Snare sprung; prize not found.
Danger awaits when you turn around.
Cages empty; occupants left;
Solve this puzzle or face your death.
This dungeon needs to take poetry classes, Dominic grumbled mentally to himself as he read the words now engraven on the stone of the altar slab. Who rhymes ‘left’ with ‘death’ anyway? And does it need to be quite so ominous?
He sighed as he managed to answer his own question – of course it had to be ominous: this was a dungeon after all. And I guess that poetry 101 isn’t a requirement of dungeoneering, he commented wryly to himself even as a scraping sound came from behind him.
Pushing off the altar stone, he turned to face the room. The coloured tiles were the source of the scraping sound – naturally. Instead of sinking into the floor, though, they had risen above it. Beneath the inch-thick stone tile itself was a...cage? Dominic padded towards the closest one to have a better look.
It was weird to see a hexagonally shaped one, but that was the only thing that made sense. It was made out of metal wire, the spaces between each probably only enough to let his claws through. On one side there was an obvious entry point, the door slid upwards to leave a gaping hole. Dominic could see how he would only need to push down on the top of the door to close it.
But what’s supposed to be inside it? It would have made more sense, perhaps, if the cages had come up with their occupants still inside and then they had been unleashed upon him. Then again, that was part of the poem, right? ‘Cages empty; occupants left’….
The sound of grating stone met Dominic’s ears once more and he saw two stone tiles in the wall closest to the door shift sideways. He narrowed his eyes as he saw dark forms come scampering out. Rats? No – they didn’t move quite right for that. What are those things called which live in forests? Wizzles? Weezles? Or maybe I’m thinking of ferrets.
But that didn’t make much sense either – he was in a savannah dungeon, not a forest one. The creatures were making a beeline for him so Dominic just waited patiently until one was illuminated sufficiently to see more obvious markings. When he got a closer look, he found an aggrieved sense of betrayal taking root in his heart.
I know I said I wasn’t Mufasa earlier, but I’m not Simba either! he complained. This dungeon had probably better watch out for Disney’s lawyers if it’s going to be stealing their characters like this. As if the dungeon was trying to ruin one of his favourite animated movies as a child, the creatures scampering towards him were indeed meerkats.
And it turned out they weren’t nearly as cute and cuddly in person as they were in the film. Ow, Dominic complained as he was surrounded by sharp-toothed Timons.
The damage hurt, but each bite had barely any effect on his health bar; his heart was hurt more at the knowledge that he was going to have to tear one of his favourite characters to bits. These are not really Timon or Timon’s family, he told himself firmly as he started using Quick Strike to bite at his attackers.
They were quick, but that was all they had going for them – as soon as Dominic got a bite in, they were doomed. A single crushing snap of his teeth and another lifeless corpse fell from his jaws.
In fact, a few minutes into the fight and Dominic found himself almost better off than when he’d entered it. Although each small corpse didn’t offer him much in terms of stamina or health, it offered him almost as much as he spent on killing them, so it was not much of a loss for the lion. And he could already feel that he was less hungry or thirsty.
I guess my increased damage reduction due to enhancing my coat and skin are helping me here, he mused, the fight not actually taking that much of his attention. The sound of more stone moving off to one side drew his attention that way.
Two more tiles had shifted again and a stream of meerkats was pouring out of it towards him. Dominic’s eyes narrowed. Is the dungeon trying to overwhelm me with numbers or something?
He supposed that if they were doing more damage then it would be a reasonable strategy; as it was, it would take a long time to wear him down, even though he wasn’t approaching this with full health. Maybe they’re going to send more powerful meerkats at me later, beast wave style?
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But that didn’t make any sense with the rhyme. It had talked about a puzzle, and the cages were definitely part of that. Then Dominic’s sharp eyesight caught a glimpse of something and the pieces fell into place.
One of the meerkats which had just entered was blue.
Blue meerkat...blue cage. Occupants left...solve this puzzle...I have to return the occupants to the cages? It made sense. Seemed a little simplistic, but Occam’s Razor and all that. Besides, the other traps he’d encountered had been pretty straightforward too.
The corridor hadn’t been embellished, and there had been no traps that had tried to pretend to be anything else. The other room had given a rhyme that was a little difficult to work through without context, but simple enough with. Heck, both rhymes had even declared that the room was a trap, not trying to pretend that they were anything different.
In the end Dominic shrugged. It’s worth a go. Just one question – do the meerkats have to be alive or dead?
Alive would be more annoying, but there was no guarantee that he’d solve the puzzle if he killed them. And it was a lot easier to make something dead that’s alive than make something alive that’s dead. Unless you’re a necromancer, of course.
Sighing, Dominic decided that assuming the meerkats needed to be alive was the best option here. Now, how to accomplish this task?
*****
The Lion had been watching as the hairless monkey controlled his body to overcome the traps posed by the stone cave which they had entered. He had been reluctantly impressed with the way the Intruder had faced the challenges so far.
While the Intruder’s control over his body was still not quite as practised as the Lion’s own, the Lion had to admit that it was getting better. No longer did the Intruder shame him by fumbling like a cub; the only errors were in not using his body to its full capabilities.
Yet even with the accidental handicap, the hairless monkey succeeded in taking on threats that even the Lion would have been leery of. While the first two groups of trodils had been easily torn apart, the third group was one the Lion would have been reluctant to face alone. With a pride behind him it would have been a simple matter, but alone….
If he was honest with himself, the Lion would not have chosen to take on the third group of trodils, just as he would not choose to take on a group of hyenas. Perhaps if he had been desperate or cornered, but not for the reasons that the Intruder had. Better to live to fight another day than face a fight that could leave him injured and vulnerable.
Being honest with himself…. It was an odd development that the Lion was struggling to adapt to. Before there had been no question of honesty or lack of it: he had been himself, and that had been all. Yet now, reduced to no more than a mind within his own body, in contact with a mind so alien from his own, and with those strange rushes of energy that flowed through him, it was different.
Now he knew what it meant to be honest and dishonest. He had come to an understanding of strategy being more than creeping through the bush undetected and waiting for a moment his prey was looking away to strike. He had learned of traps, and of ways of escaping them.
The Lion grudgingly admitted that he would not have made it very far into this stone cave without the Intruder. Actually, he would never have even entered it in the first place – the whole situation of finding and carrying pieces of sun which were cold rather than hot had been a little beyond him, even after the energy had passed through and made his thinking clearer and more critical.
He still was not entirely sure whether it was a good idea: so far, it seemed to have been a location of nothing more than threats to his health. There was no prey in here – or at least, there hadn’t been until now – and the excitement the Intruder had felt over a dried out piece of hide which now sat around his neck seemed...inappropriate.
No, between the pieces of stone which shot at him and disappeared beneath his feet, the Lion would have been long gone out of this Death Cave. And that’s not even including the lumps of stone which actually attacked him.
Though the Lion did have to admit that he had been as impressed as he had been baffled at the Intruder’s way of dealing with them. Who knew that the hairless monkey would be able to control the Light-which-Bites and that this would have any effect on the unnatural stone?
The excitement which followed continued to be inappropriate – the Intruder hadn’t felt that way over the hide which was still on the prey it had killed. And that hide was far better to eat.
No, all in all, while the Lion was reluctantly impressed by the Intruder’s ability to deal with situations that the Lion admitted he would have found impossible, he felt like the Intruder had its priorities wrong. Instead of exploring this dark cave and risking death, it should be exploring the grasslands and finding more tasty prey. Not to mention its poor choices of enhancement. Who cared if his coat was a bit longer?
The Lion had to admit that it was rather baffled at the Intruder’s most recent actions. He was forced to watch as the Intruder fumbled around a group of overgrown burrowing rats. Why it wasn’t choosing to just swipe them all out of existence, the Lion didn’t know. Perhaps I was too hasty in thinking that a hairless monkey would have stopped embarrassing me.
Unfortunately, he still had no ability to control anything. Every time the energy rushed through him, he made a new attempt. And every time, his attempts failed. Yet every time he felt like he was getting closer to succeeding. My time will come, the Lion promised himself, even the ability to have an inner voice something new since the last rush of energy.
My time will come and I will be able to focus on enhancing the only element that truly matters: growing out this poor excuse of a mane into something that will attract a pride of females.