Chimera Rising: Beast King Ascension [How a human-turned-lion went from Zero to Absolute Ruler]

Walking away from the two young males and towards the chest, Dominic noticed Sekhmet giving him a narrow-eyed look. 

‘What?’ he asked her. She didn’t respond verbally, instead huffing softly and coming over to butt her head against his with an unusual amount of violence. Dominic got the message. She didn’t like that she hadn’t been part of the conversation going on before her eyes, but wasn’t going to ask. 

The amesheks didn’t appear to care so Dominic continued over to the chest after the violent head-rub. 

Once more going through the process of checking whether the loot box was trapped, Dominic was soon reasonably sure that it was safe. Or at least, that he was unable to detect any traps, which wasn’t necessarily the same thing.  

Opening its lid, Dominic once more jumped back just in case there was something waiting inside to attack him. Cautiously approaching it again, he saw six objects in this chest too: three vials, one round piece of golden metal, much like the ones they’d inserted into the relief to gain access to this room in the first place, and two other items. 

But why would it be awarding me a gold piece now? We’ve completed the puzzle, Dominic wondered, confused. 

Pulling it out and requesting more information didn’t enlighten him much. 

[Dungeon object. Function ?]

Very helpful, he groused to himself. 

‘Perhaps it’s needed to proceed further in the dungeon?’ suggested Leo, his presence still feeling a little aggrieved from the earlier clash with the young lions, but calmer than before.

‘Good point,’ admitted Dominic. Certainly, there was no evidence of another exit from this room, leaving him rather lost as to where they were supposed to go next. It would make sense that the dungeon would require explorers to overcome this puzzle if they wished to continue further. 

Pointedly not looking at or directing his message to Fang particularly, Dominic gave the party a quick explanation of the object and their theory. 

‘Does anyone have any issue with me keeping this for now in my storage space until we find a use for it?’ he asked. A moment later, he felt a little ashamed – he’d told Fang off for his passive-aggressiveness, and here he was doing the same thing. Then again, maybe it would be a good idea to announce what each of the bits of loot was: that way, if someone did have a suggestion or request, they’d be able to make it. 

When no one objected, Dominic tucked the golden disc away and then pulled out one of the vials. All three looked identical in colour and size, so while he would check them, just in case, he suspected strongly that they would all be the same. 

[Minor Water-breathing Potion (minor, T1)]

[This potion allows an air-dependent being to extract oxygen from water for up to 5 minutes. Note: the being can exit water and breathe normally, however this will not lengthen the effect of the potion. Warning: the effectiveness of this potion depends on the quantity of oxygen present in the water in which the user is submerged. This potion does not leave any toxicity in the user’s body. Single use.]

Checking the others, Dominic verified that, indeed, they were identical. He passed the information on to the others in the party and then contemplated the potions thoughtfully. 

‘Is it just me or do these seem to be a rather odd reward for a dungeon set in the savannah, surrounded by jungle?’ he asked Leo. 

‘Who knows what drives the mind of the dungeon master?’ the lion dismissed scathingly. ‘The other two objects don’t look exactly useful for us, either.’ 

Sure enough, when Dominic pulled them out and checked them, he found that one was a lump of the same metal – dragoncite – which had been awarded in the previous chest too, and the other was a roll of fabric, probably also useful for craftsmen. It was a hide of a creature Dominic didn’t recognise the name of – the information offered by the System didn’t tell him any more than that. 

He did make a point of explaining them in the chat, just so no one would feel like he was keeping useful objects to himself when he tucked them away in his storage space – waste not, want not. They might come in useful later for all he knew. 

In the end, he took two of the water-breathing vials for his storage space, and gave the other one to Sekhmet, just in case. The fact that they were such an odd choice for reward definitely made him suspicious. Couldn’t the dungeon have just given them more health potions if it wanted to give potions as a reward? Unless it wanted to give something which looked good, but was functionally useless, like giving a party of beasts a belt and scabbard which they couldn’t wear. 

Actually, maybe I’m just being paranoid, decided Dominic. Maybe it was just like the dungeon to do that.

The chest empty, they spent a little time looking around the room for another exit, testing the stones and tapping the buttons just in case they had missed something. 

‘There’s nothing here,’ Dominic concluded finally, speaking in the Pride chat. ‘Let’s go outside – maybe we missed something there.’ 

Hope, as they started the search, quickly turned into disappointment as they found no sign of anything having changed outside either. Dominic had even led half the group back into the first room they’d visited, while the other half of the group explored the jungle around the building, looking for any sort of exit. 

Dispirited, they ended up slumping outside the temple, lying on the ground under the moon. 

‘What now?’ asked Sekhmet, putting voice to the thought that they probably all had. 

‘I don’t know,’ admitted Dominic. ‘Does anyone have any ideas?’ 

No one answered. Dominic wasn’t really expecting them to – they’d already exhausted every suggestion that the Pride members made. 

There was still the potential route that Dominic had found by crawling up the tree, but that couldn’t be it – for anyone who couldn’t fly, entering that way looked like it would require a rope, and there hadn’t been any sort of rope in any of the loot. Offering an impossible route wasn’t what dungeons did. He was pretty sure he could thank the download of information about dungeons that he’d gained the last time he was here for that certainty. 

So there had to be a different way through – they just hadn’t worked it out yet. 

The most frustrating thing was that he still hadn’t found a place in which to insert the golden disc they’d just earned. The relief which covered the two doors was complete with no holes remaining and there were no other holes anywhere else in the temple walls.

Dominic decided to sit and stare at the relief again – maybe he’d manage to spot a hole for the golden disc if he looked again, though since this had to be the tenth time, he wasn’t holding out much hope. 

‘Why don’t we just go down that other entrance,’ suggested Leo as Dominic sat down in front of the engraving. 

‘We’ve gone over that,’ Dominic told him wearily. 

‘Even if we alone manage to get through, it’s better than just sitting out here, stuck.’

‘And what if whatever awaits us is something that only a party could solve? We’d have died in that puzzle room if we’d been alone, or do you think we could have managed to light all the fires in time?’ Arguably, he could have used objects from his storage space to depress the buttons in order to keep the fires burning, but the time wasted and the necessity to have all the buttons pushed as he hurried to light the braziers would probably have meant he would have been crushed despite his speed. 

Leo subsided again. Dominic continued searching the relief for a hole that he’d somehow missed the previous times he’d done this.

‘Listen,’ Leo started, sounding almost reluctant to speak. ‘You did…well there.’

‘What?’ asked Dominic, startled. 

‘With the puzzle. I’m not repeating myself.’ 

If Dominic had been in human form, a smile would have crept across his face. Warmth still filled him even though his leonine visage couldn’t express it visibly. 

‘Why, Leo, are you complimenting me?’

‘Don’t sound so insufferable about it,’ Leo grumbled, doing the mental equivalent of showing his teeth and claws in threat. Dominic decided to leave it. This was perhaps the first time Leo had actually outright complimented him without a hint of insult – he wanted to bask in it a bit. 

His eyes continued skipping over the decorative engravings as he let the warmth fill him. Not that he needed Leo’s approval, exactly, but considering how closely they were linked, it was far better if they had a mutually respectful and amicable relationship. A compliment was a good sign of Leo’s increasing respect for him. Though Dominic hadn’t thought it would come over a puzzle of all things. 

Puzzle. 

The last time Dominic had done this dungeon, he had explored two rooms that he had thought would be the way through to the rest of the dungeon, but instead had turned out to be traps and dead ends. The proper way through had turned out to be the mozaïc which had been right in front of his nose the moment he had walked in the door. 

What if this was something similar?

What if the golden disc was actually a red herring, and that the way through was something right in front of their noses? 

The relief wasn’t the same as the mosaïc, that was for sure. There was nothing to shift, no indication that things were supposed to move. But maybe it was just a different kind of puzzle. 

Maybe opening the doors was only the first part of it, and there was a second part. 

Of course, he could be barking up entirely the wrong tree here, but it was worth exploring – they didn’t have any other ideas anyway. 

So, what was on the relief? The biggest figure was the ruler on his throne, holding a sceptre, the head of which held one of the golden discs. Right in front of him was a servant with two plates, one with two objects, the other plate with two objects. One of the objects on the first plate had been replaced by a golden disc. Next to that one appeared to be a juggler throwing what looked like four torches, one of which was replaced by a disc. To his left was another juggler, only this one appeared to be throwing five different balls, one of which was, again, replaced by a disc. Of the two figures that remained, one was holding an object in each clawed hand, one of them being a disc. The last was carrying a single large plate piled high with round fruit-like objects, including a disc, of course. 

Dominic’s eyes narrowed. There was something there, he was sure of it. 

‘The numbers,’ commented Leo with interest. 

‘What?’ 

‘They’re all different numbers,’ explained Leo. 

Suddenly, Dominic knew what he meant. One sceptre. Three objects on plates. Four torches. Five balls. Two objects in clawed paws. And when he counted the fruit on the final platter, there were six. 

‘It’s the order,’ Dominic realised, the idea coming to him like a lightning bolt. 

‘What?’ It was Leo’s turn to be confused. 

‘When we put the discs in, we just did it in any old order. But what if you actually have to insert them in a certain order to open up the next door?’ asked Dominic, following that up with a quick explanation of what he’d noticed. 

‘That’s fiendish,’ exclaimed Leo, though he sounded slightly impressed too. Dominic had to admit that he was as well – if his theory was correct, of course. But he was almost convinced that it was: this was exactly the same MO that the dungeon master had shown last time, only with a different puzzle. 

Going up to the relief, he started trying to claw out the closest golden disc. 

‘What doing?’ asked Sekhmet curiously, coming up to him and rubbing against his shoulder. Dominic quickly explained to her his theory, and then belatedly decided that he’d better do so in the Pride chat. After all, it would make things faster if they all did it. 

Renewed interest revitalised the flagging spirits of the pride members and they all started trying to pull the discs out. 

‘Don’t take them out completely,’ warned Dominic. ‘Remember how hard it was to put them in last time. Just shift them to the side a little bit so that they’re no longer in the holes, but are ready to slip back in.’

Once they had all managed to claw the discs out of the holes – aided by the fact that there was a little helpful indentation around the edge of each hole – he mentally reordered the discs. Not sure whether it was supposed to go from six to one, or one to six, Dominic decided to try the latter first. It was more logical. If the worst came to the worst, they could pull the discs out again and try once more later. 

He did check his own disc to make sure that there were no hidden messages on the disc itself that indicated it should go in a specific hole – that was another potential way of solving the puzzle, of course. But no, there were no numbers, or marks, or indentations, or anything that differentiated one disc from another.

He’d taken the sceptre, being the largest of the currently present Pride members, so he slipped that one in first. Stepping back, he looked at who was in which place. 

‘Fang, you next,’ he instructed, waiting for the young lion to slip his disc into the ‘2’ slot before instructing the next of his pride. ‘Sekhmet, now you…. OK, Lionel, go ahead….Right, your turn Sirius. And now you Procyon.’

As the final disc clicked into place, there was a rumble beneath their feet. Fang, Sekhmet, Dominic, and Lionel were quick enough to jump back. Sirius and Procyon weren’t. They fell into the hole which had just appeared.