As Dominic breached the surface, the sound of grinding and crashing which he’d started hearing in the last few seconds got louder. Blinking furiously to get rid of the water clogging his eyes, he shook his head to dry his mane slightly and clear the wet hairs from his face. He was eventually able to see what was going on, although too late to do anything about it.
Bits of the ceiling had broken free to fall to the ground below – the impacts were what he had heard even through the water in his ears. Fortunately, Procyon was fine. He’d intelligently realised what was going on and leapt into the water next to Sirius – out of the danger zone.
The impacts continued for a little longer and then stopped. The three waited in silence, looking for any indication that something else was about to happen. It seemed, however, that the dungeon was done with its current trap.
Using Airborne to help him, Dominic pulled himself out being submerged in the water and onto the ford. There, he shook himself as much as he could. When he’d shaken as much of the water out of his fur as possible, he decided to try something that he’d been wondering about.
Using the aspect of Vibrating Body which he had kept when his Abilities had been combined, Dominic hummed deeply in his chest. He felt the vibrations start there and then spread out through his body. From the depths of his chest, they extended all the way to the tips of his fur and feathers, flicking off the water far more effectively than he’d managed by just shaking himself.
By the time he ran out of breath, he wasn’t exactly dry, but he felt a lot lighter than he had when he’d got out of the water.
‘That is a good idea,’ Procyon commented thoughtfully in their Pride chat while getting out and copying Dominic. ‘I had not thought of using my vibrations for drying myself off.’ Sirius didn’t say anything but as he got out he did exactly the same.
All relatively dry, they went to investigate the area near the gate in case the impacts from the rocks had revealed anything new – enemy or clue.
As it turned out, their search was fruitless. The rocks were just rocks as far as they could tell. The only difference, apart from the new chunks of rubble littering the floor, was to the door itself. The crystal orb embedded within the symbol of a flame had lit up with a bright red glow. The other two – the drop of water and the wave – were still dull.
‘Well, it looks like matching the symbols is the way to go, then,’ Dominic concluded.
‘As long as the dungeon has not left further traps,’ added Leo grimly. ‘Do you think that this rock fall was caused by the trigger? And that it will happen every time we pull a trigger?’
‘It’s possible,’ agreed Dominic slowly. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. If any of us stay on land, we’ll need to be careful and watch out for it.’ He continued speaking to Leo but also sent his messages in the Pride chat so that the amesheks could hear him as well. ‘We need to look for the next symbol – the drop of water. I don’t know if the order matters, so for the sake of not having to repeat this whole thing, let’s just assume that it does. It seems possible, likely even, that the next lever will also cause a rockfall, so watch out for that. Perhaps, Procyon, you should stand on the ford rather than the dry land.’
‘That seems sensible,’ Procyon agrees, ‘Though, perhaps we should take it in turns to dive. That will allow each of us to recoup our stamina and breath.’
‘Good idea,’ Dominic agreed – though the water wasn’t actually as bad as he’d thought it was at first, he’d still rather minimise his time in it. ‘Sirius, do you want to have a break?’ Even though he could feel Leo’s disagreement with him offering the break to the other ameshek, Dominic felt that it was his job as a leader to do so.
‘It is not bad,’ Sirius replied. ‘I will take the next break.’
‘Fine,’ Dominic agreed, not passing up the opportunity of staying mostly dry for a bit longer since Sirius was offering it. Maybe it was just as well for him to stay up above this time: there had been a warning about a dangerous foe in the waters which they hadn’t encountered yet. He had a feeling that that luck wouldn’t last for too long, not when the poem had specifically warned about it.
They headed back to the water, walking along the ford to the second set of underwater chambers. From what Dominic remembered seeing when he had glided overhead, there were eight chambers in total, four on either side of the submerged ford. With what seemed like two more levers to find, it meant that there was no guarantee whether the next pair of chambers would indeed contain what they sought.
‘Just quickly go and check the symbols and then come back,’ Dominic instructed. The two amesheks acknowledged his instruction and then dove down into the water. The lion was left up on the surface, doing his best to watch each of his pride members like a hawk.
His attention was rewarded when he saw a dark shape darting towards Sirius.
‘Sirius! Watch out!’ he warned urgently. The ameshek did his best to shift out of the way, but his movements were ungainly and awkward compared to the shape darting towards him.
Dominic saw the ameshek jerk in the water as the creature hit him. A moment later, a dark cloud billowed into the water around Sirius.
‘Looks like the canine isn’t good at fighting in water,’ Leo remarked with idle curiosity. Dominic growled at him mentally.
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‘Procyon, Sirius has been attacked, I need to help him. Be careful,’ Dominic warned urgently before he dived straight into the water. Taking a deep breath just before he went in, he activated Airborne, maximising his weight. He tried activating Momentous Charge, but felt that it failed the moment his feet were off the ground for too long. It made sense, but was still annoying.
Swimming as quickly as he could towards the action, it felt like he was struggling through jelly. Flicking his wings, he managed to propel himself forwards, but it felt far too slow. The creature had grabbed Sirius and was turning over and over with him in its jaws.
Now close enough to identify the creature properly, Dominic felt his stomach sink. It was a crocodile or alligator. Given that most of the creatures in this dungeon had been either African or completely extra-terrestrial, Dominic was going to go with a crocodile. But correct species identification paled in importance compared to the fact that it was an armoured predator which even lions wouldn’t mess with unless it was already more than half-dead and out of the water
Here, in its element and clearly strengthened by the dungeon, a crocodile was the last thing Dominic wanted to tangle with. A dangerous foe indeed.
Dominic flicked his wings as hard as he could and activated Quick Strike, adding more speed to his attack. Reaching the twisting and turning body of the crocodile, Dominic reached out with his claws and teeth to grab onto it.
Surprising him a little, his teeth sank straight into the crocodile. He was expecting its armoured skin to hold up better than it actually did. Then again, from what he could see of the red bar, his attack didn’t do much damage in and of itself. The crocodile did more of that to itself when it continued twisting, taking no notice of the lion’s attack. Between the force required to move Dominic’s bulky body with its momentum and its own flesh, its flesh gave way first.
Dominic was left floating next to the crocodile, pushed away from the two by the currents the crocodile was generating, with a mouthful of flesh which he quickly Consumed.
Attacking again, he bit hard with his teeth as well as his claws. This time, he managed to get more of a grip. Immediately, he started pumping in venom and acid. He could feel vibration in his teeth – Sirius’ attempt at an attack. Fortunately, it wasn’t the same as the first time he’d bitten into an ameshek. There wasn’t the same…intentional edge. It was still a bit uncomfortable, but he wasn’t worried that his teeth were going to rattle out of his skull again or his claws break away from his paws. He didn’t know how Immunity managed to differentiate that kind of thing, but apparently it did.
His lungs started burning: he was pouring stamina into Crushing Bite and into just staying attached. Hearteningly, this time he was having an effect. The crocodile, now forced to whip the lion’s bulky body as well as its own, was losing momentum. Its health bar was decreasing slowly, but faster all the time as Dominic’s venom started suffusing it and the green droplet appeared.
But would Dominic’s lungs hold out? From the increasing pain, he feared they wouldn’t. But he feared even more for what would happen if he left Sirius in the crocodile’s jaws for the time it would take to go up and get a breath.
He resolved to do what he could to help for now, but to kick off if he noticed any symptoms of asphyxiation beyond just his lungs screaming at him. There was no point in them both dying.
The crocodile’s health bar was draining faster and faster. The second quarter took half the time to empty that the first quarter had and the third quarter took even less time than that.
But Sirius’ health wasn’t much better. The crocodile had grabbed him by his back right hindquarter and he was showing signs of increasing damage in that region. With the death roll of the crocodile, he hadn’t been able to do anything more to defend himself than activate his Vibrating Body.
But none of those explained how quickly his health bar was beginning to empty. The crocodile couldn’t be venomous, could it? They weren’t normally, nor were alligators, but then lions weren’t normally either. This was the System; who knew what could happen?
There was a small symbol above his floating health bar, but Dominic couldn’t make sense of it. It kind of looked like a sideways mushroom with curvy horizontal lines ending in a sort of puffy cloud.
‘Our health is decreasing as well,’ warned Leo. Dominic abruptly paid attention to the bar in the corner of his vision. Sure enough, it was starting to decrease with increasing speed – and had the same symbol above it that Sirius’ did. Abruptly, he realised that his lungs, while screaming at him, hadn’t got any worse. Nor was he starting to get the narrow vision of oxygen-deprivation.
Was that the meaning of the sign? Lack of breath? Could it be that under the System, drowning only worked when the being’s health points bottomed out?
If so, Dominic had an idea.
The crocodile had almost stopped: its exhaustion and increasingly poor health left it without the strength to move both its prey and attacker at the same time. Taking advantage of them not being flung around in circles, Dominic risked taking one paw away from the crocodile to materialise one of the carcasses he’d stored in his storage space and send it at Sirius.
‘Consume the carcass,’ Dominic urged him. The ameshek was more groggy than Dominic liked to see – apparently being the focus of the death roll wasn’t as fun as being the hanger-on – but he managed to touch a paw to the warthog carcass as it drifted by. The ameshek’s health bar got a sudden boost which Dominic was glad to see, annoyingly the crocodile also got a bit of health back from the small amount of golden dust that it was able to absorb. Oddly enough, the dust acted in exactly the same way as in the air outside, as if the water didn’t exist at all for it.
Seeing the success of his idea, Dominic quickly did the same for himself: his Regeneration wasn’t keeping pace with his current expenditure, which showed just how much health he was losing. The health boost from the carcass was very much needed. He materialised another one and sent it to Sirius, then grabbed another for himself.
The boosts from the carcasses gave them just enough time to outlast the crocodile. When it got down to 10%, it let go of Sirius – leaving several gleaming teeth in the ameshek’s hindquarter – and tried to escape. With Dominic still latched onto its body, his teeth no longer powered by Crushing Bite but still full of venom, it failed to get far. Its strength was spent, and when Sirius managed to ponderously turn around and set his own teeth into its pale throat, its health bar dropped even more quickly.
[You have killed Nile Crocodile (Evolved Beast level 11)]
[You have earned 16 PP]
‘Come on – let’s get to the surface before our own health bars empty,’ Dominic said to his pride-mate, looking forward to finally taking a proper breath.
‘Please,’ Sirius agreed fervently.
Rearranging his grip on the carcass so that he could pull it up with him, Dominic reversed his Airborne effect and flapped his wings while paddling with his feet. The surface felt impossibly far away above his head, his lungs renewing their protests at the prospect of being able to take a breath soon. But determination saw him achieve what had felt impossible and his head broke free of the water’s surface.
The first few breaths through his nostrils smelt as sweet as honey, his aching lungs finally ceasing their protest. A few moments later he heard Sirius breaking the surface behind him and sucking in his own desperate breaths. The sign faded from both of their health bars, indicating that Dominic’s conclusions had been correct.
On the surface, Dominic was reminded that the world was not only limited to Sirius, the crocodile, and himself. His eyes flew to the opposite chamber, seeing only ripples from their own movements on the surface.