“We’re outside now?” Milo says.

He takes a few steps out from the tunnel so he can get a better view, and stares up at the alien sky. The giant crystal sphere is glowing a lovely sky blue, and the smaller skymotes are shining green in the air around it.

“This world is weirder than I thought,” Milo comments.

“That it is,” I say.

“I’m impressed that you kids managed to rescue me yourselves, even if one of you did turn out to be a reincarnator with a talent for Subterfuge,” Uncle Hawk says as we’re setting up camp outside the tunnel entrance.

“Where exactly did we wind up in relation to our Hearth?” Anise asks.

“A good bit of a walk past the Hedge Maze, I think,” Uncle Hawk says, looking at the sky. “We could pass by it in the morning if anyone still wants to run it. Minus any unfortunate ambushes this time.”

I assume there’s some sort of Heroic Ranger skill to tell him where he is, seeing as he wasn’t exactly in a condition to pay attention along the way.

“I don’t see why not,” Anise says. “Drake, did you finish the dungeon?”

I nod. “Couldn’t get out until I did. But like you said, dungeons change depending on who is in them. It made sure to give me puzzles I was physically capable of solving. And an odd riddle only a reincarnator would know the answer to.”

We talk for a bit longer, but we all need rest and this has been a very long day. Uncle Hawk takes watch, since he needs less sleep and is feeling quite fine despite his experience. He even lets us sleep in until the skymotes turns green.

I spend much of our trip catching up with Milo in English. I don’t translate everything for the others. They wouldn’t understand. Milo and I tell one another about our previous lives, our interests, what we’ve experienced in this strange new world so far, and share our hopes and dreams.

We probably wouldn’t have been friends back on Earth. In fact, he died before I was even born, never mind us having run in completely different social circles. But here, we still have more in common with one another than anyone else and can relate in ways these new souls can’t understand.

“I can’t believe you’re Canadian,” I say with a chuckle.

“I can’t believe you’re Californian,” Milo replies, grinning. “I started off serving coffee to tourists, and wound up getting rich through a series of sensible long-term investments and a diversified portfolio. Got married. Had kids. Grandkids. Great-grandkids. Died at the age of 93 basically just from being old. They probably squabbled over my fortune and squandered everything I’d spent my life earning.” He shrugs and chuckles. “Brats, all of them. What about you?”

“No kids,” I say. “Married to my work, I guess you’d say. Not sure how I died, though. My memories get patchy after a certain point. I thing I invented something weird… but I’m not sure what sort of scifi crap I ultimately got myself into.”

“Afraid I can’t help you there,” he says. “When I died, those computers you keep talking about were not small enough to fit in people’s pockets. And they didn’t have complicated games yet. I heard about Dungeons & Dragons but never played it. I’ll take your word on it if you say this world resembles a game.”

“Can I learn that language too?” Burdock asks. “Whatever it is.”

“English,” I say. “And I don’t see why not, although I’m not sure how many people might speak it.”

Anise says, “Being able to speak a language nobody else can speak would be cool. And useful.”

“I also speak French, but I’m not going to inflict that on you,” Milo adds once I translate for him.

“I’m not quite sure what ‘Common’ is supposed to be,” I say. “After I unlocked the skill, it started sounding like English to me.”

“Odd, Goblin doesn’t sound like English to me,” Milo muses. “You can still consciously choose to speak either, though, right? Because you don’t seem to be having any trouble switching.”

“Yeah, I can start teaching you some basic vocabulary as we travel, at least,” I say, then turn to the others and say in Common. “Anyone who wants to listen can learn English as Milo learns Common. This is how you say hello…”

When we arrive at the entrance to the Hedge Maze again, we decide to have me, Milo, and Burdock (and Mipsy) run it by ourselves. This is a particularly peaceful dungeon that actively tries not to hurt people, so this shouldn’t really involve fighting. Uncle Hawk and Anise set about trying to repair the tent while Daisy and Meadow work on putting together a meal.

“The damage isn’t as bad as it looks,” Uncle Hawk says. “I can still fix it. You kids have fun in there.”

We head in through the gates. It’s funny that we did this same thing just yesterday, but yesterday feels like it might as well have lasted a year. Everything has changed, and I’m going to have a lot to tell Corwen Hearth once we get home.

Unsurprisingly, the challenges we face in the Hedge Maze are completely different this time. The hedges shift and move to funnel us into a different part of the gardens.

Our first challenge is a series of blocks each marked with words in Common, English, and French.

“How does it know?” Milo wonders.

The various words mean things like “trap”, “tree” and “treasure”. We stack up the blocks that say “treasure” in the three languages and are rewarded for our efforts with a chest rising out of the ground.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“Can I open the chest?” Milo asks.

“Go ahead,” I say.

Milo opens the chest and holds up a small money purse containing few copper coins. “The first actual money I’ve made in this world. And something to carry it in!”

Slightly wealthier, we continue on down the next path.

“This place is nice,” Milo says, stopping on a wooden bridge crossing a pond to look down into the water. “Is this a puzzle?”

“Prolly,” Burdock says.

“I bet there’s a chest we can get somewhere around here,” I say.

Mipsy runs up to the pond’s edge and starts batting at the small fish darting about beneath the water. The water toward the middle of the pond ripples and a large shiny fish surfaces for just a moment before it’s gone again.

“Too bad we don’t have any fishing rods,” Milo says.

Mipsy mrrrs as if in agreement. Although Mipsy cannot speak (yet), she seems to be perfectly capable of understanding English as well as Common.

After searching about for a while, we determine that the big fish is probably a fishing challenge and we’ll have to come back another time with proper equipment for it. That doesn’t mean we intend to leave entirely empty-handed. There’s a series of large lily pads that can hold our weight for exactly three seconds before dumping us in the water, forcing us to quickly jump between them one at a time. This leads us into an otherwise inaccessible little nook where a chest appears once we’ve all made it through.

Skill acquired: Athletics (Jumping)

“Wow, that was enough to unlock a skill?” Milo says, dripping water into the grass. “Dungeons are better for experience than I anticipated.”

Burdock’s turn to gather the loot, and he scoops up a handful of copper coins from the chest, then pulls out a fishing rod that really should not have fit in that little chest.

“Look at that,” Milo says with a grin. “Guess we’re doing the fishing challenge after all.”

We hop back across the lily pads and almost lose our new fishing implement in the water a couple times, but we make it.

From the mud near the pond, we dig up some grubs to use as bait. Passing the fishing rod between us, we take turns and manage to catch a few smaller fish. Then we put one of the tiny fish on the hook and let Burdock use it since he’s the biggest of us.

After a few minutes of fishing, Burdock exclaims, “I’ve got something! It’s big!”

He almost falls off the bridge, but Milo and I grab onto him to keep him from going over the railing as he reels in our prize. After a struggle, a shiny fish as long as my arm flops onto the wooden planks. Milo kills it with his stone knife before it can flop itself back into the water.

Skill acquired: Survival (Fishing)

I wish we’d been given a bucket as well as a rod, but my backpack isn’t carrying anything else and I’m sure the smell will wash out. With magic, if necessary. I’m sure Hearthkeepers have cleaning magic.

We cross the bridge and move on, and eventually come to a closed gate. Past it, the clearing with the big talking tree I encountered before can be seen. No sign of a mirror puzzle this time and it looks like we’ve approached by a different entrance. We take a look around to see what sort of puzzle we need to solve this time.

A number of bell-shaped flowers are arrayed around the small clearing. Burdock touches one curiously, and it makes a sound like a bell playing a note. Touching each of the flowers reveals that each of the eight different colored flowers produces a different tone, with the black one producing the lowest pitch and the violet one the highest. When the black flower is touched, a plaque above the gate lights up, which winks out when a different flower plays.

“I suppose we’re meant to play a tune,” Milo says. “Are either of you gifted in music? I learned to play the piano when I was a young but I was told it was mechanically perfect but had no heart, so I stopped playing. I could likely still pick out ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ if need be.”

“What’s a star?” asks Burdock after I finish my translation.

I hold up my star-shaped necklace. “It means this shape.” I point to the symbol over the gate. “And that.”

I don’t even feel like getting into trying to explain how different out skies are.

“Oh,” Burdock says. “I don’t know any music. Well, aside from singing winter carols, and then only in a group.”

I shake my head. “I don’t either. I suppose we could brute force it if it doesn’t kick us out for too many failed attempts, but that feels… inelegant. Do you suppose that star up there is a hint as to what song to play?”

Milo is already playing around with the flowers and has discovered that the first two notes are the black flower, and after a few tries he discovers that the third note is the green flower.

“Hmm,” Milo says. “If the black flower is C, then the green one is G… I believe this actually is ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’. Let’s see, how does this go again… Black, black, green, green, light blue, light blue…”

Milo is very rusty, but once he gets the rhythm going, he manages to get through the whole song without mistakes. At least the light over the gate indicates when he’s hit a wrong note. Once the song is played correctly, the gate opens.

“Got it!” Milo exclaims in glee. “I even got a skill for it! Language (Tone Recognition).”

Burdock and I didn’t get skills, but then we didn’t really help here either. With the gate open, we head in to the final clearing.

“Hmm, hmm, you’ve returned,” says the tree. “And you’ve brought friends this time. I’m glad you were successful in finding them.”

Strangely, it turns out we can all understand the tree as if it were English for me and Milo and Common for Burdock. At this point, that’s not even alarming considering what else it knows about us.

“Good to see you too,” I say. “You’re totally my favorite talking tree.”

The tree gives a low rumble of a chuckle. “Since there are five of us this time, how about we play a game of cards?”

The ground in front of the tree shifts, and a root shaped like a round table emerges, surrounded by three smaller roots shaped like chairs. Once we take our seats, he starts dealing leaves with symbols on them. Although the cards are green, they’re the regular rectangular shape of cards and feel stiff and durable as cardboard. They all have the shape of a maple leaf on them, along with an image and text that appears to us in our first language.

“This is a game called Leaves,” he explains. “The rules are simple.” He proceeds to go into a bunch of rules that are definitely not simple, seemingly with more exceptions than actual rules.

“This is hard,” Burdock says.

“Do your best,” the tree says. “You might get lucky. Whoever wins will receive a starter deck of Leaves cards. In your travels, you may find new cards that do interesting and powerful things that you can add to your deck.”

I’m not sure how keen I am on playing a collectible card game with trees across the world, but whatever. I always hated these sorts of minigames. Still, I do my best, and do even worse than Burdock, who has no idea what’s going on. At least I still beat Mipsy, who doesn’t care about the game at all and decides to take a nap on top of her cards. When we get knocked out of the match, it’s down to Milo and the tree, and after a hard-fought match, Milo comes out ahead.

Congratulations! Your party has completed the Hedge Maze.

The chest contains some more coins and the promised deck of cards, which Milo claims happily. Neither I nor Burdock are interested in starting a card collection, so he can have any cards we wind up with in the future.

“I got three skills for that!” Milo exclaims as we’re leaving. “Knowledge (Cards), Discipline (Card Counting), and Subterfuge (Bluff). This is incredible. I’ve gotten more skills in one day than I did in two and a half years in Grubwick.”