I struck down another black tumbleweed as it ambushed us from a nearby alleyway. The tangles had no discernible anatomy with nothing resembling even a hint of a head or other weak spot. For all intents and purposes, they were simply a living lash of spider webs that turned into a ball to roll around before opening up like a net to ensnare their victims.

  They were resistant to slashing weapons while being incredibly lightweight. Attacking them was like swinging at thin air. I had trouble cutting through them with my blade, but I found success with my cold longsword. Even though it didn’t slice through, the freezing enchantment was incredibly effective.

  I would essentially strike them in center mass, which would barely work because they were more likely to travel with my blade than be cut in half by it, and then awkwardly swirl it around like a stick. More parts of it would freeze than not, allowing Moose to stomp it to death. He had already had great success bludgeoning them to death, though his methods didn’t work well for me because I wasn’t close to the same weight class he was.

  At least the regular webs didn’t have that trouble. They were tightly attached to the buildings, street lamps, and just about everything else. The tension made it very easy to cut them. I was glad that I didn’t have to flail aimlessly at everything in order to get ahead.

  Even though Allspeech was still active, we said nothing as we trudged through the city. The skeletons and bodies continued to pile up at an alarming rate. It had to have been from decades, possibly over a century of feeding unless the number of spiders was much larger than we first thought. I cut through the webs and Moose cleared the path of everything else. Our advance had slowed down, but still continued.

  I frowned when we came across the second monument that I had seen in my dream. The Heavenly Trio was trashed in a manner similar to the Nine Sacred Orbs. Keith Carr’s statue had been destroyed to the point where the only thing that was left were the soles of his boots. Logan was missing his head, part of a shoulder, and a whole arm, while Alexis was gone from the waist up.

  “Interesting. It seems as though whoever did this wasn’t as big a fan of the Maker as everyone else,” Moose mused as I relayed this information.

  “It could have been CC herself,” I stated as we passed the monument. “From everything I’ve seen of her, lashing out makes sense as a coping mechanism. The only thing is, I’m still not sure if it’s so she can get revenge or just to put him in his place. She went so far as to say that they would have words twice, but…”

  “Given her mental instability, I am sure the answer to that changes on a regular basis,” Himia said. “Her unpredictability is one of the things that makes her so dangerous, and enamors many who think her attitude is freeing.”

  We followed the Information Elemental towards where the Dungeon Nexus was located, though she walked right through the webs we had to deal with. Even if she couldn’t gather information, it still made sense that the rulers of this place would be set up near it if they were a part of CC’s Cult of Chaos.

  We continued to fight our way through the tumbleweeds, though I noticed that they weren’t nearly as prevalent as they had been outside of the city’s walls. Where we once had two hundred chase us, we were now only fighting a half dozen at a time on every other street. It seemed like they were more to keep us on our toes and stressed about potentially constant combat than actually killing us.

  I had a few ideas why, but I kept them to myself. There was no guessing what kind of information these spiders could gather despite not being present and I wasn’t about to give them my thoughts for free.

  Himia’s path was similar to the tour I had taken in the dream state, though now I was actually walking it. We came across what would have been Stalwart Companion, the translucent, gray cube with orange lights in it, if it still existed.

  This one was just flat out gone. There was no debris or rubble and even the macabre piles of the dead were pushed out of the way. It seemed like nothing was allowed to inhabit this place other than dust and errant spores.

  To my surprise, the final monument we came across was mostly whole and clean with few webs covering it. There were three spheres set around out on an orrery that had a flat plane of land replacing the sun. They were clearly moons, as the guide had started to name them, with two of them having craters all along their surface. Those were blue and green, respectively.

  Only the red moon was different. It had a few overly large craters, but it was unusually smooth. This one was also on a different track than the rest. The blue and green spheres went around in a circle, never getting any closer or farther from the central plane. I followed the track the red moon was on, noting how it not only followed the path of the others, but also changed the distance at which it orbited.

  “What’s up with that red moon, Himia?” I asked out of curiosity. Not enough to stop and see if the contraption still worked—it would have taken too long to remove most of the webs—but I’d ask about it.

  “The Red Moon of Rundathier,” she answered. “That was the source of the monsters that plagued the land. It would empower them based on its proximity, though I am unsure of its method of propulsion or the reason for it. The closer it was, the more aggressive the monsters would get, though they certainly were not safe to be around when it was at its furthest. This was the reason why Keith Carr, along with others, were… I apologize, Inspector, but the following information is classified for the time being.”

  “For the time being?” I repeated, scowling.

  “I am certain that more locks on the information I have will disappear as you continue to visit the Dungeon Nexus and learn more about the man himself,” Himia explained. “I apologize for the inconvenience.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m sure,” I grumbled. “I can see why the Dungeon Master liked Knowledge Check so much; his father was the one to teach him how to drip feed information at an exceptionally slow pace.”

  My grumblings were met with silence, and we left the orrery behind with little trouble from the webs and the tumbleweeds. Himia took us through another firebreak. They were starting to become more common here as we got closer to the center of town. Instead of one every several blocks, it got down to three before once again reducing to two.

  They clearly didn’t want someone burning everything down to get to them. Understandable, really.

  Eventually, we reached a rather plain three story building. The walls were made out of white stone, which had clearly been imported from somewhere else considering the bricks everything else was made out of, and had no windows. There were four doors, one on each side, and it was completely devoid of black webbing.

  If it weren’t for the piles of bodies nearby, which was a part of the scenery whose only change was to become stacked higher, I would have almost called it pristine.

  “This was the center of government for Winleshire,” Himia explained as she stopped in the middle of the street and turned to face us. “It was actually a bunker for Keith Carr before he got his bearings on extradimensional spaces, which he then used to make Camp Lexi. He had always been very vocal on preserving the natural lakes of the area, which he said reminded him of home, and this building was donated to the town itself.”

  “Yes, very interesting,” I said with a wave of my hand. “But you’re certain the Dread Weavers are going to be in there?”

  “This is the most defensible structure in the city,” she replied, which I couldn’t help but notice didn’t answer my question. “While it may seem unassuming, this is still the most likely spot for them to dwell.”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “There is nothing here,” Moose observed, looking down the street. “Not even those tumbleweeds.”

  “I would classify that as misdirection,” Himia stated.

  Taking a breath, I sighed and thumbed the rune on my Hilt of Holding in order to retract the sword. I fiddled with the pommel, turning it to another, and summoned an almost identical blade from the last. If nothing else, it wouldn’t hurt to check and see what was inside.

  “Moose, I’m going to go in,” I told the healer as I checked my buckler. “I want you patrolling the perimeter. Make sure nothing comes in or out. If anything does, try to get my attention as best you can.”

  “Are you sure that you don’t require my assistance inside?” he asked, looking from me to the doorway. “I might not fit easily, but it would not be my first time navigating Human-sized dwellings.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not putting you out here because I think you’re going to be a liability,” I answered with a shake of my head. I retrieved a vial from my Dimensional Pocket and placed it within a mundane one. “I’m putting you out here because I think you can fight whatever kind of backup they might call and stop any escapees.”

  Moose thought about this for a moment before nodding. “You can count on me, Inspector.”

  “Good,” I said as I turned to the closest entrance. “I’ll be back soon. Himia, map out any escape routes these spiders could take once I’m inside.”

  The only parts of the door that were still attached to the hinges were old, broken pieces of wood. A sense of foreboding exuded from the dark passage as if the DTER finally activated,warning me away. I kept my grip on my sword tight as I approached and entered the building.

  Glowstones lined the walls inside but they were dim, filling the room with more shadows than light. There hadn’t been any black webs outside, but that had drastically changed after I infiltrated the government center. They covered the space from ceiling to floor. There were paths around them that would have been impossible for anyone who wasn’t my size, but I wasn’t about to leave my escape route full of obstacles.

  I sliced through the webs with ease, making sure to do so well above my head so they hung limply from the ceiling. They still constituted a trip hazard, especially with how sticky they were, but they no longer blocked my line of sight. Plus, if anything approached on the ceiling, I would be able to see them move.

  A foul wind blew through the hallways, coating me in spores. I was already dirty from the long trek through town, but this did more to cover me than everything else. Looking down, I saw that I was absolutely covered in what appeared to be black dust.

  There was a part of me that wondered if this was how they controlled the tumbleweeds and if I were going to be slowed down as they turned my clothes against me. That would be a neat trick, though I felt confident I could overpower it. I was leaning more towards a deterrent on lighting the whole place on fire. If I did, then I’d go up in flames, too.

  Covering my face as best I could, I started heading in the direction of the wind. It was really more of a light breeze, but it was easy to track due to the spores lingering in the otherwise stagnant air. I went around the building once, seeing where the inhabitants had put up barriers of their own in the form of furniture. There was only one path in and out, for me at least, and it was a long one.

  The deepest room in the building was a large, stately affair with several broken chairs and tables that have seen better decades. If I thought the webs out in the city were thick, it was only because I came here last. The walls were coated with them, making sure that no glowstones could illuminate the chamber.

  I put on my Darklight Goggles after blowing the spores off of my gloves. It didn’t get the job done, but it did well enough. The center of the room was free of webbing, and I walked in. My hand went into my pocket, wrapping around the vial I had brought.

  “The one called Inspector comes,” a grave voice came from above.

  No, not from above. It actually spoke directly into my mind. I winced at the sudden intrusion as a headache overtook me. Whatever spoke was probing my mental defenses, and wasn’t doing it gently.

  “He, along the other, has overcome our dream,” came a second, even deeper in pitch.

  “An audience with the Trine he seeks, thus, he gets,” stated a third, more feminine than the others.

  “Am I to assume that you are the Trine?” I asked, looking for the source of my mental intruders.

  Three spiders hung from the webbing above me, mostly obscured. If it weren’t for the Darklight Goggles, I wouldn’t have been able to pick them out of the darkness at all. Their eight legs curled and shifted, and black and white ringed mushrooms grew from their backs and bellies. Beady, intelligent eyes regarded me with curiosity and hunger, and I stared back with neither.

  The first thought I had was that Nightmareshrooms were pure black, so I wasn’t quite sure what this was. Possibly a regional variant, or something CC cooked up.

  My second thought was that they were surprisingly small. Even Sevensleg was the size of a horse when he first became a dungeon owner. These were tiny compared to him. I would say that they were only half again as large as myself.

  “Yes,” the first said.

  “We are the Trine, overlords of this place,” the second added.

  “We—”

  “You’re Dreamsnatcher Spiders,” I interrupted as my mind was suddenly filled with knowledge. It was about time that ability finally came into play. “Partially corrupted by Nightmareshrooms, you’re in a constant battle with yourself for control. Your bodies are so small because you’re expending so much energy keeping them at bay. At the same time, you exist both here and in the dream world, and have become much more magically adept than you would be physically.” I paused for a moment. “Well, saying it’s magic wouldn’t be right; you’re all more psychic than magical, though you do need an absurd amount of mana to retain your mental state.”

  The trio hesitated, and everything went very still.

  “He knows of us,” the second said.

  “The Inspector calls us by our true name,” the third continued.

  “Yes, yes, I know things I ought not to,” I said, waving my sword. “Listen, I could go on about how you need to eat the mana of living creatures in order to sustain your consciousness, or go on about how you don’t really have any elemental resistances, or any myriad of facts that I suddenly know about you. However, I have just one statement to make once Himia is done.”

  “You believe you have the right?” the first asked, and all three made a chuffing sound that might have been laughter.

  “Of course I have the right, I have all the power here,” I stated with utmost confidence. They didn’t seem to like that, and the headache intensified. Pain shivered down my body, but I resisted whatever effect they tried to use on me with more ease than I thought I would.

  “The room has been mapped, Inspector,” Himia whispered next to me. “There are only two exits. One is behind you, and the other is a crack leading to the basement on the eastern wall. It is currently hidden by webs.”

  I gave an almost imperceptible nod in response before continuing. “What I am going to do is give you a chance to release the spell, or psychic effect, or whatever it is causing my comrades to remain comatose. That is my wife, the two daughters she unofficially adopted, and a knucklehead whose company they like. As you can probably guess, I’m invested in their well-being.”

  “You want us to stop?” the third replied.

  “And miss out on our meal?” the second asked.

  “You must be as mad as the mistress,” the first joked. “And not nearly as delightful.”

  “Then I have been given all the information I need to know,” I said. “I have one piece of adventuring advice for you all before we begin.”

  “He thinks himself—”

  “If it’s worth preparing a spell, then it’s worth keeping on hand as a potion or scroll,” I interrupted, not caring for whatever drivel they were going to spew next.

  Removing my hand from my pocket, I uncorked the vial with my teeth before imbibing the contents. I threw it behind me, where it got caught in a web. A warmth spread through my body, not nearly as potent as if I had cast it but it would still get the job done.

  The Dreamsnatchers skittered back and forth on their webs, looking down at me. “What did you just drink?” the first asked, their attention intensifying on me.

  “Oh, no,” the third stated. They probably identified the effect.

  And now it was too late. I took in a deep breath, held my sword into the webbing, and spoke one more word. A spike of power was rammed into my brain, almost causing me to breathe out, but it was too late.

  “Ignite.”

  The room became an inferno.