“Haste be our mistress!” Helga exclaimed. She ran to the ladder leading down to level two, and Hurricane, sensing an adventure ahead, clopped after her and hopped down the rungs one sure-footed hoof at a time.

Kronke put his scythe away and followed. Cal was glad to see the bounce back in the paladin’s step. They were going to need their tank in top condition for this.

“Maybe we should have stuck with filing.” Gwen patted Cal on the shoulder and headed down the ladder.

As Cal climbed down after her, he nearly got his robe twisted up in a tangle of brittle, strangely pocked vines that had been climbing up the wall. He could see from his Triple A spell that these had been Carnivorous Vines. That explained all the teeth scattered on the floor below. Either the last raiders had defanged the vines, or the teeth had fallen out like an old man’s gums receding as the vines dried out with the death of the dungeon.

On the opposite side of the stone chamber, the vines had been hacked away from the door, but just above it, one lone leaf still clung to the stone. It was hard to tell in the dim light, but Cal thought it looked dark green instead of brown.

That shouldn’t have been possible. All Apothos manifestations and minions would have disappeared with Mimi, leaving only their bodies or husks behind when she couldn’t reabsorb them. Cal focused his attention on the vine description from his Triple A spell.

<<<>>>

Minion Description:

* Carnivorous Vines—Hungry for dungeoneers, these vines take a bite out of every raider and leave more than a nasty scar. Each tooth carries a dose of pain-inducing venom.

<<<>>>

Interesting. In the Corridor of Stone Critters, the scan had given him an NA for minions because the dungeon was dead. Was this minion still alive? If just barely clinging to the last bit of Apothos in the dungeon? Could this be the trickle of Apothos Cal had seen with Perkle and Weavelord?

“You coming, Cal?” Gwen asked.

The rest of his team was already into the next room and halfway across it.

“Yeah, sorry. Just sad to see what happens when we fail.”

“We not fail,” Kronke said.

“Yet,” Gwen added as Cal caught up to them.

Ignoring the vote of nonconfidence, he quickly took in the room as they passed through it. Scarab warrior corpses littered the floor. A smattering of their detached mandibles and spiked legs had been flung to the far corners. Cal imagined his oldest brother, Douchellis the Kitchen Telekinetic, throwing the weight of his pots and pans around this room, smashing in the carapaces of the scarabs and loving every minute of it. The thought of it made Cal sick.

He hurried on with his team to the edge of the room, which opened to the seemingly bottomless Howling Chasm. Careful not to step too close to the edge, Cal peeked past Gwen. At her feet, a rope net hung from stakes that had been pounded into the stone floor. The same dead Carnivorous Vines from the first room had interwoven themselves with the net.

He gulped. “There has to be another way down.”

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“No luck on that front, Cal,” Gwen said. “I checked the room for hidden doors. And not a hint of another way. Not even a rat hole that I could find. This is good dungeon design. Mimi did all the right things to herd dungeoneers exactly where she wanted them.”

Wind whistled up from the depths, and Cal gathered his robes closer around him.

“We’ve got but one choice,” Helga said. “Hurricane, lead the way!” She mounted the battle goat, and before Cal could process what she was about to do, they leaped over the edge.

“Helga!” Cal yelled, lunging after her.

Gwen put out a steadying arm to keep him from tumbling over the edge. He watched the pebbles he’d kicked loose topple into the chasm and clutched at his wildly beating heart. That could have been him. But Helga—

Helga hadn’t plummeted to her death or gotten swept up in the howling wind.

She sat astride Hurricane, who had found footing on the nearly sheer cliffside beneath the netting. He glided down to the next level brandishing his smug goat smile.

“Kronke need hooves,” Kronke said as he lowered himself onto the net and started the laborious downclimb.

“We all do,” Cal agreed. But the best he could do was a passable illusion of hooves, and that wasn’t any help here. He waited till a particularly strong gust of wind passed by. Then he turned his back to the chasm, grabbed hold of the top of the net, and stepped off the edge.

Finding his feet in the netting wasn’t as hard as he imagined. Going down was probably easier than trying to climb up. It was that wind whipping at his back that threatened to tear him off the rope net with every step and kept him clinging to the rope with overly tensed muscles. By the time he’d made it halfway down, his arms and legs had started to cramp, and his sweaty fingers threatened to let go.

Gwen stayed beside him all the way. The rogue had no trouble downclimbing a rope net, but she knew that he would, and he appreciated the silent support. She didn’t offer any annoying “you’ve got this” platitudes, but she would be ready with Hemp if Cal faltered.

And he almost did when he heard the unmistakable hiss of a Void Imp in the level below. A second later, though, its head came flying out of the room and lodged in the netting between Cal and Gwen.

She squealed and kicked at its still chomping maw with enough force to dislodge it and send it tumbling into the chasm. The wind picked it up and beat it against the far wall before it dropped a few floors and landed in a different level.

“I do not like those things,” she said through gritted teeth.

Helga’s battle cry echoed up from below.

“I’ve got bad news for you then,” Cal said.

Another imp head flew past the open air on the other side of Gwen and into the chasm.

By the time Gwen and Cal clambered into the room, the fight was over. Two imps lay smashed against the walls and three headless bodies lay at Kronke’s feet.

Gwen toed a corpse with her foot. “They’re multiplying.”

“Aye, we ought to get to auditing before we are overrun and can nae escape,” Helga said.

They were in too far to give up now. To Cal’s knowledge, no one had ever performed a successful Omega Audit on a Decaisy Apocalypse. Team Six could be the first. They would more than prove their worth to Weavelord with that.

“She’s right,” Cal said. “All we can do is be quick about it and hope for the best.”

“Hope is not a strategy to hang your Teeklish hat on,” Gwen said.

“Kronke not have hat,” Kronke said.

“Exactly,” Gwen said.

Kronke furrowed his big green brow.

“We need a door, Gwen,” Cal said. The room they were standing in once again appeared to have no exit. There was nothing in it. No bodies, no vines. Cal wondered what was supposed to be in here.

“On it.” Gwen whipped out Spike and went to work searching for hidden, trapped doors.

Cal checked his Triple A spell in case it gave him a clue.

Kronke wandered to the other side of the room, examining the bare stone walls himself. “Dungeon no fun. Nothing for Kronke to check.” He leaned dejectedly against the wall.

Stone scraped stone behind him right as Cal read the words “Trap Description: Boulder Falls.”

“Kronke, move,” Cal tried to warn.

But Kronke didn’t move. He turned to face the hole opening in the top corner of the room. One large boulder, about the size of Kronke, rolled out and dropped directly to the floor a few feet away from the troll.

“Trap not very good,” Kronke said. “Kronke still standing.”

“That was not mechanical,” Gwen said. The tip of her wand glowed with Apothos.

With Cal’s spell active, he could see a thin stream of Morta Apothos flowing down the wall from the hole in the ceiling to the boulder on the floor. “Uh, guys, I’m not sure this dungeon is dead.”