Barbara Starmyst sat in her inner sanctum on the fifth level of her DUDE office dungeons, trying to find some inner peace. Her meditation fountain wasn’t helping—the trickling water was inexplicably annoying. Her Zen garden wasn’t helping either because every line she raked didn’t seem straight enough. Her miniature bonsai tree garden seemed a bit too ragged, and worst of all, every scent she created came off imperfectly if not downright cloying.

The only thing that calmed her was watching the tiny silver balls clack back and forth on her Newton’s Cradle Pendulum Desk Toy.

Weavelord had suggested she get the desk toy when her team kept getting into trouble. They were mavericks. They didn’t have to play by the rules. They shot first and asked questions later. They were the best of the best, so they didn’t have to follow the rules like the rest.

When were their TAP reports due?

When they freakin’ decided to turn them…that’s when.

Barb hated that her plan wasn’t being executed perfectly. It was going well, mind you, just not perfectly. She would’ve loved to see the look on Ji-Soo’s smug face when she realized the NUKE had helped Barb!

The problem was Audit Team Six, and they shouldn’t have been a problem at all. They weren’t even dungeon cores! They were loser raiders who kept getting lucky. It wasn’t fair!

Deisel came forward. He spoke in a thick accent behind his overly large moustache which matched his overly large muscles. “Can I rub your chakra points, mistress?”

“It’s master. I’m the Vanilla Master, Deisel, and soon I’ll be the Vanilla God. And no, you can’t rub my chakra points. I just need to find the right scent to soothe me.”

Dietrich, another centaur masseuse or taurseuse, clip-clopped across the wooden pathways over the calm waters. There were green fronds all around, and no, there weren’t any of those annoying HVAK ducts anywhere near her inner sanctum. She’d made sure of it.

As for those weird circular tiled rooms on every level? She’d squeezed them closed. But the HVAK ducts themselves? Those were tricky.

They were being fueled by some long-lost dungeon core, which like the breakroom, had probably found itself cracked and near death.

Dietrich approached the pedestal, which was Barb’s favorite vibrating massage chair. Above her floated her core gem. At the moment, she was channeling the Apothos from over a thousand words into her matrix, and physically, it felt good. The relaxing “magic fingers” were just an added bonus.

Her mind, though, was in such turmoil.

Dietrich nodded. “Yes. A very specific scent would soothe you. How about root beer float in August at a carnival near a cotton candy machine and a roasted peanut cart. There is a happy ocean nearby, so you smell also smell salt and coconut sunscreen.”

Being the master of aromatherapy, Barbara brought forth the scent, and yes, it was nice. She’d visited the beachside carnivals on Plainsmeep with her parents as a young girl. Her mother insisted she pose on the beach because it was very cinematic. Her mother made sure that Barb was perfect, followed every rule and looked proper for all to see.

Barbara Starmyst hadn’t been Barb back then. She’s been Princess Persephone Flowers, and the name might be cute, but the reality of her life was anything but. She had to dot every “I” and cross every “T.” It had been beyond her endurance, and so, when she found that she could escape by dying and being reincarnated as a dungeon core, she’d jumped at the chance.

Persephone Flowers—now Barbara Starmyst—had always been so bright and inquisitive, and she knew how to study and excel. It was easy to find the right reaping dungeon, and she’d gone in, helped to defend it with perfection and precision, and then got recruited by a recruiting dungeon core guild that soon went out of business. The dungeon core guilds couldn’t compete with the academy system nor the solitary recruiters like Johnny Applebottom. Barbara, though, would always be grateful for the guild that had found her.

Four years at the Shadowcroft Academy for Dungeons, a decade of post-graduate work at Nightfall University, and then she went out to do the actual work of defending dungeons, but her eyes had always been on the Department of Universal Dungeon Efficiency from the very start. It was more social than your standard Celestial Node protection work, and it was a pathway onto the Council of Dungeons, and more power, political power. As for her personal power, Barb assumed she’d keep ascending because her meditation techniques were amazing, she had a special incense to improve her core, and there were several scents that she knew helped in cultivation, though the research didn’t confirm her theories.

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But of course, the dungeon university system didn’t want to recognize the power of her aromatherapies. If students could just find the right odors to improve their cultivation, then they wouldn’t need to go to school.

Barbara had fantasized about opening up her own aromatherapy academy, but then she found herself too busy to pursue her odiferous passions. She had this dumb day job she had to suffer through, which was so dull. Working with Weavelord was like working for her mother. There was no room to be creative!

And when she was creative, she got in trouble. Not only with the Department, but with her team. Amorfo was so full of himself, Inke was weird, and Cardi could be understanding, when she wasn’t worrying about how she looked, what she smelled like, and if the Department really valued her. Cardi was as self-absorbed as Amorfo, and that was saying something.

Then Barbara discovered the parallelograms. And everything in her life changed forever.

She saw a way out. She saw she could be more than just be an accountant, working for DUDE and redecorating her apartment for the umpteenth time.

No. Barbara could become a god. And she could get her Vengeance, not just on Weavelord—which she’d done by cracking his core—but on the entire upper management. For what they did to her. For what they all did to her!

Barbara jerked forward and her hooves clattered onto the polished wooden planks on the platform of her inner sanctum. Even without sitting on the massage chair, her core gem could drink in the Apothos pouring into the five Celestial Nodes, the three Omega Audit Crystals daisy-chained by Barb’s Remote Odor Control, the one still run by Cardi, and the one that Barb herself controlled. She’d reclaimed all five Nodes. Now, she simply had to protect them with dungeons. Good thing she’d spent most of her adult life dungeoning.

Even though Cardi was so self-absorbed, Barb was still grateful for her. She was the closest thing to a friend Barb had at her job, which made her feel sad. But soon, it wouldn’t matter. Already Barb was S-Class, with a variety of minions, traps, and talents she could use to protect her five inner sanctums. When she ascended to Triple S, she’d be unstoppable.

“Is this thing working?” Cardi’s voice came out of a scented candle, smelling like her perfume. “Hey, Vanilla Master, can you, like, hear me?”

“Yes, sweetie, I can,” Barbara said. She snapped her fingers. Deisel and Dietrich came over, one massaging her human shoulders, the other massaging her equine flanks. “Just been thinking about you, Cardi. Are you ready to defend what we fought so hard to retake?”

“Sure am, VM,” the Sweater Wraith replied. “Your candle phone is working so well. The Department is so stupid for pushing those terrible Blackberries. They suck so bad. Everyone should listen to you because you’re just the smartest and the best.”

Both laughed until they were giggling. The sound of her friend’s voice made Barb feel worlds better.

Cardi finished laughing first, which annoyed Barb. She should’ve waited for her to finish first. Barb had wanted to laugh more. Laughter was such good medicine! She had so much to be grateful for! She felt a little bad for killing Weavelord, but she couldn’t focus on the negative. Only positive thoughts!

Her taurseuses were doing their best to rub the tension out, but she suddenly found their touch annoying. She walked away from them. Both of the centaurs drew back. They were her boss minions, her beloved, and yet, they could be so clingy sometimes.

“Okay, Cardi, I have the third level locked down with my minions, and you have the second. You also took the first level, thank you for that, and sorry you had to be the one to crack Weavelord’s core.”

“Oh well,” Cardi returned. “To make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs. Am I wrong? No, no I’m not wrong. Just like what we learned at Shadowcroft. Survival of the fittest. Besides, you need your Vengeance, and we need to protect the Tree of Souls. Duh. Weavelord was fine, but in most ways, he also sucked. So no big whoop.”

Barb retrieved her incense spear from a rack, shook it around, and got some good Catholeeka incense burning. She then shook her mane and felt better. “We need to secure that first floor. Sorry, but I needed my taurseuses back on the bottom level, but I’ll send a few perfume elementals up. At this stage, it’s a little under protected, but we can’t let it fall. Do you have some other minions to spare?”

Cardi laughed. “I totally do. It’s super awesome up there, Barb, like super awesome. In the inner sanctum, I went with a cafeteria theme. I have so much power, I almost don’t know what to do with it all! Mean Ghouls, Gym Taters, Tater Tot Thugs, the whole deal. But a few of your elementals would be great, I guess. Whatever. I can put them in alcoves. So, you know, we stay on theme. Your perfume elementals are my favorite of your minions.”

Barb didn’t like how passive aggressive Cardi was being, so the aromatherapist reminded her of her place. “And you’re my favorite minion, Cardi. I’m so glad you’re working for me and helping me be powerful. I’m almost up to Triple S-Class. In the resulting explosion, when I get my Vengeance, we’ll walk away and take some time off on Sangretta. Then? Project Aroma.”

Cardi laughed. “Project Aroma, VM, you bet! First the Vengeance, then Project Aroma to save the Tree of Souls! Yay!”

Barbara sighed with contentment. She made her way back to her massage chair and sat down, with her legs under her and her side resting against the backrest. She turned off the magic fingers.

She was feeling at peace again. Yes. Everything was coming together. She’d have to murder just a tiny bit more, just a few more dungeon cores, but it wasn’t like they’d die forever. They’d rejoin the Tree of Souls, and it would all be fine. As for the one thousand, two hundred, and seventy-three? Most likely, they would be fine. If they weren’t, oh well, there were a ton of other worlds.

First the Vengeance. Then Project Aroma. With all the worlds she’d save by changing the nature of reality, more murder would fine.

What was a tiny bit of murder between friends?

Now, about that HVAK ductwork. If she could create Celestial Nodes, she could destroy that old air-conditioning system, one duct at a time.