The first tendril of steam curled from the kettle with the lazy grace of incense rising before an altar.
Elora watched it coil beneath the pagoda’s painted roof, pale against the dark beams. The Dao sat opposite them upon the broad stone at the center of the pavilion, his heavy features composed in an expression of perfect hospitality. He had not spoken since inviting them to sit. He had merely measured leaves into the pot, among them the narrow, dark-veined sprigs of drake’s wort, and smiled as though poison were simply another matter of taste.
The steam thickened, and the Dao lifted his hands.
Stone answered him. Walls erupted around the pagoda in a grinding roar. One moment the open pavilion stood above the koi pond with evening light filtering through its pillars; the next, slabs of conjured rock sealed every side, and more stone flowed overhead to encase the roof and its carved fish finial. The scrape of settling masonry drowned the startled cries of the companions. Then the Dao gave them a genial wave and sank through the stone beneath him as easily as a man descending into clear water.
The steam continued to rise. It filled the enclosed pavilion with astonishing speed, hot and acrid, carrying a sweetness that clung to the back of the throat. Thorn drew his sleeve over his mouth. Maledurk coughed, deep and harsh within the stone box, and Tempest’s eyes watered at once. Elora felt the poison bite into her lungs before she could stop herself from breathing.
The Dao had left them to die over tea.
Elora reacted first. She thrust out both hands, and translucent globes sprang into being around their heads, each shimmering faintly, a thin shell of sorcery enclosing fresh, clean air. Maledurk stared cross-eyed at the curved surface before him.
“Do I look ridiculous?”
“Yes,” Thorn said.
“Good. I would hate to suffer alone.”
They could breathe, but the pagoda remained sealed, and the kettle continued to pour forth more steam than any vessel of its size could possibly contain. Elora searched the stone walls, running her hands over their seamless surfaces, and found neither hinge nor hidden catch nor any groove that suggested a door. These walls had not been built. They had been spoken into existence.
Thorn recognized the workmanship. He placed a palm against the stone, closed his eyes, and murmured a word that seemed to sink into the wall rather than echo from it. The rock softened beneath his hand, and a rectangular passage opened through the slab, revealing the narrow bridge beyond. Poisonous steam immediately billowed through the gap and into the open air above the pond.
The four of them hurried out in their glimmering spheres, a procession of armored warriors, robed spellcasters, and spectral fishbowls. Outside, the air tasted wonderfully cold.
Behind them, the once graceful pagoda had become a featureless block of stone, broken only by Thorn’s passage, which went on vomiting pale vapor over the bridge. The Dao was nowhere in sight, and the koi continued to circle beneath the water, apparently unconcerned that their pavilion had become a poisonous tomb. A hedge-lined path led eastward.
Maledurk glanced back at the hidden carving atop the pavilion.
“I still think we should take the fish.”
“It is part of the roof,” Thorn said.
“Everything is part of something until you hit it hard enough.”
Elora sent her spectral hand skimming over the pond. After several clumsy attempts, it closed around a koi and lifted the wriggling creature into the air. The fish stared at them, and they stared back.
“Perhaps it is the key,” Elora said.
“The fish?”
“The last chamber required us to carry something out.”
“That was a gemstone,” Thorn said.
“This is shinier.”
They carried the koi down the path. The hedges bent around them in impossible turns, the narrow way winding farther than the dimensions of the courtyard should have permitted, and when at last the path opened, they found themselves looking at the same pond. The same stone-encased pagoda stood before them, steam still pouring from Thorn’s passage.
Elora released the fish into the water before it suffocated. The koi vanished beneath the surface with what she chose to interpret as wounded dignity.
The maze had folded them back upon themselves. They tried the path again without the fish and returned all the same. They searched the pond, wading along its edges and shifting the loose stones that covered its bottom, but beneath the gravel lay only smooth, unbroken cement, with no lever waiting below the water and no rune hidden among the rocks.
So their attention returned to the pagoda. The air globes still held; Tempest’s spell had bought them time, though none could say how much. They went back inside.
The steam lay so thick within the stone chamber that they appeared to one another as vague silhouettes. The cushions remained where they had sat, the bed of glowing coals still burned before the Dao’s empty seat, and the kettle rested above them, pouring forth its impossible cloud.
Maledurk lowered himself onto the Dao’s stone and sat very straight. Nothing happened. He frowned, shifted his weight, and tried to look more spiritually significant. Still nothing.
Elora inspected the cushions while Thorn examined the stone floor. Tempest stood before the kettle, studying it with the narrowed eyes of a baker confronted by an oven that had personally insulted her. Her invisible hand lifted the kettle from the coals, and the steam weakened but did not cease.
Elora placed one of her own spectral fingers into the spout, and for a moment the flow stopped completely. The sudden silence was almost startling. Then the spell ended, the invisible finger vanished, and a blast of compressed vapor erupted from the spout with such violence that everyone recoiled.
Maledurk pointed at the kettle. “It is angry.”
“It is pressurized,” Thorn said.
“That is what I said.”
They removed the lid with magic. Steam boiled from the opening, yet when Elora reached for the substance within, seeking to cleanse the poisoned tea, her spell found nothing to grasp. The kettle held no water, no leaves, no tea of any kind, only steam pouring endlessly from an empty vessel.
Tempest had reached the limits of her patience. She drew her frying pan.
The first blow rang through the chamber like a temple bell. The kettle bounced from the coals, rolled across the stone, and struck the Dao’s seat. Tempest advanced upon it with the grim concentration of an artisan correcting an inferior piece of cookware. Her second blow dented the side, and something clinked inside.
All four of them froze. Tempest raised the pan again.
Stone rippled beneath the central seat, and the Dao rose from the floor, shedding dust and fury. Hospitality had vanished from his face. He clutched a massive maul in both hands, and his eyes fixed upon Tempest with the outraged disbelief of a lord who had discovered a guest beating his finest silverware.
Maledurk stepped between them. His sun blade flashed to life, filling the steam with golden radiance. He swung once, then again, but the Dao twisted aside with startling speed, and the bright blade carved lines through the vapor without touching him.
Tempest answered with lightning. The bolt leapt from her hands and struck the Dao in the chest, filling the confined pavilion with blue-white light. For an instant every stone edge stood out in perfect detail, and the Dao’s bones showed as stark shadows within his enormous body. The blast staggered him. It did not stop him.
Elora reached through the swirling steam and laid her hand against his arm. Corruptive magic flowed from her touch, sinking into flesh and spirit alike. The Dao recoiled, his bronze-gray skin darkening around her fingers as a sickness entered him, subtle but ravenous.
Thorn spoke a name of power, and a great sword formed in the air beside him, wrought from pale force and edged with cold light. It swept forward at his command and cut deeply across the Dao’s body.
Only then did the genie strike. His maul crashed into Tempest with a force that sent her skidding across the floor, and a second blow caught her before she could fully rise. Her spectral air globe flickered but held. She tasted blood and heard the kettle rolling somewhere behind her, still hissing as though delighted by the violence.
Maledurk abandoned elegance. He drew his war pick and drove himself into the Dao’s guard. The first strike glanced aside; the second landed with brutal precision, punching through the genie’s defenses and wrenching a roar from him.
Tempest, battered and furious, raised one shaking hand, and another lance of lightning lit the chamber. Elora reached for the Dao once more, and the poison she had placed within him bloomed.
The Dao shuddered. Cracks of pale light spread across his skin, and his maul slipped from weakened fingers to strike the floor. For one heartbeat he remained standing, staring at them with hatred and perhaps disbelief. Then his body collapsed into dust, a fine gray powder scattering across the stone where he had first sat, caught in the outward drift of steam.
Silence returned. Maledurk looked at the empty place where the Dao had stood.
“I believe we have declined the tea.”
The kettle continued to hiss.
Thorn, apparently deciding that the chamber had not yet become strange enough, removed his boots. His companions watched him.
“What are you doing?” Elora asked.
“There are hot coals,” Thorn said.
“Yes.”
“No one has walked across them.”
This was indisputable.
Thorn stepped onto the glowing bed. Heat stabbed through the soles of his feet, his jaw tightened, and his eyes watered inside the air globe, yet he walked slowly and with perfect composure, hands folded behind his back as if crossing a drawing room carpet. He reached the far side without crying out. Then, maintaining the same expression of serene mastery, he strode rapidly through the passage, crossed the bridge, and plunged both feet into the koi pond. The fish gathered around his ankles, and Thorn exhaled with profound relief.
Maledurk followed to the doorway. “Was that necessary?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Behind them, Tempest lifted the battered kettle with her spectral hand. Something rolled inside it again. She overturned it, and as steam poured downward, a small green gemstone dropped from the open mouth, struck the floor, and bounced once.
Elora snatched it up, and the moment it touched her hand the significance became clear. The last false chamber had yielded its own gemstone, and only by carrying it away had they escaped the loop. The Dao’s gem served the same purpose. They left the kettle behind.
Holding the green stone tightly, Elora led them down the eastern path. The hedges twisted, the turns multiplied, and distance became meaningless, yet this time the maze did not return them to the poisoned pond. The path opened upon the sundial, its shadows pointing north and east. They had passed through one layer of the maze, only to return to its calculating heart.
The sundial stood at the center of the hedge paths, its impossible shadows cast without any sun capable of producing them. Every return altered those shadows, and every choice transformed the geometry of the maze. They had already learned where the wrong paths led: statues had risen against them in one chamber, predatory plants had assailed them in another, and the Dao had tried to poison them in a third, each trap demanding its gem before the maze would let them go. Yet the gems were not the answer to the sundial. They were merely the toll exacted by failure. The true path lay in the shadows.
From the dial pointing north and east, they chose the direction between them. Northeast.
The hedges gave way to another courtyard, where a broad circular pool occupied nearly the whole of the space, its water dark and murky. At the pool’s center, one foot above the black surface, hovered a deep red garnet.
Thorn rose into the air. The invisible ceiling that had confined them in earlier sections of the maze no longer pressed so close, and he glided over the water, robes stirring in the still air, and reached for the gemstone.
His fingers closed around it, and four shapes exploded from the pool.
They were enormous armored creatures with segmented bodies, long feelers, and pincers large enough to sever a limb. Water streamed from their shells as they surged toward Thorn. The nearest snapped both claws at him, but he twisted in the air, lifting his legs beyond their reach, and the creatures gathered beneath him.
Thorn looked down at the pool. He looked at the four monsters standing in the same water. Then he raised one hand, and lightning descended.
It struck the first creature and leapt to the second, then the third and fourth, branching across the pool in a web of blinding white fire. The water erupted in steam, and the creatures convulsed as the bolt passed through them, shell and flesh cooking beneath their armor.
The smell that rose from the pool was unexpectedly appetizing. Maledurk inhaled.
“Shrimp?”
“Do not,” Elora said.
The four creatures sank smoking into the murk, and Thorn flew back to shore carrying the garnet. Tempest offered him a small, solemn clap.
With the gem in hand, they returned once more to the sundial. Its shadows had changed again: north, southeast, southwest. The pattern had grown more complex.
The maze seemed to delight in obscuring its own language. The shadows did not simply point toward the path; they described forces, directions whose combined weight revealed a new heading. North and east together had produced northeast. The new configuration demanded the same thought, though its answer hid beneath apparent contradiction. North pulled upward, while southeast and southwest pulled downward together, their opposing eastward and westward components canceling one another. What remained was south.
They took the southern path. The hedges wound around them, and the world seemed to turn in ways no ordinary ground could accommodate. When they emerged again, the sundial bore four shadows: northeast, southeast, southwest, northwest. Every diagonal at once. The pairs opposed one another perfectly, their forces canceled, and added together they pointed nowhere at all. Zero.
Maledurk stared down at the dial. “So we go nowhere.”
“Perhaps,” Thorn said, “we remain here.”
They gathered at the sundial. Maledurk climbed onto its pedestal first, turning to help the others, and vanished. There was no flash and no sound; one moment he stood before them, and the next he seemed to fall through the solid stone.
Elora rushed forward. Thorn stepped onto the sundial after him, Tempest followed, and Elora came last.
The world dropped away. They fell without wind, no sky above them and no earth below, only the sensation of descent through a distance that could not be measured. The fall endured for an eternity compressed into a heartbeat. Elora felt herself stretched across moments, neither moving nor still. Thorn glimpsed lines of pale geometry vanishing into darkness. Tempest heard, very far away, the sound of a kettle beginning to whistle.
Then their feet struck stone, and they stood together at another sundial.
The surrounding hedge maze appeared unchanged, but this dial lay flat upon the ground, with no raised pedestal and no central rod. Shadows radiated from it all the same: north, northeast, east, southeast, south, southwest, west, northwest. Eight paths, every possible answer, and nothing to distinguish one direction from another.
Beyond the hedges, the wizard’s tower remained visible, somewhere to the west and south though not precisely aligned with either path, its dark shape rising above the green walls.
They tried west, and the path returned them to the sundial. They tried northwest and returned again. One by one they tested the remaining paths, but each folded back upon itself. The maze had ceased to punish them; it sent no more monsters, no poison, no animated stone. It merely refused to let them leave.
The shadows pointed everywhere, and their sum was zero. The dial no longer even rose from the ground. There was no obstacle at its center, nothing dividing one direction from another.
Elora looked toward the tower, and understood. The paths themselves were the deception. The tower did not stand at the end of any path. It stood beyond the hedge itself.
She walked to the wall of leaves. Earlier in the maze they had tried climbing, cutting, and forcing their way through the hedges, and the branches had resisted like woven iron. Now, when Elora pressed her hands into the leaves, she felt no resistance at all. The hedge opened around her, and she stepped through and vanished. The others followed at once.
A single stride carried them across what had appeared to be a vast distance, and they emerged at the foot of the tower.
Behind them, the hedge wall stood silent and impenetrable, but the strange pressure of the maze had lifted. The air felt different here, realer somehow. The tower’s stones bore the marks of age, its windows reflected the true sky, and the steps beneath their feet possessed the reassuring solidity of ordinary matter.
The maze, they now understood, had been a world unto itself, built from will and geometry, its gems and monsters conjured as temporary truths. The moment they crossed its boundary, the gemstones they had carried simply ceased to exist, belonging only to the false dimension that had made them.
Before them, a broad stair climbed to a heavy door. They ascended, and Elora knocked.
For several moments, nothing happened. Then the door opened inward, and an ogre stood on the other side.
He was nearly ten feet tall and forced to stoop beneath a doorway designed for a much smaller household. He wore a formal black coat, a white shirt, and gloves stretched tightly over enormous hands, and his face held the long-suffering expression of a servant who had spent years navigating architecture built by someone with no concern for his spine.
“Yes?” he asked.
“We have come to see the master of the tower,” Elora said.
“This is Vyr’s tower,” the ogre replied. “Do you have an appointment?”
They did not. They did, however, have an urgent need, several bruises, singed clothing, poisoned lungs, burned feet, and very little patience left for barriers of any kind. The ogre listened to their explanation without visible surprise.
“Who may I say is calling?”
There was a pause. Names were easy; titles were dangerous. Their company had acquired several appellations over the course of its adventures, some more accurate than others.
“The Good Guys,” someone said.
The ogre withdrew a small notepad from his coat. It looked absurdly tiny between his fingers.
“The Good Guys,” he repeated, writing carefully. He shut the door.
They waited on the steps while time passed. Tempest leaned against the stone railing, Maledurk inspected a dent in his armor, and Thorn stood barefoot, his boots tucked beneath one arm, attempting to pretend this had been a deliberate choice rather than the consequence of walking across burning coals.
At last the door opened again, and the ogre stooped through it.
“He said I should have led you to the sitting room first,” he said. “Follow me.”
The tower’s interior bore little resemblance to the lethal extravagance of the maze. The entry hall was warm, richly paneled, and quiet, hung with paintings that each depicted a landscape without people: a steaming jungle, a broad sea beneath gray skies, a field of gold in summer sunlight, mountains under snow, deserts at twilight. Thorn suspected they were not merely decorative. The perspectives ran too deep, the horizons burned too vivid, and looking at them produced the uneasy impression that one might step through the frames and find an entire world waiting beyond.
Their host’s reputation had been built upon such things, after all: other planes, hidden dimensions, realities shaped and folded by deliberate hands. The maze had been a threshold, perhaps a test, perhaps merely the wizard’s idea of a locked gate.
The ogre led them through corridors and doorways built for smaller creatures, hunching and twisting his shoulders through each one with practiced resignation, his footsteps shaking the floorboards. He showed them into a sitting room furnished with deep chairs, polished tables, and shelves crowded with curious objects. Everything appeared comfortable, and nothing appeared immediately lethal.
“Please wait here,” the ogre said, and lumbered away.
The four companions settled uneasily into the room. After the maze, cushions seemed suspicious, and kettles were unthinkable.
The footsteps receded, then returned, and the ogre leaned his head around the doorframe.
“May I get you coffee or tea,” he asked, “or biscuits, or cucumber sandwiches?”
At the word tea, every eye in the room turned toward Tempest. Her hand drifted toward her frying pan.
“Cucumber sandwiches,” Elora said quickly.
The ogre nodded. “Very good.” He disappeared down the corridor.
The companions waited in Vyr’s tower, battered and wary and beyond the maze at last. Somewhere above them, the master of the house knew they had arrived.
The session resumed with the party still navigating the magical hedge maze surrounding the distant wizard’s tower. The party reviewed the events immediately preceding the session: As the tea kettle began to steam, the Dao made deliberate gestures with his hands. The party made Constitution saving throws against the poison. Elora responded by casting Air Bubble at 5th level. The party began searching for an escape route. The four adventurers exited through Thorn’s magical passage. Before leaving, Thorn used Mage Hand to catch one of the koi. The group followed the eastern path. Thorn released the koi back into the pond before it died. The adventurers searched the outdoor courtyard for possible clues or removable objects. The party recalled that the Dao had not teleported away in the conventional sense. The adventurers returned through Thorn’s passage and reentered the steam-filled pagoda. Maledurk sat on the Dao’s stone platform. The party turned its attention to the tea kettle. The party considered plugging the kettle’s spout. Elora considered using Purify Food and Drink on the contents of the kettle. The party decided to damage or destroy the kettle. Tempest’s attack on the kettle caused the Dao to return. Maledurk acted first in the battle. Tempest acted next. Elora considered several possible spells. Thorn cast Mordenkainen’s Sword. The Dao took its turn. Maledurk attacked again. Tempest cast Lightning Bolt again. Elora attacked the Dao again with the same direct magical attack she had used during her previous turn. With the Dao defeated, the party returned to investigating the kettle. Before leaving, Thorn decided to walk barefoot across the hot coals. Thorn then hurried out of the pagoda and placed both feet into the koi pond. The party lifted the damaged kettle again using Mage Hand. The adventurers recognized that the gemstone was probably the object required to escape the looping courtyard. With the green gemstone held in hand, the party followed the path out of the courtyard. At the sundial, the party discussed the directions they had already explored. The party followed the maze path north. Thorn attempted to retrieve the garnet. Four aquatic creatures immediately emerged from the pool. Thorn responded by casting Chain Lightning. The party left the pool courtyard with the new gemstone. The adventurers reviewed their notes and reconstructed their earlier route through the maze. The group discussed what the sundial’s shadows meant. The party considered traveling south because they believed it was one of the few directions they had not yet tested from the current junction. The southern route led through more turns in the hedge maze. The group struggled to determine the mathematical pattern behind the sundial. The party was given a clue involving vector addition. The party reconstructed the progression: The fourth sundial’s four diagonal shadows opposed one another. Maledurk stepped onto the sundial first. Thorn followed Maledurk. Elora and Tempest followed. The party emerged together at another sundial. The adventurers tested several maze paths. The party considered traveling directly toward the wizard’s tower. Elora approached the hedge in the direction of the tower. The other party members followed Elora through the same section of hedge. The tower had a set of stairs leading to a closed entrance. After a brief delay, the door opened. The ogre asked what the party wanted. The ogre asked who was calling. The party waited outside for several minutes. The ogre led the party into the tower’s entryway. The ogre escorted the party through the tower. After leaving, the ogre soon returned to the doorway. The session ended with the party waiting in the sitting room of Vyr’s tower. The party had successfully completed the magical hedge maze. After the party left the maze, the gemstones disappeared. Based on what the party knew of Vyr, the magical maze was consistent with his reputation.Session Notes