Looking at the cold, dark water, Olivia debated whether to return to the room where she’d first met Jaliss to try one of the other doors. She supposed there could be another path forward, but would she have to fight through four more rooms? There was also the chance that the doors only led to different routes up to floors she’d already cleared. “Forward it is.”

She concentrated and cast Elemental Form, fueling it with water-attuned Energy. She felt a cool wave rush through her, originating from her Core, and when she looked down at her hands, they were shimmery and blue. She’d tested this form with Oylla and found that she could move quickly through water, ignoring all but the most frigid temperatures, but she still had to breathe. Not wanting to waste any time or Energy, she took a deep breath and walked down into the murky depths of the sunken stairway.

The water wasn’t any colder than her water form flesh, so it didn’t feel uncomfortable, and as soon as her head was submerged, she saw that the murky depths were liberally spotted with faintly glowing lichen. Olivia could easily see where she was going, so she pushed off with her feet and began to slide through the water faster than she’d ever imagined swimming in her old life. It was almost like flying, and a wide grin spread on her shimmery, blue face. She reached the bottom of the stairs in just a moment and still felt fine with regard to her air reserves; she might not be able to breathe water, but her racial advancements allowed her to hold her breath for a very long time.

The room at the foot of the stairs was small, and the only exit was on the opposite wall. A few fragments of wood were all that remained of a door. She slipped past the broken timber and, fluttering her feet, raced up the short hallway to another doorway, this one with no door remnants at all. She saw movement in the water ahead, so she slowed down and glided to a stop at the doorway, peering ahead.

Several dark shapes were flitting around in the water. They resembled snakes or maybe eels, but their heads were much larger than anything Olivia had seen in nature videos. She was trying to determine if they were hostile when one meandered in such a way that it faced directly at her. She caught her breath, which she’d already been holding, when she saw that it had a strange humanoid head with flat, black, fishy eyes. Its wide maw gaped open and closed, sort of chomping at the water, and she saw that it was filled with triangular, pointed teeth.

Olivia ducked back behind the corner, peering around with one eye to see how many of the weird eels were in the room, and she counted four. She thought about attacking them, but some of her spells were useless underwater, like her fire-based spells, and her lightning spells might even be dangerous to her. Could she freeze them? Would her Icy Shards have enough velocity if shot through water?

She was thinking of a way to attack when their meandering movement took them all toward the far corners of the room, and she impulsively shot forward toward the far doorway. She kicked as fast as she could and didn’t look back until she was well into the next hallway; none of them pursued her. She was glad she avoided the fight but was starting to worry about air.

Floating before the next doorway, Olivia decided to try something: she floated up to the ceiling and channeled Wind Gust out of her palm at the corner where the two walls met. Prodigious air bubbles gushed out of her hand and collected in the corner, starting to slide off to the sides. She quickly poked her head into the most prominent air pocket and gulped a deep breath, grinning at her ingenuity.

Olivia dropped down, looked through the next doorway, and wasn’t surprised to see the same weird eels. She was trying to time their movements to slip through again when a larger shape suddenly rushed out of a hole in the floor that she’d taken for a patch of dark fungus. It streamed right toward her, and she caught a glimpse of a giant, gaping maw and spindly hooked arms with three claws grasping before she raised her hand in a panic and fired off her Icy Shards, hoping for the best.

A dozen or so shards of ice jetted through the water, and with the creature advancing rapidly, they didn’t have to travel far before they sank into its face. The shards pierced its eyes, embedded in its open mouth, and ripped at its cheeks and forehead. Olivia watched the large eel creature thrash and then begin to sink, wisps of blood rising in the dark water.

She knew that fish were sensitive to smell in water and that this blood would possibly draw the other creatures, so Olivia darted forward through it and tried to make a run for the next doorway. Once again, she was pleasantly surprised to find that she wasn’t followed; when she looked back, she saw a flurry of activity near the dead eel creature and realized that the smaller ones were eating the big corpse. Not wanting to waste time, Olivia turned and hurried to the next room.

A different sight waited for her through the next doorway. She could see into the next room and didn’t note any movement, but she also couldn’t see another exit. When she moved a bit closer and peered into the submerged room, she caught a shimmer of light in the corner of her eye, and when she looked up at it, she realized there was open air above, about three feet higher than the door.

Olivia had already had to renew the Energy flowing to her Elemental Form twice. Each time, it was more difficult and seemed to take more Energy, so she was both glad and trepidatious about this new development. Deciding to err on the side of caution, she hurried through the doorway, glided to the farthest, darkest corner, and then very slowly rose up, so just the top of her head poked out of the water.

She was in a dark pool with a strangely sandy beach on the far side. A lantern burned very dimly from a hook in the wall next to a closed door, and an enormous lizard reclined in the sand near the gently lapping water. Anywhere Olivia chose to emerge from the pool would be three or four paces at most from the lizard. Bracing herself for the chill, she let her water Elemental Form drop; she wanted to hide here and wait for it to come back off cooldown so she could use a different one to face the lizard.

The water was cold, but not enough to steal her breath, and though she began to shiver, she treaded water there in the dark corner for several minutes. When she felt her spell come off cooldown, she very slowly, carefully swam to the far corner of the little beach, trying to keep from splashing the water.

When her hands and knees bumped into the sandy stone, she pulled herself up, keeping her eyes on the lizard. So far, it hadn’t reacted to her and seemed to have its eyes closed. This close, she could see it was gray-green overall, with tiny yellow and orange nodules along its snout, neck, and back.

Olivia didn’t fancy herself a violent person nor a killer, but she didn’t want to give the lizard a chance to leap up and snap her leg off in its huge maw. Whispering softly, “I’m sorry about this,” Olivia held out her palm and went for broke with a Plasma Wave. The superheated electrical plasma arched out of her palm in a wave of crackling blue devastation. It widened as it gained distance, and by the time the wave of plasma hit the lizard, it was three feet wide. It vaporized the lizard’s flesh and boiled the muscle and blood beneath it.

The lizard reflexively bounded into the air, its mouth open in a hideous shrieking hiss. Olivia tracked its movement with her hand and finished cooking it as it hissed and rolled and thrashed back from her. When her spell ended, the creature was a blackened, steaming husk. Olivia felt very guilty about killing the lizard. Something about it differed from the other monsters she’d slain in the dungeon. It seemed more natural, perhaps. It hadn’t been a swarm of aggressive spiders, an ooze, or a ghastly fish with a humanoid head. It had seemed to suffer real pain and terror at her attack.

Olivia shook her head, pushed the thoughts to the back of her mind, and moved toward the door. She was about to reach for the handle when she caught sight of something out of the corner of her eye. She walked over to where the big lizard had been sleeping and saw the curve of something pale yellow poking out of the sand.

She gently pushed the sand aside with her boot toe and revealed a large yellow egg with pale brown speckles. Olivia knelt down and gently smoothed away the sand with her hands, and by the time she was done, she’d revealed five of the rubbery, round eggs. Not knowing what else to do with them, she put them into her storage ring.

That accomplished, she stood and walked over to the door. It wasn’t waterlogged or broken, and it smoothly glided over the sandy ground when she pulled on it. Olivia stepped through into a stone corridor about fifteen paces long and ending in another identical door.

She wasn’t sure what to expect beyond this door; was it the fourth or fifth room? She didn’t know if the submerged room leading up to the sandy beach room was one space or two. Her Elemental Form was ready, and she had plenty of Energy, so she pulled open the door a few inches and peeked through.

This room gave the impression of being much more extensive than any others on this level of the dungeon. That wasn’t what stood out to Olivia, though; rather, it was the vegetation and the high ceiling with a light resembling a noonday sun. Moisture hung in the air like a tropical jungle, and the ferns and undergrowth crowded a narrow dirt-covered trail that led away from the door. Olivia didn’t like that there was so much foliage around; how could she know if something was about to jump out at her? She was tempted to take on her earth-attuned Elemental Form but decided to hold it at the ready; instead, she summoned a ball of rock and willed it to orbit her body, prepared to intercept any attacks.

Damp fern leaves left trails of moisture on her hands, sleeves, and face as she pushed through the narrow path, trying to avoid making a ruckus. She’d traversed about thirty yards when she saw a break in the dense undergrowth ahead and saw something colorful dart past the spot where the trail broke through. She tiptoed to the last solid-looking tree before the open space and tried to peer around the trunk.

Olivia had just poked one eye around the rough, green, and yellow bark when a tremendous trumpeting roar sounded, and a feathered, horn-covered head bulldozed into the tree. It split the wood down the middle and launched Olivia, who’d been leaning against it, flying through the air to smash into another tree. She crashed through the branches, painfully scratching her back and arms, even through her tough jumper.

When she landed, Olivia was almost upside down, and her head and shoulders dug a furrow in the soft dirt as she finally slid to a stop. She could feel the ground shaking as something big stomped toward her, so Olivia, still slightly dazed, cast her earth Elemental Form. Her skin had just hardened to gray-brown rocky flesh when a massive beak snatched her up and, shaking her about like a ragdoll, carried her through the trees and into the big clearing.

Olivia could feel the huge, sharp edge of the beak grinding into her, but it wasn’t terribly painful, and she didn’t think it was making much progress through her hardened flesh. She wondered if the creature was trying to kill or just carry her; it certainly hadn’t held back when it smashed into the tree she’d been hiding behind. Maybe it already thought she was dead.

She tried to look around, but the creature seemed to be trotting around the clearing in a way that made Olivia think of her old retriever when she pranced around proudly with her favorite chew toy. She began to grow dizzy, trying to focus on the details of the clearing, and instead just let her eyes move with the creature’s bouncing gait. She was in a clearing maybe fifty yards wide, surrounded by ferns and trees, and she thought she caught a glimpse of a small pool of water at one end.

“Hey, how long are you going to shake me around? Are you trying to kill me?” Olivia didn’t expect an answer and was starting to get worried; she couldn’t maintain her earth form forever, and this thing would cut her in half if she let it drop. Every now and then, it would shake her in such a way that she’d see part of its body: long red and yellow talons, bright red, blue, and yellow tail feathers; was this thing a giant rooster?

Olivia decided she couldn’t delay anymore and triggered her Elemental Bomb spell, using fire Energy like before, because she knew what to expect from it. Her vision went orange and red for a moment, and she felt the warm wave of Energy pour through her stony flesh, then she was falling to the soft turf, the roaring of flames, and the thud of a colossal body accompanying her.

Olivia sat up, shaking her head to clear the ringing from her ears, and looked over her shoulder. A giant, brightly feathered, headless corpse was lying not five feet from her, its truncated neck smoldering and black. Bits of feather, bone, flesh, and blood began to shower down on her then, and she covered her head, though she still wore her rocky earth form. Olivia stood and scampered away a few feet, just as a torrent of Energy flooded into her.

“That had to bring me close to a level,” she said, savoring the exuberance and positive emotions that always came with an influx of Energy. Olivia walked around the giant, colorful corpse toward the little pond on one end of the clearing. There, nestled among some intertwined branches, she spotted a bronze, metal chest about the size of a big shoebox. “I guess that settles it; this was the fifth room.”