While the hallways made of brick and stone were similar to the undead dungeon that Cass had frequented before, the mini boss chambers were not the same at all.
Unlike the caves and mini boss areas of the undead dungeon, this area was sectioned off by doors. It wasn’t completely obvious when they first turned down the selected tunnel because they had to travel a bit before they came upon the doors. Everyone braced as if they weren’t about to face a mini boss, but an actual boss.
It made complete sense to Cass.
After all, so far in the many dungeons that these guys had been in, only actual Bosses were behind the last closed door in the dungeon. Everything else? Open concept.
However, it made sense once they opened the door and Lucian had a moment to recall.
Because it was an underwater dungeon, if the mini Boss wanted a separate area to control, they would need a closed off area to do so. That made sense to Cass, even if he hated it. He knew that mini Bosses had control over their particular areas, that was what was written in most stories and games that he’d seen others play, he just didn’t like it when he had to come face to face with it.
Before Lucian opened the doors, while everyone else was scowling at them, it was like a light went off behind them.
"Right. Underwater dungeons have doors between areas." Lucian muttered. Gideon gave him a strange look, as did Edgar, but Cass just sighed.
"Yeah. Mini bosses get to control their areas that way." Cass agreed and Lucian nodded. Then, without much fanfare, they opened the doors. The slow stone doors pulled against the water, making its own little backwater pull. If Lucian hadn’t been the one standing in the way, Edgar, and embarrassingly, Cass, would have been pulled through the door and right into whatever plan the mini Boss had set up.
The dragon stood his ground, however, so they ran into him instead of being sucked into the room unceremoniously. Gideon used his sword to keep himself in place, stabbing it into the mortar between the bricks and stones.
"That beast." Lucian said, but there was a small hint of admiration in his tone. "Eddie, can you light up the place?" He asked and Cass watched as Edgar winced. He was getting to the end of his juice, not feeling like an endless battery like Cass was. Cass had struggled outside of the dungeon, but now?
He felt like he could do a lot of complicated magic without worry of what it would cost him.
"I can do it." Cass said, interrupting Edgar before he could speak. It looked like Edgar was going to protest, but Cass raised a hand. "I’m fine. It’s a simple spell, and I’ve been fully recharged on demon powers or magic, whatever you want to call it. You have to sleep to recharge, and I feel like I’m full to burst. Let me do it, you can save your powers." Cass told him, then didn’t give the man anymore time to speak.
Cass snapped his fingers and illuminating balls began floating into the water ahead of them. Then kept going, floating off into the distance in the water until the group began to see the shape of the room.
The ceiling was closer than they anticipated, with what looked like a small air pocket at the top. Thin, long scraggly stalactites came down from the ceiling, poking down into the dark, deep green water. Thicker, stumpier stalactites poked down from the ceiling. They looked more stable, and more deadly compared to their thinner counterparts.
Some stalagmites came up from the ground, but they hadn’t formed well. Telling Cass that this cave hadn’t been formed for too long before the water filled it. Or, at least, that’s what Cass thought. It was lucky that he even remembered the difference between stalagmite and stalactite.
From the orbs floating off into the distance, they could tell that it was a huge space. Probably the size of an average sports stadium. With the slightly lower ceiling, but still higher than the roof of the hallways that they had been walking through, Cass wondered where the mini Boss was.
It didn’t take long for Cass to find an answer.
Cass realised, about the same time that everyone else did, that the floor dropped off significantly about 30 paces in. It was a slow decline until it suddenly dropped off in a severe, huge circular pattern. The whole took up about 2⁄3 ’s of the space. Lucian whistled.
"Holy shit." Lucian muttered. "That’s holding a mini Boss?" Cass nodded. Forget the squid, this was bigger than that thing. The squid looked like chump change when faced with this hole.
"You think...it’s that big?" Cass asked and Lucian slid a look towards Cass, his orange gaze teasing.
"I would hope so. Otherwise, this is just a tease." He joked. No one found it funny.
"I...am going to attempt to set up a few protective barriers. Earth walls in case it tries to suck us into that hole." Cass muttered, and then began to raise up the earth before anyone else could say anything against it.
Cass slowly, thanks to the light that the orbs cast, began to raise up earth walls all around the rim of the dark pit. Nothing moved. Cass wondered if it didn’t consider the earth shifting anything significant. Cass didn’t like that one bit.
Cass put the one up in front of them first, protecting them from things that could attack them while he was focused. Gideon, bless him, was keeping an eye on their back. As he was supposed to do, and it was a good thing.
It seemed that the mermen had no respect for the fact that they were going into a mini Boss room. Gideon struck them down, and Lucian thought that this was a great thing.
"This is great news." Lucian said as the two bodies of the merman floated nearby. "We can push the dead bodies closer to the pit and use them to see how the mini Boss reacts." That was smart. Gideon prepared himself, as did Cass, Edgar and Lucian. Cass used his sway over water-based magic to gently maneuver the dead merman closer to the edge of the pit. Nothing happened as they came close to the earth wall that Cass had erected that everyone else was hiding behind.
When it passed the earth wall and kept going, nothing happened. At least for the first few seconds, Cass kept drifting it closer until everything happened at once. The earth under Cass’ feet began to shake, everyone grabbing onto each other for safety and security as a clicking, terrifying roar came from below. It was a warning, a signal that something had been awoken. Bubbles began to come up from the pit, big enough that Cass could have floated up in them.
A powerful, sucking force pulled the dead bodies of the mermen to the edge of the pit and then they disappeared. Another loud screech was heard with significantly less clicking but still sent a shiver down Cass’ spine.
More bubbles came up from the pit, the sucking force stopped, and Cass held his breath.
He knew that that was only the beginning. He waited, and waited, and then Edgar quietly spoke up.
"Is that...it?" He asked. Lucian’s expression was just as grim as Cass’ when they looked over at him.
"No. That was the wake up meal." Lucian muttered. "Now, it’s going to come up and see what else is up here." Cass hated that the man was right. Gideon stood to the side, braced and ready, his expression stony.
Then, just as Cass and Lucian feared, the ground began to tremble and shake once more. Cass wasn’t sure how he knew, but he could tell that something was coming up from deep in the ground. It wasn’t even coming up fast, but it was still alarming. Slowly, Cass could make out something glowing in the deep. Cass hated that.
Cass expecting something strange to come up, of course he was expecting something strange. The ocean was full of weird shit back on earth, why wouldn’t it be full of even weirder shit here where monsters also existed?
It was ten times worse, somehow, as the creature slowly came out of the pit, scanning the area of live prey. It was munching on the dead merman’s and Cass had to look away because how they were doing so was disgusting.
The thing looked like it had gotten into every drug known to man, and then robbed a clown just for the hell of it. The colours alone were blinding, made worse by the glare from the orbs that Cass had put out to be able to see the area. No wonder it lived in darkness. It was more hideous to look at than the damn mermen. The front of it was kind of hard to describe from the front. Cass had very little knowledge of sea creatures. He’d been more of a land animal lover, not a water animal lover. It looked like it had several limbs in front, curled up as if they were protecting its face.
It had these two bright eyes that looked like old stained glass. Haunting in how white and clear they were with a strange pattern etched into them. Kind of reminded Cass of lobsters and crabs when he looked at them.
It had several little gaudy coloured sticks coming out from the facial area, under what Cass assumed were the stemmed eyes. They kept moving and twitching, swirling around in a way that made Cass’ stomach roll in disgust.
In front of those spindly sticks were what looked like two identical shields in the most obnoxious green shade that Cass had ever seen. It was also rimmed in what looked like red feathers, though Cass knew that wasn’t the case. The green, now that Cass was seeing it reflect off of the orbs, actually looked more like a peacock feather.
Whatever it was, the creature had two of them in front of them, and then two more spindly legs in front and behind the shields. The colours all over this thing were garish, like Cassian had helped decorate it. Mixtures of blue, green, vibrant orange, white and red. It looked, truly, like it had mugged a clown in a back alley and all they were missing was the clown nose.
"What the fuck is that?" Cass muttered, confused, and Lucian made a low clicking noise.
"That, Cass, is something more dangerous than I thought." Lucian muttered. "That was the final Boss in a previous dungeon." Lucian muttered. Cass did not like the sound of that.
"What?" Cass whispered, turning his gaze towards Lucian. Lucian felt his gaze, but didn’t look down. His expression was grim. Very grim.
"Give me a second to think, okay?" He muttered, and Cass did not like anything that he was hearing. Lucian had encountered this before, and it had been the final boss for the underwater dungeon?
Why the fuck was it a mini Boss that they had run into on their first damn day in the dungeon? What was going on?