After looking for an hour, we finally find the entrance to the dungeon, which was easy to see. It was pretty much a cave in a cliff, and I don't see any kind of door, or some guardian. We go into the cave, and it is lucky of us that there's still some daylight, or we would be kind of blind. When we reach the end, two torches lit up, and they were located on both sides of a statue that resembled a mermaid.
"What is that?" asks Emily.
"That's a mermaid, they were a majestic race, but they are believed to have gone extinct because of the Ogrest's Chaos," I answer. Then, I see something that I could not believe, the eyes of the statue start to move, and it looks at us.
"I am the guardian of this temple, and I welcome you, adventurers," says the statue.
"Uh, thank you?" says Emily.
"If you wish it, you are allowed to enter the dungeon."
"Wait, really? Just like that?" I ask because I cannot believe that it would be that easy.
"I'm not the one who will judge your worthiness, it will be the dungeon itself. If you survive it's trials, then you will be deem worthy of it's prize."
"Any idea of what it is?"
"You will know, when you reach it." Didn't expect cryptic words, but it doesn't change the fact that we have to get the treasure.
"All right, let us in, please."
"I wish you good luck, adventurers." Then, a magical glyph lights up under our feet, and we are teleported away.
We appear inside a tunnel of some kind, and the light from the glyph starts to go out. Again, we are lucky that the walls have some kind of crystal that's illuminating the tunnel. So far, there's only one way, and that's going forward. We walk for a while, before we come to an intersection, with paths going forward, left, and right. Emily and I turn to our Ecaflip companion.
"Okay, the pirate said that we would need you to navigate the labyrinth, which begs the question as to how," I say. Amber doesn't say anything, she simply takes a few steps forward, shuffles her cards, takes three of them, and looks at them.
"This way," says Amber and points to the left.
"I'll go first," says Emily, and goes to the left, while looking around. Then, she kneels down, and starts to inspect the ground. She looks at the tiles, the walls to the side, and to the ceiling. "Get in line behind me, and follow my steps." Amber and I do as Emily said. We start to walk a certain path, and as far as I can see, there's nothing strange about the floor.
"Not that I doubt your skills, but what exactly is wrong with the floor?" Emily stops in the spot, kneels down, closes a fist, and hits the floor to the left of her. After doing that, a tile simply falls down to who knows where.
"Most of it is fake, and judging by the lack of sound, it's a very deep fall." She gets up from the ground, resumes her walk, and we follow behind her. It doesn't take long for Emily to stop, look around, and turns towards us. "This seems to be the end of it."
"That's why you're the expert in traps," I say.
"I was well trained." So she's the humble type, that's good.
We continue through the tunnels, Amber picking the way, and Emily detecting the traps. However, there's something that's bothering me about the dungeon, and it's not about the bones on the floor.
"Not that I'm complaining, but where are the monsters?" I ask.
"The pirate did say that there were enemies in here, but I haven't seen anything," says Emily.
"He probably lied to us." Something must be against me because a spear pasts flying right in front of my face. I look to my left, and find the living skeleton of a spear shark, who launched itself towards me, ready to bite my head off. I quickly duck, and the shark goes flying over me, but then, I remember that Amber was right behind me. I turn around, and see Amber rolling out of the way. The shark lands, and turns around, only to receive a card on it's face, which explodes. Well, with that one out, I look back to my left, and another shark charges at me with it's spear. It tries to stab me with it, but I move to the side. Then, he spins, and swings it's weapon, but I block it with one hardened arm, which ends up breaking the spear. It looks at it's weapon for a moment, and I take it to punch it in it's big face with a Blood Rush, which breaks it. However, I notice a sharkie falling from it's head, and it bites my arm, which was fortunate of me that I hardened it. I can deal with it, no problem, until I feel another pair of jaws biting my right leg, and another biting my left shoulder.
"Zoe!" I hear Emily yell, I look at her, and she tries to come to my aid, but she's having some problems of her own. I hear more explosions to my right, and see another shark explode in pieces. Well, it's not that bad for me, but the little sharkies certainly forgot not to bite more than they can chew. I concentrate through the pain for a moment, and use another spell I haven't used in a while, which is Burning Blood. I literally explode, and blow the sharkies into pieces, but I still don't know why my clothes never get burn. Anyways, I check on my companions, and I see Emily cutting one shark in half with her scythe, while Amber uses her cards to blow another one into pieces. We look around, and don't see anymore sharks' skeletons.
"Well, that was something," I say.
"It was, but more importantly, are you okay?" asks Amber.
"I'm fine, kind of pissed off because those little sharks ruined my clothes." Seriously, I liked this vest.
"It seems clear of enemies, we should keep moving before more of those things get here," says Emily.
"Then let's move." We continue on our way through the dungeon, and I hope that we find the place soon enough.
Along the way, we continue to follow Amber's directions, and Emily continued to help us through the traps. We did find more of those living skeletons, but we were prepared for them, and easily dispatched them without difficulty. I really don't know how much time has passed, we just keep going, which is one of the reasons that I hate labyrinths. One simply doesn't know when is it going to end, but is a good thing that we have enough supplies to last us a few more days. Then, we finally reach a really big room, which was shaped like a dome. There's a path leading to a platform that is located in the center of the room, and it was surrounded by water. As far as I can see, there's some kind of crystal ball on top of a small pedestal in the middle of the platform.
"Is this it?" asks Emily.
"In my experiences, it is, but stay on your guard," I say.
"Let's grab it while luck is in our favor," says Amber. We walk through the path, and once we get to the platform, the path behind us starts to sink into the water.
"Is this a trap?" asks Emily.
"I don't think so," I say, and right after that, the pedestal starts to get lowered into the platform. Once it's completely inside, the small hole it went through closes, and we're left alone in the room. We quickly get back-to-back, looking all over the room, searching for any kind of danger, which quickly appears in the form of a group of shark skeletons. There are ones with spears, I think I see some hammerhead ones, and the little ones. I was feeling confident, if this is all we're going to deal with, this is going to be easy. Then, I hear something bigger landing to my right, and I look towards it. I was expecting something different, like a giant monster, with tentacles, since we're in some kind of dungeon with an underwater theme, but no. Instead, it's just another shark's skeleton, but this one is bigger, and it's wearing armor on it's head, shoulders, and chest. It's spear is also different than the other ones, with some seashells decorating it, and I think I see a skull hanging on it.
"The boss?" asks Emily.
"The boss," I answer.
"How original," says Amber with sarcasm, and I won't say it to her face, but I completely agree with her.