Lillia skipped over a lot of the explanation about how the Knighting worked. Firstly, she didn't know exactly what would happen to the girls and didn't want to promise something she couldn't deliver to people who were still considering eating her. Secondly, she still wasn't 100% sure how it all worked. Most of her skills gave everything away upon introspection, but the 'Rulebreaker' part of [Emergency Knighting] had retained a sparse description from the moment she'd gotten it.

The twins—though Spinna was very clear that she was the older of the two—listened to the entire explanation, nodding along and occasionally interjecting with their own commentary. Throughout, Lillia kept trying to guess how old they were. It was unclear whether they were younger than she was or if she'd acted exactly like them before getting tossed into the dungeon.

Or was it until her aunt had taken over?

Then, right at the end, when Nicole had taken a leg off the Black Beast—ew—and they'd agreed to join Lillia's party and receive a class, they hit a snag.

"I name you knight—"

"You name me WHAT?" Spinna asked, slapping away Lillia's hand mid-ceremony.

Lillia didn't finish her incantation. The skill never activated.

"I told you what was going on. I was giving you a class. That was how you were going to get the Princess Class and get all the pretty dresses that I have."

"A gross knight?" Spinna asked. As she spoke, Nicole had stopped eating and snapped her attention back to the conversation. "I don't wanna be a gross knight. I want to—"

"No! It doesn't make you a knight. The first person I used it on became a blacksmith."

This would have been so much easier if Havoc were here. He'd have a way to explain this to someone who didn't get it. He'd had to explain a lot of things to Lillia like that.

"That's even worse. Those are those guys who taste like soot," Nicole said.

"Yeah."

"At least that's what Mom said."

"Yeah!" Spinna echoed as she scuttled back from Lillia, pulling some of the thread off the wall and weaving it between her fingers. "Why are you trying to trick us into becoming not-princesses?"

"I'm not."

"We thought you were nice."

"I am," Lillia said. "I just didn't say that it was called knighting because—"

"Because you want to be the one princess," Nicole said. "You don't like that our Mom is a queen and you wanted to—"

"What? No."

"Yeah, she's just jealous of Mom and was trying to trick us," Spinna said.

"I'm not jealous of your Mom. I just—" Shoot, shoot, shoot. She was losing control of the girls fast. She'd been making so much progress. If she got Nennia's daughters into her party, then she would have to let them through. She'd been so close.

"Spinna, Nicole, I was just bad at explaining things. It happens. It—"

"You're lying. You just wish you were as pretty as Mom, and so you were going to try and make us gross," Spinna said.

"Yeah. You're all covered in webs and dirt," Nicole said. "You might not be a princess at all."

"Hey! I was just falling down a dark hole, and I'm not supposed to be in a dungeon like—"

"Mom lives in the dungeon, and she's beautiful! You're just jealous of—"

"Why would I be jealous of Nennia? She's a scary, gross, weird spider."

Two gasps were hardly a chorus, but they were a majority.

Lillia slapped her hands over her mouth like she could somehow catch the words and shove them back inside. She didn't even mean every part of that. Nennia was weird and certainly a spider, but she couldn't call her gross, not compared to the rest of the dungeon and—

"MOM!"

"Wait, no!" Lillia said, but it was far too late. Just like she couldn't shove her argument back down, once Nennia had been called, there was no putting that…spider back in the box.

The metaphor broke down, but so had negotiations.

"We were only eating that yucky beast instead of you because you were nice!" Nicole said.

"But you're not very nice at all," Spinna added.

"I didn't mean it." Behind Lillia, the threads of silver glittering in her robe's firelight twitched as something above moved along them. "I was just angry at the fight and—"

"Mom! She's down here!" Spinna called.

Lillia whirled with the summons, twirling around as Vianaffir manifested in her hand. Just as the pommel brushed against her fingertips, the blade struck chitin. Spinna had raised one of her front legs to block the attack.

"Hey! See? You are mean!"

"Girls."

"Come here!" Nicole said as she leapt off the web behind Lillia, careening through the air with her arms outstretched. Webbing billowed out behind the young spider as she flew, spinning into a net on command.

"Oh, shoot."

Lillia dove to the side, but it wasn't enough. The net spread out wide as Nicole threw it, and the sticky strands of silk snatched each of Lillia's limbs, coiling around them in a hundred little impossible ways as the young spider directed them.

With her legs suddenly bound, Lillia wiggled on the ground, trying to force her way out.

"Got her!"

"Woah! That was so easy."

"I don't know why Mom likes fighting so much. That was boring."

Spinna lowered the leg that had blocked Vianaffir and scuttled over to Lillia, scooting in close to leer over her. "Maybe she's just really bad at it. I don't think Mom ever fought her."

"Your Mom is gonna be really upset if you don't let her fight me," Lillia said. There was no logic to the argument, but she didn't have many options.

"Come on. If she wants to fight you, she can just let you go," Nicole said.

"Yeah, that was pretty clear. Plus, I don't think she's missing much," Spinna added. She stepped up onto Lillia, triumphant.

That was going to have to be close enough.

Lillia snapped the two pieces of chitin in her palm twice, and her dress shot outward, the world vanishing into darkness as fabric transformed into the brilliant array of knives that was her second-level chitin dress.

[Chitterpede Waltzing Gown - Level 2 - Princess Class Exclusive]

[Provides a minor (+3) defensive bonus against slashing and piercing damage.]

[When a blow is narrowly avoided or absorbed by the Princess or a nearby ally while this item is equipped, the Princess gains a stack of Deadly Dance.]

[Deadly Dance - For a short time, attacks with bladed weapons are followed by a scale shooting from this dress toward the target.]

[Born in a process that discovered beauty the chitterpede didn't know it had in life. In death, it demands attention, shimmering to attract all eyes to its wearer.]

The knife-like gorgets of the gown shredded through the webbing as Lillia thrashed on the floor, tearing apart the net that was holding her down. One of her wild kicks caught Spinna's leg and knocked it out from under the spider.

Unfortunately, she had several others to keep her upright.

"Hey! Stop it!" Spinna said as she stomped down.

Lillia rolled as the spider spoke, unable to see what was going on but understanding that it meant trouble. At some point, she maybe should have stopped, but she kept going, end over end and side over side, with her knifey underskirt sparking along the floor.

Eventually, she reached the webbing beyond their little clearing, and slowly her rolls slowed. Layer upon layer of silk piled up upon each edge of the dress, turning her whirlwind stabbing tantrum into something closer to a ball of very gross yarn.

How far away had she gotten? It had to be quite a bit—she—

"Are you done?" Nicole called from somewhere out in the pitch darkness. Her voice bounced off the walls a hundred times, making it impossible to tell where she actually was.

"You should stop going that way," Spinna said. "There's a big pit over there. You're just gonna fall again."

"Yeah, you'll die if you just run away in the dark."

Were they getting closer? Further? Did the girls know where she was, or was Lillia safe?

Of course she wasn't safe. There was a chance she was safer, though.

That said, the girls were right. No matter how far she ran in the darkness, she wasn't getting any closer to winning this fight. She could accept her fate and die in the middle of Nennia's lair, but she wasn't keen on getting eaten and wasn't confident that Nennia would allow her a quick death.

There was always the other way, but Havoc called it dishonorable and Lillia found the idea off-putting.

No, like usual, she was going to have to find a way to stand and fight.

Therein lay the issue, though. She couldn't run or fight blind, and without the knives to guard her, she wouldn't be standing for very long against the twins, let alone Nennia.

If only she'd charged the second-level Burning Spelldress before coming here, then she could have used [Backdraft] and set the whole place ablaze.

Which brought up a very dumb idea.

The girls had stopped talking, but Lillia could hear the click of their chitin legs against the floor. They were coming.

First, Lillia took a feather in her hand and snapped it in two. Her dress shrank away into the near-undergarments of the Ambusher Slip and Coat. Webbing tumbled off of her, falling away from the spikes that were no longer there as Lillia stood.

Second, she tore a piece of thundermite cloth and her shoes transformed into the pitch-black heels of the Thundersteps.

It didn't change much; everything was pitch black in here.

Finally, Lillia took a deep breath, because she didn't have many places to go, but she had to hope that Spinna had been lying about the pit.

Lillia dropped back down to the floor and changed back into the Waltzing Gown, returning to her haphazard impression of a meat grinder as she started rolling away from the girls again.

"Hey! I told you there was a pit back there! You're just gonna fall."

"Just stop!"

"Come on, that'd be no fun!"

Sparks flew, and Lillia saw the first echoes of bright yellow erupting across her heels. It was working.

By the wheat and silk, she was dizzy.

Lillia spun the other way, rolling toward the children—or at least where she thought they were—as fast as a princess could roll along the ground. Which, if Lillia could see anything, she would know was pretty damned slow.

Her triumphant whirling ended as a chitin leg stomped down in her path. The knife-like edges of her dress ground against it uselessly.

"Ow! Why is this dress so sharp? That's dumb," Spinna, her captor, said.

"Who made it? Is it pretty?"

"No. It looks all dumb and puffy."

Oh, that was it.

Yellow flashed across Lillia's heels. Even charged, the Thundersteps didn't cast much light, but it was enough to see a leg beyond the one holding her in place.

"Big dresses are cute!"

Lillia lashed out with a swift, somewhat pathetic kick. Lightning crackled as she struck one of eight shins. As the thunderous boom followed, it didn't even make Spinna flinch.

But crackling sparks scattered out in every direction.

And she only needed one to catch.

Lightning kissed a silver strand of thread that was hanging loose where Lillia had torn it from its place. That spark of lightning bloomed outward into light for a moment as the spark turned to a flicker, and a flicker became a flame.

Fire ran up the thread, slowly cutting through the pitch of darkness. Lillia locked onto all eight of Spinna's eyes as they went wide.

Fire engulfed the first web, and there was an infinite number to follow.

Lillia had met warrior princesses who were all warrior and no princess. They smelled like fur and weeks without soap. They had never really felt like princesses, no matter how many times her parents insisted that they were peers.

She had met old princesses who never got the crown from their mothers—whether because of siblings or otherwise—and had started hating the word. They were more hate than princess.

Lillia had never met a monster princess before, so she couldn't know which was the operative word in that title.

Appearance didn't help. Now that she was close, Lillia could see that the girls ran along the same thin tightrope between elegance and horror as their 'mother' did. They had long black hair rolling down their shoulders that looked as if it had been freshly brushed. They wore thin, luxurious woven silk that hung loose over their shoulders. Their nails were even painted black.

Or those nails were chitin, one of the two.

As long as you weren't looking them in their myriad red eyes or looking at the bottom halves of their bodies, you could mistake them for any random princess.

Which meant they had a princess's torso and hair. That was certainly more 'monster' than princess, wasn't it?

"She's just staring at us."

"That's rude."

"Yeah. It is. I thought she was polite."

"She was."

"But is she really staring at us?"

"Yes."

"But she has so few eyes. Does it even count?"

"May I speak?" Lillia asked. She'd held up her hand alongside the request, something she'd only ever done with her parents at the dinner table.

"Now you're being polite again," the one on the left said. There was probably a lot about their spider halves that would have differentiated the two girls, but Lillia didn't have the tools or the knowledge to hunt any of it; instead, she would need to rely on the fact that the one on the left had slightly shorter hair, and her bangs had been cut unevenly.

Also the hair might have been a different depth of black than her sister's, but it was impossible to tell by thread-fire light.

Lillia took silence as permission. "Hello. I am Princess Lillia and—"

"Ugh," the one on the right said.

"We know!"

"Well, we didn't know it was you."

"Not until you said you were a princess."

"Not many of those around here."

"Nope."

"Kinda just us. Most of the time, at least."

Lillia jumped in there. Each time the girls spoke and began their rapid volley of back-and-forth comments, they opened up new questions, but for some reason, Lillia focused on one. "Most of the time?"

"There's Pilla."

"Pilla gets quiet sometimes."

"Just waits for the reset."

"Doesn't eat."

"Doesn't have to."

"And Pilla's your sister?" Lillia asked.

"Older sister."

"Much older."

"Don't be mean."

"It's not mean if it's true!"

"Yes, it can be."

Rather than continuing to argue, both of the girls turned to look at Lillia at the same time. Somehow they even managed to blink in unison, though it was never all eight of their eyes at once.

"Okay." Lillia took half a step back on the cave floor. She kept waiting for the unsteady wobble of webs beneath her feet; she hadn't ever spent much time on the 'ground' in Nennia's lair. "So, if you're two of Nennia's daughters—"

"How old are you?" the girl on the right said.

"Spinna, you can't just jump in like that. It's rude. Mom told you to wait your turn."

"I thought it was my turn," the one on the right—apparently Spinna—said.

"It obviously wasn't."

"Plus, why would she get a turn? She's food."

"She's a princess."

"And we're not eating princesses," Lillia added hopefully.

Neither of the girls turned to acknowledge her.

"Princess or not, until we decide she's not food, we should use food rules," Spinna said.

"If we're using food rules, then we can't ask her questions, because Mom would call it playing with our food."

"Hm. Good point." Spinna turned back to Lillia. Now that there had been a moment to see the differences between the two, Spinna had a lovely intricate lace earring.

Lillia wasn't quite sure she wanted to know how she got her ear pierced.

"I am sorry for interrupting, Princess Lillia," Spinna said. "But I would like to know how old you are."

"Uh."

"Uh?" the unnamed girl to the left echoed.

"Let her think! It might be a hard question for her!" Spinna said.

"Her age? That's a hard question?"

"Maybe! I don't know how good she is at math."

The answer regarding Lillia's math was that she was better than most people thought, but probably a little worse than she ought to have been for someone who was eventually going to have to listen to Treasure Master's commentaries on the land.

"It's just a weird question because I don't know how long I've been in the dungeon," Lillia said. "I was almost twenty-one when I fe—Someone threw me in here, but I don't know how long it's been since then."

"How can you not know?" Spinna asked.

"Yeah, Mom said you adventurers get a count of how many days it's been every day."

"But sometimes an adventuring day is longer than a day outside the dungeon," Lillia said. "Sometimes it's shorter."

"No, they're not," Spinna said. "Don't be silly."

"Days are days."

"Just a moment," Lillia cut in, focused on the sister to the left. "I'm sorry, but we haven't been introduced and it's making this conversation much harder to follow and will make it much harder to explain to someone later if I need to for some reason."

"Oh, this is Spinna."

Lillia already had that name, but she said thank you anyway.

"And I'm Nicole."

"Nicole?"

"Nicole. Yes. Is that not a name where you're from?"

Lillia fully blinked several times before finding her verbal response. Havoc. Thorne. Eisel. Nennia. The Silencer.

Nicole.

One of those things was not like the other. There had even been a spider naming scheme up until that point.

"Do you think my name is weird?" Nicole's voice grew shrill with panic. "I told Mom it was weird once I could talk, but she kept telling me it was a name that humans would have, but you're a human and you think it's weird and now I know I have a weird name and—"

"I have a handmaid named Nicole back home," Lillia said to try to reassure her.

"I'm named after the HELP?" Nicole fully buried her head in her hands, spreading her fingers wide so they covered each and every eye. After a moment, she shrank in on herself, recoiling back from Lillia and tucking herself into a web just on the edge of Lillia's thread-light.

Once she was moving, it was lethally clear how much larger both of the girls were than Lillia. While Nennia's torso was slightly larger than hers, the girls' torsos were the same size as Lillia's, but the spider halves of their bodies still meant they would have dwarfed Lillia if they stood at full height.

Spinna looked back over her shoulder for a moment at her sister before shrugging. "Sorry about that. She thinks about it too hard. Mom named me Spinna, after all, like 'spin a web.'" She rolled her eyes as she spoke. "Think she just ran out of ideas after the first thousand kids."

"There are more than a thousand of you?" Lillia asked.

"Kids? Yes," Spinna said, "but unless you've got news for me, just the three girls. You don't get many girls."

There was no real way to word this that didn't sound offensive. "Among your species?"

"Just Nennia's children, as far as I know. Ain't really been outside the cave much and—Well, Mom ate Dad way back before I was even born so…" She looked down at the floor for a moment and bit her lip. She had fangs. "Yeah. I guess I don't know what we're called. Never really thought about it before."

"What do you call yourselves, then?"

"Well, Mom and all my sisters have names," Spinna said. "Do you just call your parents humans?"

"We—"

Before Lillia finished speaking, Spinna cut back in. "Oh. No. I'm sorry. You guys have parents, right? I just—I just assumed because this part looks the same." She waved at her top half. "That the rest of it worked the same."

"Oh, okay."

"So?"

"So?"

"So do you have parents?" Spinna asked. As she spoke, she folded her legs under herself and sat down on the floor. For the first time, one of the women in this room was shorter than Lillia.

That part felt like home.

"Not anymore," Lillia said.

"They died?"

Lillia nodded.

"Who ate who?"

"Pardon?"

"Do human moms eat human dads too? Or is it like a weird dad thing?"

"I—"

"I bet it's a weird dad thing and that's why you're so small. So you're easier to chew."

"Pardon, no," Lillia said. She shook her head to try to stop picturing one of her parents unhinging their jaws in an attempt to eat the other. "Neither of my parents ate the other."

"Oh, did you eat them? Is that how it works?"

"Humans don't eat each other."

"That can't be right. That sounds fake," Spinna said. She reached back behind her and pulled some webbing off the floor, only to begin weaving it in intricate patterns without bothering to look at her hands. "You've got to eat each other."

"We don't."

"But you look so tasty. Very chewable."

Lillia took a small step backward. "Thank you?"

"You're welcome! I guess it's a compliment, but I'm not really sure you should be taking it as one unless—Do you want to be eaten? I can do that if you want."

Nicole spoke up from the shadows. "Are we eating her now?"

"She said she wanted to be eaten."

"I most certainly did not," Lillia said.

"Okay, but you basically did and now I'm thinking about it," Spinna said. She stood back up, tossing the pattern she'd been playing with off and to the side. "Which kinda made me hungry so—"

"Hey. Hey, hey." Lillia backed up again. If she went too far, she'd be back in the web.

"It's fine. If you wanna come back down here, just ask Mom next time you come in. I'm sure she'll be happy to send you down and—"

"I don't wanna get eaten."

Lillia was out of steps backward to take, and Spinna was still slowly approaching. Her sister pulled herself out of the web in the shadows, lowering back down to the floor. Her eight red eyes shone in the light cast by the Inferno Spelldress.

Okay. She could do this. Nennia was too powerful, but these were two kids. That probably meant she could take them—and they were barely kids. Young adults, even, so Lillia didn't need to feel guilty about it.

"Hey. Stop backing away. You'll just get caught in the web."

"I don't want you to hurt me."

"It won't hurt. Our venom is numbing!" Nicole called. "It's how I pierced her ear."

Lillia knew if she summoned Vianaffir to her hand and started a fight now, it was all over. She'd be sent back to the Cathedral, which was fine, but if she attacked Nennia's children, there would never be a diplomatic solution to escaping the third floor.

Nennia would be a permanent mortal enemy.

She would need to fight her way past her every time she wanted to get down to the fourth floor with Havoc.

She needed to figure this out.

She.

"Wait!" Lillia had her arms covering half her face as Spinna drew close. Nicole was several steps behind.

Luckily, they listened to the plea.

"If you're hungry, I can feed you. Then can we still talk?"

"We can't still talk. You'll be dead," Nicole pointed out.

"Yeah, I don't know if you know what happens when someone eats you, because your parents never did it, but—"

"No, no. I have something for you." Lillia held out her hand. She'd planned to use this on Nennia if she scrambled her way out of the pit, but no amount of offerings would make up for hurting the princesses.

At least that was Lillia's best guess at how it worked down here.

The best guess was all she had to go off of.

Lillia held out her hand. "The beast back there. It's yours if you want to eat something and then—and then I think I can make you girls into princesses like me."

Lillia 'landed'. She didn't know where or how, but at some point she stopped falling.

In truth, she knew how it happened; she just simply wasn't interested in accepting how many separate webs she was tangled in at the moment. Plus, it was easy to ignore, considering she was in darkness so absolute it was easy to forget whether her eyes were open or closed.

On the upside, denial. On the downside, she would never see the other children coming.

Lillia tried to wiggle herself out of whatever bind she was in, but without seeing the braided strands of webbing, it was hard to tell which were in the way. That, and even if she untangled herself successfully, she didn't know how much further there was to fall.

Was there even a bottom?

"Well shoot."

After swinging, Lillia was slowly spinning in her webbed prison. She was probably getting more and more tangled with each rotation, but there wasn't much she could do about it. Or at least, she was going to have to do it in steps.

Lillia tried to get her hands together, but they were each too wrapped in their own ordeals to reach. In fact, she was well-splayed, like Nennia had somehow calculated how she would land in the webs when she'd pulled the 'ground' out from under her.

"First things first. Let's not think about how gross this all is," Lillia said. Of course, a shiver immediately rallied, ready to shoot down her spine once the statement brought on realization. "Second things second. I should see."

Three burnmite cloths.

Usually, the dress would bloom outward from her, expanding in every direction and flowing with each movement. Due to her current predicament, the fabric stayed locked tight against her skin.

Luckily, even bound, the Inferno Spelldress's fiery stitching glowed bright enough to provide some light, enough to glisten off the thousand silver threads around her in a glittering cascade almost pretty enough to smother the horror of being upside down—apparently—in the Spider Queen's web.

[Inferno Spelldress - 3 x Burnmite Cloth]

[Searing Hot - Once per day, the Princess can empower her weapon strikes with fire damage for a short time. This effect ends if the Spelldress is removed.]

[Up to three times per day, prevents fire damage to the Princess. Fire damage absorbed this way recuperates the use of Searing Hot.]

Seeing was one item struck off the list of things Lillia needed to do to escape. Fire could have taken care of the rest—and probably sent Lillia back to the Cathedral for good measure—but, unfortunately, they'd already tested the Inferno Spelldress and discovered that her empowered sword did fire damage, but it couldn't ignite anything.

At the time, that had felt like a saving grace.

Something moved in the shadow beyond the glittering reflections in the web.

"Hey kids," she began. "It's your Aunt Lillia here. Or…I don't know if your mom calls me Aunt Lillia or just a friend or…Godmother of something? It's... I don't know if she talks to you at all."

She cleared her throat as the shadows continued to move.

"I know your mom and I are a little touch and go right now…but I don't think she'd like it if something happened to any of you. So if you could all just stay away while I figure this out, that would be lovely."

Nothing.

Lillia scanned the darkness, flicking her eyes back and forth to try to see something in the abyss of black beyond her ambient glow.

How scared would she have been when she first fell down into the dungeon if she'd ended up here? Would she have been a terrified, babbling little thing? Would she have even managed to make half a plan?

Had she really changed that much in forty days?

Or was it simply a matter of knowing that, whatever horrible things happened, they would be over as soon as she died and she'd be back in the…somewhat comfortable Cathedral.

Lillia Ashvalin was getting a little cavalier about death, a clear sign of mental stability.

"Alternatively, if you're open to listening, kids. You could let your Aunt Lillia down? Let me out of the web and I'll just go ahead and fumble my way out of here, if you don't mind."

There was nothing in response to that either.

"Bit of a big ask there. I get it."

While the spelldress had provided some light, Lillia was no closer to seeing the ground or understanding where she was. Every direction ended in a void of darkness. In fact, she'd fallen so far that she couldn't see the blue light of the cavern she had fallen out of.

It might have made sense, considering there was an entire castle and a savanna in some of the other rooms, but she hadn't expected Nennia's lair to be this big. Or at least, after crawling through it as much as she had, she hadn't expected to find herself in such a large somewhere she'd never been.

Lillia tried to bring her hands together again. That hadn't changed. If anything, swapping dresses had gotten her more stuck.

Following that logic, there was a world in which she could have tried taking everything off to escape, but that would mean touching all of this with her bare skin, which…ew.

No. Lillia was headed one way, and that way was down. If that ended horrifically on a stone floor, at least it meant this would all be over.

In the corner of Lillia's vision, the shadows began to move again. The webs binding her began to vibrate as something else moved along them.

"Okay, well, bye, I guess."

Lillia stretched her fingers out to the void below her.

[Tantrum]

Hooke flew from the space in front of her fingers and spun end over end, flying a whole several feet before ending up so tangled in webs that it ground to a stretching halt. A cascade of broken threads fell in its wake, and Lillia gasped as she dropped several inches, but didn't fall.

It was something, but she'd kind of been hoping for more.

Time for something more manual. Lillia summoned Vianaffir to her more-free hand and swung it once. Similarly to Hooke, it didn't get far before becoming so tangled that a cutting edge meant nothing. Still, the webbing holding her arm sagged as it lost support. Progress.

Lillia called Vianaffir back to her inventory and then reset it into her hand.

The webs that had been wrapped around the blade fell around her, and absolutely none of them got into her hair. None of them were tangled in there and matting it down, and she wasn't going to feel them on her neck later. Nope.

With a fresh blade, Lillia returned to cutting. Each swing and reset took down more of the webbing, until denial couldn't carry the load any longer and Lillia was stuck with the fact that she was going to be more spiderweb than princess by the time she escaped Nennia's lair.

Or killed Nennia, as was probably what she needed to do, but there was an order to her problems.

The next slash was followed by Lillia's shriek as she fell several feet, her left leg now almost completely free.

Okay, so she could cut herself free, but there was still the matter of what happened after. Escape didn't mean much if freedom meant free fall.

Lillia put Vianaffir away and pulled out the Amulet of the Creator. While she'd already used Cathria's summon for the day on her conversation in the Hunting Grounds, she still had someone else she could use for help.

"Hey. Uh. Sorry if you just fall and shatter, but…you come back. You know."

She tapped the centre of the Amulet and the Glass Spellmite popped into existence in front of her. For a moment, it floated impossibly, hanging in the air before Lillia, then, as soon as it looked down, it fell, vanishing into the darkness with a soft whistle.

Based on how fast the crack of glass against stone came, it didn't vanish very far.

"Glass Spellmite, I name you my champion."

Rose-gold glitter outlined the Spellmite. Below Lillia, just far enough that the glow of the Inferno Spelldress didn't illuminate it, was the ground.

This whole time, if she'd fallen, it would have hurt, but it wouldn't have been the end of anything. She'd tumbled from further heights several times, mostly from the castle walls post-trebuchet.

"You good there, buddy?"

The Glass Spellmite offered a thumbs-up.

"Little help?"

Unfortunately, despite jumping in an attempt to help, the Glass Spellmite was fully and completely 'a little guy,' and reaching Lillia was out of the question.

"And no volunteers from among the kids?" Lillia asked.

Something shifted in the webs beyond the darkness again, but outside of that, Nennia's children seemed happy to observe for the time being.

Whatever. Fine. Being an independent woman was the fucking worst.

Lillia restarted the process of hacking away at the bonds around her. With each cut, her situation became more precarious, with each slice feeling as if it would be the one that sent her tumbling down to the floor.

Twice she tried to shoo the Glass Spellmite away in case she landed on him, but both times, it'd eventually scampered back over after she almost dropped out of the web, jumping up to try to catch her.

The enthusiasm was infectious. Lillia swung Vianaffir a little too hard and almost took off her foot as she carved through the thickest braided rope wrapped around her leg. Suddenly, she was weightless.

Then she wasn't, because a new rope shot out of the darkness and wrapped around Lillia's leg.

"Hey! Come on! I just spent way too long getting out of that."

A second rope snapped around the throat of the Glass Spellmite, and then yanked hard, slamming it down to the side. It shattered on the floor.

"Catty!"

Lillia called Vianaffir back to her hand, fresh and free of webbing. Just as she was about to take out the new rope around her leg, a fresh coat of silk launched from the darkness and smothered her hand.

"Hey! Woah, woah. Stop, stop. Please!"

It had been hard, between the clinking of the Glass Spellmite—Catty—and the sound of her own overenthusiastic slashing, to hear anything out in the darkness, but now that there was only her heaving breath, Lillia could hear something, or someone, murmuring.

Over a series of back-and-forths, the murmuring conversation escalated from soft voices to whisper-shouting.

"She said please."

"Yeah, but Mom doesn't send anyone down here unless we're supposed to eat 'em."

"You're the one who told me to wait."

"Yeah, because the things Mom sends down here aren't usually pretty!"

"So, we just don't eat the pretty things?"

"I don't know. But do YOU wanna go ask Mom?"

"I'm not asking Mom. It's your question!"

"It's not my question. I just wanted to wait and see what she did."

"So we eat her."

"But now she's being polite!"

"We've eaten polite things."

"Yeah, but I didn't like it as much."

Lillia summoned Vianaffir to one hand, and then the Black Beast she'd never gotten around to offering Nennia flopped onto the ground below her with a wet plop.

The voices stopped.

"I don't know if I get an official vote," Lillia said, "but as another princess, I vote that princesses shouldn't be allowed to eat each other."

The webs around Lillia pulled tighter, and suddenly she was being reeled in. Slowly but surely, she was pushed through the darkness until the edge of her dress's glow revealed sixteen wide, red eyes staring at her.

Half-spiders, like Nennia.

On one hand, that made Lillia feel like she had a chance.

On the other hand, that brought up so many questions.

"Never mind the children, they're just curious, Princess," Nennia said as she hung suspended from the ceiling above Lillia. "They are accustomed to guests other than yourself."

Nennia's children were partway through disassembling Bronle. They had woven threads between the gaps in his plate, and some of the larger children were using them to make him dance. A collection of smaller spiders had run off with his hand at some point.

They were deep within Nennia's caverns now, after trudging through the webbed caves in search of her voice. Unlike most times they'd come to see the Spider Queen, Lillia had needed to climb up.

Bronle had been able to cut some of the webs out of her way, but that didn't mean Lillia wasn't a disaster tangle of a woman right now. No matter what she did, she would be sticky until she rested.

And feel like she were covered in webs for three days after.

There was a clatter behind Lillia as Bronle's leg gave out from under him. Three of Nennia's smaller children—though each still the size of an overfed cat—scampered forward and stole chunks from the disassembling knight.

Nennia watched the chaos over Lillia's shoulder and chuckled, covering her mouth to keep everything courtly.

"To what do we owe the pleasure, young princess? Your visits usually aren't so close together."

"Um," Lillia struggled to find the words with the clattering chaos behind her. Thankfully, there wasn't a true knight within Bronle's plate, or it would have been a horrifying scene. "I've come to seek counsel."

"Not a sparring session or a mercy killing." Nennia grinned at the second suggestion. "What novelty. What fun."

The Spider Queen slowly lowered from the ceiling. As she did, her torso stayed steady, guided by eight legs clicking against the stone. The hallway she'd met Lillia in was relatively narrow for her massive frame, but that kept the walls within reach.

There was no light within the tunnel itself. Only a flickering blue from hidden torches at the far end. Once Nennia was standing in front of Lillia, she blocked most of it. A hulking silhouette carved out of the ghastly light below.

"I knew you'd come to see me for my unique perspective eventually." For the first time that Lillia had ever seen, Nennia folded her legs under herself, 'sitting down' and leaving her just barely taller than Lillia. "A person can only kill for so long before seeing the beauty in the artwork they make."

It suddenly felt very hot. "Well, that's—"

"Right. The adventurers call it farming, don't they? And it's so very different from slaughter." Nennia offered an open palm to Lillia. "Come, tell Mother all about it."

Lillia cleared her throat. "I still don't like killing. Even when it's farming."

"We'll see how long that lasts, little princess," Nennia said. "I have found that once people get the taste for the challenge, they keep returning to it."

"I thought you hadn't talked to many people."

"I haven't," Nennia said. As she spoke, she reached up and pulled one of the threads off the wall, weaving the silk between her fingers. "But unlike myself, you grew up in court. You, of all people, should know that words are the last thing to reveal someone's true nature. They're so much easier to twist than—Well, I would say actions, but wouldn't that be trite."

"I haven't killed enough to make it a thing!"

"You're right, you certainly haven't," Nennia said. "And I won't stop you from discovering the beauty on your own. It wouldn't be appropriate for me to steal that experience from another warrior of noble blood."

None of that sounded nice. None of that was what Lillia wanted. She wanted to be out of here again.

"That's…very kind of you. Thank you." She cleared her throat. While Nennia was the closest thing she had to an aristocratic conversation partner, there were hints that she and Lillia ran in different kingdoms.

There were also trumpet and fanfare signals that they had different moral codes.

"So if it is not about embracing your truth, young princess, how can I offer counsel? Seeking a hand in marriage?"

"Well, Nennia, I was—pardon?"

"Seeking diplomatic ties between the kingdoms. That's the sort of silly little ritual you have. Isn't it?"

It wasn't often that Lillia got to be the one staring dumbfounded at her conversation partner. Usually, Havoc was shocked into silence by something she said.

"There are marriage alliances, but…and I wasn't promised to another prince because my aunt wasn't really in a hurry to give me any companionship, but…"

Lillia was doing an odd round of waffling with someone who could have just said, "I don't want to kiss a spider."

Nennia chuckled, feeling them both form Lillia's awkward spiral trap of politeness.

"What is your question, little princess?"

Time to cut right to the chase. "Can you let me through?" Lillia asked.

"As in past me in this tunnel? Where would you go? You hardly know your way around my lair unless…"

Nennia leaned in, even kneeling at Lillia's height. She loomed over the princess with sheer intimidation.

"Oh Lillia, don't tell me it's finally time. Do you think you can make it past me? Down to the fourth floor?"

A grin split across Nennia's face as she spoke.

"No. Which is why—"

"Good, because I do enjoy our chats, but I do have a job to do here, Lillia. I was trusted with guardianship of my domain and—"

"I was hoping you could let me through."

Nennia stopped. Something in the chitin on her legs clicked as she shifted her weight.

Quiet settled into the hallway, which was disconcerting. Usually, Nennia's lair had a constant hostile hum as the children moved through the walls. Now? Now they were all still. They were even leaving Bronle alone.

Nennia leaned in close. She was wearing the usual floral perfume that had always felt out of step with her monstrous form, but as she approached, Lillia could smell the iron on her breath more than anything.

Eight eyes held a stare longer than Lillia could ever hope to match.

"If you could just let me through, it would be lovely," Lillia said. "I wouldn't want to dishonor you by suggesting I could best you in combat, but I do need to keep going lower and—"

Nennia silenced Lillia with a single fingertip pressed against the princess' lips. It was deeply uncomfortable, but what was she supposed to do about it?

"Oh young little princess," Nennia said. "You are truly such a delightful change of pace for this sort of place."

Lillia wanted to squeeze words past Nennia's finger, but something in her gut told her that wasn't about to make anything better for her.

"And you know, I've taken a lot of joy in watching you grow, Lillia. It's been an interesting change from the same boisterous knights and rogues that come traipsing through here all the time."

That sounded okay?

"But…"

Oh no.

Nennia pulled her finger away from Lillia's lips, curling it so her nail caught in the princess as she did.

Lillia swallowed.

"When I told you that killing and fighting were my favorite things, little pet, I'm sorry to tell you, but I was lying."

Nennia stood.

"There is one thing I like even more, little princess, and it's watching that sparkle in your wide brown eyes fade. It's having you come back here, again and again, only to wake up in the cathedral knowing that you're no closer to escape."

"Nennia…"

"And now that you've gotten there. Now that you think you might have a chance? That will make it all the sweeter when, one day, someone else opens that door and I get to revel in the fact that you died cold, hopeless, and—"

Vianaffir, unfortunately, didn't reach all the way through Nennia's chest. Blood poured from the wound as the tip of the blade ground against her ribs.

Lillia gasped, almost like she wasn't the one who'd done it.

Nennia smiled. Even wider.

"Oh, so there is fight in you, little girl."

Lillia tore Vianaffir free and blood followed, splattering over the princess as she let out a soft "Eep."

"Eep indeed."

Lillia cracked the chitin just as Nennia lashed out with one of her front legs, the dress forming in the breath before the kick cracked against her ribs. Shards of the dress flew around the hallway as Lillia careened backward, catching and sticking in the webs that ran along the walls.

When Lillia hit the floor, she managed to catch Vianaffir in the webbing, pulling herself to a stop before she rolled down the hallway and into the web-covered darkness beyond.

As Lillia righted herself, Nennia stayed at the other end of the hallway, silhouetted in the ghastlight. She looked down at the wound carved in her chest and dipped her fingers into the blood before holding them out in front of her.

"You have gotten stronger, Princess Lillia. I don't believe you could have drawn blood before."

She walked forward with slow, deliberate steps. The webbing under Lillia's feet pulled and shifted with each of the Queen's movements, keeping her off balance.

"But I hope you know, we have a different relationship now…"

Lillia wrestled Vianaffir out of the webs and held it out in front of her, drawn and at the ready.

"I can't let my children see their mother as weak, and you made me bleed, Lillia."

Maybe that hadn't been that smart, but Nennia wasn't going to let her through anyway, so—

"You're going to die for that. Over and over."

Oh.

Alright then.

There had been a brief, if foolish, moment when Lillia hoped that Nennia would change her mind about everything and choose forgiveness. After all, that was what happened in some of the stories. In some of the stories, the monsters were nice people. Havoc was a nice person.

Then again, there were a lot more stories where the monsters were just monsters.

"But maybe it would be motivating for my children if they were able to avenge Mother…" Nennia said. Her voice stopped echoing through the cavern as something filled the walls and smothered the sound.

Lillia had some ideas as to what it might be, but she didn't like any of the options.

"I do like that idea," Nennia said. "Run along, little ones. I will attend to the princess personally later."

What? Was she letting her go? Was Nennia about to—

Nennia tore at a strand of web with her hind leg, and everything under Lillia unraveled all at once. The floor vanished, and Lillia screamed as she tumbled into the void below.

“A level cap? That’s the first I’m hearing of it,” Cathria said as she followed Lillia through the long grasses of the Hunting Grounds. “Though levels are an adventuring mechanic, and as I said, that’s far from my area of expertise.”

Lillia was still struggling to string the bow that Thorne had hidden by the door of the Hunting Grounds. It didn’t help that she kept moving between attempts, but she was also spectacularly bad at it.

While Lillia had taken to swordplay like a fish to water, she’d taken to archery like a fish to a leash; much to Thorne’s dismay.

“And you say you’ve gotten that new drop? The Droplets of Experience?”

“Yes, but if I can remove them—” Lillia tried to force the bow to bend far enough to accommodate the string. She failed, and it snapped back at her, flinging itself out of her hands. “If I can take them out of my inventory, I don’t know how. I tried. It just doesn’t work.”

Cathria paused, staring out at the horizon as Lillia picked up the bow and shoved it away instead of setting it down.

“Has the experience varied?”

“Pardon?”

“Have you gotten different amounts for different enemies?”

“I’ve only killed spellmites…”

“Poor things.”

“And a chitterpede.”

Cathria didn’t offer the same sympathy to the bug.

“The Spellmite gave me more droplets. If it’s based on experience, then I suppose they always gave me more experience, but that just makes sense.” Lillia righted herself. If she kept wasting time on the bow, she was never going to get one of the black beasts in time to hold court today.

Partly because the attempted stinging slowed her progress. Partly because the entire ‘morning’ had been ‘wasted’ on a ‘tantrum’. Havoc’s words. Not hers. As far as Lillia saw it, everything this morning had been completely justified.

First of all, level 40 had been another dumb stat increase—whatever those did—and second of all, the level cap revelation had changed Nennia from ‘vague future responsibility’ to ‘imminent task.’

As many times as she’d fought the Spider Queen, she wasn’t looking forward to it. That was why she needed to hold court first.

By the time Lillia looked up, Cathria was holding the glass version of an ancient tome in her hand and leafing through the pages. The pages cracked as they folded over one another. Glass was never supposed to move that way.

“I may have something somewhere about this,” Cathria said as a spiderweb spread across her thumb. “I’ve memorized all of my books, but sometimes re-reading offers connections you missed.”

“You have books?”

“Of course I have books,” Cathria said without looking up. “I’m an archmage.” She turned the page and then continued. “You don’t need to wait on my behalf. I’m very adept at moving while reading.”

Their current target was a tree far off in the distance. Below the tree was a huddled black mass. Over time, Lillia had learned that the beasts used their coloration to try to appear as shadows under trees and avoid the Ambushers’ claws.

If their strategy worked, Lillia had yet to see it, but then again, she was always the issue. The scattered beasts were easy prey.

“I suppose I didn’t think a statue would have books.”

“Of course I would. This statue is based on my memory of myself, and my archive is as much a part of me as my clothes or my magic.”

Cathria almost certainly didn’t see it because she was still reading, but Lillia winced at that statement. She had a full archive back at home. She had spent five years mostly locked in a tower and only showing her face publicly when her aunt allowed it that now felt like a lot of wasted time.

Perhaps she could have been Lillia Ashvalin, archmage-in-training, if she had focused her study during those years. Perhaps she could have had spells alongside her skills if she hadn’t called her tutors boring and old.

Lillia shook her head. No need to let those thoughts linger in regret. If she had told people she was preparing for life in a dungeon, they would have had her—well, she’d already been mostly locked away, but locked away more. None of this was supposed to happen to a princess.

Considering the circumstances, she deserved some credit.

“Oh shoot, Lillia, I’m losing an ankle,” Cathria said. As Lillia turned to make Cathria her champion, the archmage threw the book up in the air, and it vanished into a shower of glass dust.

“Archmage Cathria, I name you my champion.”

Glittering rose-gold settled over Cathria, and the surface cracks in her black opaque glass began to heal themselves. It wouldn’t keep her together for long, but Lillia could buy her a few more minutes.

“Thank you,” Cathria said. Lillia motioned for the pair of them to get low, so she dropped to a whisper as well as a crouch. “In my brief skimming of the Septim of St. Vatruvio—”

“Who?”

“I was unable to find any reference to Droplets of Experience.” Cathria followed Lillia through the grasses as the rose-gold light faded from her glassy skin. “Based on my memory of the texts, it seems unprecedented. Or at least it was in my time.”

The black beasts were huddled under one of the wide-canopied trees that dotted the landscape of the Hunting Grounds. Their scraggly manes barely moved in the soft, ever-present breeze of the savanna; their tails constantly swished back and forth, batting at insects that Lillia could hear but not see.

There was one near the tree trunk that was old and frail. Its fur was lighter than those around it and, though it wasn’t by much, it moved slower than its companions. Thorne had told her that it was better for the herd if Lillia killed the older members. She didn’t know if it mattered in a room that reset like the Hunting Grounds. But it felt better.

That, and they were easier targets.

“Pardon, Lillia, before you pursue your prey. You said that the dungeon wanted you to descend.”

“Yes, that was the message. “Descend to Continue your Quest.”” She could still see it as if it were right in front of her.

“Then perhaps that’s an avenue worth pursuing.”

“I’ll get on defeating Nennia then,” Lillia said.

“You are much more powerful than you were when you defeated Eisel.”

“Yes, but when I fought Eisel, I had people helping me. Namely Nennia.” Lillia called Viannafir to her hand. “I don’t think she wants to fight herself.”

“People fight themselves every day.”

As Lillia looked over to Cathria to question the statement, a large split formed down the center of the Archmager’s throat. It was about time for the discussion to end and for her to get to work.

“I’m not sure Nennia is plagued by inner demons,” Lillia said. “But I am going to speak to her. See if she will let me through without a fight.”

“Is that why—”

“That’s why I’m hunting, yes. Offering a deal.”

“For her to let you through?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I don’t think she’d do that. That wouldn’t be very narratively satisfying.”

“Narratively satisfying? I don’t care if it’s satisfying. I don’t want to fight Nennia.” She raised her voice, passed a hushed whisper. Several of the beasts looked in her direction, but either didn’t see the princess hidden in the grass or didn’t think anything with that many frills was a threat.

“While some of us are stuck watching more than participating, Lillia,” Cathria rested a hand on Lillia’s shoulder, her fingers began to crumble to dust. “I think you should give it a shot. You might do better than you think.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Lillia said.

Cathria offered a soft smile and then lay down in the grass so she could shatter peacefully.

Despite Lillia’s insistence on another plan, she had always seen a fight with Nennia coming. Fire in the halls of spiderwebs. Changing dresses to untangle herself. Using tantrums to keep her older children at bay. Lillia pictured it over and over in her quiet moments on the third landing.

The Spider Queen blocked the only door down. The Spider Queen blocked the only way out.

As the Five-Point Fall would put it, “The Way is Shut.”

But in all those thoughts. All those strategies and ideas, Lillia was always “a little bit stronger” than she was when she had them. If she were just a little bit stronger, she was capable of anything.

There was always a Lillia somewhere on the horizon that she would eventually grow into. That was a Lillia who would fight Nennia.

Now, the dungeon told her that she was there. She was The Lillia on the Horizon.

She didn’t feel any different. The dresses all fit the same. She’d killed the Silencer, but at what point had the scales of that fight turned in her favour?

What horizon had that been?

The dungeon was telling Lillia that when she looked in a mirror, she was staring at a princess who could overthrow a queen. That didn’t mean Lillia had to believe it.

The soft breeze of the savanna picked up for a moment. In the far distance, a piercing cry echoed out. Each of the beasts looked up.

Lillia broke into a sprint, swapping to the chitterpede riding boots, which clicked with each step. Then she snapped feathers between her fingers. The dress bloomed out around her. Volumous feathers cascaded over Lillia’s person.

[Ambusher Claw Petticoat - 3 x Ambusher Feather]

[If the Princess has enough momentum, the flight of the Ambusher will push her further forward, empowering her strike with the Ambusher’s fury. This effect can be used three times per day. Uses are only expended if the strike lands.]

[Dazzling Brilliance - When a creature makes a ranged attack against you, there is a small chance they are blinded.]

The Ambushers’ cry rang out as Lillia cut through a small gap in the herd. Vianaffir sunk deep into the older beast, then through it, and then into the tree behind as the surrounding beasts suddenly realized what had happened.

Lillia’s target struggled once, then fell limp. Around her, the black beasts bleated and panicked as they scattered off across the plains. Above them all, the Ambusher echoed Lillia’s dress.

She withdrew the blade, and the beast slumped down. Lillia backpedaled to avoid having any of the blood or the beast’s smell get on her shoes. Once it was on the ground, she raised a hand to it.

“Dance for me, my knight.”

Plate armor assembled in the air in front of her. A hand grabbed a large, two-handed spear before it could fall to the floor. A brilliant purple plume stood proudly on the helmet of one of Lillia’s three knights: Branle.

Branle wheeled, brandishing the weapon with shocking ease. The massive spear would have pulled Lillia straight off her feet, but he looked balanced and deft while wielding it.

After spinning to check his surroundings twice, the armor stopped and bowed to its master. As it stood up, it cocked its head.

“Please assist me in pulling this body out of the room so I can bring it to Nennia.”

Bronle looked from Lillia to the carcass and back to Lillia. He threw the spear to the ground and begrudgingly trudged over to the body.

He did have a bad habit of being summoned for the menial tasks.

Lillia kicked open the store room door at the back of the Hunting Lodge and found the chitterpede staring at her with its blank, glossy, multi-faceted eyes. It was the simplest of the dungeon monsters. Havoc had a personality. The beasts of the hunting ground consistently changed. The Spellmite challenge presented multiple levels of difficulty.

The Chitterpede was the chitterpede. It didn't learn. It didn't adapt. It simply threw itself at Lillia from wherever it happened to be standing when she opened the door. Killing it never felt like it was worth the mess. If Havoc hadn't consistently hounded her about efficiency, she would have left the poor thing alone.

The Chitterpede opened its mandibles wide as it reared up, a dozen legs twitching in the air in the moment it threw itself toward Lillia. Gross in a weird familiar way that no longer made her retch.

[Lillia used 'Tantrum']

The Captain's Sabre hit the chitterpede like a boulder instead of a sharp blade and the outer chitin shell of the bug shattered and its innards splattered against the back barrel wall. The impact also broke two of the casks, spilling spoiled ale onto the floor, turning the floorboards into a disgusting wash of bug and foam.

"No, not doing that," Lillia said to the scattered carcass of the chitterpede. They certainly didn't need more chitin, and she'd deal with Havoc's annoyance at missing a potential bloodfang.

In a way, Lillia was lucky that she was free to leave. Back in the tutorial, she needed to collect her rewards before she could leave the Hunting Lodge. The memory of her first contact with Chitterpede still sat cold in her stomach every time she went into the back room.

Just when she was about to leave, a particularly aggressive slosh of booze pushed a green chunk of chitterpede close enough to Lillia's feet that she couldn't justify ignoring it. She held her nose as she prodded it with her toe

[Chitterpede defeated! Yay!]

[Gained Chitterpede Chitin x 1]

[Gained a droplet of XP x 2]

"What?"

Lillia tried to pull the experience out of her inventory, reaching deep inward and trying to summon it into her palm. No matter how many times she pulled at the thread, nothing came loose.

"What's going on?"

Lillia summoned the chitin she'd just earned to her hand. It arrived obediently.

So it wasn't that her inventory was broken.

"Huh."

That was a conversation to have with Havoc, but heading back up without fighting something other than the chitterpede would just summon complaints about Lillia's work ethic.

A work ethic that was fabulous—thank you very much—considering she never had to work before she'd been thrown in the dungeon. Of course, Havoc never saw it that way.

With the rewards acquired and mysterious droplets in her inventory somewhere, Lillia left. The Captain's Sabre would be there tomorrow morning, covered in less guts and stale alcohol. She could collect it there.

Like most drops from the first three floors, she certainly wasn't short of the damned things. If it wasn't for her Royal Wardrobe skill, there would have been a pile sitting in the corner.

[Royal Wardrobe - Princess Class Exclusive]

[The Princess has a closet to rival all. Materials that can be used for Adaptive Regalia do not count towards her inventory limit.]

[Additionally her inventory is expanded and multiple copies of the same item require greatly reduced space.]

Lillia hadn't run into the inventory limit before taking the skill, but as soon as she'd begun farming that problem felt imminent and she didn't want to find Rickshaw again only to not have her duplicates on hand.

Back in the castle, Lillia would have had handmaids to attend to her ever-growing closet. In the dungeon, a skill would have to do.

Once she was back on the landing, Lillia attempted to toll the droplets out once again to no avail. Whatever a droplet of XP was, it was stuck inside her inventory and that meant she couldn't see the details of the item. That meant that, unless Havoc had heart adventurers speaking about them in the past, there was no way for Lillia to discover their purpose.

Well, perhaps their purpose was obvious. They were related to experience and level ups. Lillia just didn't understand why she was getting them now.

One of many unanswered questions of the dungeon. Another was the door across the landing from Lillia. At one point, it had been Havoc's archive, but ever since Lillia had knighted him and circumvented his first death the door has been locked.

The first time Lillia had come back to the door the dungeon had sent a million messages over text to her in a single moment as it tried to understand what it should do about a dead monster that was still alive. For a while after that, the dungeon had seemingly given up. The door remained locked—even after Havoc tried to break it down with a Siegecraft Potion—and textless for a long time.

Lillia placed her hand on the handle in the same text that had been there since day twenty appeared.

[Room will update upon reaching the fourth floor.]

Havoc didn't seem to care that he was locked out. Or at least, if he did, he never admitted it. According to the him, he had better things going on in the Cathedral.

Lillia's throat still went dry whenever she saw the message about updating the room. Havoc might not remember what he'd written on the thousand scrolls within the archive, but Lillia knew. Lillia knew that if the dungeon replaced the room there would be a thousand memories lost. One for each scroll.

So she did the same thing she did every time she walked by when Havoc wasn't looking.

"Come on, let me in."

Nothing.

"I'm the princess, and I demand to be let in."

[Lillia used 'Indignance - Level 3' - There was no target!]

"Dungeon, I defy you to keep me out of my friend's room."

[Indignance is on cooldown.]

Lillia sighed. That last one wasn't an ability message. She knew Indignance didn't go on cooldown if it had no target. That last comment had been from the dungeon. A soft, guided no. It had been flexible with the rules occasionally. It allowed her to knight Havoc. It rewarded her for fighting Eisel. Since then, the dungeon had been strict. Since then, the dungeon had been clear that it wasn't her friend. She was its prisoner.

Havoc was hammering away at something up in the Cathedral. She could head up there right now. Speak to him. Explain why she cared about the door and ask about the experience.

Climbing down to the second floor felt easier in the moment.

Lillia descended. Down past the checkerboard transition between grey flagstone and black tile and onto the second landing. Once she was there, she checked the torch above the door to the Spellmite Architect's Challenge.

It was a dull, burned orange. A level one challenge today.

Lillia whispered a quiet thank you to Cathria for explaining how that torch worked. Without the Archmage's guidance, the levels would have felt completely random forever.

It was a Level 1 challenge, or the Hunting Grounds. Only one of those ended with Lillia taking a bath and removing some of the ale smell from her shoes before resting for the night.

Lillia's heels clicked against the black glassy tile as she strode through the chamber towards the altar. At the center of this Spellmite Architects' Challenge. The soft smell of a storm on the horizon replaced the lingering stench of the Hunting Lodge in her breath as she approached. Rainfall echoed from droplets that didn't exist as she hovered her hands above the inlay.

She called the anaphere to her free hand as the altar cracked down the middle, and a thunderous boom echoed through the chamber. The shrill laughter of a Spellmite followed. Lillia turned just in time to see the thing raise its hand and light coalesce at its fingertips.

The flash came before the thunder as a bolt shot towards Lillia. She batted it to the side with Vianaffir. At this point, it was practiced timing. The lightning crashed into the chamber walls to Lillia's right.

In most fights, Lillia kept one hand free. Neither sword nor shield was worth giving up her ability to swap dresses at a moment's notice. That said, she knew how this fight went.

Lillia tore two pieces of Thundermite cloth and the dress stormed around her, pulling itself together from static and sparks. A brilliant gown of blues, yellows and whites, short in the front with a long train flowing behind her. As Lillia rushed forward, the train billowed out and then transformed from thin, sheer fabric into crackling lightning.

[Spelllighting Bridal Train — 2 x Thundermite Cloth]

[Attacks deal bonus lighting damage on hit. This effect increases based on the Princess' speed.]

[Always in search of the next electric connection]

As this dress finished forming around Lillia [Quick Change] kicked in and she redoubled her speed.

The Spellmite raised its second hand in panic, firing off a wild shot.

Lillia called Hooke to her off hand and cut through the lightning, splting the bolt in two before ripping it apart with the cruel spike at Hooke's end. Sparks erupted behind her as the lightning shattered across the glassy black tile. Vianaffir struck, piercing the spellmite as it made one last squeak.

[Tunder Spellmite Defeated - Yay!]

[Gained Spellmite Cap - Thunder x 1]

[Gained Thundermite Cloth x 1]

[Gained a droplet of XP x 4]

Despite more droplets being thrown into her growing pool, Lillia didn't slow down. She turned her momentum around, tearing up the stairs toward the next stage of the challenge.

Though challenge truly didn't feel like the appropriate word anymore.

-------------------------------------------------------

Lillia returned to the Cathedral, freshly washed, her hair still dripping from the baths and the sweet citrus smell of her current favorite soap followed her wherever she walked. She headed over to the forge first, leaning backward toward it to use the heat as a hair dryer.

By the hearth, Havoc was already asleep, wrapped in a complicated tangle of animal skins. Either he'd gone to bed early, or she'd lingered in the bath longer than she intended to.

Either way, they could talk about their experience problem in the morning.

Now that Nennia was the only obstacle between them and the fourth floor, maybe it was time to talk about the scrolls in his room as well.

Lillia lingered by the forge long after her hair was dry. The heat of the fire within followed Havoc', waxing and waning with his deep, rumbling breaths.

They had to talk about it at some point.

She had to bring it up. He wouldn't. Or he didn't know to.

Lillia sighed. She had expected to be much more excited and headed into this next part.

As Lillia knelt down beside the animal's skins, she's resurrected on and spread them out into a single even layer, she realized that, in all her years of sleeping in luxury, she'd never needed to make her own bed.

It was a truth that became painfully obvious. The second Lillia tried to lay out her new silk fabrics cleanly, they wrinkled in all the ugly ways she didn't want.

They were smooth and buttery on her hands, especially compared to the rough coarse skins she'd reluctantly gotten used to. But no matter how much she wrestled with the silks, they wouldn't quite sit right. They wouldn't quite lie flat and show off their luster in single shining streaks.

It was closer to home, but it was clear that part of home for Lillia was somebody else making the bed. Somebody who'd done it over and over. Somebody who'd pretended to be her friend while working for her.

Maybe she could teach Havoc to do it. He'd never be good at it, but he'd be a real friend trying for her. 

Nennia would probably nail it, but she was a write off for other reasons.

For the first time since coming into the dungeon, Lillia stripped before crawling into her makeshift bed. The fine fabrics, even layered were a little too thin and a little too cold.

But that was okay.

Bit by bit, victory by victory, Lillia was forcing the dungeon to become something tolerable. She'd bent, but with enough effort, they were starting to meet in the middle.

That was progress.

----------------------------------------------------------

[You Rest at the Cathedral Hearth]

[You Rest Safely and Completely]

[You have Leveled Up! You are now Level [40]]

[Stats Increased]

[It is now day [40] of your quest.]

[Level Cap for Current Floor Reached! Descend to Continue Your Quest]

[Accept]

Lillia never spent long in the space between life and death anymore. Cathria didn’t visit that often, and the land of Wheat and Silks’ call never reached her ears. There should have been something wondrous about waking after death. Something disquieting about learning that what came after life was simply more life.

There was something magical about the answers to all of life’s questions, but Lillia was used to it, and nothing stripped magic faster than familiarity.

Now, to Lillia, dying was like falling asleep in her own bed. Sometimes she wasn’t aware it happened until she woke up under the covers in the morning.

Or in the case of the dungeon: on top of animal skin at some undefined point in the afternoon. That was the whole point of killing the Silencer, after all.

Lillia snapped her eyes open in the same moment. She snapped an Ambusher feather between her fingers. Equipping the slip was a reflex now. After dozens of resurrections, she’d gotten to the point where she was only exposed as light before she and her underclothes formed at nearly the same time.It had come naturally to her; what was courtly life other than practiced modesty?

The first time Lillia had come back from the dead, there had always been someone there to meet her. While Havoc had dismissed the notion of worry, he never left the Hearthside while Lillia was alone in a dungeon room. Over the depths, he had drifted further and further away. Or at least further and further into his work.

Like resurrection itself, a princess waking on the dungeon floor had become unremarkable.

Today, though, Havoc was near the hearth when its warmth first touched Lillia’s freshly formed cheeks. He had set up the forge in the same soot-covered corner of the cathedral that he always did. The difference was that the chair he stole daily from the Hunting Lodge had been dragged to sit halfway between his workstation and where Lillia awoke.

He let Lillia sit up before asking questions. Both of them knew that talking in the first moments after resurrection was uncomfortable.

“Get anything good that will help you get them next time?”

“Next time?” Lillia asked. “I find your lack of confidence offensive.”

“I find my lack of confidence well-founded. How many times is that?”

“I don’t remember, but…” Lillia said as he stood.

“Probably concerning.”

“But! It’s the last time I have to do it,” she said. As she spoke, she threw her hand out, and a curved, malicious blade flew out of her inventory and skittered across the flagstone to land at Havoc’s feet. “That is a Darkheart Khopesh, whatever that means.”

Havoc gripped his thighs, his clawlike nails leaving sharp indentations in his leather apron before he bent over to grab the blade. “That khopesh is scratched now.”

“That is a drop from the Silencer, one of three because I killed him by dropping a building on him. This loot is a gift from Her Royal Highness, the Unstoppable Princess Lillia.”

“What happened after you killed him?”

“The reavers overran the city, and I came back here.”

Havoc turned the blade over once in his hand. His brow furrowed as he frowned at the new scratches on the weapon.

“Sounds like you were pretty stoppable.”

Lillia put her hands on her hips and scoffed. “Can you just let me have this?”

Havoc let the blade fall to his side. “Good job? That’s what you wanna hear, right?”

“It doesn’t matter when it’s the fifth thing you say.”

“If it doesn’t matter, why do you make me say it?”

“Because you were supposed to say it first.”

“I can’t tell you “good job” if I don’t know that the job is done. I’m not gonna say good work about half a job.”

“It’s like you never had grandkids.”

“It’s like you never had to work for anything.”

Over the next few seconds, both of them took a deep breath and gave room for the tension to dissipate. They had reached the same impasse they always did. The small space in conversations where personalities clash in waves that cannot and will not be changed. Like proper allies, they had quietly agreed to shake on it and move on.

Or at least they’d both decided it wasn’t worth the fight.

Havoc broke the silence first.

“Get anything else?”

“The silk!”

“From the Silencer?”

Lillia made an odd noise that translated roughly to “Kinda” as she manifested shoes and headed over to one chair at the table by the Hearth. There wasn’t any food on the table—they hadn’t gone into the hunting grounds for several days, and Lillia wasn’t about to eat chitterpede—but dying and resurrecting was hard work, and she deserved to take a load off.

“Well?” Havoc put the blade down.

“We got more of the essence of Night Whisper, which is good, but we know Nennia is immune to poisons,” Lillia placed a small vial filled with opaque lavender liquid on the table. “Then I’m not counting the invader’s cloth because we have more of that than we could ever use.”

“So, then there are four drops.”

“Yes, thank you, Havoc, for clarifying the math.” Lillia held out both her hands over the table. “And then there is this.”

The coarse executioner’s hood-like fabric flopped out onto the table in an unruly tangle. It was a massive pile, a cloak that would need to be wrapped and layered multiple times to fit anyone present.

“That’s a lot of cloth.”

“It’s the Executioner’s Cloak, which I think we’re selling if we ever find Rickshaw again.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Havoc walked over to the table, pushing one chair out of the way as he approached. He smelled of burnt metal, which meant he’d been practicing again.

“Oh, nothing’s wrong with it as an item. But unless we’re trying to put Thorne in this, I don’t think we have a way to use it.”

Havoc shook his head. He was right; she’d never agree to that.

“I inspected it, and it offers bonuses to poison damage if you hit someone first. And passive poison damage on all your weapons.”

“Not bad.”

“Not bad,” Lillia said. “But it’s probably worth more traded than it is in our pockets. I’ve got all my dresses. And you can make yourself armor.”

“You also have one pair of pants.”

Lillia recalled the Executioner’s Cloak to her inventory. “I’d prefer if you stopped bringing up the trousers. I still feel weird wearing them.”

“They’re convenient.”

“They’re not very ladylike,” Lillia said as she stood. “And considering how much I’ve given up in here, I think a gown is one of the last things I have that will show anyone we run into that I’m a lady of the court.”

“Everyone on these floors knows you. What are you worried about? That Nennia is going to see you in pants?”

“I am not letting the Spider Queen outdress me,” Lillia said. “She already mocks me as she kills me. I don’t need to add courtly scandal.”

“Gods and council, I’m glad I was born to a tribe,” Havoc said as he turned back to the forge. Even when there was nothing for him to make, Havoc used the proper fire of the forge to bend and reshape metal. He’d explained that he was keeping it hot. It had taken Lillia several discussions to realize that was a metaphor.

Unfortunately for the pair, once Havoc had made an item, he couldn’t make it again. In some cases, that was fine. Ambusher sytheclaws were rare enough, even to Lillia, that he still had options if she found another one. But the more common items, like the tool cloth, had quickly become useless pieces of scrap.

Combined with the overtime confirmation that he would never reach beyond level 14, Lillia could tell that Havoc had been pacing more often over the past ten days. The way a person moved when there was a door somewhere and he had already checked every wall twice.

“You’re doing it again,” Lillia said.

Havoc’s hammer paused above the strip of metal he’d been flattening for no particular purpose. “Doing what?”

“Pacing with tools.”

“That’s just work.”

“No,” Lillia said. “Work makes things.”

“That’s what I keep telling the dungeon.”

The hammer came down. The sound rang through the cathedral, sharp enough to echo back from the broken galleries above them. The old stone swallowed most noises, but the forge never let itself be ignored. Every strike announced that Havoc was still there. Still making. Still trying to be useful in a place that had decided usefulness had a ceiling.

Lillia watched him for a moment, then looked toward the Darkheart Khopesh lying beside his forge.

“You haven’t introspected it.”

“I’m getting there.”

“You were very interested in it when you could berate me about keeping it well,” Lillia said.

“It’s a curved murder knife from a man who didn’t talk,” Havoc said. “What’s there to introspect? Probably just more poison.”

“You’re avoiding it.”

“I’m not avoiding it.”

“You are. You avoid things by working at them from the side.”

Havoc looked back at her. “And you charge right at them until they kill you.”

“Yes,” Lillia said. “I’ve become very direct.”

“That’s not a virtue.”

“It is when you say it with enough confidence.”

Havoc snorted and set the hammer down. He didn’t reach for the khopesh immediately. Instead, he wiped his hands on his apron, though there was nothing on them that hadn’t already been there. Soot had settled into the lines of his palms so deeply that Lillia suspected it would take a resurrection to scrub him clean.

A non-dungeon resurrection. When Havoc died here, he came back with his soot intact.

When he finally took the blade, the forge fire bent toward it.

Not much. Barely enough to notice. But the flame narrowed, pulled thin and hungry.

Lillia leaned forward to match.

Havoc’s ears twitched. “Don’t make that face.”

“What face?”

“The face you make before you ask a question you think is clever.”

“I was only going to ask whether that was normal.”

“No.”

“That was clever.”

“No, it was obvious.”

“Obvious questions are the foundation of good leadership,” Lillia said, echoing some tutor she couldn’t remember. “People are always too embarrassed to ask them.”

“Then you must be the greatest leader who ever lived.”

“Thank you.”

“That wasn’t praise.”

“Thank you,” she repeated.

Havoc turned the khopesh over in both hands. His expression shifted the longer he looked at it. The annoyance remained, because Havoc appeared to regard joy as a personal failing, but the rest of him sharpened. The same thing happened whenever he handled rare materials. His shoulders squared. His eyes narrowed. His claws stopped tapping.

He was listening to it.

It seems silly to Lillia. But Havoc had a relationship with metal that she didn’t. While she could introspect dungeon items as well as he could, he tended to leave that step for last. He looked at each inch of steel as if it held an ocean of secrets within. Lillia only ever saw her reflection.

“Well?” she asked.

“It’s not steel.”

“I assumed.”

“It’s not bone either.”

“I assumed that less.”

“It’s hardened malice.”

Lillia sat up. “That doesn’t sound like a real thing?”

“I’m holding it,” Havoc said. The word came with the distinct notion that Havoc did not like if he was holding it.

To stress that, he put it down.

“Have you introspected it?” he asked.

Lillia shook her head. Her unbraided hair swished around her shoulders as she did, light and free in the minutes post-resurrection. “I wasn’t going to bring out the mirror when I was about to die.”

“Smart,” Havoc said. He didn’t look over to see Lillia beaming at the proper compliment. “Maybe we don’t touch that again without Cathria around.”

“Can’t be today. I used her in the fight.”

“Figured,” Havoc said, “but she’d know more about something like this than I would,” he said, “or at least she’d be able to do more about it.”

Lillia bit her lip. Cathria knew more about most things, but she wasn’t quite following. “Meaning?”

“If I’ve ever held a cursed weapon. Well,” Havoc clicked his tongue and left it off there, almost as if he was cautious about referencing the blade itself.

“Really?” Lillia groaned.

“What?”

“After what happened last time, I’m not that enthused about using a cursed item.”

“And don’t.”

“Come on, the Silencer was hard to kill! If I can’t use the sword, then the only thing he gave me was that dumb, itchy cloak that I’m not gonna wear.”

“He gave you experience.”

“I can kill a Chitterpede for experience,” Lillia kicked the table once from her seat and winced. The Thunderstep heels didn’t protect her toes from her hubris. “I’ll just go to bed, and hopefully this got me to level forty.”

Havoc had returned to frowning at the Darkheart Khopesh. His expression kept shifting in subtle ways as he stared, as if all of his emotions were incomplete thoughts.

“Right!” Lillia said. “I can sleep in the sheets. It’s going to be so nice. You should see them, Havoc. There’s this lovely shade of ocean green.”

“Have you done your farming for the day?”

Lillia looked down the stairs to the unopened doors of the dungeon. She knew what Havoc was going to say. The worst part was that he was right. She stood before she even bothered to argue. “I killed the Silencer today, can’t I just—”

“A reset wasted is—”

“More time in the dungeon you hate,” Lillia finished for him. “Yeah. Yeah. I know,” Lillia said. “Are you coming?”

Havoc had returned to staring at the khopesh. Lillia realized she wasn’t getting an answer before Havoc realized he wasn’t going to give one. She was down the stairs by the time he looked up to see her gone.

https://www.youtube.com/live/JA2uvurKz7Q?is=5tfjtICPMinsaFlb

The market stall shattered as a Captain's Sabre crashed into it at blinding speed. On impact, the weapon broke out into light, folding in on itself before vanishing among the debris.

[Tantrum - Skill: Princess Class Exclusive]

[Throw a random non-consumable object from your inventory at an opponent. The object returns to your inventory upon impact.]

[This action can damage items]

The Silencer was off the stall by the time Lillia's attack hit, but he was running out of places to hide. The previously crowded market was filled with the rubble of two dozen stalls smashed across the courtyard.

Unfortunately for Lillia, the Silencer landed on the one stall in the market she was unwilling to smash. He touched down on the roof of the tailor's stall. Lillia raised a hand to threaten her tantrum even when the skill was still on cooldown. But the Silencer saw her fingernails curl inward as she hesitated.

Seizing the opportunity, the Silencer reached deep into their cloak and then lashed out, unleashing a flurry of knives in Lillia's direction. She dove to the side, trying to preserve the charges of the battlegown, but two nicked her as she dove. The first cracked against chitin, the second caught her ankle halfway through the awkward roll.

"Oh come on!" Lillia shouted.

[Lillia used 'Indignance - Level 3' - Avoided by Silencer's [Like Shadow] !]

Yeah. Lillia knew how that went. Though it wasn't as if using indignance was anything other than habit.

The Silencer quietly put their blade away. Lillia placed her palm on the amulet around her neck. The glass wrapped around her palm before she threw it out onto the battlefield in front of her. The Glass Spellmite spilled out onto the floor, tumbling once before righting itself on the cobblestone, glowing in the surrounding fire.

[Lillia is poisoned!]

[Passive Ability - Royal Taster Activated]

[Poison Transferred to Companion - The Glass Spellmite]

[The Glass Spellmite is Immune to poison.]

Lillia rushed at the Silencer with Vianaffir primed to strike.

"That's right! I was ready for that you spooky looking bag of—"

The Glass Spellmite laughed and raised a finger to the Silencer. A harsh orange light formed on its finger tip. Lillia's eyes went wide.

"Wait, wait, wait, no, not that, stop!" Lillia changed course, diving in front of the Glass Spellmite as it turned its fire toward the Silencer. She tore the Burnmite cloth just in time, the battlegown widening into the flowing sleeves of her Spellfire Dress as the Glass Spellmite's magical inferno crashed into her.

The fire wrapped Lillia like a wreath, coiling around before settling into each thread of the dress. As she righted herself, the fabric near hovered behind her, flowing with the energy of the magic it absorbed.

The Glass Spellmite Squeaked.

"I thought I explained this!"

More squeaking. Waving arms.

"We did talk about it! We can't ruin that cart. Come on."

Three little hops.

"I'm not going to bring you out if you're going to destroy something every—Oh shit!" The sound of unsheathing steel interrupted Lillia's rant. She ducked as the Silencer flew through the air toward her, his blade whistling overhead, barely avoiding Lillia's braid.

The Glass Spellmite chased after the Silencer as he landed softly behind them. Lillia righted herself.

"We're not done! I'm going to bring this up—Whatever." She followed the Glass Spellmite, almost reaching the Silencer in time to prevent the Glass Spellmite's Inevitable death.

The little guy was certainly ambitious, but a headlong charge was not the strategy.

Just before Lillia reached the Silencer, she dismissed Viannafir, letting it fall back into her inventory. As the weapon was a mote of light beside her, she raised both hands. In the right, she wove a rune in the air, with the other, she focused on how unfair this all was.

[Lillia used 'Tantrum']

Hooke appeared just above her left shoulder, hovering in the air for a breath before following Lillia's next footstep and launching itself forward. The Silencer lashed out with his blade, deflecting Hooke. Sparks flashed between the blades as they clashed, only for Hooke to careen off into the night sky.

[Lillia used 'Backdraft']

All of the Spellmite's fire ran through the fabric of the dress into Lillia's fingertips. Bright orange hissed in her nails before it exploded outward into a roaring beam of fire. The Silencer raised his arms, but it was too late for him to block.

The fire smashed into him like a tidal wave, knocking the Silencer backward onto the cobblestone and setting his cloak ablaze. As he fell, Lillia summoned Vianaffir back into her hand. The hilt of the blade choked the last embers of fire as she swung down.

Vianaffir should have been embedded in the Silencer's chest. Instead, it cracked against the cobblestone as the man melted into shadow. The shock of steel on rock shot up Lillia's arms and she almost dropped the blade.

"Oh come on, what now?"

Lillia rallied, pulling Vianaffir back up and holding it in front of her, just as Havoc had shown her during their first lessons. As she waited for something to happen, Lillia took turns with which hand was holding onto Vianaffir and which one she could shake out.

The seconds passed by. The building that had been behind the Silencer during Backdraft groaned as the first licks of fire began spreading around its foundation.

Whoops. By the rules of the current game, this was her city. She probably shouldn't have been burning it down.

She also probably shouldn't have destroyed nearly every cart in the market. Fortunately, the most important one was still standing.

Seconds turned into a minute. Was she going to have to find the Silencer again? He wasn't dead, the text hadn't tried to force her to celebrate by barraging her with noise yet.

Did she even have to kill the silencer if she could grab the fabric without finishing him off? Havoc would chide her for missing the XP. And she really should have felt the same about it, but she had only come back to fight him for one reason.

Well, several bolts of reasons that were all draped across one of the few remaining stalls.

Lillia didn't put Vianaffir away—she had been taught that lesson several times and it had eventually stuck. No she kept the blade out and kept watch as she slowly inched her way over to the stall, Her sliding feet catch on the space between cobbles.

From up close, the fabrics reminded her even more of home. Her bed felt like a legend now, something she kept in the back of her mind that just must have been too good to be true. She spoke about it in the same way people spoke of myths and heroes, wistfully over a campfire

She was in arm's reach now. It wouldn't be that hard to reach out and touch the fabric. It was probably so soft. It was probably perfect. A thousand times better than sleeping in old animal skins and—

Lillia wheeled And Vianaffir sung through the air, carrying a sigle perfect note across the entire swing until it carved through the assassin that had been trying to attack Lillia from behind. Unfortunately for him, she knew the sound of the invader's cloth from the hundred times she'd torn it between her fingers.

The first assassin's knife dropped to the ground, clattering against the stone as another came in from the side.

The assassins had gotten the drop on them once, but without the element of surprise, they weren't what Lillia was worried about. Free experience and free material.

The second assassin drew closer, but Lillia took one hand off Vianaffir and pointed it in their direction while watching the other direction to keep an eye for the Silencer. Even without turning, she heard the assassin adjust their path, dodging out of the way of a tantrum that was never coming.

Instead, Lillia snapped her fingers around one of the Ambusher feathers and leapt up in the air, kicking the air a second time to gain impossible speed between Quick Change and the acceleration from her Plainsrunner Boots.

 Once she was in the air, she saw him. The Silencer stood on a nearby rooftop. Now that Lillia had committed to an arc in her jump, he reached deep into his cloak again. Lillia saw the glint of steel within.

Lillia flew over the head of the assassin as the Silencer threw his knives. Lillia put her sword away. One hand held spider silk, the other on the Amulet of the Creator.

"Cathria!"

"Time For an Electric Battle!"

The glinting firelight on each of the airborne knives flickered for a moment and as the reflections formed something within their core. Cathria appeared just above Lillia, too high to block anything, but on the right angle to catch the Silencer in his follow through. She raised her staff and Lillia's hair stood on end.

In the breath before lightning, Lillia tore Spider Silk, and Widow's etiquette once again wove itself across her person. The thousand layers of silk that made her billowing gown shot out as the knives approached, turning into a massive spider web that caught the projectiles.

[Widow's Etiquette - 3 x Ensnaring Silk]

[Web Weaver - Passively ensnares non-magical projectiles in the web of the gown. This ability as a moderate cooldown.]

[Widow's Snare - If there are projectiles caught in this dress, they are used to follow up attacks from the wearer. These weapons are thrown with ensnaring silk attached, slowing the target.]

In the reverse of nature, the booming crack of thunder shot across the courtyard before everything went white. Cathria shattered when Lillia was still blinking away, the blindness that came with her magic.

The building the Silencer had been standing on was mostly a crater. Thick curls of smoke rose from what had once been a stonecarver's workshop.

Upon writing herself, Lillia called Vianaffir back to her hand and caught the assassin that had been trying to sneak up behind her. The sword itself barely touched the mans cloak, but the seven daggers tore themselves out of her billowing gown plunged deep into his person. He fell before he managed to finish his strike.

Lillia shook her head then stuck a finger inside one of her ears. It wasn't very aristocratic, but she had to try to pull the ringing out.

"Come on, that's gotta be it."

She put her hands on her hips and waited. A notification came up, letting her know the gate had been lost. A moment later, the text informs Lillia that Saltarello had fallen in battle.

No lights, no confetti, no fanfare.

"Fine."

Lillia marched over into a smoldering crater that Cathria had left on the side of the market. For most fights, summoning Cathria after the enemy's guard was down was a quick way to finish everything up. In fact it was so efficient that Havoc had tried to ban her from using it during some of the early tens, because he didn't think she was learning how to fight.

"What you're learning is how to call a friend to do all your work for you," he'd said. "Do your own job," he'd said.

Whatever it was, for the first time in a while, it hadn't worked. Lillia sighed at the idea of getting her hands dirty. Even if she'd gotten better at dispatching certain foes quickly—like the assassins—she'd yet to get over the hesitation that came with fighting someone who was a someone, and also helpless.

The Silencer had barely crawled onto their knees in the time that Lillia had walked over to the smoking rubble they laid in. There was no blood, shadow seeped between their complicated lairs of fabric.

Oh, that made it so much easier.

The sound of the reavers carving their way through the city rose over the general din of the siege. The gate was lost, and Lillia would drown in a tide of invaders soon.

It was too late to change sides, she'd learned that during one of her many attempts. Once the gate was broken, the Dungeon wouldn't let her swap teams.

The Silencer didn't look up. He quickly reached into his cloak and pulled out a knife, by the time he pulled his arm out, Lillia already had Vianaffir at his chest.

He dropped the knife. The surrender tasted weird in Lillia's mouth.

"Bow. Surrender to Princess Ashvalin."

The command hung in the air. The footsteps of soldiers running through the city echoed down the streets. Screams from guards at Lillia had fought alongside a dozen times, echoed through alleyways.

While the surrender never came, the Silencer also didn't go for a weapon. It took everything they had to resist the command.

It was time to test out what level 39 had been worth.

"I am Princess Lillia Ashvalin, rightful ruler of all kingdoms."

[Lillia Activated - Royal Decree]

[If Lillia has overwhelming Authority, she can issue 1 command that her surroundings will carry out to the best of their ability.]

[This ability can be used one per day. If the request is too large, it will not be carried out but the use will be consumed.]

Lillia withdrew Vianaffir from the Silencer's chest and allowed the weapon to slip back into her inventory. Disarmed, she turned back to the market, walking over to the stall with its myriad luxurious fabrics.

They were so lovely. She would have sheets. Drapes if she could figure out a way to hand them over the stained glass of the cathedral.

Along with a prayer to every god in the Land of Wheat and Silk, Lillia attempted to put the fabrics into her inventory.

[Gained Nice Fabric - Mundane x 27]

Interior decorating was going to be such a nice break.

Lillia twirled once in her dress. Her spin stopped in a way that she could see crumbling ruins of the building the Silencer was still trapped under.

She still had a decree to use.

"Silencer, if you won't bow, then perish."

The last standing wall of the stonecutter's workshop fell inward. Confetti plumed outward with the dust.

[Secret - The Silencer - Vanquished!]

[It is Day 22 of Your Quest]

"Nennia, I brought you a snack. It's…gross."

As long as Lillia didn't think about the metaphysical aspects of having a corpse inside her, the discovery she'd made with Eisel's murder was quite useful. Once a thing was both dead and out of its original room, the body became an item, which meant she could pick it up.

It was a useful but limited revelation. Both the Siege of Castle Varian and the Spellmite Challenge used portals as their exit doors, which meant Lillia couldn't drag a body with her. Leaving the chitterpede and the Hunting Grounds as her only source of corpses.

Technically, she could exit the Spellmite challenge without using a portal, but it would have involved facing down against Cathria, something Lillia wasn't eager to do, especially with a corpse in tow.

All of this boiled down to Nennia having to accept offerings from the Grounds.

Nennia answered long after Lillia's voice had echoed off into the darkness, and she'd been left waiting at top of the stairs in Nennia's domain. The spider queen answered in a slow, condescending chuckle that dripped down from the rooftop like the first drops of spring rain.

"A tribute my dear? How kind of you."

"It is a gift between equals, Nennia, not a tribute."

"You wound me, princess. Always coming into my court but never bending a knee."

Lillia could tell that Nennia was somewhere above her—directly above—but the Spider Queen still hadn't revealed herself through the dozens of layered webs that crossed the ceiling.

"Is this truly a gift, Lillia , or do you once again request an audience?"

"I wouldn't call your home a place I like to visit without reason."

There it was. The laughter. Again. This time, as it faded, the sound of Nennia's armored legs tapping against the cave wall followed. She lowered herself down through curtains of white like an actress on the worlds most dramatic stage. The last three layers of silk followed her as she descended, folding around her torso and becoming a ghostly flowing top.

A small group of Nennia's children followed the Queen down the wall. They moved like single spots of shadow, skittering without any of their mother's gravitas. They always looked so small as they hovered over Lillia's conversations with Nennia, but once they were on the ground, half were as tall as wolves.

Lillia held out her right hand and a the carcass of one of the black beasts from the Hunting Grounds hit the stone with a wet thud. She stepped away from the gift before Nennai's children pounced on it, wrapping it in silk with a speed Lillia had, unfortunately, experienced.

"One side of the bargain kept," Nennia said as she watched her children drag their prize down the stairs and into the infinite dark. "As for the other…"

Nennia finished her dramatic walk down the wall and stood facing Lillia. She was calm, relaxed. Lillia had learned that Nennia's spider half gave away much more that the human one.

"Is it finally the day you choose to challenge me again?" Nennia asked. "I so enjoyed our last battle, brief as it was."

"I don't believe I'd need to bring gifts to convince you to fight me."

"There is always the possibility that it was a gambit to prevent me getting the drop on you, young princess," Nennia said. "It would be clever. Useless, but clever."

"I request access to your shamblers," Lillia said. "So that I may practice battle against multiple opponents."

"Will my children not suffice?"

"I would never hurt your children with their mother watching."

"And what if I wasn't watching?"

"You always are."

Nennia laughed again, but this time it didn't carry the weight of condescension and it flew to a higher register. There were moments like that in their conversations. Moment when Lillia was convinced that, if they weren't destined to kill each other and if Nennia wasn't always one whim away from impaling her, they could have gotten along quite well.

If Nennia was to join Lillia's list of potential escapees, there would need to be a lot of rehabilitation involved.

"I suppose if the Princess wants the shamblers, the Princess can get the shamblers. As boring as they are, there are certainly a lot of them."

Lillia held out of hand and called Hooke out. While Viannafir did more overall damage, Hooke's bonus against incapacitated targets was irreplaceable against the weak willed.

"There certainly are a lot of them. Would you mind sending out a couple at a time so I can—"

"Princess, I am doing you a favor, I'm certainly not volunteering to become your lackey, as the others do."

Nennia snapped her fingers, and the howl of a hundred webbed souls rose in response.

----

Sparks flew off Viannafir as Lillia deflected the Silencer's poisoned blade to the right. Even a glancing blow was enough to nearly throw her balance. Even with all of her levels and her Poise on her side, the secret boss struck with strength that didn't match his speed.

By the time Lillia was pulling Vianaffir back into position, the Silencer was swinging at her again. Each of his attacks was unconventional, difficult to predict, and harder to avoid. Havoc, Thorne, the Reavers and the Guards all fought in the same language. Their strikes sought mortal wounds.

The Silencer was keenly aware that the smallest nick of his blade would be lethal. He aimed for wrists. He aimed for lagging heels. He aimed for any skin his blade might reach.

Unbound by convention and quick to match the Silencer fought outside of Lillia's rhythm. She could almost keep up, but each time Viannafir was a breath later than before. Each strike took the two a spark closer to the Silencer's inevitable victory.

One. Two. Three. Once. Twice. Thrice.

There was a glint somewhere deep within the void under the Silencer's hood. Lillia was too far behind.

This time, she didn't try to block. In the second before the blade flashed, Lillia pushed forward, turning her failed parry into an aggressive swing. The Silencer twisted his body to ensure that his blow would land before Lillia's. Behind her back, Lillia called forth chitin with her free hand. She stepped forward, stomping hard on the ground-summoned chitin to snap it in two.

Brilliant iridescent dust scattered around the pair as the Chitterpede Battlegown unfurled around Lillia and absorbed the blow from the Silencer.

[Chitterpede Chitin Battle Gown - Level 1 - Princess Class Exclusive]

[This item was crafted using the skill 'Adaptive Regalia' and will revert to a basic material if removed or if the wearer loses the Princess class.]

[Provides a minor defensive bonus against slashing and piercing damage. The first [2] instances of damage the Princess would receive are instead absorbed by the armor.]

Lillia's suddenly redoubled the speed of her strike, cutting through the air at an impossible pace. Vianaffir tore through the Silencer's robes and found something deep within, just as the blade began to cut deeply, the Silencer was gone.

Even with the sudden lack of resistance, Lillia reset her stance faster than she ever should have. The Silencer landed on one of the market stalls. Its hand drifted to where Lillia had cut and dipped inside the robes.

Lillia dashed forward, now with a speed that could, for a brief moment, match the Silencer's.

[Quick Change - Skill: Princess Class Exclusive]

[When the Princess changes their main armor, their headgear or their footwear, their agility is greatly increased for an extremely brief period.]

[This effect's duration is extended to a brief period if the Princess is changing into equipment befitting her station.]

[This skill has a moderate cool down. This cool down is independent for each of main armor, headgear and footwear.]

---- 

[Day 26 of Your Quest]

Cathria, the glass one, was sitting beside Lillia by the Hearth fire of the Cathedral. It was, by Lillia's accounting late, which meant releasing Cathria from the amulet before resting for the night.

Most of the time, the Sorceress stuck around to chat, sometimes, she cast a spell to shatter herself as soon as she was released. She hadn't explained why.

Tonight at least, she was chatty.

"In regards to preparing for battle, neither Thorne nor Havoc will have answers that suit you, Lillia. At least not completely."

"They won't? Havoc fought for—"

"They don't lack experience, but they did not earn that experience as adventurers."

"Oh," Lillia looked over to the Sorceress, who was still staring into the fire. "Wait. Were you an adventurer?"

"Hardly," Cathria said. "Mastery of the Arcane takes independent study that would be difficult in a dungeon. I did technically earn my interface, but I never used it for much."

"Really?"

"Well, ignoring their extremely truncated use outside of the dungeons," Cathria said. "Would you rather be a 14th-level adventurer or an archmage?"

"I suppose an archmage, if I didn't have to do all the studying."

"If only I was lucky enough to skip that part," Cathria said. She stared into the fire, and Lillia could see the reflection of a possible past in her eyes, one that Cathria was imagining. One where she wasn't a simulacrum of glass an age after her true death.

"With my admittedly limited experience, though, I do believe I can offer some advice that they would miss."

Lillia scooched a little closer to the fire, warming her toes after spending the first half of the day in Castle Varian's rain.

"I have spoken before about the acceleration required for an Archmage to cast their most powerful spells in a moment."

Lillia nodded along. That had been one of the times where it was better just to let Cathria talk. The conversation where she'd tried to explain mana acceleration had drifted so far into theory that Lillia could have fallen asleep to it, but the princess had learned that interruptions left Cathria distraught if she was speaking about something she was interested in.

"With so many powerful spells, but a crushing amount of memorization needed to call upon each, we archmages are never able to carry our full repertoire into battle."

"Pardon?"

"Trying to memorize too many spells lead to memorizing none of the spells."

Lillia nodded along. It was like titles for visiting nobility.

"So, though magic offered me a perfect answer to every scenario, I began memorizing imperfect answers that fit a lot of shapes."

"A simple pair of regal flats."

"Sure."

"Or like a giant fireball," Lillia offered to relate.

"A giant fireball is exemplary of my point," Cathria said. "There are scenarios in which a beam of condensed light would outperform a fireball, but how critical are those instances? How essential is the perfect tool? You can shave down your spellbook by looking at situations and finding the patterns between them. If the pattern matches. Throw a fireball."

Cracks were beginning to form in Cathria's fingertips. The Archmage held her hand out, pondering the way the light danced across the signal of her impermanence.

"I can't throw fireballs, so I believe you're halfway through your point, Cathria."

"Ah yes, pardon me. There is usually not much time for beauty in my visits."

"Take as much time as you need. There's always tomorrow."

"There is forever tomorrow. There is still reason to do things today," Cathria said. She had a habit of doing that, casually making Lillia feel vapid.

"My point being, your skills as an adventurer are similar to the truncated spellbook I keep memorized. It's critical that with a limited selection of skills, you recognize the patterns and shapes of your opponents." She folded her hands into her lap, but kept staring out into the fire.

"You will fight a thousand battles in here, Lillia, and perhaps one battle a thousand times. Your opponents will be varied. There will be no single strategy or method of the hunt or skill with the blade that will guide you through every encounter."

Her gaze drifted downward as something cracked just below her navel. "But looking at your opponent and recognizing the shapes they move in before they have moved."

Cathria smiled, her voice lifted, and two small spider webs spread from the corner of her lips. "Well, it certainly helped me. And I did okay for myself. Only turned into a monster one time."

"Cathria, you're not a monster."

"I most decidedly am. I am also glass. I am also dead. But that's life."

She grabbed the brim of her hat as if she were going to remove it. Of course she couldn't, it was part of the same glass.

"I suppose saying that it's life isn't appropriate in my circumstance."

"It's something," Lillia offered.

"It's something," Cathria said. "And sometimes, something's enough to kill someone you need to kill."

[It is now Day [39] of your quest.]

"Alright Silencer, let's try this one more time."

Princess Lillia Ashvalin stepped through the inlaid door on the Five Point Fall's third landing. For a breath, there was nothing as she slipped between the central dungeon and the siege of Castle Varian.

She didn't break stride.

The first trebuchet stone would pass overhead in three breaths. The Guard Captain would reach for her shoulder on the fourth. Somewhere below, the ram would strike the gate just as the first siege tower kissed the wall.

The sound of the siege arrived all at once: the roaring wind, the shouts of the soldiers on the wall, the howl of trebuchet fire. Lillia stepped out onto the wall walk under the blazing sky and tossed her hair.

"You there, soldier! Defen—"

"No." Lillia held up a hand, and the Guard Captain's Sabre on her hip flared hot for a moment. The Guard Captain, who was supposed to shove her forward toward the other soldiers, hesitated, his hand frozen in the air. She batted the hand to the side as she walked, and the Captain recoiled as if he'd been blessed to be touched by her.

Lillia strode forward along the wall. The soldiers awaiting the siege tower parted for her like a dull sea of armor splitting to reveal Lillia's stunning silver. The fire in the sky accentuated the polished plates sewn into her cropped coat and the medals embedded within the lone pauldron on her right shoulder.

Below the jacket, the outfit had a tight chain shirt that hugged Lillia's torso from the neck down. At her waist, a thin belt cut off the chain-mail to open to a pair of narrow trousers made of links so fine they appeared to be fabric.

The pants had been a surprise the first time Lillia put on the outfit.

[Court Commander's Uniform - 3 x Guard Captain's Plate]

[On My Command - Changes 'Indignance' to 'Command' - An authority based check to force a friendly creature to follow a command or a hostile creature to perform one of three minor actions.]

[Steel Resolve - As long as the wearer has a “Summon,” she recovers from injury rapidly. The Summon must be involved in the same battle as the Commander for this effect to activate.]

[For Your Highness who wishes to protect their people on every field of battle.]

Once she was on the other side of the first crowd of soldiers, Lillia rolled her shoulders and hopped up and down in place several times. Each and every morning, she woke up rested but on the floor, which meant she was never able to sleep as a princess should.

Today, that would all change. Today was the day she would take down the Silencer, but even with that focus, she had to set up her soldiers for success. Otherwise, she'd never hear the end of it from Havoc.

"Skipped fights are missed opportunities," he'd say, or one of the other hundred things he'd repeated to chide Lillia as she'd learned the farming process.

Once she felt refreshed, Lillia raised a hand. As she turned her palm to the sky, the Vibrant Dawn tiara glowed. For a breath, the sky was pink instead of orange.

"Dance for me, my knight."

A knight manifested in front of Lillia. Hollow armor that clattered together, piece by piece, as they formed mid-air. Its silvered gauntlet reached out and caught an axe as it appeared.

[Waltzing Retainers - Once per day, the Princess may summon [1] armored knight from the ballroom to assist her with any manner of tasks. The number of knights is dependent on the Princess’ authority.]

Lillia's waltzing retainer bowed to her. Even with her increased authority, the skill only created a single knight. That was fine. Lillia was using him to farm either way.

“Saltarello, man the ballista, if you would. Help clear the walls. Trebuchet first, then the siege towers until you’re overrun.”

Saltarello, one of the three knights Lillia had learned to summon and recognizable by his axe, bowed a second time before marching off further down the wall.

Lillia turned away from the advancing army and looked out over the burning city behind her. Once more into the breach.

Silently, and much to the horror of any of the soldiers watching, Lillia stepped off the wall and plummeted down to the city below.

*****************************

[Day 19 of your Quest]

"Open the door and fight the chitterpede for three minutes without killing it. If you manage that, I'll tell you another one of my grand kid's names." Havoc leaned back in his chair, putting his clawed, dirty feet on the Hunting Lodge table.

They never used the table, but Lillia still rolled her eyes at the breach of etiquette. She'd given up arguing the point, but there was a long road stretching between tolerance and acceptance.

"Three minutes?" Lillia asked.

"Mhm."

"Last time was two."

"And last time you managed" Havoc said, "so this time it needs to be longer. Or you won't improve."

"I barely managed," Lillia muttered. She knew Havoc would hear her, but that was fine. He knew her opinion on his training methods.

She took a deep breath and instantly regretted it as the stench of the Hunting Lodge's alcohol-soaked air seared her sinuses. That's what this was, training. It had started several days ago, a week of dungeon days and a dozen deaths after killing Eisel.

Lillia, in Havoc's unimpeachable opinion, relied too much on her dresses to guard for her. The Chitterpede battlegown was her default for every battle, as she was tossed and thrown around again and again in the process of leveling up.

Lillia couldn't argue Havoc's point, not that she'd convince him either way. She did rely on her dresses to carry her defensively. Of course she did. For all the leaps and bounds Lillia had made regarding her swordplay, she was still an untrained princess waving around a sharp stick.

Knights spent years training and perfecting their dueling technique. Lillia had unlimited chances, but even if she was a prodigy she was years away from the flawless parries and ripostes that Havoc demanded of her.

Originally, Lillia had tried to convince Havoc by explaining that getting punched in the face and letting the dresses handle it had so far been a winning formula. Why mess with success?

Havoc’s pride had settled that argument.

"Okay," Lillia said as she rested her hands on the storage closet handle. "I got this."

It was just three minutes. She could pull it off.

*****************************

On day 39, Lillia touched down in the castle-town streets. White wings extended from her heels to slow her fall.

[Plainsrunner Over-the-Knee Boots - Level 2]

[Equipment - Boots]

[Aerial Predator - the wearer deals increased damage with all attacks if they began above the target.]

[Soft Landing - The Plainsrunner boots will catch the wearer and prevent injury from falling.]

Once she was on the ground, Lillia drew Vianaffir out of her inventory. Since the battle with Eisel, the blade had changed. A brilliant blue lightning-like streak ran down the center of the blade whenever Lillia held it. A representation of its new form and the fact that Lillia had used the True Soul strike to escape her old captor.

The constant reminder of her victory was one of the many reasons Lillia began each fight with Vianaffir.

Before charging into the city, Lillia considered her options.

Unlike her previous attempts, they were less infinite. She came with a goal: defeat the Silencer, and furthermore, defeat the Silencer alone.

It was one of the nice things about Infinite Lives. It gave Lillia as many chances as she needed to pursue a vendetta. Time and time again, her attempts to explore the city surrounding the palace were ended prematurely by the same stupid secret boss. At first, it had been annoying. Now it was personal.

Even with a singular end goal, there were dozens of ways Lillia could approach challenging the Silencer. She knew that he began his hunt in the market, but the longer she spent in the castle town, the further he roamed in search of her. Even wearing one of her invader's gowns didn't prevent him from engaging on sight.

Over several mornings and too many sticks' worth of charcoal, Lillia had pitched a dozen ideas to Havoc, trying to determine where in the city would give her the best chance against the Silencer.

None offered enough benefits to overcome the fact that he would attack at random.

In the central market. In his home, Lillia knew she could attract the Silencer's attention. Plus, there was something cathartic about kicking his ass on his home turf.

At least there was supposed to be. Lillia was twelve attempts into battling the Silencer, and all of them had ended with her choking on her own throat as the poison coursed through her veins.

[Trebuchet Destroyed - Yay!]

Saltarello was already doing his job. That meant she'd lingered too long. Decision made. Today, she wouldn't bother circling around the burning tailor shop to try and start closer to the fabric. Today, she would start her fight in the main thoroughfare, with her head held high.

*****************************

[Day 16 of Your Quest]

"The second rule of the hunt is Preparation. Namely: you've got to understand what you're hunting because there are two kinds of hunt on the grounds."

Lillia was crouched low in the thin, wispy grasses of the hunting grounds near the top of the hill in the southern corner. Thorne was perched on the branch of a tree above her, her leather and royal blues matched by bark and flower.

"And even out there, it's the same thing, sugar. There's two kinds of fight: a hunt and a fight."

"I don't know if you can say there are two kinds of something and then list that something as one of the two kinds."

Thorne scoffed. "Just listen to me and you'll understand what I mean in a minute." As she got riled up, her wings buzzed behind her. "What I'm trying to say is that you need to know whether what you're fighting wants to fight you."

"Pardon?"

"Take a scurry ram, for example. It is scared of you. It doesn't want to fight, so unless you corner it, it's just going to try to run."

"Okay."

"But if you take something like your friend the Ambusher, it's going to want to fight because it first sees you as prey, but if you strike back, it sees you as a threat to its territory."

"Mm-hmm."

"One's a hunt, one's a fight. Gotta know which is which."

"That’s good to know while we’re in here, Thorne," Lillia said.

Thorne lowered her bow from the horizon she was watching and turned to Lillia. "I think I hear a but coming."

"But so far, everything I've run into in every other room just wants to kill me," Lillia said. "Nothing tries to run away."

"Alright, then, in that case, change of point of view. You need to figure out whether it thinks you're going to run away."

"Or?"

"Or, if whatever you're facing thinks you're gonna fight."

"Okay, thanks for the guidance, I suppose," Lillia said. She wasn't sure she'd taken anything from Thorne's rambling, but what else was new? If there was one thing she'd learned about the Huntsmaster over the course of finding something decent to eat within the dungeon, it was that downtime made her devastatingly chatty.

"Thorne?"

"Yeah, sugar?"

"Which should I be?"

Thorne considered it for a moment. "You know, I'm always on the hunt, so prey knows what it's getting into. But the only creatures that get a shot on me are the ones that look like they're gonna run and then turn fast."

"So both?"

"Make him think you're one and then do the other. It ruins their preparation."

"Okay." Lillia could do that. She thought.

"Now, rule number three of the hunt…"

*****************************

Lillia approached the silk cart in the central market. The same one that she'd been drawn towards during her initial encounter with the Silencer. Even if she smuggled some of the fabric back to the cathedral with her she didn't know how permanent it would be. Would the dungeon allow her the luxury of a blanket that didn't smell like wet fur and beer?

The temperature plummeted as Lillia approached the merchant cart. The smell of ash and wood from the burning city faded into nothing.

[Secret Discovered - Good Luck]

Lillia kept walking forward, empty handed and in her first level Ambusher Slip. If she drew her weapon. If she changed armor. If she did anything other than approach the cart the Silencer would change tactics. If he thought she were oblivious, he'd come out to play.

The scratch of leather sole on cobblestone, barely audible above Lillia's steps. The soft rustle of layered fabric nearly covered by the crackling fire. The whistle of an inhale before held breath.

Lillia wheeled as the Silencer was already in the air, summoning Vianaffir to her hand, directly in the path of the assassin's blow. The Silencer spun to the side, his blade barely nicking Vianaffir's tip to prevent Lillia from mounting a counterstrike as he landed. Black fabric whipped around the Silencer as he landed just past Lillia.

[Secret Discovered: Defeat the Silencer.]

Lillia pulled spider thread into her hand, tearing apart three instances in a single practiced motion. The threads wrapped around her, spiraling across the princess a thousand times and forming a tight bodice around her torso. Behind her neck, the thread stiffened into a high collar with eight points. Around her legs, a hundred sheets of silk layered one over another, each so thin that they floated alongside Lillia's movement, never quite settling in one place.

Finally, a mourning veil drew over Lillia's face, fine as mist and black as midnight as Widow's Etiquette finished forming around her.

She pointed Vianaffir to the Silencer.

It was impossible to see the Silencer's face in the shadow of his hood, but Lillia knew he was smiling.

Lillia dropped into the Cathedral just after she’d realized that going to the Hearth of Memory, even if it had taken a day, would have bought her a bath she desperately needed. Somehow the blood under her fingernails and stuck in her hair felt even more congealed than it had been before.

The Hearth itself was different, not in any reward sense—they hadn’t captured a new Hearth—but Lillia could feel it right away. The torch in its sconce on the far wall glowed brighter than it had before. The table by the fire had fewer cracks. The Hearth itself burned hotter and pulled more of the room into its embrace.

Along both walls, a small kiss of light filtered through stained glass. If Lillia didn’t know for certain they were underground from her original fall, she world have sworn it was the sun.

Mistaking it for daybreak was enough to make it feel friendly though. Each time she caught it in the corner of her eye, until she thought about it long enough to correct herself, the sun would say hello.

Lillia was alone in the brighter room. She’d expected a little more fanfare upon her return. “Hello?”

Nothing.

“Anyone?” she called louder. Echoes answered.

Lillia sighed. “Ah, shoot and sugar, what is it this time?” After one quick look around the cathedral hall, she descended.

There was nobody on the first landing. The door to the hunting lodge was ajar, and when Lillia opened it, she ran into the familiar stench of stale alcohol and lingering food scraps. The chitterpede slammed into the storeroom door at the back of the room.

Across the hall, the door to Havoc’s room was locked. There was no error message, but Lillia couldn’t get through.

Between the two doors, a thousand footsteps surrounded Sir Nobody’s dust outline on the floor, plus the thirty-odd more that Lillia had put there in the past day.

On the second landing, the door to the hunting grounds opened easily. Lillia peeked into the plains beyond, looking out over the pre-formed landscape and spotting the moving shadows of some of the creatures inside. She didn’t see Thorne.

The door to the Spellmite Architect’s challenge and Cathria’s tower was still there. Lillia decided against opening it, considering it was the most likely to lead into a whole new set of problems. That, and between the group she’d brought to fight Eisel, almost every room was covered, but the Architects’ challenge.

Technically, she also had the owner of that room on her side; Lillia just couldn’t summon her again today.

The third-floor landing had changed. Hanging from the ceiling was a three-armed chandelier that carried massive, lit torches on two of its three branches. The last unlit black iron branch pointed towards Nennia’s door.

That would be the way down through her domain.

Someone pounded on the door to Eisel’s room. Lillia answered.

“Hello?”

Havoc was on the other side of the door, with the backside of his axe raised to the door in order to hammer on it. Havoc lowered the axe slowly.

For one second, neither of them spoke.

Then Havoc looked her up and down. His eyes stopped on the blood in her hair, then the new tiara on her head, then the fact that Eisel was not standing behind her with a hand on her shoulder and some horrible little smile on his face.

“Well?” Havoc asked.

Lillia swallowed. Her throat was so dry that it hurt.

“He’s dead.”

Havoc stared at her.

“Dead, dead,” Lillia added. “Corpse in the marketplace dead. Rickshaw was mad about the blood dead.”

“Oh.” Havoc lowered the axe the rest of the way. “Good. Worked how you thought then.” He scratched his nose. “Glad. Could have been real dumb.”

“It was a good plan.”

“That was clever,” Havoc admitted. “Doesn’t mean it wasn’t dumb.”

“Hey, I know y’all are busy with your reunion, but I have been stuck in this room too long.” Thorne came in hot, buzzing past Havoc as Lillia barely scooched out of the way and opened the door wide enough for her lithe frame. At speed, the Huntsmaster almost crashed into the far wall. She shivered and her wings buzzed.

“I thought I was never gonna get out of there.”

“Was it that long?” Lillia asked.

“No.”

“Yes!” Thorne said. “That room gives me the creeps. It’s too small and narrow.”

“We live in a dungeon.”

“And have you seen the room I spend most of my time in? It’s the biggest one. Gotta know I can stretch my wings or I start getting itchy about it.” Thorne shivered again. The blue flaps of her jacket fluttered along with her wings. “Plus, I can’t say the company helped,” she added at a whisper.

“Havoc?”

“I believe she was speaking about me, pet,” Nennia had lowered herself from the ceiling behind Havoc and was craning her human torso to meet Lillia eye to eye. As her massive spider body dropped to the floor, she mostly managed to keep herself upright and facing the princess.

The eye contact made Lillia deeply uncomfortable.

Little princess.”

Lillia lifted her chin. “Spider queen.”

“How formal. I was beginning to think murder had made us friends.”

“Murder has made me tired.”

A low laugh moved through the thread.

“Eisel is dead,” Nennia said.

“Yes.”

“Properly?”

“Proper.”

“Good.” The word was soft. Almost tender. That made it worse. “Then our bargain still breathes.”

“Yes.”

“I assume you remembered that which was mine?”

Lillia took a deep breath. She hated every part of this.

Shaking, Lillia held her right hand out to the side and called something from her inventory.

Eisel’s body slapped the ground like a wet sock. The tattered rags Rickshaw had covered him in were stuck to his skin.

Havoc’s eyes went wide. “That was in your—”

Lillia nodded quickly.

“So you’re saying that—”

She nodded faster.

“Did you have to press it up to…”

Lillia squeaked.

Nennia placed a soft human hand on Havoc’s shoulder, but one of her front legs was what pushed him to the side. She squeezed through the doorway, needing to fold her legs at awkward angles to exit onto the main landing.

Even as she turned to Lillia, the Spider Queen kept one leg on the corpse, affirming ownership.

“Prompt payment for services rendered. Consider our accord complete. I helped rid you of your pest, and you provided...a novel experience.”

Nennia bent a knee, leaning herself down to reach Lillia’s height. From this close and in the proper light, Lillia could see the pupils behind the red of the spider’s eyes.

“This spells the end of our trip, little princess. Next we speak, it’ll be a Spider Queen to adventurer.”

“I will still be a princess.”

“Princess or not, you will be attempting to conquer my domain, and that will not lie unchallenged.”

“And here I thought murder had made us friends.”

Nennia chuckled. Too regal to be a monster, and too monstrous to be a regent. “I look forward to our bouts, Lillia. The fleeting conversation before each of your deaths will be more entertaining than most.”

Lillia swallowed. “Good luck to you, too.” Her goodbye was an entire octave higher than intended.

Rather than spinning him in silk or taking him in or impaling him on one of her massive hind legs, Nenna bent down to fetch Eisel’s corpse from the floor. She peeled it off the flagstone with one hand, holding it out at arm’s length. Across her eight eyes, Lillia saw hunger, derision, disgust, and curiosity.

The door to Nennia’s lair swung open on its own accord, and the Spider Queen skittered inside faster than they had seen her move outside of the fight. The lacquered black of her carapace disappeared into the shadow almost immediately, but the pale white of her skin, the red of her eyes, and Eisel’s blonde hair lingered in the dark.

Then all at once, they were swallowed whole.

The door slammed shut behind Nennia and jolted all three that remained on the third floor landing awake from their staring stupor.

“I know it wasn’t a permanent thing, but damn, I’m glad she was on our side,” Thorne said. “I know I was all excited about it before, but I am less confident in joining you for a scuffle against her later on.”

“We come back if we die,” Lillia said.

“I’m just worried she’d make the part before that linger,” Thorne said. “She seems like the type.”

Lillia nodded along. She had a good idea what that first meager conversation before combat would be. A request for quick death.

The thought made Lillia’s skin crawl because she could already hear Nennia’s answer.

Something polite. Something amused. Something that made it clear the Spider Queen considered mercy a fascinating courtly custom, but not one she had any intention of observing.

Havoc scratched under his chin with the haft of his axe. “Yeah. Not a fan of that.”

“Of Nennia?” Lillia asked.

“Of the part where we’re apparently doing that next.”

Lillia shook her head. “That’s not next.”

“What?”

Lillia began to lead the way for Havoc and her to return to the Cathedral. She knew that Thorne would follow for a time, but understood that she had more of her own agenda than anything Lillia could corral.

“I need a bath. I need to talk to Cathria. I need several naps. I need a hairbrush, and we have all earned a rest.”

Around the second core landing, when Lillia had finished her list, Havoc skipped a step to catch up to her. He pressed the clasp of the Usurper’s Cloak into her palm.

Lillia stopped.

It looked so light and fragile in her hand. As harmless as it had felt the first time it closed around her neck.

“Don’t know if you should put it on, don’t know how it works if he’s dead but…” Havoc rested a hand on Lillia’s shoulder. “Uh, it’s good to. Uh. It’s—Hrm.”

Lillia pulled Havoc into a hug. He tensed against it for a breath, and then on the first exhale the hesitation melted from his shoulders.

“It’s good to carry something to represent hard work and a good lesson,” Havoc said into Lillia’s chest. He patted her back as he said it.

Lillia didn’t end the embrace. “We did it.”

“He’s dead.”

“Dead, dead. Body in a marketplace dead,” Thorne echoed. She buzzed as she said it, seemingly happy to be caught up on the bit.

“Lillia,” Havoc said.

“Hey Princess! I’mma hop off here, head out to the ground. I still got your fun toys to play with,” Thorne said. She held out a hand, and her bow wove itself together in her open palm.

Lillia pulled Havoc deeper into the hug. “Thorne, thank you. I’ll come down soon. I think I have to learn the whole farming thing.”

“I’ll teach you how to hunt proper, don’t you worry,” Thorne said.

“Lillia,” Havoc said.

“Thank you again, Thorne. I couldn’t have done this without you.”

“Damned right. Not sure I did more than the spider lady, but I was certainly easier on the eyes.”

“Take care.”

“Lillia,” Havoc said. He patted her on the back again.

“Don’t need to. Got a spare life,” Thorne said as she slipped through the door and out into the Hunting Grounds. Lillia heard the buzz of her wings just before the room clicked shut.

“Lillia.”

“Havoc.”

“You can let go now.”

“This has been a long time coming,” Lillia said. Even then she released him after one last confirming squeeze. “And there will be more.”

Havoc snorted and started trudging up the stairs without Lillia. “Come on. You look like shit. You should rest.”

Lillia hurried after him. “Excuse me?”

“You've got corpse blood in your hair and you’re limping.”

“A princess has never looked like sh—that bad.”

“Here we go.”

“Here we go, what?”

“You solve the one big problem and now you’re gonna start bugging me about all the little ones again.” They reached the top of the stairs together. As they entered the domain of the Cathedral Hearth, the fire popped.

For a brief moment, every shadow in the Cathedral drew back from the fire. The room brightened again, and the stained glass along the walls caught more impossible sunlight.

Then the text returned.

[Would you like to Rest at the Cathedral Hearth?]

Rest.

Lillia was gross. Lillia was tired. Lillia had so many reasons to hate this moment. There were a thousand small cuts that should have added up to agonizing wounds.

But they didn’t.

She was alive. Havoc was alive. Thorne was alive.

Nennia was alive, which was probably a neutral outcome.

Eisel was dead and currently being stuffed into a spider’s pantry.

Lillia sat down beside the fire and curled up into herself. For the first time in forever, nothing was stealing the taste of brief victory from her lips.

[Rest?]

The text waited.

Lillia listened to the fire.

Havoc joined her.

The rest of the dungeon was down then, below them. The secrets of the Castle Varian siege, Nennia’s domain, whatever horrors lay on the floors beyond.

But right here, right now, inside the Cathedral Hearth, Lillia wasn’t a scared little girl jumping at each creaking door and waiting to be rescued.

She was Princess Lillia Ashvalin. Class: Princess. Level 15.

And even if it took a thousand deaths, she would get out of here.

Nobody came.

Nobody saved the princess.

And she didn’t need saving.

They were nowhere, and they were everywhere. For a brief moment of time the only thing that Lillia could feel was the thread of Eisel’s collar balled in her fist, and his struggling heartbeat through Vianaffir’s pommel.

First, there was the smell of spice and wood smoke. Then there was the sway of the sea under their feet. Then Lillia opened her eyes to the market.

Every stall had seemed so colourful the first time she’d been there, but after being in Eisel’s domain, the market was beautifully easy on the eyes.

Lillia was still using Vianaffir to support her weight. As the pair landed in the market, she shifted and the blade lurched forward, pulling further through Eisel and widening the lethal wound.

He didn’t have the strength to moan.

“Welcome back, darling. Thanks for coming to the traveling ma—WHAT THE FUCK?!” Rickshaw had popped up behind one of the stall counters to the right of Lillia and had the appropriate reaction to the soon-to-be corpse Lillia had brought along with her.

Lillia, for her part, was too out of breath to answer the skeleton as the adrenaline drained out of her. Her fingers tingled as she kept them wrapped around Vianaffir’s hilt. If Eisel still had a heartbeat, she couldn’t feel it anymore.

“Does he need a potion? I mean, I don’t do freebies, but we could do something quick and…” Rickshaw leaned over the counter, and the gold behind his sockets flickered for a moment. “Though you are in the middle of stabbing him so. Maybe you’re not paying for the potions.”

“I…” Lillia's throat was too tight for her to speak. She wanted to pull the blade out of his chest. Wouldn't that be the right thing to do? But each time the thought crossed her mind, she could see the wound stitching itself together and Eisel standing up to grab her.

“Ugh. Honeybee is gonna kill me. You know how hard it is to get blood out of hardwood? There’s a reason I stay on my own floors instead of messing around on the fighty ones."

Lillia was still staring at the body. How was she supposed to know when she could take Vianaffir out? How was she supposed to know if it worked? How was she supposed to know when it was ov—

[Eisel the Usurper Vanquished! Yay!!]

Confetti popped out of the space where Vianaffir had pierced Eisel’s heart. Lillia fell backward as the fanfare blared; the sword came with her, tearing out of the corpse with a soaking squelch.

[Gained - Poison of Weakmind x 2]

[Gained - Essence of the Prideful x 1]

[Gained - Usurper’s Garb Fabric x 1]

The text faded, and the fanfare stopped for a moment. Then something glowed deep within Eisel’s chest wound. The emanating light shifted from white to green to blue to purple and then into a brilliant gold.

[Legendary Drop!]

“Holy, don’t see that every day.” Rickshaw was leaning over the counter, watching the show.

Rather than being added to her inventory, the final drop revealed itself to Lillia as a mote of light that hovered over Eisel’s corpse. She hesitated for a single moment before taking one hand off Vianaffir to touch the light. It was warm.

As soon as Lillia’s finger brushed against the light, it bloomed outwards into a series of weapons that grew more massive by the second. The silhouette of a rapier turned into a battleaxe turned into a great sword.

Then the light stuttered for a moment, and the text returned.

[Additional Quest Completed - Remove the Usurper]

[Reward De-Randomized]

The light snapped inward, folding on itself over and over until it was something small and thin. Just before it fully formed, Lillia reached out and caught it.

Of every fearsome shape it could have taken, the light sat in Lillia’s hands as a tiara with a frame of clear glass and coloured shards where the gems would have been. The tiara caught every light in the market, sending them cascading in a thousand glittering directions.

[Gained - Legendary Item: The Vibrant Dawn]

Lillia didn’t need to force the text to explain what was going on.

[The Vibrant Dawn]

[Legendary Tiara - Required Class: Princess]

[The Sun Never Sets - The Princess’ Authority is increased in rooms they have already conquered.]

[Befitting Her Station - The Princess’ Authority grants her Poise. Poise increases the Princess’ prowess as long as she fights in a manner befitting her station.]

[Waltzing Retainers - Once per day, the Princess may summon [1] armored knight from the ballroom to assist her with any manner of tasks. The number of knights is dependent on the Princess’ authority.]

[Let the princess carve a path, that her name may carry weight beyond its lineage.]

While Lillia read, Rickshaw had slid in beside her. She was interrupted from re-reading the last lines by the skeleton clicking a tongue he didn’t have. “First legendary drop I ever get to see live, and it’s not even something I can sell.”

Lillia looked up at him. “I don’t want to sell it.”

“Good, cause I don’t wanna buy. Only equippable by the Princess Class? Darling, from what I can tell, that’s only you, and there is no margin in a one-woman market.”

Blood continued to seep out of Eisel’s corpse after the drop.

Lillia waited.

Some stupid, hopeful part of her waited for the levels. For the flood of everything Eisel had stolen to come rushing back where it belonged.

Nothing came.

Of course nothing came. Killing a thief did not put the jewelry back in the box. She was lucky she'd gotten what she did during the fight.

Rickshaw approached, then recoiled from the corpse. Lillia imagined him scrunching a nose he didn’t have.

“Seriously though, I invite one lady to come back to my market from anywhere, and she brings me a corpse. Absolutely ridiculous. What am I going to tell my other customers?”

Rickshaw scratched the back of his skull. The sound of his finger bones scraping was louder than Lillia expected.

“Alright, kid. Are you buying? Are you selling? Or is this just a…delivery?”

Lillia shook out her hair, and some of her bangs still stuck back on her sweat-slicked forehead. She was drenched in sweat, absolutely coated in Eisel’s blood, and even some of Nennia’s blood had slipped between the plates of her battlegown and stuck to her between changes.

It wasn’t bug guts, but once again, Lillia was gross.

Havoc. Thorne. Nennia.

Lillia’s mind reached for them one at a time and found only questions. Were they alive? Were they back in their rooms? Had the dungeon taken the victory as cleanly as it had taken Eisel?

She wanted to check. She wanted to sit down. She wanted to sleep for a week.

She wanted a break. Shopping could be a break. It’d been an escape for her before.

“I would like to buy a mirror, some more soap, my old dress back…” She took a second to steady herself. “And some smith’s tools if you've got them.”

“What do I look like, a village market?”

“You don’t have mirrors?”

“I have enchanted mirrors and standards, darling. Thus, my issue with the body you left on my floor.”

Lillia kept trying not to look at the dead body. Eisel had deserved it, and that had been the point. That didn’t mean she didn’t want to distance herself from it. “It goes away, doesn’t it?”

“Is that guy from one of the dungeon rooms?”

Lillia nodded.

“Ah. Damn, I’ll get the cleaners.”

“What?”

“Darling, that is no longer a monster. That right there, that is a corpse.”

“Oh.”

“Well, you abused the coin I gave you to bring him here so he could die out of his room, right?”

Lillia nodded.

“Then don’t be surprised when you leave a dead body.”

Lillia looked from Eisel to Rickshaw and back. He looked so much harsher in death. His face was screwed up and his clothes were a crumpled mess, as if this were the reality and every waking moment had been spent trying to maintain certain appearances.

“Well, he was a ba—”

“Darling, I do not care. I’m sure he deserved it. People die in dungeons; we kill ‘em. That’s what we do down here. You kill things, you get rewards. And he might not be in the drop system, but those look like some nice shoes he’s wearing.”

“Would they be an item?” Lillia asked. The thought of pulling blood-soaked clothes off Eisel was enough to make her stomach flop around.

“Oh! No, they wouldn’t be part of the Dungeon anymore. They just look like they’re well made and about my size.” Rickshaw looked over to Lillia. “If you help me lift them over there, I’ll give you a discount on the mirror.”

Eisel’s corpse was wet, and probably cold. Just because Lillia’s hands were already bloody didn’t mean she was eager to get more on them.

There was at least one solution to it, though.

Lillia pulled off the Plains Tyrant’s Crown and placed The Vibrant Dawn on her head. It was light and felt oddly ordinary.

Once she wore the item, she held out a hand toward Eisel’s corpse. “Waltzing Retainers!”

Despite appearances, the travelling market was a small space. Lillia’s voice echoed back to her. Nothing happened.

“Go, my waltzing retainer?” Lillia tried. The second attempt wasn’t loud enough to echo, but it was just as useless.

Rickshaw patted Lillia on the shoulder.

“I’ll figure it out. I just need to activate the item, and then my knight will pick it up.”

“Darling,” Rickshaw said. “It’s a legendary item. You have to attune to it.”

“What? How do you attune to something?”

“You’ve gotta rest.”

“I didn’t attune to Vianaffir,” Lillia said, “and—”

“Yeah, Vianaffir ain’t a legendary sword in anything but name. There are legends about it, but item-wise it’s classified as very rare.”

“I…oh.”

“Hey, don’t let that take away from how important that sword is to you, darling.”

Lillia was busy picturing what would have happened if Vianaffir were a legendary blade. She could have pulled it out during her battle with Eisel upon hitting level 15 and found out that it wouldn’t work.

“All right, darling, you have whatever crisis you need to, but come on. If you want that mirror, you’re gonna have to lift with your back.”

Lillia looked over at Rickshaw, who was now standing above Eisel’s cooling corpse. Blood had pooled beneath him, as it had beneath Havoc’s body in her first days in the dungeon.

Oh God, she wasn’t going to have carry him, wasn't she?

Lillia stood by the door to the heart of memory, holding her new mirror with her old dress and additional bars of soap in her inventory. She desperately needed water to get some of the blood off her hands.

“Thank you again for your business, darling. You take care, and I will see you around the dungeon somewhere.”

“Third floor of the architect challenge, I know.”

“Oh no, I won’t always be there. Gotta keep it moving. Can’t find me in the same place twice.”

Lillia stopped. She didn’t quite turn around to Rickshaw. “Then why did I find you there last time?”

“It seemed like you were really counting on it,” he said, “and I’m a sucker for a sob story."

Oh.

"Now you, darling, should run along. Go out there and celebrate killing that guy. I’ve got a corpse worth of loot to organize.”

“Thanks, Rickshaw.”

“I’d say anytime, but I’m never giving you an invitation coin again.”

Lillia pushed open the door to the Hearth of Memory. There was darkness and text in front of her.

[Would you like to rest in the Hearth of Memory or transfer to another Hearth?]

[Which Hearth?]

[You Will Return to the Cathedral Hearth]

[Resting There will Move Time in the Dungeon Forward by [1] Day]

[Are You Ready?]

Lillia took a deep breath.

“As I’ll ever be.”

Stained glass walls slammed into place around Lillia and Eisel, isolating them in a small, beautiful box. Colored streams of light poured in from every direction, like they were within the sun.

Eisel had changed in the time when Lillia had been between worlds. He was back in the paladin-like suit he’d worn before. Pauldrons, but no other armour, and a sweeping cloak. It was a costume optimized for the appearance of heroism.

Eisel chuckled as he paced around the walls. As he walked, he wiped some of Nennia's black blood off of his cheek and then took off the glove he'd used to wipe it, tossing it to the side.

It disappeared into the glass.

"You really did the best with what you had," Eisel said. He didn't bother looking at Lillia as he spoke. "A couple tutorial characters and one of my neighbors from the third. Work with what you got."

Lillia swapped over to the Widow's Courtesy, spider silk wove itself between her fingers, reinforcing her grip on Hooke.

"If you're not worried about them, why isolate me?" Lillia asked.

“I said I wanted to talk. You agreed to it when you grabbed the broken sword.” Eisel put his sword away with a flourish, the stained glass of the blade catching the light before it vanished into the ether. "You should be glad I'm willing to negotiate."

"If—"

"If I'm not worried, why negotiate?" Eisel predicted Lillia's next response. She bristled at the fact that he was right. "It's simple, Lillia. There's an easy way and a hard way to do this. I would prefer you agree to work with me."

Eisel was still pacing. Lillia kept turning to keep her blade trained on him. "And if I don't?"

"You will, eventually, Lillia. Do you know how long I've been down here? I've waited so long. Waiting for you to come around would be easy." Eisel stopped pacing to face her. He tossed his hair out of his eyes. The long blonde locks framed his face perfectly.

"The thing you're making difficult is that, by bringing friends, you've made it so I have to treat this like a boss fight and make it lethal." He sighed. "By doing this, you're risking the worst outcome for both of us. I don't want to kill you, Lillia. Never permanently. And I don't want to do it at all, but you might make me."

Lillia's stance slipped for a moment at the threat. She recovered, but Eisel noticed it.

"See, here's how it should go," he said. "You stand aside and I can send the little group of nobodies you brought to very permanent ends, and then we can pretend that none of this happened and work together."

Lillia hadn't dropped the blade yet. Eisel looked at it and rolled his eyes.

"And what happens if you keep fighting? They still die, I send you back to the Hearth and then I have the power to find you again and again and again. And then, once you're ready to give up, you know that I can find you before the Land of Wheat and Silk."

"I'd never help you."

"That's the issue," Eisel said. "You think you wouldn't. I mean, I'd have to break you and then wait for you to come around. You worked alongside your aunt to run the kingdom eventually. How long did that take? Three years?"

Lillia took a deep breath. Now wasn't the time to let him get to her. She palmed Cathria's amulet.

"Your Highness, the four years it would take me to break and remake you are years I'd prefer not to waste. And I can't imagine that's something you want to go through. Don't make me do this to us."

Lillia tapped on the front of the amulet. She stepped backward as the Glass Spellmite slipped out of its cage. In a room made entirely of windows, her footsteps covered the Spellmite's, if only for a second.

"I have offered you partnership in escaping this dungeon, and you have thrown it back in my face twice."

"It wasn't a partnership."

"Don't you just have a lovely memory?" Eisel said. "Nitpicking my words and trying to twist my meanings. Is it just because you enjoy fighting now, princess? You want a reason to swing a sword? You want to be angry with me and—"

"Don't have to do much nitpicking."

"Lillia Be—"

The Glass Spellmite made a break for it and charged toward Eisel. He stopped looking at Lillia for a breath to swat it and shatter it into a thousand shining pieces.

That was all the time Lillia needed. She raised the Amulet of the Creator high into the air.

"Cathria!"

The stained glass walls appeared to shatter inward without the glass actually breaking. Cathria formed in the centre of the room. "Enchanted, Princess!"

Eisel growled and summoned his sword back into his hand. "Dammit. Can't you be reasonable for once, Lillia?"

"No!"

Cathria lowered her staff. Eisel spun his sword and it widened into a shield. He got low, ready to guard.

Lillia raised Hooke to the sky next. "My name is Lillia Ashvalin!"

Eisel glared.

"And you're going to wish you bowed to me!"

Cathria spun, turning her attention to Lillia and summoning a massive circle of runes beneath her.

Eisel's glare turned into confusion. Then realization. "NO!"

He lunged.

There was a flash as the runes came alive, blazing with perfect white light in the middle of the chaotic colour of Eisel's stained glass domain.

The arcane force kept Eisel back. He fell short in his lunge, lashing out at the air.

Lillia's hair billowed behind her as she turned her gaze up to Eisel. The Usurper's Cloak clattered to the ground behind her as Cathria's curse break finished.

The archmage shattered into glittering shards above Lillia. They rained down around her, shining a brilliant white from the runelight, and then the pink and rose-gold of Lillia's Authority.

[Lillia Ashvalin - Class: Princess]

Every pane of stained glass caught the words.

For one perfect second, Eisel's beautiful prison was full of Lillia Ashvalin. A thousand princesses stared back from the walls, all of them bloodied, all of them armed, all of them free.

Eisel took a step back before he seemed to realize he had moved.

"My name is Lillia Ashvalin."

Power she'd earned surged back into her. Not everything she'd lost, but enough.

[Current Level - 15]

"Many people will fight for me!"

Lillia let go of Hooke and it shattered into light. A new blade formed in her hands.

"But I will never stop being my champion!"

[Equipped: Vianaffir, Blade of Freedom]

The glass shards of Cathria and the spellmite were spun up in a gale around Lillia as she held Vianaffir high above her. The air sucked in toward the blade, whipping into a tornado around the legendary sword as it began to glow in Lillia's hands. The glow began white.

Became pink.

Eisel opened his mouth.

Whatever clever thing he had ready died there.

For the first time since Lillia had met him, he looked at her sword before he looked at her face.

Vianaffir vibrated in Lillia's hands. The air felt thin around her as everything she had been through coursed from her heart to her fingertips. Each moment of despair. Each second that would tick by between now and freedom. Vianaffir raged against it all.

"You wanted an audience with a princess!"

Lillia took all that fury and channelled it into one righteous swing on the stumbling Eisel. He tried to get his shield blade up in time, but the hurricane surrounding the legendary blade pushed it out of Lillia's way.

"Then kneel!"

Vianaffir found his chest. It cut.

Something deep within Eisel severed.

The glass walls cracked.

They shattered.

[Lillia used Once and Forever Free]

Lillia finished her swing with Eisel flying through the air. Gigantic panes of stained glass fell inward, crashing and breaking on the ground. They exploded into a thousand pieces each. The entire room was only the sound of perfect things breaking apart.

Eisel landed on his feet. His hair was a mess. Blood poured down his chest. His cloak had been torn by the shattering glass.

"You called them nobodies!"

Havoc leapt in from the side, his massive black axe high over his head and the discarded armor of Sir Nobody shining in the coloured light. He swung the axe down and the air trembled. The thundering clang of hammer on metal rang out. A searing anvil dropped from the sky.

Eisel spun, barely getting his blade in the way in time. Just as the glass weapon began to tear through the metal, Nennia dropped down from the ceiling, weaving ribbons between each of her eight legs. She threw them out and silk wrapped around Eisel's legs, tearing them out from under him.

He fell. The anvil crashed into him with the rest of the momentum it had and crushed Eisel into the floor. Stained glass spiderwebbed around him and blood sprayed out across the pink and blue hues.

The anvil disappeared. Before Eisel could climb to his feet, Thorne dropped down from the chandelier, pulling her massive bow out from the ether. She fired a volley of barbed arrows. All three hit his hand, pinning it in place and knocking his sword out of his grip.

Lillia charged. Changed dresses.

Eisel yelled out in pain.

"You should have learned their names!"

There was another thunderous clang of metal on metal as Havoc punched the ground in front of Eisel. The perfect glass gave way to a forge that erupted from below the man, sending him flying into the air.

[Lillia used Pure Soul]

The Ambusher's cry pierced the room as white wings erupted behind Lillia. Vianaffir pulled the air with her, dragging the sky and a song of freedom into the final strike. In the moment before it hit Lillia stabbed forward and the wind cut through everything Eisel had before the steel did.

Vianaffir went straight through Eisel's heart. The sound he made was weak, helpless, and stolen by Vianaffir's hurricane.

Momentum carried them forward, and the pair crashed across the stained-glass floor. The sword carved through the glass as Lillia landed on top of Eisel. The pair skidded to a halt together, a long trail of blood was behind them.

Eisel coughed.

Lillia panted.

Everyone saw Lillia Ashvalin standing in the wreckage of Eisel's perfect little world, pink light burning around her, a legendary sword in her hands, and the floor boss bleeding at her feet.

Eisel let out a soft, wet chuckle. "Cute trick. But I'll be back and—"

"No, you won't. Stop underestimating me."

Eisel continued to laugh, even as death started to dull his eyes.

"See, you're just a boss. I'm done with this room."

Eisel's confidence melted into a question.

"Why would I stay here after I've cleared it?"

Eisel struggled under Lillia as she grabbed him by the blood-soaked collar. He knew what happened if he died outside his room.

"I've got shopping to do."

The coin flashed between her fingers.

Eisel's dying smile twitched.

Not much. Not enough for anyone else to see.

But Lillia noticed.

He knew what it was. Even better, he knew what it meant.

Lillia flipped the coin into the air.

[Would you like to visit Rickshaw's Traveling Market?]

[Accept?]

The princess and the usurper vanished, leaving nothing but a bloodstain and broken glass behind.

Stone and dust plumed out from the impact of Nennia crashing into Eisel. Something broke. Glass.

Lillia spun to the sound of shattering behind her as Eisel erupted out of what looked like a broken window in the middle of the air. He flew at Lillia, blade first. The stained glass glittered as it careened toward Lillia.

She ducked out of the way, allowing Eisel to fly past her and roll to a stop on the ground. On the other side of the room, still by the door, Havoc raised a hand to the ceiling before slamming the ground. The tiles beneath Eisel shook in the moment before a massive forge surged out of the floor, sending more stone into the air.

Eisel kept his balance as the forge rose. He pulled back his arm, and a rune appeared in his palm. The air crackled around him. In the second before he could cast the spell, a thick cord of silk wrapped around his hand, and Nennia tore Eisel off the top of the forge.

“Come here, plaything! Where do you think you’re going?”

Eisel snapped with his free hand as Nennia reeled him in. A towering piece of broken glass erupted from the floor, severing the silk. More followed, trailing a line toward Nennia, who leapt backward, landing high on the wall.

Lillia righted herself after ducking; everything was happening so fast. The siege had been chaos. The fight against the Architect had been horrifying. This?

She wasn’t ready for this.

It was so far beyond what it had been like last time against him. She’d been able to follow him before, but—

With Nennia off him, Eisel spun back toward Havoc. The axe was suddenly in his hand. He pulled back.

Lillia ran forward. “This is my court, Eisel!” she called out.

[Lillia Activated - Run the Court]

“Is it?”

The initial activation of Run the Court crashed into Eisel. There was no spark of power in Lillia’s chest as it hit him. He simply looked over at the princess with an expression she knew from her aunt.

A glittering line of rose-gold shot out from under Lillia’s feet as she ran forward. Her castle wasn’t big here, but she still owned the ground she was standing on.

Another tether of silk shot from the ceiling. Eisel caught it on the way this time, cutting off the end with his summoned axe, then using the momentum of the same stroke to throw the silk into the path of oncoming arrows. They all fell to the ground in a useless bundle.

At the end of the slash, Eisel stomped the ground. Towering glass shards tore through the gaps in the flagstone toward Lillia. The sound of glass screeching against stone chased her as she dove to the side. Unlike Nennia, she couldn’t get far enough.

A blue and yellow blur flashed across Lillia’s vision and snatched her by the back of the dress, pulling the princess to the side and out of the way.

“I've got you, sugar!” Thorne said before she dumped Lillia on the ground as several of the glass shards tore themselves from the floor and threw themselves at the Huntsmaster. Thorne shot up toward the ceiling to escape.

From his space within the field of spikes, Eisel put away both of his weapons and clapped his hands together. The world flashed white and then was overtaken by a solid wall of colour. It split down the middle as Lillia peeled herself off the floor.

Every colour shattered in front of Lillia. She hadn’t closed her eyes, but she felt as if she had suddenly woken up in the stained-glass room she’d fought in before.

Eisel stood at the center of the stained-glass court. Havoc was by the door, Thorne in the air, Nennia on the wall, and Lillia alone on the glittering floor between them.

Time ticked slower. Seconds dragged and stretched themselves as Eisel rolled up the sleeves of his royal gown.

“How mature of you, Lillia. We get into one little fight and now you’re siding with a scout troupe of bugs. I could have sworn you hated them.”

Nennia was the fastest in the dragging time, but even she was slower than Eisel. She leapt through the air toward him, but he didn’t seem to be in a hurry to get out of the way.

“Fine. You want to make me an enemy? Allow me to remind you who I am.”

Eisel snapped his fingers, and something in the core of Lillia’s spine went cold. Whatever persistent warmth of hope had been there flickered out. Eisel laughed.

[The shadows darken. Death stays with those who die.]

“What?” Lillia managed. Her mouth was slow, but the words came out clearly.

“Now let’s get rid of these other distractions.”

Eisel pointed toward Havoc and one of the glass walls behind him shattered inward, breaking into a hundred shards of colour that all launched toward Havoc.

Time snapped back into sync with itself. Nennia crashed into Eisel; the glass careened toward Havoc.

No. No.

She couldn’t lose Havoc.

Not to someone like Eisel.

Not another parent. Not again. Not when she could do something about it.

“Havoc! Go where I tell you!”

Lillia pointed toward the hobgoblin as she began to stumble in his direction. One moment she was moving towards him, the next, she’d blinked into his place.

The cascading light of the glass flying towards her was beautiful in its own deadly way. She closed her eyes.

“Kid! N—”

“NO!” Eisel screamed. The glass shattered into a million pieces of powder in the breath before they impaled Lillia. The motes of dust and light washed over her. It stung her skin, but nothing more.

“He needs me alive!” Lillia said. “He can’t use me if I’m dead. I’ll cover you.”

That was a bluff. She needed more than a few seconds to activate that part of Run the Court again, but Eisel didn’t know that.

Lillia took a beat to steady herself before nodding to Havoc. If she wore the chitin battlegown, the gambit wouldn’t work. He knew how that dress worked. She needed to throw herself in front of Eisel without her backup.

She just needed to hope she could swap to her backup in time if everyone was doing their job too well.

Nennia pinned Eisel to the ground. Each of her sharpened legs acted as a spear he needed to twist between or bat aside to avoid being impaled. She lifted herself off him for a moment, and Eisel tried to roll to the side.

An arrow careened from the air to the right, breaking out into thick vines that lashed themselves around Eisel as he tried to move. He was pinned in place as Nennia smashed down on top of him, her legs digging into his shoulders and stomach. They didn't pierce his clothes.

Nennia hesitated. She'd expected blood.

Eisel swore, less like he was in pain and more like he was frustrated about getting touched at all.

Glass shattered on the walls to either side of Nennia, and she was forced to leap back from Eisel. As soon as she was in the air, he tore through Thorne’s vines and kicked upward. The floor shot up to meet Nennia in the air, transforming into a spiked pillar with dangerous shards pointing in all directions. It caught up and stabbed her. Glass tore through her stomach and black blood poured down the lines between coloured panels.

Nennia cackled, but her voice caught on something wet as she did.

“Nennia! You are my champion!” Lillia called out as she ran toward the glass spikes on the ground. Rose-gold glitter covered the spider queen and danced over her shining black chitin as Eisel wheeled to try to turn his attention to Havoc again.

Lillia snapped an Ambusher feather, changing into her feathered boots. She leapt toward the spiked tower, kicking again to careen toward it even faster.

Eisel growled in frustration as the tower shattered apart in front of her.

So this was the deadly dance she’d entered. Lillia literally throwing her body in harm’s way to keep Eisel from killing everyone who’d sought to help her. Whether it was because they thought it was fun, or because they cared about her.

Lillia tumbled through the glass dust, and Nennia crashed down over her. The spider queen’s massive frame caged Lillia in for one breath before thin streams of black blood poured over her as Nennia’s wounds sealed themselves. Lillia rolled out from under the spider queen before her majesty charged at Eisel.

Glass shattered as Eisel flashed away from Nennia, stepping to another part of the room.

The forge that Havoc had made flared to life as Lillia scrambled to her feet. She called out.

“Light it up, Havoc!”

She couldn’t see where the hobgoblin was, but he answered her call. The flame within the forge grew bright and then spilled out the front of it. Lillia charged across the room to the fire and then tore the burnmite cloths as she leapt in front of the surging flame.

The blaze coiled around Lillia, licking the hem of her dress and spiralling into every thread of the fabric. The surrounding air hissed as she stole the forge’s fire.

Nearby, Eisel knocked three of Thorne’s arrows out of the air with impossible precision, each one disappearing from its path with a simple flash of his glass blade. In the brief moment he wasn’t blocking Nennia, she stabbed forward twice with her legs. Both of them caught on Eisel’s robes, but didn’t pierce. He grabbed one of them.

“You overestimate yourself, spider.”

“You and I are the same, pet.”

“Oh. Not anymore,” Eisel tore her leg inward, and something split within it; more black blood poured out of the chitin.

The smile that Nennia had been wearing all fight vanished as she stumbled forward. Eisel pulled back his blade.

“This is my court! And you will go where I tell you!”

Lillia cracked chitterpede chitin in her hand. She didn’t know which would happen first as she disappeared in a flash of iridescent light and powder.

Eisel’s blade tore through the chitterpede chitin, but stopped just before Lillia’s chest as he forced himself to pull the strike aside. Scales flew around Lillia as she stumbled into Nennia’s place. The Usurper’s Cloak boiled hot at her throat.

As Lillia fell backward from Eisel’s attack, he snatched her free wrist. Lillia caught his glare. His eyes were a wild, electric purple.

None of the stained glass outside had shown this truth.

“You! Stop being so difficult and fucking sit!”

The clasp of the Usurper Lord’s Cloak snapped tight around Lillia’s neck as the words crashed into her soul. The rose-gold line that marked Lillia’s territory flickered and shrunk as Eisel threw her backward. The clasp tightened further around her neck, and the force of Eisel’s command slammed Lillia to the floor. She clawed at the glass as she gasped for breath, her nails grinding against the grout between panels.

[Lillia bows to Eis—]

No!

No, no, no. That was what she did. It was supposed to be her authority. He’d stolen it.

Lillia fumbled at the clasp on her throat, but it wasn’t truly what was keeping her down. She could feel something further back in her head. Something that told her this would be easier.

She could just agree, and then he would let everyone go. She could simply join him, and it would be comfortable. It would all be over eventually. One day, when she had stayed quiet for long enough, been polite for long enough, and accepted the derision for long enough, she would become queen. On some mysterious day on the far horizon, Lillia would be rewarded for sitting back like a polite little girl who knew her place.

Lillia dropped Hooke as she struggled to keep herself from lying down and giving up.

[Lillia bows—]

Lillia called a Guard Captain’s Sabre to her hand. She heard glass shatter on the other side of the room.

She had to do something. She couldn’t sit by again. She hadn’t gotten everyone to stand up for her so she could throw it all away.

Her knees wanted the floor. Her throat wanted the collar. Some trained, obedient part of her wanted to make this easier, but…

She was a princess. It was her right to rule.

Lillia had already bowed one too many times in this dungeon.

Havoc flew across the room as Lillia climbed to her feet, inch by inch. The collar of the clasp loosened around her throat as she pushed through Eisel’s influence and righted herself.

Eisel skewered Nennia as Lillia tore cloth in her hand. The spider queen stumbled back, but didn’t fall.

[Lillia—]

“Eisel!” Lillia called.

Fire ran up Lillia’s sleeve and into her fingertips as she finished the hand signals.

“Burn.”

[Lillia used Backdraft.]

A surging torrent of flames erupted from Lillia’s hand, shooting across the battlefield. Empowered by the usurper’s cloak, it hit Eisel as if it were a tide of water, throwing him through the air and setting his royal finery ablaze. He slammed into one knight along the far wall, crashing through the decapitated suit of armour and crumpling on the floor.

Thorne flew over and gave Nennia a health potion. The two of them said something to one another. Lillia couldn’t hear it over her heartbeat pounding in her ears.

Eisel didn’t move. Lillia refused to lower her hand.

One act of defiance couldn’t be enough. And she’d learned her lesson about celebrating too early. Lillia grabbed Hooke off the ground and ran toward Eisel. They had their plan, but if she could finish it now—

Glass shattered somewhere between worlds, and Eisel was gone.

Then his voice was in her ear. “Come here, Lillia. Let’s talk.”

The world flashed white.

There was no dance with the knights this time between Lillia and Eisel’s room. The master of the domain was too obsessed with himself for that. The puzzles? The game of it? Those were all gone in place of a single silent hallway. It had the same inlays that were in the heart of memory, but instead of waiting for art, all of them have been filled with glittering, but artless stained glass.

At least, if nothing else, the hallway was carpeted.

Lillia took a deep breath by the door and summoned Hooke to her hand. The heavy blade, the Makreaver, felt familiar in her palm now, the way Viannafir once had.

The way Viannafir would once again.

Sword in hand, Lillia changed into the chitterpede battlegown, her first hard-won prize from the dungeon. The glittering chitin caught the light from the stained glass in a way that was too beautiful for Lillia to ignore. She took half a step to make the radiant rays dance.

Eisel liked to blind with pretty things and hadn’t made them any less beautiful when he wasn’t around to taint them.

Maybe there was a sincere part of him deep down that liked the pretty things. Maybe it was all a manipulation to show the princess what she wanted to see.

Maybe a lot of things.

Lillia took a step forward into the hallway, and the door shut behind her. Havoc had been able to push it open himself earlier as an adventurer. They had to hope that her coming in alone didn’t knock him out.

Behind Lillia, the door creaked open, just enough that the warm light of the dungeon’s hallway could leak into the room and shine on the wall. Good.

Lillia had to go in alone to talk to Eisel, but she knew when it came to a fight, alone wouldn’t be enough.

She continued further into the hallway. As she walked, the faint light behind each of the stained glass windows burned bright as she passed. With each step, the mosaics changed, shifting from meaningless colorful noise into single images rendered in the harsh lines of stained glass.

Lillia did her best to keep her eyes on the door at the far end of the hallway, but they kept wandering.

A young boy running through the forest. The lush ferns at his feet were rendered leaf by leaf in thin shards of varied green grass. He had brown hair, represented by a single chunk above his head. Somehow, even rendered in an expensive art form, he looked poor, common.

The next window showed the boy standing beside a muddy road while a carriage passed him by. The horses were white and gold. The passengers were violet and silver. The boy was brown and grey, a small shape reflected in the carriage window as it rolled past.

Whoever had made the glass wanted Lillia to notice the longing.

Lillia noticed the mud. The road was muddy, but more of it was on the carriage than on the boy.

In the window after that, the boy stood with four others at the mouth of a dungeon. One carried a lantern. One carried a shield. Two had a hand on the boy’s shoulders. All of them were smiling.

In the next pane, only the boy was still standing.

Lillia slowed.

The glass showed the boy kneeling in beautiful grief, one hand pressed over his heart while red and amber shards of light fell around him like sunset.

He looked sorry. The glass worked very hard to make him look sorry.

Another window burned darker than the rest. The boy stood beneath a black sun, accepting a cloak from a hand that had no body attached to it. The clasp at the throat was a tiny shard of purple glass. Even from several steps away, Lillia recognized the colour.

Her own clasp burned cold against her neck.

After that came a window of many Eisels. A knight. A scholar. A grieving friend. A prince. A savior. A lover. A king. Each figure had the same smile, but none of them had the same eyes.

The longer Lillia looked, the less it seemed like history.

It was a wardrobe.

The last window had not finished forming. At first, it showed Eisel on a throne, one hand extended in gracious invitation. Then the glass shifted, and Lillia appeared beside him. Smaller. Softer. Crowned in lilac light, one hand resting in his.

The image was beautiful.

It was also wrong.

Lillia kept walking before the glass could decide whether she was his queen, his prize, or his rescue.

Eisel had made his little gallery to ensure that Lillia saw the narrative he wanted her to see. He’d even painted it in light for her. She was still a princess; she liked pretty things.

She was just tiring of pretty lies.

One last deep breath at the end of the hallway, and Lillia pushed open the doors.

When Lillia stepped into the room, Eisel was waiting at the head of the stone table that had originally been part of the puzzle. He was resting his chin on his hand, propped up on the table, and barely looked up when Lillia entered the room.

“Took your sweet time walking through the hallway, didn’t you? I know we have an eternity here, Lillia, but did you really have to keep me waiting?”

Eisel had dressed in finery this time around. While his first outfit had been knightly and his second had been provocative, his new, sweeping cape, dangling jewelry, and luscious, layered, purple robes implied royalty he did not have.

A royalty that he would only inherit through someone like Lillia.

“Eisel.”

“Hm,” Eisel clicked his tongue twice and let his head tilt to the side; his hair followed in waves. “I’m not sure I like the tone there, Lillia, or the sword. It’s a little cold, don’t you think? Considering all I’ve done for you, everything we’ve been through together?”

At its mention, Lillia tightened her grip on Hooke. “Are you including our fight in that, Eisel?”

“Of course, it’s something we overcame together. Partners fight all the time. You argue with that hobgoblin regularly, don’t you? Their kind is so disagreeable.”

The knights stood along the edge of the room, all headless. Their swords, axes, and spears have been stripped from them and laid on the far wall behind Eisel.

“But I digress. This conversation isn’t about him. It’s about you. I’m just wondering why you stopped by.”

“I came for the talk I promised you.”

“Please, Lillia, this is hardly our talk.” Eisel waved his hand, and the chair at the head of the table, close to Lillia, pushed out to welcome the princess. “I gave you a legendary sword.”

“A broken legendary sword.”

“A legendary sword nonetheless,” Eisel pointed out. “Did you really think that just coming here, at any time you wanted, carrying a weapon would repay that debt?” He glanced at Hooke.

“Speaking of which; Put that silly thing down.”

Hooke, for a moment, became immeasurably heavy in Lillia’s hand. It slipped from her palm, leaving her clinging to it with only her fingers, before she called the Ensnaring Silk to her free hand and tore it.

Her dress shifted around her, unspooling into light before snapping inward into something far simpler than the chitin gown.

A single piece of woven black silk wrapped itself around Lillia, becoming a snug but complete gown that glittered with the silver of spiderwebs woven through it. It hung from one shoulder, leaving the other bare to the elements and drawing the eye along the line of her collarbone. On the covered side, a sleeve ran all the way down her arm, transitioning from black to pure silver as it became a spidersilk glove around her hand.

[Widow’s Courtesy]

[Defensive Item]

[This item was crafted using the skill ‘Adaptive Regalia’ and will revert to a basic material if removed or if the wearer loses the Princess class.]

[Widow’s Hand - While wearing this dress, the user is incredibly difficult to disarm.]

[Run off, little plaything. Don’t break too easily.]

The spider silk of Lillia’s glove caught Hooke when her fingers could no longer hold it, curling around the hilt and forcing the heavy weapon back into her palm. The moment she was no longer at risk of dropping the sword, it became light again.

A soft smile inched across Eisel’s face.

“Oh, that’s a cute little trick, Lillia. I see you found the spiders.” Seeing that Lillia clearly wasn’t going to sit down across from him, he pushed out from the table and stood. “But come now, you aren’t actually planning on fighting me? Don’t be silly, Lillia. We both know how that goes.” He walked to the side of the table so it was no longer separating them.

“Stop being irrational, Lillia. You said you came here to talk. Put down the sword. Let’s talk.”

Lillia reaffirmed her grip, but managed to stop herself before her brow furrowed or she bared her teeth. She knew those words. She knew why he was saying what he was saying. She’d heard it from her aunt daily over the course of five years.

For now, she needed to play along.

“You’re right, Eisel. I’m just being silly. Sorry.”

“There we go. That’s better. Now—”

Lillia dismissed Hooke before it felt too much like following an order.

Eisel nodded over to the chair. Lillia didn’t move. He didn’t return to his seat either. “Well, you clearly have something from our ten-limbed friend, and you and I both know you found a way around the siege. I knew you could do it.”

Lillia didn’t have to hear the lilt of false praise in Eisel’s voice. She could feel it deep in her spine.

“But you only killed one of those little friends Nennia brings along with her, right? Then it was all over. That’s why you’re here with me.”

Realization held Lillia’s breath for a moment. She hoped Eisel didn’t see it.

Eisel talked about her and Havoc arguing, he had shown up during the castle siege, and that he only knew about the single time she’d gained experience in Nennia’s lair.

When she gained experience, he was keeping watch.

Lillia’s eyes flicked down to the clasp, just for a moment.

That, Eisel caught.

“Did you come to ask for another item like that?” Eisel asked before he forced a sigh and approached Lillia, running a single finger along the edge of the table. He passed the incorrect place setting casually. “I’m sorry, Your Highness, but I don’t have another, but…”

Eisel cocked his head as he reached the end of the table. He was only a few feet away from Lillia now. His perfume was strong enough to choke out a lesser noble; unfortunately, Lillia’s nose had already suffered through worse during her life in court.

Silence took over while Eisel and Lillia met each other’s gaze. She tried to hear if Havoc and the rest of them were coming down the hallway.

Footsteps.

Lillia spoke up before Eisel heard it. “I don’t want another one. I want something better.”

“Better?” he said the word as if it were a slur. “You want something better from—”

“Prettier,” Lillia said. “You change outfits every time, and I change all my dresses. We could match, but the lilac of the cloak doesn’t go with all of my outfits.”

“Oh?” His shoulders relaxed. He took another step forward; it took everything Lillia had not to flinch away.

She continued to prattle. Fill space. “If we’re going to work together, I need to know you can provide. I can’t do this dungeon thing. I’ve tried everything on the third floor. It’s too hard.”

Eisel was practically hovering over her now. Lillia felt sweat dripping down the small of her back.

She swallowed.

“I just need to know you can help me enough. I can’t do it alone.”

Eisel chuckled and laid a hand on Lillia’s shoulder. He wasn’t quite pressing down, but he also wasn’t resting. The man was just putting enough pressure on her to keep her at his side.

“Really? That’s a change in tune.” He dug his fingers into her shoulder.

Now or never. More lies to steal his attention. Luckily, Lillia had every truth but the last to pull from.

She let her eyes water.

“I shouldn’t even be here. Have you seen this place? Have you seen me? I’m supposed to be up in my castle, and instead I’m down here stuck killing bugs, and I hate it so much.”

“Sweetheart...”

“It’s gross, and it’s cold, and I’m getting better at not reacting to it, but it doesn’t mean I like it. I just can’t scream at everything I see, even though I want to. And I just…”

Lillia felt her chest tighten as Eisel put his other hand on her shoulder.

“I don’t want to be an adventurer, or a dungeon crawler, or a hero. I just want to be a princess.”

“Don’t worry, Your Highness,” Eisel said as he moved his hand from Lillia’s shoulder to her chin and lifted it up toward her. “Just a little of your power and I will conquer this whole dungeon. I will sit on its throne.”

“For us,” he added, too late for it to matter.

“Thank you, Eisel.”

“Now,” Eisel said. “Make me the adventurer, and I will earn my title,” he said as he let go of her chin and raised a hand toward the ceiling. “I will finally take that which is rightfully mine, and you will be free of this dungeon.”

Lillia heard everyone. They were close now.

“You promise?”

Eisel looked back down at Lillia and went to put his hands on her waist. “Don’t worry, Princess, I’ll save you.”

An ear-splitting clang filled the room. Lillia leapt backward from Eisel, pulling away from his hands as a searing red anvil appeared in the air above them.

Eisel’s sword was in his hand before Lillia could blink. He lashed out at the stained-glass blade, and it cut into the metal above him, splitting it in two.

When he was still halfway through the slice, Lillia lunged. She summoned Hooke to her hand in the same motion she stabbed with it.

Eisel stepped to the right to get out of the way, but Lillia was faster than before. The curved hook at the end of her sword caught the edge of his cloak, tearing through it. She saw his eyes go wide.

On either side of Eisel, the metal halves of the split anvil crashed to the ground. Flagstone shattered on impact, sending shards of rock scattering across the floor.

Lillia wheeled around, spinning on her heel to swing Hooke wide. Eisel moved to block, only to duck out of the way as three buzzing arrows sliced through the air between them.

“Who would want to be saved by you?” Lillia asked as she followed Eisel’s backpedal. She crushed chitterpede in her free hand and the dress grew with each of the three.

Emerald-black plates slid over Lillia’s waist, ribs, and shoulders, each piece locking into the next with the soft, terrible precision of a hundred legs in lockstep. The skirt bloomed around her in layered arcs of polished carapace, beautiful enough for a royal court despite where they came from.

Behind her, a train dragged once across the stone. Sparks flew as she lunged toward Eisel.

[Chitterpede Coronation Gown]

[Defensive Item]

[This item was crafted using the skill ‘Adaptive Regalia’ and will revert to a basic material if removed or if the wearer loses the Princess class.]

[A Hundred Legs as One - The plates on this gown can shift, moving in sync to layer with one another and help block incoming attacks, acting as a shifting shield on your person.]

[Tempered Tango - Each time this dress successfully blocks an attack from a hostile creature, you will gain a stack of Deadly Dance if you switch to the Level 2 Battlegown within a minute.]

[Forged from a thousand layers of chitin to wield status like a shield.]

Eisel was still mid-duck when Lillia finished crossing the distance between them. She stabbed forward. This time Eisel raised his free hand.

A second stained-glass weapon flashed into existence. An axe with a wrought-metal handle and a shining pink and purple blade that caught Lillia’s strike an inch from his chest.

Eisel shoved Lillia away. He was impossibly strong, forcing her to stumble back several feet with a single hand. As the princess found her balance, he finished standing up.

Lillia adjusted her footing. Eisel slicked back his hair and took a deep breath before dismissing the axe.

“I offered to save you, princess, and you come at me with tutorial monsters?”

“Nobody gets to save me, but me, Eisel,” Lillia said. “But I asked for some help.”

“Allow me to introduce all three of you to a new tutorial.”

“Not just tutorial monsters, Eisel.”

The chandelier groaned as Nennia, who’d finished climbing across the ceiling, leapt from the side and crashed down toward Eisel, engulfing him in a terrible tangle of web and black.

Between the portals and death, it had been a while since Lillia had been able to walk out of a room through the door she had entered. Even with the Hunting Grounds, Thorne had shown her a back way that exited through the Hunting Lodge closet—which made no spatial sense but what did?—but rather than being a welcome change, walking out into the third floor landing came with the painful realization that, without the Hearth of Memory, Lillia was painfully stuck without a bath while covered in more spiderwebs than she wanted on her body for the rest of her life.

Changing dresses hadn’t helped. Sure, there was some stuck between the scales of the battlegown that had vanished when she changed over to the tulle dress, but that hadn’t pulled the strands out of her hair or the wads stuck under her fingernails. Those would go away with a rest at the Hearth, but Lillia would still be wondering if they were there until she had a proper bath.

After the rest, it would be the same feeling of wondering if she had walked into a spiderweb, but being unable to find the thread that she’d felt touch her face. The difference was that Lillia knew she’d walked through a thousand spider webs, and there was somehow still nothing to find.

Still, she wasn’t screaming. She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t begging someone to check her for webs. The last week had changed a lot about Lillia.

She still hated everything about the past three hours of her life for obvious reasons. It was just that she had become more silent about her suffering than she had been when she’d fallen down here. That didn’t mean she wasn’t suffering.

Lillia swapped dresses again, from the tulle to the Ambusher slip, in a vain attempt to peel some more of the webs off herself. It failed for all the same reasons as the first attempt, but at least it hadn’t come alongside the same hope.

Havoc was upstairs with a possibly repaired Vianaffir. Thorne would be missing from the hunting lodge until tomorrow, and Lillia couldn’t summon Cathria until then either. But tomorrow was coming.

If Lillia couldn’t progress without progressing Eisel, then tomorrow she would either free herself of him, or be forced to take a place at his side.

Even after talking to the giant spider woman today, tomorrow was somehow intimidating.

Lillia took the steps slowly, following the path back up to the cathedral. Most times, it felt mysteriously shorter than the way down had been, but today?

Today it felt like the walk up would never end, like the Cathedral, the closest place to a home she had, was always going to be just out of reach.

Her legs ached from climbing around Nennia’s lair, but Lillia continued to take the stairs one step at a time. It was more painstaking than it should have been, and she didn’t want to do it, but that just made it feel like a recreation of her entire experience down in the dungeon. A series of ickier, grosser, and more painful bridges that she had to cross day after day.

Or at least time after time. Lillia didn’t know how long she’d been in the dungeon. If it had been more than a week and a half, she should have been picking out her coronation dress instead of climbing the stairs of a dark dungeon while covered in spiderwebs.

Lillia reached the first landing and sat down where Sir Nobody had been for a break. It was easy to tell where he’d been lying, because of the gap in the thick layer of dust that covered the landing. The only difference from the first day she’d come in here was that now there were a thousand of her own footprints scattered across the flagstone.

Somehow, despite all her pacing and walking, Lillia had managed to miss some of the dust. Despite all the effort she’d put in, and all the change she’d effected, there was a physical reminder of how long the dungeon had been there before her.

A small voice in the back of her head reminded Lillia that it might be there after her as well.

Not if she had anything to say about it.

And she had something to say about it, didn’t she?

Lillia pulled an item from her inventory that had been with her since she’d come into the dungeon. She’d sold the dress, but she still had her—

[Princess Slippers (Ruined)]

They were thin pieces of leather and cotton that had been dyed pink, with soles that had torn apart against the stone of the dungeon. Some of Lillia’s blood was on the heel where they’d bitten into her before getting replaced with the Thundersteps.

That blood was so much a part of them that resting hadn’t washed it away.

They were light. They were flimsy and fragile.

They were pretty once.

They were all the things Lillia had wanted her life to be before coming in here. Light, frilly, pink and comfortable enough to get through the day.

She crushed the shoe in her hand. Unlike everything else she carried, it didn’t crumble to dust. The split in the sole widened, revealing a hole in the centre that allowed her to see her skin through it.

It had always been paper-thin. Hadn’t it? When was the last time Lillia had been something other than the pretty painting of a princess up on the surface? Back in the castle, was she always just something to stand there and colour the light around her aunt?

Stained glass that everyone could see through.

Lillia relaxed and let the shoe sit in her palm for a while. Twice she had to shake herself out after feeling a spiderweb against her cheek, but no matter how many she pulled out of her hair, there always seemed to be more.

Tomorrow she would be clean again. Tomorrow there would be Eisel.

At least with him, she was going to fight to stop herself from becoming a decorative piece of furniture someone kept in a dark corner of the castle so they could claim their rule was legitimate.

Five years ago, she should have kicked and screamed more than she did.

Now she wouldn’t just kick and scream. She had a sword, and she almost knew how to use it.

Lillia stood. She dusted herself off and continued her climb up the stairs. One last rest at the Hearth stood between her and coronation day. The only question was whether it would be hers or Eisel’s.

They’d find out.

[You Rest at the Cathedral Hearth]

[You Rest Safely and Completely]

[2 Companions Are No Longer Adventurers!]

[It is now day [9] of your quest.]

[…………. Good luck.]

Lillia awoke with a start on the Cathedral floor. She had originally sprawled herself across two chairs, but where she fell asleep didn’t seem to affect where she woke up while resting.

The dim chandelier from their conquest of the Hearth of Memory swung above in the non-existent breeze of the Dungeon. The table on the other side of the fire was in disarray, covered in bits of tulle cloth Lillia had given to Havoc and chunks of stone that he’d peeled from the walls around the room.

Havoc was in one chair, asleep with his head resting on the table. He clutched his empty locket in his palm with the chain wrapped between his fingers. Just out of his reach on the table was Vianaffir. It was impossible to tell that Havoc had ever needed to work on the blade.

Lillia knew from her lessons that you couldn’t fix a snapped sword. One of her mentors in history enjoyed the fact as a turn of phrase. “A broken weapon did not merely require repair; it needed to be reforged.”

She also knew from her lessons that items in dungeons were not merely swords, and legendary items were not merely items. They wanted to be restored. They wanted to be remade. Vianaffir wanted a wielder.

Lillia grabbed the blade from the table. It was so much lighter than she remembered, like two halves combined into a whole that hadn’t inherited their heft.

As she turned the sword over in her hands, and hearthlight danced off it.

“Introspect.”

[Vianaffir, Blade of Freedom.]

[You are not at a high enough level to use this weapon. Level Required: 15]

[Once and Forever Free - Upon hitting a hostile target, removes any area-control effects from the user.]

[The Pure Soul - Once per User allows the use of Windrider’s Strike: This ability changes after that use.]

Havoc stirred, and Lillia lowered the sword.

“Can you believe it?” he asked with sleep still hanging on his words. “I stay up for hours finishing my work on that thing, and I’m still not allowed to use it. Item levels are bullshit.”

“We can’t use the abilities, but a sword is still a sword. It cuts.”

“Sounds like something I’d say.” Lillia could almost hear Havoc’s spine cracking as he groaned and pushed himself up from the table.

“Does that mean you agree?”

“It’s still a sword, but if you give it to Thorne, she can probably use it.”

Lillia nodded along, but didn’t agree. There was a plan somewhere in the back of her head. It was still forming. “I think I’ll keep it for now. Sir Nobody entrusted it to me; plus, Thorne has her bows and knives.”

“Sir Nobody’s long dead, kid, so—Bah,” Havoc waved off the topic as he stood. This time Lillia heard his knees crack. “I ain’t gonna argue with you on the emotional stuff. I know I ain’t gonna win.”

Lillia swung Vianaffir once. The blade sang through the air, not louder than Hooke, but higher. Cleaner. Like the sound belonged to something that had never been broken at all. Once the song had died, she put the blade away, allowing it to shatter into light within her palm.

“Havoc. Once again today. Will you be my knight?”

“Might be the last time.”

“Havoc!”

“Not talking about it isn’t gonna change that.”

“Don’t.”

“Fine. Yeah. Sure. Knight me.”

“In that case…”

“I name you Sir Thorne, the Huntsmaster of House Ashvalin.”

The flash, whiter than white, filled the room. Lillia didn’t look away. She knew it wasn’t going to sear her eyes to watch herself grant status to her ally.

Thorne rolled her shoulders. After the knighting was complete, but before she stopped glittering, her wings buzzed behind her.

“Damn, there we go. That’s more like it,” she said. This was the third time they had tried to knight her since coming to the third floor. Despite Havoc’s insistence that she count the minutes between casts, Lillia didn’t quite know the cooldown between uses of Emergency Knighting.

Thorne had brought a massive bag of weapons with her. Once she’d tested every joint post-knighting, she bent over and began reaching into the bag to shove a myriad of knives, arrows, and two separate bows into her inventory.

“Care to share?” Havoc asked.

“Hell no. You got yours. Kill more if you want more, Havoc.”

“I’ll stick to an axe and a shield then,” Havoc huffed.

“We have the extra Guard Captain’s Sabre,” Lillia offered.

“That would allow me to leverage all of my authority-based abilities. Good pick, kid.”

“See, if you’re gonna be a picky ass, you don’t get to complain when you’re not carrying much,” Thorne said as she pulled back from her now-empty bag. “Steel’s steel, it’ll cut.”

“How about I just don’t lose my weapon?” Havoc suggested.

Lillia frowned at the comment. She wasn’t quite sure if that was a general rebuttal or a shot at the fact that most of Lillia’s earned weaponry had, at one point, been lost to Eisel.

Two of them are still in there in with him.

Either way, while Thorne and Havoc bickered, Lillia walked forward to the great black door that locked Nennia’s domain. She placed a palm against it. She could feel something moving on the other side.

Havoc and Thorne went quiet as she took a breath.

Lillia pushed open the door. When it was barely cracked, a black lacquered leg slid into the gap. A moment later, it hooked the iron and wrenched the door open the rest of the way. The metal slammed against the wall and rang down the stairway up to the cathedral and the tunnels down to Nennia’s lair.

A black mass shifted behind the spider queen, then skittered away.

“Hello, princess,” Nennia said. “Are these the friends you talked about, or are they an offering?”

“Don’t act like you don’t know,” Thorne said.

Havoc kept quiet. He glanced over his shoulder, but didn’t move away as Nennia stepped forward. She loomed over everyone else on the landing.

“They’re the friends,” Lillia said.

“A crew to kill the usurper.” Nennia moved past Lillia, her eight legs carried her smoothly, like she was gliding along the floor to the clicks of eight heels. “I assume you’ve already granted them their special status?” Nennia asked.

“Yes. If you kill them now, they just come back. You don’t get to keep them.”

Nennia sighed. “Pity. The landing is such a perfect place for a gathering.”

“Lillia, not to complain about the company, but if we gotta wait to add her to the party, couldn’t you have kept her behind that door for a bit longer?” Thorne said. Her hand was on the back of her belt, where she kept two of her larger knives.

“Please, the princess won’t be demeaning me by calling me a knight,” Nennia said. “I am already a queen. Why would I accept a demotion?”

Havoc cleared his throat. “Makes sense to me.”

Nennia swooped back around, turning so her torso was close to Lillia. Her top was different from she’d worn when Lillia last saw her. Thicker ropes that had been woven into chain-mail had replaced the sheer silk.

“Have the commoners been informed of your clever plan? Or is that information for royal ears and tongues alone?”

“They’re about to be,” Lillia said.

If they were going to beat Eisel, it all needed to come together at once.

Nennia led Lillia deeper and deeper into her lair, through holes in the floor and corridors crafted entirely from the millions of silk threads drawn across the spider queen’s domain. She had to swallow fear and other squeaking sounds at each turn. Each new descent into shadow was another horror that Lillia needed to close her eyes and pretend wasn’t there.

The Spider Queen wasn’t with Lillia through the entire descent. Or at least she wasn’t always directly leading her. Nennia would duck into a larger passage—one that allowed for her size—and leave the princess alone to fight her way through the tangled webs. Then, at some point, she would appear below Lillia and guide her in a new direction.

It took everything Lillia had to put Hooke away and keep it away during the climb down. She hadn’t carried a blade for long, but she was starting to feel naked without one in her hand. Hooke was a lifeline, but that lifeline would have been rude here.

Worse, if Lillia gave in and cut some webbing out of the way, she might have untangled the whole mess and sent herself falling down into the shadows below.

The silk was beautiful. That was the worst part. It layered over the stone in patterns too deliberate to be mess, too delicate to be simple infestation. Curtains. Braids. Lacework. Whole hanging veils that would not have looked out of place in a palace if Lillia could ignore what they were made from and what they were for.

If all of this was what was in the light, Lillia didn’t want to imagine what was hiding in the darkness.

Lillia had been guided for almost an hour by the time Nennia finally slowed. Her arms were sore from pulling herself through the webs. Her core whined from needing to balance on unsteady floors.

Every nerve was on fire from constantly needing to ignore every alarm bell blaring in her head during the entire descent. Each step she took made the web shiver. Worse, after each shiver something answered from the walls. A twitch. A scrape. The delicate tap of legs against stone. Lillia knew that the web was announcing each of her footsteps to anything that would listen.

Nennia, for her part, had been mostly silent during the descent. She led the princess through motion alone, aside from occasionally telling her to continue without her. Nennia kept calling Lillia the ‘young one.’ She didn’t know if that was a compliment about her age, or a comment on how fresh she was.

The room Nennia finally stopped in was more pit than room, a massive, carved-looking hole that stretched up and down into shadows that Lillia couldn’t see.

Up, somewhere at the top, there was a pinprick of blue light. It wasn’t enough, and Lillia still had to squint to see, but it was light.

There was no floor in this room outside of the spiderwebs. They were woven tight and thick across the hole to the point where there were few places that you could see through them. It was the steadiest the ground had looked to Lillia in a while, but she still hesitated to step out onto it.

Nennia went first. Even though she was obviously heavier, each step of her eight legs seemed to fall lighter than any of Lillia’s. Each motion barely put pressure on the threads she stepped on, almost plucking them as she pulled away.

Lillia was sure her clumsy steps would put her through the web and sprialling down into oblivion. She took a deep breath and stepped out into the webbing.

She didn’t fall. That was a good start.

Once she stepped onto the web, Lillia looked up. Nennia was far out in the centre of the room, awaiting her.

With each step, Lillia heard a thousand voices in her head telling her to turn around, that this was too scary, and that she was certainly dead. Some of them were the scared girl who’d fallen into this dungeon in the first place, others sounded damn rational in the moment.

After all, she was walking out into the middle of the giant spider’s web to meet with the spider. What was she other than a fly?

If Nennia was planning to kill Lillia, she was patient about it. The spider queen waited in the centre of the room for Lillia’s entire, painfully slow journey out there. Once Lillia was close enough, Nennia smiled. Her teeth were sharp.

The threads beneath Lillia’s feet tightened with each beat of her heart, as if the room had learned the rhythm and was quietly repeating it back to her. Through one of the gaps, Lillia saw more webbing below. Then, more below that. Layer after layer descending into black.

“You’ve come so far into my lair. Young one, aren’t you scared?”

Obviously! Completely! Utterly! Incomprehensibly!

Lillia swallowed down all of those answers and shoved them deep in her stomach alongside all the screams she’d have to let out later. It took a moment, but she eventually found something appropriately diplomatic for an answer.

“You have a lovely home. I am very impressed with the silk work.”

Nennia leaned forward, her entire form shifting to carry her humanlike torso close to Lillia. “What a sweet young lady. Such a diplomatic response.”

When she swept in close and the human torso was all Lillia could see, she could almost mistake Nennia for human. It would have been easier to do so if it weren’t for the eleven unblinking red eyes where a proper two should have been.

“Well, Diplomatic Little Princess, you said you came here to negotiate. Why?” Nennia cut back in before Lillia had a chance to speak. “And why should I listen to you at all?”

There was truly no good reason for Nennia to listen to anything Lillia had to say. Even if she hadn’t been drawn deep into Nennia’s lair, the Spider Queen could have just killed Lillia as many times as she wanted, over and over again.

She couldn’t appeal to power, and she was asking a favor. Quite different from the negotiations she’d seen her parents engage in.

“You said it yourself. We’re both royalty. I’ve come to speak to you, leader to leader.”

“Leader to leader,” Nennia echoed. “And what exactly do you lead, Princess?”

The room grew colder as Nennia asked the question. Lillia heard something skittering on the walls above.

“I am the heir to House Ashvalin. I am the…” Lillia trailed off as Nennia leaned in closer. It took her a moment to find the courage to continue. “I am the ruler of the four kingdoms and—“

Nennia was too close now. Lillia could feel her breath on her lips. It smelled strangely sweet.

“Excuse me, if you could just…”

“Don’t lie to me, Princess. I can feel your heart racing through my web.”

“I am a little frightened.”

“You’ve always been frightened. Now, you’re frightened and lying.” One of Nennia’s hind legs twitched, and Lillia felt one thread pull under her feet. “Try again and don’t test my patience. I get hungry when I’m irritated.”

Lillia nodded. Threat received. “I am the rightful ruler of the four kingdoms.”

“But not the ruler?”

“In…” she tried to place the exact date, but couldn’t; there was a chance it had already passed. “In a few days, I will be old enough to be named queen and replace my aunt on the throne.”

“But you are down here.”

“But I am down here,” Lillia said. There was movement on the walls. Shadows that weren’t shadows moved up and down the webbed network. “If I can escape in time—”

Nennia chuckled. Somewhere above, a hundred little feet moved at once, then stopped together.

Lillia took a deep breath. “When I escape here. Before or after. I can reassert myself as queen.”

Nennia pulled away from Lillia, rising back high enough to look down on the girl. “So, you come to me as the leader of the four kingdoms. Not as a woman of the dungeon?” She crossed her arms. “Do you plan on offering me one of your kingdoms, little princess?”

Lillia recoiled. That idea was more gross than anything she’d seen down here. “I couldn’t split the kingdoms!”

“Then you come to me as an adventurer, do you not? I will entertain your title of surface princess, but I can’t go accepting empty promises.”

“And I wouldn’t make one.”

“Glad we see eyes to eyes,” Nennia said.

The spiders from the walls were on the web now. None of them had a human half like Nennia’s, all of them were larger than any spider that Lillia had ever imagined, let alone seen. The smallest were as large as her father’s hounds, the largest—

Well, the largest was right in front of her.

“I hope you don’t mind if my children sit in on this negotiation,” Nennia said. “They need to learn from Mother at some point. We spent so many years waiting for someone to stumble into the dungeon and wake us.”

Lillia tried to focus on Nennia and take a deep breath. She failed on both fronts; her eyes wandered and her breath came short, the exhale nearly whistling.

“So, princess, you come into my lair as an adventurer. What’s stopping me from treating you like all the rest?”

She could do this. She’d thought about it. Probably not enough, but she had thought about it.

“I’m not treating you like the rest of them did. I didn’t come in here and treat you like a monster.”

Nennia chuckled again. Everything she did was shockingly aristocratic for a spider and more appropriate for her status as a queen. “Please, young princess. I am a monster.”

“But I’m not treating you like one.”

“And you think that’s enough.”

“I think you’re listening.”

Nennia’s dark lips were already parted with a prepared response as Lillia spoke, but she pulled it back onto her tongue. The spider-woman’s fangs flashed as she smiled. “That I am.”

“If I’m talking and you’re listening, that means I can make you a deal as long as I know what you want.”

“And what if I want to kill you?”

“You can. I really wouldn’t enjoy it, but you could,” Lillia said the words as confidently as she could, even as she realized they were insane. “But you’re going to probably kill me at some point over and over again. No matter what accord we reach, I will have to come through your lair to complete the third floor.”

“What adorable logic,” Nennia said as she stood and paced around Lillia. There were more of her children in the room now, enough that she couldn’t see the web on the walls. “You make a good point. Maybe I play with you before I kill you. String you up. You’ll come back the same as that other knight.”

Lillia kept her screams internal, but a sharp breath escaped at the implication of Sir Nobody.

Nennia noticed. “He was such a noble knight. He tried and tried his hardest, but he couldn’t quite cut his way through my children. He stopped coming eventually. It’s always sad, losing such a tenacious plaything.”

“Well, you have me instead,” Lillia said. “And you’re only going to get this once unless you agree to work with me.”

“Negotiating the number of times I get to kill you? Certainly an interesting angle.”

“I can’t keep coming here again and again unless we work together on something,” Lillia said. “You don’t get your game.”

Nennia was behind her now. Lillia couldn’t hear her move, but she felt the vibration of the threads through her feet as Nennia plucked them.

“That,” Lillia said, “and based on everything I’ve heard, I think you’ll enjoy the work I’m asking of you.”

“And what is that work, little princess?”

“I need your help killing Eisel,” she said. “Another one of the—”

“I’m aware of Eisel, child,” Nennia said. “I’ve heard him skittering about on the upper floors. Making his little schemes, thrashing against his position in the dungeon.” She rounded Lillia, ending up back in front of her. “Is that your proposal? I help you kill him, or you’ll sit down, die, and leave me alone again?”

Lillia nodded.

“Adorable. You really came here with nothing.”

That was a dagger.

Lillia took a deep breath and let her arms flop to her sides. “Unless you’re interested in items, then I have very little to offer a mighty queen. I am cut off from my kingdom. I have survived based on the kindness of others in places where I should never have found it. This is my place in the dungeon right now, but it won’t be forever.”

“You’ve seen charity, but you haven’t asked me for it.”

“Your reputation precedes you.”

“What reputation is that?”

“You are a fearsome queen who has previously pulled monsters out of their rooms in order to kill them permanently,” Lillia said. “So, I came here planning to appeal to your…interests.”

Nennia clicked her tongue and leaned her torso in. “Little Lillia, you haven’t offered me a chance to kill him at all. You’ve offered me a chance to defeat him for you.” She put her cold hand on Lillia’s cheek and lifted her chin. “How am I supposed to feed him to my children if he comes right back?”

That was a horrifying clarification. Nennia dragged monsters out of their room to permanently kill them and called it motherly love. The idea sat weirdly in Lillia’s stomach. She couldn’t figure out if she preferred that to the alternative of Nennia just thinking it was fun.

In the process of stewing over those options, Lillia realized she had one more thing to offer.

“If you help me make him weak enough, I can get him out of his room. He’ll die outside of it, and then you can feed him to your children.”

“Oh,” Nennia dug her nails into Lillia’s cheek. “Does our little princess have a plan?”

“I think so.”

“Why don’t you tell Mother all about it,” Nennia said, “and if I like it, I will help you take care of your little problem.”

The door to Nennia’s lair had silk on the iron-barred window again. It wasn’t much: several strands that had been spun between the bars, only to be left hanging, lightly swaying in a breeze that wasn’t there.

Someone had partially wrapped the door and then lost interest.

Lillia stood in front of the door with Hooke in one hand and the other resting on the clasp of the Usurper’s Cloak.

Tomorrow, theoretically, she could have Cathria remove the cursed item, but that would only happen if tomorrow was the day they fought Eisel. And tomorrow was only the day they fought Eisel if Nennia was willing to listen.

The day would come when the clasp wouldn’t be weighing on her throat, but that day hadn’t come.

Yet.

The cloak was still feeding Eisel. Every fight. Every success. Every hard-won bit of progress gave itself to him. Lillia had been dying, bleeding, screaming, and somehow still dragging herself forward. All the while Eisel had been sipping from her victories like wine at a banquet.

Lillia should have been level thirty.

Level thirty.

She was going to be furious about that later. She was already furious about it now, but later she planned to do a much better job.

Right now, she had a door.

A door, and the choking feeling that even if this was a plan, it was a horrible plan.

Havoc had been clear that he thought it was a horrible plan. He had used several words to describe it: stupid, suicidal, and “something I don’t want to be a part of.” The last part was fair. While Lillia would have wanted Havoc beside her if she were going into Nennia’s lair looking for a fight, she wasn’t confident he would be helpful in negotiation.

At least, if she died in this room and then escaped back to the Hearth, Havoc would come back as an adventurer. That was a risk she’d mitigated. That counted as forethought, right?

Lillia took another small step forward, not quite enough to reach the door.

No time like the present?

It wasn’t as if she was getting any younger. Or any stronger. Thanks, Eisel.

Lillia squeezed her eyes shut and looked away from the door as she knocked. The sound of her knocking boomed across the third floor, through the walls and the flagstones beneath her feet. Knuckle on metal echoed back to her from every direction.

She waited. Nothing answered.

Lillia tried again. After all, the first step to proper negotiation would be an invitation. If she were going to negotiate with a monster, she needed to put her best, polite foot forward.

The second knock sounded nothing like the first. It was a hollow sound.

“Hello? Nennia?” Lillia asked.

Just as she spoke, Lillia heard the twang of strings being pulled tight above. The loose threads over the barred window weren’t drifting in the windless air anymore.

The door groaned. A gasp-like breath escaped the door as stale air poured out onto the landing. Metal ground against stone with each inch the door opened, white gouges in the flagstone marking its path. It stopped opening when it was barely wide enough to allow Lillia through.

How did it know how big she was?

Lillia swallowed spit and closed her eyes. The dungeon was doing it again. Each time she thought she had seen the worst of what it offered, she ended up in front of another door she hated.

Three floors ago, Lillia might have stood and wondered if following Eisel was really the worst option. She would have made excuses. Called him agreeable. Said that he was nice to look at. Said anything she could to herself to avoid walking through an iron door covered in silk. She knew what silk meant.

Now? After her short time in the dungeon, she knew she had to do this, even if she didn’t want to.

Character development sucked.

Lillia took a deep, steadying breath and squeezed through the opening.

Cold air brushed across Lillia’s face as she passed the door. It smelled of damp stone, old straw, rust, and something faintly sweet beneath the rot. Mournflowers that someone had left in a crypt.

Looking around her, that comparison might have been too exact. The area just past the door was a small landing. Just dark enough that Lillia needed to strain her eyes to see anything past her nose—when she did, all she could see were stairs.

Of course. The door hadn’t been enough; she needed to go further down into the creepy basement.

Lillia took a small step forward. Something brushed against her ankle. She froze.

Havoc would have been proud of her for not screaming.

Lillia looked down. There was a thin strand of silk across the landing. In fact, there were dozens of them, all criss-crossing around Lillia’s feet. The strands continued down the stairs, all within an inch of the ground like a thousand tripwires that wouldn’t stop her.

“Hello, Nennia?” Lillia said in the vain hope she would come up to the entrance to meet her. “I’m Princess Lillia. I’ve come to talk.”

The door swung shut behind her. It did not slam. That would have been too kind. It closed softly, with the careful click of a lock being set in place by someone who wanted her to hear it.

By the time Lillia turned around to try to see the door, it was gone. In its place was a black stone wall with more thin strands of silk draped over it.

“Oh boy.”

Lillia looked at the first several stairs in front of her as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. A chill ran down her spine, but there was no way but forward.

The staircase descended in a long, tight spiral. Each step had been cut from dark stone and worn smooth in the middle. Webs clung to the walls in fine layers, catching motes of dust in pale constellations.

The further Lillia descended, the more the air changed.

It first became colder. Then wetter. Then quieter.

The dungeon did not have the silence of the palace after battle or the silence of the Hearth when everyone else was sleeping. This silence was padded. Wrapped. Every step Lillia took was swallowed by silk before it could echo. By the time Lillia reached the bottom, she could barely hear her own breathing.

The staircase opened into a massive stone corridor.

No. A dungeon. A proper dungeon.

A castle dungeon in its worst, most theatrical form. So much worse than a sad little basement where a king kept political embarrassments. The ceiling rose high above her in arched ribs of black stone. Iron cages hung from chains overhead, swaying gently in the shadowed dark. Narrow cells lined both walls, each one barred with thick, rusted iron. Some had doors. Some had broken doors. Some had no doors at all because the webs had done a better job sealing them than iron ever could.

Silk covered everything.

It hung from the ceiling in long curtains. It wrapped the bars in white ropes. It filled the corners of cells until the shadows inside looked stuffed and swollen. It spread across the floor in patches that glistened faintly under the dull blue light burning in sconces along the walls.

Lillia raised one foot and almost stepped down on a thick, braided rope of silk that crossed the floor. She stopped.

The strand twitched.

“Absolutely not.”

Lillia put her foot down on the other side of the strand. As she stepped, something moved to her right.

She spun, raising Hooke and pointing it off toward the dark corner of one of the cells. The bulge in the corner twitched again, then squirmed.

Lillia’s stomach spun in several directions as her strained eyes put all the pieces together. Her sword was trained on a person-sized bundle wrapped completely in silk, suspended from the ceiling by a cord as thick as Lillia’s wrist.

It shifted again.

It went still.

There were more of them. As Lillia turned around, she realized they surrounded her. One in the next cell. Two in the cell after that. A dozen further down the corridor. Some hung from the ceiling. Some lay against walls. Some had been tucked carefully into corners like stored luggage.

Lillia went to take another step, but stopped herself again. The chitterpede battlegown was good for preventing surprise attacks, but it would draw every kind of attention to her. She should change dresses. She should switch to something quieter. She should…

No, she had come here to talk. She couldn’t talk to Nennia if she didn’t get her attention, as terrifying as that attention might be.

“Nennia,” Lillia said. The words were strangled by the damp air and silk around her.

This time, a whisper came back. Not words, but movement above Lillia.

The princess looked up. The hanging cages weren’t swaying, but the webs above them were. It was hard to tell how much the sea of white and silver shifted, but she could track that it had based on the occasional shine.

Further down the massive hallway, something moved on the ceiling. Lillia barely caught it. A shape. Too large to be a person. Too graceful to be a beast. Lillia saw a flash of pale limbs, a spill of dark hair, then the shape slipped behind a curtain of webbing and disappeared.

Lillia once again held back her screams. This time she only whimpered.

[Objective: Survive Nennia’s Lair.]

Oh, good. She had a goal.

The text faded.

Something laughed.

It came from everywhere. From the cells. From the ceiling. From behind the walls. A low, soft sound that might have been beautiful if Lillia had not been standing in a dungeon full of people-sized cocoons.

Just when Lillia was about to say something, there was movement to her right. The person-shaped bundle in the first cell crashed to the ground as the tether tying it to the ceiling broke. It writhed on the floor.

Lillia reached out, but stopped herself short of running over to help.

The thing rolled over itself again and again, winding itself tighter in more and more of the silk that coated everything within the dungeon. An arm split out as it writhed, still wrapped in silk but separate from the rest of the bundle. Other limbs followed. The limbs found purchase on the ground, and the thing twisted itself onto all fours.

A hole tore in the silk. A ghastly groan cut through the forced silence of the dungeon.

The bundle shambled up onto two legs. It hunched over, twitching all the while.

It looked up.

Lillia held Hooke at the ready and wished she had something that could keep that thing further away.

The silk-wrapped man charged. The tear in the silk flapped wildly as it ran. A scream escaped that sounded somewhere between the howling winter wind and the last gasps of a dying parent.

It was fast.

“Stop! Just let me talk! I wanna negotiate!”

[Lillia used Indignance! Level 3 - Highly Effective against the Webbed Shambler.]

The Shambler stumbled after being stunned, its momentum carrying it most of the way to Lillia even as it was falling over. Its scream stuttered and broke as it fell. Lillia swung Hooke in an uppercut, catching it by the chin.

The steel tore through some of the silk and pulled some of it along Lillia’s swing. There was nothing to offer resistance within the bundle, but shadow splashed out in the echo of the swing, spraying like blood across the far wall.

A pile of empty silk crumpled at Lillia’s feet. She danced half a step backward to avoid touching it. Darkness bled out between the strands.

[Webbed Shambler defeated! Yay!]

[Gained - Ensnaring Silk]

The scream of the first Shambler had faded quickly, but more followed it further down the hall. Bundles wrapped against the ceiling thrashed against the strands that held them there. Lillia heard the thump of bodies hitting the floor in further cells.

She had been eager to come here and had known that death wouldn’t be the end. She hadn’t slept before. Hadn’t bothered to reset Cathria before an encounter she didn’t want to be a fight.

Lillia had regretted her lack of preparation multiple times in the dungeon. She knew she wasn’t an adventurer, and hindsight was usually embarrassing.

It just wasn’t typically this quick to arrive.

One bundle snapped free from the ceiling in front of Lillia. It had already torn its limbs from the central cocoon. It landed hands first, then twisted itself over in a way that would have broken Lillia’s spine so it could run at her.

A thick cord of silk shot from the ceiling and caught the shambler by the legs. Just as fast as it had dropped, it rocketed back up into the ceiling, disappearing into the silk above.

Lillia looked up.

“My,” a woman’s voice said. “You knocked.”

Up in the darkness, from one of the black stone arches, a pair of pale hands emerged from the layered silk. They each reached out, stretching their fingers wide.

The hair on Lillia’s neck stood on end.

Nennia lowered herself from the ceiling.

The upper half of her body was almost painfully elegant. A woman with long black hair that fell around her shoulders in straight curtains, skin as pale as moonlight, and dark eyes that reflected the blue light in tiny points. She wore a gown of silk so fine it might have been mist, wrapped around her torso and arms in layers that shifted with every careful motion.

Below the waist, she became something else.

A spider’s body, massive and black, polished like lacquer. Eight long legs guided her descent with impossible delicacy. The abdomen behind her was enormous, marked with faint silver patterns that looked too much like embroidery to be natural and too much like scars to be beautiful.

Lillia backed up. Nennia ended up right in front of her. Each leg ended in a sharp point that clicked softly against the floor. She impaled the shambler that had torn itself from the ceiling on one of them without breaking her stride.

Nennia spoke. Her voice was softer than Lillia had expected, but no less threatening.

“Princess Lillia Ashvalin. Our new dungeoneer.” Nennia bent her legs to lower herself somewhere close to Lillia’s height. She must have been at least ten feet tall between her torso and the massive spider body underneath. “The scared little girl.”

“Woman.”

Nennia’s smile widened by the smallest amount. “Of course.”

Lillia lifted her chin to meet Nennia’s gaze. It was all she could do to appear brave.

“I had so much fun with the last knight who was here. I wonder what makes you different. What makes you unique? What fun we are going to have?”

Lillia swallowed. “I came here to negotiate.”

“I know. You knocked,” Nennia said. One of her hind legs twitched as she spoke. “It’s a novel strategy. How very royal of you.”

Lillia was trying to find some sort of footing to begin a back and forth on. “Is the royalty part going to be a problem?”

“Hardly, Princess. I’d be a hypocrite. You came here to speak to the spider queen.”

She leaned in close. Close enough that Lillia could smell the iron on her breath.

“I wonder what you have to offer my kingdom aside from your death?”

After her revelation from Cathria, Lillia had expected to hold a round table with the two people who were willing to help her in the dungeon.

It turned out that Thorne’s need to leave the Hunting Grounds didn’t just mean she couldn’t stick around in the lodge. She fully disappeared as soon as they had left the grounds, leaving Lillia to make the climb back up to Havoc alone.

It wasn’t a long climb up the stairs. It was only two floors. It felt like a lifetime with the weight Lillia carried.

Havoc had, at first, been excited to see her. After all, Vianaffir was mostly repaired and he wanted to show off his progress.

It had only taken one look at Lillia for the hobgoblin to drop what he was doing and…

Well, Lillia had expected a hug considering the mood, but that would have been wildly out of character for Havoc. Instead, he had simply sat down on one side of their new long table in the middle of the room and motioned for her to sit across from him.

It wasn’t a round table. It was a mostly empty banquet table, but it was theirs.

Lillia sat in silence for a long time, allowing the crackle of the fire to carry the conversation. Havoc waited across from her. He never moved. He never seemed uncomfortable. He just waited.

Some of the silence was her being physically unable to say everything she wanted to say. Some of it was from her not wanting to talk about it.

Vianaffir lay across the table between them in two pieces that no longer looked entirely broken. Havoc had fitted the shattered edges together with tiny seams of dark metal, each one hammered so fine Lillia could barely tell where Vianaffir ended and the repair began. It still was not whole. The break still caught the light wrong. But it looked less like a corpse now and more like something sleeping through a fever.

That was a glimmer of hope somewhere left of centre in her chest, and eventually that glimmer was enough to drive her to speak. It began simply.

“There is a man on the third floor. One of the bosses. His name is Eisel.”

“The man you fought before you found me at the Hearth of Memory? You just talked to him. I know about him.”

Lillia nodded. “He’s been absorbing experience from everything I’ve done, and it’s my fault.”

“Your fault? How?”

“I—” Her tongue pressed against the shape of the truth and went numb. Not asleep-numb. Not cold-numb. Obedient-numb. As if some invisible hand had pinched the words between gloved fingers and smiled while it did. It wasn’t something she could fight. It wasn’t something being her own champion would fix. Lillia chose silence over lying around the topic again.

Havoc sighed. “That explains the last conversation. You’re not allowed to talk about it. Sounds like fae bullshit to me.”

“Fae?”

“Backhanded deals and that sort of work. If you’ve ever lived near a forest, you’d know all about it.” Havoc clasped his hands in front of himself. “You said he’s absorbing experience?”

“Cathria took a look at me and explained that with everything we’d done, I should be level thirty.”

“What level are you?”

“Ten.”

“Well, doesn’t that just explain it. Was wondering how the hell I was a higher level than you after all the times you went through the siege.”

“What level are you?” Lillia asked.

“Still fourteen. Don’t know if that can ever go up,” he said. “I know I talk about it a lot, but I was never that much of a fighter before I came here. If killing things is the only way to gain experience, then it makes sense that I only hit fourteen in seventy years.”

“That didn’t change even when you were in the siege?”

Havoc shook his head.

Lillia sighed. She’d been supporting herself on her arms as she leaned over the table, and they suddenly felt like they couldn’t hold her at all.

Eisel had taken more from her than Havoc had earned in seventy years. Plus, Havoc couldn’t earn new experience, which meant they couldn’t mitigate Eisel’s growth by having Havoc and Thorne grow alongside Lillia.

Anything they fought, anything they killed, they could gain equipment, but the gap would just grow wider.

“The way I see it, there’s a simple solution. We just get Cathria to take that off and—”

“He’d know.”

“He’d know?” Havoc asked.

“If there’s a connection, then he’d learn about it if I took it off, right? And I can’t take it off without Cathria’s help.”

“So what if he knows? Let him be mad about it. We’re worried about this guy’s feelings?”

Lillia sighed. No. There was a reason that Vianaffir was a poison pill. “I agreed to one more conversation with him. I agreed to it when he gave me Vianaffir.”

Havoc sighed. “Why would you make another deal with him?”

“I made a choice because I didn’t know how this worked.” Lillia tapped the clasp. “But I know he has the ability to pull me into a conversation once.”

“What did you agree to?”

“One more talk.”

Havoc sighed. Lillia couldn’t tell if he just thought she was reckless or if he’d reached the same conclusion she had.

“And I don’t think that talk goes well if he knows I’ve taken this off. I think the only reason he’s played so nice is that he’s known there’s no way for me to close the gap.”

Havoc frowned. Which was normal. He nodded, which was less normal.

“Kid, if I had any room to judge, I’d have a lot of choice words for you, but I’m only here because of a choice I made that I can’t remember. So…you know." Havoc's shoulders sagged as he spoke. "Always told myself once I was a grandfather I’d stop being a hypocrite. Hypocrisy is something parents gotta do but…”

Havoc reached into his pocket below the table and pulled out a small locket. The same one he’d kissed in that quiet moment all those battles ago.

He dug one thick claw into the crack and opened it.

There was nothing inside. No scrap of paper. No curl of hair. Not even a clumsy little sketch tucked behind cloudy glass. Just the dented inside of the thing, scratched from claws that had opened it too many times to find nothing waiting.

“I made this when I stopped making swords. Everyone told me I’d gotten too old, but I was too stubborn to sit back and be a mentor if I couldn’t work myself. So, I tried to make something smaller, something that would be easier on my back.”

He made a noise. It was somewhere halfway between a chuckle and a cough.

“It’s a piece of shit. I’m not a jeweler. Never had the hands for detail, and the shakin’ doesn’t help.”

Lillia held her tongue. The nicest thing she could have said about the crude locket was that it was quaint.

“Now, I don’t know how much royalty would deal with stuff like this, but there’s supposed to be something inside. I was gonna get something made, something drawn. Never did, never put anything in there.”

He sniffed.

“When I made the deal, if I had thought about everything and been 100% rational, I would have asked for just a little more time so I could have put something in this locket. Put anything in here so that a thousand deaths later I wasn’t just pretending to care about it.”

Lillia stared at the table. She knew how the conversation would go. If she tried to offer any sympathy or condolences, Havoc would shut her down. She would protest. They would move on.

She hoped the quiet carried everything she needed to say.

Havoc snorted again, closed the locket, and put it back in his pocket. Then he reached for Vianaffir again, because apparently a broken legendary sword was easier to look at than an empty locket.

“Alright, so we grab Thorne and go punch this loser?”

Lillia shook her head. Of course Havoc would suggest that. He hadn’t seen what she’d seen. He hadn’t seen Eisel in a fight. He didn’t understand the impossible gap between Eisel and Lillia.

If the three of them went in there, no matter how fast Thorne was and how stubborn Havoc was, all three of them would be killed the second Eisel wanted them to die. Then Lillia would be back in the Land of Wheat and Silk. She didn’t know how he did it, but she knew that Eisel could reach her there.

She sighed as she looked down at the table and slowly shook her head. She had an idea. It was a much dumber idea than Havoc’s. But it gave them a chance to come out on top.

On the plains, when she considered the shape of the dungeon and what it taught her, Lillia had assumed that she was supposed to negotiate with Eisel. Eisel was a true monster. If Lillia was a heroic princess, she would need to be the kind that killed monsters.

If this dungeon was teaching her to negotiate, then she had one last person to talk to and one last deal she could make before falling back on Havoc’s original idea and trying to kill him.

There was one last thinking person on this side of the dungeon.

“I’m going to go talk to Nennia.”

“Come on, sugar! Keep up!”

Thorne kept saying that. Lillia kept falling short of answering the call.

The Plains Tyrant Crown Lillia had gotten from the Ambusher in the first place made her fast over the plains. Scary fast.

Fast to the point of worrying what would happen if she tripped. Fast to the point where she worried her dress would ride too high during the run.

None of that speed allowed her to keep up with Thorne.

It was unclear whether Thorne’s prodigious alacrity was because of her status as a level 20 Huntsmaster or whether she had just always been like that. No matter what the answer was, she was revelling in the speed, and in the fact that Lillia couldn’t keep up.

By the time Lillia actually caught up with Thorne, she was tired; she was panting, and she was sweaty. The scaled, dark beast that Thorne had seen on the horizon was already dead. Several dozen arrows were sticking out of its side. Three of them were in each eye.

Thorne laughed as Lillia stumbled onto the scene. “Man, this makes it almost too easy.” She shook her head as the buzzing of her laughter faded. “Usually I got to worry about how many arrows I’m carrying, but—” She cut herself off by reaching over her shoulder. She pulled her hand back out with an arrow between her fingers. Thorne laughed again. She treated the trick as if it were novel every time.

It took Lillia a moment to catch her breath. By the time she was ready to speak, Thorne had already moved on to the next topic.

“Sorry, I ain’t leaving more of these for you, kid. It’s just too damn fun once I’m in the thick of it.”

Lillia offered a thumbs-up as a response. Thorne obviously thought that she was depriving Lillia, but one experience in the Hunting Grounds had been enough to turn her off killing for sport.

If there was something they needed in the room, that was another discussion. But hunting for the thrill of the hunt or fighting for the thrill of the fight? Lillia didn’t think she’d ever be keen on that.

Thorne looked around them, staring past Lillia and off over the horizon. She saw things Lillia couldn’t see. Her eyes turned a honey colour of gold.

She hadn’t explained what that ability did to Lillia. In fact, she hadn’t explained any of her abilities to Lillia. In the Huntsmaster’s words, it was more fun if she had to figure it out.

Lillia didn’t know how she was supposed to do that. She couldn’t track an arrow in flight, and by the time she reached a fight, the “monsters” were the equivalent of pincushions.

Thorne blinked, and all at once the golden glow of twilight stole the stage from daylight. The false sun, which had always hung high in the sky, was now far beyond the ceaseless horizon. Lillia spun, trying to understand how so much time had passed all at once. Thorne just sighed.

“Ah, think I got about one more hunt in me before it’s time to call it,” she said.

“How is it almost nighttime?” Lillia asked. Then came the perhaps more pressing question. “There’s nighttime in this dungeon?”

“Kind of.”

“I could have had a bedtime this whole time? I could have woken up to the sunrise? I could have—”

“Did you feel like camping?”

Lillia considered it. “Are there tents and bedrolls?”

“Nah.”

Lillia nodded. Frankly, even sleeping in a tent would have sounded like a nightmare a week ago. Now, she would have taken it over settling for the dungeon floor or the stone chair of the palace. “I just didn’t know this place had day and night.”

“The dungeon doesn’t. I do,” she said. “Keeps me from disappearing into the Hunting Grounds forever. Gotta be there in case some adventurers come along.”

“I’m the only adventurer in the dungeon,” Lillia said. “Unless you count Havoc.”

“Remember when I told you I was more like Rickshaw than Havoc?” Thorne said. “This is another way that is true. I got more dungeons to think about than this one. I’ve…” Thorne hopped, and her wings buzzed to catch her before she touched the ground.

She looked past Lillia and into the lands yonder. Her honey eyes shone for a moment.

“You sit here tight for a sec. I’ll be a minute.”

Thorne sped away. A golden glow radiated off her wings as she flew, but even that couldn’t keep her in sight for long.

At least she hadn’t asked Lillia to keep up this time.

After a few moments of waiting, Lillia sat down beside Thorne’s latest kill. She kept her distance to avoid the blood-soaked grass. As she waited in the calm twilight, she could hear flies buzzing around the meat Thorne had left behind.

Was she planning on coming back and using that for anything? Was the point of coming into the Hunting Grounds just to kill at random until night fell?

Maybe that was it. Maybe each room was supposed to teach Lillia something. The Lodge covered commoners. The Havoc’s archive had information about the trades. The Spellmite Challenge covered history. The Hunting Grounds taught her to hunt as a ruler should.

The siege taught her about war. Nennia would teach her to slay monsters. Eisel would…

By the logic she was walking through, Eisel would teach her about negotiation. Unfortunately for that lesson, Lillia had no plans on compromising with him anytime soon. If that meant she was disappointing the dungeon, it was far from the first time.

Lillia looked out to see if she could see Thorne. She couldn’t, and she swore it had gotten darker since the huntress had left.

Left alone in silence, Lillia found her hand drifting again and again to the clasp of the Usurper’s Cloak.

She knew someone who could help with that particular question. At least hopefully.

Even as Lillia whispered her name, the sound of it rang out across the plains as if she’d shouted it off the tallest cliff. The flies around the carcass scattered.

“Sorceready!”

Cathria landed in front of her, her staff pointed at the black carcass. She relaxed once she realized it was already dead.

“Sorceready?” Lillia asked.

“Can’t all be winners,” Cathria said as she turned back to see Lillia. Once she looked down and found the princess on the floor, she lowered herself. Her glass body cracked and groaned as she crossed her legs and sat to match Lillia.

“To what do I owe the pleasure, Princess? You have been quite busy the last couple of times you summoned me.” She looked over at the carcass. “I see the excitement’s already over.”

“I wasn’t even part of it.”

“Hm. I didn’t take your hobgoblin friend as a master of archery.” Cathria returned her attention to Lillia.

The idea of Havoc carrying a thin little bow did seem absurd. Though Lillia also imagined that there had to be hobgoblin archers. Unless they found bows dishonorable or had some other weird hang-up.

Either way, she had brought Cathria out for a reason in this quiet moment on the plains.

“What spells can you cast that aren’t just blowing things up?” Lillia asked.

Cathria chuckled. “A great many, my dear. I was not given the title of Archmage based exclusively on my explosive prowess.”

“I guess the better question is, how many could you cast for me?”

“Ah.” Cathria looked down. “A great deal fewer. In my time, battle mages had already spent centuries optimizing their offensive spells for speed. That optimization allows me to cast those spells before my time is up.”

“But?”

“Many utility spells are ritualistic castings that take place over hours or days. Unfortunately, I’ve learned that the moment I begin to cast a spell, my time is nearly up.”

“Could you identify something for me? An item?”

Cathria chuckled again. It was the kind of laugh a parent made when their child did something cute. She avoided sounding condescending despite it.

“I would barely classify identification as a spell.”

“Even if there’s something hidden?”

“If it couldn’t identify something hidden, the Identify spell would be just as useless as Introspect,” Cathria said.

Lillia understood that it was supposed to mean something. She nodded.

“And what was it you wanted me to identify, dear?”

Lillia tapped the clasp.

“Alright then.” Cathria got up on her knees and scooched over to Lillia. “Permission to touch, Your Highness?”

The question made Lillia feel oddly at home. “Yes.”

Cathria reached out and tapped her glass finger against the jewel in the center of the Usurper’s Cloak clasp. She stared deep into the item. Something glowed within her opaque glass eyes, but there was no colour aside from the black.

Cathria remained perfectly still as the seconds ticked past. The first crack appeared on the finger that was touching the amulet. It stretched up her hand, splitting into two at the wrist as it began to climb up the woman’s arm.

Lillia reached out and grabbed Cathria by the same wrist, resting her thumb on the split. Her skin was cold.

Of course it was; she was just glass, even if she were alive.

“I, Princess Lillia Ashvalin, name you Cathria, as my champion.”

The rose-gold light of Lillia’s Blessing danced over Cathria’s glass skin for a moment. The crack halted its spread, but it never receded.

Cathria blinked twice and dragged her hand away from the clasp around Lillia’s neck. As she sat back down, a horrid split tore down her torso, just beneath the surface.

“That, young princess, is a nasty little curse you picked up. A powerful item, mind you, but a nasty little curse.”

“What?” Lillia asked. As soon as she’d seen that there was a hidden effect to it, she knew that something was wrong, but her heart still felt hollow as Cathria spoke.

“It’s siphoning from you. It gave you experience all at once, but has been draining your progress since.”

“It got me to level four,” Lillia said. She didn’t know why she felt the need to defend the item, but it made the sting feel better.

“Which would have been a great boon at the time, but now that you’re making actual progress, it’s going to drag in more and more of your victory and feed it to whoever made this item. Do you know who that is?”

Lillia sat there on the plains for a while, failing each time she tried to open her mouth. The explanation came too close to touching the conversation she’d sworn secrecy about. Even trying to change the topic and bring up Eisel in another context brushed up against the edges of the promise.

Not rules, technically. A promise.

But it felt like a curse.

The same split that Lillia had massaged and tried to heal earlier shattered outward on Cathria’s hand, echoing through the entire thing and changing her overall color from matte black to a cloudy grey of cracked glass. The Archmage looked down with vague curiosity, as if it weren’t spelling her death, and sighed.

“If you were to summon me again, I could break the curse shackling that item to you. It would restore some of the experience to you, but not nearly all of it. Right now, anything you defeat will continue to contribute more to their growth than yours.”

Guilt sat hot in Lillia’s stomach. It wasn’t fair guilt. She couldn’t remember deciding at all. All of a sudden she’d just been shaking Eisel’s hand. The embarrassment and guilt were there nonetheless.

A deep crack within Cathria’s core stole Lillia’s attention back.

“Cathria, what level should I be?”

“What level are you?”

“Ten.”

“And you’ve been wearing that since you were level…”

“Four.”

Cathria nodded, her head threatening to come off as she did. Glass rained down from each crack along her skin. Her time was up.

“Thirty.” With that last revelation, Cathria laid back down and broke into the grass. Lillia stared at the glittering remains before they faded away.

The back of Lillia’s throat was tight. She felt hot bile in her stomach as it churned.

Thirty?

Lillia failed to hold anything back. She fell forward onto her hands and knees. She threw up.

It was very un-princess-like.

Lillia coughed up spit and the last of the vomit in her mouth. She heaved over the grass.

THIRTY?

Havoc’s room, a tutorial level, had scrolls that required twenty levels. She was still fighting things that were much stronger than she was supposed to face. She had conquered an entire siege.

Well, fought an entire siege as a conqueror, but she digressed.

How much was each of those towers supposed to be worth? How much experience was Cathria supposed to offer during the second fight?

Lillia felt like she was going to throw up again, but nothing came. After all, there wasn’t anything truly inside her. While she’d been satiated by resting, she hadn’t eaten for days.

Gods.

It wasn’t just the level. It was knowing that she’d been feeding Eisel all of her experience from her hard work. When Lillia had been fighting and dying over and over again, he’d been stealing the credit.

All of this, and she’d just been making him stronger.

Oh, fuck.

Eisel was obviously at a higher level than Lillia if he ran off levels at all, so she probably hadn’t fed him twenty levels, but…

If Cathria was right about the ratio, it didn’t matter how much Lillia tried to fight and prepare for a battle against him. She might pick up an extra dress or two, but no matter how much she grew, he would grow more.

“Hey! Sugar, I—”

Thorne caught up with her own call after she saw Lillia on her hands and knees. The bee woman crouched beside the princess and placed a hand on her back.

“Ain’t got the stomach for hunting, do ya? Embarrassing, but it happens to some of us. Never ran into it myself, but—”

“No, it’s not that,” Lillia corrected.

It was so much worse.

When Lillia returned to the cathedral, Havoc made her knight him right away. He was eager to set up his entire blacksmithing station. He had a whole new location mapped out further away from the fire.

The reason it had to move was that as a reward for another Hearth, the dungeon had added a table and benches. It felt like a subpar reward until Lillia realized the other hearth had 'given them' a literal palace as another Hearth.

At least on the hearth vector, fair was fair. Even if the table meant Havoc had more places to put gross meat he decided to try cooking.

At least he hadn't been cooking when Lillia arrived, which meant she'd had the stomach to ask him about Vianaffir.

Talking about how she'd reacquired the weapon had led to an awkward dance of a conversation for Lillia. Havoc, in his usual thoroughness, had asked about each point. The first line of questions: She fought Eisel as a boss, what did she know about that? Was simple enough. Lillia was allowed to talk as much as she wanted about the fight, even about the conversation they'd had during it.

As soon as Havoc followed up, she'd gotten into trouble. What was her theory on how he found her again? She couldn't explain that well without getting into the conversation between life and death. The further Havoc pressed into the connections the harder Lillia found it to speak. Whenever she tried to say something or answer a question the deal considered 'off limits' her tongue felt numb and she felt a gloved hand guiding her thoughts away from the proper answer.

The deal, in technical terms, didn't prevent her from talking about it. It simply forced her to lie around it. That felt worse.

Havoc grumbled several times before finally dropping the questions and moving back over to the blade. Him being frustrated with Lillia's answers wasn't novel, it was just usually because she didn't pay as much attention to detail as he wanted her to.

Havoc leaned over the blade as it was laid out on the table. Even broken, it was still beautiful and shining. He considered the sword for a long time, occasionally running his clawed thumb across the break.

"When my grandfather taught me to work metal," he eventually began, "There was a long list of hobgoblin blades he made me memorize. He told me if I worked hard enough and did good, clean work, I'd get to work on metal that lived through the old stories."

Havoc sighed and his whole body moved with it. For one of the few times since Lillia had met him, Havoc seemed old.

"I gave the same talk to my grandson, Blather. Told him that he'd be the one in the family to repair hollowed craftsmanship."

Havoc frowned. It lingered for a long time.

"I haven't thought about that in ages. About that conversation. I think I'd forgotten it. I think I've forgotten a lot."

"Havoc." Lillia stopped short of reaching out for him. She hadn't known Havoc for that long, but she knew that hug was the preferred form of physical comfort.

The Hobgoblin met Lillia's gaze for a second, nodded. He forced the sorrow out of his tone in the next words. "Well, guess Grandpa was right. Time to get to work."

Lillia stepped forward. "Havoc."

"What?"

She could hear it on his voice. He was already annoyed by the upcoming attempted comfort.

She skipped over that part. "What do you need from me?"

"You? Time. Not too much of it, but enough."

"You don't need materials or anything?

Havoc scratched his chin then picked up the bottom half of Vianaffir. "It's a legendary blade, Lillia. Nothing we've found in here is going to affect it." He held the sword up, checking it against the dim, flickering light of their shoddy chandelier. "Something like this wants to be reformed. It just needs hands to do it."

Lillia matched Havoc, staring at the blade until he lowered it. It looked like a broken sword. She didn't understand how it could want anything.

"You're going to go talk to Thorne, right? See if she'll help."

"That was the plan."

"I'll take care of this. You take care of that."

Lillia went to follow his orders, but stopped halfway through the turn. She lingered for long enough that he turned his gaze back to her.

"Havoc."

"Yeah?"

"The next two things: Nennia and Eisel. Are you g—"

"What are you gonna do to them alone, kid?" Havoc asked. "Don't ask stupid questions."

"But—"

"Kid, I've been getting killed in a basement over and over again before you convinced me to come out here. If I gotta get my skull smashed in a couple times to keep a promise and get to work on legendary blades. It's worth it for as long as it lasts."

Lillia didn't have time to find words before Havoc continued.

"If you get all sappy right now, I'll run myself through so I don't just sit through it."

"Okay, Havoc. I'll get to work."

"Yeah. I will too. Grandpa would have had a fit if he found out the legendary blade was a human one."

"Thank you, Havoc."

"Don't start with me."

Lillia left Havoc to do his work. Heading down the stairs to the first landing. She was supposed to be checking the hunting lodge, but she checked Havoc's door first.

Locked.

This time, there was no scrolling error message. Lillia couldn't know if that was progress, but it felt like it.

At least the door was still there. She hadn't thought about it before, but the implication of another room appearing here could have stripped all of Havoc's scrolls, all of his written memories away.

She didn't know if he'd ever planned on reading them again when he wrote them. Or if he remembered that he'd written them, but if they got out, they'd become important study material for a hobgoblin headed home.

One problem at a time.

Or rather, one potential solution at a time.

Lillia opened the door to the hunting lodge. Thorne was sitting in one of the chairs around the center table, her feet propped up around the cutlery.

"Well, there you are, sugar. Was starting to get worried y'all would start the adventure without me."

Thorne being there didn't take away the smell of stale alcohol that permeated the room.

Lillia was stuck in the doorway. She'd expected an empty room and to have to hunt Thorne down somewhere in the Hunting Grounds.

Thorne read the princess like a book. She was used to staring at gormless prey. "Havoc's making noise up there for a while, and I figured y'all might have made some progress."

"We cleared the siege room Havoc probably told you about."

Thorne sat up and removed her feet from the table. Lillia realized how much that had been bothering her. "You two cleared a third-floor room?"

Lillia nodded.

Thorne leaned in. "All on the back of that adventurer thing Havoc was talking about?"

That wasn't quite the whole truth, but it was Lillia's sales pitch. "I couldn't have done it without him."

Thorne leaned back in her chair and cackled. She clapped twice. As she laughed, the sound of buzzing lingered in the room. "So you're telling me you can give me all that? All the freedom out of my room and the ability to carry as many weapons as I want."

"I actually don't know if there's a limit."

"Hey, as long as it's more than two proper pieces and seventeen knives, it's an upgrade."

"Seventeen?"

"Oh sugar, don't tell me you're down to the single digits. You gotta carry more side arms or—Well I suppose you actually don't. Ain't that just the fun of it."

Lillia had come in here expecting a lot, but Thorne's excitement hadn't be part of her plan. She'd come here focused on Thorne's previous promise of needing something from Lillia.

Maybe them conquering the siege—as she didn't know about the cheating—was proof enough for her.

"Now," Thorne kicked herself up out of the chair. Lillia swore she saw her coat flutter. "Originally, the plan was that I was going to run you through a trial or two, but a gal's got to be honest with herself. The honest truth is I want in on whatever madness you're cooking up."

Lillia figured it was better to be honest. "Even if that madness is hunting Nennia?"

"Oh girl, threaten me with a good time. A chance to tussle without the risk of the permanent end? You have to love it. Even if it might take a bit of thrill outta that hunt." Thorne was smiling. Lillia didn't like that smile.

"I have an idea that might work for having both you and Havoc be adventurers at the same time," Lillia said, "but I think—"

"Oh sugar, please tell me you're about to suggest we test out how this thing works on me at all before we climb into Nennia's lair."

That was correct, but it brought up another question. "I thought you would enjoy the thrill of hunt if we went in there before—"

"Part of the thrill of the hunt is preparing for the hunt, sugar," Thorne approached, and then walked past Lillia through the door. She dragged her finger along Lillia's shoulder as she did. "Stick around long enough and I'll be sure to show you how it's done."

Lillia held her breath as Thorne's nail caught in the strap of her dress. The deep inhale that came after confirmed that Thorne smelled like Honey.

"You planning on coming for the hunt, sugar? Hard to test my skills out in a cramped room like this."

Lillia nodded.

Thorne was willing to help, which was step one. Thorne was a little too willing to help, which was another problem for another time.

The Hunting Grounds had been ready from the moment Lillia and Thorne arrived. Unlike the previous iteration, that had formed itself in real time, this version seemed to know what it wanted to be.

Was that because Thorne was here? Or because Lillia had burned it down during her last adventure down into the dungeon?

As soon as they were through the door. Thorne cracked her neck to either side and stripped off her fancy jacket, tossing it to the side of the door. Once her jacket was off, two thin, transparent wings buzzed in place. Lillia recognized the motion, it was like shaking her hand awake after sleeping too long.

"Feels good to be out, don't it?" Thorne asked. "I know it ain't the fresh air but it's closer than anything you're going to get on this side of the dungeon."

"This side?" Lillia asked.

"Tutorial side," Thorne said. As she spoke she bent over and grabbed something hidden within the long grasses. A leaf-wrapped package tied closed by twine. She began opening it. "You need to get through the third floor to see any more of the place and, for obvious reasons, I wasn't about to do that?"

Lillia nodded. "Yeah, it seems like they're worse than the floor—"

"Sugar, watch it before you say somethin' about me you don't mean." Thorne finished upwrapping the package. There was a bow inside, it looked like it had been folded somehow without breaking it.

"See, I…" She dragged the word as she strained through the process of unfolding the bow. "I'm part of the tutorial, but I ain't what you're supposed to fight durin' it. Or did you forget the entire point of killing the Ambusher was to impress me?"

Lillia looked out over the horizon. She didn't see anything to hunt.

"Havoc is a monster, and he was brought in here from outside. So is that girl he was talkin' about from the amulet." There was bowstring wrapped around Thorne's armband. Lillia had just through it was part of the outfit until Thorne started to string the bow with it. "Cathria, I think?"

"Yeah," Lillia said.

"I'm closer to your skeleton friend, Rickshaw. The dungeon's my home. I don't follow the same organizational structure as the monsters within."

Something moved far out in the plains. Lillia caught Thorne's eyes darting over to the movement as she went to point it out.

"If it's not…" Lillia tired to find the words. "If you're not trapped with Havoc, then why would you help me? Do you even need worry about dying outside of your room?"

"First, I ain't just helping you out of the good of my heart. We're trading your goods for my services. Second, I gotta worry about dying anywhere. I ain't a dungeon monster. I don't come back. That is unless this plan of yours works."

Now the bow was strung. Thorne tested the weight of the draw several times, but never let go of the string. Lillia didn't understand why she hadn't tested it. Thorne's wings began to buzz, quickly becoming a blur behind her.

"You're willing to try to fight Nennia and go against the dungeon because it's going to be fun?"

Thorne settled, her wings slowed. "Well, that, and I'm a sucker for a cute girl who's nice to me," she said. "You'd never believe how belligerent a lot of those adventurers are. There's a reason I don't usually show up to visit. You saw how it was with the first beast ya killed, I just left a note. I—"

Thorne cut off her sentence as she watched the horizon. Lillia tried to follow her gaze and track what she was looking at. As far as the princess could tell, it was just an empty landscape.

"Alright, here, let's get this show movin' and get on out there. I didn't come into the grounds to just stay by the door."

Lillia nodded. Time to do it then. "I, Lillia, Heiress to House Ashvalin and—"

Thorne held up a hand. "Wait, wait, wait. Let me do this."

Thorne waved a hand. The text in front of Lillia shifted.

[Quest Received: Give a Mouse a Cookie]

[Use Emergency Knighting to grant Thorne the status of Adventurer.]

Oh. Oh! Thorne could give quests.

[Reward: Thorne's Favor.]

Lillia looked from the promise up to Thorne.

"Nothing mechanical, just means I like ya," Thorne clarified. "Only got so much to give away and gonna use it on this."

Lillia nodded. Fair enough.

A deep breath.

The dungeon's name for the quest was calling her out. She knew it. The same way that it had called out her use of the chitterpede armor earlier.

Of course, it was right.

Lillia wasn't supposed to be in here. Princesses didn't belong in dungeons. Princesses shouldn't have to form parties.

What princesses were good at was pushing until they got their way.

She would take anything the dungeon gave her and make it regret giving her an inch.

"I, Princess Lillia of House Asvalin, name you, Thorne, as knight."

[You Rest at the Palace Hearth]

[You Rest Safely and Completely]

[Your Companions Have Revived!]

[You are Separated from Your Companions!]

[You have Leveled Up! You are now Level [10]]

[Stats Increased]

[It is now day [8] of your quest.]

Lillia awoke to the sound of drums in the distance. The palace doors had been closed “overnight,” leaving her alone in the massive foyer/grand hall. The art on the walls—all the canvases Lillia’s invaders had torn down—had been repaired, but they were empty and blank.

Resting in the Palace apparently meant sleeping on the throne, which was only marginally more comfortable to wake up on than the floor of the Cathedral.

The Architect’s lair was a distant third. The Cathedral also made Lillia wake up on the floor, but at least it had the courtesy to have a fire.

Lillia climbed off the throne. The discarded robes of the “king” who had been there before were still lying on the ground where he’d fallen. She nudged them with her foot. The fabric acted like fabric would. No reward. No item added to her inventory.

Lillia sighed. Set dressing, like the rugs in the Hunting Lodge. If she wanted silks worthy of a royal, she would have to buy them, or fight the Silencer for them.

Even after “winning” the siege by making the castle lose, fighting something like the Silencer wasn’t exactly at the top of Lillia’s list.

It took Lillia a moment of staring at the dead king’s robes to figure out what was on the top of her list.

Escape, obviously.

But escape from the Five Point Fall felt so far off it was useless to put it on the long list of things she needed to do. Plus, “escape” came with the caveat of discovering how to get Cathria and Havoc—at minimum—out of the dungeon as well.

Even if she ignored several floors between her and escape, helping them was several arcane discoveries away.

Beyond escape, it was the third floor. If the Palace Hearth was theirs and remained clear, that meant there were two doors left. Nennia and Eisel.

Current Objectives: Defeat Nennia and Eisel

Preferably in that order.

Lillia walked down the entire length of the Grand Hall as she considered what those options meant for her. They had cleared the siege because they could try over and over. Even then, it had taken Lillia and Havoc cheating to break through the Palace.

How many more attempts would it have taken if they had stuck to defending? Stopping the siege was the intended difficulty of the floor. Lillia couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that they hadn’t even come close to succeeding.

Lillia reached the far doors, massive, ornate metal things. Lillia frowned at the designs. If they were going to spend so much time moulding designs into a door, they should have meant something. This door was just covered in useless filigree.

She grabbed the handle. It didn’t budge.

[Room will Reset in [3] Days]

Lillia pressed her ear to the door. The drums were coming from outside and she could still hear them, but as far as the Dungeon was concerned, that space beyond the door didn’t exist. Lillia pulled on the handle twice more to ensure that the dungeon would not change its mind before moving on.

Along the walls of the room, there were four closed, barred gates, two to each side, evenly spaced between the massive blank canvases on the wall. Lillia approached one of them.

Lillia recognized the design. A portcullis that prevented invaders who entered the foyer from reaching the deeper rooms. Its purpose was dulled because Lillia knew the throne room, and thus the king, was also in the foyer of this palace.

It was a show, a simple measure made by the dungeon to keep her from going that way.

[This way is shut. Unlock this path by capturing more Hearths]

Lillia tried to slide her hand through the small gaps in the gate. She ran into the same pressure that had prevented her from going to the third floor early. A gentle, cosmic nudge that kept her from pushing her fingers beyond the iron.

At least the implied evolution of this space was more impressive than the Cathedral Hearth. For all of Lillia’s effort, they’d only added a shoddy chandelier to that space. That seemed trite compared to an entire wing of a palace.

Lillia finished her lap of the room. Her heels clicked on the smooth, polished stone, the sound echoing along the massive pillars up into the barrel-vaulted ceiling. With the canvases removed, there wasn’t too much for Lillia to see in the space, but she still had to finish her miniature search.

Havoc would never let her hear the end of it if she didn’t.

Finally, Lillia returned to the space in front of the mural. She stared at the dread princess version of herself holding a large black blade above her head in triumph.

Havoc had said it suited her.

Lillia sneered at the mural before walking up to it. She pressed her palm against the stones.

After a second, the stones rippled like water. The surface of the mural splashed outward and dropped her through. She yelped before falling back out on the other side. Lillia face-planted—well, splashed down—in the Hearth of Memory, having fallen through one of the wall murals.

Last time, she had simply flashed into the Cathedral. Clearly, the dungeon thought she was beyond that courtesy now.

“If anyone is listening,” Lillia said as she dragged herself out of the water. “Remind me to try and find a towel.”

Once Lillia was standing, she summoned and broke a feather in her hand. Even after only a few days, changing dresses with adaptive regalia felt so natural she barely needed to think about crushing whatever material she needed in her hand.

Maybe one day she wouldn’t even need to crush it. She would simply think, and her dress would change. That would have saved her the feather she had almost lost during the second battle against the Architect. Havoc had found it for her in the aftermath, but she could have lost something at any time during the siege.

Lillia stared at the mural on the other side of the room. Her battle against the Architect. The way back to the Cathedral. Havoc would be waiting there for her.

He was probably doing something gross like cooking up chitterpede. Lillia grimaced at the fact that 100% of her dungeon companions enjoyed the taste of bugs.

She had time for a bath.

After her rest, Lillia was already clean, but despite that she felt dirty. It was like the dirt that the dungeon removed from her skin was still there, she just wasn’t allowed to see it. Maybe she simply craved the ritual of soap and water.

The water was soothing. There was no thunderous clanging. Lillia could take her time transitioning from merely clean to properly bathed instead of wrestling with layers of grime.

She took up residence in the bath under her statue and gazed up at the version of her they’d carved from stone. It was what she wanted to be if she ever had to hold a sword. Not the Dread Heiress, but a princess holding a blade in the…

In defense of the innocent or something.

Whatever.

Once she was out of the dungeon, there would be knights and soldiers to take care of the fighting. If—when—if she escaped, she would never need to hold a sword again.

Which was good, because, as she bathed, Lillia noticed calluses that had begun to form on her hands. What was she? A farmer?

Lillia frowned at her palms and stared at herself in the mirror. Her face was a little sharper. Her eyes a touch more hollow. More small scars crossed her bare chest and shoulders. Lillia didn’t know when she’d decided to keep those.

[Class: Princess - Level 10]

Good. Still a princess.

Lillia held her reflection’s gaze for a moment longer. She traced her fingernail down her jawline and then lingered on the clasp of the Usurper’s Cloak.

“Introspect: Usurper’s Cloak”

She’d only done it because it was the only thing to inspect at the moment. After all, she only needed to hold an item to see its stats. But…

[Usurper Lord’s Cloak]

[A Bargain Made and Kept - The Usurper Lord’s Cloak is not lost on death.]

[Dance with Death - After narrowly avoiding or otherwise taking 0 damage from an attack, your next strike, physical or magical, is greatly empowered.]

[Bound. Cannot be removed from inventory.]

[This item has an additional hidden effect.]

[There will come days when the sun blackens and the sky bleeds. The dungeon will never know. Its Lord will. Plan and wait for the day of black sun, fight for the throne you deserve.]

The additional text below the stats was still unsettling, what was worse was the line above it.

[This item has an additional hidden effect.]

That hadn’t been there when she first checked the cloak after death. That hadn’t been there any of the dozen times her fingers had lingered too long on the metal collar and the text had tried to answer a question she hadn’t meant to ask.

A hidden effect. Even the knowledge of it had been hidden. She just hadn’t thought to check because she “already knew.”

Was that how Eisel found her in the siege?

Was Eisel doing something else?

What…

Lillia let her hand fall off the clasp. The text went away.

Okay. Updated list of objectives. Find out what’s up with the cloak. Defeat Nennia. Kill Eisel.

Though now that Lillia realized she could go through her items using the mirror’s introspection, this was about to be a much longer bath.

The process didn’t take as long as Lillia thought. Most of the items were simple—she already knew what they did, and there were no hidden effects. They also hadn’t received that many new items from the siege beyond the the Invader’s Cloth and siegecraft potions. In their victory, they had added the Guard Captain’s Sabres, which raised Lillia’s Authority if she held them but were poor weapons otherwise, the Hammershield, which allowed someone to apply offensive melee attacks to their shield (whatever that meant) and the Essence of Nightwhisper, which could be enchanted onto a weapon.

Lillia didn’t know if enchanting fell under Havoc’s purview.

The last item in Lillia’s inventory made her hesitate. She stared at the mirror at her reflection as she held a piece of Vianaffir in each hand.

The weapon had been her lifeline. Without Vianaffir, she wouldn’t have lasted a day in the dungeon. The knight, in his last words, had begged for Lillia to take care of the weapon. Now it sat broken in her hands.

She didn’t know if introspection would work on a weapon she couldn’t equip.

[Class: Princess - Level 10]

She hadn’t earned it yet.

Lillia sighed.

She didn’t have the privilege of being that sentimental, not with what was coming.

“Introspect: Vianaffir.”

Lillia’s reflection stuttered before any text arrived. When the description appeared on the mirror, it was broken in the same places as the blade.

[Vianaffir ______ Free___]

[Once ________ Free - Upon hitting _______ removes any ___control effects]

[The ______________ - Once per User ____________ Wind__________Strike]

Lillia looked from her reflection back down to the blade. She rubbed her hand over the jagged edge where it had been snapped in two.

When she looked back up, there was a different message.

[The legend of this blade does not matter. Let it guide your hand in my stead. - A Nameless Knight]

Something caught at the back of Lillia’s throat.

“Thank you, Sir Nobody.”

She sniffed, wiped nothing from her eyes, and then dunked her head underwater. Vianaffir faded back into her inventory as she held her breath.

The next step would be getting Havoc to fix Vianaffir. That meant she would need a different scouting partner for Nennia’s lair.

The reavers led Lillia and Havoc through the conquered city. Once the bell had rung its last, the strange silence settled over the place. There was no march of armies outside, no crash of trebuchet fire in the distance. There were no screams. It was finally quiet enough that Lillia and Havoc could hear their footsteps along with those of the reavers who shuffled around them. The air still smelled of smoke and wet stone. Somewhere distant, a shutter banged once against a wall and went still.

The city was nearly empty. Twice, they passed contingents of guards who had been rounded up into a square and forced to kneel before their captors, but outside of that, the only souls Lillia and Havoc encountered—aside from those leading them through the city—were scattered members of Lillia’s newly inducted invading army on their way to perform tasks Lillia hadn’t ordered and didn’t understand.

Lillia had never seen a city at the end of a siege. She had expected it to feel more broken than it was.

The pair were ushered to the palace gates in silence. Each time Lillia had been tempted to speak, it had felt like the quiet immediately became more pressing. The quiet after the battle was reverent and ritualistic, as if the invaders were giving space for the city to breathe after all the noise they’d brought.

Finally, in front of the palace and looking up at the towering doors that had been opened for them, Lillia couldn’t help but feel like it was—quaint felt rude, but it was the word. It was the kind of palace she’d visited during summers with her mother as a child. The kind of palace she’d stayed at when her father was taking care of actual work in palaces large enough to matter.

On either side of the doors, there were long golden rods meant for banners. Whatever had been there before was already torn down.

The reavers guiding them dispersed, giving Havoc and Lillia room to head inside.

Havoc leaned over. “It’s big.”

Lillia had a lot of responses to that, some glib, most just the truth. At the moment, she was still the Dread Heiress. The Dread Heiress, Lillia decided, would say something.

The rain had smothered most of the fires in the city. The sky was now near black, as was Lillia’s soaked hair.

Seconds dragged by as the pair stood there. It eventually became apparent that the reavers who had guided them there were still watching. Lillia nodded to one of them before taking the first step into the palace.

From outside, the palace doorway had looked like a yawning void. The second Lillia’s heel touched the tiles within, torches lit on either side of a grand hall.

Lillia couldn’t help but click her tongue. A grand hall acting as the foyer? That was certainly an architectural choice.

As outside, there were places where banners and flags should have been. At the base of some poles, tattered scraps of purple cloth lay on the grey tile, where they had been torn from their masts. People had come in here before them.

Knowing that people had already breached the palace didn’t make Lillia feel better, even if the invaders were supposed to be on her side. All the knowledge did was make every long shadow cast by the torchlight seem like a place to hide.

As Havoc and Lillia walked across the room, more torches set themselves ablaze. There were canvases on the wall, or at least there had been. What was once art had been gutted by blades. Some pieces had been fully cut from their frames and removed. Others had just become target practice.

Lillia slowed as two braziers roared to life close to the far wall, on either side of a white throne.

There was a man on the throne, slumped over, adorned in complicated layers of fabrics of red and purple. Lillia strained her eyes, trying to see if there was any blood. She tried to see if there was a blade. She tried to see if he was dead before they approached.

The man stirred. Lillia summoned Hooke to her hand. She wasn’t quite sure when she’d put it away.

Havoc brought his axe to bear. He’d never stored it. Once he had his weapon ready, he looked at Lillia. “Oh? So now you want to get some swings in. Get bored on the walk?”

“No—I just.” Lillia watched the man in the throne. He was still. “He could be a boss.”

“I’ve only seen one boss. He doesn’t look like it.”

Of the bosses Lillia had seen, the slumped man looked decidedly more like Eisel than the Spellmite Architect, but not by much.

She didn’t put Hooke away, but she held it at her side like she would hold a riding crop.

When Lillia stopped, Havoc overshot by several steps before looking back to her. He didn’t know the polite distance from which to address a king, but that space, whether it was less or greater than thirty feet, was written in her blood.

She did not know if this man was a king, and if he were a king, he was merely a king of ashes, but he was on a throne, and so she stood at the correct distance.

In stillness, quiet entered the throne room. Eventually Lillia could hear the crackle of the braziers and the still-heavy beating of her heart.

Was the Dread Heiress supposed to attack? Was she meant to rip the evil man off his throne and take her rightful place? Could she do that?

Havoc certainly could, but it didn’t feel like his role to play.

Just as Lillia remembered what deafening silence felt like, the man stirred. It was a twitchy, jerking motion, as if he were a marionette.

As soon as Lillia saw the blanks in his eyes, she understood that his puppet nature was not simply a metaphor.

The man was gaunt. His cheeks were hollow, and what was left of his eyes sat recessed deep in his face. His skin was somehow both wrinkled and pulled tight at the same time. He opened his mouth wide, revealing yellowed teeth, and made a strange sound, caught somewhere between an inhale and an exhale.

He had barely begun to rise before he was already falling out of the throne. The man hit the stone floor with a deep thud. There was no flesh under the fabric, only bones and sinew.

Lillia swallowed. He needed help, but was this just another test?

Silence again.

Seconds dragged into a minute.

Inaction turned into compliance.

Both of the braziers ignited and burned hotter.

[You have Liber—]

[You have]

[You Have Captured the Palace Hearth. Yay!]

[Mission Com—]

The text went away.

Lillia didn’t dismiss it.

It went away.

“Hello?” Lillia asked.

Havoc looked to her. “Did you see that too? Was it all weird?”

“Yeah,” Lillia confirmed. “It was like that with you, too.”

“With the knighting?”

“The first time I made you my knight, it didn’t like it,” Lillia said. The entire time she spoke, she was staring at the empty man on the floor. “Or at least it didn’t know what to do.”

“Think it’s trying to figure that out now?”

The text came back.

[Mission Complete]

[Result Deemed Satisfactory Despite Its Irregular Nature.]

There was another pause in the text.

[Princess Lillia Ashvalin.]

[Your companion cannot follow you through to the Cathedral Hearth.]

As the text appeared, a mural began forming behind the throne. Stone by stone, an image of Lillia clad in black with her blade to the sky began to appear.

[He must die before you rest at this Hearth.]

“What? There has to be another way.”

“What are you talking about?” Havoc asked.

He wasn’t seeing this.

[No. There doesn’t.]

[Do not mistake bends for bows, Lillia Ashvalin.]

“The dungeon is talking to me.”

“It doesn’t do that.”

“It’s not the first time it has,” Lillia said. "It's telling me that the only way through to the Cathedral is that mural."

Havoc looked from Lillia to the mural. “Shit, I can’t use those.” He scratched his chin a moment later. “You gotta kill me, don’t you?”

[He understands.]

Lillia turned back to the throne to address the text as if it weren’t always right in her vision. “Come on, you helped me before. Just let me bring him through.”

[Lillia used———-Nothing.]

[Cute.]

“Hey! Wait! You can’t do that! Come on!”

[Indignance is on Cooldown!]

“You didn’t even let me use it!” Lillia said.

“Lillia.” Havoc put a hand on her shoulder. “Kid, you were supposed to kill me over and over like the chitterpede. You can do it.”

“It’s the principle, Havoc! We won. We should get a reward and not be stuck here until I kill you.”

[You have been rewarded.]

“The reward is useless.”

[Incorrect.]

[The reward is useful to you.]

“No, it’s not, because I’m not going without him.”

The text faded away.

Lillia and Havoc were alone in the throne room. The man had faded away, leaving a pile of luxurious fabric on the floor. It, too, was beginning to decay.

Lillia took a step forward. Each of her steps towards the mural dragged rainwater and ash across the smooth tile.

Havoc caught up to her and leaned closer to the mural, almost past the throne. The newly formed image of Lillia looked nothing like her and exactly like her at once. Black gown. Sword raised. Head held high. The Dread Heiress, painted in stone as if she had always belonged there.

“Kinda suits you.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Lillia scoffed. He had no idea what he was talking about.

Havoc nudged the pile of cloth with the toe of his boot. It was cloth. Fancy cloth, but cloth.

“Eh, I’m not much fun for palaces anyways. Yeah, just come kill me and get it over with.”

Lillia clenched Hooke until the chitin of her glove creaked against the hilt. There had to be another way. There was always another way. Maybe not a good one. Maybe not a safe one. But there had to be some seam in the dungeon’s logic, some loosened thread she could hook her fingers through and pull.

She had bent rooms before. She had made the Architect stutter. She had escaped Eisel in one hit. She had made the walls themselves recognize her.

This was a castle.

Her castle, according to the dungeon’s own nonsense.

Lillia lifted her chin.

“Havoc, Sir Nobody of House Ashvalin, Knight of my court, bearer of my authority, you will follow me through that mural.”

Rose-gold light flickered over Havoc’s shoulders.

For a moment, the mural shimmered.

Lillia’s heart leapt.

[Your Court does not extend beyond this Hearth.]

“Dammit!” Lillia threw Hooke to the ground. It clattered across the floor and landed near the brazier to the left of the throne. Havoc flinched, half for Lillia, half as a craftsman.

The ringing of Lillia’s tantrum echoed off the walls, then faded away.

Havoc rubbed a hand down his face. “Kid.”

“Don’t.”

“Lillia.”

“Do not.”

He walked back over to the brazier and picked Hooke up off the ground. He studied the blade for a moment, ensuring it hadn’t chipped before turning back to Lillia.

“You’ve killed me before.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Pretty sure, to me, dead’s dead. Ain’t my first go-around, kid.”

Lillia bit her tongue. Havoc didn’t understand. It wasn’t just about killing him. It was that the dungeon knew she didn’t want to do it. It was that they had won and the dungeon was proving that, for all Lillia’s authority, for all the “help” she was giving it with Eisel, she was trapped in the Five Point Fall.

He pressed Hooke’s hilt into Lillia’s palm. As she refused to move, he began unspooling the Invader’s Cloth from around his chest.

Havoc wasn’t putting too much pressure on the hilt as he worked. It was just enough to let Lillia know that he didn’t want her to pull away.

[He must die before you rest at this Hearth.]

Lillia’s eyes stung.

“I hate this place.”

“Yeah,” Havoc said. “Me too.”

She drew a breath. It came in ragged and left worse.

“Havoc.”

“Yeah?”

“Close your eyes.”

He chuckled as he positioned the blade over his heart. “I ain’t a coward.”

Lillia swallowed spit.

“Please?”

Havoc took a deep breath and looked at her for one long second. Then he let go of the blade, stepped back, and knelt, hanging his head to expose his neck.

He closed his eyes.

Lillia raised Hooke.

“Havoc, you served House Ashvalin with courage and distinction.”

Lillia thought she saw a twitch at the corner of Havoc’s lips.

“See you soon.”

“See you soon, kid.”

Lillia squeezed her eyes shut.

She struck. It was quick. Brutal. Havoc didn’t resist. His head thumped against the tile before the rest of his body.

[Havoc has fallen! He will return to the Cathedral Hearth.]

[Rest at the Palace Hearth?]

Lillia opened her eyes again.

Her hands were bloody. Her dress was black. The throne room was hers.

She hated how much all three things sounded like a story someone else would tell about her.

“Yes.”

[You Have Captured the Palace Hearth—Yay!]

[All Objectives Completed!]

[The Room will Reset in [3] Days]

[You did it! Yay!]

[Havoc - Status: Friend Defeated!—Yay!]

Ah, fuck." Havoc slapped Lillia on the back as they looked up the stairs to the guard house and then to the top of the wall.

"Oh no."

"I wouldn't call it good."

"Dread Heiress, I must attend to the troops," the priestess said. Before she had even finished her sentence she was gone.

But it was almost hard to tell, despite “Reinforcements being cut off,” there were still dozens of reavers passing Havoc and Lillia every moment, pressing further into the city and towards what must have been Castle Varian.

"Well, everyone's headed that way," Havoc said. "Don't know if clearing the walls is needed with as many guys as we've got."

Havoc made a good point, but the Silencer was still out there. Maybe he was on their team now, but running into him had shown Lillia what could lie in the depths of the city.

They couldn't afford to run into whatever the equivalent of the Silencer was without a connection to the Hearth.

Havoc caught her thoughts based on Lillia’s distant gaze. "You've seen some shit in the city, haven't you?"

Lillia nodded.

"Alright, the walls then?"

Lillia nodded.

"You're gonna get over that cowardly hesitating at the first man with pretty eyes?"

The rain was coming down harder now. Puddles of water were mixing in with the puddles of blood on the ground. Even with the rain soaking the air, Lillia could smell the iron in the aftermath of the battle.

All this time, she'd been fighting monsters. Or men in masks that she could say were monsters. The Other. The enemy.

"Lillia, this ain't the time for an existential crisis." Havoc slapped Lillia on the back. "I made you a sword. Hit them with the pointy end of it, and I'll even listen to you talk about your feelings if we both make it back to the Hearth."

Lillia blinked. A raindrop stuck to her eyelashes.

"You'd listen to me talk about my feelings?"

"Don't push it." Havoc bent over and picked Hooke up off the ground. A mix of water and blood dripped from the blade, even though it hadn't killed anyone yet this siege. "You ready, Lillia?"

"As I'll ever be."

Lillia snatched Hooke from Havoc's hand as she crushed chitin into dust. Blood-soaked tulle cloth snapped together into hard scales that bounced the oncoming storm.

The storm clouds had darkened the sky, pushing it toward black from the brilliant orange that had filled the entire siege. Lillia stared up at the wall of colour. At the lack of stars.

She tightened her grip on Hooke.

She was playing a role. Lillia was the Dread Princess. Lillia was the leader of an invading army. None of the people who were in here were real. Only her as the dreaded, and the dreaded wouldn't hesitate.

Lillia nodded and climbed.

The stairs up to the wall were slick with rain that ran down the gaps between stones in small rivers and waterfalls. As they march past the gatehouse, the water changed. The streams in the stone began to thicken with blood. Even if the siege towers had been broken, they had landed, which meant the fighting had been fierce over the wall.

In the moments before they crested, Lillia pictured a wall covered in nondescript bodies with a single man standing to guard it, one obstacle between them and progression.

No such luck.

While the walls were certainly more sparse than the attempts where Lillia and Havoc had intervened with the siege towers, there were still many guards along the wall with their bows drawn, firing down into the army below.

Once Havoc was high enough to see over the crest as well, he pulled Lillia down.

"More than I expected."

"More than I wanted," Lillia whispered.

"Ain't that always the case."

The guards had not noticed them yet. They were too busy firing arrows into the army below, too busy shouting for more pitch, more arrows, more men. The wall had become a thin strip of desperate people trying to pretend a lost gate still mattered.

It did matter. At least as far as the dungeon was concerned. If these men were still fighting, then Havoc and Lillia wouldn't get any flexibility in the conquest of the castle.

Havoc poked his head back out. His ears twitched. "There."

Halfway down the wall from where they could see there was a towering woman in heavier armor than the rest. Torchlight silhouetted her as she shouted orders in the rain. An archer turned from the wall. The woman put her hand on his shoulder before he could turn and run. He stopped. Grabbed an arrow. Drew. Fired.

Lillia slipped back down once she'd clocked it.

"A captain?"

"Looks like one and yells like one."

"It's a different captain than the one I made battle with before."

Havoc nodded. "That's our target." He grabbed Lillia by the shoulder to ensure she was looking. "See the rest of them? They're twitchy, scared. Get rid of her. Wall's as good as ours."

Lillia stared at the captain as they stalked down the line. She couldn't hear what they were saying, but she could imagine it. It was glowing, heroic.

"Can we please not kill her?"

Havoc looked at Lillia.

“Please don’t make that face.”

“Kid.”

“Princess.”

“Lillia,” Havoc said, and that was worse. “These people are trying to kill us.”

“They’re defending their wall.”

“We’re taking it.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

A flash of lightning came before a long rumbling roll of thunder.

Lillia gripped Hooke tighter. The rain ran over the emerald chitin of her gloves and dripped from the scales in cold beads. Below them, the reavers screamed as they surged through the broken gate. Above them, defenders screamed back.

Death stays with those who die.

Lillia had changed sides, and the dungeon's equalizer had been making them mortal.

"I do," Lillia finally said. "I just don't know if I can."

"You can."

"I thought I could down there," Lillia said, "With the guard. I charged in with an entire army and—"

Lillia squeezed her eyes shut. She cut the sentence short before any tears came with it. Frustration. Shame. Fear. All of it bubbled up at once.

It was dumb. Havoc was right. She'd been celebrating knocking down an entire siege tower, and all it took was one pair of blue eyes for her to break down? She should just—

Havoc put his hand on Lillia's shoulder and squeezed. It was softer than she expected. Lillia opened her eyes and saw the thoughtful gaze of a warrior who'd had this conversation before.

"You never forget your first one, kid. You train, and you think it's going to be easy, but it's just not."

"Havoc, I…"

"And good news, you get more training than the rest of us because these people aren't real." After he made his point, he sighed, looked over his shoulder back to the guard captain. "But if you really think you're going to freeze up, we can do it your way. Whatever that is."

"We capture the captain. We capture the wall."

"What?"

"The Dungeon likes roles, so if the Captain works for us, then the wall might count as ours."

Havoc nodded along. Lillia didn't know if he agreed with the logic, but he at least understood it. It was time to leverage her authority.

Just when Lillia was about to head up the last steps. One of the soldiers turned. It looked like he was going to run, but his eyes went wide as they met Lillia's. His want to flee turned into another kind of panic.

"Invaders!"

He fumbled with his bow. Every archer along the wall heard his cry.

"Shit!" Havoc swore. He put his axe away and swung his arms in an arc above him. Lillia heard his fists sizzle in the rain. The ring of hammer on anvil echoed out as a forge erupted from the wall in the space between them and the first rank of archers. Arrowheads sparked against the stone.

Just in time.

The volley clattered into the forge wall like a rattling storm. Havoc pulled Lillia lower as one arrow whizzed over the top and flew off into the night beyond.

A second volley didn't come, but there was shouting.

"So much for a chat," Havoc said.

"No. I…" Lillia had cut in faster than her mind could come up with ideas.

"I can bring down an anvil and hit a few. If you call Cathria, we can blow up more…"

Lillia pulled the Guard Captain's Sabre out of her inventory. Compared to what she's been building, it didn't feel like much of a weapon. It reminded her of what the princelings carried in her youth at the castle. It was a tinny, thin thing that felt awkward in the hand. A sword of ceremonies instead of battlefields.

In another life, the only kind of sword she would have ever held.

"You grab the guard captain and throw her off the wall, even if you fall with her, you can take two hits so— What the hell are you doing?"

Lillia was already standing. She was half way through climbing up on top of the forge when the first arrow that had been trained for good measure bounced off of her chitin armor. She turned her gaze to the archer.

"I am Dread Princess Ashvalin, and you will bow to me!"

[Lillia used Run the Court - Highly Effective Against the Guardsman!]

The archer fell to his knees so quickly Lillia heard his armor dent against the flagstone.

The rain may have swallowed some of her words, but the walls seemed to hear them. As the man bowed, they hummed in her presence.

Lillia felt it in her heels first, then in her spine, a cold thread of recognition running through the captured gate, up the stairs, and into the wall-walk beneath her.

[Princess in Her Castle - Level 1]

[Your Authority carries through the area around you, granting you Lordship.]

A thin, glittering line echoed out from Lillia, tracing a growing circle around her as she rose to the top of the forge. The archers within all hesitated. It was enough to make the guard captain look.

Her visor was up.

Of course it was.

She was older than any of the other soldiers Lillia had seen, Old enough that crows' feet marked the corners of her eyes. She looked confused. Determined. But more than anything, she looked tired.

“Hold!” the captain shouted. “Loose on my—”

"You." Lillia held the Guard Captain's gaze as she dropped off the top of the forge and landed on the wall itself.

Behind her, Havoc moved around the forge and into view. Some of the men watching Lillia flinched at the sight of him.

"This is my gate already," Lillia said as she walked forward. She kept her voice low and cool, a skill she'd practiced over years of being needled in court. As long as her voice was steady, it didn't matter if her heart was pounding or if her tongue felt numb. All that mattered in this moment was poise.

And she was a goddamned princess.

"My men have taken the courtyard and beyond. You're not fighting for your city. It's mine."

Lillia watched as the thin, glittering line moved forward with each step she took towards the guard captain.

"Men!"

"The other captains have already surrendered. Spare your men from the inevitable."

She just needed to get a little closer.

"They wouldn't. Men f—"

Lillia tossed the Guard Captain's Sabre just short of the captain in front of her.

"There, a captain's sabre I received as tribute."

They took the step forward over the glittering line. Lillia had the boost she needed. She triggered the second active ability of Run the Court.

"This is my castle. So you will go where I tell you."

The Captain met Lillia's gaze. She was so tired.

"Come over here and kneel."

For a Breath, Lillia saw determination flash in the captain's eyes. There was steel somewhere deep within her that wanted to say no. Lillia continued to hold her gaze.

Something was tested deep within Lillia, like a string she didn't know was inside her. Being plucked over and over within the seconds that passed. The string pulled tight. It didn't snap.

The Guard Captain walked forward. Halfway to Lillia, she drew her blade. A step from Lillia, she dropped to her knees and held it out. Rain gathered on the edge of her helm, pooled and began to spill over the brim down onto her face.

[The Guard Captain bows to Lillia's Authority.]

[Gained - Guard Captain's Sabre x 1]

Lillia accepted the sabre and handed it back to Havoc, who looked at it as if it were disgraceful.

"Surrender yourselves at the gate. This war is already lost. There is no need to for you all to die for a pointless cause."

The Guard Captain stood. Lillia was tall for a woman, but even then she had to look up to meet her prisoner's gaze. The determination in the woman's eyes had been replaced by a clouded deep sadness that hung in the foggy gray.

It took everything Lillia had to keep her voice low and cool and say anything other than "sorry."

"You fought well while there was something to fight for. Your men will survive the night."

The captain hung her head as she marched past Lillia and Havoc. Once she was past them, the archers began to throw their bows to the side and follow her. They put their hands behind their heads and kept their distance from Havoc.

Several offered Lillia small bows.

"Did you just manners them into surrendering?"

"It's called negotiation, Havoc."

"Did you just negotiate them into surrender?"

"You say it like it's disgusting."

"They should have fought."

"Don't encourage them," Lillia said. She looked down the stairs, following the trail of soldiers to the captain at the bottom. The reavers in the courtyard had turned to the stairs. Their blades were drawn and ready.

Lillia felt the hum of the captured wall beneath her feet as she raised a fist to the air to draw the reaver's attention.

"No slaughter, they pass with my authority."

The reavers at the bottom of the stairs hesitated but didn't put their blades away.

"I said prisoners live."

The one closest to Lillia sheathed his blade. The rest followed and parted, leaving a path for the captured soldiers to leave their castle and be held within the army.

Lillia lowered her fist. There was no flash, but thunder rumbled across the sky. The sound echoed off castle walls. Off warriors and prisoners. Off Lillia and Havoc.

The thin, glittering line faded away as Lillia's authority returned to normal.

"This isn't going to make you insufferable, is it?"

[Subquest Complete - Capture the Walls to Restore the Hearth]

[Hearth-Light Returns to the Battlements]

[Deaths within the Captured Walls will now return to the Cathedral Hearth.]

"It might," Lillia said.

Havoc clapped her on the back hard enough to make her stumble.

“There,” he said. “You captured the wall without killing anybody.”

Lillia looked at the prisoners, the reavers, the broken gate, and the burning city beyond.

“Please don’t say it like that’s embarrassing.”

“It is a little embarrassing.”

“It was strategic.”

“It's some noble bullshit," Havoc said, "but authority looks okay on you, kid."

Damn, that was close to a compliment.

From somewhere deeper in the city, a bell began to ring.

Not the frantic alarm bells from the wall. Not the iron shrieks of war.

This one was slow. Heavy. Ceremonial.

The kind of bell that announced an arrival.

The reavers in the courtyard bowed their heads.

The captured defenders around them went pale.

Havoc tightened his grip on his axe.

At the far end of the courtyard, through rain and smoke and drifting hearth-light, the palace doors opened.