The gate opened onto water.
Victor was in.
Not flooding — controlled, deliberate, the dungeon's architecture designed around it. The entry corridor was submerged to the knee, the floor sloping gently downward into chambers where the water level rose progressively. The walls were pale sandstone, porous and water-stained in long vertical streaks, and the ceiling dripped in a continuous soft percussion that echoed strangely in the enclosed space.
Victor noted the water immediately and noted also what it meant for fire application — not impossible, not at all, but requiring more output to overcome the environmental resistance. Water absorbed heat. Fire in a flooded dungeon was a conversation about volume.
He would manage.
