“You sure you killed that fuckin’ thing?” Havoc asked.
The Spellmite Architect screamed. The sound echoed more in their heads than against the walls. Lillia winced at the noise. Havoc seemed to just push through it.
“Which stairs do we take?” Lillia asked.
Havoc had already started to run as she asked. “Different stairs, kid! Don’t let it see both of us at once!”
The gigantic eye that had split open across the Spellmite Architect’s head focused on Lillia. The iris changed from inky black to a bleeding red.
“Just don’t get hit.”
The Architect screamed again and slammed its four arms down to the glass platform. Dust rained down as Havoc went under the thing to get to stairs on the other side.
“Just don’t get hit.”
It spun the staff with surprising grace and leveled it at Lillia. She needed to run. Her legs felt like they were made of lead.
“Just don’t get hit.”
Okay, if she couldn’t run at least she had options. The chitterpede battlegown could save her in a pinch, but she could swap to the fire skirt or lightning minidress if the spell gave her the right element—
The temperature in the room plummeted as icy blue coalesced at the end of the staff around the glowing eclipse.
Right. Cathria was an archmage. She wouldn’t be limited to two elements.
The room flashed an impossible color for a moment as the spell fired. The world’s breath hitched and time itself seemed to freeze from the cold for a moment. Gigantic spikes of ice erupted on the ground in front of the Architect, shattering as the beam of cold shot through the air.
Lillia ran. The spell curved. There was a pillar that wasn’t too far from her.
She felt crystals of ice forming in her tear-ducts as the beam approached and the cold became absolute.
Was the pillar even going to be enough?
It was bearing down on her.
There wasn’t enough time. Not with the spell tracking her.
Lillia closed her eyes to drop down to the first level of the battlegown.
“Hey ugly!”
Havoc?
The words were stupid. The fact that they worked was worse.
Lillia couldn’t see Havoc from where she was sprinting, but she saw the spell veer away from her as she slid behind the pillar.
There was a massive ringing clang high on the platform. The room boiled and flashed red for a moment. Another clang rang out, like a hammer striking the world itself.
Snow, slush and brine crashed into the pillar as Lillia dove behind it. The mass of cold and fury split, rushing to either side. The pillar cracked and shook but didn’t break.
The Architect screamed.
Havoc.
Lillia pulled out from behind the pillar as the ice faded to nothing around her. Blood was pounding in her head. She could feel her heartbeat in her fingertips. Her teeth were grinding against one another.
There was no time for a deep breath.
Lillia began charging up the stairs as the Architect wheeled around, pointing its staff down at Havoc. In one of its other hands, the Architect held a massive boiling anvil, which it tossed to the side as if it weighed nothing. Anvil careened through the air and slammed into the black glass floor, embedding itself several feet into the tile.
As she reached the top of the stairs, Lillia couldn’t see Havoc, but she saw the Architect charging magic at the end of its staff. She drew Hooke back in preparation for a strike. There was something natural about the motion now, something powerful. A smooth and deadly twitch in Lillia’s muscles that she’d never felt before.
The Spellmite Architect turned its attention to her, its one eye coiling around its head to see the princess.
Lillia swung.
Steel bit into the heel of the Architect as it tried to kick at Lillia. Instead of flying along with the motion like she had last time, Lillia pulled, reaving the blade through inky flesh and keeping it true to its name. Metal tore through inky skin and black blood poured across the platform and over Lillia as the Architect finished missing her.
The clasp on Lillia’s throat burned. Apparently, almost being kicked in half counted.
The blade ripped free. Lillia tried to steer the momentum away from floor and into another slash, but couldn’t manage it. Steel sparked off glass tile. Spiderweb cracks spread across the floor.
An arm swung backward at Lillia.
Lillia heaved her blade in the way, trying to block it, but there was nothing to block. She dropped the battlegown down a level, losing the knives as the first-level chitin absorbed the impact of her own sword being slammed into her chest. Blunt impact dragged Lillia across the ground as she tried to hold her footing.
Her heels screamed against the glass. The sound went through her bones before the pain did. For one awful second, Lillia was not a princess, not a champion, not anything with a plan. She was just weight being dragged by something stronger than her.
The sword guard crushed into her sternum. Her breath vanished. Something hot and wet filled her mouth, and she bit down hard enough to taste iron.
At the end of the swing, the Architect pulled up, sending Lillia flying into the air.
For a second, Lillia felt like she was flying as she caught her breath. For a moment, at the apex, she was.
Then she was falling.
Lillia screamed.
How long was too long for the battlegown to absorb the blow? How long?
How long did Lillia have?
Wind rushed past her.
Lillia pulled out a feather. It blew away between her fingertips.
Another. Snapped. Her shoes swapped from Thundersteps to the Ambusher boots.
Lillia kicked when she was inches from the ground. Sudden flight broke her momentum, shooting her sideways across the floor. She hit the glass tile and slid, rolling over herself several times. The scales of her dress rattled her teeth against the floor.
She had to catch her breath.
“Lillia!”
She tried to pick herself off the ground. Failed the first time.
Her hair stood on end.
The air smelled like the seconds before rainfall.
She couldn’t get up. Lillia changed her dresses with the flash. Static filled the room.
The minidress crackled with energy as the bolt slammed into Lillia only to get sucked into the embroidery on the front of the dress. The fabric twitched and buzzed over Lillia’s skin as the princess leapt to her feet with seemingly infinite energy.
Lillia’s vision closed in on itself. For a moment she could only see the Architect as she felt her teeth rattle together. The room was vibrating.
No. It was her.
“Oh boy,” Lillia said. The words came out like static.
When Lillia took off, she took off like a bolt. Flashing from her place on the ground to the stairs at a speed that made her overshoot and almost turn directly into one of the pillars.
Lillia yelped.
Almost splattered against the glass.
Wheeled and shot up the stairs. Static followed her through the air.
She was at the Architect before she understood what she was doing. It had turned the eclipse staff back on Havoc. More magic. More fury. Fire this time.
Lillia leapt through the air, burning the last of the lightning in her veins. Thunder cracked as she took off. Everything slowed for a moment as Lillia realized she was going to fly off the center platform again.
Time to take something with her.
Lillia slashed at the eclipse at the top of the Architect’s staff as she careened through the air. Hooke caught in the ichor surrounding it, and then the sun within it. The staff screamed through Lillia’s hands, vibrating hard enough to numb her fingers. Hairline cracks raced down the black-and-gold orb, spilling threads of white fire between them.
Lillia pulled harder.
Light split the room in two.
Something broke in the center of the staff. Deeper, something within the fabric of the room shook itself loose.
The Architect screamed first. Lillia could hear Cathria’s voice within the cry.
Lillia screamed as the room grew boiling hot. It was all she could do to hold onto Hooke and keep pulling as the blade cut into magic itself.
Everything went black and white.
Then white and black.
White.
Shattered.
Lillia lost her grip on Hooke, but managed to summon it back to her inventory before it was gone into the air. She flew, again, this time with no understanding of what direction was anywhere.
Her mouth tasted like iron and soot.
Lillia landed before she should have. Cracked against warmth and stone. The side of a searing forge. Lillia crumpled.
The Spellmite—Cathria screamed. The staff rang as it crashed to the floor. Sizzling against the black glass as it did.
Lillia thought she heard Havoc through the chaos. Tried to find her footing. Grabbed a potion once she couldn’t.
Chitterpede chitin could only do so much.
The pain had already stopped, but she couldn’t find the strength to move, so she downed the potion either way.
Numbness flared back to pain as Lillia’s skin grew back in places she didn’t know she’d lost it. She screamed.
Something crackled in the air.
Lillia found her feet. Righted herself. She had been sprawled on a narrow ledge along the side of a massive forge-tower Havoc had summoned out of the floor, a good twenty feet above the center platform.
On the platform itself, the Architect was nursing a missing arm, seemingly blown off by the explosion of its staff. Black blood flowed from the wound like an open river, threatening to drown the glass tile.
Even as it nursed the wound it was raising one of its remaining fists up into the air. Havoc was under it, chopping the leg he could reach.
Lillia saw him look up. Check to either side, and try to take off. There wasn’t time. The Architect had recovered too quickly.
She used the forge for support. The words on Lillia’s tongue felt powerful. Hot. Authoritative.
“This is my court! And you will bow to me, Cathria!”
[Lillia used Run the Court - Highly Effective Against the Spellmite Architect!]
The Spellmite Architect twisted and writhed as it was forced downward toward the floor. It struggled with all the arms it had left, pushing against being dragged down, but it was no use. Havoc got away as the Architect prostrated itself to Lillia.
“Now follow my orders!” Lillia cried.
The world held its breath. For a second, everything slowed. Hitched. The eye of the architect locked on Lillia. Blood red and fearsome.
The princess raised her hand and, by the royal authority of her blood she clenched her fist and vanished.
Lillia appeared beside Havoc. The Spellmite Architect crashed down onto the forge-tower Lillia had been on.
It was her court. She told people where to go.
The forge-tower cracked under the weight of the Architect. The sound of breaking and grinding stone filled the room. It lashed out with arms in every direction, but couldn’t reach any of the surrounding platforms.
Stone gave way. The architect tumbled down to the ground with the rest of the pillar, smashing into the pile of rocks and fire the forge left behind.
The room shook. Lillia used Havoc for support.
“You okay, kid?”
Lillia felt pressure in her chest. Her heart was pounding. Moving Havoc during their tests had been so much easier.
“Alive.”
“Better than nothing,” Havoc said.
The Spellmite Architect was up, too fast. By the time the two had caught something close to their breath it was already back to finding its balance while missing one of its arms. Its eye, once again, locked on Lillia.
Cathria’s voice came through. Not through the air. Through the room. Through the glass under Lillia’s feet.
“Lillia! Come down here. I THOUGHT WE WERE FRIENDS!”