I emerged from the still raging fire going on inside the building while coughing and sputtering. My outfit was singed along with my skin and hair, though not as badly as it would have been without the Resist Fire potion. The spores were vindictive when aflame.

  Moose was there quickly, led by Himia, and he immediately cast a cleansing spell on me. Not one that cleaned me like Ferrisdae had, but something that relieved my lungs of the build up of smoke. I coughed a few more times, getting everything out of my system, before spitting some of the soot out of my mouth.

  “What happened?” the healer asked as I caught my breath. “One moment everything was calm, and then this.”

  I tried to speak, but coughed up black mucus and cleared my throat. Only after I spit again did I find I could speak. “They weren’t fucking dungeon owners, they were gods damned pets,” I complained, turning on my heel to head towards where the park should be.

  Moose looked down at me in confusion and was slow to follow, but easily caught up when he did. “Pardon, but what do you mean?”

  Sparing him and the government building a glance, I shook my head. “I mean, sure, one of them was, but that wasn’t a fight befitting one,” I complained. “They were a trio of Dreamsnatcher Spiders that called themselves the Trine. They’re an offshoot of Dread Weavers that CC created herself, if Knowledge Check is to be believed.”

  “It contains information that comes straight from the dungeon, so it is accurate,” Himia assured us.

  I grunted in response and kept going. “They were psychic, speaking in my mind and causing me pain that way. Instead of being physically powerful, that was all they had going for them. The moment I lit the room on fire, they panicked.”

  “Why did you light the room on fire while you were in it?” Moose asked with a tilt of his head.

  “Because it was obviously going to be effective, and I knew I would survive it,” I snapped back before taking a breath. The healer didn’t deserve that kind of treatment, and I looked up at him. “Sorry. I’ve still got a lot of fight in me. They didn’t put up one at all.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” he replied, taking a look around at the literal thousands of skeletons around us. “After all, they did this.”

  “No, I don’t think they did,” I retorted with a scowl before shaking my head. “I mean, yes, this is because of them. But I don’t think they actually killed them all.”

  “I’m not sure I follow,” he admitted, returning his gaze to me. “What is it that you meant by pets instead of dungeon owners?”

  I gestured towards the corpses. “If something comes within a certain distance of their web, dungeon, whatever the criteria is, then they cast some spell, or do something to make sure that their prey becomes comatose, and that’s it. There’s no fight. I doubt anything native to this continent would have wandered in of their own volition.”

  “Ah, I think I see now,” Moose said with a nod. “You think CC, or someone else, has been actively feeding them. Spellcasters, specifically. That they were more guard dogs than proper arachnid hunters.”

  “Barely guard dogs,” I scoffed. “Those, at least, have some bite to them. No, it became clear to me almost immediately that these were pampered brats who weren’t used to their food coming to hunt them down. They panicked immediately upon seeing the flames, and the webs did the rest.”

  “You didn’t even have to fight them?” he asked incredulously.

  “I had to fight one,” I answered, holding up a single finger. “And that was to stop it from climbing through a crack that would take them into the basement. Then it caught on fire and the mushrooms on its back finished the job.” I threw my arms in the air, unable to be still even as we walked. “It’s like, that was one of the worst designed dungeons I had seen in a long, long time, and it’s not even close.

  “If you don’t have any protection from fire and the stuff your very body produces that allows you to hunt is an incredibly effective accelerant, then you get protection from fucking fire! Shore up your obvious weaknesses!” I argued loudly, directing my anger into the world. “You don’t coat the enemy in the same stuff and hope they don’t have spells to protect themselves! You don’t hide in the webbing away from your only escape route! You don’t just… ugh!”

  I started taking out my anger on the webbing once we left the firebreak, cutting through it with reckless abandon. “You could tell that they’d never been challenged, you know?” I asked rhetorically, continuing before Moose had a chance to answer. “They are effective, I’ll give them that considering that they took out four of the six of us, but I mean properly challenged. These were clearly no better than pets! CC could have put the Shadow Dragon here, or something else, but no. It was nepotism at its finest, all because she created them and they could get the job done well enough.”

  Moose stared down at me for a few moments as if waiting to see if I was done before nudging me gently on the shoulder with his nose. “Good work, Inspector.”

  “It wasn’t work, it was—” I stopped myself, taking another calming breath. This kind of anger wasn’t good for my heart. “Thank you, Moose,” I finished, trying to mean the words.

  “If it makes you feel any better, Inspector,” Himia spoke, appearing beside us. “The basement had tunnels leading all throughout the city. Actually, I would call them catacombs at this point; there are just as many bodies underground as there are above. They could have escaped anywhere in town if it were not for you.”

  “And you know that, how?” I asked, arching an eyebrow. “Is your information gathering… whatever working again?”

  “Yes, it is. Thank you for asking,” she answered with a wooden smile. “It came back after you had slain the first Dreamsnatcher, so it appeared to be an effect caused by the Trine as a whole.”

  “Well, that’s something at least,” I grunted before waving my sword in the direction we were heading. “Anything else we have to look forward to?”

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  “No. It will be smooth sailing from here on.”

  “Silver linings, I guess.”

  We walked for a few more blocks before I reached into my pocket. I figured that enough time would have passed for news to reach Justisius, and I had said I would call when I was done. Hopefully, he’d have something good to tell me. I set my thumb against the Sending Stone’s sleek surface and moved it in the pattern to reach him.

  “Badger!” he greeted almost immediately. “I’m relieved to hear back from you.”

  “Everything has been handled with the enemy here in Winleshire,” I reported, tampering my feelings on the matter. “Dreamsnatcher Spiders. They’re a psychic-focused offshoot of Dread Weavers. Incredibly flammable, if any of the other teams need a quick way to defeat them.”

  “I’ll be sure to pass that on.”

  “Good. Now, what about my team?” I asked, getting to the point now that I had given him the bare minimum.

  His voice was muffled for a moment as he talked to someone else on his side of the Sending Stone for a moment. I heard the sound of shuffling papers before he spoke again. “It seems as though they all woke up at the same time roughly five minutes ago. Violently, too. Gasping for breath, lashing out. Cojisto apparently punched a hole in a wall. They became lucid quickly, though. Tabs has been asking after you.”

  “So they’re okay, then,” I said in relief.

  “As far as we can tell. They will still need to recover, Ferrisdae the least out of all of them, but the clerics and medics don’t think there’s going to be any long-term damage.”

  “Excellent news. Tell them thanks for me.”

  “I’ll pass that along. Now, onto something a little more grim,” he said grimly. “Has there been any word of the two teams that went missing in that area? Did you find them?”

  That put a pause in my step, causing me to stumble against an uneven patch of road. “Two teams? You couldn’t confirm or deny one before, but now there are two missing teams?”

  “I only just found out about the second myself when talking with their team leader. This information would have been passed on to you, but there had been… I couldn’t return to the Sending Stone before you called back,” Justisius sighed, and I could imagine him running a hand over his bald head. I frowned, wondering what must have happened in the short time since our last communication. “I’m guessing that you haven’t, considering how surprised you sound.”

  I turned to Himia. “Were both teams sent with a full eight members?” she asked.

  “That is correct.”

  “Then it is likely that they were the fresher corpses in the basement,” the Information Elemental stated, as if we weren’t talking about casualties of war. “They were neither monsters nor Gnomes, other than two of their number, and they were geared for combat. While I cannot confirm that they were the teams sent here with certainty now that we’ve moved away from the Dreamsnatcher lair, I believe it is highly likely that they are the missing teams.”

  “And you didn’t mention this when I was there because…?” I asked, waving a hand back towards where we came from.

  “I did not have ample time to analyze them before you lit the place on fire, Inspector,” she answered. Her words stung, even if they were spoken without malice, and I froze while I processed them. “From my understanding, slaying the spiders was the top priority, if only because they had the rest of your team under their control. If it makes you feel any better, I can assure you they were not alive by the time we arrived. Their deaths did not come from you burning everything inside the government center.”

  “That…” I paused, frowning. The fight was all but gone from my body as this news hit me, and the fatigue was catching up with me. “That is comforting, actually. I was so worried about Tabs and the others that I didn’t even think about the other teams. If they had died because of my scorched earth tactics then I don’t know what I’d have done with myself.”

  “Tunnel vision,” Moose said. “It happens to the best of us. I get it, too. However, I doubt that Cheroske would have allowed you to go through with it if they had still been alive. Everything I know about her makes me believe that she would have sent you a sign.”

  A simple warmth spread through my divine core, and I reached up to touch my chest. “Yeah, that’s right. Good call, Moose,” I told him, a little embarrassed at how relieved that made me feel. “We can try to recover the bodies after we’re done with the Dungeon Nexus if you’d like, Justisius. The fire should be out by then.”

  “Putting aside the apparently alarming amount of property damage you’ve committed to take out some spiders,” he started, sounding concerned but putting it aside for now. “We have new orders for you and Moose, so you won’t have time to go back for them. We’ll mark their location and make sure they’re retrieved after CC has been dealt with.”

  “Okay. Someone from Third Division can come pick them up, then,” I replied, sharing a glance with the healer. “What do you need us to do?”

  “Once you are done with the Dungeon Nexus, you are to immediately drink the Teleportation Drafts you have remaining and return to Pointship B with the rest of your team,” he ordered, sounding as though he was reading it aloud.

  I arched an eyebrow at the Sending Stone. “If I may, Moose and I actually make a pretty good team. We can also take the path less traveled if we go together, moving faster than we can using Ferrisdae’s Skymirror Carriage. It would be more prudent to save those extraordinarily powerful potions and meet up with the rest of the team at our next destination.”

  “While you are right when it comes to frugality, we have other plans for you at this time, Badger,” Justisius returned.

  “And what plans would those be?” I asked.

  “You’ll find out in person,” he answered.

  We arrived at the park that had been built around Camp Lexi’s portal. It was overgrown with grass and weeds that had become twice as tall as I was, but there wasn’t a single web in sight. There were a few structures spiraling into the air, but I could only see the tops of them. The government center wasn’t even nearby.

  “That fake dream guard was wrong,” I said, putting a hand on my hip. “You can’t see this from the mayor’s office at all.”

  “One of these buildings might be the office,” Moose offered.

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “What’s going on?” Justisius asked.

  “Nothing,” I sighed. “Fine, we’ll head back once we’re done with the Dungeon Nexus. Then we can find out why we’re throwing away so much wealth.”

  My fellow Inspector, well used to me by now, didn’t rise to take the bait. “Good. Take care, Badger, Moose, Himia. I look forward to seeing you all safe and sound, as is the rest of your team.”

  I slipped the Sending Stone back into my pocket as I approached the weeds. We already knew that this was going to be another hole in the ground, and I didn’t want to step into it on accident.

  A part of me wanted to burn it all down, like the webbing, but I immediately dashed that intrusive thought before it could propagate.

  “A thought occurs to me,” Moose said. “Those chosen for these teams had been the best of the best, and two teams still fell prey to these Dreamsnatchers. It seems to me that they were effective, at least until they came across you. I believe that your standards may just be too high, Inspector.”

  I thought about his words for a moment. There was wisdom in them, but any retort I had out of pocket would require me to speak ill of the dead. I didn’t want to do that. Not here. Instead, I started chopping with my sword, cutting a path forward through the weeds. Camp Lexi awaited.