They stood staring at the bodies of the crocodiles being pushed towards them – the waves were once more moving towards the door. Numb shock that they’d actually survived all that along with the draining of adrenaline from their system sent their minds almost into a waking dream. The last couple of hours had just been one thing after another and they all needed a proper rest.
But, as the sound of grinding rumbled out anew reminded them, this was no place to sleep. Dominic felt a shiver of alarm go through him as he realised that the door was no longer opening. Instead, having fully opened, it was beginning to close once more.
‘Come on, quickly – grab a body and pull it through,’ he instructed the amesheks tiredly. Dominic himself grabbed the tails of two crocodiles and pulled at them while walking backwards.
The massive reptiles were hard to pull through the water, harder to pull on the land, and bloody hard to pull over the edge of the now rising door. But with dogged determination, they all succeeded in returning to the next room before the door got too high to manage.
His burdens falling to the floor with a messy and heavy-sounding splat, Dominic suddenly realised that he could have put at least one of the bodies in his storage space, maybe even two. He blamed his tiredness for not thinking of it earlier and quickly looked around the room they were now in, not wanting to accidentally miss something else important.
‘Leo, help me,’ he demanded of his companion. ‘If this isn’t the right route, we need to know before the door closes too far to get out again.’ At least the other room had had access to the staircase, even if at the moment the route through to Sekhmet and the others was still blocked.
Or was it? Perhaps something they’d done had opened it and this was just another red herring? The dungeon had proven to be unpleasantly prone to using those, both during their last visit and this time. Just because this was the door at the end of the room didn’t automatically mean it was the right door.
‘No, this is the right way,’ Leo answered sounding surprisingly calm.
‘How do you know that?’ demanded Dominic with growing doubt about his choice tearing away at his insides as he looked around the room frantically, seeing nothing but an empty room. Had he doomed them by automatically going for the obvious choice?
‘Dominic, turn around,’ Leo told him, again uncharacteristically patient.
Growling both mentally and aloud, Dominic twisted around.
‘Oh. I should have noticed that.’
‘I’d say that’s a pretty good indication we were meant to come here,’ Leo told him with a hint of humour. Dominic chuckled mentally, though rather weakly. The relief from his building panic made him suddenly feel his exhaustion even more.
‘Yeah, probably,’ he agreed.
It wasn’t as blatant as a ‘This way’ sign or something like that, but a chest was slowly rising into the room, the grinding of the stone slab it was sitting on masked by the grinding of the stone door. Once the stone slab reached the level of the others around, there was a loud click and it stopped moving. Its presence was probably a safe clue that they were supposed to come in here.
‘Alright,’ he said in the Pride chat, glad that he hadn’t accidentally alarmed the amesheks with his undignified moment of panic. ‘Let’s make sure we’re safe here first. The chest should be an indication of that, but let’s not make any assumptions here which might come to bite us in the arses. Probably literally.’
The amesheks agreed, but evidently decided to get themselves a bit dry first as they both started to hum. It was a good idea; Dominic joined in by Roaring quietly to himself even as he shook his fur and wings firmly.
When the humming stopped, Dominic looked at his pride members and would have broken out laughing if his body was capable of it. Instead, he let out a series of short huffs.
Now not looking like drowned rats, the amesheks looked more like they’d stuck their paws into an electric circuit: all their fur was standing on end. Sirius was worse off than Procyon – apparently whatever melding of the individual strands of fur had affected him meant it didn’t move as easily as the other’s fur.
Then, with a sudden bout of fear, he felt his own mane.
‘Damn!’ he cursed. ‘I must look like a pom-pom!’ His own mane was indeed standing on end just like the amesheks’. Shaking his head didn’t appear to do much so Dominic decided to ignore it – there were more important concerns than what his hair looked like.
Not that Leo agreed.
‘Wash our mane with a paw – that should make it lie down flat.’
‘A little busy here, Leo,’ Dominic sighed as he walked around the room looking for traps or places creatures might hide or enter and an exit for the three of them.
‘Not too busy to fix our mane! At least none of the females are here – I’d die in shame,’ the lion moaned, rather melodramatically in Dominic’s opinion.
‘Well, if something catches us with our guards down, we might really die,’ Dominic answered sardonically.
After a fairly detailed inspection, they concluded that the room didn’t seem to have any obvious traps and his mane had started to lose a little of its static. Instead, with the door to the water room now closed, it was quite a small and plain box of a space.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
The width of the door from the space with the crocodiles was most of the width of the whole room and it was about twice as long as that which made it a bit over twice Dominic’s full length. The ceiling was quite high, though, which meant it felt less confined than it might have. With two amesheks, an extra-large lion, four large crocodile carcasses, and a chest, however, it did feel a bit close.
The walls were almost entirely bare. Only two of the walls showed any adornment at all, and it wasn’t really pretty. The wall at right angles to the way they had got in and to the left had a round indentation, reminiscent of the holes they had needed to fill with golden discs on the surface level in order to gain access to the underground. The wall opposite their entrance had a large arch carved into it. A door? Dominic wondered.
It looked like it might be a door, except for the fact that the carving was very clearly only shallow. Otherwise, there were no indications of how they might get out of this space. No buttons, no levers, no riddles.
Maybe the chest will hold something useful, Dominic told himself firmly, trying to quell the rekindled panic in his chest. While he wasn’t claustrophobic so to speak, he definitely didn’t like the idea of being trapped in this small room for any length of time.
Ignoring the crocodile carcasses for the moment, he moved over to the chest. Forcing himself to take the same cautious approach as with the previous chests made him feel that it took an eternity before he had the thing open. But he was finally able to see what was inside. At first glance, it was disappointing, at least in terms of something which might be immediately useful.
As with the other chests, there were six items in total. Dominic pulled the items out one by one, hoping that first appearances were deceptive. Again the first three were all potions, and identical to each other.
[General Antivenom Draught (Moderate, T2)]
[This draught clears the drinker’s body of any single venom type up to T2 strength (in the case of multiple venoms present in the drinkers body, the draught will clear the most debilitating). As a moderate quality antivenom draught, there is also a 10% chance that the drinker will be rendered immune to that particular venom for a period of time (duration depends on multiple factors). Single use.]
Dominic looked at the oddly glowing and almost neon yellow potions, or ‘draughts’, a pit of trepidation forming in his stomach.
‘Last time we received rather specific potions in the form of water-breathing potions, we ended up having a water challenge. Do you think that this is a clue about what we’re going to face next?’ Dominic wondered at Leo.
‘Probably,’ answered the lion, not sounding too concerned, ‘But not necessarily too specific. We encountered plenty of snakes before, didn’t we? Perhaps that’s what the reward is for.’
‘Except that this is for any ‘single venom type up to T2 strength’. It seems like a bit of a waste to use it on a bite from one of those little snakes – after all, if we hadn’t had some way of surviving them, we’d have never made it through the jungle.’
Leo sent a feeling of nonchalance.
‘Then perhaps we will encounter a very big, very high level snake as the dungeon guardian. Or perhaps they are just in case like the health potions we received.’
‘Perhaps…’ Dominic agreed thoughtfully. He suspected that it would be more likely the former than the latter.
The next item he pulled out was familiar – almost the twin of Sekhmet’s bracelet. There was only a small change in the description.
[Leather slot-storage bracelet (non-standard, Beast, T1)]
[This is a Common leather bracelet which has been worked to give it the capacity to be worn by a Beast. In exchange for this, the bracelet only has 9 storage spaces instead of 12. Each storage space can hold a single item type. Identical item types can be stacked up to 10. Bracelet allows for quick consumption of potions.]
Instead of holding six slots, this one held nine which made it better than Sekhmet’s. Dominic was very tempted to hold onto it for her, but then decided that it would be unfair. The two amesheks had fought as hard as he did to get to this point; they deserved to be rewarded.
‘We decide the rewards,’ Leo scoffed. ‘Give the female the better bracelet if you prefer and toss the scraps to the canines.’
Dominic growled at his companion.
‘You’re just saying that to wind me up,’ he accused.
‘I’m not!’ Leo argued, but the way he subsided shortly after made Dominic think that he’d indeed hit the nail on the head. Still, he held onto the bracelet until he’d checked the final items in the box. The last two were a chunk of metal and an orb.
[Ability orb: Temperature Tolerance (T2)]
Intrigued, Dominic looked at the description.
[Temperature Tolerance (T2): Increase your ability to tolerate different temperatures and resist negative temperature related effects.]
As descriptions went, it was pretty short, but since most of the information was actually in the title, Dominic supposed that it was understandable. He wasn’t sure why it was classed as Tier 2 but maybe it was because it didn’t just affect temperatures but also ‘temperature related effects’, whatever those were. They rather sounded like one and the same to him.
Oh well, it sounds pretty good, regardless. Without any further ado, he absorbed the orb and tucked the metal – dragocite again – and one of the potions into his storage space.
‘OK, it looks like there’s a choice to be made here. There’s one bracelet which will let you store stuff like Sekhmet, but only one of you can have it. And there are enough potions for one each. So, who’s going to take the bracelet?’
The two amesheks exchanged glances.
‘I want it,’ Sirius said.
‘So do I,’ Procyon rumbled.
Dominic sighed. Of course. He waited for a moment but, although the two amesheks exchanged glances, neither was apparently willing to yield to the other. It seemed like that was up to Dominic. Rock, paper, scissors was out. So was hiding something behind his back.
‘I’m thinking of a number between one and ten. Each of you say a number and the closest wins the bracelet.’
‘What are numbers?’ asked Procyon sounding confused.
Dominic sighed again.
‘Alright, fine. Close your eyes. I’m going to put the bracelet somewhere in the room. The first to find it, wins.’
After checking that the amesheks had done just that, Dominic did a circuit around the room, dropping the bracelet en route. Returning to the centre, he told the amesheks to open their eyes.
They went hunting for it immediately. Procyon quickly arrowed in on the bracelet’s hiding place, tucked behind a crocodile body.
‘Congratulations, Procyon. Now, you guys rest while I get the Cores out of the crocodiles. You can even put a couple of the carcasses in your bracelet for later. After that, we’ll try to figure a way out of here.’ Unfortunately, it seemed like the chest didn’t hold any useful clues to whatever puzzle it was.
Pushing himself to his feet, Dominic’s gaze was caught by colours suddenly flashing on the wall below the round indentation.