NOVEL NEXT Chapter 55: A Seriously Well-Defended Red Herring
First of all, there wasn’t just one door with a keyhole bridging the two pieces. Instead, there were two large doors, with an intricate relief carved across and around both of them.
The relief seemed to show some sort of banquet going on, the drawing of the pictures seemingly influenced by an Egyptian style. Not Egyptian in terms of what was shown, though – Dominic easily recognised the creatures depicted as being the same species as the dungeon master. After the events last time, he wasn’t likely to forget that creature.
Clawed feet were presented in profile, as were the heads with toothy mouths and sail-like ears; round bellies and narrow shoulders were presented straight on. Different figures appeared to be doing different things. Some were carrying items, some were doing what looked like juggling, others were being served or entertained. Around the edge of the relief was a frame formed out of something that looked like words, though not in any sort of alphabet Dominic could read. It was too angular, but not like Norse runes either. Hopefully it was just decorative.
What clearly wasn’t decorative was that there were several round holes in the picture. They were all part of something figures were carrying, sitting on a plate, embedded in a sceptre, being thrown up in the air. The sceptre was being held by what looked like the most important character – sitting on a throne and bigger than the rest. There were six holes in total.
Even before he touched the door, Dominic had a feeling he knew what the task would be.
[Not wanting their sacred temple to be desecrated, the final disciples of the Plains Temple removed the key discs when they left for the last time. They have hidden the discs in the area around, waiting for the right person to return and reassemble them.
Objective: Find the key discs and correctly insert them into the doors (0/6 found)]
[Reward: Entrance to the temple]
‘The dungeon master couldn’t have changed this task up a bit when it changed the rest?’ Dominic complained to Leo.
‘Somehow, I don’t think we’ll be facing trodils this time so technically it did change the task,’ the lion pointed out.
‘Not enough,’ Dominic grumped, then sighed mentally. ‘Then again, we do have a party this time. Perhaps we can split up and get it over with faster.’
‘Maybe we’d better find the first key together,’ cautioned Leo. ‘We don’t know what sort of defences they have. If the path to get here is any indication, we could lose our party members quickly if they are unwary or the enemies are too strong.’
‘Good point,’ Dominic granted. ‘Alright everyone, this is the situation.’ Quickly, he explained what he’d learned from the temple. As expected, the rest of the pride didn’t quite get the idea of a ‘key’ – barely even having an understanding of a ‘door’. However, they did understand the idea of finding something, which was most likely to be guarded, and they’d seen the traps Dominic had triggered on the path. They would be wary.
It seemed like an easy assumption that the discs would be found in the jungle around, but Dominic decided that it would be best to search the clearing first: he’d want to murder someone – probably himself – if they spent a long time searching the jungle and then found that some of the keys were hidden right next to the temple.
By directing different pride members to search various areas of the clearing, they covered the ground quickly. Dominic had told them all to send him an image if they saw anything either round or metallic, or both. He got a few pictures from various members of round stones, which he quickly discounted. In the end their search seemed to be fairly fruitless.
Heading towards the back of the temple, Dominic was curious to see that the forest was definitely encroaching on it. He’d thought so when they’d approached – the clearing had looked like it should have been perfectly circular, but was instead an odd kind of horseshoe shape – and here he had definite proof.
In fact, more than just encroaching, the jungle was actually taking over the temple, trees starting to sprout out of the stonework.
‘I wonder…’ Dominic said absently.
‘Wonder what?’ Leo asked impatiently after he didn’t continue for a while.
‘Oh,’ replied Dominic, realising he’d accidentally directed his thoughts to his companion. ‘Whether there’s another way in. It would be good if we could avoid needing to track down six discs, after all.’
‘You think there might be?’ Leo responded tentatively. ‘Maybe it’s just overgrown.’ Dominic sent him a sense of a shrug.
‘Perhaps, perhaps not. This is a dungeon, not a natural place. Anything that’s here is here by design. There has to be a reason for why there are trees growing out of the ‘temple’. Maybe it’s only aesthetic; maybe not.’
‘You’re going to investigate it?’ Leo asked, though his tone didn’t indicate that he felt much doubt about it.
‘I might as well.’ So saying, Dominic padded closer towards the forest edge.
As he reached it he became more and more convinced that his instinct was right. There was a fallen tree just inside the tree line which was rather suspiciously leaning against the temple wall. Actually, through the temple wall, stones having been ‘knocked away’ when it ‘fell’.
As he got closer, Dominic became increasingly careful. If he was right and this was an intended second entrance to the rest of the dungeon or at least part of it, then it seemed likely it would be trapped in some way.
His caution paid off: on his second step onto the darker loam of the forest, he felt the ground giving way beneath him. Having only placed a single paw down and not even having much of his weight on it stopped him from tumbling into a bigger pit trap than he’d yet seen.
After that, Dominic was even warier, though feeling slightly validated that his suspicions seemed to be proving themselves true – why defend something useless? Unless it was another example of the dungeon’s psychological tactics, of course.
Two snakes leaping out at him and another pit trap combined with a rather fiendish log swing later, he managed to step onto the leaning trunk. If it wasn’t a different way into the temple, then it was a seriously well-defended red herring. Interestingly, the number of points from the snakes had been the same as the ones earlier, indicating that they were divided among the rest of the pride. Dominic guessed that it meant that they were considered a party while they were in the dungeon, involved in the immediate fight or not.
With the way the two pit traps had been placed, only a narrow spit of land left between them, it had been impossible to dodge the log swing that had a practically-invisible trigger. Fortunately, by flattening himself and his wings to the ground, the large lion had managed to scrape by with only a scrape on his back, and not be propelled into the spike pit to the side. He hadn’t wanted to leap forward in case there was another trap waiting for him.
There wasn’t, as it turned out, but he was still glad he’d wriggled forwards on his belly – better safe than sorry, for sure!
‘Do you think the dungeon has had enough of trying to kill us?’ asked Leo with an exasperated growl.
‘Almost certainly not,’ Dominic wryly replied. ‘But with any luck, it’s already used all its traps.’
Still, he carefully inched his way up the trunk, digging his claws in and keeping his centre of gravity low. Climbing this was far easier as a lion than it would have been as a human. He suspected he’d have needed ropes: even if the trunk was leaning, the angle was still very steep.
‘What you doing?’ Sekhmet’s voice asked, startling him a little. Fortunately, not enough to send him tumbling down.
He dared to look to the side and saw her standing there, the rest of the pride arrayed around her. Procyon and Sirius were both lying down, though Dominic knew that they could quickly climb to their feet if needed. Fang was nosing around in the clearing; Lionel was…marking his territory. Dominic couldn’t help but find that rather amusing and wondered what the dungeon master thought.
‘No luck in finding anything?’ he asked the group. The three verbal members all answered simultaneously in the negative. Lionel sent a hint of confused negation while Fang sent a feeling of more precise negation. ‘I guess they’re all in the jungle area, then. I’m just checking this out: it might be another way in.’
‘Shall we come?’ rumbled Procyon.
‘Not yet,’ Dominic rejected. ‘For all I know, it might just be a trap, or nothing at all. Just stay there for now.’
Since he’d kept inching his way forwards throughout the conversation, he was now getting close to being able to see over the top of the stone wall. Within a few moments, he reached it.
Peering forward, Dominic couldn’t see much more than stones and the tree trunk, so he inched forwards a little more. He was almost expecting there to be an invisible wall blocking him from continuing along the trunk: if it was just for aesthetics, he expected it to be like the edge of a game map.
But no wall prevented him from continuing further and he was soon head and shoulders through the hole.
‘What do you think?’ he asked Leo, feeling more than a little uneasy.
‘I don’t like it,’ the lion responded immediately. ‘I have a bad feeling about this.’
Dominic knew exactly what he meant.
Below him was a massive hole. He couldn’t even see its depths. That wasn’t just because it was deep, though he guessed it was. It was also because the pit itself was obscured. First, by the canopy of the tree on whose trunk he was standing – the trunk was broken just a bit further up from where he was and had fallen into the hole and was blocking part of it. It was stopped from falling any further by some other growth that looked suspiciously…wet.
There was also a stomach-turning smell that came from below, an unholy combination of rotten vegetation and rotting meat. The canopy from the tree looked like it was already rotting, its remaining leaves brown and its branches glistening even in the low light level.
Worse, to get down to the broken canopy, he’d have to fall the equivalent of two or three storeys. Depending on what the surfaces were like down there – and if he just fell straight through the canopy – he might not be able to get back if it turned out to be another trap.
‘And you were telling me wings wouldn’t come in useful in this dungeon,’ Dominic accused Leo.
‘You agreed with me!’ the lion defended himself. ‘You’re not considering going down there, are you?’ he asked, sounding more than a little trepidatious.
‘Not without a rope or being able to actually fly, not just glide,’ Dominic agreed. There were probably other ways of making the exploration a bit safer, but considering that they didn’t even know if this was an alternative way in, it was probably better to just hunt for the key discs anyway. The whole point of finding another path was to reduce the time it took, but if the alternative path was just as risky as the normal one, they might as well take the normal route.
Getting down was another question, of course. Dominic soon found out why cats were notorious for getting stuck in trees – it was far easier climbing up than it was climbing down.
In the end, he backed up carefully until he was past the stone wall, then turned and dared to make a flying leap towards the clearing. With the amount of force he could apply to make himself soar through the air, plus his wings and Airborne which added extra glide time, he found himself going a lot further than he’d expected.
In fact, he almost overshot where the rest of the pride had moved to and actually had to cut his glide a bit short. Fortunately, Sure Feet meant that he didn’t fall flat on his face and Easy Landing reduced even the small amount of fall damage he suffered from falling from about ten feet up in the air. He definitely hadn’t lost as much height as he thought he would.
‘We not taking that route?’ Sekhmet checked with him.
‘No,’ Dominic replied to the group, not explaining any further. ‘Come on, let’s explore the jungle. Everyone be careful, OK?’
