‘Ugh,’ Leo complained in Dominic’s mind as his paw sank straight through the almost-clear surface he had been expecting to be solid. The former-human didn’t blame him. He’d loved swimming as a human, but it was a very different feeling to slip a human foot into water than to dip a lion’s paw in. And anyway, this water was colder than he’d like even as a human.

The water soaked uncomfortably through his fur and immediately started cooling the skin below. Pulling his paw straight out and placing it back on the step felt kind of like he was wearing clammy clothes which stuck and rubbed uncomfortably on his body.

‘Great,’ Dominic agreed sarcastically with Leo. ‘The water level.’

Now he was able to see the room a bit more clearly, he had more of an idea of what sort of challenge waited for them. The water was no doubt part of it, but the first steps didn’t require them to swim. Instead, there was a sort of underwater bridge which seemed to stretch directly between the stairs and the door opposite them.

There were only three stairs between Dominic’s front feet, standing on the last step above the water, and the point where the stairs met the underwater bridge. That at least meant that the water wasn’t all that deep. Not on the walkway, anyway.

It was hard to see what lay ahead of him – though the ripples from his movement were spreading out and disturbing the surface, the water further away in the chamber was too reflective to observe anything. Close to him, however, he was able to see more of what lay below the surface. Either side of the bridge that barely matched the width of the stairs, the stonework dropped away into the depths. In some places, Dominic could see the pale-yellow stone floor; in others, there was only darkness.

He had a strong feeling, though, that they weren’t alone here. He couldn’t see any evidence of the movement of other creatures, and the previous mirror-like surface supported the lack of underwater currents. Still, he was almost sure that they were there. Waiting.

‘Do you see anything? Sense anything?’ Dominic asked the amesheks, sharing his own observations with them through the Pride chat. At least that hadn’t been affected by whatever had impacted their communications with the others.

‘The water makes it difficult for us to sense what is within it,’ Sirius explained. ‘But there is something on the other side of the cavern.’

‘Something living?’

‘They are moving slightly, so I think so,’ Sirius answered.

‘They are hidden among the rocks on that side,’ added Procyon. ‘It is hard to tell exactly what they are.’

‘Do you know what they could be? How many there are? If they are in groups or alone?’

The two amesheks hesitated, staring at the other side and humming softly.

‘They are not big,’ Sirius told him cautiously, ‘but there are many of them. Far more of them than of us.’

‘They are evenly dispersed,’ Procyon added. ‘They hide together in groups, but there is no part of the area which has none of them. I cannot recognise them from here.’

Sirius agreed wordlessly.

‘Alright, thanks for the information,’ Dominic sighed. He eyed the water. They were going to have to go through it, weren’t they?

‘You have wings, idiot,’ Leo snapped at him. ‘Use them.’

Dominic felt immediately foolish. His companion was right, damn him.

‘Aren’t you glad I was able to convince you that we should increase their strength?’ he teased Leo weakly to cover up his embarrassment.

‘Perhaps I would be if my foolish brother would actually remember that he has them,’ grumbled the lion.

Feeling a bit more happy about not having to immediately get himself all wet – having one paw still soaked was uncomfortable enough – Dominic hopped up a few of the stairs.

‘I’m going to fly to the other side and check things out. Stay here for now.’

‘There may be too many potential enemies for you alone,’ warned Procyon.

‘If it’s too much, I’ll either call you or come back,’ promised Dominic. ‘But I’ve been itching to let loose a bit. We should share the points anyway so you shouldn’t be badly affected by me taking over the fight.’ It would be good to be able to let off a bit of steam – distract himself from worrying about the other three. Leo hadn’t said anything, but Dominic could tell that he was concerned too.

‘Of course I am!’ Leo snapped. ‘Our female is alone with two males and I’m not there to make sure they don’t do anything with her.’

Dominic mentally glared at the lion.

‘So you’re not worried about them dying.’

‘I’m worried about the female dying. As are you. So can we get moving?’

Though itching even more now to argue with Leo, the lion had an annoyingly good point. Since neither of the amesheks objected any further, Dominic shifted his wings into position and then leaped off the stairs, using Airborne to reduce his weight as much as he could once his momentum had him moving forwards.

His wings felt stronger than they ever had, supporting his slightly reduced weight with far more ease than last time. Dominic glided forwards smoothly, losing height inch by inch but not too fast. Eyeing the distance, he thought that he might just about make it without getting drenched. He was too curious to take the easy route, though.

Moving his wings slightly, he beat down just a bit. He bobbed in the air, losing more height than he gained.

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That didn’t work, he mused wryly to himself. Maybe I haven’t quite got the right angle here.

‘If you dump us in the water, I will never forgive you,’ warned Leo with a snarl.

‘I’ll try not to,’ replied Dominic brightly, more than a little tempted to do exactly that just to annoy his companion. But he refrained – the middle of a dungeon was no place to do stupid jokes like that. Besides, if he got attacked by something because he’d splashed down in the middle of the bridge and got soaked, Dominic would never forgive himself either.

Instead, he just focussed on what little he knew about birds and the faint instincts which seemed to have come along with the wings. Curving his wings forward slightly, he decided that his tentative approach was probably part of the issue last time and decided to put a bit more force behind it this time.

Pumping his wings downwards took a lot of strength, but it was doable. This time, he surged a little higher into the air, enough to almost regain what he’d lost since trying to beat his wings the last time.

Stretching out his wings back into their gliding position, Dominic decided to stop experimenting and instead get ready for the landing. He was pleased with his discoveries so far. He didn’t think he’d be flying properly without a few more upgrades to his wings, but being able to gain a bit of height when already in the air was a good start.

The cavern was long, but he was getting close to its end. His eyes flicking over the area, he took in the details he previously hadn’t been able to see. Frankly, he was rather impressed that the amesheks had been able to get any information at all from such a distance. Maybe the emptiness of the space over the water helped.

The door was larger than he’d thought, the distance making it look smaller than it actually was. The land sloped gradually up towards it from the water’s edge. Littering that slope were a number of chunks of rock, appearing to have fallen from the ceiling at some point. Dominic highly doubted that the ceiling really was unstable – this was a dungeon, after all. However, he did consider that falling rocks could be one of the environmental weapons the dungeon would use against them. And he already knew that the fallen rocks hid enemies.

Coming in to land, his tail skimmed the top of the water before he lifted it up, then his back paws struck the ground first. He hadn’t quite missed the edge of the water, but his back paws only got a little splashed and his front paws landed on dry ground.

Immediately equipping his tail armour, Dominic let out a tremendous Roar. His enemies knew where he was; he’d like to know the same. Focussing on making his enemies blindingly angry, he was surprised at just what came boiling out of the rocky area.

‘Does this mean that we won’t be facing Pumba again in the final fight?’ he wondered at Leo with a hint of bemusement.

‘If any of them have Enhanced Fertility, we need that Core,’ the lion responded eagerly, not paying any attention to Dominic’s question.

‘Well, let’s find out if dungeon warthogs have the same Abilities as the ones outside, shall we?’

The rocky area, previously unmoving, now practically seethed with enemies, some charging toward Dominic, others trying to run away from him. It created more than a few bottlenecks which Dominic certainly wasn’t above taking advantage of.

Using his own version of Charge, he ran towards the largest and closest knot of struggling porcine creatures. Just to increase his momentum a bit more, he activated Airborne and increased his weight to its maximum.

The warthogs were certainly bigger than the ones he’d killed in the outside world, but nowhere near as big as the warthog guardian he’d killed in the dungeon. He hit the knot like a bowling ball hitting pins, sending several flying over the dungeon floor, then he immediately twisted into a Tail Strike, using his momentum for extra damage.

The strike was beyond his expectations. The two first warthogs were practically pulverised, blood and bits of bone flying through the air as his spiked metallic mace went straight through them. After that, the strike slowed down, catching three more with a nasty blow, but not killing any further.

Notifications flashed up, but he dismissed them – Leo had a point about how distracting they were.

Dominic didn’t hesitate to capitalise on the warthogs’ continued confusion and disarray, ripping out the throat of the closest, then leaping away to crunch through the spine of another.

He dealt out a Swipe here, a Bite there, a Strike every so often; one notification was followed quickly by another.

After the brief period of disarray caused by his Roar wore off, he did start accruing some injuries himself. Although he tried to keep out of the way of the warthogs’ Charge Abilities, there were too many of them to keep track of them all – he was rather occupied with the warthogs close by, several with some sort of tusk enhancement by the feel of their attacks.

Spatial Awareness warned him about a Charging warthog but he couldn’t dodge in time. It slammed into his flank, sending a burst of pain through Dominic, though, it wasn’t as bad as he had expected it to be – he didn’t even feel like anything had been broken. His regeneration quickly started working on the injury too.

Leaping up onto a large rock nearby, he leaped again high into the air. At the apex of his flight, Dominic caught the air with his wings and slowed his descent significantly. Flicking his tongue quickly, he gathered acid in his mouth.

‘Are you leaving any for us?’ asked Procyon, a hint of amusement in his voice.

‘Not if I can help it,’ replied Dominic cheerfully as he started dropping the acid over the warthogs, angling himself to glide over the densest group of them. He was rather enjoying being able to let loose on the warthogs without needing to worry about the state of his allies.

Quickly looking around to see how he was doing, he tried to take a headcount of who was left. Enjoyment or not, if there were loads more warthogs, he’d have to call the amesheks over. What he saw was a scene of carnage. He must have killed at least ten already, and there were another seven left, all injured.

Increasing his weight with Airborne, Dominic angled his wings to drop down at a slight angle, crashing into a group of four warthogs who had got trapped between two large rocks, neither apparently willing to let the other go past.

More notifications popped up in front of his eyes, then quickly vanished at his dismissal. Whirling around he struck with his tail at the healthier warthog and killed it in one blow, then bit at the last of the group still living.

His Spatial Awareness warning him of movement rushing towards him, Dominic leapt straight up. The two warthogs charging him slammed head first into the rocks. Surprisingly, they both walked away from it, though not without looking a little unsteady. The lion dropped right on top of the staggering wild pigs, biting through the spine of one, and then bowling the other over and ripping out its throat.

Looking around for his last opponent, Dominic was unable to see anything moving. After a moment, he spotted the missing pig. It was lying on the ground looking very sick. Just as he started walking towards it, the porcine creature went still and a new notification flashed in front of his eyes.

Huh, must have died from my venom or something, he thought to himself.

‘You’d better check there isn’t anything else hiding or preparing to attack,’ reminded Leo.

‘I was about to,’ sighed Dominic. Deciding it wasn’t worth an argument, and feeling more relaxed after venting his frustrations, he just went ahead and started checking the rest of the rocky area. ‘I’m glad that no rocks ended up falling on our heads,’ he said brightly to his companion.

‘Don’t say that,’ warned Leo.

‘Worried about Murphy?’ Dominic scoffed a little.

‘No, the dungeon master. It almost dropped a rock on our heads before, if you remember. And proved capable of at least some mind-reading,’ the lion said seriously.

‘Good point,’ Dominic replied, sobering. Fortunately, it didn’t seem like his unwise chancing of fate had been held against him as no rocks descended on top of his cranium.

Nor did there seem to be any more warthogs – all of them had been drawn out of hiding by his Roar. Though, he did find something else interesting. Or perhaps frustrating would be another word.

‘I suppose another of these wretched poems is only to be expected,’ he groaned as he saw the writing on the floor right in front of the exit.