The silence of the first floor was a transient thing, broken only by the moaning wind that now seemed to carry the ghosts of the fallen orcs. A shimmering portal of ice, humming with latent energy, materialized at the far end of the tundra. Without a word, Alex and Saeko stepped through, the glacial cold of the first floor instantly replaced by a damp, oppressive heat.
The second floor was the Tanglewood—a petrified forest frozen in a moment of primordial violence. The trees were not of wood, but of gleaming, black obsidian, their branches like shattered glass claws against a cavern ceiling dripping with glowing green phosphorescence. The "ground" was a treacherous bog of bubbling, acidic mud that released plumes of noxious, yellow gas. The air reeked of rot and sulfur.
This was a hunter's floor.
