The chamber of the Guardian was built for war.
Dante emerged from the passage into a space so vast that the far walls were lost in shadow. The ceiling arched overhead like the inside of a cathedral, supported by columns of living wood that stretched up and up until they vanished into darkness. The floor was stone worn smooth by ages of footsteps, marked with symbols that pulsed with faint green light.
And at the center, waiting with the patience of centuries, stood the Guardian.
It was Sylvani in design but inhuman in scale: a construct of wood and stone and living vegetation, standing thirty feet tall. Its body was a trunk of ancient oak, gnarled and twisted into a roughly humanoid form. Its arms were branches thick enough to crush carriages, and its eyes, set deep in a face carved from heartwood, burned with the green fire of nature magic.
\"THE GUARDIAN REMAINS,\" the dungeon announced. \"DEFEAT IT, OR DIE.\"
The construct moved.
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