Cal was breathing hard against the pain.

Cardiganna Lowhand’s dungeon was tough, without a doubt. But the inner sanctum didn’t look too bad.

Amorfo laughed despite the agony of his many wounds.

Cal had forgotten.

The Dudusa sped through the office space, as drawers exploded around him. Paperclips sliced through his face, and he lost more snake hairs. No one should ever doubt the danger of paperclips.

He sped down a hallway with the shining linoleum and past the custodian’s office.

A huge mop nearly took off his head.

Cal didn’t know, and the Custodian was a fearsome spectacle. He was an enormous man with an enormous belly, dressed in gray, and armed with a killer mop, not unlike Jan the Janitor from the Stain Removers. Ugh, Cal had had enough of mop guys to last him a lifetime.

Amorfo Serpentine Dodged away and pushed through another set of doors, and into the Health Center Hells with the nurse’s room on the right, and the counseling center on the left.

Cal saw the nurse, Wrequel Wretched, and she lived up to her name. Eight feet tall, huge, muscled arms, in a tight nurse’s outfit with the little hat perched on her bleached blonde hair, she had a face fashioned from the nightmares of a million children who were scared of both school and tetanus shots. Her weapons of choice were two huge reflex hammers, though she had a belt of glowing syringes around her waist.

She let out a bellow and smashed through the window, trying to behead Amorfo, but he managed to duck her abnormally large reflex hammer.

The counseling center windows blew outward, cutting Amorfo more with shattered glass. How could the guy still be on his feet?

Courtney Cortisol had neutral brown hair, nicely styled, and she would’ve been beautiful if not for the gleam of pure psychosis in her midnight black eyes. She was also eight feet tall, dressed in business casual suit coat and skirt, and exuded a bleak energy.

Cal felt the darkness and insanity coming off the Crypt Counselor. And yes, the counseling center was a crypt, where skeletons sat in torture chamber chairs that included spikes and rotten leather wrist bindings. There were cobwebs hanging everywhere and a ton of dead bodies. Somehow, after the relatively normal décor of the school, the sudden appearance of the crypt made it doubly horrible.

Amorfo sent.

The skeletal students left the chairs, standing on wobbly bone legs. Most were dressed in ragged plaid shirts, ripped jeans, and filthy sneakers.

After seeing Courtney Cortisol and the Untreated Undead, Cal understood why the breakroom cores had been so psychologically damaged.

But Amorfo wasn’t about to stop because of the trauma emanating from the Crypt Counselor. He sped by her as a few of the skeletal students stumbled out of the counselor’s crypt to block his way.

Amorfo whipped out two javelins, throwing them as he ran. Both of the javelins found homes in the skulls of the skeletons, and they keeled over, just as Amorfo brushed past them and through the doors and down the central aisle of a theater. He stopped when he realized that he’d made it to the inner sanctum, and he was surrounded by more enemies than he could fight.

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On stage were Mean Ghouls in various costumes, putting on a play. The audience—every seat filled—were skeletons, their clothing hanging off their bones in dusty rags.

There, on the stage, was Cardiganna Lowhand, the Sweater Wraith herself. She was wearing her tightest, pinkest pashmina turtleneck, which covered her throat. Was she wearing a potpourri pendant? She had to be, right?

She took off her earrings, and made a long, spiked whip, and cracked it. “Oh, Amorfo, you silly, silly goose. Nice job getting to me. But now you die, right? I mean, you don’t die yet. I’m going to rip apart your guardian form now, and then crack your core later, once we invade your pathetic office dungeon, created by you and the pathetic Audit Team Six.”

From behind him, the doors to the theater slammed open. Silhouetted in a fiendish light stood all of Cardi’s floor bosses, from Tina Fae to the Crypt Counselor. All eight of them were bad, but the Sweater Wraith was worse.

She cracked her spiked earring whip again.

Cal watched in disbelief as figures appeared around Amorfo’s battered, scorched, and nearly destroyed guardian from. The fourth audit team, the Quatros appeared, standing there in their white cloaks and ivory robes. Power emanated from them, though, Cal could tell they didn’t have their core gems.

Quisling spoke in a high-pitched voice that had a bit of lisp to it. “While it has taken us nearly two days, we have broken through the barrier using forbidden magic, known only to our kind. We have come to defend our brethren. If you value your core gem, Cardiganna Lowhand, you shall—”

Carid whipped the head right off of Quisling.

Suzy went to cast a spell, but she suddenly had a mop handle through her heart. She keeled over. A potato blew the arm off another member of the fourth audit team, while the last of the heroic Quatros had his head pulled off by a vicious Nurse Wretched.

The Quatros were gone in seconds. Their guardian forms were gone, but at least their core gems were still alive, wherever they were.

Amorfo glanced around, surprised he was still alive. “Wait. Cardi. You’re under Barb’s aromatherapy spell.” He grinned. “Hey, my dysphasia is gone, and my cool words are back. Rock on.” He then grew serious. “Cardi, listen. Barb is the Vanilla Master, and I don’t know what her Vengeance plan is, but it’s not worth it. Over a thousand worlds will die. Please, listen to me.”

Cardi laughed and floated off the stage. “You silly, silly man. I’m not under Barb’s spell. I saw the writing on the wall. Do you really think I was going to retire from the Department? Do you really think someone as hot as me was ever destined for government work? No. Barb is going to be a god, and I’m going to be like a demi-god. One thousand, two hundred, and seventy-three worlds dying? Oh well. Totes worth it.”

Amorfo went to raise his sunglasses to use his Stone Gaze ability, but he was too late.

Cal watched as her eye shadow leapt off Carid’s face and swept around Amorfo, pinning his arms behind his back. Her lipstick poured off her lips and became a red giant mess of wax that trapped his legs.

Her mascara struck his sunglasses, acting like black liquid knives, pinning the sunglasses to his face. He wouldn’t be able to shake them off.

The blush on her cheeks became giant pink hands that held him still.

Amorfo couldn’t talk. More mascara knives had pinned his lips shut. But he could send Cal a final message.

With a crack of her whip, Cardi took the top off Amorfo’s skull, whipping it clean of snakes. Another crack finished the job.

Cardi laughed, her final words echoing through the room. “Yeah, you losers. If you think the fourth floor is hard. You should see all the other floors. We have fortified every dungeon level, and if you think you can use those ducts again, you’re mistaken. Barb now has enough power to close them down completely. She’s so close to triple S. Yeah, with only the four Celestial Nodes, it’s going to take a bit longer, but oh well. That’s why we haven’t gotten serious about the first node. We don’t really need it. Later, losers. Be cracking your cores soon!”

Cal was left alone in the inner sanctum while the creamed corn fountain gurgled grossly. So that’s why Barb hadn’t thrown her armies at them. She simply didn’t need to. Barb and Cardi, working together, had amassed enough power to keep their sanctums secure indefinitely. There was no hope. Even the Quatros had been taken apart in seconds, and they were tough.

The elven accountant buried his face in his hands.

That was how his team found him, completely depressed.

Then a baby, in a little basket on Amorfo’s desk, started crying.

Gwen squinted and pointed. “Uh, Cal, do you want explain the baby?”