Whatever floats your island

The 'garden' was accessible through a double door on the far end of the building, and garden really wasn't the right word for the scenery that lay before John. It was more like a small blooming field, too big to be tended to without big machinery but not as big as some farmer's fields. The ground was overgrown with wildflowers and lots of high grass. This had obviously not been tended to in quite a while as well, but that didn't surprise John, looking at the state of the interior of the house. Funnily enough, there was no damage on the outside of the house though, no ivy climbing up the walls, no cracking facade.

Speaking of the house, it looked just as grand from the outside as it did from the inside, even if it only was a single floor building. The walls looked like they were made out of polished marble, smooth and cold to the touch, but slightly warm at the spots the sun had been directly shining on. Whoever had built this thing had some serious money, and that didn't make sense to John seeing how there was nothing in that house... was it maybe that something happened to the owner while the house was built? Was the house built, and then the owner didn't have any money left? Who knew the right answer, it was not like John could simply ask the next person, seeing as how he hadn't seen anyone up until now, not even any smaller animals or critters... strange...

The next thing on John's list to check out was the edge of this plateau to get a glimpse into on what this place was standing on, if at all. So John went around the house, to the first window he looked through and where the edge was the closest from what he had seen yet. Looking at it from a distance while he rounded around the house made it really look like there was nothing there... And that sense only was confirmed when he looked over the edge at the point closest to the house.

Beyond the edge, there was nothing there. No remaining ground, just a cliff. But John couldn't properly see what was below the ground he was standing on. Casting Magic Rope, John tied one end of the rope to himself while he tied the other one to a small tree sticking out of the ground... hopefully that thing would be able to support his weight... Gently leaning himself over the edge, he could quickly see the answer to his question: there was nothing below the mansion. Well, not entirely nothing, there was a big chunk of rock going down that contained the basement, but there was nothing down there connecting the rock to the ground.

This was a floating island! John had found a keycard to a seemingly deserted floating island! This was amazing! Now he just had to find out how to get electricity, how to get wifi and a lot of furniture in here, but then he could really use this place as his own!

Pulling himself up again over the edge of the island was an easy task, and the small tree thankfully survived the effort. John then remembered a certain someone in his inventory that would probably like this place very much.

Opening his inventory, John pulled out Gary, who then immediately materialized on the palm of John's hand. The little guy seemed to know that he was free to run around in this place, as he quickly left John's hand with an excited metallic squeak and ran off to somewhere in the fields. Seeing as how he probably didn't need Gary right now, he was totally okay with the little guy just running off for now, and he was pretty sure that he wouldn't fall off the island, that spider was way too clingy for that.

Circling the rest of the way around the house, he arrived at the artificial lake and the actual garden of the island that he could see from the central room of the house. The flowers here were a lot more colorful and blooming like they were planted here at some point and then simply grew without anyone watching over them. There probably would have been a lot more different kinds, but some of them probably had died to the lack of care. The lake was perfectly square and big enough to be considered a pool, but the edges and the ground were obviously natural to some degree, so it was a fascinating hybrid between a pool and an artificial lake. The water inside was full of various water plants that made the water look murky from afar, but now that he was directly next to it, John could see that the water was pretty damn clear. The more he looked around; the more magical and weird this place seemed... someone had obviously used a lot of effort and resources to build this, but why then leave it in this state of desolation?

Maybe John would find some answers when he looked through the rest of the basement; maybe he would find something resembling a living person there?

The way back to the door into the mansion didn't take John long, and by the time he was there, Gary had also joined him again, obviously eager to see the inside of the house as well. Since John had already looked through the ground floor, he went straight to the spiraling staircase and descended to the depths he hadn't explored yet. The encompassing darkness of the basement was starting to get on John's nerves by now, so he pulled out the Essence of Light from his inventory, seeing if it shed light as its name suggested. And indeed it did, basking the surroundings in bright light. Now that John had some proper lighting, he could see that the walls were dark in color, almost black and that the floor was covered in the same dark carpet as the ground floor. It felt like this place was kind of different to the upper floor, yet it shared similarities... Was it on purpose? Was either the basement or the ground floor built after the other one? John had no way to know...

Leaving the first basement floor behind himself, for now, he descended to the second basement floor, where he reached a small room from which doors lead away in every direction. Looking into one of the rooms revealed it to be a storage room of some kind, lined with boxes and shelves, which were empty... Was there anything useful he would find here? It seemed like someone just packed all the things they owned and left, but why?

The second room was another storage room, but this time there were weapon stands and armor racks, so this was obviously some kind of armory, but, once again, completely empty except for the storage units. The third room was another empty room, just like the ones on the ground floor.

The last room on this floor turned out to be much smaller than John had expected because it wasn't a real room like any of the other ones, but simply a small foot by foot closet with a ladder in the ground. This thing was going deeper and deeper into the ground. Would he reach the bottom of the floating rock if he kept going down like this? Did he even want to go down there? It's not like anything had attacked him up until now, and the chances that something was down there were pretty slim in his mind.

The choice was taken out of his hand anyway as Gary ran down the hole, forcing John to follow him down to wherever this hole went.

The climb down took several minutes, but it didn't feel like that to John. The deeper down he went, the more of an uncomfortable feeling he got in his gut like there was something here that he should not see.

As he reached the bottom of the ladder, John was standing inside some kind of hallway that only went into a single direction. Gary was nowhere in sight, however, so with a quiet sight, John went off in the direction of the hallway. He quickly reached the end of the hallway, and what he saw before him made his stomach queasy...

He was standing a big circular room; there were different ways going off from it looking the same way like the one he just came from. The room itself was roughly 20 meters in diameter, unfurnished, and had a high ceiling that John couldn't see the end of. Around the walls of the room were gray translucent stones sticking out of the walls. These stones looked like massive crystals, cut into some big hexagonal shape.

John knew this room.

This was the room he saw himself die in by the hands of Astrid (or Titania). There were some key differences like no snow and the different colors of the crystals, but he could immediately recognize the room.

Aside from the previously named differences, there was one major one that stuck out even more: There was a person hovering in the middle of the room, covered in gray and long robes that seemed very rigid. John was not sure if the person was human, seeing as how every part of them was covered in the gray garb and the face was covered in something he would describe as a helmet with an orange visor (or was that the head?). The position the person was floating in seemed like a meditation pose, completely relaxed and unattentive to the world. Gary was running around the person, curiously running his laps. As John approached the person, they immediately changed their position and now stood in front of John, arms hidden in their sleeves. Out of instinct, John tried to use Observe:

Observe failed. Target too powerful!

"Ah, I have been waiting for you, young one," the...thing said in a distorted and metallic voice. The voice was soft, but there was a lot of weight in the words. They had been expecting him? How? He only got this card maybe two hours ago...

"How did you know I would come?" asked John.

"Simple, I saw it, just like you saw your fate in this room, did you not?" That question sent shivers down John's spine as he remembered the vision and the look on Astrid's face in it. "What else do you know about me?"

"As much as you know about me." That answer didn't really relieve John...

"What is this place?" asked John, finally able to ask this question to someone.

"It is an Abyssal Nexus, a lynchpin between worlds, a mostly blank canvas ready to be shaped into whatever its creator wants it to be. And it will retain that shape until the next creator decides to empty it once again."

"Are you the 'creator' of this Nexus, then?" was John's next question. The being shook its head, "I am not. I am a byproduct of this kingdom; I am a protector. I am also responsible for testing the new creators. So, are you ready?"

"Ready for what?" John had a guess what the 'protector' meant, but he had no idea what the objective would be.

"For your test of succession of course. The last creator has left me with a specific test on how to test the next creator. Your objective will be to reveal my identity. Any means you see fit are allowed, and you have unlimited tries. And do not hold back, as I can not die and will hold my damage at a minimum."

So... His objective was that he had to 'unveil' the protector? Was he meant to destroy that helmet? John wasn't quite sure about that, but the way the protector talked, he had the feeling that that was the way it was supposed to go.

Welp, here goes nothing, and he then changed into his gear and pulled out his Spear of Armamyris, which by now had ten charges again.

Then he charged for the protector.