"I set down my lance, symbol of Duty.
I spurn those whom I love, I relinquish all, and take up the tools of my quest.
No obstacle shall stand before me, no plea for help shall find me wanting.
No moon will look upon me twice lest I be judged idle.
I will give my body, heart and soul to the Lady whom I seek."
- The Questing Vow
Louis felt reasonably sure that his two companions would have headed back to the teleportation pad, and were unlikely to leave without him, so he decided to take a detour first before joining them. Taking a winding path through the maze, he continued to marvel at the detail and beauty in the maze around him; already lauded as one of the top 10 most beautiful dungeons in Yggdrasil, the Garden of the Lady seemed to have taken on a whole new vibrant life - the colours almost too bright and striking, the sounds and smells almost too perfect to be real.
Eventually, he reached the spot he was looking for, an uninteresting stretch of hedge for those not paying attention. For those with the time to search (or in Louis' case an obscure account from a group of players who cleared the dungeon around four years ago), this was the only row of hedges in the entire garden that did not have a single flower planted among them.
The account that Louis had found had been made by a small group of lore-hungry roleplayers, who had apparently read just about every book they could get their hands on in the game, and had discovered a curious quote at the end of a piece on the Garden of the Lady.
"Those who seek sanctuary in my embrace, come to my Garden and look for me where my grace seems most absent. Shine forth your light, champion of goodness, and be welcomed into my place of rest."
Apparently the small group had discovered that this particular patch of wall would react to a light-based spell, but when they were playing they received a popup message that told them they 'were not worthy to proceed' no matter what they tried, and so they had eventually moved on.
When Louis had come to this dungeon, he had tried the same thing, but had been astonished when the hedges swung back for him and allowed him entry to the vast room beyond; further tests and research over the span of a day or so netted the result that the Karma of the group who did the initial research was below 200, so they were not able to get in.
Standing in front of the hedge again now, Louis raised a hand and activated [Lay on Hands], a minor healing ability which caused his gauntlets to glow with a holy light. In front of him, the hedge rustled and then began to pull itself back, the branches curling out to form an archway through the hedge into the dimly lit space beyond. As Karolus stepped up to the archway, the light from his gauntlets spread and made the space beyond flicker and glow as they illuminated pile upon pile of neatly stacked gold coins lining the walls - the fortune of many guilds all ransacked and now in one place, Louis' treasury.
The room, completely enclosed from above by a canopy of thickly woven branches and vines, centered around a huge oak tree which had a series of gold-encrusted engravings flowing up its trunk, displaying various acts of faith and devotion in simple yet beautiful artworks.
Set around the base of the tree in concentric circles were weapon racks, armour stands, and mannequins, all completely covered with high class objects, and grouped together in sets based on their effects. Beyond the tree towards the back of the room were row upon row of identical chests, enchanted items that each contained a pocket dimension, each storing piles and piles of less notable loot that hadn't warranted displaying.
With so many guilds and players slowly falling out of the game and moving on to other things, it was only natural that their stuff was left mostly undefended, and so the scavengers descended on them. While certainly not the most lucrative of treasure hunters, Louis certainly did extremely well for himself, with even a couple of dedicated RP guilds on Asgard reaching out to pass on what they had when they left the game for good, 'entrusting it to good hands' as they called it.
The result was, of course, that he ended up with far more stuff than he could ever feasibly use - he probably had enough reasonable quality gear in here to outfit quite a large guild from scratch. He'd thought about selling it or crafting it into more useful stuff, but practically speaking he didn't really have any better gear to get anyway, and he felt at least a little bad about selling or destroying stuff that other players had put so much effort into making. In the end he just sorted it into reasonably neat categories and let it keep stockpiling - it's not like it was costing him anything to keep it the way it was.
After looking around at the assorted loot for a moment and acknowledging it was all still there, he took a step forward into the room. With preternatural speed, the grass below his feet exploded with life, whipping up around his legs and torso, binding him immediately in place. While it would have been possible for Karolus to break himself free, he knew this was just the room reacting to someone entering it before being given approval from the caretakers. Speaking of them, high above in the canopy, a pair of childish laughs rang out, and there was a rustling of leaves as two small figures dropped down through the canopy on dragonfly-like wings to buzz around Karolus' head.
They were about the height of a small child, but were far more petite, their bodies like miniaturized adults rather than having the chubbiness of children that height. Their dark hair hung loosely down around their heads as they flew around, crowned by ornate wreaths of flowers that seemed to sprout straight out of their hair. Their faces looked young, but behind their childish laughter and glee, you could tell that not everything was as it seemed - their laughter didn't quite make it to their eyes, the deep blue wells of their wide irises seeming to take everything in all at once with their piercing gazes.
"Look, husband, our favorite knight in all the realms is home and here with us!"
"Indeed, dear wife, and what tales he must have! Oh, he shall have to tell us all about them or we shall surely perish of sadness"
"Too true, too true indeed my love, whatever should we do without him?"
This appeared to be the funniest thing they'd heard all day, and they both promptly dropped clean out of the air onto their backs and began laughing heartily as they stared up at the still patiently entangled Karolus. Louis felt bemused by all this - he had assumed that they might be here, but having never interacted with them since they were text-less NPCs in the game, was thoroughly flustered as to how to respond.
Are they making fun of me? Is this just what they're like? I guess I'll just have to get to know them...
"Titania, Oberon, would you please release me from this trap?"
At this, the fae guardians gradually stopped their laughing and floated back up into the air on their humming wings. Titania, the Queen of the fae, was the one who spoke first, nudging her husband Oberon in the ribs as they came back up to eye level with Karolus.
"Please? My goodness, he is polite isn't he? You can really see why the Lady likes him can't you?"
Oberon chuckled softly before responding
"Well, I'm sure she doesn't keep him around for nothing. Here you are, Ser Karolus, you have the run of the place as always." With a snap of his fingers, the ropes of grass binding Karolus to the ground split apart and broke into individual blades of grass with a loud crack. "Can we get something for you, or were you just here to spend time with dear old us?"
Shaking his arms to shed the last of the grass off his body, Louis gave the two fae a closer look. They, like the rest of the NPCs he had seen since the server was supposed to end, looked far too good to be from a game - the translucence of their skin, the details on every freckle, even down to the minor imperfections in their eyes - it was all too good for a human to have made in any program he knew existed.
"Gee, husband, he's really staring at you, should I be worried you're going to run off together and leave me here alone?"
Louis, realizing how rude he'd unconsciously been, turned a little red at the ears and averted his gaze. His tormentors immediately started laughing again, now definitely at his expense. Raising his voice a little to get their attention back, Louis responded to Oberon's earlier question.
"Sorry. Yes, I do. I would like to view the artefacts in storage."
Sighing, the two of them circled around until they were flying in front of him again before responding. With a lingering smirk, it was Titania who responded.
"As the good Ser requires, we are but your humble servants…"
With a turn, they guided him towards the centre of the treasury. As he approached the foot of the great oak trunk, Louis became curious about what exactly was about to happen. His in-game experience was that interacting with this tree in the presence of these two opened the super secure storage. There had been no visible cue; the popup inventory box had just opened up for him. Clearly, this wasn't a section of the dungeon that a lot of effort had gone into planning by the Developers, so it wasn't clear to him just how the item storage here worked.
Fluttering down to the ground, Oberon and Titania grasped each others' hands tightly, curving lines of flowing green rippling out from their intertwined fingers and across their bodies. As the whorls of green reached their faces, the pair placed their palms softly onto the bark of the tree, and it rippled like the surface of a still pond beneath their touch. As they did so, they began singing a slow and quiet song in a language that Louis didn't know; it was enchanting, with Titania's strong and clear soprano harmonizing perfectly with Oberon's powerful baritone - a beautiful song that sounded full of the promise of life and vitality.
As they sang, their voices growing louder as the song increased its pace, the green lines etched across their skin began to flow forth, disappearing out into the wood around their hands, and down into the ground beneath their feet. As it flowed away, the hill around them sprung up with life, wildflowers sprouting and blooming around them en masse in an explosion of colour that sprawled away from them in a wave, rippling all the way out to the edges of the clearing.
Then, on the tree, the carved golden figures began to dance.
Flickering with golden light, first the figures swayed to the song, then moved around their own carving, then spun and leaped in 2D as they escaped the boundaries of their own section and twirled with other carvings in groups of two or three. At last, as the song reached a crescendo, a flood of golden light burst forth, carrying them from the tree itself and off into the air, each a tiny figure of gold, and each carrying a single object - some many many times larger than themselves.
As they soared through the air they all joined the song in swelling harmony with their Queen and King. Soon, the song slowed, and their dance drew to a close, the golden dancers coming to float around the tree in a reasonably ordered set of rings, each still holding the item they came out of the tree with.
All manner of odd looking things were in their hands, a charred and tightly rolled vellum scroll; a savage looking shortsword carved from bone; a huge red and blue kite shield embossed with silver letters; a long, sheathed sword with a celtic cross for the handle; a battleaxe that dripped sizzling black ooze from the end onto the ground below; and a whole host of trinkets, headpieces, and shimmering clothes besides. This was the collection of things that Louis had gathered that were truly rare, and most had been taken over the dead body of their previous owners, or from the smoking ruins of their treasury.
Aside from the [Lady's Grail], Louis had successfully hunted down two other World Items, following up on leads that certain players would be leaving the game, and striking their base as soon as possible after they left before anyone else could get to them. The first prize was his most impressive and his most treasured of the two, and to get it he had befriended a specific player over the span of a month in order to get a tour of a certain base, so that when the time came and the previous owner left the game, he knew exactly where to go and how to raid the place to get what he wanted.
Reaching out, he took a firm grasp of the sheathed sword, the golden faerie holding it fluttering off into the canopy as he took it, and immediately felt a massive host of buffs get added to him as the power of [Excalibur], the Sword of the King, flowed through him. As an Arthurian history obsessed gamer, this was his greatest treasure and despite its power he had never been brave enough to use it in combat before. Now, he thought, was the perfect time for it to see use.
Attaching the longsword of legend to his belt above his normal sword, Karolus also reached out and took the rolled up scroll, the [Seal of the Void], which was the other World Item in his possession, and placed it in his inventory. Lastly, he reached out and placed his hand upon the kite shield, the [Faithful's Defender].
This was the Guild Weapon that he had made and improved over the years, having chosen a shield as a weapon for the guild due to the benefits his classes got from having a good shield. Just like [Excalibur], however, he had never used it in combat, and it had sat here metaphorically gathering dust for all those years. Smiling to himself, he unequipped the shield off his back and reached out with both hands to grasp the hefty shield, the embossed silver lettering across its face shining brightly as he swung it up over his shoulder onto his back, and then stepped back from the tree.
"Thank you both, I have what I need."
Turning, Karolus looked around for the pair of fae monarchs, who had some time ago left him by himself at the tree, and were now tussling with each other in the long grass, surrounded by a cloud of the golden faeries who still danced lazily in circles around them in the air. Titania leapt up off her defeated husband with a grin on her face and darted back over.
"And doesn't it all look good on you! Though you're right of course, we do deserve so much thanks. If you'd see to it that we get some treats for all our...uh…" Her eyes flicked to her husband who was lying flat on his back and had now fallen asleep "...hard work? Anyway, good luck fighting the dragon or whatever! We'll be waiting for you when you get back."
With a small wave, she dashed across and heaved the still sleeping Oberon into the air by one arm and carried him back off into the canopy. At the tree, Karolus watched as the golden faeries with the remaining items shimmered and flickered as they spun and twirled back onto the wood of the tree, forming back into their carvings as if that is how they had always been. Taking one last look at the room, Karolus stepped back out through the hedge, and as it closed behind him started making his way back to the teleportation pad where he assumed the others awaited him.