“Was that guy made of rock candy?” Cal asked as he slowly righted himself to keep his head from spinning more violently after the rough portal transfer.

“You didn't know about Caverna? Do you even listen to The Daily Node?” Gwen asked with her hands placed accusingly on her hips. She and the rest of his team seemed fine coming through the portal. Must have been that smell that set Cal’s extra sensitive elven senses off.

“Of course I do,” Cal half lied. He tried to tune in for news, but it was mostly gossip, and any of the really good stories he’d hear from Connie, the Water Cooler dungeon core in the breakroom. She knew everything about everybody.

Gwen shook her head at him. “He managed to shade his excrement with exogenous manifestations so no one knew they weren’t actually rubies until he’d amassed a fortune in trade, left the planet, and left the investors holding nothing but disintegrating red sugar.”

“Red pass poop off like treasure?!” Kronke giggled.

“Despicable,” Helga harrumphed. “Magic that powerful should be used for good.”

“Did him some good,” Gwen offered.

Helga shifted in her saddle. “Ye morals be questionable.”

Gwen jerked a thumb at herself. “Rogue.”

“Yeah, speaking of that,” Cal said and winced slightly. He wasn’t sure he wanted the answer to the question he was about to ask, but as team leader, he had to know what they were in for. “Did you do what I think you did back there?”

“Cal, are you accusing me of something untoward?” She flashed her best innocent smile.

“What Gwen do?” Kronke asked.

“Just business, like the woman said.” Gwen tossed Cal the mudwoman’s coin purse.

He shook his head. “You know those dungeon cores are our only hope of getting off this world?”

“Yes, and as you would point out, they are contractually obligated to do so.”

“Gwen shouldn’t steal,” Kronke said.

“I’d agree with ye, Kronke,” Helga said, “but that mudwoman had it coming.”

No one was going to argue with that, so instead they got to work.

The portal had taken them to the outskirts of a long-abandoned stone village built on large sloping terraces on the side of a mountain. Below them, a treacherous trail switchbacked from the lake far below up through the jungle. It would have taken dungeoneers hours of slogging their way up through the dense vegetation and rocky terrain to reach this point. Cal was glad they’d paid for the portal.

Above them the jagged mountain peak stretched into the purple-gray sky. A few pools of slushy snow, all that was left of the majestic snowcaps, dripped down the rocks and into a crevasse that split the mountain in two all the way down to the village. The wind whipped an eerie moan from the rock corridor.

“Must be in the right place,” Gwen said. “That’s downright ominous.”

“Aye, good ambiance,” Helga said as she dismounted Hurricane. “Abandoned village and howling wind.”

They picked their way through the crumbling stone stairs of the ancient village toward the largest building, which blocked their view of the opening of the crevasse. Built from more imposing stone than the other structures and marked with intricately carved inscriptions, it had to be the village temple. Cal couldn’t read ancient Teeklish, but he assumed the gist of the writing said “Beware, dangerous dungeon this way.”

Roaming the abandoned slopes around them, ghostly llamas floated just above the ground and nosed through grass too rotten to eat. Their once bright wool had dimmed to a dull gray. They almost matched the clouds closing in on the peak, making them harder to pick out against the gray sky.

Hurricane leaped toward them, no doubt thinking he’d finally found some companions who understood his bursts of boundless energy. But they stared at him with empty eyes and floated out of reach.

Hurricane bleated mournfully.

“Ye can’t frolic with the dying,” Helga said.

Kronke rummaged around in a pouch on his belt. He lifted out a cookie and crumbled it. “May the Baker bless you, strange long-neck, sheepy animals.”

The Spirit Llamas bleated bleakly in return.

“I don’t think they eat cookies, big guy,” Gwen said.

“Special Spirit Cookie,” Kronke said. “You wouldn’t like. Oatmeal raisin.”

“Oh, then crumble away. I mean, the raisins lie, Kronke. They pretend to be chocolate chips, but they’re not.”

“Come on, guys,” Cal said. “We can’t help the llamas, but we can get this audit done.” It might be too late to save Tittikaka, but the information they gathered here might open up a whole world of studies into Withering Apocalypses everywhere.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Aye, we shall audit quick as the wind that howls through the mountain!” Helga exclaimed. She tugged Hurricane’s lead and strode through the temple’s archway.

Cal cast his Mood Lighting spell to brighten the gloom inside the temple for his team as they followed Helga in.

Unlike the half-collapsed houses in the village, the entrance hall looked like it had been constructed yesterday. Birds, beasts, and heroic Teeklish warriors were carved into the walls and stacked stone pillars and the reliefs were painted in bright colors that Cal imagined would have matched the vibrant jungle life outside when the world was still full of Apothos and thriving.

Mimi Drybone’s Area of Influence, or AOI, must have reached this far when she was alive. Curious to see what his Improved Generic Audit power would show him as they made their way through the dead dungeon, he cast his Triple A—Advanced Apothos Analysis—spell.

<<<>>>

Triple A Enhanced Initial Results – Room Scan

Room Type: Foyer

Room Name: Temple of Matto Pottatto

Room Purpose: Set the Scene

Room Description: For eons, the Teeklish living in Matto Pottatto enjoyed corn beer, fried potatoes with both ketchup and mayonnaise, and plenty of leisure time to turn stone into art. They slowly migrated from the mountaintop to the jungles below, believing the grass was greener in the warmer climes and leaving their stone sculptures for later generations to rediscover. When Miriam “Mimi” Drybone moved in to protect the Celestial Node at the core of the mountain, she capitalized on the locals’ reverence for their ancestors’ creations and cultivated the mystique of the mountain.

Apothos Usage Effectiveness: Error...

Challenge Level Rating: If you’re an art history major, it’s going to be a challenge to pull yourself away from the Hall of Life and Death—Morta and Vita, chocolate and peanut butter, fish heads and bananas. (It’s a local delicacy and it’s delicious. Don’t knock it till you try it.)

Manifestation Type: NA

<<<>>>

Cal had never gotten an error for Apothos usage. Must be an effect of the dwindling Apothos in the world since the failure of the Heart Dungeon had severed the connection to the Tree of Souls. But at least he could see some information as they made their way down to the inner sanctum for the Omega Audit. That would give him all the information, assuming he could use the crystal and perform the audit. He’d read about it, of course, but reading and doing were two very different things. He’d learned that the hard way before.

At the far end of the room stood another inscribed archway. To either side of it, baskets of shriveled potatoes and moldy corn were stacked. Likely offerings from the locals. Hurricane clopped across the stone floor to sniff at them.

“Hurricane Hoofclop, do nae eat that!” Helga yelled as she charged after him.

Too late. He stuffed his nose into the nearest basket of corn and chomped eagerly.

Cal’s sensitive elven nose picked up the sour mash scent as soon as Hurricane stirred it up. “Kronke, help her get Hurricane away from there. We do not need an inebriated battle goat on this audit.”

Helga was pulling with all her halfling barbarian might on Hurricane’s lead, but when that battle goat wanted something, he could be as stubborn, well, as an old goat. She wasn’t budging him an inch.

Kronke solved the problem like he solved most things—with brute strength. He bent over and swept Hurricane up in his arms.

Hurricane bleated his protests even as he licked the fermented corn off the tip of his nose with his long tongue.

“Where put?” Kronke asked.

“Best carry him on if ye can,” Helga said, nodding through the archway to the hall beyond. “Once he’s got a nose for it, he’ll be loath to give it up till he can’t sniff it out.”

“Kronke carry,” he agreed.

As Kronke stepped past the fermented offerings, Hurricane strained his neck as far down as he could, but all the goat got was a nip of a basket handle. He chewed it disagreeably but didn’t spit it out.

“Sorry,” Kronke told him. “Sometimes stale cookie better than no cookie at all.”

The rest of the team followed Kronke into the hallway. The moaning wind picked up slightly here, ruffling Cal’s nearly platinum hair and chilling him, so he wrapped his robes more tightly around himself. But as soon as he glimpsed the artistry in the Hall of Life and Death, he forgot about the cold. His jaw dropped open at the sheer amount of effort it must have taken the Teeklish to decorate this hallway. The entire central courtyard at DUDE would have fit easily in here with room to spare for even the tallest branches of the BYE portal tree. And the Teeklish had carved and painted every inch of the hallway’s interior, ceiling included, in meticulous detail.

“Now that’s craftmanship,” Helga admired.

“Pretty,” Kronke said.

“The engineering alone.” Gwen stared up in awe. “To curve the arch of the ceiling just so to support its weight on these walls.”

Cal smiled to himself. When Gwen lost herself in her work, she forgot to be sarcastic.

As they marveled at the artwork, a story started to come to life. A legend of a little Teeklish, a small spotted panther, slinking into the cavern to find shelter from a storm. There she befriends a rainbow-colored bird and a red-and-black striped snake, both bird and snake wearing decorative hats. After the storm passes, the three emerge from the mountain to bring peace and prosperity to the land. The Teeklish thrive with healthy crops and happy children. The Spirit Llamas graze over their fields, sharing their bounty and providing transportation for trade. Llama wool is knitted into all manner of hats. Monkeys sing serenades from the trees in harmony with the brightly colored birds, and all seems right with the world.

But as the story continued from one wall to the other, the tone changed. The three friends get separated. The bird flies too far into the heavens and can’t find his way back. The snake dives too deep into the lake and is lost to its darkness. Both lose their hats along the way.

The little Teeklish mourns her friends. She grows old alone and fades into the mists of the jungle. The world falls out of balance. Famine comes to the Teeklish and with it, hunger and the heartache of loss. Death follows, and hats are removed in sorrow.

Cal found himself blinking back tears as he followed the story to its conclusion, but at the end of the hallway, as the two walls and their entangled story met directly overhead, a sliver of light shone down from the open sky above. On a normal day on Tittikaka, that ray of sunshine finding its way through the mountain crevasse would have brought hope to the Teeklish onlooker at the end of this hallway, representing the possibility of ascension to the afterlife. Today though, the dim light from the darkened sky only brought a sense of doom to the tragic end of this world. He hoped it wasn’t also a bad sign for their descent into the dungeon.

Team Six emerged from the Hall of Life and Death in a daze, but they didn’t have time to linger with their thoughts. As they exited the hall, they stepped onto a rock outcropping overlooking the crevasse they’d seen from the village. Up close, the giant split in the mountain dwarfed them, and the howling wind that ripped through it nearly swept them into its vortex.