, you can’t use your Scared Straight Scream, can you?”

She shook her head. “I’d need to be within fifteen feet of him to do it.”

Kronke and Dave were already moving down the hall.

Gwen gave them a preview. “There’s a statue garden, tons of statues, around a fountain. That’s what’s glowing. Lots of vines and grapes. Red grapes. Not a fan. Green grapes I like.”

“Don’t I know it!” Dave erupted. “Miss finicky eater would only eat green grapes and red apples. Drove me and her mother insane.”

“How is Mom?” Gwen asked. “Oh, you wouldn’t know. Because of your divorce, death, and resurrection. Kinda puts a damper on a relationship.”

“She understood what I had to do Gwen,” Dave answered. “I’m sorry you didn’t. Have you talked to Lorelei?”

“Here and there. She’s dating again. That’s probably good.”

Helga lost her patience. “By my brother’s sinus infection, could you two nae bicker? Ye both are lucky ye both are alive.”

Both Gwen and Dave grumbled but stopped talking.

They moved into the statue garden. Cal noticed immediately that every single statue was of Amorfo in a toga and saddles. Some had the snake hair, some had regular long flowing tresses, and some had trendy Sangretta dreadlocks. They were all in various poses, surrounding the basin of the fountain. They were all looking into the water, as if admiring themselves. All were about to preen, in the process of preening, or languishing in the ever-popular post preen. They didn’t have weapons, but being punched by a marble statue wasn’t going to feel like a love tap. All that stone in motion had the power to kill.

Helga stormed forward and leapt from Hurricane’s back. She landed on the lip of the fountain, with her two-handed crowbar held over her head. She then smacked the statue with all her might. “Demo Day!” she yelled with glee.

The crowbar completely destroyed the tiered fountain and sent a shockwave out that turned all twelve of the statues into gravel. The fountain was gone, the statues were gone, and trestles holding the grape vines exploded into splinters. The pillars turned into piles of powder.

Amorfo’s voice boomed throughout the room. “Not cool, guys. Not cool! I know my Vanilla Master has this big Vengeance thing, with the capital letter, but this is going to be my vengeance thing! Lower case letter, but still a thing, because I can’t believe you freakin’ destroyed my Narcissus Room!”

“Aye, boyo.” Helga chuckled. “Stripped to the studs, as they say. Now, I think there is another skill called Waste Management that would remove all of the rubble and debris. Might get that when I hit my Mid-B upgrades. I must say, I find it very satisfying to be gaining power again, but we’re doing it cleanly, and we’re doing it to protect the Tree.”

Dave leapt down from Kronke to peruse the rubble. “Good heavens, Helga. How often can you do that?”

Helga slipped back onto Hurricane’s saddle. “More often than you think. Can’t hurt organic material, and I can’t bring the roof down, so ignore my comment about load-bearing beams. But I can shatter anything that is cometic. Lucky for us, those statues were cosmetic.”

Gwen motioned to a passageway in front of them. “There are going to be a ton of Amorfo Deuce statues. This is the Temple of Him.”

“No!” Amorfo shouted. “It’s the Temple of Me! I don’t know how you shattered everything in my Narcissus Room, but you will all die in the Hall of My Myriad Talents. Don’t go on if you know what’s good for you!”

Gwen couldn’t help but mutter, “If we knew what was good for ourselves, we never would’ve become freakin’ dungeon accountants. Always putting our lives on the line. And now we’re probably going to die in the basement at work. Great. Good. Wonderful. I’m still a little baffled that the Narcissus Room was just a monument to the guy and didn’t have any actual minions and not a single trap.”

They went through another hallway of pillars. In the distance was a well-lit room. Numerous candles in candelabras sat on a central ornate marble table that ran the length of the room.

This time, Helga and Hurricane went forward, while Kronke and Dave took the rear guard.

Gwen shook her head. “The Temple of Me isn’t done with us yet.”

Cal followed the goat and halfling into the room. There were more statues of Amorfo, but these ones were giant, standing guard at the other end. They wore leather kilts and knee-high sandals. His biceps and pecs were abnormally swollen.

Those giant statues were only part of the problem. On both walls were murals of Amorfo in various settings, in various poses, doing a variety of things. In one, he was throwing javelin. In another, he was tutoring children on how to play the lute. In still another, he was checking things off on a clipboard, his lips pursed in thought. The biggest painting was of the Dudusa wrestling a dragon only to be dancing with the beast in a mural next to it. It was all Amorfo, all the time.

Of course, the murals would come to life because that was part of the Dudusa’s magic.

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In all the paintings, he was wearing a potpourri pendant. They had to shatter the pendant before they could free his mind. As long as he still had a guardian form. If not, then they’d have to crack his dungeon core.

Amorfo’s voice sounded triumphant. “Okay, guys, fine. The Narcissus Room didn’t make it, but this is the Hall of My Myriad Talents! The mural is dedicated to the many things I rock at. Starting with killing you all! For my own personal lower-case vengeance. Just don’t tell the Vanilla Master, okay?”

Dave moaned. “This is why I kept quiet when you raided my dungeon. All that chatter sounds so pathetic.”

Cal watched as the paintings started to come alive, peeling themselves off the wall, but Helga raised a hand. “Oh, I think not. I find the mural lurid, and the framing is all wrong. Look at the different colors and variety of frames. For shame.

She then used her Lesser Transmogrify to turn the paintings into paisley wallpaper. The magical murals were gone in an instant, though a few severed limbs dropped to the marble floor. Helga had transmogrified every wall.

The Dudusa sounded very upset. “Not cool, guys! I spent a long time designing those murals! Feel the wrath of my re-vengeance!”

The two giant statues came alive and stepped forward, their stone feet crashing down onto the stone floor in a storm of noise. The newly wallpapered walls shook as dust sifted down from the ceiling.

Helga didn’t pause. She let out an Intimidating Roar and rammed into one using Destructive Charge. She bashed off his leg, the statue teetered, and then fell onto the table. Helga swung her battle goat around and then went clattering onto the smashed table and writhing statue. She leapt off the back of the statue and triggered another Destructive Charge. She shot through the air and disintegrated the chest of the second giant statue, turning it into rubble.

The first giant statue was still thrashing around, trying to get at them, until Dave cast webs that stuck the remaining limbs to the ruined table. The giant statue kept trying to tear free, but Helga was there to bash his nose off. This an ear. Then she smacked his entire head off his body. The chunk of marble went bouncing across the floor.

The halfling barbarian grinned. “Amorfo isn’t a bad looking fellow, but decorating with yer own face can nae be done with any grace. And yet, despite the faux pas, I find myself having a very good time.”

Amorfo wasn’t going to let that lie. “All I heard you say was that I’m super good-looking. Thank you. But I’m not going to forgive you for destroying my Deuce Giants. Never! I’m going to rock you so hard you’ll be, uh, rocked.”

Helga shook some dust off her crowbar. “We’ll see about that, Amorfo. Aye, we’ll see about that.”

In the end, they were able to get through the dungeon quickly. Cal was rather surprised because he thought that Amorfo Deuce was one of the more powerful dungeon cores in the AT1. It soon became apparent that wasn’t the case.

Helga used Demo Day on two other statue gardens, both similar to the first, until they came to a library, where there were books on shelves in a heigh-ceilinged room. In between the bookshelves were more paintings of Amorfo reading. When those murals came to life, Helga simply wallpapered over them, ending the magic and trapping the minions. A few arms stuck out of the wall, writhing, which was rather shocking.

A few of the books tumbled out of the shelves, and their pages opened, and monsters wiggled free of the pages, growing bigger and bigger. There were giant rat women, a serpentine and strangely famine basilisk, and a chesty eagle-headed griffin, also female.

Between Dave’s napalm bombs, which fried the books, Kronke’s scythe, which cut through the monsters easily, and Helga’s musket and crowbar, the book monsters weren’t a threat. Even Gwen didn’t use Shrimpie’s antennae cannons because there was simply no need.

Most of the dungeon consisted of hallways connecting a variety of gardens. The third level was far bigger than Inke’s dungeon, but with Helga’s powers, it was easy to dismantle it quickly. There were a few pathetic traps—a rope strung across the hallway that would’ve dropped two giant amphorae on them that Gwen easily dismantled it. They did find one long, circuitous hallway of blank stone, lit with torches, that took them to another circular tiled room that had the vent and the drain. Those rooms were very strange, and again, they heard clanking through the vent and then silence. Amorfo made it clear it wasn’t his doing. They tried to open the vent, but like all the others, it was magically sealed shut.

At last, nearly two hours later, they stood in the last, grand pillared hallway, outside of the Inner Sanctum.

Kronke radiated warmth and light. “This dungeon boring.” He sighed happily. “Not have boring dungeon in a long time. Kinda fun. Good thing other dungeons hard. No, Pinkie, you can’t kill our friends. You got to kill a basilisk girl. Be happy with that.”

Amorfo had been very chatty with them all along, letting them know that he would be getting his lower-case vengeance.

Helga loaded her musket as she stood in front of the final double doors. They were made of beaten copper, and there were faces on either side, one of Amorfo smiling, and one of Amorfo crying.

Gwen grimaced. “Ugh. These are Amorfo Deuce versions of those Aldaleeran theater masks that had been popular on Eritreus a few years back. He’s the worst.”

For once, Amorfo didn’t respond.

Dave glanced around. “His sudden silence is supposed to make us pause. My music and sound design class said that such unexpected silence creates a nice atmospheric dread. Something about using negative space.”

Helga walked Hurricane up to the door. “We should be careful, friends. For Amorfo’s very gaze can turn our skin to stone. His dungeon might nae have been difficult, but by my great aunt’s incontinence, his sanctum might prove deadly.”

Kronke pushed past her. “Okay, Pinkerton, okay!”

Before they could stop him, the troll shoved his way in, already in his Reaper Knight form. The skeletal cloaked troll flew in on the scent of cinnamon rolls. The inner sanctum was marble ledges half-submerged in boiling water with a wide stone circle in the middle. That was where the pedestal stood, a cracked marble pillar. Above it floated Amorfo’s blue core gem. Columns—some thick and whole, others crumbling—were sprinkled around the room, some rising out of the murk, others standing on ledges. Statues were here, like in all the other places, but these statues all had leather quivers stuffed with javelins on their backs. There was no way of knowing if they’d come alive or not. Again, all the statues were of Amorfo Deuce, showing a wide range of emotions.

Gwen sent her blimp in. “I’m going to stay out here because there is no moisturize on the market that can turn stone into smooth, supple skin.”

Cal was too panicked to comment. He shouted at the troll paladin. “Kronke! Get back here!”

Gwen tilted her head. “Oh, the statues are like those tapestries that showed all possible emotions. Remember? Those were also popular on Eritrea. You could get a T-shirt, with the faces, and they had the names of the emotions in all the different languages. I kinda like that idea.”

“Yeah, you freakin’ do!” Amorfo roared. “And yeah, I was giving you the silent treatment. Stay out of my Sanctum of Self-Absorption, or this will happen to you.”

One of the smiling statues came alive, with snake hair standing on end. The stone turned to skin as the real Amorfo lifted his sunglasses. He could hide in the statues? Not fair!

Cal watched as Kronke lost his Pink Reaper form. Both the cloak and scythe vanished in seconds. He was left in his torn clothes and Laplander hat. For a second, Kronke was green, but soon that green turned to gray before hardening into stone.

Cal had to look away. He couldn’t accidentally gaze into the Dudusa’s eyes. But he heard Kronke’s petrified body splash into the water.

The Sanctum of Self-Absorption had claimed its first victim.