Chapter 41: Garden Biome

  The tundra was different now that all the statues were activated.

  Without the storm, it felt wrong. The lack of movement and noise made the area feel silent and hollow, like a theater stage after the actors had finished their performance and walked off. There was no more howling wind chewing at their ears, and no more white curtain smothering sight. It was just a wide-open plain of snow and ice stretching to the horizon, with the statues glowing faintly like lanterns scattered across the expanse.

  And no more chimeric ghosts.

  The leopard chimeras were surely still out there. Alex could feel them, their threads of aether curling faint and distant on the edges of his [Aether Sight]. But without the blizzard, they were nothing but cats without their shadows.

  They didn’t even try to ambush the team anymore.

  Every so often, Alex would catch a pair of glowing eyes retreating into the distance, or the ripple of spotted fur disappearing into a ridge of ice. But they were always slinking away, never challenging. They were cowards without their storm. And that was fine by him.

  “Almost feels like using cheatcodes. All this space and not a single furball trying to rip out my throat.” Garret said.

  Allie scoffed. “Cheating would be me sitting at home with a drink while you idiots did all the heavy lifting.”

  “Dream on,” Lance said as he hauled Tom-Tom out of a snow drift he’d stumbled into.

  Alex tuned them out, his eyes fixed ahead. The calm didn’t comfort him. If anything, it unsettled him more. But that wasn’t his problem right now. His boots crunched steadily over the ice, his lungs burning with every cold inhale, and his focus stayed locked on the only thing that mattered: the dungeon objectives.

  The tundra had been trial enough. The statues were done, the hidden challenge finished. Now the path bent onward, away from white and silence, toward the next threshold. Toward the Garden Biome, and that’s where Alex led them.

  The tundra ended not with cliffs or walls, but with iron.

  A fence stretched across the expanse, black bars rising from the snow in neat, perfect lines. It went on forever in either direction, unbroken, as if the dungeon had drawn a ruler straight through the world.

  On their side, the ground was all white and ice, lifeless as a corpse. On the other, pressed right up against the bars, was green. Lush grass curled thick against the fence posts, flowers swayed in a breeze that couldn’t reach them, and trees rose tall and flush with leaves. The transition was staggeringly stark, just a couple inches of steel separated frozen death from teeming life.

  And at the center stood the gates.

  They were seemingly made of tall, arched, wrought-iron, like the entrance to some old cemetery. The iron scrollwork was bent into lavish patterns that seemed to mock him the longer Alex stared at it. The tips were speared with finials shaped like twisted blooms, thorns and flower petals entwined into something both beautiful and harsh. Foreboding didn’t even begin to cover it.

  Garret whistled low. “Well, that’s… cheery. Real welcoming. Nothing says ‘step right in’ like Dracula’s front yard.”

  “Looks like a place you bury people, not grow things.” Allie added.

  Holly tilted her head, her eyes watching the grass ripple beyond the bars. “Garden or grave… maybe both? Did rich people used to bury their dead in their palace gardens?”

  Alex only shrugged. His eyes traced the gates, the arch, the vines of iron looping around in patterns he didn’t quite trust. The dungeon never gave them transitions for free. And if the tundra had been a test of endurance and patience, he could only imagine what the Garden Biome had waiting.

  “Stay sharp. Whatever’s on the other side, it isn’t just flowers.” He said.

  The wind stirred faintly at their backs, as if urging them forward. They stepped forward together, hands on the bars of the gate, and they all shoved as one. The gates groaned open under their combined push, the iron gate shrieking like something long asleep being forced awake.

  Crossing the threshold was like stepping into another world. Cold air gave way to warmth, biting wind to a sweet, humid breeze. The crunch of snow underfoot was replaced by the solid clack of boots on stone. A path stretched ahead, pale flagstones set in perfect lines, and on either side rose greenery thick enough to choke the senses.

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  Topiaries shaped like animals stood in silent rows, their leafy hides trimmed with unnatural precision. Flowering bushes flared with colors Alex couldn’t even name, blossoms spilling scents so heavy they clung to the back of his throat. Vines coiled lazily up trellises and archways overhead, dappling the path with fractured light.

  It should have been beautiful. And it was. But in the way of all dungeons, beauty had teeth. The stone path wound lazily ahead, curving left, then right, never quite straight. Alex found himself glancing around, uneasy with how much ground they were covering without actually getting anywhere. The trees pressed close, the air too fragrant, too heavy, and then the path forked.

  Four ways, all converging into a neat intersection. Each path had identical stone, each lined with more greenery, all of them continuing on, curving just out of sight.

  Obby stirred in his mind, his voice sadistically gleeful as ever. The System loves this kind of thing. It punishes hesitation. Punishes the wrong choices it forces on dungeon divers. So it gives dungeon explorers mazes, riddles, forks—they’re all traps in disguise.

  Alex grimaced. He’d been thinking the same thing. He let his gaze sweep across the others. “Thoughts?”

  Peter crouched low and brushed his fingers against the stones as if they might whisper a clue. Garret muttered something about picking whichever one didn’t smell like death. Holly tilted her head, her face making it seem like she listening to the garden itself, as if it might answer.

  The decision sat on all of them. Four paths stretched ahead, and only one true way forward.

  Tom-Tom hopped down from Henry’s shoulder into the middle of the intersection, shaking off snow and dirt that still clung to his scales.

  “Mm, yes,” he said with grave seriousness. He raised his stone-wrapped ladles like ceremonial wands and began waving them back and forth. “Time for the ancient ritual of pathfinding.”

  Allie sighed deeply. “Oh, gods.”

  Tom-Tom ignored her, and he began circling slowly. He tapped the stones three times with each ladle, then crouched down low, swaying his snout side to side as if divining secrets from the air. Finally, he pressed his face nearly flat to the ground and inhaled with a long, dramatic snuffle.

  Garret leaned toward Lance. “Do… do we stop him?”

  Lance shrugged. “I kinda want to see where this goes.”

  Tom-Tom straightened suddenly with wide eyes. He pointed one ladle at the second path from the left. “That way! Smells best. Not like rot or iron. Smells like…” He squinted. “Warm bread. And maybe honey.”

  The squad stared at the kobold.

  Holly squinted at him in confusion. “Bread?”

  “Bread,” Tom-Tom repeated solemnly. “And honey.”

  Alex looked at the others, weighing the absurdity of Tom-Tom's statement against the very real possibility that Tom-Tom’s nose had saved their skins more than once before. The garden was thick with scents, all of them overwhelming and strange, but maybe that was the trick. Where their senses were drowned, Tom-Tom’s cut through the overwhelming collection of odors.

  He exhaled slowly, scratching at the growing hair on his chin. “Alright. Bread and honey it is.”

  Allie threw her hands up. “We’re trusting the lizard’s sense of smell? He danced for a few seconds then smelled the rocks, that's it.”

  “Got us this far,” Garret said with a grin. “And hey, if it’s wrong, at least we die on a full stomach. Bread and honey is good eats right about now.”

  The squad fell into formation with their weapons up, following Tom-Tom’s chosen path. The garden seemed to close in tighter around them with every step, but Alex kept his eyes forward, trusting the little lizard’s nose more than the dungeon’s illusions. Garret was right about one thing; Tom-Tom’s nose hadn’t failed them, yet.

  The path wound cleanly through the garden maze, revealing no sudden ambushes, and no twisting loops dragging them in circles. There was only the stone underfoot, the topiaries looming on either side, and the heady perfume of flowers pressing at their senses until, finally, the trees parted. They stepped into a courtyard.

  The area was rather broad, easily the size of a martial training field, the air twinkled with quiet birdsong. At its center stood a fountain made of stone carved in the image of a great flower, its thick stem rising from the basin, petals unfurling outward in a graceful flourish. Water spilled from the petal tips and glittered as it caught the strange, sourceless light of the biome.

  Three other paths split away from the courtyard, each vanishing into hedges and flowerbloom in different cardinal directions.

  Eric grimaced. “I don’t like this already. This place feels too staged. And for the record, I’m not drinking anything in a garden again for the rest of my life.”

  “Noted,” Garret muttered, though he was already peering into the fountain like it might spit out treasure.

  They spread out cautiously. Peter crouched by the hedges, brushing his hands along a series of cut arches set neatly into the greenery. “These look manmade. Like… doorways.”

  “Noticed that too,” Lance said, pointing his sword toward another. “But nothing on the other side. Just more hedge.”

  “Then they’re hiding something?” Holly asked.

  Alex’s attention drifted back to the fountain, to the careful craft of the petals. It wasn’t just a decorative statue, it felt more, designed. Which was a strange feeling given it was a carving, so of course it would be designed, and yet, Alex couldn’t shake the feeling he was getting. The statue’s stem was thick as a tree trunk, the petals carved as if caught mid-motion, frozen in a perpetual bloom. He felt it was important, a clue staring them in the face.

  Something else caught his eye. Off to the side of the fountain, on a low stone table, sat a small plaque. The metal and its lettering was dusty and tarnished, but still legible.

  He crossed the courtyard, and brushed his gloves across the surface. It wasn’t writing on the plaque. Not exactly. It was a map. Alex could only guess that it was a bird’s-eye view of the entire garden, every courtyard, hedge, and twisting path was etched in delicate lines.

  Alex stared at the engraving. “Well. That’s new. And probably important.”