Book 2 - Chapter 5 | This Time We Mean It 3/3

Usually falling was the issue. Now there was a new one for Lillia to consider.
Namely that she wasn’t dead. It was a weird issue to have, but it was hers. One thing about respawning over and over was that it had made her rather cavalier about death as a concept.
Nennia was still silhouetted in the flames above. When Lillia looked up, she’d expected to see the Spider Queen chasing her, running down the wall on eight legs.
Instead, she was just standing there on the wall. Her arms crossed, the light of the fire showing through the thin gaps in her woven flesh.
Even with the searing light of the inferno behind her, Lillia could still see the burning red of Nennia’s eyes in the silhouette. Eight eyes narrowed to watch her.
Then, scuttling beside her.
Lillia peeled herself off the floor just in time for a thread of silk to shoot through the air toward her. Instinctively, she whipped Vianaffir into the path of the webbing to stop it from hitting her.
Nicole yanked on the rope that now connected them. Lillia managed to hold her grip on the sword but not her footing as she was torn off her feet, instantly losing the game of tug-of-war she’d never agreed to.
She hit the ground hard again, not hard enough to count as damage but hard enough that she felt the uneven stone of the floor pressing into her chest. Nicole continued to reel her in by the sword, and the scales of the chitin ground against the cavern floor.
Lillia dismissed Vianaffir, calling Hooke to her hand instead. The line suddenly snapped back to Nicole without the sword to force it into place. In the moment when the spider was reeling back, Lillia rolled forward—thanks to Havoc for that move—and brought the blade down in a slash.
There was a leg in the way before there was any meaningful contact.
While Nennia would have been laughing through the entire fight, Nicole pulled away from the blow as soon as it landed, failing to hold Lillia back as she yelped at the first sparks that flew from the steel on hardened chitin.
Nicole pulling away turned into an opening. Lillia pursued, finishing her original arc, only to build the momentum into another slash. This time, she aimed for the legs. Nicole was falling back. That could work.
In a duel, there was no way that she could keep up with all eight legs and Nicole’s strength, but that just meant she couldn’t let it become a duel.
Another clash. More sparks. The ringing steel and roaring fire overhead consumed Lillia. She could see that Nicole was saying something, but she couldn’t quite hear it.
That was all she needed, just a little more panic.
A third clash. A fourth. A fifth. There wasn’t much space left, and with each wheeling blow, Lillia grew faster, fiercer. Twice, Hooke sparked against the ground as she found aggressive angles to come in at.
They were two princesses. They’d both been in this dungeon. Only one of them was trapped and forced to fight.
Nicole hit the cavern wall and stumbled forward. Her eyes went wide as Lillia swung Hooke high toward her throat.
Just as the blade was about to hit flesh, it vanished as Lillia dismissed it and cracked Guard Captain’s Plate underfoot. The shimmering battle gown snapped inward, folding over itself into layered, stylish plate.
[Court Commander’s Uniform - 3 x Guard Captain’s Plate]
Lillia spun around Nicole and pulled her in tight by the shoulder. As she did, Vianaffir manifested in her hand, appearing just short of Nicole’s neck.
“Kneel.”
The spider princess complied, falling down onto all eight knees as Nennia watched from above.
“I didn’t want this to happen,” Lillia said, half to her captive and half to the looming Spider Queen overhead. “I just wanted to get through.”
Nennia shifted her weight. Lillia pulled Nicole tight against Vianaffir’s edge. She had to hope that Nennia was too far away to see that her hands were shaking as she did it.
“Concede,” Lillia said in a whisper she also hoped fell beneath Nennia’s notice. “Surrender and it counts as me beating you.”
Nicole tried to look back over her shoulder at Lillia, but she couldn’t let her move that much. “But my Mom.”
“She doesn’t want me to kill you.”
“She wants me to eat you.”
“Well, that obviously isn’t happening,” Lillia said.
Above, Nennia still hadn’t moved. She waited near the flames, a quiet arbiter save for the fact that she’d stolen the first Tantrum.
“Do you think she’s just waiting for me to do it?” Lillia said.
It took a moment. A moment in which both of them were able to stare at the smoldering pile of silk that remained of Spinna, but Nicole eventually nodded.
“I don’t want to, Nicole. Concede now.”
Even though she hadn’t changed her volume, Lillia’s last words were louder than the rest. The command rang in both girls’ ears, pressing in on any resistance it could still find within Nicole.
She was already kneeling. There wasn’t much left, but words alone weren’t quite enough.
She hadn’t wanted to waste this.
“Surrender and declare me the winner, Nicole.”
[Lillia Activated — Royal Decree.]
[Highly Effective Against Spider Child Nicole due to Status: Restrained]
“I—” Nicole tried to struggle for a moment, which was better than most managed in the face of overwhelming authority. Then she shuddered and bowed her head.
“You beat me. I give up. I’ll let you go.”
[Nicole Conquered - YAY!]
As the text announced Lillia’s victory, she pulled the sword away from Nicole’s throat and let the girl fall forward.
Two down. One to go.
Lillia hated the confidence that came with that. She’d accepted that she was going to die to Nennia the second that the Spider Queen hadn’t accepted her request for passage. She’d been ready to die over and over in her attempts to come up with a plan.
She’d been okay with that.
Now, all of a sudden, victory didn’t seem that far away. Of course, it was, though. Beating both of the children was hardly two-thirds of the way to—
[Objective Complete! Vanquish the Regents of the Spider Caverns.]
[Completed by defeating ½ of the crowned monsters.]
Lillia and Nennia said it at the same time.
“What?”
What did that mean? Objective complete? That was the same thing that the dungeon had said when she and Havoc had captured the castle in the siege, but there, the end of the fighting had been obvious. By the time it told her the objective was complete, there was nobody left to fight.
Objective complete, but Nennia was still a hundred feet above her…and Nennia was certainly someone that Lillia had to fight.
Right?
[Objective Complete!]
Nennia didn’t climb down the walls of the cavern. She dropped off the side, landing in front of Lillia almost too fast and with impossible grace, placing herself between Nicole, who’d just started to cry, and the smoldering remains of Spinna.
That fall should have bothered her more than it did. She made it look casual, barely taking a breath to orient herself before rearing up to her full height.
“Did I win?”
Nennia didn’t take a step forward. She didn’t need to in order to be intimidating.
“Hardly, little princess. I’m still here. And nobody humiliates my daughters without—”
Lillia was nowhere. Absolutely nowhere. She had no mouth. She still managed to scream. After all, she was a professional.
The nothing didn’t last long. Barely two skips in the void, and suddenly Lillia was falling again. A short, familiar fall.
There was no floor.
“Wait, how can I recognize a fall?”
She hit the stone, and the last word broke against her teeth.
The door creaked as it slammed shut. The bolt clicked into place.
Lillia knew this stone. She felt the single ajar tile that she’d fallen onto and understood where she was.
Back at the entrance. Back at the same fall she’d tumbled down when Otto and Sven had thrown her through the dungeon door.
Maybe there should have been more questions. Maybe she should have wondered how she was back here. Maybe she should have wondered where ‘here’ was. Maybe a lot of things.
But honestly, around the point where Lillia had opened a door to find a castle, she’d stopped questioning what was possible in this place. The Dungeon was the Dungeon, and if it confused Cathria, she was going to have to go with the flow.
Lillia peeled herself off the floor faster than she had the first time, and this time around, she simply tore a piece of burnmite cloth between her fingers to summon the Inferno Spelldress and provide glowing ambient light.
It was the same fall. She was a very different girl.
Instead of needing to feel her way around the space, Lillia walked up to the door on the far side of the room. As she approached, glowing white text appeared on the door itself.
[The Five Point Fall - Floor Four]
[To return to the upper floors, use a Hearth Portal to connect to the Hearth of Memory.]
[Once you enter this floor, enemies on the upper floors will no longer provide experience.]
There was a pause, and then the text faded away. She was going to have to open the door herself.
She would leave that last part out for Havoc. If Havoc understood, he would have suggested she stay on the upper floors longer to try and get more experience droplets.
Assuming she was going to get to use those now.
Assuming there was a way back to Havoc from here. There had to be a way back to the Hearth of Memory close to the entrance. Right?
Assuming a lot of things in the end was the point.
Even if she was assuming a lot of things, Lillia had been in this room before, and she understood that there was only one way to go. Forward.