As soon as Jonah touched the vines covering the gate, several glyphs beneath them, inscribed directly on the door itself, glowed a bright and deadly shade of green. Jonah let out a surprised yell as he staggered backward, clutching his hand, which appeared to be burned for some reason. At the very least, it was smoking, though I couldn’t see exactly what kind of damage had been done to his hand.

  Then a rather inconvenient notification unfurled in my vision:

  Warning! This is a Rootbound Gate that cannot be opened manually. Brute force is not an option.

  Then the floor underneath our feet rumbled and cracked, forcing Ruth and me to scatter as a podium of stone emerged from a chamber underneath the floor. I nearly tripped over some of the tree roots covering the floor, forcing Nimbus to hop off my shoulder to avoid toppling us both over.

  Just as I regained my balance, however, I heard the tinkling sound of knives and looked over my shoulder in time to see one of the throwing knives that the Tree Chimp had launched at us flying straight toward my face.

  But Jonah knocked me down and slapped the throwing knife out of the air with his trident. He then pointed his trident forward and summoned a crackling orange barrier just in time to deflect several other throwing knives that I hadn’t even noticed.

  Falling onto my hands and knees behind the barrier, I raised my head and saw that several of the vines and roots along the floor had picked up the Tree Chimp Guardian’s dropped throwing knives and were throwing them at us again. Jonah’s barrier blocked and deflected the knives, but that turned out to be more of a curse than a blessing because every time a knife was deflected, one of the writhing vines would snatch it out of the air and throw it. The vines and roots had a pretty good rhythm going where they would throw a knife, have it deflected by Jonah’s barrier, and then catch it again just to repeat the process.

  If it were just one of the vines throwing knives at us, then maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad. But a dozen vines and twisted tree roots were rising into the air like snakes behind us, catching and throwing knives over and over again. Jonah’s barrier held despite the onslaught, but I could tell based on the way he was sweating bullets that it was taking a lot of effort on his part just to keep the barrier up.

  “What happened?” said Nimbus, sitting beside me. He looked from the Rootbound Gate to Jonah and back again with a quizzical look on his rabbit face. “Is this your fault, Jonah? Because I’m pretty sure this is your fault somehow.”

  “I don’t know!” said Jonah through gritted teeth. He seemed unable to move for some reason, holding his trident up while clutching his burned hand close to his chest. “I was just trying to open the door to the next room! I thought that the Tree Chimp Guardian was the main obstacle.”

  Rising to my feet unsteadily, I looked at the Rootbound Gate. “When you touched the door to the next room, I got a notification describing it as a Rootbound Gate. But what is a Rootbound—”

  A new notification popped into my vision just then:

  Room 1: The Rootbound Gate.

  Welcome to the true challenge of the first room of the first floor of the Verdant Seal!

  Though you have successfully made it past the Tree Chimp Guardian, you must open the Rootbound Gate to move on to the second room.

  But the Rootbound Gate cannot be opened so easily. Its roots and vines are made of a special type of ancient tree bark that is immune to all but the most powerful of magical flames, and it cannot be cut except with diamond claws. Any attempts to brute-force the gate open will result in even more unexpected obstacles that will make this challenge even harder to complete. These roots are reinforced by the glyphs inscribed on the Gate itself.

  To move on to the next room, you must inscribe Balance into the Gate Podium before you within the next 10 minutes or the Tree Chimp Guardian will come to life and slaughter you and your party.

  I thought I heard the Tree Chimp Guardian overhead shift on its pedestal above the door, like it was getting ready to jump down and attack us along with the living tree roots and vines.

  But my eyes were drawn to the glowing 10-minute countdown timer that materialized in the air directly above the Rootbound Gate. Unlike the Ten-Year Reset Protocol countdown in my user interface, this countdown was visible to everyone, presumably including the mobs and monsters of the dungeon, though I suspected they didn’t care very much about the countdown.

  Jonah looked over his shoulder at us in alarm. “Did you guys see that notification? What does it mean that we have to inscribe Balance into the Gate Podium?”

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  Jonah’s barrier cracked sharply all of a sudden, and one of the knives flew through and nearly nicked his face, flying past me and Ruth and crashing into the Rootbound Gate before falling onto the floor. He turned his attention back to the barrier and the crack filled just in time to block a dozen knives that had clearly been aimed directly at that weak spot. Of course, the deflected knives then returned to their users, who resumed their rhythmic throwing, deflecting, and catching routine again without missing a beat.

  Ruth ran a hand through her hair anxiously. “I have heard about these kinds of trick rooms in dungeons before. They have very high fatality rates.”

  I stared at the Gate Podium before us, frowning deeply. “Is that even fair?”

  Jonah shook his head without looking at us. “First rule of dungeon diving, Aaron: The dungeon isn’t fair and won’t play nice. Now stop talking to me. You two figure out how to inscribe Balance or whatever into the Gate Podium. My current barrier spell requires my focus; otherwise, it won’t work.”

  I was tempted to ask Jonah about his burned hand and his current spell, but a glance at the timer showed me that we only had 9 minutes left already, so we had no time to chat about that or anything else.

  So Ruth, Nimbus, and I rushed over to the Gate Podium. I immediately scanned it with my portable, just on the off chance that it might have some scan information that might tell us what it was. And thankfully, I did get this description box:

  This is a Gate Podium assigned to the Rootbound Gate of the Verdant Seal, Room 1, Floor 1. To unlock the Rootbound Gate, you must inscribe Balance into this podium before the countdown timer ends.

  Nimbus scoffed. “What a helpful description that totally didn’t just repeat information we already know. Sure would have been nice if it actually, you know, gave us even just the slightest hint of what to do.”

  I scratched the back of my head as I looked at the Gate Podium again. It was a waist-high podium made of the same greystone as the rest of the dungeon, with a smooth, flat surface on the top that was angled toward us slightly. It looked like the North Forest Node, though it clearly wasn’t a Node itself.

  I looked at Ruth for guidance. “Have you ever seen or heard about a Gate Podium?”

  Ruth pursed her lips and shook her head. “No, and none of the dungeon-diving books I studied in the Academy ever mentioned things like this. But that’s not surprising. Node Dungeons can make up pretty much any obstacles or challenges they want. In fact, dungeon challenges only become set after they are completed the first time.”

  “So if we fail and die here and someone else tries to complete the dungeon, they would run into completely different challenges?” Nimbus shook his head. “I’m going to need a lot of bananas after this.”

  I pulled out my Stylus from its holster, and its tip glowed blue as I switched it to utility mode. “Later, Nimbus. Right now, I am going to try inscribing some glyphs into the Gate Podium and see if that works.”

  Ruth raised a questioning eyebrow at me. “Why?”

  I gestured at the Gate Podium with my other hand, doing my best to ignore the rhythmic thumping and cracking noises coming from Jonah’s barrier behind us. “Because it said that we needed to inscribe Balance into the Gate Podium to open the gate. Now maybe it isn’t supposed to be literal, but I suspect that it is—because of the glyphs on the door itself.”

  Nimbus stood up on his hind legs for a moment to look at the top of the Gate Podium, which was just slightly taller than he was when he was sitting down on all fours. He bounced on the edge of the podium with his front paws, sniffing the air. “Okay, but when it says you need to inscribe Balance, what does that mean, exactly? Does it mean that you need to literally inscribe the word Balance on the Gate Podium?”

  I bit my lower lip. “That’s the tricky part, but I think it’s worth a try as a first attempt. Unless you guys have a better idea.”

  Ruth glanced at the timer over the door and gulped nervously. “Do it, Aaron. Seven minutes.”

  A glance at the timer above the door confirmed to me that we did indeed have less than 7 minutes left before the timer ended and the Tree Chimp Guardian came to life. Though again, I noticed its shoulders shake slightly as if it were already in the process of coming to life.

  So I looked down at the Gate Podium and activated Trace Glyph, one of my free but weak spells that let me trace glyphs through the air or on surfaces. I’d gotten pretty good at practicing with Trace Glyph over the last week or so, using it to increase my speed and accuracy at tracing glyphs through the air. Normally, I just relied on the pre-inscribed spells in my glyph reservoir in combat, but Trace Glyph was easy enough to do that I didn’t feel the need to store it in my reservoir.

  So I inscribed the glyph for Balance, which was one of the first glyphs I had learned from that book on Chapter One Codexing that Isaac had given me a while ago, on the surface of the Gate Podium.

  As soon as my Stylus finished tracing the last twirl at the end of the glyph for Balance, I knew I had made a huge mistake.

  Thick vines and roots reached out from the Rootbound Gate and immediately snatched up both Ruth and Nimbus before pulling them toward the door. Ruth screamed, and Nimbus thumped his feet against the vines several times as they were pressed against the Rootbound Gate. The glyphs underneath Nimbus’s fur lit up several times as he clearly attempted to use some of his own spells to free himself from the grasp of the roots, but he couldn’t escape.

  “No fair!” Nimbus cried out. “These stupid plants are blocking my spells!”

  Then I heard a sparking sound above the door and looked up at the timer just in time to see it go from 7 minutes to 3 minutes instantly. I took a step back, clutching my stylus in my hand, saying, “What the Sheol—”

  A new notification unfurled in my vision at that moment:

  Your first attempt to unlock the Rootbound Gate has failed! Now the Rootbound Gate, aware of your efforts to defeat it, has taken two members of your party hostage. The only way to save them is to complete the Gate Podium Challenge before the timer ends. Additionally, because of your failed first attempt to open the gate, the remaining time on your timer has been halved and will be halved again if you fail a second time.

  The Tree Chimp Guardian stirs.

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