[You Rest in the Cathedral Hearth]
[You Rest Safely and Completely]
[It is now day [2] of your quest.]
[You have conquered [0] elite enemies.]
[You have vanquished [1] bosses.]
[The way is shut.]
[You have leveled up! Indignance Increased!]
Lillia had spent two days surviving the dungeon, and the first thing she wanted was for Havoc to be impressed.
She swung open the trapdoor at the back of Havoc’s archive room, and it flew out of her grip and slammed into the wall with a resounding bang that rattled her teeth. The princess winced at the sound. Loud noises had never been welcome around the castle. They made servants flinch, guards reach for weapons, and her aunt’s eyes narrow.
The yawning darkness past the first five steps to Havoc’s basement was still there. Clearly, as long as Lillia wasn’t around, he didn’t bother lighting all the torches. Who wanted to live in darkness like that? That would have been lurking instead of living.
“Havoc!” she called down into the cellar. Her voice echoed off the empty walls and floor. “I’m back.”
There was no answer. Instead, she heard metal clatter to the floor near the bottom of the stairs. After too long, just when she was about to head down after the hobgoblin, a torch lit at the foot of the steps.
He looked the same as last time, as if Lillia had never skewered him.
“Havoc!”
He lifted the torch and squinted up at Lillia. Then his face did something strange. Not relief exactly. More like someone trying very hard to look unimpressed.
“Oh,” the hobgoblin said. “It is you.”
“Of course it’s me. Who else would it be?”
“Next adventurer,” Havoc said. “Someone who was, uh…”
His eyes drifted to the maul on the flagstone floor at his feet, then to the shadows he’d been hiding in.
“Someone a little less friendly.”
“Havoc…” Lillia began. She had heard enough half-truths and watched enough dancing around subjects to know when someone as socially graceless as Havoc was attempting both. Her irritation thinned to something smaller. “You thought I was going to be dead.”
His wide brow furrowed as he lowered the torch. “Better that you ain’t, I suppose.”
“You suppose?” Lillia asked as she swung her legs over the edge of the floor to hop onto the stairs. When Havoc didn’t move out of her way, she paused.
Havoc just shrugged, which was very rude. “Yeah. Better you than someone trying to bash my head in from the get.” He waved her backward as he climbed the first step up.
“You don’t seem that excited,” Lillia said.
“Girl. Last time I saw you was just a minute ago, and you were stabbing me.” Havoc reached the top of the stairs with an old man’s grunt. “Forgive me for not jumpin’ for joy.”
“It wasn’t just a few minutes ago.”
After attempting to crack his back once, Havoc stopped and surveyed Lillia. It was a thick, judgmental stare, the kind born from well-worn disappointment. He usually wore a frown, and it deepened as he looked her over. “How long’s it been?”
“A couple of days,” Lillia said. “It’s weird because I both slept and ‘rested’ so I don’t know what counts as what.”
“Just count the hours,” Havoc said.
“With what clock, Havoc?”
Havoc straightened—and thus was briefly as tall as Lillia was kneeling—then again arched his back and twisted. Nothing cracked, but he made some interesting mouth noises. “Young folk like you have no respect for time.”
“What?” Lillia asked.
Havoc trudged past Lillia over to one of the archive shelves; she stood up to follow.
“Anyway, Havoc, it’s great that you’re back. I have so much I want to show you and—”
“You talk a lot. Huh.”
Was that a question or an insult? Back home, it would have been both.
“I prefer to say that I’m friendly.”
“Real friendly,” Havoc said. As he walked, his gait slowed. He sighed as he turned, shoulders sagging the whole way. “You alright, kid?”
“Of cou—” Lillia started; she caught herself in the middle of the rehearsed lie. “I think I’ve been doing well,” she said, “better than I thought I could.”
“Ain’t that the truth.”
“When you say it, it’s rude.”
“Glad you’re okay, kid,” Havoc said. He reached out to pat Lillia’s shoulder but came up short, pulling away before she could bend down to accommodate. Once he was done, he turned back to the shelves.
Lillia let the hobgoblin do…whatever he was doing for a moment. She didn’t see the point in him moving scrolls around. Who was he keeping them for, other than her? After what she called a while and Havoc called too short, Lillia jumped back in.
“So, it’s just been a few minutes for you?” she asked.
“Mhm.”
“But how does that work?”
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
“I was dead,” Havoc said. “Don’t know much about it.”
“Why?”
Havoc had a scroll in each hand when he stopped his work to turn to Lillia and stare.
“Because you were dead. Suppose that makes sense,” Lillia said. The princess gave Havoc room to politely respond. Once that window passed, she waited even longer, rocking back and forth, her heels clicking on the floor each time.
Lillia continued the conversation where he wouldn’t. “So when did you wake up?”
“Heard you open the door,” Havoc said.
“Just then?” Lillia asked.
“Yeah, that’s how it goes,” Havoc said. “I wake up when someone comes into the room.”
He looked over his shoulder, back toward the door.
“Every other time, they stab me as soon as they can. Then I wake up when the door opens again.”
“No. That’s…”
“Yep,” Havoc said, “Every once in a while, I’d get one of them first, and then I’d get a bit of time with the scrolls in here, but yeah. Door opened and stabbed, usually how it went.”
“They didn’t even try to talk?”
“Why would they? I’m a hobgoblin. They’re in a dungeon. That’s how it’s supposed to go.” Havoc nodded at the shelf he’d been rearranging before moving onto the next. Lillia couldn’t tell the difference. “You’re the weird one in this situation, kid.”
Lillia crossed her arms. “That’s rude of them.”
Havoc snorted, shook his head, then turned back to the scrolls.
“What are you even doing with those?” Lillia asked. “Can you read them? Because if you can, that would save me a lot of guessing and probably several injuries.”
“You can read your own scrolls, kid.”
“But I’m only level three.”
“Level three?” Havoc asked.
“Yeah.”
“Thought you’d be level one. You know, considering how it went the first time.”
“Well, I was back then, but—”
“Didn’t you just go back to the hearth?”
“I just found that,” Lillia pointed out. “Wish I knew about it earlier.”
Havoc’s brow had furrowed earlier in the conversation, but those same wrinkles transitioned from trenches to canyons. “You didn’t have a hearth?”
“No.”
“And you went exploring?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t know how else to move the time and—”
“Stupid child!” Havoc snapped. His shoulders tensed, and the hobgoblin slammed his fist against the shelf. Wood rattled, the bang echoed, then faded. As the quiet settled in, Havoc closed his eyes. His nostrils flared with each settling breath.
Lillia went still. Not offended-still. Not princess-still. Actually, still.
One final inhale, longer than the others. Havoc looked at Lillia. “You could have gotten yourself killed.”
The first response in Lillia’s head was the obvious: ‘but I didn’t’. At the same time, she’d seen that exact anger from her parents before. She wasn’t quite old enough to understand it, but she could empathize with him. Being alive didn’t prove Lillia right.
“I just didn’t know better.”
Havoc lowered his gaze and coughed, then stalked across the room. There weren’t many places for him to go, but walking away was a tactic to burn off steam.
Rather than make Havoc sit in the feeling, Lillia returned to the shelves. Most of the scrolls were still useless to her; their levels too high to matter. She kept the only one that seemed even remotely appropriate.
The candles in the room were strange. Even without oils, they normally had a scent — burning fat and wax left a smell that could stick to a tongue. The archive just smelled like old paper, and that was about it.
Did the candles in here burn? Or were they simply pretending to until Lillia sawed them off the bookshelves?
Her first victims were back. The room had reset just as the Hunting Lodge had, only less obviously without the aftermath of Lillia’s rug-napping.
“Havoc,” Lillia said. She didn’t know where specifically the hobgoblin was in the room.
He spoke up. “Yeah?”
Back corner, near the trapdoor.
“How much do you know about the dungeon?” she asked.
“Some,” he said.
“So more than me.”
“Most things are stronger than a lamb.”
Lillia took the turn of phrase to mean yes. She made her way to the end of the row in the archive and saw Havoc leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and his chin tucked firmly into his chest.
“How do the rooms reset?” she asked.
“Don’t know.”
“But you live here.”
Havoc looked at her.
“Lillia. The room resets when I’m dead. Don’t get much time to watch it at work.”
Lillia frowned at that. “But what do you know about the dungeon?” she asked.
“Know about some of the stuff around. Been in one or two of the rooms after the few times I got to kill the bastards who…Well—”
Lillia waved the comment off. “Tried to kill you. Right?”
“Yeah, that.” Havoc scratched his chin, his claw grinding against stubble. “Point is, know some of the other rooms. Just not much about how it or the…whole adventuring thing works.”
“Why not the adventuring?”
“I’m not an adventurer,” Havoc pointed out. “Can’t see the same stuff you do.”
“The text?”
“Yeah, whatever it is all of you point at and giggle with each other about when you’re opening the scrolls.” Havoc shrugged. “I know some of it from overhearing people before you. Like the levels, but that’s it.”
“And the Hearth.”
“Well, that’s the Hearth. Everyone knows about the Hearths.”
“Including burning the knight to make it work?”
“Well, yeah, that’s just…” Havoc pushed off the wall like he was about to share a strong opinion, but he ended up just growling in frustration instead. Another deep breath. “Yeah. You didn’t know about that. Little baby bird and all.”
“Aww, cute!”
“Helpless. Weak.”
“Hey, come on. I killed the Architect thing.”
Havoc froze.
Lillia reached into her inventory and pulled out the Architect’s Spellmaul.
The weapon hit the floor with a wet, metallic thud. Its oblong head bled dark ichor onto the flagstones. The liquid pooled, then vanished, still endlessly dripping from the spikes.
“See?”
Lillia learned two things at once. The first was that hobgoblins had a separate language. The second was a colourful assortment of hobgoblin swear words. Lillia wasn’t sure which one she should ask for a translation of; probably none.
“Do you want to hold it?” Lillia asked. She almost went to flip the maul to offer Havoc the handle as if it were a spoon, but caught herself before she put several holes in her palm.
“You keep that thing away from me, thanks,” Havoc said. “How’d you kill that thing?”
“I stabbed it a lot, but I think my dresses did most of the work, honestly…”
The victory curdled in her mouth as soon as she said it.
She hadn’t been powerful enough to earn it. Not really.
“Dresses?”
“I can change really fast. I’m not going to do it now—”
“Please don’t.”
“But both of them have abilities and,” Lillia snapped her fingers, “you saw the other one! It was all green and shimmering.”
Havoc cocked his head.
Lillia put her arms out to show off the wide, flowing sleeves of her fire dress.
“It’s different?” Havoc asked.
“Of course! Didn’t you notice?”
“They both look dumb and frilly to me. This one’s covered in blood at least.”
“Dumb and frilly?!”
[Lillia used Indignance. Havoc was dazed.]
Lillia gasped as the hobgoblin stumbled backward into the door and went glassy-eyed for a moment. His daze shook off as quickly as it’d come on. Havoc opened and closed his mouth several times, testing his jaw and tongue, but didn’t seem to register that it was Lillia’s fault.
“Yeah, dumb and frilly kid. Like lots of human clothes.”
Lillia looked Havoc over. He had either completely missed what just happened, or he was choosing to ignore it. The princess cautiously continued the conversation. “They’re pretty.”
“Don’t know why you have different clothes for men and women. If both are gonna be warriors, then they should wear the same gear.”
“I’m not a warrior.”
Havoc nodded to the maul. “Looks like you’re on your way.”
Several arguments simmered on Lillia’s tongue. Winning a fight didn’t mean she had to become some brute who smelled like leather, iron, and personal growth. She was a princess through and through, no add-ons or modifiers. Every warrior princess she’d met had been all warrior and no princess.
In the end, the princess bit her tongue because she understood warrior was a term of endearment coming from the hobgoblin.
“While Lillia wrestled with whether she was now an unwashed barbarian, Havoc had been staring at the maul. “Do you know how to use that thing?”
Lillia snapped back into the moment. “Oh! No, I was hoping you could look at it, or—make it better? I don’t know.”
“Make it better?” Havoc asked.
“You’re a blacksmith, aren’t you?”
Havoc stopped.
“I saw the tools in the cellar,” Lillia said, softer now. “They were yours, right?” She pointed past Havoc with the maul. “If you come upstairs, I have a fire there—or a Hearth, I guess. You could do some work.”
The hobgoblin bit his lip. “Aye,” he said. “I was. Don’t think anyone’s thought of me as…” He looked away. “I ain’t been one for a long time.”
“You probably still know how to do it,” Lillia said, “and this baby bird could use the help.”
Everything about Havoc softened. Then he forced it back into place. “Fine. Let’s see if we can’t keep you alive for a day or two.”