Tree Guardian

by Andrew Karevik

  Still, Ehdrid seemed to sense my pain. As a shaman, he was tuned in to the presence of spirits and I was considered to be one great big spirit. He came to me one late night, stepping outside in the cold. The snow was falling greatly now, and the rest of the forest was dead and barren. My leaves were starting to turn gray, as a reflection of my feelings and worry. I had wished they kept their green beauty, but my fears were so great that the color change was involuntary. I looked almost as dead as the other trees.

  “I forget how cold the outside world can be,” Ehdrid said as he strolled about, leaning on his staff for support. He examined the large craters that were now filled with snow. “You are suffering greatly.”

  “I am, Ehdrid,” I replied. Normally, Ehdrid would address me in his private hut, but to come outside and speak to me felt different. As if we were face to face in a way.

  “There is a great rage below us, boiling and brewing, seeking to bring harm to you,” Ehdrid continued as he dragged his staff on the snow, drawing little symbols in the ground. “And you face a great destiny ahead of you.”

  “I have learned the terrible truth about the Invaders,” I admitted. This was the first time I would speak these words out loud to anyone that I trusted. “They have devoured many realms before ours. And great beings of power, gods and dragons, were helpless in stopping them.”

  Ehdrid nodded. “That is why you are so afraid?”

  “How can I not be? The entirety of this world, all of us, will be erased in an instant. I am not strong enough to protect myself from a feral dungeon beneath me. How will I save us?”

  Ehdrid sighed at those words and continued to carve symbols out of the snow. “I wish there was some way I could provide you comfort. Some phrase or analogy, perhaps a story, that would fill you with courage and confidence. But I deal in truth. You have a great burden upon you and, truth be told, such a burden would crush most of us. I am sorry you are in this pain but there is nothing that can be done to comfort such a heart.”

  “Do you…do you believe it will all end? That I will fail?”

  Ehdrid smiled a little, looking up from his carving. “Nonsense. You are the World Tree, are you not? You are mighty, clever and wise. You have defeated gods, struck deals with dragons and endured the antics of Immix without slaying him. I do not believe there is anything that you cannot do.”

  “Then why can’t you say words that will give me the courage to face it?”

  “Words last a few hours or a few days at most. They will fade. But deeds stay, the actions you have done will stay in your heart far after you forget the words. Why look to someone less accomplished for guidance? Reflect on what you have already achieved, look at your victories. Let those be the things that guide you forward. Let those be the things that give you the strength to press on. Will they heal your pain? Will they ease your suffering? No. But they will give you strength. And you need strength more than you need relief.”

  Ehdrid raised his staff high, causing the symbols on the ground to begin to glow with a blue energy. These symbols started to rise in the air, and as I gazed upon them I could see images of my past within them. Each symbol was a different time of trial, a different victory that I had secured.

  “Reflect, Great Tree,” Ehdrid said as he hobbled back into the entrance. “And seek not comfort, but victory.”

  I sat in peaceful silence and watched these memories come to life. Ehdrid was right, they did not provide me comfort, but rather they set a fire within me. A burning sense of passion, of strength. I knew that I had the power to carry on, regardless of what lay ahead. I would succeed where gods and dragons failed. I would put a stop to this Invasion, no matter what.

  Chapter 18

  With my renewed sense of determination, I began to focus on the few tasks at hand that had been pressing me. The first and biggest was Vincenzo’s presence. This man was surprisingly resilient. He had not been exaggerating his ability to survive the dungeon. Anything that was thrown his way, he found a way to escape. When teleported into the first room of Level Three, he was quick to take out a pole that was sturdy enough to withstand the brutal crushing of the walls. He was able to navigate the rest of the traps and obstacles with surprising ease. When encountering the dragon, he somehow knew their tongue and was able to negotiate for free passage to the outside portal.

  Then, upon reaching the outside world, he returned to my mouth to resume his work. Regar was infuriated at the sight of Vincenzo coming back, map in hand. He asked for my permission to slay him and I told the minotaur he was free to do as he liked, as Vincenzo enjoyed no special protections. The mighty minotaur charged the cartographer but was quickly dazed by a bit of magic. And by the time his sight returned, Vincenzo was gone, off to another vault.

  This hardiness would normally irritate me, especially when the man was recording all of my secrets. But truthfully, I could use him. If he was able to survive my deadliest traps, perhaps he would be the one who could investigate the interior of the Dungeon Below.

  I reached out to him as he was busy asking a goblin engineer about how the service tunnels were constructed. Usually, goblins were quick to scamper into the tunnels to escape from adventurers, but Vincenzo had been able to lure one out of hiding with gifts. As it happily munched on the chocolate confections he had brought, the goblin was quick to explain just how all the tunnels worked. Namely, that anyone who entered would be vaporized instantly by the most powerful of magics.

  “Vincenzo,” I said, reaching out to him. “I am ready to make a proposition.”

  “Ahhhhh, Great Tree! I am thrilled to hear your voice!” Vincenzo said, bidding the goblin farewell and turning his attention upwards, towards me.

  “You have shown yourself to be quite skilled at navigating dungeons,” I said. “I am impressed by your ability to survive not only my most lethal traps, but also an encounter with the dragon.”

  “Dragons are easy to deal with, once you know their language,” Vincenzo said, waving a hand in the air to dismiss my compliment. “But the trick is staying alive long enough to learn their words. I trust you are not here to simply praise me? What is it that you wish from Vincenzo?”

  I was quick to explain the presence of the Dungeon Below. I told him everything, of its power, the soul capturing and its cruelty towards any mortal being. Vincenzo did not seem terribly surprised by anything I was telling him. Instead, he merely nodded until I finished.

  “Ah yes, you speak of a dungeon type that I have encountered before. We call them Carnivore Dungeons. Unlike other dungeons, which are for the most part created by wizards to protect themselves, Carnivore Dungeons are more like animals. Where they come from has long been debated, but they represent a threat to all mortals and thus have been widely routed out and destroyed,” Vincenzo said as he began to dig through his bag, producing a few smaller maps. He unfurled one and held it up proudly.

  “This was the Tomb of Irui,” he said, showing me the interior of a long, circular-looking dungeon. Every route seemed to lead to the center, as if it were one giant labyrinth. “Irui had a great level of contempt for living things and, before his death, created a Carnivore Dungeon. Its purpose? To eat anyone who entered his own tomb, looking for his secrets. But it was very hungry and very greedy, rapidly expanding so that it could find more food.”

  “And you explored it?”

  “I wish!” Vincenzo said. “No, that honor went to my great grandfather. This map was his. He was the first to realize the dungeon was different. It was a living thing that could think and react in real time. There are other dungeons like this, of course, but not carnivorous. Most dungeons function like you do, taking the raw essence simply because they need it to grow. But Carnivores want it all. Every last drop of a spirit, until everything is gone.”

  “I am well aware of that fact,” I replied. “What happened to the Tomb of Irui?”

  Vincenzo shrugged. “It vanished one day. Some drunkard claimed to have killed it by stabbing
it in the right place. But if that was the case, there would have been some kind of body left over, like a husk. The Cartographers’ Guild believed that it moved to another plane, either on purpose or by accident. Perhaps a wizard sent it away.”

  Teleporting it to another plane? That was an idea I had not considered. Yes, I had been thinking about a way to redirect it partially to another realm, but if I were to forcibly remove the dungeon from this realm altogether? That might be the better solution.

  “Would you be interested in exploring such a place?” I asked.

  “So that I may be devoured and removed from your life? I think not, friend!” Vincenzo said. “I would prefer to finish my work here first. Then afterwards, I shall send for aid and begin looking into your dungeon playmate.”

  “I have no intention of you recording my interior,” I said. “I have a great deal of power and, as we speak, I am preparing a spell that will erase not only your memory but your artistic ability as well. You will not have the skills to draw any more maps.”

  “You think Vincenzo is not used to losing his memories?” the cartographer asked, laughing as he produced a few little vials from a small pouch on his hip. They glowed faintly, and I could see silver liquid sloshing about inside. “These will restore whatever I have forgotten. I appreciate your desire to keep your secrets, Friend Tree, I do. But it is my job to steal those secrets. We must have respect for one another, even if we are at odds.”

  “I do not understand this desire to map me so. What is it? The challenge? The wealth that comes with selling?”

  “In all honesty?” Vincenzo said with a grin. “I’m simply too curious about the world. I would do this even if I weren’t getting paid for it.”

  “Then be on your way, I shall not keep you any longer,” I said to him. Vincenzo bowed and returned to his occupation, carefully walking along, searching for any signs of a secret door.

  As he continued his work, so did I. If Vincenzo was so convinced of his talents, I would build another floor, one just for him. The name? Vincenzo’s Humility, and it would be the most dangerous place he would ever encounter.

  I reflected on what made the man so efficient at navigating through these traps and puzzles. He was the kind of adventurer who had seen it all. Not only had he been through countless dungeons, he was also meticulous in his approach. He would categorize and classify every threat, every challenge. Over time, he would undoubtedly begin to recognize patterns. And by understanding these patterns, he would be far more likely to survive just about any other kind of dungeon—provided he was able to identify which patterns were being used.

  I checked my own blueprints and tried to determine what they all had in common. They were so carefully planned, so precisely designed that it would be impossible not to see the logic of what I had created. In other words, my designs were so rational that all Vincenzo needed to do was look at the room with the eyes of a dungeon architect. If he could think like I did, he could reasonably identify my own patterns and guess as to what was coming next.

  This was why he moved so slowly. He wasn’t just learning my secrets, he was learning my style. If I was going to be able to throw him off and create a custom floor just to show him I was different from the other dungeons, I would need to abandon the rules and conventions that I followed in my design.

  How does one change their style when they were so unconscious of it? By embracing chaos. Instead of crafting the traps, monsters and puzzles in a logical manner, I would throw them all together incoherently. I would break the inherent rules to dungeon design. It would be confusing, frustrating, and above all unpredictable.

  The first thing I did was develop a new trap that was antithetical to my normal creations. Most of my traps were built so that they needed to be either discovered or overcome. They would pop out of walls or holes in the ground; they would suddenly open up and fire out deadly acid or arrows. Sometimes I would have a large, complicated trap in the center of a room, meant to divert attention away from the real traps. But there were always ways to solve these traps, always a means to get around them—be it through the use of cunning, strength or magic.

  What if there was no rational way to solve a trap? What if even I did not know the answer to the riddles that I gave? This was not to say that the traps could not be conquered or that the puzzles could not be solved, but rather that they did not follow the standard logic that I had been using all of this time.

  I began to develop my own method of creating a chaotic dungeon floor. The first piece would be the traps. All of the traps within—the standard pit traps, buzzsaws, poison arrows, and so on—had to be different in some way. Different enough not only to confound Vincenzo, but also to overtake him.

  I analyzed my favorite blade trap to use, the buzzsaw, in order to determine how I would change the rules of the weapon. In general, the buzzsaw would be attached to a long metal rod that was affixed to a series of gears in the wall. The gears would rotate, powered by magic, causing the buzzsaw to move back and forth while spinning at a deadly speed. It would shred anything it came in contact with. Most of the time, I would have the buzzsaws set up so that they were guarding an area out in the open, moving up and down at a certain speed, giving adventurers a chance to leap over when the time was right.

  Other times, I liked to be clever and hide the buzzsaws inside of the wall. Stepping on a stone would cause the wall to open up, dropping the buzzsaw out and slicing it towards the unfortunate victim who activated the mechanism. This was still a matter of reflexes; if an adventurer was quick, they’d be able to dodge the attack.

  So, what if I changed the rules of the buzzsaw? Quickness was always implied. If a buzzsaw was coming towards an adventurer, they would have to dodge. There was no fighting it off, no repelling it with force spells or whatnot, mainly because the adventurers moved too quickly to do anything other than get out of the way. But what if I punished their quickness? What if the buzzsaw were to follow the adventurer, with the rod flexible enough to twist and bend in any direction? Therefore, if Vincenzo were to see the buzzsaw sliding back and forth in a corridor and he were to leap over it, it would simply raise itself, homing in on his exact position.

  I was pleased with this new concept: the targeted buzzsaw. It would be a nasty surprise to just about anyone who had gotten used to the regular buzzsaws I set in the other floors. They would not see this coming in the least. As always, however, there did need to be some weakness, some exploit that a clever adventurer could figure out in order to bypass the trap. In this case, I thought it best to continue with the counterintuitive design process. In order to avoid getting sliced in half, the adventurer would simply have to walk slowly forward as the buzzsaw moved towards them. The blade would stop spinning once it approached them. As long as the movement was slow and methodical, it would not spin up and attack. But a single jerk, sudden action or attempt to run, and the blade would take the adventurer down.

  In order to make these traps even more difficult to navigate, I would always place them with other, normal buzzsaw traps. Even if an adventurer was to figure out the secret, they would still have to be cautious in dealing with these saws, because one of the traps would not respect their decision to stand still. I felt this was deadly enough to include in the first room of the fourth level.

  Keys were a major part of the rest of my design as well. Usually, a key had to be located in order to open up a vault leading into a new zone. Indeed, I would design the doors to this floor to have the same type of vault-like look, with large slots for special keys. But unlike the other vaults which would open when a key was placed, the first door in the dungeon would actually seal off the entire room, closing all exits. Then, the oxygen would be rapidly drained as the room began to fold in on itself at a rapid pace. No adventurer would question the need for the key. They would take one look at the empty keyhole and begin to search right away. Any attempts to pick the lock would trigger the same response as putting a key in. The best part about
the lockpicking trigger? The adventurers would make the mistake of thinking the illegitimate attempt to enter through the door was what triggered the trap. This would let the trap run twice on the same group.

  I had to do more on this floor than just create reverse results of what adventurers would expect. If they started to realize everything was the opposite, they’d be able to anticipate what was coming next. I couldn’t allow for that to happen, so I would need something more to be successful. I thought for a while about the most common expectation an adventurer would have: the expectation that walking was the best way to move through a dungeon. After all, every adventurer would walk or run through the halls, looking for the next room.

  I began to construct a special tile, one I nicknamed the Eternal Maze, for no matter how far an adventurer walked, they would not be able to budge from that spot. Yet, the walls alongside them would appear to slowly move with each step they took, to give them the appearance that they were traveling. A few charms would be necessary in order to make them believe that they were indeed exploring the dungeon. Illusion spells would provide false hallway entrances and forks in the road that would allow them to “navigate”, all the while stuck in one place.

  These Eternal Maze tiles would be placed randomly across the new floor, scattered about with the help of Immix, who was blindfolded and given a paintbrush. Anywhere he painted an X upon the ground, I would place the Eternal Maze tile. The tile itself would be large enough to trap an adventuring company of six. To those outside of the maze tile, the wandering adventurers would become invisible, as if they had gone somewhere else. It would be impossible to hear anyone’s voice from the outside world while standing on the tile. If a few tiles were close together, it would be possible for multiple adventurers to be convinced they were completely lost and alone, despite the fact that their comrades stood a mere twenty feet away.