‘I think one of us should stay on the surface to keep watch,’ Dominic decided. He was heavily tempted to assign himself that role, but felt that it would be a bit selfish of him. ‘Which of you would like to stay here?’ he forced himself to ask.
The two amesheks exchanged glances.
‘I will go in,’ answered Sirius after a moment. ‘The water is not too bad now I am more used to it.’
‘OK. Thanks, Sirius. You go over there,’ Dominic said, pointing to the underwater area to the left, ‘and I’ll go here,’ he continued, pointing to the right. ‘Don’t touch anything; just tell me what you can see. And watch out for enemies. You too, Procyon.’
‘I will,’ promised Procyon, Sirius sending a wordless acknowledgement. Then they both padded off to their respective areas. Dominic hesitated for a long moment as he tried to summon the courage to actually go into the cold water.
‘I can’t believe you didn’t make the two canines go into the water instead of us,’ Leo grumbled in his mind. ‘This is going to be terrible.’
‘Welcome back.’ greeted Dominic with fake cheerfulness, which brought him another grumble as answer. Dominic then dropped the act. ‘I know it’s going to suck,’ he sighed. ‘But it’s better that we see things first hand instead of just getting it as a description from the amesheks.’
Leo clearly didn’t agree, if his continued grumbling was anything to go by. Dominic tuned him out – it wasn’t helping his resolve to go in the water.
His first step was almost enough to make him back out of the whole thing – it was only knowing how smug Leo would be at him coming around to the lion’s point of view which kept him going.
That one step led to two, and then to three, and finally four. Shivering already as he strode further into the water, Dominic could only be vaguely grateful for the slope that led down into the first set of ‘compartments’. He guessed that the dungeon might have realised that not all explorers would be able to pull themselves out of the water on their exit.
As a human, Dominic had enjoyed swimming to a certain extent, but it hadn’t been something he’d chosen to do if he had other options. He hadn’t ever been part of a swimming team and none of his friends had been rich enough to have a pool. Once he’d learned the mechanics of it well enough, swimming had therefore been something he’d only done on holiday at the beach or the occasional water theme park.
Of course, even if he’d been an expert swimmer who’d been training for the Olympics before the System arrived, he’d still have an issue trying to swim with a leonine body…and wings.
Eventually managing to get himself fully enveloped by water, Dominic felt an increasing sense of weightlessness as the buoyancy of the water supported his body a bit. Struck by an idea, he activated Airborne, curious as to whether it would work in water. First increasing his weight by 5% and then reducing it by 5%, Dominic felt himself being pulled downwards and then bobbing back upwards. Apparently it worked. Good to know.
Paddling forwards, Dominic tried to work out how to swim in his leonine body. Leo continued grumbling in the back of his mind until Dominic had had enough and told him to shut up unless he could come up with something useful to say.
‘Which isn’t that the amesheks should do it,’ he warned, preempting exactly what Leo was about to respond with, if the way the lion shut up afterwards was any indication.
It turned out that a sort of doggy paddle was the best way of moving as a lion – not unexpected considering that his morphology didn’t really make front crawl viable. Gaining more confidence, Dominic tried holding his breath and dipping under water completely.
‘No, don’t do that!’ Leo exclaimed from the back of his mind, a note of panic in his voice.
‘Leo, are you afraid we’re going to drown?’ Dominic asked with exasperation but also a touch of sympathy.
‘No!’ Leo denied, but the feelings drifting from his side of their mind indicated that that was indeed what he was worried about.
‘Listen,’ Dominic said with a sigh. ‘I don’t want to drown as much as you don’t, but we need to find a way to open that door or we’re in a different sort of trouble. We’ll be fine,’ he promised, though was aware that he had no way of guaranteeing it.
Nevertheless, he felt his leonine companion leap on the reassurance like a cub cuddling up to his mother. Maybe he’d been a bit tough on Leo – Dominic, at least, had spent some fun time in the water. Leo, as far as Dominic knew, had never done more than splash around in the shallows. And considering the sorts of creatures which lurked in the average savannah waterhole, even that had been risky.
Even as he thought that, a brief memory passed from Leo to Dominic. It wasn’t detailed, but he had the impression of water everywhere – in his ears, in his eyes, in his nose, in his mouth, panic taking over until he was lifted from the water by a massive mouth descending on him. The memory vanished at that moment, like it was a holiday picture which had been yanked away.
‘Leo…was that you?’ Dominic asked tentatively.
‘No!’ the lion responded quickly and fiercely enough to know both that he had just told a bald-faced lie, and that he had no desire to discuss this any further.
Feeling more sympathy for the reticence of his companion, Dominic continued practising – the sooner he got the job done, the sooner they could get out. Increasing and decreasing his weight helped him control where he was in the water, and his wings turned out to actually be slightly more useful than they were awkward – by flapping them in a certain way, he actually pushed himself forwards faster than he would otherwise have achieved.
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‘I have reached the object sticking out of the wall,’ Sirius’ voice abruptly told him.
‘The lever?’ asked Dominic quickly. ‘Can you see whatever is engraved above it?’
As he asked, he looked down into the depths of his own area. His vision slightly blurred by the water, Dominic was still able to see the metallic object sticking out of the wall.
‘It is a set of lines carved into the wall. It doesn’t appear to be a button.’
‘OK. Don’t touch it for now,’ Dominic instructed. ‘I’m going down to look at my own.’
Reducing his weight, Dominic bobbed to the top of the water, took a deep breath, and then increased his weight to its maximum. He started slowly sinking, but with a little flick of his wings and an awkward paddling with his paws, he managed to increase the speed of his movement.
Bit by bit, he became more confident in his underwater movements. Holding his breath was fine for the time being – perhaps his body was used to taking in large lungfuls of air when he Roared.
His ears became uncomfortable as the pressure started impacting them more the deeper he went. Chewing gum would come in really handy right now, he thought to himself. He also felt cut off in a way he wasn’t expecting as two of his senses became useless, and a third was made blurry. With his continued fear that something was about to leap out at him, he found the lack of senses to be particularly perturbing.
But despite his paranoia, nothing disturbed him as he made his way down to the lever. Above it, he saw a drawing which looked identical to the first symbol he had seen on the door – the flame.
His lungs starting to demand oxygen, though not urgently yet, Dominic pushed himself to the surface, aided by the reduced weight through Airborne.
Taking in a deep breath, he swam-paddled-flew over to the ford-like bridge which separated his section from the one Sirius had been exploring. The ameshek in question was standing on the slope that led back to the door, but, seeing Dominic, he moved over to reflect the lion’s position on the other side of the bridge.
‘Does the engraving above your lever look anything like the engravings on the door?’ Dominic asked urgently. The ameshek looked puzzled for a moment, and then realisation dawned and he turned to look at the door. From their angle, they could just about see the engravings. His expression then turned to thoughtful before he sent negation into the Pride chat.
‘No. It is quite different.’
‘I see,’ murmured Dominic in response. So that now raised the question: should Dominic pull the lever because it was one of those engraved on the door? Or should he not for the same reason? He decided he needed a look both at Sirius’ lever, and at the door again.
Moving over to Sirius’ side required him to almost completely leave the water to cross the bridge – something that was easier than it sounded. Water-logged, it felt like he weighed twice what he did normally – or even more. He stayed as low in the water as he could to use its buoyancy, particularly for his wings which he intentionally let sag. While he could just about lift them even when they were so saturated, it made his muscles strain so he decided not to bother.
The soggy shagginess of his mane was the heaviest part of him otherwise. At least Airborne helped a bit too, as did shaking his head violently to flick off some of the water – now he understood perfectly why dogs and cats insisted on doing that the moment they came out of water.
This is annoying, Dominic admitted quietly to himself. Not quietly enough, apparently.
‘I hate to say that I told you so…but I told you so,’ Leo’s voice interjected irritatingly. Dominic gritted his teeth and ignored his companion. It was a relief when he got into deeper water again and could feel the weight being taken off his shoulders.
Quickly swimming down to the lever in the same way that he had earlier, he examined the engraving. Sure enough, it didn’t look like the flame, drop of water, or wave that he’d seen on the door. Instead, it looked like…he didn’t know. Stones?
Those stones that I thought might drop on my head earlier…could this trigger them? he wondered. It seemed more than possible – likely, even. Dominic pushed himself back to the surface as his lungs started complaining again.
He quickly explained the situation to the amesheks.
‘So,’ he finished, ‘the question is which lever to pull. Or even whether to pull one at all. And if pulling a lever, whether it should be one of these. Or both. Or more. And if it’s multiple, then what order. Actually, that’s several questions,’ he finished wryly. ‘Personally, I think that either the dungeon is being relatively straightforward, and we need to pull the levers which have the same symbols as the door, probably in that order, or the levers are completely misleading and there’s another solution.’
‘I have examined the door and the area around it,’ rumbled Procyon, ‘and I cannot sense any other way of opening it.’
‘Neither could I,’ Dominic admitted. ‘But this dungeon has proven to be tricky in the past – it’s not impossible that there’s something we’re missing.’
‘Perhaps it would be a good idea to try the lever which has the corresponding engraving to the door,’ suggested Sirius. ‘See if there is any indication that it is the correct choice.’
Dominic hesitated for a moment. Logic warred with caution: Occam’s razor suggested that the simplest explanation of the two was most likely to be the case; caution warned that the dungeon hadn’t always chosen the simplest option.
‘But haven’t the dungeon solutions always been simple?’ questioned Leo pointedly. ‘They haven’t been obvious, but once we knew the trick, they were simple.’ Dominic hated to admit it, but he was right when the former-human thought about it. ‘Doing nothing is worse than trying something,’ the lion continued. ‘We need to get through the door and find our female again before anything happens – I don’t trust the males. Doing nothing won’t get us that. And we’re already wet so what does it matter now?’
‘As long as it doesn’t bring the ceiling crashing down on our heads,’ sighed Dominic, ignoring the lion’s last comment. Still, he agreed with Leo. Again. Was that a record?
‘Alright, for lack of any better ideas, I suppose we’d better try it,’ he said in the Pride chat. Surely the dungeon wouldn’t just kill them for choosing one bad option; even if this wasn’t the correct solution, they should have the time to find a better one.
A laborious return to his own section later, Dominic dived down and paused in front of the lever. After a brief moment of hesitation, he triggered it and then rose to the surface to see what had changed – if anything.