Lillia walked through the stained glass portal, and upon accepting her trip to the Cathedral, found herself in the middle of the air several feet above the ground.
This time she didn’t bother screaming. What was the point? Instead, she sighed on the way down, only to have the sigh cut short by a coughing ‘oof’ when she hit the floor. They never dropped her into a space feet-first, nor from high enough to right herself. Not that she knew how to do that anyway.
Lillia allowed herself a moment on the floor. Whenever she’d done this back in the castle, it had been on the plush fur rug beside her bed at an angle where she could vaguely see out the window. Now, she was on the cold flagstone. Previously, moments like this would have been used for introspective questions, such as “How did I end up in this situation?” but Lillia had stopped asking that. Thrown in. A coup. This place sucks. Blah blah.
No, this time the dedicated floor time was used for more pressing questions, like: What were those white strings across the ceiling, and had the ceiling always been moving?
The answers were “Oh God” and “No, it hadn’t,” respectively. Lillia shot up, but before she could stand, a tight rope of silk wrapped around her right wrist and yanked her back to the floor. Her boots scraped along the flagstone as she kicked against whatever was dragging her across the cathedral floor.
After thrashing uselessly for a moment, Lillia summoned Vianaffir to her hand and swiped at the rope tying her down. The not-quite-legendary blade slashed cleanly through the braided silk, and the coil around her wrist fell limp, though still sticky.
“Well, well, well,” a familiar, smooth voice said from close to the cathedral stairs. “Look who finally decided to join us back on the quaint side of the dungeon.”
Oh shit. Yeah. Nennia wasn’t dead. And considering Lillia had opened her door and then escaped the room without—
Yeah, maybe she should have seen this one coming. Had she thought it was going to be Nennia, as opposed to a Havoc who was tired of waiting for her, she probably would have stepped through the portal vaguely more armed than she had.
Lillia rolled onto her knees, then tried to find Nennia in the shadows on the far side of the cathedral. As soon as she was looking, the spider queen stepped out to meet her. Clicking steps echoed through the entire chamber with each of the eight footfalls.
There were a lot of questions, and negotiations, and a fight and possibly groveling in Lillia’s future, but the first thing was:
“Where’s Havoc?”
“Dead.” Nennia chuckled. “Dead for a while, actually. You’d been gone so long, I was starting to wonder if you were ever going to come back to see him or if you had simply moved on to bigger and better things.”
“I’ll—”
“You’ll what, Princess Lillia? Sweetheart, let’s face it: we know exactly how this goes. You haven’t rested to recover any of your toys since you last saw me.” Nennia stalked forward, slowly rounding Lillia as she followed the edge of the cathedral. “See, I know you haven’t rested because my daughter’s still dead, and the other one’s still sitting there waiting for your orders.”
There was only one person Lillia really hated in the dungeon, and he was rotting somewhere in the traveling market, but at least in the moment, Lillia hated Nennia mostly because she was right.
“Was it fast?”
“Oh, Havoc,” Nennia mused. “Yes, he didn’t see me coming, and frankly, with my daughters incapacitated, there was no point in dragging it out. I know I threatened the torture, but something would have been missing with him.”
Nennia was far enough around the room that the Hearth was now between them.
“That hobgoblin’s too stoic. I imagine it’ll be much more fun to drag it out with you. So many little squeaks to figure out.”
Cold beads of sweat formed on Lillia’s neck. Which dress could she even use at this point? Most days, her options felt almost infinite, but with how long ‘today’ had been, she was running out of every ability she had.
“Now, I owe you a couple of screams for what you did to my daughter, but based on our burgeoning friendship, Princess Lillia, I promise to make this relatively quick.”
She might have not known which dress she still had charges on, but now she knew that negotiation was off the table too.
Lillia braced for Nennia to throw a rope of silk at her, try and reel her in, but there was nothing so fancy—instead, Nennia crouched low, and then pounced off the ground with impossible speed.
[Tantrum!]
Lillia threw Hooke, and it spiralled end over end towards the spider queen. A moment before impact, she shot out a net of web, which snared around the handle of the spinning blade. It flew past her, but she pulled hard on the thread, snapping Hooke back around herself and diverting its momentum.
“Oh shoot.”
Chunks of flagstone flew as Lillia barely dove out of the way in time. Hooke embedded itself in the Cathedral floor, and Nennia was almost on top of her. Slick, black, armor-like chitin blocked out the light from the stained glass as Nennia reared over her and jabbed forward with two of her legs at once.
Lillia managed to get Vianaffir in the way of one, sparks flying off the blade as it ground against chitin, but she was too slow for the second, which cut through the folds of her dress and pinned her to the floor, throwing Lillia down to one knee with the sound of tearing fabric.
A single Ambusher feather snapped between Lillia’s fingers, and suddenly her skirt was too short to get caught in Nennia’s grasp. She stumbled forward, almost falling from her sudden freedom when another leg flew into her vision.
She heard her nose crunch before she felt it.
Lillia went flying backward across the room, toward the stairs down into the rest of the dungeon. She crashed down, rolling over several times from momentum.
The stairs? At least that would be better than here.
She pushed herself over and over again, rolling along the floor with borrowed speed before she dropped off the first step. Warm blood ran down her face and smeared as she thumped onto the first step to the sound of Nennia’s laughter.
“Oh! I thought you’d know better, but run, little plaything. It will make this more fun.”
Lillia fell several more steps, almost making it all the way to Sir Nobody’s corpse before a thick cord of silk snapped around her ankle and tore her to a stop. Something popped in her hip. It was probably fine.
She stowed and called Vianaffir to swap hands, then slashed around her ankle. Thanks to blessed luck, she was able to cut the silk before she took off her own leg.
Nennia tsked at her as she flopped down the last few stairs to the first-floor landing, landing on her back in the space Sir Nobody’s bones had lain when she first came here. When he’d chosen to—
“Wait!” Lillia raised her hands and dismissed the sword while Nennia stood at the top of the stairs, silhouetted against the flickering light of the Hearth. The warm firelight lingered on the shining edges of her chitin and glowed amber through her flowing hair.
“Begging for mercy already?” Nennia asked. “Truly, if you were going to start the fight, I figured you’d at least try to finish it.” She wrapped a coil of silk around her arm. “Must say, I’m disappointed, Princess. For a moment, I thought we had something special.”
“Stop,” Lillia repeated, staying on her back. At this point, if she tried to use the pause to recover her footing, Nennia wouldn’t hear her out. “If you just let me rest, then your daughters will be back and back to normal, and—”
“True,” Nennia said as she stepped onto the stairs. “But I could also simply kill you, and I’ll find that monumentally more satisfying.”
“No. No,” Lillia said. It took every fiber of her being to not stand in that moment, to not try to run away, to not try to get anywhere but here.
“That’s not going to work.”
Nennia chuckled. “Young lady, I live in this dungeon. I know exactly how it works. Death twice resets the day, and I’m more than happy to play this game a second time.”
“No,” Lillia said. “Death twice only resets the dungeon if I’m willing to come back,” she said. “If I choose not to come back, who knows what happens?”
Nennia paused.
“Yeah, you don’t, do you? Sir Nobody just lay down here, so you weren’t out of your room, but you don’t know if it resets if I’m dead.”
“It doesn’t.”
“If you kill me now, then I won’t come back and then your daughters might be gone forever.”
Nennia growled, but didn’t take another step.
“If you just let me rest instead, then we know they come back, and I won’t go through your domain again. I promise.”
Nennia straightened, and Lillia took the chance to recover her footing, standing up on the landing and staring down the massive woman looming above her.
“Do we have a deal?”
The laughter wasn’t a good sign.
“Princess,” Nennia said. “Here you are again, negotiating with your life. You really need to hold yourself in higher regard.” She began unspooling a long whip of silk. “But you’re missing a critical part of your argument.”
“I don’t know what you’re—”
“You’re bluffing,” Nennia said.
“I’m not!”
“You ran to Eisel, almost threw it all away for a chance to take control of your life. You died dozens of times on your quest to escape this dungeon. You’re not going to throw that all away out of spite.”
“You don’t know that! You—”
“Oh, please, Princess. As I just said, hold yourself in higher regard than that. You and I both know your dance with the dungeon is far from over.” Well. That didn’t work.
Lillia dove to the side as Nennia lashed out with the whip, which left a harsh scar across the stone of the first landing. During her dive, Lillia grabbed the door to the Hunting Lodge and threw it open.
[Tantrum!]
A Captain’s Sabre careened out of Lillia’s inventory and into the door at the back of the lodge just as the smell hit Lillia.
She didn’t wait to see the result.
Lillia sprinted down the stairs as Nennia followed, leaping down onto the first-floor landing. Just as she reared up, the trap was sprung, and an angry Chitterpede launched itself out of the Hunting Lodge and onto Nennia.
Who caught the poor thing out of mid-air, and then smashed it against the wall. Chunks of chitterpede goo and chitin slid down the stonework as Lillia touched down on the second landing.
Oh.
Dead outside of its room.
Goodbye, chitterpede.
Something tugged at the back of Lillia’s eyes, and her throat tightened. OVER A BUG? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? WHAT THE—
Lillia dove to the right, throwing herself into the Spellmite Challenge before she could face Nennia or her emotions.