Cal threw up his hands in surrender. “We come in peace.”
“Pieces,” the nearest tree soldier said in a deep, rumbling voice as he jabbed his spear toward Cal’s chest.
Cal squeaked involuntarily and backed up a step. He’d just gotten these new robes and didn’t want them torn in the first hour of this audit mission. And being the average wizard robes he could afford on his DUDE salary, they didn’t offer much in the way of protection against sharp spears.
“No, no,” Cal said. “We are Audit Team Six from the Department of Universal Dungeon Efficiency.” He slowly reached into his robe and pulled out his department badge. “We’re here to audit Miriam Drybone’s dungeon.”
The tree guard cocked his head, causing his upper branches to shake away from his face like a surfer flopping his hair out of his eyes.
“FLEA,” Kronke said, pointing to the official blue-and-green FLEA badges dangling from bright red lanyards around the tree soldiers’ necks.
“DUDE,” the tree soldier in front of Cal said, pointing his stick fingers at Cal’s badge emblazoned with the DUDE logo. “Expect you.”
With that pronouncement, the four tree soldiers lowered their weapons and, using even fewer words than Kronke usually did, beckoned Team Six to follow one of them to the biggest tent, which Cal assumed housed the FLEA evacuation management team.
Hurricane sniffed at the dead, trampled grass on the way, but turned up his nose and tried to take a bite out of one of the evacuation tents instead. Helga reined him in. “These people do nae have much, Hurricane. Let us leave them what they do.”
A few Teeklish children were playing quietly outside one of the tents. Each had a different kind of hat on, and the game seemed to be trying to pluck the hat off each other. One tabby girl snatched a fedora off her Siberian friend. Then he gently tackled her. They all giggled as they switched hats, and they were careful not to hurt each other with their supernaturally sharp and dense claws.
One little calico cat girl with a multicolored cap sat alone. She pawed idly at the withering blades of grass in front of her, but she wasn’t playing with the others. Cal recognized the shock in her eyes, somewhere between fatigue and grief.
Kronke knelt beside her. A large green troll paladin in full black armor could be intimidating. The Teeklish calico didn’t pull back though. She seemed to sense the good in him.
His pink charm bracelet flashed, but instead of summoning his Live, Laugh, Love scythe, he summoned a tin of cookies and placed it before the girl.
She trilled when she opened the tin and discovered the cookies, a mix of chocolate chip, oatmeal, and iced sugar. Her eyes glowed with appreciation as she thanked him, and he patted her on the head. “Cookies make less sad. May Keyblarr, Baker of the Universe, bless you.”
She nodded enthusiastically and ran to the group of kittens, passing the tin around to share.
“That’s right, kids. Eat your feelings. The world is ending,” Gwen said.
Helga checked her with a hard elbow to the ribs.
“What?” Gwen rubbed at her side.
Helga ignored her question and trotted Hurricane forward.
As they got closer to the tent, Cal could see the acronym stitched into the blue-and-green material. FLEA, or the Federal Life Evacuation Alliance, received some funding from the Council of Dungeons, like DUDE did, but mostly, it was sponsored by rich and powerful dungeon cores who for some reason or another couldn’t hack the life they’d signed up for anymore. Some were simply extroverts who wanted to give back in ways other than being sequestered in their respective dungeons, but some were crackpots or narcissists who loved nothing more than the prestige of saving people from dying worlds. In the end, what mattered was that they got the job done. People like the Teeklish got saved.
The tree soldier the team had been following led them up to the front entrance of the tent where a squat mudwoman wearing a FLEA badge held a clipboard and sported a frown. A dungeon core gem the color of amber gleamed in her round belly, and the name tag pinned to her muddy blouse read Pat Flux. From her muddy blouse to her muddy brown pumps, her whole outfit screamed muddy businesswoman, middle management. They’d found their FLEA liaison.
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With a nod, the tree soldier introduced them, “Mistress master. DUDE dudes and dudettes.” His eyes glowed the same color as her amber core gem.
“Hold on, Elmer,” she said with the patience of a woman who has no patience for interruptions.
“Elmer?” Gwen asked. “As in elm tree. Now that’s a clever bit of wordplay.”
Inside the tent, something popped loudly. The cloying odor of burned candy wafted through the air. A gruff voice shouted, “Groups of twelve! Can’t you count? Pat! You’re freakin’ killing me. I can only do groups of twelve!”
Pat Flux shouted back in a nasal tone, “I told you, Red, twelve is unlucky for the Teeklish. Can’t you do thirteen or eleven?”
“I can’t freakin’ do thirteen, or we risk losing one en route. And do we really want to send only eleven each time? Don’t these cats know that we only have so much time? Already, I’m burning through Apothos like a freshman on double-secret probation at Shadowcroft.”
Another flash of light, another pop, and more burning candy.
A different tree soldier escorted a group of nervous-looking Teeklish, with their tails tucked in, past Cal and his team and into the tent. Some of them wore bonnets, some fedoras jauntily propped between their kitten ears, and some even sported Aldaleeran ballbat caps. They hugged each other close as they entered the tent.
The mudwoman checked them off on her clipboard, then wheeled on Team Six. “DUDE? What do you want?”
Cal pulled his badge out again. “Ms. Flux, we’re with the Department of Universal Dungeon Efficiency. I’m Calcannis Illudere, and this is my team, Audit Team Six.”
Pat glanced up from her clipboard. “Bit late for an audit. Don’t you think?”
“We’re here to perform an Omega Audit,” Cal said.
Pat raised a mossy brow and surveyed the whole team. “I don’t see a single gem core in the lot of you. What do you think? You’re going to perform an Omega Audit with your little red stick there? Get out of here. Stop wasting my time. You dungeoneers aren’t as funny as you think you are. We have serious business to take care of here.”
“Ex-dungeoneers,” Gwen protested. “We are Audit Team Six and we have the paperwork to prove it. Cal.” She nodded meaningfully toward his messenger bag.
Of course he had all the DUDE paperwork in order, and he’d tucked the triplicate copy in his bag behind his spare robes—he’d learned that lesson the hard way in Otis’s Slime Dungeon—but his official badge should be more than enough for these FLEA representatives to take him seriously. He did, however, need Pat to sign their liaison form, so he might as well appease her. They were on a world-ending deadline here.
Cal retrieved his tabbed and color-coded stack of documentation from his bag. “Here is our authorization for the Omega Audit, OACA Form 4779, and I’ll need you to sign the FLEA Liaison Acknowledgement form, the FLA7, and the Emergency Portal Usage and Retention Agreement, the EPURA, and initial by paragraph 48 that you will retain contact with our team throughout the audit and immediately notify said team lead, that being me, in the case of emergency portal closure, giving us time to rectify our proximity deficiency.”
Gwen snickered. “Level with me, Cal. You’re in this business for the acronyms and the legalese, aren’t you?”
Kronke rubbed his big forehead. “Why speak letters? Words work good.”
Pat grabbed Cal’s entire stack of papers in one stubby, muddy hand, crinkling and smudging them with slick dirt.
Cal did his best not to outwardly cringe. Instead he offered Pat a pen.
Red shouted inside the tent. “Step back, sir. Or you’ll get to the refugee camp without your spleen. Or your large intestine. Or some other vital body part you’ll miss once you get there.”
“FLEA fixed their unstable portal problem, right? I mean the portal mages aren’t exactly known for their stability,” Gwen said.
Pat slapped the stack of papers back into Cal’s hands. “You don’t want to avail yourself of our portals, you’re welcome to find your own off-world transportation.”
“We didn’t say that.” Cal straightened the stack of forms and tried his best to dust the dirt off them, but he mostly managed to smear the mud on his fingers and then his robes. “We would greatly appreciate your cooperation in holding the portal until we can complete our audit as stipulated in the EPURA and providing us transport to the Heart Dungeon of Tittikaka.”
He proffered the forms again, and Pat took them, along with his pen. She read over them carefully as if there weren’t an apocalypse literally withering the world away as they stood there. She paused long enough to check the next group of Teeklish off the list on her clipboard as they passed by into the tent. One of the Teeklish wore a large hat with a giant feather plume, and another wore a tiny fascinator pinned between her furry ears.
The Teeklish really were a fascinating people, and Cal was glad to see so many of them being rescued, but to his great horror and disgust, Pat licked the tip of his favorite pen before she signed each of his forms in triplicate. She handed back the muddy mess of paperwork, and he wished he’d thought to bring a bag protector for the inside of his messenger bag. Now his spare robes were going to get soiled before he even got to the dungeon. He made a mental note to add bag protectors to the growing list of supplies necessary to bring on these audits. She tried to hand the pen back too, but he told her to keep it. The last thing he wanted was mudwoman saliva leaking on everything inside his bag. He’d find a new favorite pen.
“Thank you,” he said. “Now if we could get that transport to the dungeon, we can get this audit started.”
Pat threw a muddy palm over her heart. “Oh, there’s been a misunderstanding. Those forms obligate FLEA to guarantee access to our portal for transportation off-world. If it’s on-world transportation you want, that’s going to cost you.”