The five four adventurers stumbled through the door to my inner paradise, the Garden of Glass Bells, panting and huffing. With every breath they drew the golden spore that permeated the air into their lungs. Kneeling down, the bard lit a stick of incense and I felt that constricting sense of restraint surge through my being, sealing me out from my ethereal control.

The alchemist dressed the small wounds of his comrades with a tin of aromatic balm, the wounds sizzling painfully and sealing as he pasted it thick across the bleeding cuts from the spider’s fangs.

And all the while, they were shrinking. They hadn’t noticed it yet, but they were losing size with every second. Every delay worked in my favor.

“Hold up.” The armored woman said, lifting a gauntleted hand. “Something’s strange.”

“Everything’s strange. Strange and beautiful.” The alchemist noted, gazing out on my domain. The delicate shapes of the glass mushrooms pulsed with waning and waxings of pale, greyish light, a light without any warmth. The landscape was completely alien to the world above, with a pale and sinister reflection.

“Yes but- Something’s wrong.” Ah, she had noticed. I had a clever idea how to slow down the realization in the future, but that would have to wait.

She stood, putting her hand flat just above her eyeline and tracing it out to the walls. With a dagger from her belt she scored the line as her teammates readied themselves, the alchemist unpacking a series of vials and wooden canisters from his bag as the knife-fighter cleaned his blades.

The violinist watched her comrade with thoughtful eyes. She was dangerous, I felt. It was her abilities that had let them penetrate so far into my domain without notice.

After a count of three on her steel-clad fingers, the woman again traced her height from her eyeline. Her hand touched the wall just below the first mark.

“We have to move.” Her voice was hard, and her companions took notice.

“What’s going on?” The violinist asked.

“I don’t know, but it’s no good. C’mon. In and out before the Dungeon knows we’re here, that was the plan. We can’t slow down now.”

“Here, drink this at least. This golden stuff could be poison.” The alchemist was grinding down a handfuls of herbs, cupping his hand over the pestle to keep the spore lazily drifting from the ceiling from getting in. He poured a light silver solution from a vial into the bowl and offered it to his companions. One by one, they sipped and winced.

“Sorry, no time to make it taste good.” He said, wrinkling his nose up and chugging it down. I was counting every second in my favor and the woman was shifting impatiently on her feet, eyes scanning the fungal forest warily.

They could see, from the doorway, the rise of the glass gazebo, and the hilltop I had built up underneath the silver door to the Everforest. The way was complicated by a jungle of somnolent blooms- high, spiralling stacks of corkscrew shaped mushrooms that bent crookedly as they reached towards the ceiling, ready to let loose clouds of sleeping-poison spore at the slightest touch. Above, the nacre spiders waited, crouched over their false ceilings to slice down with razor-sharp limbs. The ornamental pools scattered across the floor were deceptively deep, home to lurking reelfish. Snakes curled among the glass mushrooms.

Everything seemed calm and still, but my gardens were only waiting to burst into deadly motion.

The armored woman took her first step forward, clearly nervous, glancing between the palatial gazebo and the doorway. “Which way?”

“I don’t know, dammit, Egar was supposed to scout for traps.” The knife-fighter replied.

“I can do something.” Lifting her bow, the violinist played a quick saw, drawing out lovely, deep strains from her instrument. A gentle light cascaded forth in ribbons to form the small, glowing body of an ethereal rabbit, then another, and another.

A cascade of bunnies moved through my gardens, and one by one, they died. A snake burst from the undergrowth and sank its fangs into their neck. A pond exploded as a reelfish burst above the waters and snagged the kicking poor creature with its tendrils. Two dropped as they touched the climbing towers of the somnolent blooms and were brought down by the explosion of poison that rained down.

“C’mon, this way.” The armored woman led the way, weaving between the blooms and giving the ponds a wary eye, jabbing her sword into the ground before her to flush out snakes.

“Has anyone noticed-” The alchemist started to say, glancing frantically around the gardens.

“Yes. Come on and move.” She hissed in reply. They were already two feet gone from when they’d entered, the strangeness of the garden delaying their realization. But they saw it now, saw how they were growing closer to the ground, closer to the small and deadly creatures I’d propagated through my little wonder of a world.

And that spur of fear made them sloppy.

A nacre-spider dropped, its pearly white armor gleaming, from above. A bladed foreleg stabbed through the woman’s torso, puncturing her armor like cheap tin. Another came stabbing for her neck but she deflected, cleaving the limb away with her sword even as she was forced to the ground by the creature’s weight slamming down atop her. Mandibles that dripped with poison spread wide above her horrified face to deliver the killing bite.

The knife-fighter tackled the beast from the side, jabbing his blades down into the narrow pinch of its body between thorax and abdomen. His blades found the unarmored joint and twisted inside, ripping open the beast’s most vulnerable point.

Man and spider both went rolling on the ground, the woman screaming as the limb that pierced her gut was yanked away, tearing the wound open wide. Her comrades rushed for her but it was too late, too late by far.

Blood was pouring in waterfalls, staining her armor and filling up the dark earth like a red rain. The violinist laid her hand on the wound and pushed a golden light in, sealing it, but the woman was pale, gasping, the sword fallen out of her hands.

The knife fighter ripped his blade free of the dying spider and pushed it off him, having ended up underneath its upturned back in the tumble. A lucky happenstance that kept him out of the way of its sharp thin legs thrashing in death-throes.

But as he rose, poison fangs sunk deep into his thigh. He screamed, stabbing at the snake that curled its muscular body around his leg, hacking away. It was no good. The shrinking charm over my gardens had reduced him until the serpent could coil all the way up his leg, crushing the bones and bringing him down to the ground.

The snake was dying too, hacked nearly in half at the neck. It died a good death, defending its home.

He would die alone, abandoned by his comrades, far from the sun’s light.

They were running now, the armored woman lifted with one arm around the alchemist’s shoulders as he clutched a wooden canister and readied to throw at the first thing that moved. I casually reached out and touched the minds of my nacre-spiders, pushing them with angry, bloody thoughts.

On cue, they opened their hidden doors and descended. Gleaming bodies dripped from the ceiling, touching down on deadly limbs. The adventurers were caught out- the way back closed behind a wall of deadly eight-legged bodies.

I watched them. No more in control of their lives than the frightened rabbits they’d sent to die. Frozen in panic. Stumbling to a halt.

There had been a moment where they’d almost won, where their plan had almost worked. Now their momentum was ebbing away and they were left to hold up one comrade and watch another crawl across the ground, his leg mangled, poison spreading with every heartbeat as he pleaded for them to help.

It was so easy to be left helpless, watching your fate rush towards you. The only thing you could do was come to your senses and make a decision, however terrible. The violinist was stricken, fear in her eyes. She was sharp but brittle. In situations like these she would simply freeze.

“The door.” The alchemist said, his voice strained. “We have to.”

He lifted the canister and hurled it where the spiders were thickest between them and the gate to the Everforest. It cracked open, a spill of smoke expanding outwards. The spiders scuttled back, my will pulsing thoughts of danger and retreat in fear of poison, but it was only smoke. A distraction in which to break through.

They ran, holding up the woman under either arm as they plunged into the thick smog. Their only hope now was the door, although they couldn’t know what was beyond.

My lion-golem finally roused from its post guarding the doorway, lifting and lunging into the fog after a fleeing shadow. As the smoke cleared, it was left holding a rabbit beneath its paws, and the adventurers were gone. I sighed.

The lion really was more concerned with its supper than anything else. It didn’t even need to eat.

Gone. Vanished into the Everforest. Despite the threat it presented, I hadn’t had time to scout the land beyond the portal. Now one more enemy lurked through that door waiting for revenge.

But today I’d reaped a full harvest. Dozens had died during the rush towards the orchard, and I’d claimed two of the would-be adventurers. I turned my attention back to the grove, watching the poor fools who’d been used as fodder trying to escape back across the waters.

My shark rose, its grey shape visible for a moment before the waters burst up in its wake, the rows and rows of teeth lining its gaping, circular mouth flashing open as it claimed another life. Broken bits of crude ships drifted on the waters.