Rathbone the zombie orc brought his ax crashing down on the creature’s back, splitting open the mossy-green flesh to spill glossy black goo all over the dirt floor of the hedge maze. Only once before had he ever faced a monster such as this. The thing had a gut full of bones that didn’t belong to it—sections of skeletal arms and legs still attached with rubbery ligaments, as well as multiple skulls and a whole ribcage—and they came festering out in the dark gush, along with bright pink viscera, tongues and brains and lungs, and un-skulled eyeballs casting accusatory stares, and even inorganic objects, like daggers and keys and oddly enough a rolling pin like a human baker would use.
The bard—the others had called him by the ridiculous name Handsome Gentry—had been ripped completely in half. The creature which had killed him must have been hiding in plain sight, using its mossy-green skin to blend into the hedge wall. It waited until the party had passed, and then it attacked the last in line. The first hint that something had gone awry was when Handsome Gentry dropped his lute with a clang.
By the time Rathbone got turned around and waded past the druid and the human girl with the strange, ghostly book, he found the bard half-swallowed by what appeared to be some variety of gelatinous monster. It was almost as if the floor had opened up to devour the poor half-bastard, but Rathbone could make out the edges of the creature, where its green coloration came close but didn’t precisely match the surrounding hedge walls.
He decided it must be some plant-based cousin of the common dungeon mimic, though it was odd that it had so much undigested material inside of it. His experience with the more common dungeon-variety had taught him that a mimic’s gut juices could melt an adventurer in mere moments.
Confusion swarmed Rathbone’s groggy mind like flies on the dung-piles of his beloved, tusked, swamp-yak mount. How had he become conjoined to these amateur adventurers? Hadn’t he been battling through this hedge maze with Uther, his long-time partner, whose wife had gone missing when the third floor of Dragon Dan’s Adventure Depot suddenly and inexplicably transformed into a bizarre labyrinth? Where had Uther gone? And why had he been replaced by…. these people?
Do not allow these thoughts to intrude until the battle is finished. You know this to be a dangerous specis of monster.
Fortunately, the best way to deal with any sort of monster was to hit it with an ax – and Rathbone carried a big one. With a few vicious chops he ravaged the hedge mimic, but the damage to the bard had already been done. The creature had managed to sever and swallow much of him in the moments it took Rathbone to intervene. Now the bard was only half a bard, and he lay there on the dirt floor groaning and gurgling inarticulately. His time was short.
Rathbone turned back to the others. They stood there pale and wide-eyed and dumb-struck. He suspected that in the coming moments they would both puke. These weren’t adventurers. What was he doing here in this place with the likes of them? Furthermore, what was he doing back in this place at all?
It was all something from a dream.
Uther’s woman and offspring have already been rescued. We found them and were headed back out of the labyrinth when—
When what, exactly? Had he lost a stretch of time? He took a moment to pause and reflect on his memories involving these half-assed adventurers:
They had fought through a number of the strange, living topiary creatures. First, a hyena, and then a tiger. They’d even faced a ridiculously long python made from twisted roots. None of the topiary creatures had posed any real danger to Rathbone, even if his teammates were poorly equipped to help him fight. The bard would sometimes play a song that increased Rathbone’s attack speed, which was a welcome buff. The druid could cause sections of the hedge maze to wither, which would in turn produce pods of healing magic, which were appreciated for the rare times when one of the topiary critters landed a swipe. And then there was the girl with the ghost book. She had thus far proven to be entirely useless. He wasn’t even sure what that strange book of hers was supposed to do.
But most importantly, right up until this point, none of the topiary animals had posed a meaningful threat to Rathbone. The hedge mimic was another matter, however. Something so clever presented a true danger – even to an orc as fierce as he.
And then something terrible happened: Rathbone Killmaim suddenly remembered his own death. One of these same hedge mimic creatures had been hiding near the exit of the hedge maze. He and Uther and Uther’s family had walked right past it without even noticing.
It bit me close to in-half. He could see it in his mind’s eye. He could see his own intestines snaking out of his torn gut. He could see his leg protruding half-out of the mimic’s fanged mouth. He had died here, in this maze. Exactly the same as that ridiculous bard.
Rathbone turned back and studied the rapidly degrading corpse of the monster he’d just hacked into gooey hunks. He swooned with an eerie sense of deja vu. And then he noticed something in the corner of his eye. A notification had been automatically minimized and was now blinking at him, in the shape of a blood red exclamation point. Without delay he willed it to open, eager for anything that could help explain his current predicament:
Mind control. Rage bloomed within his stone-formed orc-heart.
Someone had been controlling his mind using a sigil power called Cost of Living. He could no longer trust his hazy recollections of the recent past. Had he even truly been killed – or was that some sort of illusion, softening him up for domination by some despicable enchanter-type?
Whatever had taken place—whether his death had been real or not—whoever had taken control of his mind had evidently been ignorant of orc racial traits. His Indomitable trait had finally kicked the mind-invader out and now he was back in complete control of his own body.
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But that body of his felt somehow different now, too, didn’t it? Slightly weaker than it should be.
And cold. He felt it deep in his bones and veins and guts. So terribly, terribly cold.
Snowflakes flittered down all around him but the weather in this labyrinth didn’t begin to account for this deep-seated freeze within him; a cold which he felt in the depths of his soul. Fear crept into his stone heart, temporarily evicting the rage which had resided there a moment before.
He turned to the pair of pitiful, young, wannabe adventurers who both still looked ready to puke. Surely neither of them could be responsible for this Cost of Living power.
“I do not know how you’ve tricked me into being your escort,” Rathbone snarled at Thornton and Penny, “but this arrangement is over.” He held his greataxe menacingly at the ready, daring either of the green-gilled adventurers to argue.
The druid finally hucked up a mouthful of vomit and quickly turned to barf it out. The girl didn’t respond at all. She stood staring at the bisected bard, his ropy guts battered in dirt like some sort of nightmare calamari. His groans were starting to gurgle more and more as he drowned in his own blood.
Rathbone grunted and turned back the way they’d come from, leaving the humans to fend for themselves.
Seymour saw all of this go down through the crystal display in Testing Chamber Number Four, which was linked to the Sigil of Attachment Penny had applied to Handsome Gentry's arm. It was like watching the action streaming in real-time on a big-screen TV.
Early on in the crawl, he had the bright idea that maybe this whole thing could be monetized. He briefly considered approaching Dan to propose converting one of the testing chambers into a kind of theater, with permanent seating and maybe a snack bar, where non-adventuring customers would pay to watch from a safe distance as dungeon crawlers braved Vol’kara. He knew Eusebio would be on board with the idea, if for no other reason than it would mean he could watch the shows broadcast by the Xallem Stage Company in that much more comfort and luxury.
But then everything had gone seriously off the rails and Seymour thought better of the scheme.
It had all started off as expected, right up until some kind of giant hedge-slug monster appeared to have chomped poor old Handsome Gentry’s ass legit in half. When he fell to the ground it put a serious damper on Seymour’s ability to see what was happening. But he knew enough to command Zombie-Rathbone to attack the damned monster before it could tear into Penny or Thornton next.
He’d accomplished that with the help of an interface element only he could see, an extension of his Cost of Living power. It gave him the most basic of information regarding his zombie slaves: current health and mana, status effects, and a simple list of available sigil powers and abilities. It was honestly really sweet, like a menu in a party-based, tactical roleplaying game. But after he’d tabbed Rathbone to take care of the slug-monster that had bitten Gentry in half, something went wrong.
The interface element tied to Rathbone Killmaim had suddenly vanished. But the orc hadn’t been killed or anything. Seymour could still see him flashing into view every so often; flashing into Handsome Gentry’s field of vision as he finished off the monster.
And then, he just up and left. He had somehow thrown off Seymour’s control and having regained his own faculties the orc bounced and left Penny and Thornton to fend for themselves.
Seymour continued to watch what was happening on the crystalline wall of the testing chamber. Penny soon entered the frame. hovering above the half-bard’s body. Behind her, Thornton became visible at the very edge of Gentry’s vision, wiping the barf off his mouth with the cuff of his robe.
“I’m home,” Gentry suddenly croaked. These were his final words, and the first he’d spoken since Seymour had half-resurrected him. In the last moment of his un-life, he’d come back into his body. somehow.
The view on the screen was frozen on what he would see in his final moments while lying flat on his back. The hedge walls on either side of the corridor towered some thirty feet high, and above that loomed a foreign night sky full of bright white stars. The stars began to blur, not from anything related to Handsome Gentry’s eyes, but rather from the tears welling in Seymour’s own.
And then Thornton suddenly appeared—way too close—holding a serrated blade in his right hand – the sort you’d use to clean a fish.
“Thornton,” Penny weakly pleaded, her voice less than a whisper. “What are you trying to do?”
The crystal display dimmed and finally faded to black.
Seymour turned in place, sitting then with his back against the darkened display.
“Stop it!” Penny screamed. The druid had lost his mind. He was butchering the twice-dead bard with a fileting knife. She pounded her fists against his back but it was no use. Some sort of trance had stolen him. Maybe it was shock; or simple, sudden-onset insanity. She punched him in the side of his head but it only hurt her hand. She really needed to take part in some martial arts training. Cradling her sore hand against her chest, she staggered back away from the gruesome scene.
Everything had gone so wrong.
The hedge maze wasn’t quite like she had expected. It wasn’t close, really. It occupied a massive space, its area far more voluminous than the regular dimensions of the shops’ third floor. Her foursome had come up through the stairwell and immediately the temperature plummeted. Suddenly, they were outside; the roof was gone; snowflakes fluttered down intermittently.
The hedge walls themselves towered impossibly tall and dense. Every so often, the party would come across a relic of the shop’s actual third floor: a curio full of magic candles half-sunk into the dirt, looking like a tombstone, or sometimes a section of the floor that would still be cedar boards. Here and there they found wooden doors, formerly of the Adventure Depot, now built directly into the hedge. It was almost as if the transformation had only completed partially, with the labyrinth having subsumed most—but not all—of the shop’s original space.
None of the topiary creatures they’d encountered cast any sort of spells, so Penny had done nothing but observe from the back while Rathbone the zombiefied-orc chopped them into kindling. She should have been paying closer attention to the path they were taking, but she’d been eagerly fingering the dagger she’d brought along, waiting for a chance to join in a fight – eager to the exclusion of any other tasks. Now, with Rathbone having abandoned them, and with the bard’s death severing their connection to Seymour, she had no idea which direction she needed to travel in order to get out of this place. She prayed that Seymour would activate the escape array without any further delay.
If he didn’t, then the druid might know the way out. Perhaps she could rely on him to lead her back to safety. But the suddenly-insane bastard was over there sawing away at the dead bard’s gory abdomen.
“Gentry,” she whispered, slumping against the hedge wall. “His name was Handsome Gentry.”
The druid had finished his butchery. Now he was zombie-walking with zombie-eyes, holding one of his healing pods in his blood-soaked hands as he shambled in Penelope’s direction. At first, she thought he must have died and fallen under the effect of Seymour’s hideously profane power.
But then as she slid back another step she realized what he’d done. He’d used his knife to dig a tunnel into Gentry’s stomach, and then he’d attempted to shove the healing pod inside. The wad of composted hedge material now looked like a bloody heart. Why was he bringing it to her?
“Stay back!” She pulled the dagger from the sheath on her hip. In that moment she wished more than anything that she’d saved a few chits to add a catalyst to her Diligence sigil that might have given her some actual proficiency with the damn thing.
Thornton froze where he stood. He blinked and shook his head, and as the shock began to recede he looked down at the bloody lump of the healing pod he held cradled with both hands. He threw it down in disgust, and the pod hit the dirt with a squishy thud. He looked back to where Gentry lay legless and mutilated. The filet knife sat bloody and abandoned upon his chest.
“What have I done?” Thornton fell to his knees, his whole body racked with sobs. Cautiously, Penny moved to kneel beside him. He’d genuinely been trying to somehow save Gentry, she realized. He’d simply been out of his mind for a time, no doubt because of the trauma. He’d been adventuring for only the past month, and he’d obviously never experienced anything as horrible as all this.
She put her arm around his shoulders and he looked at her with his bloodshot eyes and he tried to say something but he couldn’t form a single word. Penelope found herself unable to stop staring over Thornton’s shoulder at the mutilated half-body even while she consoled the mutilator with gentle, cooing words. Fat snowflakes fell from the night sky that shouldn’t have existed inside a magic shop, blanketing Handsome Gentry in white.
