ALL NOVEL Chapter 67: Smaller Parties
‘Sirius, Procyon, are you OK?’ Dominic asked anxiously in the Pride chat, dashing forwards to the edge of the pit.
‘We’re fine,’ Procyon answered for them both just as Dominic spotted them. Fortunately, they hadn’t fallen far. In fact, the former-human realised that the hole wasn’t a pit at all: it was a set of stairs leading underground.
That could still have been nasty if the two amesheks hadn’t landed on their feet and got their balance – rolling down a flight of stairs which disappeared into the darkness could have caused significant injuries, especially for larger creatures like them. As it was, though, Dominic’s pride members had reacted quickly enough to land safely, even if they hadn’t been able to leap clear of the opening.
‘Good,’ he told them, relieved. ‘Without moving, can you see any signs of a trap?’
The two wolven creatures looked carefully around, both up and down the stairs. Dominic saw their antennae twitching too as they felt for information with those too.
‘No odd markings on any surface that I can see or sense,’ rumbled Procyon.
‘Nor me,’ confirmed Sirius.
‘Alright, we’ll come down then, but be careful – we don’t know what could be waiting for us. I’ll go first; Sekhmet, please follow us at the back. Watch for anything that comes at us from behind.’
His pride members assented with a mixture of body language and messages in the Pride chat, so Dominic headed carefully down the stairs. Reaching the amesheks, he paused to let his eyes adjust a little bit, then continued walking down into the darkness. Though he did miss his hands sometimes, he had to admit that there were many leonine aspects that made up for them.
His eyesight, for example: it would have taken him far longer to adjust to the darkness of the tunnel as a human, and even once he had adjusted, he suspected that the tunnel would have been full of flickering shadows, the dim torches barely illuminating the steps enough to move. As it was, he could see as well in the tunnel as he’d been able to see with the moonlight outside. He attempted to take one of the torches off the walls, wanting to replace the one he’d used in the puzzle room upstairs. Unfortunately, though, it was immovable. Disappointed he returned his attention where it should have been all along: the route in front of him.
Dominic moved carefully, watching every step for a sign of a trap, but saw nothing. He didn’t sense anything with Spacial Awareness either, though the Ability was still new enough for him to not be sure whether he should if there was a trap. Rounding a corner, the full length of the stairway came into view, the distance about three more times what they had already covered.
By the time they got halfway down the stairs, he was starting to believe that the stairway was just that – a way of travelling between two parts of the dungeon. He wondered if they’d be facing the warthog guardian again, though surely at a much higher level. Maybe even into the next half-step?
They reached the end of the stairs, only to find that it was a landing rather than an end. The stairs continued forwards, but there seemed to be another option too: a door on the left of the square landing area.
Approaching it warily, Dominic first examined it with his senses, then tapped on it, and then finally tried pushing at it when there was no reaction. It seemed to be locked tight. There were no marks on the door or the area around it which might give a clue as to how to open it.
By this point, their way was lit only by the flickering torches set into the wall. Dominic wondered whether opening the door would require the cliché manipulation of a sconce, but his attempts to shift the torches around the landing area proved to be as futile as his previous attempts to take some for himself.
‘Any ideas?’ he asked his pride in frustration.
‘Maybe we aren’t supposed to go through it,’ suggested Sirius.
‘It’s odd for a dungeon to have a door that isn’t a door,’ Dominic pointed out.
‘Perhaps its diversion. To make us chase our tails like cubs,’ offered Sekhmet.
‘That…is a good point,’ Dominic admitted. It seemed like something the dungeon would do – get them to waste time trying to open a door. At least, if by wasting time, they risked their lives in some way. While that definitely wasn’t impossible, there was no indication that some sort of timer had started. Or, at least, Dominic hadn’t noticed any indication of it. Which…didn’t necessarily mean that there wasn’t a timer.
‘Perhaps there’s a round circle somewhere else to open it, like in the last room?’ suggested Fang thoughtfully.
‘Maybe,’ agreed Dominic slowly. ‘It’s possible that we have to complete a task down below and then it will open.’ He’d played a few of those puzzle games where sometimes he’d had to leave an objective for later after he’d achieved a few others first. That would be more complex than the dungeon had previously shown, but it had gone up a rank.
Before going with that idea, though, Dominic encouraged everyone to help look for any sort of clues. He even went back up the stairs in case there was something waiting by the entrance which they’d missed. Finally returning to the group, Dominic gave up.
‘OK everyone, let’s keep going and then come back to this door later,’ he said, trying to sound cheerful instead of defeated.
No one objected, so they continued stepping carefully down the stairs.
A rumble above was their only warning that something had gone wrong. Faster than they could react, a slab of stone slammed down from the ceiling above, completely blocking off their return route.
Fear making his eyes go wide, Dominic looked around to find only the two amesheks with him. Where were Sekhmet, Fang, and Lionel?
‘Sekhmet? Lionel? Fang?’ he cried in the Pride chat. He felt Leo doing the same, though his message was predictably a wordless expression of concern for Sekhmet alone – his female.
‘We’re here,’ Sekhmet’s voice came in the chat, oddly muffled. A massive wave of relief coursed through Dominic.
‘All three of you are there? Are you OK?’ he asked with concern.
‘We’re fine,’ answered Lionel briefly.
‘The stone dropped in front of my paws, but I jumped back in time,’ Fang explained in more detail.
‘Into me,’ complained Lionel grumpily, the young male speaking more in the last few minutes than he’d done in the hour before.
‘Would you rather I’d been squashed?’ snapped Fang in response.
‘Enough!’ Dominic snapped. The two young males immediately went silent. Dominic felt a hint of guilt – maybe he had been a bit sharp there. But this was no time for an argument. ‘Can you see any way of opening the stone slab from your side?’ he asked, starting to look for the same on his side of things.
Sirius and Procyon also stepped forwards, their antennae waving and a low hum emerging from their bodies.
After searching for several minutes with all senses and finding no sign of any sort of a lever, button, or any other means of opening the massive slab, Dominic had to give up on that idea.
‘It looks like we’re separated for now,’ he said with resignation in the Pride chat. ‘Wait there. We’ll investigate what’s down the stairs – maybe there’s a trigger or something down there.’
‘Fine,’ Sekhmet answered, though she didn’t sound all that happy about it, her emotions still obvious despite the muffled nature of her communication.
‘The door is open,’ Dominic heard Fang say, though his voice was barely decipherable, despite it being through the Pride chat.
‘What?’ Dominic asked, confused. The slab in front of them didn’t seem like it had moved at all.
‘The door. What we were trying to open earlier. It’s open now – I just managed to nudge it open with my nose,’ the young male explained, his voice growing clearer and clearer like he was walking towards Dominic. ‘Here, let me show you,’ he said to Sekhmet. Even if he didn’t use her name, he very clearly directed his message to her.
Listening anxiously, Dominic heard their voices get more and more muffled, until it was barely possible to hear what they were saying at all. They seemed to be discussing the room on the other side of the door. It sounded like a bit of a mess from what Dominic could tell.
‘Can you hear me now?’ Sekhmet’s voice was directed straight at Dominic and had a sound to it that indicated that she might have said the same thing multiple times.
‘Yes, I can,’ he answered – it was much clearer this time.
‘Seems like can’t go far from each other,’ Sekhmet told him with an undercurrent of irritation. ‘Or you can’t hear me.’
‘It’s weird,’ agreed Dominic. ‘We haven’t had that problem before.’
‘Haven’t had thick stone between us either,’ the lioness pointed out. Dominic didn’t think that that should make a difference, but she was right that they hadn’t tried it. It could be some sort of feature of the dungeon too.
In fact, given that the door from the landing was apparently working, Dominic would suspect that to be the case. Since it hadn’t fallen on them, it appeared to instead be trying to separate them; if the dungeon separated them physically, it was logical that it would try to do so with any other form of communication too. Though it did seem a little odd that it could affect something like Pride chat.
‘So you can open the door which was previously closed tightly?’
‘Yes,’ Sekhmet answered, matter-of-factly. ‘Are things in the room. Predators, and lots of obstacles.’
Right. Which probably meant that there was something hidden in the room which would reopen the stone slab, or Dominic and the two amesheks would have to find something in whatever was waiting for them to do the same. Or, he supposed, there could be a meeting point later on where the two paths of the dungeon converged again.
Well, there was nothing to do but play along with what the dungeon seemed to want them to do – move forward as two smaller parties. At least Sekhmet had the healing lion with her party. Dominic would have to be even more careful with the amesheks’ lives than usual.
‘OK, you go and explore the other room that’s been newly opened,’ Dominic told his lioness lieutenant. ‘Be careful; look out for each other. There might be something to find in the room which will help you get back to me so make sure you investigate everything. Or there might be an exit to somewhere else where we can meet up. I suspect that our Pride chat is going to be very limited going forwards, so I suggest that each party goes as far as it can and then returns here where we know we can talk to each other. Clear?’
‘Clear,’ chorused the three other lions. Belatedly realising that he hadn’t really included Sirius and Procyon in the conversation after they’d verified that they couldn’t find any way through the stone, Dominic turned to them.
‘Are you both fine with continuing?’ Dominic asked.
‘Do we have a choice?’ Procyon asked wryly.
‘Probably not,’ Dominic sighed. In a way, their group was worse off – Sekhmet’s could escape the dungeon completely if they wanted to; Dominic’s little party couldn’t.
‘Then let us continue,’ the ameshek replied, answering his original question. Dominic turned and led the way down the stairs. The Pride chat with Sekhmet, Fang, and Lionel had cut out completely by the time they were halfway down the remaining stairs: he couldn’t even get a sense of their emotions – or if they were still alive.
Only quickly checking his Pride status screen stopped him worrying about that – they wouldn’t show up on it if they had been killed the moment they walked through that other door. Dominic focussed again on wanting to have a notification if any Pride member died. He didn’t know if it had worked; he might find out later, though he hoped not.
Heading down the stairs even more carefully than before, they soon found the space opening up below them. A mirror-like surface stretched out in all directions: the room was vast. More of a cavern, really, though the obvious working on the walls around showed that it wasn’t a natural space. Well, it was a dungeon space, natural-looking or not. But this looked like people had chipped away at it with pickaxes. Large people – the highest marks of picks were about double Dominic’s human height.
As he got to the lowest step, Dominic realised something else: the surface wasn’t solid. It wasn’t a mirror, or glass that formed the floor.
It was water.
