Book 2 - Chapter 13 - The Queen of the Depths

Cathria tapped the back of her staff on the ground once as she stepped off the pedestal and greeted Lillia, before turning the glass weapon towards Nennia, who actually hesitated.
“Ah,” Cathria said with her usual cheer. “A Queen of the Depths. How charming. Haven’t had the pleasure in a while.”
Cathria let go of the rope wrapped around Lillia and straightened, rising high above the pair of them. “And who are you?” Nennia asked. “Not one of the faces I recognize from the first floors.”
“You might know me as the Spellmite Architect,” Cathria said. “But in a pinch and in this form, you may refer to me as Archmage.”
“The boss of the second level?” Nennia asked. “I’ve heard about you, nothing impressive.”
“Truly, I’m flattered,” Cathria said, as she spoke, she swung her staff in a wide arc around herself, and wind whipped up around her. Impossibly it caught on her robes, making them flow behind her like streams of liquid glass. “But, this young one here is in my charge,” she said. “And unless you wish to meet a very certain doom, I’d suggest you leave her alone, and return to whatever hole you crawled out of.”
Nennia didn’t move.
Cathria looked down to Lillia, adjusting her hat so it didn’t fall further down her face. “You are being chased, right, my dear? Just want to ensure I’m reading the station correctly.”
Lillia nodded while kicking the thick rope of silk Nennia snared her with off her leg. The silk faded as it touched the ground, vanishing into the smooth black tile.
“An Archmage?” Nennia asked.
“Quite a potent one, if I do say so myself,” Cathria said as she offered a hand to Lillia. “Not the kind of person you’d want on your bad side. Our Princess here would know, she’s seen some of it.”
“Hm,” Nennia kept her gaze on Lillia. Even though she hadn’t backed off, her stance changed. Her legs relaxed, and she allowed her fist to unclench.
Even if this was all a bluff, if Cathria wasn’t capable of stopping Nennia, the pause was opening the door to negotiations.
“Do you doubt it?” Cathria asked. “By all means, you’re welcome to try your luck. Of course, one of us is a far way from home.” She motioned to the myriad pillars around them, most of which contained some form of Cathria herself.
“I don’t doubt you are an archmage. I just doubt your potency,” Nennia said as she began to move, circling around the pair.
“Really? What makes you so confident?”
“Why would an archmage get trapped down here?” Nennia asked. “How would the dungeon hold someone like you?”
“Well, I am one of the greatest forces of man. Man has always been humbled in the face of nature,” Cathria said. “As with the divine, though you could argue that is just nature in a different cloth.”
“An archmage who was stolen by the dungeon,” Nennia mused.
“An archmage who accepted the offer of the dungeon,” Cathria corrected.
“Nonetheless, you haven’t had the skill to escape it.” She’d circled the full way around them at this point, coming back to the front, each of her eyes scanning Cathria for a weakness.
There was the soft crack of glass as Cathria’s temporary form gave way. Nennia caught it.
“I could say the same about you,” Cathria pointed out as she followed Nennia with her staff. “Tell me, how does a Queen of the Depths end up in a dungeon herself? Surely you weren’t captured by it.”
That question made Nennia paused her preadtory circling. “That is not a discussion for the Princess,” she said. “And this was not your fight either, Archmage.”
“And yet here I am.”
“And yet here you are,” Nennia said.
Another split ran down Cathria’s forearm as she held her staff out towards Nennia. Small shards of glass rained down toward Lillia, who still laid mostly on the ground below her.
“You know,” Cathria said. “You clearly have a way to escape your room. If you wish, I could set you free.”
All of Nennia’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
“I could end all of this for you here and now,” Cathria said. “Right now, in this moment, I could put an end to eternity.”
“You—”
“You don’t need to be part of the cycle. It can be over.”
Nennia’s shoulder sagged for a brief moment before she clenched her fists and bared her teeth. “You will not tempted me away from my daughters!” Nennia roared before lunging forward.
With a wave of her staff, Cathira sent Lillia sliding along the smooth black tile, further into the pillars. In the same motion, her left hand snapped off at the wrist, breaking off and powdering beside Lillia before she levelled the staff at Nennia and the wind rushed in toward her.
“Be a dear Lillia!”
Near flailing on the ground, Lillia careened past the smooth black pillars of the room. What did that even mean? What was she supposed to—
One of the pillars cracked as she zoomed by. Lillia called Vianaffir to her hand and stabbed it downward into the tile. Sparks flew in every direction as she tried to slow herself using the blade.
Across the room, back toward the clash of titans there was a ear rupturing pop as the air exploded outward. Nennia screamed. Glass shattered.
Lillia literally ground the edge of Viannafir to a stop. It was strange to consider, but thank goodness Havoc was dead, he’d never have forgiven her using the blade he’d repaired as a rudder.
Stopped and back on her feet, Lillia ran back toward the pillar that had been breaking on her approach. Across the room, Nennia growled in frustration.
When she found and touched the pillar, the Cathria with a staff in her chest stepped out, fresh—blood coloured glass flowing out of her chest. Lillia glanced down at it, as Cathria tore the staff out of her core, sending chunks out her flying in every direction.
“Oh I—”
“Don’t worry princess, can’t hurt me too much, I’m made of glass!” she said as she waved her staff-which was still carrying a chunk of her torso—through the air. As she brought it down, a crackling rift opened. “A new body sooner than later though! Thanks!” She allowed herself to fall backwards into the rift, vanishing into the ether before her champagne toast of a laugh appeared back toward the front of the room.
“Shoot shoot,” Lillia said as she turned around, trying to remember where any of the other Cathria’s had been. The first time she’d been in this room, she had had the Archmage herself walk her through it, and every time since she’d simply been able to summon Catty to lead the way.
Not only was Catty unavailable, she’d probably need to have a heart to heart with Catty before she ever tried to ask for her help again.
No, she needed to trust her instincts, instincts which had allowed her entire court to go against her. Instincts that Thorne had called ‘actually shockingly bad.’
Then she looked behind her and realized that one of the pillars—which had been earlier in her previous journey—was already cracked, saving her from learning a lesson about her instincts or anything like that.
Lillia ran over to the pillar, but it hadn’t quite split down the middle yet. She pushed on it. Tapped it with Vianaffir. Kicked it and then regretted kicking it.
Across the room, a pillar of fire erupted, swelling up to the ceiling and pluming outward across the glossy black tiles. As the flames receded, the tiles glowed red hot and sagged downward.
Then the sound of shattering glass, simultaneously in front of Lillia and back at the fight with Nennia.
The Cathria who had been petting the spellmite in her statue shook her head as she stepped off the pedestal, which corrected her hat, which had been lopsided in the original scene.
“You know,” she began. “This whole ‘one spell per body’ thing is rather tiresome,” she said. “And that Queen can take more hits than I expected.”
Lillia’s eye widened. “Are you going to be okay?”
“Oh by every heavenly equation, yes,” Cathria said. “I cannot die here. So I cannot lose,” she said before resting her staff on her cheek. “The main issue here is that I might not be able to ‘win’ in the brief window of spell-casting opportunity each body provides me.”
It took Lillia a moment to catch up with the roundabout nature of the sentence. “You don’t think you have enough glass bodies to win?”
“At least not through knock-out,” Cathria said. There was a crash of glass on the other side of the room as Nennia shattered a pillar in front of her, sending glass dust scattering across the room. “Looks like that’s my cue before she breaks too much of the furniture!”
This Cathria opened a portal and stepped through it. With any luck she would last longer than the previous considering she had a complete torso.
“Oh shoot,” Lillia said as she turned around, searching for the next pillar. But what would happen if she found it. She would send another Cathria into the meat—well glass—grinder only to be no closer to actually stopping Nennia’s rampage.
There had to be something else she could do.
Funny enough, while Cathria was the one who could likely overcome anything through raw power, she was also the most likely to be able to solve a puzzle like this. Lillia was a poor substitute on either side of the equation.
Of course, Lillia held all the cards. Meaning that she held all the items and she was the one Nennia wanted.
She pulled out the inert amulet of the creator. Cathria had said she could watch Lillia through, it so she spoke into the glass center like she was whispering through a keyhole.
“Cathria, I’m coming. I have an idea. Don’t cast a spell and break yourself. Just don’t get broken.”
There was no sound—of course there wasn’t, Amulets couldn’t talk, but the metal grew warm in Lillia’s palm for a moment. That would have to be enough.
Lillia reached into her inventory as she broke into a run toward the other side of the room and grabbed the small vial from it.
This was going to work, wasn’t it?
What was the alternative, that she was wrapped up in a web and tortured after Cathria ran out of glass bodies to throw at the spider. That didn’t sound like it led to a way out of the dungeon.
Lillia doused Vianaffir in the potion at a sprint. She only had one shot at this. The man who’d dropped that potion was never coming back.
Lillia broke out from in between the pillars to the open space at the front of the room, where black blood was streaked across the floor as Nennia lunged after a teleporting Cathria. Behind her, molten tile bubbled, and gigantic scars ran along the walls where blades of wind had slashed into them.
Though all of it, the Spider Queen was still standing and fighting.
Cathria caught Lillia’s eye as she began to run towards the fight and dropped her constant dancing around the spider, instead lowering her eclipse-like staff towards Nennia’s, who reared up to avoid it being pointed directly at her face.
“Good luck!” she called out, before the staff shattered outward into a thousand pieces, each of which broke into further flashes of brilliant light that bounced and erupted off of each other in an cascading and dazzling display.
Nennia raised her arms to shield her eyes, and didn’t have time to react to Lillia sweeping in from behind.
“You’re supposed to be a Queen!” Lillia cried and she ran. “Negotiate with me like a proper royal.”
[Lillia used Indignance - Level 3 - Effective Against Nennia]
Just as Nennia stumbled forward, Lillia swung, catching one of the dripping wounds Cathria’s wind had left on the Spider Queen’s side. Even with the pre-cut armor, Vianaffir didn’t dig deep, but it didn’t have to.
[Nennia is effected by Eisel’s Potion of Weakmind!]
Lillia took her right hand and raised it to the sky. “Nennia! I name you knight! With all the duties and honours that come with that title.”
Nennia sagged as the potion took effect.
“And it is your duty to protect your Princess!”