The hallway to the inner sanctum was a wide, tiled hallway, with water trickling down from tiny little fountains and into drains next to miniature Kneeponn bonsai tree gardens and relaxing sand trays. Soft music from stringed musical instruments purred from unseen audio crystals, and the hallway smelled like a potpourri of soothing scents.

Given the nature of their situation, Cal found it all awful and he was immediately on edge. He wasn’t going to be lured into a false sense of security. And then a body was thrown into the room, smashing through a fountain, and ripping through the bonsai tree gardens, sending sand flying.

The body leapt up, a shadowy, perfume scented copy of Barb, that hissed at them, and then went thundering back into the room with its incense spear lowered like a lance. Catholeeka incense trailed after her.

Gwen leapt away from Cal. “That’s my cue. Wish me luck.”

She then went soaring into the room on her wings, with her spoons ready. A second later, they heard the clatter of silverware on the floor.

Helga nodded and laughed. “Aye, Calcannis. Now is the time to screw our courage to the sticking point. For Hurricane! For Karl! For Weavelord!”

She then let out a roar, non-magical in nature, and went storming into the room.

Cal followed but the second he crossed into the threshold of the room, which was remarkably like the first room in the dungeon. There were palm fronds hanging over peaceful waters, crisscrossed with wooden walkways.

There, in the center of all the wooden walkways, was a wooden platform and a central cushy massage chair, painted with a light. Sitting around the chair were all the same mediation stuff from the hallway, fountains, sand gardens, bonsai trees, and sticks of incense burning there, as well as round orbs, leaking sweet smelling mist into the air. Each of those orbs were powered by the parallelograms, the tchotchkes from the mysterious corner office.

But there, above the chair, was the biggest tchotchke of all—the tchotchke to rule all tchotchkes—floating above Barb’s gleaming core gem.

Cal blinked. Wait. Barb must’ve used the parallelogram, the biggest and most powerful of the tchotchkes, to create the Celestial Nodes. How she could daisy chain them together, Cal didn’t know, but he figured if he destroyed that massive parallelogram, he could disrupt all the Nodes. Would they explode? Well, an explosion was likely anyway, if Barb succeeded. Or there might be a creamed corn Armageddon once Amorfo’s dungeon flooded completely.

Barb’s inner sanctum should’ve been a peaceful place of quiet meditation and sweet-smelling aromatherapy, but no, it was a battlefield for dozens of Barbs and dozens of the Pinkerton Kronkes. Somehow, Pinkerton had the power to make copies of its Reaper Knight form. It was pink warriors versus black warriors in a battle royale.

And when one Reaper Knight was destroyed, the master Pinkerton shimmered, and a new Knight was born. But Barb didn’t just have her scented copies of herself, there were more of her killer koi leaping out, snapping up Pinkertons, and biting them in half.

Until the master Pinkerton called down the scythe rain, chopping through the koi like a Kneeponn sushi chef. Shadow smoke Barbs disappeared but new smoke Barbs appeared, all wielding the incense spear, that they used to slay the various Pinkertons.

Cal didn’t feel it when the Barb’s smoke selves died, but when Pinkerton killed a Koi, Cal somehow got Apothos, not Morta, but Umbra, the darker of his Apothine energies. But in the end, he could process it.

He felt the power fill his Funk Soul. It was impossible. He’d lost connection to Amorfo, and he shouldn’t have any connection to Kronke’s Funk Soul. Wait. It had to be through the Pink Reaper—him channeling his Apothos into it must’ve created some kind of connection.

What was Cal going to do with this newfound power? He had no idea. But it was enough that he could turn on his Off the Books ability. He vanished into a shadow and started running around the perimeter, mapping out a way to get to the massage chair.

Abruptly, he got a message from his benefactor.

<<<>>>

Ultra Audit Tipline Message

Foe Type: Villainous Rogue Dungeon

Foe Name: Barbara Starmyst (Also known as Princess Persephone Flowers)

Foe Species: Midnight Musk Centaur

Forecasted Foe Level: S-Class, Rank 1, with a margin of error of two to three levels.

Potential Foe Abilities:

* Incense Spear

* Fragrance Gate

* Aroma Form

* Summon Temp

* Makes Scents

* Scent Spikes

* Scent Shadows

* Stink Stop

* Odor Cage

* Perfume of Persuasion

* Potpourri Pendant

* Stank Minions

* Memory Musk

* Horsebutt

Suggested Foe Elimination Tactic: Die, parallelogram, die. Or crack Barb’s core. Either one will improve your situation dramatically.

Encouraging Note: While the Quatros didn’t save the day, they weren’t villains either. Good news bad news situation. They did, however, give me some ideas on how to possibly get inside the blockade to help, so you might be seeing me soon. There was a reason she was asking about me.

<<<>>>

Wait! The mysterious executive was behind his strange, at times mildly amusing messages? Cal so wanted to meet this executive, but first he had to survive the siege. At least he now had some of the names for Barb’s abilities, as well as a clear objective. Destroy the parallelogram. It was the source of the artificial Celestial Nodes. Or crack Barb’s core. Either one would end the fight.

With his Spectacles of Awareness, Cal saw Gwen skulking in a corner, eyes on Barb’s core gem above the central massage chair. She was trying to find a clear path. As was Cal.

Meanwhile, Helga raced across the wooden path ducking koi and Barb’s Scent Shadows. With her musket on her shoulder, she gripped her two-handed crowbar in both hands and triggered her last remaining Destructive Charge. She blurred forward.

Barb was there, on the path, in front of the central massage chair. She was smaller than her Scent Shadows, but far tougher.

Before Helga could hit her, Barb sprouted spikes from every part of her, and Helga ran into one, impaling herself. Barb spun and kicked Helga, who went flying into the still waters.

Gwen swung down, hurling spoons into Barb’s face, which distracted the little centaur for a minute. It was long enough for Gwen to scoop up Helga from the waters.

Barb pointed her incense spear and hit Gwen with a green cloud of some kind of vapor. Gwen coughed, her eyes fluttered, and then she fell to the wooden planks Along with Helga. That had to be Barb’s Stink Stop ability. Both of Cal’s teammates were out of the fight, and Helga could very well be bleeding to death.

Pinkerton had engaged Barb’s minions, but the pink entity was nowhere near as powerful as Barb. As an S-Class entity, she was basically a demi-god aromatherapist, and she had the powers to prove it.

Cal saw that the Ruby Staff had powered enough to have a single charge, not for telekinesis, but for one last Staff Smack.

Cal had zero chance of facing Barb one on one.

More scythes rained down. More koi were hacked up, and the place smelled like fish for a minute, then it smelled like incense, then it stank of something worse. Was that Barb’s Horsebutt ability? It seemed to sap some of his spirit out of him.

Cal had to focus.

He had one shot.

He took off running, racing across the boards. He jumped off a walkway, onto a dead giant koi, and then onto another walkway, and then onto the central platform. He raised his staff to completely smash Barb’s core gem.

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Only his staff went right through the core gem, and it flickered, while the parallelogram glowed brighter, matched by the glow of Barb’s core gem sitting in her belly, which glowed under her peasant blouse.

Cal then inhaled the scent of fresh ink on paper, and not just any paper, but the ledgers he’d used to track the accounts of the Illudere Family Singers. That and his brother Douchellis’s cologne, his sister Tramina’s hairspray, and the stage makeup his siblings wore.

All the smells took him back, and he blinked, and he was sitting at a tiny desk, in an inn near the Crabapple Commons, a tiny, terrible venue that had hardly paid them a dime. But it was the town where Cal had realized he was never going up on stage, that he wasn’t handsome enough, and he had zero musical talent.

He’d do the books, all the while being ridiculed.

He turned to see Barb there in the inn’s room, in her peasant blouse and jaunty cape and flowers in her hair. She was the source of all the smells, and Cal knew it was magic, but a part of him thought that maybe she had teleported him back in time. He’d be stuck there. He’d have to start all over at the Department of Universal Dungeon Efficiency. The despair felt crushing.

Barb hooves clattered on the dirty wooden floor even as more Catholeeka incense rose from her spear. “Did you really think you could beat me, Cal? I mean, sure, I always came across a little flakey, I get that. You start talking aroma art, and yeah, everyone thinks you’re the one who is crazy. But if I were like a painter, or a writer, everyone would be fine with it. My aroma art is real, Cal, and my canvas is the nostril. Why didn’t anyone take me seriously?”

Cal had no idea what she was talking about it.

She saw his confusion. “It doesn’t matter. Sorry. You’re all going to die, but you knew that was the likely outcome, right? Yeah, your efforts were heroic, blah, blah, blah. Sure. Bad you can’t blame me. You were a dungeoneer. You killed worlds. I’m just taking my turn, and we don’t know those worlds will die. Anyway, I better hurry. Cardi is not liking the creamed corn thing. Really, Cal. I thought you had more class than that.”

Cal was having trouble remembering what she was talking about. He’d always kinda liked creamed corn, as a rule, and the Crabapple Commons had served it up with a nice roasted chicken. Very delicious.

Creamed corn. Wait.

At the Crabapple Commons, they’d had a hard time getting their tour wagon down the street, and parking was nearly impossible. They’d found stables for their horses, but the costs were enormous. Cal, to save money, had found a farmer to let them park on his property. That hadn’t gone well with the local magistrate, who wanted the stable money.

What did this have to do with anything?

Cal reached into the pocket of his suit and pulled out the file on Barb. He opened the folder. “I’m not really here, am I?”

“No, genius. This is my Memory Musk. Smell is super powerful when it comes to memories. Smell the right scent, and uh, yeah, you’re transported. Hold on. I have to just kill the big dumb paladin. Don’t you have to be smart to be a paladin?”

Cal shook his head. “You need wisdom.”

“Well, wise or not, Kronke is an idiot. Watch.”

For a second, the inn was gone, and Cal was back in Barb’s inner sanctum, watching as Barb created a spiked cage out of the smoke from her incense spear. She then hurled that across the room, snapping the cage around Pinkerton, and spearing the troll within with all the spikes. All the other Reaper Knights vanished.

Barb giggled a little. “That’s my Odor Cage and Scent Spikes combo. Pretty cool, right? You don’t need to answer. I don’t need outside validation.”

Cal felt his heart drop. No way could Kronke survive all those spikes. He was dead. The Pink Reaper would have to find a new master. But the Killer Koi were all dead as well, and Cal felt the power in his core.

But what could he do with that Apothos?

Another Dharmic Direction? Even if he could channel the Apothos into the Ruby Staff, he wasn’t going to be able to defeat Barb. Nope. He had to get clever. And fast.

Helga lay in a widening pool of blood, and Kronke wasn’t around to heal her.

The inner sanctum faded away. Cal was back at the desk, smelling the ledger, the ink, the lingering scents of his family’s stage smells. What was he doing?

He’d remembered the parking troubles they’d had in the Crabapple Commons. Why exactly? It came to him instantly because while he might have a very plain face, he had a very sharp mind.

He returned to the file. “Look, Barb. This was unfair.” He showed her the parking ticket. “Remember this? You had that cart full of your aromatherapy stuff, and yes, you parked out front, and that should’ve been fine. I’m sorry. The Department really messed up. I can see why you’re angry.”

Barb tilted her head. “You agree with me?”

Cal nodded. “I completely agree with you. You should’ve had two hours. The signage was clear. But you got a ticket after twenty minutes.”

“It wasn’t just that—”

Cal cut her off. “It wasn’t just the parking ticket. You never got to sell your aroma art in your tent. People complained about the smells, and you were asked to leave, and it wasn’t fair. You have a right to be upset.” He paused dramatically, which for him was very difficult because he didn’t like drama. “Weavelord is dead now, so if you wanted revenge, you got it.”

Barb blinked. “I did, didn’t I? You understand.”

Cal knew he had to choose his next wors oh so carefully. “I would want vengeance as well. For that. Believe me, we had parking issues all the time when the Illudere Family Singers were on tour. But is this really worth killing one thousand two hundred and seventy-three worlds over? But the Vengeance thing was only part of it. The other part was your art.”

Barb’s eyes were gleaming with tears. “Yes. You get it. My aroma art. I wanted to open a gallery, sell different sensory experiences, but everyone just laughed at me. Well, with the power of a god, they wouldn’t laugh. Billions would die, sure, but my dream would come true. That’s Project Aroma. I wanted to work on my aromatherapy full-time. That’s what I’ve been working towards while I was doing all those audits. I can, once I become a god.”

Barbara Starmyst was insane. Yet, Cal knew, he had to play along. “Hey, Barb, what if I helped you? I did the books for my family, for their music business, and running an aromatherapy art gallery wouldn’t be all that different.”

Barb was staring at him intently. She then smiled. “You don’t understand. When I become a god, I won’t need an accountant, Cal. I’ll be a god. Duh!”

“Wait, Barb! Just wait!” Cal needed to keep Barb talking. For one, it stopped her from murdering his body outside the memory where he found himself. For another? And maybe—just maybe—it would give the Divine Auditor time to figure out how to penetrate Barb’s hijacked lockdown magic. “Barb, since you had those Potpourri Pendants, which were super powerful, why didn’t you use them on me or my team?”

She frowned. “If you must know, the pendants take a long time and have to be crafted specifically for each person. Now, the Perfume of Persuasion, I would’ve used a lot more, but you have your dumb troll and his cookie powers, or whatever. And then Helga goes and gets her scream thing, and in the end, it wasn’t worth it.” Barb looked at him suspiciously. “Hey, are you trying to delay me for some reason? Because I was trying to delay you—"

A second later, Cal was yanked from the inn back into the inner sanctum deep underneath DUDE’s offices.

Pinkerton roared as it destroyed the Odor Cage, sending metal flying. Her roar was pure Pinkerton. “I will murder you all. All of you! I will suck the soul of the universe dry. But first, I will end the misery of the wounded halfling and the sarcastic thief and use their souls to kill the stinky pony woman!”

“Pony woman?” Barb screamed. “I’m an aroma artist, and you should be dead!”

“Troll regeneration powered by evil! Pure evil!” Pinkerton raised her scythe to kill Gwen and Helga. “With great evil comes great power!”

Only, at the last minute, the pink skeletal face turned green, and happy, and Kronke was there, in the pink cloak, holding the scythe, grinning. “Kronke think with great evil come lots of yelling. Kronke no want power. Or murder. Kronke only want cookie. By the Baker, Cal, can we be done?”

Cal felt the tears in his eyes.

Kronke was a saint.

He radiated out his Auras of Light, Courage, and Healing. Helga let out a groan as Gwen got to her feet.

But Barb’s Scent Shadows were all around them.

Kronke gave the elven accountant a grin. “You no answer Cal. Can we be done?”

Cal nodded. “Yeah. I’d like to be done. I’m very tired, but I don’t understand….”

Kronke was getting brighter and brighter while the Pink Reaper shrank, becoming smaller, smaller, smaller, and yes, Cal was drinking it all into his Funk Soul, and he knew he was ascending. Right up to A-Class. If might be temporary, but it might not be.

There was so much Apothos being drained from the worlds, and it was all around them, and Cal knew that he was getting a vast amount of it.

Kronke chuckled. “Weapon thinks it own Kronke. But Kronke own weapon. And Kronke tired of it now.”

Pinkerton screamed, “No! It can’t be! A saint? Really? What were the odds?”

Cal knew the answer to that one. “Sixty forty.”

The scythe then exploded. Pieces of metal, wood, and several gems splashed down into the water. For a second, the words, “Lived, Laughed, Loved” glittered like stars in a night sky. Then they faded.

Kronke put a finger to his chin, deep in thought. “Words ironic. ‘Died,’ ‘Screamed,’ ‘Hated’ would be better. But it gone now. Kronke and Cal needed all Apothos back.”

The Pink Reaper was gone, Helga and Gwen were healed and full of power.

As for Cal? He’d never felt more powerful.

He turned, and this time, he didn’t smash the gem, which was a false gem, a decoy, but it wasn’t a tenth as powerful as the parallelogram underneath.

Cal smashed his staff into the parallelogram and knocked it off the pedestal. It went flying through the air, its light fading. When Kronke caught it, the tchotchke was blackened and useless. It had been drained of power. However, the Celestial Nodes were still active. The threat wasn’t over yet.

The glowing false gem core winked off, and the place would’ve been plunged into darkness if there hadn’t been all the scented candles.

Barb pulled her real gem core out of her blouse and tossed it at the pedestal, trying to take it over, but a spoon flew from Gwen’s hand.

“Uh, no, Barb,” the rogue called out. “Like Kronke said. We want to be done.”

The gem core was sent flying right into Cal’s hand. He caught it in spite of himself because Cal had zero athletic ability.

Barb stormed forward, grabbing at his hands, and suddenly, he was wrestling with the tiny centaur to gain control of the core gem. Around them crackled the Apothos of a thousand worlds hanging in the balance. Cal knew for a fact that they would all die if Barb retrieved her gem.

He’d delayed her by talking about her secret file, which allowed time for Kronke to regenerate, but Barb had managed to come right up to the precipice of becoming a god.

Lucky, she wasn’t a god.

Cal threw a pie graph right in her face. Neither cherries, apples, nor whipped cream was involved—no, it was just his Beguiling Data Visualization, and she stopped, her mouth falling open. “Wow, I didn’t realize that 11% of the Apothos I stole was Fulgur. Who knew? That’s why Deitrich’s and Deisel’s tingler rods were so powerful.”

It was easy to shove the aromatherapist back and snatch her gem away.

Cal didn’t want to kill anyone, but there was no stopping Barb. He was about to throw her core gem to the ground when time stopped. Again. This wasn’t Barb’s doing. This was something else.

Shoes clacked on the wooden walkway as a familiar face walked into the room. The man in the brown suit. And if Cal wasn’t mistake, it was Bonaventure Brown, the Divine Auditor himself.