Monteblanc’s Mystic Mansion – Misery XV

Gardens I cont.

The woman’s breathing wouldn’t steady. She bounced between panic and sorrow. Had she not been silenced, she would have been detected. The golem didn’t move much and blocked her path, so she opted to backtrack.

The hedge maze was unrelenting and each turn felt as foreign as the last. The hedges were too tall to veer over and the woman dreaded what might appear to consume her if she tried scaling them.

She found herself at a dead end.

Upon turning around, a golem appeared at the last intersection she crossed. She was pinned.

The branches and roots wriggled together as the golem began closing the gap between them.

The woman backed up slowly until she had no space left. She trembled as she leaned back into the hedge. It held tight, like leaning into a quilt.

The golem got so close to her, she could smell the damp earth holding its magical form together.

As the golem’s head about met her face, the hedge gave way and she silently fell through it.

She was on a cobblestone patio, complete with a worn down gazebo in the center. She stared blankly into the sky, wondering if she could still move.

“Did you like my maze?” came a light airy voice.

The woman leaned up and peered over her shoulder to see a pale, slender woman adorned in a torn black and green dress sitting at a table under the gazebo.

“I call it Rooter’s Folly,” she cheerily declared as she sipped on a chipped tea cup.

The woman stood up from her daze and wandered over to the pale woman’s table.

“Care for some rose tea?” the pale woman offered.

Monteblanc’s Mystic Mansion – Misery XIV

???’s Route

Gardens I

The woman shuffled around uneasily looking left to right. The thunder cracked through the sky again and startled her into moving towards a nearby hedge. She felt around it, the leaves also produced no sound to her touch.

Dim light bled through the clouds and the occasional bolt of lightning lit up the gardens. The woman followed the hedge until she found herself in front of several massive flower blooms of pastel colors.

The small section of courtyard had a headless statue in a stone fountain at the center. A bird flew from the statue into one of the flowers. The flower immediately closed its petals around the bird and began digesting it. The woman slowly moved away from the flowers.

She checked the water in the fountain only to find it caked in green algae. She leaned in to get a closer look and a vine began slowly wrapping around her wrist. She pulled away quickly as more vines thrashed about the water and a green bud emerged from the water splitting into a mouth.

She backed away while taking care not to end up inside of a flower. The vines seemed unable to find anything and the plant creature sank back into the fountain. An opening in the hedges looked to be her best option and she departed as quickly as she could, shivering silently the whole way.

The hedges developed a maze-like quality not long after she took the opening. The woman’s heartbeat grew more rapid and uneasy with each turn she made. As if to reward her anxiety, a golem made of roots and branches blocked her path. As it moved, branches moved to meet it and clusters of plant matter fell to dust in the places it moved from.

Another bird flew down in front of her and was immediately beset upon by the golem. She froze in place, fearing herself next.

As the golem quieted down, its “head” seemed to move around inquisitively before shifting the opposite direction from her.

Her silence was proving to be a boon.