Your creation has received divine favor.

It has been Named ‘Garden of Glass Bells’ and given the following Blessing:

A doorway shall open between this location and the Everforest. For the first thirty days, only lesser beings will be able to enter or leave through this door.

I had a portal to another plane open in the middle of my Dungeon. This couldn’t be summed up with a word as small as ‘disaster’.

Slowly, all around me, the Dungeon began to move again. My creatures shook themselves awake from whatever sleeping spell the Messenger had used. Experimentally, I ordered the glass golem to pick up the flower she had dropped and set it on the table, and to my immense relief he obeyed; his body bent and shifted like human flesh as he moved.

So that was one thing going according to plan.

[ Glass Golem ]

Born from the most fragile of materials, this swift-footed guardian is surprisingly resilient, and can produce debilitating resonances from its body to disable enemies.

I needed to know what was beyond that door. All I could see before my Mana dissipated was a flash of tree trunks, of moss-drenched bark and crawling insects. I ordered Adamant to go through and scout the surroundings.

But as he stepped through nothing happened. He simply moved through the empty doorway and arrived on the other side, still in my dungeon. Which told me his Legendary path was enough to disqualify him as a ‘lesser’ creature.

Adamant couldn’t go through, and Aurum was likely barred as well. Argent was away. The new golem might be able to go, but I couldn’t see through its eyes, and it couldn’t tell me what it saw. That left…

Izzis. Did it really have to be Izzis?

Reluctantly, I mentally prodded him. He was taking his sweet time waking up from the Messenger’s spell, and when he didn’t respond at once, I got… rough.

He yelped and startled awake, clutching his aching head. “Yesboss, yesboss? What izzit?”

GO THROUGH THAT DOOR, SCOUT THE SURROUNDINGS, AND TELL ME WHAT YOU SEE. TAKE THE NEW GOLEM. I shaped the words out of mushroom roots on the walls, and then turned to the golem.

OBEY HIM. I ordered. The golem gave no response, since I hadn’t asked for one. But as Izzis fluttered down to land among the golem’s horns, slapping it on the head and ordering “Forward!” the glass faun stepped forward obediently, walking smoothly through the door.

And they were gone.

I watched until they were out of sight, and then I could do nothing. Nothing but work on the second golem.

This time, I couldn’t seem to slip smoothly into a state of focus, distracted by my fretting and by the flower the Messenger had left behind. Time and time again I returned my attention to that flower, always expecting it to have played some trick while I wasn’t looking.

It was infuriating. My nerves were playing tricks on me.

I had shaped the golem’s base out of rich black soil, intending to weave a frame of fungus through its earthen body. But my usual enthusiasm for the work had faded to nothing. My mind was elsewhere, trying to imagine what Izzis was seeing on his journey.

Despondent, I ordered Adamant to finish my work. The golem approached the half-formed shape of earth curiously, settling onto his knees to regard what I’d begun, a long moment of silence descending. I could feel his thoughts flowing, his slow way of considering the problem. I had intended to create the shape of a stag, but he saw something else in the contours of my unfinished work.

Reaching out, he began to scoop and mold, push and smooth, finding a rhythm that seemed to please him. Something like music filled his mind, a deep humming note he had no mouth to express.

I watched, increasingly curious, as he worked the earth. His strange mind made it impossible to understand what he was truly thinking, but as familiar features took shape I joined in, helping him, following his lead. Together we sculpted a lion from the slab of soil I had raised, and I found an odd peace in working with one of my own creations.

It was like watching a child learn to fingerpaint, but Adamant’s skill was far from childish. Despite the crumbling dirt’s inability to hold fine shapes he had crafted a wonderful suggestion of a lion- it had the unmistakable personality of a reclining monarch.

Now I went to work. I threaded thousands of fungal roots through the loose soil, anchoring it together. Numerous fan-shaped growths in brown and black colors rose along its back, alongside the bubbling shapes of round-capped mushrooms, and round puffballs, wobbly cup-shaped funnels; so much lichen coated its dark flesh that it began to look like green fur. A mane of dripping moss surrounded its noble head, with whiskers of hair-thin roots.

I slowly removed the original dirt, replacing it with more fungus-flesh. In the end what we had was a strange, shaggy lion, its noble face emerging from a fringe of rough greenery, its back a garden.

Adamant had the honor of lifting the core to the lion’s brow and pressing it in. I did the work of connecting the Mana flows of all the individual fungal bodies together and weaving those threads of energy into the core. The many different breeds of fungus became one living colony.

And the beast stirred, yawning. It lapped Adamant’s hands with a tongue made of pale fungus-flesh.

[ Fungi Golem ]

Born of living root and spore, this beast has impressive powers of regeneration and a feral intellect. Poison drips from its claws.

It was far more alive than the first one had been. I didn’t know whether that came down to the living material, an effect of its shape, or even to Adamant’s influence.

One thing I did know was that I felt immensely calmer now.

With that done, I reached my tendrils of Mana for the flower. I had spent long enough resisting my curiosity, and it had yet to do anything mischievous. I devoured just the edge of one petal.

Mana from heaven. I couldn’t ‘taste’ a thing but the act of consuming just that tiny sliver made dancing lights and strange music play in my mind. I couldn’t help myself. I ate more. I eroded away the entire petal of that divine flower.

In moments my reserve was full, and I stopped myself- but if I went on I knew I could fill my Mana pool several times over. A simple two times overflow had given me the Blessing of the Earthshaper.

If I went farther what kinds of prizes could I win?

But that was a thought for later. When I’d found a way to secure this portal.

“So when I pull this horn we go left, and this horn means go right!” Izzis declared, steering the golem with tugs on its antlers.

The unlikely duo trotted through a vast, unknowable forest. The trees were ancient, gnarled things, their trunks like knots of pale bone-white bark, encrusted with furry mosses, marked with strange runic signs that seemed to be part of their growth. Far above they spread their vast arms into a canopy of glass.

Every leaf was a crystalline blade the color of sky, and they cut into the incoming wind with long, keening notes, an endless hum filling the forest below, alongside the faint chime and crystal clattering of the leaves knocking together. It made a strange music that went on and on.

As the light shone through this strange ceiling the world took on a deep azure hue. It was as if they were walking on the bed of the ocean, drowning in blue and deep shadow, the occasional shaft of golden light piercing through a gap to blaze down into the dark undergrowth.

Small animals scuttled in all directions as they passed, or paused to stare at them. A rabbit with a crown of horns stared at them from atop a rotten log. A silver fox with a streak of blazing red in its fluffy mantle padded past, sniffing at them, almost neighborly.

And Izzis never noticed the shadow trailing behind them.