Between the portals and death, it had been a while since Lillia had been able to walk out of a room through the door she had entered. Even with the Hunting Grounds, Thorne had shown her a back way that exited through the Hunting Lodge closet—which made no spatial sense but what did?—but rather than being a welcome change, walking out into the third floor landing came with the painful realization that, without the Hearth of Memory, Lillia was painfully stuck without a bath while covered in more spiderwebs than she wanted on her body for the rest of her life.
Changing dresses hadn’t helped. Sure, there was some stuck between the scales of the battlegown that had vanished when she changed over to the tulle dress, but that hadn’t pulled the strands out of her hair or the wads stuck under her fingernails. Those would go away with a rest at the Hearth, but Lillia would still be wondering if they were there until she had a proper bath.
After the rest, it would be the same feeling of wondering if she had walked into a spiderweb, but being unable to find the thread that she’d felt touch her face. The difference was that Lillia knew she’d walked through a thousand spider webs, and there was somehow still nothing to find.
Still, she wasn’t screaming. She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t begging someone to check her for webs. The last week had changed a lot about Lillia.
She still hated everything about the past three hours of her life for obvious reasons. It was just that she had become more silent about her suffering than she had been when she’d fallen down here. That didn’t mean she wasn’t suffering.
Lillia swapped dresses again, from the tulle to the Ambusher slip, in a vain attempt to peel some more of the webs off herself. It failed for all the same reasons as the first attempt, but at least it hadn’t come alongside the same hope.
Havoc was upstairs with a possibly repaired Vianaffir. Thorne would be missing from the hunting lodge until tomorrow, and Lillia couldn’t summon Cathria until then either. But tomorrow was coming.
If Lillia couldn’t progress without progressing Eisel, then tomorrow she would either free herself of him, or be forced to take a place at his side.
Even after talking to the giant spider woman today, tomorrow was somehow intimidating.
Lillia took the steps slowly, following the path back up to the cathedral. Most times, it felt mysteriously shorter than the way down had been, but today?
Today it felt like the walk up would never end, like the Cathedral, the closest place to a home she had, was always going to be just out of reach.
Her legs ached from climbing around Nennia’s lair, but Lillia continued to take the stairs one step at a time. It was more painstaking than it should have been, and she didn’t want to do it, but that just made it feel like a recreation of her entire experience down in the dungeon. A series of ickier, grosser, and more painful bridges that she had to cross day after day.
Or at least time after time. Lillia didn’t know how long she’d been in the dungeon. If it had been more than a week and a half, she should have been picking out her coronation dress instead of climbing the stairs of a dark dungeon while covered in spiderwebs.
Lillia reached the first landing and sat down where Sir Nobody had been for a break. It was easy to tell where he’d been lying, because of the gap in the thick layer of dust that covered the landing. The only difference from the first day she’d come in here was that now there were a thousand of her own footprints scattered across the flagstone.
Somehow, despite all her pacing and walking, Lillia had managed to miss some of the dust. Despite all the effort she’d put in, and all the change she’d effected, there was a physical reminder of how long the dungeon had been there before her.
A small voice in the back of her head reminded Lillia that it might be there after her as well.
Not if she had anything to say about it.
And she had something to say about it, didn’t she?
Lillia pulled an item from her inventory that had been with her since she’d come into the dungeon. She’d sold the dress, but she still had her—
[Princess Slippers (Ruined)]
They were thin pieces of leather and cotton that had been dyed pink, with soles that had torn apart against the stone of the dungeon. Some of Lillia’s blood was on the heel where they’d bitten into her before getting replaced with the Thundersteps.
That blood was so much a part of them that resting hadn’t washed it away.
They were light. They were flimsy and fragile.
They were pretty once.
They were all the things Lillia had wanted her life to be before coming in here. Light, frilly, pink and comfortable enough to get through the day.
She crushed the shoe in her hand. Unlike everything else she carried, it didn’t crumble to dust. The split in the sole widened, revealing a hole in the centre that allowed her to see her skin through it.
It had always been paper-thin. Hadn’t it? When was the last time Lillia had been something other than the pretty painting of a princess up on the surface? Back in the castle, was she always just something to stand there and colour the light around her aunt?
Stained glass that everyone could see through.
Lillia relaxed and let the shoe sit in her palm for a while. Twice she had to shake herself out after feeling a spiderweb against her cheek, but no matter how many she pulled out of her hair, there always seemed to be more.
Tomorrow she would be clean again. Tomorrow there would be Eisel.
At least with him, she was going to fight to stop herself from becoming a decorative piece of furniture someone kept in a dark corner of the castle so they could claim their rule was legitimate.
Five years ago, she should have kicked and screamed more than she did.
Now she wouldn’t just kick and scream. She had a sword, and she almost knew how to use it.
Lillia stood. She dusted herself off and continued her climb up the stairs. One last rest at the Hearth stood between her and coronation day. The only question was whether it would be hers or Eisel’s.
They’d find out.
[You Rest at the Cathedral Hearth]
[You Rest Safely and Completely]
[2 Companions Are No Longer Adventurers!]
[It is now day [9] of your quest.]
[…………. Good luck.]
Lillia awoke with a start on the Cathedral floor. She had originally sprawled herself across two chairs, but where she fell asleep didn’t seem to affect where she woke up while resting.
The dim chandelier from their conquest of the Hearth of Memory swung above in the non-existent breeze of the Dungeon. The table on the other side of the fire was in disarray, covered in bits of tulle cloth Lillia had given to Havoc and chunks of stone that he’d peeled from the walls around the room.
Havoc was in one chair, asleep with his head resting on the table. He clutched his empty locket in his palm with the chain wrapped between his fingers. Just out of his reach on the table was Vianaffir. It was impossible to tell that Havoc had ever needed to work on the blade.
Lillia knew from her lessons that you couldn’t fix a snapped sword. One of her mentors in history enjoyed the fact as a turn of phrase. “A broken weapon did not merely require repair; it needed to be reforged.”
She also knew from her lessons that items in dungeons were not merely swords, and legendary items were not merely items. They wanted to be restored. They wanted to be remade. Vianaffir wanted a wielder.
Lillia grabbed the blade from the table. It was so much lighter than she remembered, like two halves combined into a whole that hadn’t inherited their heft.
As she turned the sword over in her hands, and hearthlight danced off it.
“Introspect.”
[Vianaffir, Blade of Freedom.]
[You are not at a high enough level to use this weapon. Level Required: 15]
[Once and Forever Free - Upon hitting a hostile target, removes any area-control effects from the user.]
[The Pure Soul - Once per User allows the use of Windrider’s Strike: This ability changes after that use.]
Havoc stirred, and Lillia lowered the sword.
“Can you believe it?” he asked with sleep still hanging on his words. “I stay up for hours finishing my work on that thing, and I’m still not allowed to use it. Item levels are bullshit.”
“We can’t use the abilities, but a sword is still a sword. It cuts.”
“Sounds like something I’d say.” Lillia could almost hear Havoc’s spine cracking as he groaned and pushed himself up from the table.
“Does that mean you agree?”
“It’s still a sword, but if you give it to Thorne, she can probably use it.”
Lillia nodded along, but didn’t agree. There was a plan somewhere in the back of her head. It was still forming. “I think I’ll keep it for now. Sir Nobody entrusted it to me; plus, Thorne has her bows and knives.”
“Sir Nobody’s long dead, kid, so—Bah,” Havoc waved off the topic as he stood. This time Lillia heard his knees crack. “I ain’t gonna argue with you on the emotional stuff. I know I ain’t gonna win.”
Lillia swung Vianaffir once. The blade sang through the air, not louder than Hooke, but higher. Cleaner. Like the sound belonged to something that had never been broken at all. Once the song had died, she put the blade away, allowing it to shatter into light within her palm.
“Havoc. Once again today. Will you be my knight?”
“Might be the last time.”
“Havoc!”
“Not talking about it isn’t gonna change that.”
“Don’t.”
“Fine. Yeah. Sure. Knight me.”
“In that case…”
“I name you Sir Thorne, the Huntsmaster of House Ashvalin.”
The flash, whiter than white, filled the room. Lillia didn’t look away. She knew it wasn’t going to sear her eyes to watch herself grant status to her ally.
Thorne rolled her shoulders. After the knighting was complete, but before she stopped glittering, her wings buzzed behind her.
“Damn, there we go. That’s more like it,” she said. This was the third time they had tried to knight her since coming to the third floor. Despite Havoc’s insistence that she count the minutes between casts, Lillia didn’t quite know the cooldown between uses of Emergency Knighting.
Thorne had brought a massive bag of weapons with her. Once she’d tested every joint post-knighting, she bent over and began reaching into the bag to shove a myriad of knives, arrows, and two separate bows into her inventory.
“Care to share?” Havoc asked.
“Hell no. You got yours. Kill more if you want more, Havoc.”
“I’ll stick to an axe and a shield then,” Havoc huffed.
“We have the extra Guard Captain’s Sabre,” Lillia offered.
“That would allow me to leverage all of my authority-based abilities. Good pick, kid.”
“See, if you’re gonna be a picky ass, you don’t get to complain when you’re not carrying much,” Thorne said as she pulled back from her now-empty bag. “Steel’s steel, it’ll cut.”
“How about I just don’t lose my weapon?” Havoc suggested.
Lillia frowned at the comment. She wasn’t quite sure if that was a general rebuttal or a shot at the fact that most of Lillia’s earned weaponry had, at one point, been lost to Eisel.
Two of them are still in there in with him.
Either way, while Thorne and Havoc bickered, Lillia walked forward to the great black door that locked Nennia’s domain. She placed a palm against it. She could feel something moving on the other side.
Havoc and Thorne went quiet as she took a breath.
Lillia pushed open the door. When it was barely cracked, a black lacquered leg slid into the gap. A moment later, it hooked the iron and wrenched the door open the rest of the way. The metal slammed against the wall and rang down the stairway up to the cathedral and the tunnels down to Nennia’s lair.
A black mass shifted behind the spider queen, then skittered away.
“Hello, princess,” Nennia said. “Are these the friends you talked about, or are they an offering?”
“Don’t act like you don’t know,” Thorne said.
Havoc kept quiet. He glanced over his shoulder, but didn’t move away as Nennia stepped forward. She loomed over everyone else on the landing.
“They’re the friends,” Lillia said.
“A crew to kill the usurper.” Nennia moved past Lillia, her eight legs carried her smoothly, like she was gliding along the floor to the clicks of eight heels. “I assume you’ve already granted them their special status?” Nennia asked.
“Yes. If you kill them now, they just come back. You don’t get to keep them.”
Nennia sighed. “Pity. The landing is such a perfect place for a gathering.”
“Lillia, not to complain about the company, but if we gotta wait to add her to the party, couldn’t you have kept her behind that door for a bit longer?” Thorne said. Her hand was on the back of her belt, where she kept two of her larger knives.
“Please, the princess won’t be demeaning me by calling me a knight,” Nennia said. “I am already a queen. Why would I accept a demotion?”
Havoc cleared his throat. “Makes sense to me.”
Nennia swooped back around, turning so her torso was close to Lillia. Her top was different from she’d worn when Lillia last saw her. Thicker ropes that had been woven into chain-mail had replaced the sheer silk.
“Have the commoners been informed of your clever plan? Or is that information for royal ears and tongues alone?”
“They’re about to be,” Lillia said.
If they were going to beat Eisel, it all needed to come together at once.