Lions of Leilon

Chapter 67: The Silent Garden

Some places are abandoned because people forget them.

Others are abandoned because people remember.

For more than a century, the Cloak Tower has stood over Neverwinter like a broken promise. Its gardens have become a wilderness of twisted vines and shattered statuary. Chunks of the tower itself drift silently through the air, forever caught between gravity and impossible magic. The people of the city know its story well enough to avoid it. Wizards disappeared. Cloaks came alive. Treasure hunters never returned.

Every tavern tells a different version.

None volunteer to walk through its gates.

The trail to the tower began not with swords, but with questions. Atlavast, the ghostly loremaster of the Vault of Tomes, had recognized the mysterious crystal carried by the party immediately. It was no mere magical curiosity, but an Anchor—a fragment of an ancient arcane network hidden beneath Blacklake. Before it could be returned, however, one final stop remained. The answers lay with the long-vanished Order of the Many-Starred Cloaks.

After gathering rumors over breakfast at the Driftwood Tavern, one warning surfaced again and again.

“Don’t touch anything blue.”

Whether sage advice or drunken superstition remained anyone’s guess.

The estate surrounding the tower proved every bit as unsettling as the stories suggested.

Great hedges swallowed forgotten paths. Broken walls floated lazily through the sky as though gravity itself had surrendered long ago. The very air seemed reluctant to decide whether the Spellplague had ended or merely paused.

Then came the watchers.

A small gathering of pale, alien figures stood motionless among the overgrown grounds. Star Spawn—creatures from beyond the known planes—neither attacked nor fled. They simply stared toward an unseen point in the garden with unsettling patience. Zoltan’s magical senses revealed only something stranger still: not magic, but the absence of it. A wound in reality that refused to heal.

For now, the creatures were content to watch.

The Lions wisely chose to do the same.

Elsewhere in the gardens, another danger waited.

Within the shattered remains of an old greenhouse, a monstrous Corpse Flower had taken root, feeding upon the forgotten dead who had wandered too close over the decades. Its toxic pollen filled the air while grasping vines sought fresh victims.

The battle was short.

Steel, sunlight, and spellcraft quickly reduced the ancient predator to little more than fertilizer.

Among its grisly harvest rested the remains of an apprentice of the Order of the Many-Starred Cloaks. Time had nearly claimed the young wizard’s spellbook, but Zoltan’s careful magic restored the fragile tome, preserving knowledge that had been thought lost for generations. Krum, never one to waste a perfectly good monster, harvested rare pollen sacks whose value would no doubt delight alchemists—and alarm everyone else.

Unfortunately…

The greenhouse was not home to one Corpse Flower.

It was home to three.

The remaining plants barely had time to understand they had become the next victims.

Fireballs erupted through the cracked glass roof. Divine magic flashed across the overgrown floor. Blades carved through tangled vines. The battle was over almost before it had begun.

Not that it was entirely without drama.

Krum managed the remarkable feat of nearly being defeated by pollen after surviving the much larger monster moments before—a performance his companions will almost certainly preserve in song for years to come.

With the greenhouse secured, the estate slowly surrendered a few more of its secrets.

An old Many Arrows war banner still hung where an orc warband had once claimed the tower as its own—before deciding that living somewhere else was the healthier option. A forgotten fountain yielded gemstones and a superior healing potion. Everywhere lay reminders that many had attempted to tame the Cloak Tower.

None had succeeded.

And through it all…

The Star Spawn never moved.

They remained fixed upon whatever impossible thing only they could perceive, silent witnesses to wounds left by the Spellplague more than a century before.

Beyond them stood the tower itself.

Empty.

Waiting.

Its windows dark.

Its bridges broken.

Its enchanted cloaks, if the stories were true…

…still faithfully standing watch.

Next time, the Lions of Leilon will finally step inside one of Neverwinter’s oldest mysteries and discover whether the Order of the Many-Starred Cloaks truly vanished… or whether some duties refuse to end, even after death.