Cal, safe inside the mysterious ductwork, checked on the first level’s defenses. The army of Mean Ghouls and Gym Taters had made it through the Bowling for Dungeoneers room, and yes, several Mean Ghouls had been squished. But the horde easily swept through Helga’s Rage Cave and into Kronke’s Paper Shredder of Destiny Room. How had they found the secret door so easily? It wasn’t long before they’d sprinted through Filing Cabinet Alley. The teenage girls and potato men with whistles flowed into the Long Hallway.

“We have to hurry!” Cal said.

“You’ll probably need this, Amorfo.” Dave coughed as he handed the Dudusa back his core gem.

Amorfo immediately opened his shirt and stuck it where his belly button should’ve been.

The Spidercrat winced as he swallowed. “End the Meld.”

“Not yet.” Cal glanced around. The vent’s ductwork branched out into three different directions.

Dave coughed more. All of them were smoky and smelled like a flooded dog pound near a church on Catholeeka, a very religious world. “What is this place?”

Perkle motioned to a pair of motorized sleds, steam engines chugging. They had eighteen wheels each, nine on each side, fashioned from any number of parts that the Gadget Gnome had been able to salvage.

Gwen pointed at them. “Nice work, Perkle. Now that’s some next level gadgetry.”

Dave coughed more. He was the shade of a piece of paper. “We have to get to the first floor’s inner sanctum. We need to get to my inner sanctum. Fast. The Dweebers are about to be overrun.”

“Yes, but…” Perkle frowned. “That troll of stone weighs so much! Not sure about the mass, the force, the momentum.”

Cal lifted Kronke and set him on one of the sleds. “Let’s just go. We need to hurry.”

Perkle got on top of Kronke and motioned for them to climb onto the second. “Yes, gosh, hurry we must! Through the HVAK vents. Yes. Old technology. Very inefficient, and it required so many technicians! Many schools taught the mysteries of the inner workings of the HVAK. But it was because it never worked properly that so much schooling was necessary.”

“History…lesson…later,” Dave said through coughing.

Cal sent.

Gwen took the driver’s seat of the second sled and had the rest of them, including Helga and the wounded Hurricane, sit behind her. Amorfo got on last, sunglasses back in place.

Perkle shouted over his shoulder. “Follow me, Miss Gwen. The controls are intuitive, thanks to my superior craftsmanship. I am very proud.”

Perkle shot away down on the ducts.

“Hold on!” Gwen called out.

They went screaming down the ductwork, flashing past any number of vents and branching tunnels.

Cal transferred his conscious back into Dave’s gem, powered by the first Celestial Node.

Centaur masseuses were galloping through the corridors of their dungeon, unchecked. They would be able to help Cardiganna’s minions when they reached the inner sanctum. Speaking of which, the Mean Ghouls and Gym Taters had blasted the Chessboard Chuckles room to pieces. The strange mob then breezed through The Break Room of Utter Despair.

“They’ve breeched the Soul Crusher’s Office,” Cal said in horror.

Using their whistles, the Gym Taters blew the cubicle walls to pieces.

The minion flood then sprinted into the Dweebers.

There was some fighting, sure, but the driders were outnumbered ten to one.

The centaur masseuses galloped into the inner sanctum with howls of victory.

The Dweebers had fallen back to the last cannon, which was near the pedestal. Only three were left, including the assistant manager, who was now fighting with two short swords. With a scream, he went charging toward three of the Gym Taters, entangled in webs.

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Cal was brought back to the sled when Gwen braked, so they could get around a tight curve before sliding into a big vent that pushed them upward in a blast of dusty air. The whole place smelled dusty, but it was a welcome relief after facing Barb’s incense spear.

They then stopped in front of a metal vent, that yes, led into the circular room on the first level. There was the vent on the wall and a drain in the floor. Two doors, across from each other, led to the rest of the dungeon.

They tumbled out and piled into the circular room.

Dave was thrown against the wall. He looked even worse. His skin was white. There were dark circles under his eyes. He was bleeding through his web bandages. Kronke wasn’t there to heal him, but the problem wasn’t his guardian form. No, that he could recreate.

Dave shuddered as his entire flickered. “They’ve made it to my core gem. They hit it once. I don’t have long. Disconnect from me, Cal. End the Meld.”

Cal flashed back to The Soul Crusher’s sanctum, and yes, all the Dweebers were gone, and all he was seeing were the vicious faces of the Mean Ghouls. With some satisfaction, he realized that the assistant manager had wiped out all the Gym Taters.

One of the Ghouls struck the core gem with a Dweeber short sword.

Dave’s flickered again as cracks of light appeared on his skin.

Cal pulled up the menu.

<<<>>>

Basic Dungeon Meld Options: Would you like to end your connection with Weavelord? Y/N?

<<<>>>

This time, heart heavy, Cal chose Y. But he could still feel the connection. Why?

Helga sat with them while Perkle and Amorfo worked to haul Kronke’s stone body off the sled along with the wounded battle goat. Perkle and Amorfo then crawled back into the ductwork, probably to gather up some supplies.

For the moment, it was only Team Six and the former Weavelord in the circular room.

The halfling nodded grimly, “We’ll get them, Dave, if we can. If we can.”

Cal felt the tears in his eyes. No. This couldn’t be happening.

He tried to end the Meld again, but again, he failed. Part of him didn’t want to focus on that, not with what was happening to his once boss and now friend.

Dave’s body went transparent again as even more lines of light crisscrossed his skin. “Only one more hit.”

Cal felt like someone had punched him in the gut. No, that would’ve felt better than what he was feeling.

Gwen grabbed her father’s hand. “Wait. Dad. Can’t you create another guardian form? Or generate more minions? This can’t be the end.”

Dave smiled at his daughter. “I used every bit of Apothos I had to keep Barb and her minions back. To save you all. Ha. I did my bit. Maybe now you can forgive your old man.”

Tears tracked down Gwen face. “No, Dad, we can’t give up. I mean, we saved Fidotopia and Tittikaka. We can save you.”

He shook his head. “Not this time. You all did so well. I never wrote you up because I believed in you. And yeah, I hired you all because then I could be close to you, Gwen. I wanted things to be different between us, but my anger always messed things up. But please, forgive me. I’m so sorry I couldn’t be a father to you.”

Gwen choked back a sob. “Yeah, Dad. I can forgive you. Just don’t die on me. Then I’ll never forgive you.”

“Too late, Gwenivere. I love you, and I’m sorry I didn’t always show it.” He chuckled. “And here I thought I would save the multiverse, but no, in the final analysis, all I had to save was you. Because you’re just as precious as the Tree of Souls. You and Team Six…you’re going to do more to protect the Tree than I ever could.”

There was another flicker, and Dave turned into pure light. Then he was gone, except for his magic items: a red tie, two magical pairs of sunglasses, the noisy rock polisher, and the last Blackberry. It lay on the ground like sad relics.

Cardi’s minions had reclaimed the first level’s Celestial Node. All of Team Six’s dungeon had failed.

Cal felt Dave’s Matrix fade away, returning to the Tree of Souls, and he felt that emptiness though another part of him still felt connected to the Dungeon Meld.

He reached out again.

Nothing answered, just as Gwen was left holding nothing. Tears slid down her face.

Cal felt his throat close with emotion. He’d felt Dave holding his daughter when she was first born. There had been so much love there, and though he’d given up his role as a father to become a dungeon core, that love had never died. That was why Cal and his team had been hired. So Dave could be close to his daughter.

Cal closed his eyes. He couldn’t believe Weavelord was gone.

Gwen chuckled unexpectantly. “At least he’ll never yell at us again. Or throw us under the bus. Or remind us that we used to be dungeoneers.” She tried to laugh, clinging to her sarcasm, but then her laughter turned into sobs as she cried her heart out.

Cal took her hand, and then noticed something. The vent in the wall was gone, replaced by tile. Both doors were also gone. They were trapped in the circular room. How could that have happened?

Because the dungeon had a new dungeon lord. Barbara Starmyst.

Her voice filled the air around them. “Wow, I said I was going to kill Weavelord a million times, when he was writing us up for whatever, or yelling at us, or not reading our TAP reports. We spent a lot of time on our TAP reports, or at least Amorfo did, but that stupid spiderbutt hardly ever glanced at them. Well, he’s gone. Kinda sad.” Her sweet voice turned sour. “This wouldn’t have happened, Cal, if you and your dumb team of ex-raiders hadn’t butted in. Everything was going fine! Swell! Wonderful. I was going to get my Vengeance! Guess I still can. Only the body count is going to be a bit higher. How does it feel being trapped?”

At least Cal was trapped with his team—a weeping rogue, a sad halfling, a wounded goat, and a stone troll. Like before, Perkle had escaped somehow, along with Amorfo.

Ji-Soo then added to their troubles. Her voice exploded everywhere around them. There wasn’t going to be a discussion. This was a dungeon wide announcement. “Sorry, everyone, but we’re going on with plan A. I’m pretty sure you lost control of all the Nodes. Wow, that happened fast, but the energy readings are back to how they were last night when all of this trouble began. Again, super sorry. Super unfortunate. But we’re going to be NUKEing you in three, two, one…”

Barb had gone mysteriously quiet.

Cal squeezed his eyes shut and then felt Gwen pull herself close to him. She put her head on his chest as they clung to each other and waited for the end of things.

They’d lost and lost big.

Well, at least they’d be seeing Dave again in the Tree of Souls.