There’s a sudden horrible sound, and I startle awake, panickedly looking around to find the source among the previously dozing, but now agitated wolves. And Tåke. When did she get here?

“Get off of me you big lump!”

I fumble to get my phone out of an inner pocket and I regret forgetting to set my alarm tone back to something not entirely obnoxious after changing it to make sure I would 100% not miss it. There, stopped. Ugh, I put it in that pocket so that no one could steal it, not to make it so hard to turn it off.

“Sorry guys, my fault.”

Then again, with the judgemental look a few of them gave me before lazily walking away they already knew that.

“Hi Lars!”

“Hi Tåke. Hi Tåke’s pack members. Are you good?”

“Yes, I am good!”

“Where have you been?”

“Not city, far, big forest. Much food! Funny flower!”

I take the bond she offers, taking control of it and improving it slightly. They went pretty far up north, huh. They met a few people, but mostly stayed out of their way, good. Ran away from some monster they couldn’t defeat… I should notify Thomas about that. Okay, you can have your hug, you’ve indeed been a good girl.

I stretch before grabbing my bags, mentally signalling to her where I’m going, and watch in fascination as they communicate with touch, motions, a word here and there, and a bit of magic in what I assume to be a nascent language of sorts.

Tåke and two of her male pack members follow me as I exit the Den, and by the time we reach the lake, the heavy fog and light rain has us soaked, not that it matters. I simply walk across the surface, looking back to see the wolfkin seemingly dancing with springy steps, covered in Mist and Water.

When I reach about the middle of the lake I stop to take in the experience. The fog creates a heavy silence as it dampens all sounds, and it’s almost dreamlike how, for the moment, the only things in existence are the four of us and this still lake, disturbed only in the edges of my magic and where the wolfkin takes their dancing steps.

I close my eyes. I immerse myself in the quiet.

Tåke end the moment by grabbing my arm, and I give her a smile and a pat on the head before moving on. I can barely see the faint outline of the shore and trees in the distance when I reach the dive point.

“I’m going underwater.”

My voice sounds muffled in the fog. Hm, has the effects of the Mist been expanded here, via the natural fog? Well, it shouldn’t be a problem, I don’t imagine there’s that many people who are out in this weather who would actually be affected by the redirection. Meanwhile, Tåke just looks at me, and once I mentally share what I’m about to do her ears and tail drops further.

“Don’t go.”

“I know you’ve missed me, but it will be fine. Here, hug.”

I slowly pet her slightly ruffled fur and let her have this moment.

“I’ll stay with you afterwards. I can groom you if you want.”

“Yes! Groom. Have comb.”

I push away to look in her face, giving her an honest smile fueled by warmth and fluffiness. She’ll be more fluffy after I groom her, so that’s a win-win.

“See you later.” I say as I take control of the bubble of air around me and start to submerge.

“Bye bye!”

“-supposed to make one, we have nothing to go by. We’re just doing it wrong.” Says Jasper in an almost-shout.

“Calm down.” Sensei urges, clearly mediating. “Lars was the first here, why not ask what he knows?”

“But he’s not here yet.”

“Yes he is,” I correct Jasper as I round the corner, “But how did you know?”

All eyes, including the couple’s turn to me.

“It is not only magicians who can sense what’s around them.”

“Oh, so you managed to find an equivalent to mana perception?

“No, I simply heard your footsteps.”

“Oh.” I should have expected that?. “Actually what was it that you wanted to ask me about?”

“We need to make a-”“Did you find-”

Jasper and the woman starts to talk at the same time, before being shut up by a look from Sensei.

“Explain what we’re talking about, from the beginning.” he says to the boyfriend.

“Uh, yeah, we got here a while ago to try that dance-lock for the big door, and we did all the steps-”

“All of them? Are you sure you just can’t find the next one?”

“Well, we thought of that, but there was this… sound. A deep sound, like something happened. We looked into it, and there’s a slot for a key.”

“Wait, a keyhole? Where?”

“Right here.”

I look at where he points, then look some more.

“Uh, nope, not seeing any keyholes.”

“Well, it’s not actually a keyhole in the door, but there’s a circular slot where you need a key.”

“Still not seeing it. Maybe you need ki? How does it look?”

“It’s circular, we think it might be a ring this big, and would probably have a ki-enchantment.”

“Wait, a ring with ki in it? Hang on…”

I rummage through the ancient forgotten depths of my spatial bag, but manage to find the small bracelet by the void it leaves in my mana sense.

“Could it be this thing?”

They just look at each other, and I swear Sensei looked hella smug for a moment. Then, the girlfriend suddenly snatches the ‘key’ and turns to the door.

“Wait!”

“What?”

“Do you have any idea of what’s on the other side? Because if that is indeed a key, and the doors open if you use it… What then? Do you know what’s on the other side?”

“Oh. Oooh. I can’t believe I got reprimanded by you for that!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“No offense, but-”

“I’ll just stop you there, any sentence that starts with that is likely to be offensive.”

And so we end up discussing what might be on the other side, after Sensei studies the door and key and concludes they probably go together. Given how safe this part is, we all agree that whatever is on the other side other side is probably not going to instantly murder us, but it wouldn’t be out of place to have… harsher ‘tests’ on the other side, if the water elemental and dance-locks are tests on this side.

Then again, for all we know this temple might be constructed to keep some monster sealed, in which case we might already have weakened the seal enough for it to escape if that kind of stories is anything to go by. On the other hand, we have four pretty strong cultivators and a magic user who is consistently put in ‘top 10’ clickbait lists about magic, but who also feels kinda useless after experiments revealed the cultivators are practically immune to direct magic influence.

For tools and weapons, I usually carry around the spearstaff, mostly because I haven’t bothered putting it away, and now is no exception. Also, like they have an insane resistance to mana, I can effortlessly resist their ki, and indirect uses of magic works just fine.

In the end we decide we could probably at least escape if need be, but if there was something we needed to escape from and we did, that thing would now be free to at least roam the temple, if not escape into the wider world. And that’s assuming there’s just one big bad and not some horde of evils.

Before we come to a conclusion on that, there is a deep, reverberating… sound, more felt than heard, and a moment later, a small burst of mana.

“Woah, did you feel that?”

“Yeah, it sounded almost like when we finished.”

“No, there was a burst of mana just after that, and I wondered if there was something like that for ki as well?”

There wasn’t.

“Huh, well, it came from the entrance.”

“You know that thing with boss rooms where the door closes behind you?”

I glare at Jasper before rushing back to the entrance, coming to a near stop as I round the last corner.

“What, did it close?”

“No, hold my spear.”

I jog the last few steps, crouching next to the prone form. Eyyup, that’s her alright.

I flip her onto her back, then drag her lower body through to the other side the mana- and water-blocking barrier. A moment later her eyes focus and she turns to me.

“Hi Lars! Thanks!”

I put a hand to my forehead.

“Leda…”

“Tåke said you went here, and you said you’ll take me here, but I forgot about the barrier. Tehee!”

“That was admittedly kinda cute, but… Nah, I don’t really have any reason to deny you from coming here, but how are you gonna manage that with the barrier?”

“Oh, that’s easy! Can you move out of the way?”

“Wha-” I start, before my brain catches up and I back off, retrieving my spear from Jasper as Leda’s main form peeks her head through the barrier.

“So, uh, with Leda around it should be fine, especially if the door scan be locked again. If no one has any complaints, you can put the key in.”

None? Alright. I motion for the girlfriend to use the key, as I can’t actually see this keyhole they claim is there. She reaches out, slightly to the left of the split between the doors, above a matching mark, and the ring remains floating when she withdraws her hand.

But nothing happened.

So either the key is not the correct key, we’re using it wrong, or they need to do the dance again, but the latter is the easiest to test, so that’s what they do. The girlfriend had the idea of using a song to synchronize their movements, and the song they’ve picked, some instrumental-only, ethnic-sounding thing, fits surprisingly well for the location and movements.

Meanwhile in the popcorn row (since this will take a while) I inspect Leda’s new form. Well, it’s her usual main form, but with arms instead of wings. On my instructions she makes some other tweaks to make it easier to walk around, as the wyvern form isn’t exactly made for terrestrial movement. Meanwhile her puppet is sitting on her back eating actual popcorn and watching.

｢{Amused, hungry}Where did you even get that?｣ I send, as not to disrupt the dancers.

｢{Proud}I bought it! Want some?｣

And so we look on as they finish the dance, upon which we hear/feel that deep sound again. Leda offers some for them, too, and after they have caught their breath and we’ve gotten ready, Sensei places the key in its slot.

And nothing happens.

“Well that’s a bit awkward. Uh, do you have to do that again?”

The couple both groan at that.

“Uhh, guys?” Leda says, pointing to her main body.

Oh, did she-?

“You just push it.”

Yep, she did.

“But we tried that, and it didn’t work, even with all of us using our full force!”

“You tried without the key.”

I walk up to the door Leda pushed, and apply just a little bit of force.

“Yeah, you guys are either really weak, magic is cheating, or, of course, the key was, well, the key.”

Since we’ve come this far, I push open both doors to the point where we can see what’s on the other side and-

“Oh- my.”

“What?” someone says behind me, as I open the doors all the way.

Then they all echo some variation of my statement. At least I’m not the one who invoked a deity here.

Just to make sure, I push the door easily, then remove the key and try again.

“Guys, if we remove the key we can’t move the doors. I’m gonna keep the key, so that we don’t get stuck here.”

They barely seem to acknowledge this as they exit and look around, and after pocketing the ‘key’, I follow after them. I don’t feel the distortion of walking through a portal as I pass the doors, meaning that what we came from is physically part of wherever we are right now. And this place is certainly a sight!

Leading from the doors is, for lack of a better term, bridge, made of almost organic-looking white stone. At least, I think it’s stone. Either way, after a few meters it ends in what from here looks to be a giant flat ring, encircling us. The edges of that, in turn, have decidedly organic-looking structures going up and then over us, forming a dome.

The dome is by no means solid, being made of strands of the white material, varying in thickness and length and with large openings in between, but it still appears to hold the water out. Or perhaps I should say the sea, as a quick taste reveals it to be salty, and Leda confirms that there’s air around fifty meters above us.

“I’m gonna look around.”

I lift myself off the ground and heading clockwise around the ring. The outside of the part we came from, what we know as the Water Temple, is also made of the white stuff. It connects to the top of the dome with more of the organic mesh.

There’s four more, uhh, buildings like it, arranged radially inside the ring. Between the buildings are bridges, leading to a central courtyard. The buildings we can see from our position appear to have two of those lifts at their back, and judging by the circular opening at the very top of the dome and the matching platform below, there’s a big one in the middle, too.

More importantly, there are other people here.