Cal leaned back dangerously far in his Merman Hiller chair and kicked his feet up on his desk. He needed to think over the best way to conclude his latest TAP Report. Should he end with a summary table comparing the current, improvedApothos flow of Chunk the Woodchuck’s dungeon to what it had been before the audit? Or would it be more impressive to show the expected flow once Chuck made all their suggested changes? Would that be too much information for his boss to absorb all at once?

“Comfortable?” Weavelord, Cal’s Spidercrat boss, skittered into the cubicle on his eight short legs. He was a chihuahua sized drider in a cheap, gray polyester suit.

Cal snapped upright in his chair. “Just thinking, sir.”

Weavelord’s eight eyes glowered down through four pairs of glasses at Cal and his neatly organized desk. “It has come to my attention that your legacy is one of destructive violence.”

“Sir?” Cal asked, taken aback by the sudden accusation. He and his team had done nothing but work for the good of the Tree of Souls. For the last six months, they’d proven themselves as the best dungeon auditors in the department, even if Weavelord would never admit that. He still held it against them that they were all ex-dungeoneers instead of dungeon cores like the rest of the teams at the Department of Universal Dungeon Efficiency (DUDE).

“Follow me to the Divine Control Room,” Weavelord commanded and spun to lead the way without waiting for Cal to respond.

“I’ll gather the rest of Team Six,” Cal said, grabbing his outer robes. The control room could be a tad chilly

“No.” Weavelord rapped one of his claw-tipped legs on the beige floor tiles. He frowned in disgust. “Just you, Illudere.”

Cal started to argue, but arguing with Weavelord never got him anywhere. He could take this one for the team and go this round with the boss alone. His outer robes were a bit loose. He’d been working so much, he’d lost a little weight, and he’d already been thin. He was pretty sure his not-quite platinum hair was thinning, which wouldn’t help his looks any. For an elf, he simply wasn’t all that attractive. Good thing accounting didn’t require charisma.

In the Divine Control Room (DCR), Perkle Twinkletwerp, a Gadget Gnome dungeon core who rode around on a steam-powered scooter, adjusted knobs and spun wheels on the console he’d constructed over his dungeon core pedestal where his core sat gleaming with Apothos. This room had always fascinated Cal. A great tree grew from the cobblestone floor, and moss and vines climbed their way up the rock walls and into the crevices of the ceiling. As Perkle dialed his devices to the right position, the tree turned translucent and the leaves shimmered to reveal a ghostly map of the Tree of Souls with glowing points of light where each Celestial Node connected. Perkle tweaked another dial and the map zoomed into a point on one of the larger branches.

Cal recognized the world as it came into view. His family, the infamous elven band of minstrels turned dungeoneers called the Illuderati, had sung songs about the mythic world of Tittikaka his whole life. It was a lush forest world where sentient spotted panthers made their home. Majestic snow-capped peaks rose from verdant jungles dotted with warm, tranquil lakes.

Or that’s how it should have been. As Perkle focused the image, Cal saw the whole world wilting. The snow dripped off the jagged purple mountain tops like ice cream melting in the rain. The once green trees had turned a sickly gray, and the blue waters of each lake were muddied with the silty runoff from the melting snow fields.

Cal blinked as though that could reset the image of this dying world. “There should be several Celestial Nodes on that world. What happened to them? Where’s the Heart Dungeon?”

Perkle reported sadly, “The world has been losing one node after another for months. Maybe years. So many weeks, though. They are losing just a bit of Apothos, a minor amount is being siphoned off, and that it shouldn’t mean much. But then dungeoneers come in and whammo, core crackage.”

“We believe it might’ve started around the time you joined us, Illudere,” Weavelord said.

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“What? I—”

“Oh, Cal, no one is blaming you,” Perkle squeaked. “Not directly. But, uh, the methodical eradication of Celestial Nodes, well, it stinks of something nefarious. And I don’t mean the lavender soap you use. It’s a bold choice, by the way.”

Cal sighed. “It’s not soap. Barbara Starmyst keeps casting a lavender smell spell on my cubicle to rid the air of the lingering scent from Otis’s Slime Dungeon.”

“Let’s focus on the crisis at hand, shall we,” Weavelord said. He pointed with one of his human fingers to an abandoned village on the planet. “We lost the Heart Dungeon, and the Withering Apocalypse has already begun. We’ve contacted the Federal Life Extraction Alliance to start rescue operations for the Teeklish, but we need an Omega Audit before they finish evacuations and the BYE portal destabilizes. We need to know everything about Miriam Drybone’s death and possible dismemberment. Mimi has been a friend of mine for years, and there is no way a bunch of C-Class raiders could have taken her down. She was Jade Leaf, Illudere. A-Class, and on the cusp of S-Class.”

Miriam “Mimi” Drybone was almost as legendary as Tittikaka itself, well, at least among the audit teams at DUDE. Most people, including dungeoneers, didn’t know the truth about how dungeon cores were actually the good guys working to keep the Apothos of the Tree of Souls flowing into the worlds through Celestial Nodes. But those in the know, knew of Mimi. When she’d been a student at the Crossworld Academy of the Arcane, she’d won the intra-school tournament three out of her four years there. It was no surprise that she’d wound up running the Heart Dungeon on such a powerful world. What was surprising was that so many Celestial Nodes on that world had failed, including hers. An A-Class Maternal Nightmare Mummy like her shouldn’t have been taken down easily.

Weavelord was right. They had to find out how this had happened, and an Omega Audit was the way to do it. But Cal wasn’t a fool. He understood what was at stake. With a Withering Apocalypse blighting the land, Tittikaka could become a hellscape overnight, and the vanishing Apothos could cut off their access to the Branches that Yield Everywhere (BYE) portal. Even Hell-Oh Portals were iffy on such worlds. If his team got stranded, and the Withering Apocalypse turned into its more deadly variant, a Decaisy Apocalypse, they would all die horribly.

Cal tried not to think about that last part and focus on the task at hand. He and his team would get the chance to conduct their first Omega Audit. They may not be dungeon cores, but they could use an Omega Audit Crystal, at least in theory. They hadn’t actually trained for that, but they’d been honing their audit capabilities for months now, and this would show Weavelord how good they were at their jobs—as long as they survived.

Cal cleared his throat. “Audit Team Six won’t let you down, sir.”

Weavelord scuttled up to him, mistrust written in every line creasing around his eight narrowed eyes. “Run the video crystal,” he barked to Perkle.

Perkle complied, and a second later, an image of six elvish dungeoneers appeared, breezing through the forests of Tittikaka. Their platinum hair waved gently in the wind and their perfect, smug smiles advertised their perpetual self-satisfaction. But there was a lilting arrogance to their steps here. They looked entirely too self-satisfied. And Cal could tell the difference between normal elven overconfidence and this particular brand of certitude. He’d seen it all his life.

These were the Illuderati. All six of Cal’s siblings—three brothers and three sisters—each one rotten to their beautiful cores.

Weavelord poked a long finger at Cal’s chest. “Your siblings, I believe, Illudere. They cracked Mimi’s core and drained the Heart Dungeon. They weren’t the only raiders in the area, but somehow, outgunned and outclassed, they managed to defeat her. You’ve been telling me for months now how ‘dedicated’ you and your team of ex-dungeoneers are to this department. I can’t think of a better way to prove it than conducting this Omega Audit. You will use an Omega Audit Crystal to conduct an Omega Audit. Then you will return with a full report on how your C-Class family of dungeoneers managed to kill an A-Class dungeon core, along with one of your detailed graphs about how we can more efficiently run the next generation of dungeons to rid the worlds of scourges like your family for good.”

Cal gulped. That was a tall order, but he wouldn’t actually have to face his family to do it, just an unpredictable Withering Apocalypse filled with wild Apothos that could spit out monsters like chewed up sunflower seed hulls while conducting an audit with an OAC, which he’d never used before. He’d take that over a family confrontation any day.

Looking at the smug faces of his murderous siblings was too much for Cal. He focused on where Mimi’s Heart Dungeon had been connected to the Tree. “Wait. Perkle. What’s that trickle of Apothos? Do you see it?”

Weavelord lifted one of his frames off his face, squinted, then switched glasses, until he’d gone through all four pairs. “I don’t see anything.”

“It’s only a little, a scant line…” Cal blinked. It was gone.

Perkle frowned. “Yeah, Cal, I saw it too. You know, it might be residual Apothos. That happens sometimes. The cracked cores of powerful dungeon cores can mimic an actual flow for quite a while after crackage. And poor Mimi was super powerful. That’s probably what it was.”

Cal wasn’t so sure. Well, he’d be able to see for himself.

He and his team were about to get a front row seat at Armageddon.