Despite my tight grip on his hand, the Dungeon Master slipped free. Oozed free was a better phrase, actually. His body and clothes slipped through the ground and disappeared, leaving nothing but a few drops of blood in the grass and on my fist. I looked around, trying to find where he had gone or where he would reappear.

  “Ow! I think you boke my nose!” came his voice by the table. I spun on my heel, lowering my body into a defensive stance, but he wasn’t attacking. He was just standing there, gingerly poking at his nose while tilting his head back. His voice certainly sounded like I broke his nose. “Dick, at was uncalled for.”

  “You know that it wasn’t,” I said angrily.

  “Coulda warned me firs,” the Dungeon Master protested.

  I furrowed my brow. “The fuck is going on? You’re supposed to be the Dungeon Master, Master of Dungeons, but you’re this fragile? Do you understand what you’ve been doing?”

  “Yeh, helpin out your coninen!”

  “You’re getting in the way!” I roared and approached. The Dungeon Master took a few steps back, but I stopped at the table and slammed my hand down on it. “We came up here for a very specific purpose, and that was to take down the Land Pirate Raitheus Razorbeak. Our mission was clear: visit Oristrella to get a boon that will allow us to make it through the Thousand Year Blizzard, then come here to subjugate him.”

  “At’s no—”

  “And let’s start there, shall we?” I spoke over him. “I don’t know what you were thinking changing Oristrella’s dungeon, but you royally fucked it up. You showed up, offered her a few thousand books, and then put a huge cork in the whole thing. She was expecting adventurers, Dungeon Master, they were supposed to show up and save Princess Koritha. And you seduce the Dragon? What, you’re pretending to be a bard now?”

  “We’re bohf manaphiles so—”

  “Don’t want to hear it! Adventurers were there, you blurry bastard! And they couldn’t do what they were supposed to because you decided to muck it all up. Do you have any inclination towards decorum? The system is a bit broken but it is in place for a gods damned reason. You didn’t even have to do anything, just wait for the adventurers to be gone and then pop in to woo your Dragon girlfriend.”

  “She’s—”

  “And disregarding the proper forms!” I continued. “Changing dungeon interiors is a HUGE undertaking, and one that’s supposed to be facilitated by the DoD! Forms need to be filled out, inspectors need to be consulted, and yet you just go ahead and make things happen all willy-nilly? Do you understand what kind of chaos that leads to?”

  “You really do hae willy-nilly, huh?”

  “Willy-nilly is the worst!” I shouted, throwing my hands in the air. “And this? Taking over the whole caravan deal? What’s up with that? Not only are you breaking the rules of dungeons, but also of just regular fucking magic? Why don’t the circles work here? Why did you decide to make dungeons out of thin air and turn corpses into magical items?”

  I slammed my hand back on the table, causing the teacups to fall over. “Not only do you take over Raitheus’ dungeon, but you let him roam free! He got out and slaughtered researchers who are just trying to figure out what’s going on inside this blasted blizzard. You have so much control here and yet he’s just wandering around doing his own thing? Their blood is on your hands!”

  “I don—”

  “And don’t even get me started at Himia,” I interjected, pointing towards the Information Elemental who was still standing nearby. She waved. “Are you aware that the sort of magics she used on us are illegal? You must have been, because it’s not only morally wrong but illegal everywhere. Aura reading, sure, that’s fine. Clerics and paladins do it for less than whatever you have going on here, but mind reading? Soul reading? That’s a massive invasion of privacy that would see you set in a prison for the rest of your life.”

  “We had do make sure—”

  “Had to nothing! And then what you did to Ferrisdae…” I brought my voice down to a raw, intimidating growl that I was particularly proud of. “Let me make one thing clear, I don’t care what you did to me. Cojisto doesn’t matter, and Moose is a damn moose, but what you did to Ferrisdae was atrocious.”

  “I made her s—”

  “I swear to Tegril that if you say you made her stronger I will find it in me to smite you right here and now! Himia said the goddess of community, Cheroske, was keeping an eye on me and so help me I will leverage that into divine smiting power if you so much as make any sort of excuse for what you did to her.”

  My eyes bored into the space where his should be. The blurred face didn’t bother me, now, though that might have had something to do with the anger I was allowing to flow through me. When the Dungeon Master didn’t say anything, I continued.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  “She is a hundred and twenty four years old, eighteen in Human equivalent years, barely a grown woman. And what’s the first thing you do when she gets here? Reach deep inside her and ‘make her stronger’ like what you did wasn’t an egregious abomination of nature? Cojisto and Moose might be impressed by the powers you somehow gave them, but you just sent that young Elven girl down a path of trauma that will take her years, or decades, or gods forbid centuries, to get over. Do you still want to say all you did was make her stronger?”

  “When you put—”

  “I don’t want to hear it!” I yelled. It was time to start yelling again, I decided. “You messed with her soul, the very essence of magic power that exists inside of her! What dubious morals must you hold to think that kind of shit’s okay? And Ferrisdae’s the only one I’m emotionally invested in! What about the other people you’ve trapped in this sick dungeon of yours?

  “And you trapped me in here with Cojisto! Have you seen how big of an idiot he is? He just goes on and on about how he wants to fight a giant chicken the size of a building. Do you know how annoying that is? He’d have died already if it weren’t for the apparently holy moose that decided to follow him around. And the chicken! Why is there a disappearing thirty foot tall chicken in your overdungeon? Why is it terrorizing the encampment, and why are you letting it?”

  Before he could attempt to answer again, I started moving around the table to get to him. Spooked, he tried to avoid me by using it as a barrier, knocking down a chair in his hurry. Since the table was going to be an obstacle, I jumped onto it so I could point directly at his face.

  “Forget about Cojisto, I’m going back to the people. I wouldn’t be surprised if you kidnapped all these people. Did you? Or did you get Razorbeak to do it? They sure as hell don’t belong here, that’s for sure. The people here don’t look like Snow Elves, they look like the kind of people you’d find further south.”

  “I didn’t kidnap anyone!”

  “A likely goddamn story. You trapped us in here, didn’t you? Did they get the same power boost that we did? Did you offer it to them? Or did you arbitrarily choose our team because your girlfriend decided to take a liking to my apprentice and you wanted to one up her? Not that you succeeded, because you took our gear first chance you got! Here’s some new abilities, also I’m taking all your shit. Give it back, now. Everyone gets their gear, with all the enchantments turned back on, and I get my damn pants back. Why you even kept them confuses the hell out of me.”

  The Dungeon Master hurriedly snapped his fingers, and my missing pants appeared on the table at my feet. I looked down at them suspiciously, then back up to the blurred man in front of me. The climate magic on my coat immediately kicked in, cooling my skin. The temperature on this mountain was pleasant, but it had nothing on the enchantments placed on my clothes.

  “Please, have ih,” he said, nose still bleeding.

  I raked the items to my side of the table and started to take off the pants they had left me, using the furniture as cover. Chances are it didn’t matter if I changed, but I wanted my old clothes on as soon as possible.

  “Looking good, sir,” Himia swooned from across the clearing once my pants were off, giving me a lascivious wink in response to my glare. It was the most emotion I think I had ever seen on her.

  My eyes snapped back to the Dungeon Master. “You tell her to say things like that? On top of everything, you’re a pervert, too? Is that why you kept my pants?”

  “Wha? No! Himia, go away,” he said in a rushed panic.

  “Right away, Dungeon Master, Master of Dungeons,” she replied before disappearing in thin air without any audible sound or incantation.

  I pulled on my own pants and tucked in my shirt before smoothing my coat. The next thing I checked was my Dimensional Pocket, and I felt relief when I was able to start rifling through it. Nothing seemed to be missing.

  So I pulled out a scroll case. Popping it open, I pulled out the rolled up parchment and set it on the table. Each one was absolutely covered in writing, and I pulled out a few choice documents before slamming them down.

  “This is what I’m talking about! Forms, Dungeon Master, forms! Going through the proper procedures in order to do the things you’ve been doing. Can you even fathom the headache I’m going to have going through all of your blunders and fuck ups?”

  “I wouln’ call ‘em all hat…”

  “For the gods’ sake, man, take a potion or something. I’m tired of hearing you try to talk without your nose working right.”

  The Dungeon Master stared at me before pulling a potion vial out of one of his pockets. It was large and red, far bigger than potions that I usually saw around for adventurers, but I didn’t focus on it. I continued speaking as I pulled out my Sending Stone.

  “Blunders. And. Fuck. Ups,” I repeated pointedly. “All you had to do was come in to the DoD, explain your situation, and we would have helped you go through all of the necessary hoops. Dungeon creation? We can help. Want to do a transfer? We can help. Already have a dungeon but you want to make sure it’s up to code? We. Can. Help.”

  I tried to call Brackenhorst from the Sending Stone, but it predictably did not work. Usually being in a dungeon didn’t create the kind of interference necessary to stop the magical connection, but we were inside both the Thousand Year Blizzard and the Dungeon Master’s strange overdungeon.

  “All of this could have been avoided, Dungeon Master. More like Dungeon Disaster, if I have to put a title to it.”

  “Hey!”

  “It’s a real title,” I scoffed. “We have a whole wall dedicated to dungeon disasters. Yours blows them all out of the water. We haven’t seen this kind of disregard for the rules in centuries. Centuries! What could you possibly have to say for yourself?”

  The Dungeon Master watched me cross my arms and stare at him. “Oh, are you done berating me? Is it my turn to speak?” he asked sarcastically.

  “I can keep going if you really want me to, or you can tell me what you’re doing here, how you got here, and what your goals are. The floor is yours, if you want it.”

  To be completely honest, I was feeling better after my outburst. It was borderline unhinged and not at all structured in a way I was proud of, but it had been cathartic. I pulled out another piece of parchment, this one empty, and my writing kit before looking at the Dungeon Master in an expectant manner.

  It took him a few minutes to speak, but he eventually found his words. “Fine, Dungeon Inspector Badger. It all started five centuries ago…”