“We are not the right team for this,” Gwenivere Copperblade, the ever-skeptical rogue turned structural engineer, protested as Audit Team Six stepped through the BYE portal into a small meadow in the forests of Tittikaka. “This is Dave literally trying to kill us. He calls it an Omega Audit. I call it a suicide mission. We don’t even have a dungeon core on our team.” She tucked her one stripe of blue hair back into her black ponytail. Her blue eyes, which could turn cold with hatred at a poorly designed trap, narrowed at their surroundings. In her black rogue armor, she did not blend in at all with the greenery of Tittikaka.

“That’s why we have the Omega Audit Crystal,” Cal tried to reassure her. He reached down nervously to confirm the OAC was still tucked securely into the front compartment of the tattered messenger bag slung over his shoulder.

“You don’t even know how to use that thing,” Gwen said.

“If there be anyone to learn it, it be our Cal,” Helga Kneebash proclaimed as she rode her battle goat Hurricane farther into the meadow so he could snack on the flowers. While she was the team’s interior decorator, everything about Helga screamed fierce warrior—braided blonde hair, hardened leather and chainmail armor, big armored boots and gloves. Meaty forearms flexing, she held the muscled goat’s leash in a tight fist.

Cal appreciated the optimism their interior designer brought to the table. She could be a little too excitable at times, but it was a good counterbalance to Gwen’s pessimism.

“Yeah, Cal smart. Cal always pack cookies,” Sir Kronke the Charming said. Their troll paladin, a devotee of Keyblarr the Baker, always had baking on the mind, but that also meant his healing spells emanated the scent of freshly baked goods. And that was never a bad thing. It had been more than a welcome reprieve back in Otis’s stinky slime dungeon. “And this place need lot of cookies.”

He wasn’t wrong. Cal could’ve gone for an uplifting cookie about then. The foliage that had once been lush and colorful and teeming with life was wilting before their eyes. Hurricane spit out his mouthful of gray flower petals and blew a series of loud raspberries, trying to get the taste off his tongue. Helga helped him out with a nip from her canteen.

With no Celestial Node to connect this world to the Tree of Souls and its flow of life-giving Apothos, everything was dying. And it was Cal’s family’s fault.

He was too late to save this world, but he would do everything he could to make sure they never did this again. He hadn’t really gotten along with them back when they were a group of traveling minstrels, and he’d preferred keeping the books rather than taking the stage. But at least they hadn’t been the power-hungry dungeoneers they were now, cracking the core of the Heart Dungeon to absorb its Apothos and dooming Tittikaka to a horrible fate.

The densely clouded sky hardly let any morning light touch the small clearing where Team Six stood. The forest would stay darkly shaded all day in these conditions. The whole jungle would rot from the bottom up, and from the stench of rot wafting their way, it had a good start.

“Why can’t DUDE ever send us to a nice smelling world? Isn’t there a potpourri dungeon in need of an audit?” Gwen asked, stepping through the detritus as quiet as ever in her black Boots of Silent Striding.

“Do nae jest, lass,” Helga admonished. “We are here to witness the death of this world.”

A determined look crossed Kronke’s big green face. The copper covering the three big puncture wounds on his magical black armor glinted in what little light shone through the clouds. Helga had helped him repair it, and unless you’d witnessed the Mega Spear—it was a trident, honestly—pierce the gullet of the last owner of the armor, you’d think the copper was just a fashion statement.

The pink charm bracelet jangled on his wrist as he placed his hands on the portal tree. That charm bracelet housed his powerful weapon, that may or may not be evil, but the pink did look good with the black.

Kronked leaned into the portal tree and prayed to the Baker. He glowed a glorious golden brown like freshly baked bread, and the air around them swirled with the scent of warm yeast and butter. But the brittle gray tree bark flaked off under Kronke’s touch, revealing nothing but rot underneath. Even as they watched, the final leaves lost their color, wilted, and fell to the ground as the mystical energy of the portal faded away.

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Kronke gulped back a sob, but the tears ran freely down his cheeks. “Bye, bye, Branches that Yield Everywhere. Goodbye, Apothos. Blessings from the Baker not enough.”

“There, there, big guy,” Gwen said as she laid a hand on his forearm.

They all stood in silence for a moment. No one wanted to say it, but the BYE portal disappearing meant this apocalypse was moving along fast. The remnants of Apothos that had powered it would dissipate soon and leave nothing to give life to the surrounding meadow. Its flowers would droop and fall onto the bed of rotting grass, a last memorial in the dirt to the life of Tittikaka. Not to mention, now their only hope of getting off this planet lay with the Federal Life Extraction Alliance (FLEA) portal mage.

Gwen sighed. “I hope my father isn’t actually trying to kill us off.”

Kronke threw a big, armored arm around Gwen’s shoulders. If you didn’t know them, you’d think they were the lead singer and drummer for some goth band on a darkling rage world instead of a paladin trap-springer and a rogue engineer working for the Department of Universal Dungeon Efficiency. But Cal knew that under their black armor, they were two big softies, one who loved cookies and one who loved sarcasm.

“Yer da would nae send us to our deaths,” Helga said. “Deep down Weavelord knows the great auditors we are! And even deeper down, he loves you, lass. By me great grandda’s wooden shoes, we will complete this Omega Audit and return with the full spread of sheets to save more worlds!” She thrust her two-handed crowbar up in the air to emphasize her point.

Hurricane bleated his agreement and Kronke gave a half-hearted cheer.

“Right,” Cal said. “We still have plenty of time to get this audit done and use FLEA’s portal to return home.”

Kronke nodded. “FLEA help people leave world. FLEA help us.”

Gwen stepped away from the troll and gave him a friendly punch on the arm. “Not sure you should put as much faith in the bureaucracy as you do in the Baker, but let’s go meet this FLEA liaison so they don’t pack up and leave without us.”

“Kronke put all faith in Baker. He give all blessings.”

Maybe the Baker had a blessing to butter the bread with their FLEA liaison. Like every bureaucratic agency, FLEA had issues. But Cal knew from working at DUDE that the rumors were often worse than the reality, and it all came down to the specific people you had to deal with. Weavelord, for example, was a stickler for by-the-book work, but Denise, the leader of Team Freundschaftsbeziehungen, threw lavish taco parties to reward work well done. Cal was sure it was the same with FLEA. He just hoped the liaison here was more a Denise than a Dave. They didn’t have time for any delays. They needed to secure a way off Tittikaka and then hurry to perform the Omega Audit on the Heart Dungeon.

Following the rogue’s lead, they made their way through the dense vegetation, trying with varying degrees of success not to get smeared by the slime of the leaves decaying on the underbrush. Cal tried to push the grossest branches out of the way with his Ruby Staff. He wished it had grown to accommodate his size like Kronke’s armor had when Otis the Muck Lord had gifted them after they helped save his dungeon, but the staff had remained dwarven sized, so it functioned more as a walking stick for Cal. Today that came in handy as they trudged through the debris of the dying forest.

Not too far into the jungle, Gwen found the path evacuees had trampled from the nearest village to the evacuation site, and the team followed that to the next clearing. As they approached, the din of a crowd filled the silent forest, and they saw blue and green tents marked with the FLEA logo.

The poor denizens of the world—the Teeklish—gathered in and around the tents in the large clearing as they waited to pass through a portal. The Teeklish were smaller than Cal had pictured from all the songs his family had sung about them when he was growing up. The adult spotted panthers were about the size of Helga, the halfling barbarian. And the Teeklish children ranged all the way down to the size of house cats.

Most of them wore ornate hats. The Teeklish were known for hats, hugs, and their trilling speech, which sounded like giggles. Legend also told that their claws were sharp and strong enough to carve stone. They were a people with a long, proud history according to all the songs Cal knew about them.

But none of the Teeklish stood tall and proud this morning. Cal guessed he would cower close to an evacuation tent too if his world suddenly started decaying before his eyes and strange dungeon cores showed up to portal him off-world. At least FLEA was always smart enough to send a few people of familiar races, or at least changelings who could be those races for a while, to ease the transition for the evacuees. They’d never trust dungeon monsters showing up and pushing them through a portal, but a couple Teeklish with dungeon core gems shining in their bellies were directing evacuees as they entered the encampment and answering their questions.

Cal desperately wanted to get answers for these people. It was all he could do for them—conduct the Omega Audit and gather the needed data to understand how dungeoneers had taken this world so DUDE could use that knowledge to protect other worlds.

As he stepped into the clearing, though, all thoughts of accomplishing anything useful vanished. Four ten-foot-tall tree soldiers, holding spears that glowed with destructive magical energy, aimed their weapons at Audit Team Six.