"Now everyone will pay," the soldier said. "Unless you surrender…" He looked at the robot, still covered in confetti. "Arrest Mr. Garland when I return. If he resists, burn the house down."
"You can't do this!" Rex exclaimed.
"Of course I can," the man replied. "Even if I didn't want to, these are direct orders from the Maze Council. When I catch that crazy old man of Garland.... Alright, now…"
He pointed it at my head.
"Lower the weapons," Ivy urged.
"What?" The soldier barely had time to finish his sentence when a blur of blonde hair launched itself at him. The man fired, the ice projectile missing his head by inches. Ivy grabbed his forearm and twisted him in one clean motion. The weapon fell to the ground with a crunch.
Just as fluidly, she launched a kick directly into his chest, sending him slamming into a pile of crates, which collapsed on top of him. We were all speechless, you can imagine. When you see an old friend fight like a professional boxer, it's truly shocking.
Meanwhile, the robot began to load its cannon. "Objective: Eliminate."
June grabbed a broom from the floor and smashed it against the robot's head. Meanwhile, Rex rummaged through a pile of crates, trying to find anything they might find useful. From among the dusty wood, he pulled out a sword. A real sword that emitted a blue glow.
But what could he do with a sword?
The answer seemed simple to Rex: He wielded it as fluidly as if he'd been doing it all his life, and leaped forward. The blade ended up embedded in its chest. The robot staggered backward, and the cannon exploded backward, throwing it into the wall.
"And that's how debts are cleared," Rex laughed.
"Okay," I said. "And since when do you guys know how to do that?"
"Do what?" Ivy asked casually.
"That weird leg twist, then the lock and the neck punch!" June said.
"Yeah," Rex agreed. "And on top of that, you did it with a face like, 'I do it every day." What happened to the girl who always says she doesn't like sports?"
"Oh, don't exaggerate…" he tried to excuse himself. "It was pure luck."
"No," I said, having had plenty of experience with luck, most of it negative, by the way. "Luck is finding twenty francs in the pocket of an old coat. You gave an incredible performance."
Juniper stopped. "Wait, do you train in secret?"
"No, no… well… maybe I'll take a couple of self-defense classes," she said, looking at the floor.
"A couple? That wasn't "a couple," that was... the whole season," Rex exclaimed, still holding the sword.
"It's okay... My grandma signed me up for a class when I was younger. She said, "You never know when you'll have to take down a thief on skates."
"I think we should meet your grandma someday. Now, keep moving."
I'm not going to lie: after watching Ivy throw the soldier around like he was an empty garbage bag, I started to rethink our friendship. Not because I dislike her or anything... but because now I know that if I ever beat her at a board game, I could end up on the floor in an arm lock.
And it's not like I felt super safe around her before. I mean, yes, she's smart, fast, and knows more useless facts than any encyclopedia... but now she can also take down a guy with a gun and armor.
Basically, Ivy went from being "my best friend" to "my best friend and potential bodyguard"... with the added bonus that if she gets angry, she could also be my executioner. I didn't know what was more terrifying.
And then there was Rex, who looked like he'd been in fencing classes his whole life. His skills were surprising, even to me, who'd been his best friend for three years. It was all very strange.
"What do we do now?" Rex asked.
"I told you to bring more ammunition."
"Error," the robot muttered. "The ammo was your responsibility."
"No," the soldier exclaimed. "I was supposed to bring the handcuffs, you brought the candy bullets!"
"Correction: You never said 'candy bullets.'"
"Of course I did! It was at the Tuesday meeting, right after we talked about the late payments," he exclaimed.
"You know I don't attend meetings on Tuesdays; that's my gear-lock day."
"Stop talking!" Juniper yelled.
The two of them stared at her. Although she couldn't see either of their expressions, she knew we could be in serious trouble. The soldier pushed a box aside and tried to stand up. "You guys don't scare me. Last year, I fought a mutant goat in Bavaria. You guys are nothing…"
A blow to the head with the frying pan told him otherwise. He barely managed to aim his gun at it when Rex knocked him unconscious. At least they wouldn't argue. I took care of the robot. Would you think I wouldn't do anything? I grabbed the ice gun from the floor, and after a BOOM, there was a smoking hole in the center of the robot's chest.
"Wow… you just killed a robot."
"It wasn't that bad," I said. "Besides, I think it'll wake up soon, so we'd better get out of here."
We didn't even take two steps toward the exit when a CLANG was heard. We turned toward the source of the noise. Where a bookshelf should have been, there was a door.
The basement door swung open.
"You two again?" Mr. Garland said calmly. He looked at the tax collectors as if they were a mere nuisance. The soldiers froze as if they'd been caught stealing cookies.
"Mr. Garland... we... uh…"
"Statement: The objective was to conduct a routine tax inspection."
"Routine, huh?" asked Mr. Garland, taking a step forward. "Well, my basement doesn't look very 'routine' now. Look at that shelf—it was oak! And the carpet... that carpet was imported from Norway!"
"But…" the human justified himself.
"Nothing! Do you know how much it cost me?! Pick up all this mess, leave me the inventory of damages, and get out of here." Mr. Garland's tone left no room for discussion; the soldiers seemed dwarfed by comparison.
"Proposal: We can come back tomorrow to finish the inspection," said the robot, clearly intimidated.
"If you come back tomorrow, I'll charge you triple the tax for 'extreme inconvenience," Mr. Garland declared.
The soldiers looked at each other, defeated. The human sighed and began to pick up the flour Rex had scattered, though I guessed it was quite difficult to do so in all that armor. The robot, on the other hand, tried to clear away the magical snow still floating in the air.
"Well, as for you," he looked us in the eye. "You've done an excellent job. Now, come with me outside. We need to talk, but first, let's wait for you to finish."
Mr. Garland ended up inviting us to have coffee. We sat just outside the mansion, just around the corner from the front garden. The intense Californian sun shone directly in our faces, and the smell of the flowers was certainly relaxing. After fighting two robots, this was just what we needed.
Everything was quite peaceful and beautiful; no one would suspect there was a...
"I suppose you've met my friends," he said calmly, his ridiculous Christmas suit and wooden cane gleaming in the sunlight. "They've been grumpy for the past two months. They visit me every month to bother me and steal all my treasures. Thank you very much for taking care of them."
"Well, we didn't know something like this would happen," Rex said. "If you had informed us about these... unpleasant visitors, we could have avoided the problem."
"The good thing is that they didn't steal from me anymore," Mr. Garland said, sipping from his coffee cup. Next, he rummaged in his pockets and pulled out the same gold case from the beginning. He held the black and gold card like a trophy. "As promised, the passage card."
I reached out and took it. It felt warm to the touch, a strange energy running up my arm. Everyone leaned over my shoulders to try to see the shiny thing. Mr. Garland seemed to enjoy our astonishment and gave him that self-satisfied look that characterizes him.
"Still, the passage card isn't the only thing that's guaranteed to stay out of trouble. Not after what happened last Christmas, and certainly not after the mass monster sightings." The eccentric man stirs his coffee as if it were a poisonous potion.
"What exactly happened?" Rex asked.
Garland stared at him for a moment, as if she wanted to kill him with her gaze. "A blackout in the Central District. Everything went dark, cameras dead, not a single witness. When the power came back on… three rooms were gone. It was an accident… or so they reported."
Ivy raised an eyebrow. "An accident?"
"Vanished… in what way?" June chimed in.
"As if they had never existed," Garland said. "It was the busiest area of the labyrinth, the place where almost all paths cross. During that Christmas night… everything changed. Where workshops and markets once stood, now only the memories of those who remember their existence remain."
"Well, that sounds very reassuring," I said.
Ivy leaned forward. "And the investigation? You mentioned a council. Don't tell me a place like that doesn't have safety protocols."
"Officially, there was one… yes," she replied. "Unofficially, they buried it. Structural accidents, climate change."
An accident that erases entire rooms? Yeah... very believable.
"I''s obvious someone wanted to hide something," Ivy said seriously.
"But enough with the nonsense," Mr. Garland added. "Now for the important stuff. Have you ever heard of the Chalice of the Frost?"
"With the Passage Card, you'll be able to cross the labyrinth doors without them closing on you. But…" his eyes narrowed "don't think it'll protect you from everything."
I raised an eyebrow. "There's always a catch, right?"
Garland barely smiled, without happiness, "Of course, there is. Because every artifact in the labyrinth belongs to someone older than me, older than you… and crueler."
Ivy tilted his head forward. "Who are you talking about?"
The man leaned back in his chair, lowering his voice almost as if he was afraid of being heard by the very walls of the mansion. His own mansion was connected to the maze, and that was not a good omen.
"The Guardian. They called him Festus Scrooge. He's not a human legend—human legends are merely echoes of what really was. He guards the Chalice of Frost, not because he believes in its power, but because it belongs to him. And when anyone dares to seek it, he always appears to remind them why they should never have tried. No seeker returned after an encounter."
"So…" Rex muttered, arms crossed, "you're telling us we have an angry undead guy with a collector's complex guarding the jackpot?"
"I'm telling you, if you advance, you won't be doing so just against the labyrinth or other seekers... but against him. And believe me, no one who's faced him has ever come back to tell the tale."
A silence fell over the Californian landscape, the garden no longer felt so comfortable for a moment, and the cups of coffee in our hands lost their warmth.
"However, he must advance step by step," Mr. Garland initiated, unaware of our dark glances. "In the first place, you must find the Maze's Map in Baviera. Only with the guidance of the map, you'll be able to find Mr. Scrooge's secret lair, and only that way, you'll find the cup."
A quest ended, another started, and this time, we will not receive help from Mr. Garland.