They blew through the next two rooms. Serenity grew more worried with each room they completed, because none of them had any of the smaller swarm-type enemies Nat and Lancaster mentioned. The third room had one larger enemy, while the fourth room had two - they were simply repeats of the first two rooms. If anything, they were easier because the group had more of an idea what they were doing.

There simply weren’t enough enemies. Lancaster was worried as well; he’d done the dungeon several times and he’d never seen this few enemies in the first four rooms.

Everything was explained when they finally came out of the tunnel into the fifth room. The fifth room wasn’t a single large room like the others they’d seen; instead, it was a more or less open area the size of several football fields. The dungeon had changed since the last group went through it.

To the left was a large open area that looked like a nice, grassy field, but a closer look showed ridges of rock with deep cuts between them running along the ground below the short plant cover. They were more or less perpendicular to the entrance. They looked sharp; even if they didn’t actually damage one’s feet, they wouldn’t be a stable surface to fight on, so they effectively blocked the area.

Straight ahead was dirt, but Serenity could see signs of dried mud. A bit of searching revealed a crude wooden spillway to the far left; a little water sloshed over it as Serenity watched. There seemed to be a set of spigots set about a foot down from the top of the spillway; Serenity expected that they could be opened by the dungeon, and probably would be when a fight reached a specific point - or perhaps simply when people reached the wrong place.

It looked like the ridges were there to channel the water into the middle of the room. It didn’t look like it would be very deep, but depths could be deceptive in a dungeon; Serenity had no way to know how much water was backed up behind the spillway, after all.

To the right of the path that led to the middle muddy area was a water-filled depression. If it had been anywhere other than a dungeon, Serenity would have been considering its swimming potential, but all he could think of here was that it must be where the water that didn’t become mud went.

There seemed to be two possible paths through the room. One was to hug the right wall; there was a narrow ledge between the wall and the beginning of the water-hole. Serenity could see a continuous path along the wall all the way to a tunnel. Going the other way around the hole wouldn’t be easy; shortly to the left of the tunnel was the exit for the water from the water-hole, and there was no path over its top.

The second path was to go forward and risk the mud and water. Serenity couldn’t tell if there was another exit past the muddy patch, but Serenity could see that the far end of the room was covered in wasps. He couldn’t tell the individual sizes; all he could tell was that there were three sizes. There was a single large wasp, three wasps that were a quarter the size of the big one, and more tiny ones than he could count.

If Serenity assumed the smallest ones were the hand-sized wasps he’d been told about, the medium wasps were about the same size as the person-sized ones they’d fought. Which meant that this was a significantly tougher fight than the previous four; even if Raz, Nat, and he could manage the swarms, the big ones would be difficult for Lancaster, Russ, and Rissa.

Serenity didn’t count Made. So far, she hadn’t done anything actually helpful in combat, and he didn’t expect that to change.

Serenity dismissed the tunnel from his thoughts. They couldn’t afford to leave a nest like this behind them as they went forward; it might not be able to come after them, but if it could and it happened to arrive while they were already in a fight, the consequences could be dire. They were going to have to handle it.

“Made, stop.” Nat’s voice grabbed Serenity’s attention and he looked for what was going on.

Made was sauntering forward, fifteen feet ahead of the next person. She didn’t stop until two steps later, when her right foot sank deeper in the ground than she was expecting and she tripped, landing on her hands and knees. She started swearing.

Serenity hurried towards her; this was supposed to be an escort, after all, even if he didn’t like the reporter. As he yanked her to her feet, he heard the squeal of metal against metal - perhaps there was rust? Serenity turned towards the spillway and saw water rushing through the spigots. He didn’t wait for Made to get herself together; he simply picked her up and hurried back, right behind the others who had been in front.

Made thumped her fists on Serenity’s shoulder as she yelled at him. “Put me down you overgrown bird!” was the least derogatory thing she said and Serenity swiftly tuned her out. Once he was back with the group, he turned and let her slide to the ground. He could see a wall of water moving slowly along the ridges; it was nearly to the path when he turned to face it. It wasn’t anywhere near the group, but he hadn’t wanted to risk stopping too close.

“Did you want to get left in the water?” Serenity asked the muddy reporter. She watched the water, then glared at him but didn’t say anything.

Serenity turned towards the rest of the group. “Does anyone have a way to attract the attention of those bugs? If we could get some of them to come over here where it’s dry so we can fight them in small numbers, that seems like the best plan.”

No one had any ideas of how to do that. They weren’t moths to be attracted by light, after all; no one was certain if wasps liked light, but they didn’t really think so.

“Then we can either try to run through the mud and beat the water - I bet that’s the expected path; it looks like the water isn’t all that wide - or we can go over it. Does anyone have any other options?” Serenity looked around the group.

No one spoke up for a moment. The uncomfortable silence was broken by Nat when she asked, “Does that mean you can fly?”

Serenity looked at her and realized that her camera was pointed directly at him. Was this another interview question?

Probably. It wasn’t a problem to answer, at least. “No. My wings aren’t nearly big enough, and I don’t have hollow bones. Even if they were big enough, I doubt I’d be able to fly. I’ve been thinking about magic that could make it possible, but I haven’t worked out anything for true flight yet. The most I can manage so far is really big jumps.”

Nat held up her hand in a thumbs-up. Serenity doubted the camera could see it, but that was enough for him.

“Right, then. I’m thinking that over is the better option, but it means that we’ll all have to group up and jump together. I can lower gravity temporarily, but only very close to where I am.” It wasn’t anything close to a full explanation of the spell he’d be using, but it was good enough for now. This would be going on the Internet, after all, and Serenity didn’t want to reveal his full capability.

More than anything, he didn’t want anyone trying to build their own gravity bomb. He could think of many ways it could go wrong. What if someone linked it to a ley line? There wasn’t anyone on Earth other than himself who should know how to do that yet, but the last thing Serenity wanted was someone accidentally turning the planet into a black hole, even temporarily. It probably wouldn’t work like that, but the idea was enough to make Serenity cautious.

“3 … 2 … 1 … GO!”

They all jumped at (almost) the same time; it was close enough, at least. Serenity had his wings folded close behind him so that they wouldn’t create any extra wind resistance. A seven-person long jump was silly enough already.

“It’s too bad you can’t film this. I bet it’d be great.” Rissa commented as they soared over the mud.

Nat laughed. “That’s what cheap remote cameras are for. They don’t last long in a dungeon - that’s why I didn’t bring a drone camera - but for this? It’s worth the sacrifice. I’ll trigger it to transmit the footage when we land; if we’re lucky, it’ll catch part of the fight and survive. Probably won’t; we’d have to be really fast.”

“What kills them?” Rissa sounded confused. “I don’t think anything would eat them…?”

“We don’t know. Cameras just don’t stay where you put them, they disappear.”

They were going to go too far. Serenity increased the downward pull of gravity a little; he couldn’t change it too much without risk, but a little should be fine. He wanted to shift it to slow them down, but he hadn't set up the spell to be able to change axis on the fly; he'd have to consider that if he ever did this again. As they passed the spot he’d intended to land at while still ten feet in the air, Serenity increased gravity a little more. They’d land about five feet farther in than he’d wanted, but it would probably still be fine.

Inches above the ground, he reduced gravity again. A softer landing should help. It wouldn't really make much difference, since velocity was more important than acceleration for how hard they'd hit, but perhaps it would help a little?

As he landed, Serenity steadied Rissa then released the spell, relieved. Carrying that many people for that long hurt and had drained most of his mana as well.

Lancaster and Nat yelled as they landed. Fortunately, Nat was on one end of the group, so when she went over, she didn’t take anyone with her.

Nat was worried about her camera; she’d had it out for the jump, unable to resist the temptation to record a real superjump. When she landed, it was off balance and she converted it to a roll, ending up curled around the camera, lying on her back. “Oh thank heavens. Still running.”

Lancaster landed hard instead of rolling. “Rissa? I twisted my ankle. I think it’s just a twist, but can you check it anyway?”

Serenity watched the wasps in the distance. None of them paid any attention to the group as they recovered from crossing the flood zone.

The ground in front of them was much nicer than that behind them; it was covered in short grass, and Serenity didn’t see any obvious hazards. He could only assume that the flooding area was a trap of some sort, probably to discourage people from coming this way.