Cal and his team stood in front of the dark doors of DUDE office building as he tried to find the courage to walk inside.

Even Helga wasn’t charging in.

Every so often, Perkle’s idling scooter would stall, and a terrible hush would fall on them. Nothing inside stirred. There was no wind.

“What exactly did you see?” Cal asked the Gadget Gnome.

Before Perkle could answer, Kronke strode forward, summoning the Pink Reaper. He chopped through the webs easily with the semi-sentient weapon, which had lots of bling and gems and the words “Live, Laugh, Love” on the blade.

Kronke burst inside. “Why stop? This where we work. Just webs. Maybe spiders. Spiders okay. Eat mosquitoes. Mosquitoes maybe taste like cookies to spiders. Kronke maybe try.” His voice grew fainter as he walked farther into the darkness.

Helga urged Hurricane forward, but the battle goat shied away, bleating. Helga scowled. “Now, now, ye bothersome animal. There’s naught to be afraid of that we cannae handle.”

The goat let out a long bleat. Helga winced. “Aye, he misses his Spirit Llama sweater. By my uncle’s rheumatoid arthritis, I shouldn’t have taken it off him.”

Perkle still hadn’t found his courage. “The webs weren’t like this before. There were some, but they were by the main staircase. It smelled better. And it wasn’t so hot.”

Cal didn’t like the foul, stiflingly hot air seeping out of the open door, but he hated that eerie quiet more. Something was very wrong in his workplace.

Gwen grabbed Cal. “Kronke is in there alone. Come on, guys. Hurricane, don’t be such a baby goat.”

“He’s nae a baby goat, girlie, and he’s nae far from being a kid. But yer right.” Helga dismounted, grabbed the reins, and gently pulled her battle goat through the door.

Gwen and Cal walked in next.

Gwen was sweating. She had her Roast Beast Fork out, ready to do some forking.

Perkle came in last, and they heard his teeth chattering. “Oh, my gods and gears, but look at this place. Look at it!”

The front lobby and the reception desk were coated in webs, and there was a wretched stink hung in the air. Not quite rot. Not quite office dust. Something in between.

The sound of hissing came from the hallway to the left, which would lead them to the main staircase, the Divine Control Room, and the big filing warehouse. The corridor to the right would take them to the breakroom, the cubicle farm, and the offices of the Department’s management team.

The place was dark except for the scarlet glow of Cal’s staff. And the glittering gems on Kronke’s bejeweled scythe.

Kronke came marching in from the Divine Control Room. That was where the main staircase was. Below was the basement, which was used for storage, and then down another staircase to the subbasement, which included the practice dungeon in Cell 12E.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Kronke then stomped past them without saying a word, heading toward the cubicles and offices. There was an alternate staircase down that way, which descended to the basement but not the subbasement.

Ever since Cal had used his Triple E—Enhanced Equipment Examination—spell on the Pink Reaper, he’d been worried that the magical weapon might change Kronke. Had that happened? Why else had the troll paladin marched by without saying a word?

Gwen called after him. “Hey, big guy, did you find anything?”

“Kronke not find anything! No traps. No spiders!”

Gwen had her wand out. “Right. But why would you think there were traps here? It’s just where we work, right? Sure, sometimes I thought the birthday cake might be poisoned, or some of the meetings felt like they might kill me with boredom, but it’s not like this is a dungeon.”

“Are you sure, Gwenivere?” Helga asked. “It be feeling like a dungeon to me.”

Now that they were inside, Hurricane seemed better. Helga rode her goat down the hallway. Cal and Gwen went next with Perkle following on his scooter, which chugged noisily.

The gnome gulped in a breath. “Oh, Mr. Cal, I went a-looking for Weavelord, for we were to go to the Fiscalia together. But he was down below—in the basement or the subbasement—for some reason. That was where the AT1 were too. Down there. I went to get ‘em, but then the shadows attacked, big bats, and I fought ‘em off, but there were other things coming. I had…I had my Apothos meter, and that’s when I saw the readings go off the charts. And the screams, Mr. Cal, those terrible screams. Could they be dead? They might all be dead. Golly, it would make me sad. Sadder still would be to lose my own sweet gem.”

As a dungeon guardian, Perkle did indeed have a green core gem, and it gleamed through his dirty work shirt, painting the tools hanging off his belt with a verdant light.

“What happened to your Apothos meter?” Cal asked.

“Broke. Bats knocked it out of my hand. That’s when I ran to get you.” Perkle’s engine coughed to a stop, and he used his foot to push himself along. “Looks like I’m out of a steam for now.”

Without the engine running, the silence felt like a different kind of darkness. Webs covered the carpet and hung from the ceiling like curtains.

Kronke cut his way through some of the webs and tore through others.

Cal found himself sweating. “It’s so hot in here. Is the furnace on the fritz?”

“Not likely,” Perkle said in a choked voice. “Normally, we have spells to keep the offices cool. Just checked the magic yesterday. No problems at all.”

Gwen waved a hand in front of her face. “But we do have problems. I’m sweating in places I didn’t think I could sweat from. And that smell. It’s like someone firebombed a sewer.”

Despite the stench, they reached the cubical farm. Their desks were covered in the webs, and the whole place was even hotter. The air didn’t move—it was completely stale and suffocating. Then, a chittering started. Above, in the ceiling tiles, came the sound of something scurrying.

Gwen made a face. “Are those rats with eight legs? Or spiders. Yeah. Probably spiders. My old man must’ve snapped, right? Dave must’ve totally lost it and created a dungeon where there should be just boring accountants and even more boringer reports.”

“Not boring,” Cal corrected. “This does seem like a dungeon. If you take into account the smells, the sounds, the webs.”

Kronke cut his way through the main corridor that cut through the center of the cubicles. “Kronke needs armor. Pink Reaper thinks fight coming. Kronke agree. But who Kronke fight?”

Cal was about to cast his Triple A—Advanced Apothos Analysis—spell when Perkle let out scream.

Perkle—suddenly covered in webs—was being hauled up toward a blank square where the ceiling tiles had been shoved to the side. The Gadget Gnome took out a box cutter which snapped into a four-foot-long blade. In seconds, he’d sliced himself free, but webs shot out and plucked his box cutter out of his hands.

At the same time, some huge worm-shaped thing roared and started bashing its way through the cubicles, splintering the walls, throwing chairs, and wrecking desks. The webs were so thick that it was impossible to see what was coming toward them.

Kronke let out a laugh. “Big monsters fun to fight!”

From above, it started raining giant spiders. The arachnids broke through the ceiling tiles, a ton of legs, big hairy bodies, and long fangs dripping venom.

That was all bad. Even worse? The spiders burst into flames.

Suddenly, Cal and Audit Team Six found themselves in deep, deep trouble, facing more giant flaming spiders than they could fight.