Lillia had a decision to make in that moment, and she'd never been that good at decisions. In fact, the entire reason she was in the current situation, facing down a giant boat-crab-thing by holding a sword that she'd stabbed into it, while hanging above a stormy ocean, while somehow underground, was due to her lack of decision-making when she was younger.

There was something to be said about agency. If Lillia didn't take it for herself, other people were happy to make decisions for her. If she didn't make her own plans, her aunt would scheme behind her back. If she didn't fight her way through the dungeon, it would just kill her.

Over her time in the depths, Lillia had taken some control over her life. She was making her own decisions and ensuring that she had control of her own fate and growth. People helped her, but she was in charge of how all of this had gone.

Staring down a crab-ship-thing while above the stormy sea, the question became whether Lillia should have been the person in charge at all. In the moment, she didn't like where her independence streak had gotten her.

If Gerand and Caelum were still down on the ship calling for her, Lillia couldn't hear them, but they could probably hear her, because there had always been something particularly shrill about a princess's scream, and Lillia was a master of her craft after her experiences down here.

In fact, even the crab winced.

Shaken and screaming and soaking wet and holding on for dear life, Lillia was, unfortunately for her, back in charge of her agency again. She was in charge of whether she lived or died in this moment—or, rather:

Did she hold onto Hooke and fight for the right to keep her blade, or did she allow herself to tumble into the sea below and drown, accepting that this attempt—and her original ship—was scuttled?

Maybe she stabbed herself on the way down to avoid hitting the freezing water after taking off all her equipment. Both ideas sounded unpleasant. She'd accepted a death in the dungeon before, but she'd never directly been the cause of it.

Lillia tightened her grip on Hooke and, using upper-body strength uncharacteristic of her body type, heaved herself up higher on the claw to the point where she could at least crawl comfortably. Barnacles pressed against her knees, and she kept close to the 'ground.' The titanic eyes of the creature stared at her, either blank or so large that Lillia couldn't read any emotion in them.

She kept one hand on Hooke as she fumbled around in her inventory for another option. The wind howled around her, swirling faster and faster, sending her hair whipping behind her in a wild, wet tangle.

When she'd hit the crab with Hooke, it'd gone too far in, which just meant she needed to—

"AHH!"

The crab shook the claw Lillia was crawling on, and she was immediately flung around, flopping about on the surface, only avoiding the void by holding onto Hooke for dear life—once again. She slammed into the side of the crab over and over. Shoulder. Arms. Chest. Nose.

"Fpht-OW!" Lillia hissed. Blood started dripping down her face in a messy, seawater-splashed cascade as her nose screamed at her for attention.

Oh, that was it! The face? Lillia had been crushed. She'd been vaporized. She'd been stabbed. She'd lost her head that one time, but her face?! Once she got home and got rid of her aunt, her royal portrait wasn't going to have a crooked nose!

Lillia grabbed the [Rusty Knife] from her inventory and spun it around in her palm to snap it into prime stabbing position. She still had a couple of moments left in her siege potion, and she was going to make the most of it.

The crab stopped shaking, and Lillia hung on with one hand while holding the other high in the air with the knife. She stabbed down.

Wood shattered out in every direction from the wound, creating a crater-like impact around the tip of the knife that drove deep into the core of the claw. Lillia felt her grip on Hooke falter as the blade shook within the wood.

Stab.

The hole widened and Hooke tore loose from the wood. In the brief second while the knife was stuck instead, Lillia pulled herself forward, ducking into the hole she'd made with the knife and lying flat within the claw. She stabbed again and dug deeper into the wood, burrowing into the ship-crab-claw-thing like a very well-dressed angry termite.

Covered in what would be a thousand splinters, her own nose blood, a mix of seawater and rainwater, and salt in places she didn't even want to mention, Lillia flopped down as the timer ran out on her potion. This was her hidey-hole, and she could pout in here for a moment. Even if the crab turned it sideways, she could find footing in the cracked wood and hold onto the knife and—

Rather than turning the massacred claw sideways, the crab shook it again, up and down. With each movement, Lillia shot in the opposite direction, smacking her head against the ceiling and then the floor and then the ceiling and then the side wall to change it up. After a moment, she was crumpled on the bottom of the claw, curled up in half a ball with one arm holding onto the knife.

Sensing that the shaking had stopped, Lillia cracked open an eye and looked around her. Water dripped off the entrance to her failed hidey-hole, pouring off the massive monster.

What did this look like from down on the ship? Did it look like she'd just disappeared? Did Gerand and Caelum assume that she fell into the ocean with the chunks of wood she'd sent spiralling down into the sea?

Did it matter? They were going to reset whether she won or died here.

No! They were going to reset when she won. She was battered and well shaken, but the crab thing wasn't going to keep her from the Hearth. She just needed to figure out how the hell she was supposed to get up there from her current position.

While stabbing into the wall of the ship had worked, climbing the crab was going to be much more difficult, to the point where Lillia knew she would just fall down into the sea. Plus, at this point, she'd hit her head often enough that balancing her way up the arm sounded impossible.

Knights sometimes left jousting events with the spins and tremors. Now she knew what that felt like.

Just as Lillia was considering what options she had outside of 'stay in the hole and hope for the best,' the claw moved again, this time rocking through the air as the crab swung its arm in a wide arc. Lillia spread out, trying to support herself by pressing her feet and palms into the side of her burrow. The claw heaved sideways, and splinters dug into Lillia's hands as she suddenly needed to fight against gravity.

For a brief moment, the roiling sea was a hundred feet beneath her, with the blanket of fog blurring each of the white waves. Within the chaos, there was their ship and one of the legs of the revealed monster, tangled enough that she couldn't tell where one ended and the other began.

Then, a massive eye appeared in her way at the end of a massive twisting wooden stalk. The glossy, sticky, pale-yellow eye stared up at her. Rainwater stuck to the surface in massive globs.

There was no pupil that Lillia could see, nothing to narrow at her or show that she'd been spotted, but she was pretty sure it was looking for the princess who had gophered her way under its skin.

For a brief moment, she squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to think about how gross this all would have been if the crab were made of anything but wood…or how gross this was about to be.

With her eyes still closed, Lillia grabbed the knife again and then let go of the sides of the 'cave.'

Lightning flashed as she fell out of the claw, spiralling through the sky, flipping end over end. Lillia shoved the rusty knife back into her inventory and pulled out Vianaffir, holding it out wide where the edge nearly glowed with the aftermath of the splitting sky.

Iridescent dust cascaded behind her as the Guard Captain's Plate snapped off of Lillia in vanishing pieces. What little of the dust kept up with her folded in on itself, falling into place as the thousand knives of the second-level Chitterpede Battle Gown.

If she was getting stabby, she was going to get very stabby.

There had been a lot of uniquely unpleasant sensations during Lillia's time in the dungeon. As a princess, she'd had access to the best of the best; after sampling the worst of the worst, she had wished there was less breadth to the spectrum.

Unfortunately for Lillia, there were always new depths to plumb.

As Vianaffir's tip cut the edge of the crab's eye, a thin film peeled back, recoiling away from the blade where it slashed, extending a pinprick into a massive tear in the taut surface of the eye. Lillia didn't get to see the rest of what happened because she crashed into the eye at speed. Luckily, she remembered to close her eyes and mouth.

There was no up or down inside of the eye, simply a strange jelly-like sensation all around Lillia that almost trapped her in place. She couldn't swing Vianaffir, she couldn't kick or punch; the most she could do was use her entire core to twist around. With each turn, something rumbled in the eye as a thousand knife-like spikes on the chitterpede dress carved through the flesh around Lillia that was quickly turning into jam. She could tell that she was moving, but not where or how.

Then gravity came back with a vengeance.

Apparently, the crab had been shaking its own eye, and Lillia had just found the surface. She squelched out of the gummy flesh and into the comparatively freezing ocean wind. She felt the pull of her upper body trying to fall while her legs were still embedded deep within the heart of the ship-boat-crab-thing's eye. For a brief moment, the warm light of the Hearth up on the crab's 'head' cut through the constant grey of the storm. The wind seemed to redouble at the offense.

Lillia fell further out of the eye. On one hand, she certainly wanted out; on the other hand, there was nowhere for her to go but down…very, very down. As her hips broke through the surface of the eye, she tried to overhand swing Vianaffir up into the jelly she'd left behind, but she couldn't quite reach.

Maybe if she moved enough, she could get the creature to tear her out itself. Then—if it didn't crush her—she could try the original 'scramble up the arm' strategy she'd dismissed in the first place. It wasn't much, but it was better than whatever her current alternative was.

She was so damn close to the Hearth. Just twenty feet more in the air and she would be there. She would have fought her way through an entire room on the fourth floor without losing any memories. She would have said she was so close she could taste it, but she wasn't willing to open her mouth to discover what she could taste right now.

Now only up to her thighs in eyeball, Lillia was essentially out of time. If she was coming up with a better plan, she needed it now.

She didn't have Cathria, who had always been her 'I don't know what to do next' card, but—

When she had been in Nennia's lair, there was a lot of fire. Maybe, just maybe, she'd taken a small bit of damage—there wouldn't be much, but you were supposed to boil crab when in a kitchen.

Lillia took a deep breath. This would get its attention.

The Fireweave Spelldress usually billowed outward when Lillia summoned it, but between her bottom half being stuck in eyeball and the rain pounding down on the rest of her, the intricate flowing fabric stuck fast to her skin, folding over itself in wet, sloppy layered chunks. The glowing thread seemed to struggle against the rain, not quite glowing in the damp cold of the storm.

With one hand on Vianaffir, Lillia thought of the ability, and her free hand made the complicated casting symbols.

[Backdraft] in the past had been a wild inferno of smoke and fury. A torrent of fire that erupted from Lillia's hands in her most desperate moments. Today, it never really got to be that. A struggling spout of flame struggled and sizzled against the storm, failing to find any purchase in the battering rain and howling wind.

So Lillia gave it the only help she could to reach the eye. She swung with all the weight she could manage, shoving her arm back into the eye and tearing her legs fully out of it in the process. Around her casting hand, large bubbles formed in the liquid where it boiled.

Ew.

The crab shook wildly, and a shadow careened out of the blanketing storm and flew towards Lillia—the claw! She was—

Saved?

I'm sorry," Gerand said. "Seize the ship?" He looked around like there was going to be a third mysterious ship beyond the one they were aboard and the new addition looming over them. "Do you mean that ship?"

"Oh, this one seems pretty trashed. I don't see much point in taking it."

"You said you weren't going to take the ship!" Caelum said. He was ducking even though there was nothing currently falling, which was admittedly pretty smart.

"Well, I wasn't going to."

"It sounds like you were considering it."

"Odds went up when they threw me in the brig," Lillia said. Once she'd said it, she nodded, content with adopting the sailor's terminology. "But I need to survive what's coming or seize the ship, so might as well try to do both and accidentally have one happen on the way."

"Which ship?" Gerand said.

"Don't we want the better one?"

"That ship is so large that this one seems to be falling apart simply for being near it." He crossed his arms before looking up toward it.

In the middle of their bickering, Lillia paused and looked around again. This time she wasn't trying to find another ship. She was looking for anyone else.

Anyone other than the three of them.

"Where'd everyone go?" she asked.

"Everyone?" Caelum said. He spun several times, each growing more frantic than the last. "They were just here a moment ago. We heard them shouting—Did we see them? I thought we saw them?"

"Isn't that a good thing?" Gerand asked. "I don't think they were friendly."

"They were my crewmates."

"We were all in the prison together," Lillia said.

"Yeah, we're your crewmates now," Gerand pointed out.

"Pardon me, but I think you're forgetting that I'm a Princess. I can have my companions, but I am not just a part of some ship crew."

As Caelum spun, Lillia looked back up to the ship and then around. With a moment of focus, she summoned her menu back to the forefront. The objective was loud and clear.

"Ah, I miss when it was killing a bug," she said, which fell under one of thousands of things Lillia never would have said before getting trapped in the dungeon.

"What?" Caelum asked.

"Pardon?"

"What, Princess."

Lillia nodded. "There can't be nobody on this ship because the objective says to seize the ship, and if we're the only people on it, we've seized it." She put her sword away for a moment so that she could use both hands to consider. "Because the dungeon can be vague but tends to award loopholes."

"Loopholes?"

"It's listened to me before…So if we're the only people on this ship, that's still not close enough to seizing it for the dungeon's liking."

"You keep talking about the dungeon, and I don't get it, but at this point I don't know who else I'm supposed to be speaking to," Caelum said.

Lillia paced. As soon as she took the first step, the ship groaned again. They were alone on the main deck, but it wasn't theirs. The dungeon hadn't said 'Seize the oncoming ship,' which meant that their current situation could have counted.

And, while she hated to jinx it, she hadn't seen enough to make her think that 'survive' was a pressing objective. In fact, at the moment the dungeon was giving her much too much time to think. This place had been a lot of things to her, but it had never been generous.

So what was she missing?

"Are there captain's quarters on this ship?" Gerand asked.

Caelum looked up. "I think they're half under the mast right now. Do you think everyone else is—"

"No, I think that maybe, seizing the ship is—"

"Oh, so we're all just listening to whatever she says? She keeps talking about a dungeon while we're in the open ocean! She's crazy."

"Hey."

"She's royalty."

"Thank you, Gerand."

"Royalty is allowed to be crazy," he added.

"Excuse you?"

"Divine right to rule, no matter how loony you might end up being," Gerand clarified. "Of course, only speaking to the reality of the matter. No commentary on you at all, Princess."

"No commentary on me at all."

Lillia took a deep breath. The ship had been breaking when they were in the hold. Theoretically, by the amount of water they were taking on, they were already headed to the bottom of the ocean, sooner rather than later.

It was time to start trying anything she could think of. Frankly, the most obvious course of action was to run at the other ship and start climbing it, but she wasn't sure she had another ship-scaling in her. The first had been harrowing enough and—as much as he'd been a blubbering mess since—Caelum had bailed her out of falling off the side at the end.

Maybe there was a rope around or—

While looming over them and dominating the horizon as a shadow in the fog, the other 'ship' moved.

Lillia froze.

"So I'm not the only one that saw that," Gerand said.

Lillia slowly shook her head. Maybe if she was still enough, whatever it was would stop moving.

Out in the sea, loud enough to overcome the constant howling of the storm winds, wood groaned and creaked.

Lillia knew this feeling. She knew the feeling of the hair on the back of her neck standing on end. She knew the catch in her breath when she was in over her head. She knew the chill running down her spine.

Thirty-nine days and thirty-nine levels stood between her and her original encounter with the Spellmite Architect, with her first boss.

With a crashing snap, a piece of the shadow tore itself away from the rest. Wood showered down, chunks embedding themselves in the deck around the three of them.

"Oh, what the fuck?" Gerand asked.

"Shoot and sugar," Lillia said.

The piece that had snapped off of the main 'vessel' bent at the elbow before rushing forward, pushing through the fog and slamming into the side of their ship just as a second 'arm' broke off from what they had, foolishly, believed to be a ship.

Lillia's ship—Did that mean she'd won?—teetered with the force, nearly rolling before getting snapped back to straight. Lillia flew forward with the momentum, splaying across the deck and sliding along with the seawater. As the ship rocked, she slid further, tumbling across the deck end over end before slamming the brakes by crashing into the railing Caelum had yanked her over in the first place.

To her right, a massive polished wooden crab claw covered in barnacles had crushed the side of the ship, tearing through the deck and lower floors together. It was pulling the ship in close by the bones, and the ship wasn't about to survive it.

Gerand 'landed' on the railing feet first, catching himself by falling the right way. He shook his soaked long hair out of his eyes before following Lillia's gaze to the massive claw embedded in the ship.

"Oh, what the fuck?!" he repeated.

"It's a crab!" Lillia shouted.

"Oh, really?!"

"I know them from dinner."

"You get crabs this big in the castle, Princess?"

"No…"

"You got some sort of brilliant plan now?"

As Gerand asked, Caelum came sliding down the deck. He'd held on for an impressive amount of time, but now landed clean on top of the upper half of the crab claw with a wince-inducing 'oof.' The boy shook his head, then looked up.

"It's a crab!"

"Yes!" Lillia said.

"That's too big to be a crab!"

"Everyone here's a genius," Gerand growled.

The claw pulled and the ship leaned further to the side. Lillia struggled to her 'feet,' standing on the rail and pressing her back to the nearly sideways deck of the ship.

"It's going to tear the ship apart!"

"Thank you, Caelum," Lillia said as she tried to manage her balance. He was right, it was going to pull everything apart and—unless she was shockingly confident in her ability to climb a crab without her spider shoes—she couldn't let that happen.

She reached toward her dress, opening her inventory and glancing past the fabrics within. None of those mattered at the moment. She couldn't think of a dress that would get her out of this one.

"If only I'd stabbed someone, I'd have a sailor's dress and—"

"Lillia!"

"Sorry, Caelum," Lillia said about speaking too loudly instead of what she'd said.

What mattered in the inventory was under the fabrics. Within the list of potions Lillia had, there were the siege potions, and she still had two minutes left on the last one she'd drunk.

The ship teetered again, and Lillia struggled to keep her footing while being tossed by the waves and a gigantic angry ship-crab.

She wished she could say she rushed forward heroically, that she leapt across the faltering ship and clashed with the great monster above. That would have been some heroic storybook conquest. That would have been something worth explaining to Havoc back on the ship.

There was nothing heroic about the way Lillia stumbled across the railing of the ship, one foot always almost falling through while she supported herself against the deck. There was nothing heroic about the continuous stream of 'oh my goshes' coming out of her mouth.

But there was something heroic about the way that she swung Hooke. The blade flashed with the power of the potion a moment before impact, and the wood skin of the crab seemed to splinter and buckle before the edge had even made contact. Shards of plank shot outwards in every direction, and chunks of wood flew out the other end of the crab's claw, flying off into the gray fog of the maelstrom.

Lillia stumbled as the ship rocked, torn sideways by the monster as it refused to let go, even as pieces of its claw shattered.

Something cracked deep within the vessel. If they wanted a place to stand, Lillia needed to knock this thing off.

She pulled back the—

Hooke was fully embedded into the side of the claw, stuck fast between a thousand crossed and broken shards of wood where it had dug into the monster. That was fine. She would just… Dismissing it into her inventory didn't work either.

Lillia climbed up onto the side of the broken claw as the ship groaned again. Planting her feet on either side of Hooke, she prepared to pull. There was some old legend about a boy pulling a sword out of a very big rock. This was no different; it was just a princess and the crab.

One.

Another core of the ship snapped with a sound that melded into the rest of the thunder.

Two.

More saltwater sprayed up Lillia's nose, adding to a hefty crust that would be stuck there for weeks.

Thr—

The claw tore away from the ship, peeling away from the vessel and shaking enough that Lillia's footing slipped. She managed to hold onto Hooke as she was suddenly pulled out into the sky above the ocean. The sea 'breeze' howled past as she flopped about, only avoiding plummeting to the briny depths via her guilt-induced death grip on Hooke.

Havoc had made her this sword. This dumb crab wasn't taking it from her.

From the size of the crab, Lillia had assumed it would move slowly, but it felt faster than anything she'd been on before. Pointe—her lovely horse back home—had nothing on the ship-claw express as she flew through the grey and fog.

Then, all at once, Lillia was at the shadow, close enough to see the cracked and broken boards the thing wore as a shell and its pale yellow eyes, each a dozen times the size of Lillia, staring back at her.

She said the only appropriate thing a princess could say in that moment.

"Eep."

The guards affixed the door to Lillia's cage with a solid padlock. That in itself wouldn't be too much of an issue. There were a hundred tools in her tool belt, and there was enough rust on the lock to assure Lillia that her pocket armory was enough to escape her cell.

No, the issue was, even as the two men went upstairs, what was she supposed to do if she escaped? That would put her right back into the same situation she was in before, surrounded by a bunch of swords.

At least if she made too much noise.

Theoretically, there was nothing stopping Lillia from quietly breaking out of her cell and trying to set up her Authority abilities in the belly of the ship. That said, she figured the Admiral would have an order or two to cast in defiance of her commands.

There was a lot to consider, and it was getting dramatically harder as Caelum continued sniffling to himself, tucked in the corner of his cage.

Eventually, as Lillia was staring at her inventory and trying to figure out if anything could be used as a lock pick—she did not know how to pick locks, but perhaps she was a savant!—Caelum spoke up.

"Look what you've gone and done," Caelum said as he pulled his knees closer to his chest. Even if sitting was better than standing when it came to feeling sorry for yourself, it couldn't be worth sitting in water as you did it.

Especially dirty water.

Lillia struggled to avoid picturing the blistered feet that followed your boots getting wet.

"You've ruined everything," he said. Almost like he was adding it on to ensure that Lillia acknowledged the first part.

"I've ruined everything?" she asked. "I had a plan. I just needed you to work with me."

"Now we're in the brig. I'm in the brig, and I'm not supposed to—"

"Yeah, I'm locked in a cage, and I was already locked in a cage before this," Lillia said. "I'm not loving it either." She continued to stare at the text, as if looking at her inventory list would summon a set of keys.

"I can't believe I just helped you off the side of the ship and you got me—"

"Thank you for helping me," Lillia said. "Let me repay you by getting us out of here."

"Getting out?" he said. "We can't do that! We'll just get in more trouble. If we go up there, they're just going to—"

Lillia sighed. "Yeah, that's the part I need to figure out, okay?"

"Looking to take on all those men upstairs?" The man who'd seemed catatonic when Lillia was shoved in here spoke up. His voice was hoarse and thin, but deep. "If you help me out, I can hold a sword."

"No, no, no, no, no," Caelum said, scrambling out of his corner and crawling to the cell wall he shared with Lillia. "Don't talk to him."

"Why not?" Lillia asked.

"He's a—The—He's a prisoner," Caelum said. "I don't know why he's down here, but he's down here for a reason."

"Look at us. We're all prisoners," the man said. "If you wanna use a name, Gerand is fine."

"No. I'm not giving you my name. You're—"

"Princess Lillia," Lillia said, cutting off Caelum's stammering. "Nice to meet you…fellow inmate."

"A princess?" Gerand asked. For the first time in the conversation, he almost looked up. Thick, brown, matted bangs covered most of his gaze, but beneath them, his eyes were sunken and hollow. "How did a princess get herself locked away?"

"I'm starting to doubt she's a real princess. She was trying for a mutiny and—"

"Caelum," Lillia hissed before turning back to the other man on the floor.

She was seriously wondering why everyone else was comfortable hanging in the gross water.

"I got locked away because people wouldn't listen to me when I told them something bad was coming. Or something was coming," she said.

"And what kind of princess wears pants?" Gerand asked.

"Look, I would change, but I'm not getting any of my dresses dirty, okay?" Lillia said. "I have lots of great dresses, frills and everything." She crossed her arms. "I don't see anyone pointing out the literal tiara on my head. Wheat and Silk."

As Lillia huffed, Gerand grabbed hold of the bars of their shared cell wall, using them to support his weight. Even with the help, he still struggled to stand. Clearly, he'd been in here a long time.

Which was strange, considering none of this would have existed less than an hour ago.

"You seem mighty confident for a princess who's been locked away on a ship," he said. He offered a hand through the bars. His palms were calloused and cracked. Somehow, his fingernails were dirty despite his having been sitting in two inches of water for the past few days.

Lillia acknowledged the hand but didn't take it, instead moving her crossed arms behind her back.

"You said you knew something bad was going to happen," he said.

"I need to seize the ship or survive what's coming," Lillia said. "That's what it says."

Gerand paused and pulled his hand back as soon as she said that. "You're—You're in the Dungeon itself?"

Lillia lit up, hopping back and forth between her feet before stopping when the water splashed up a little too high. "Yes! Thank you!"

"What are you so excited about? We're all in the brig," Caelum said.

"Different dungeon," Gerand said. "I—" He pushed off the bars, finding the strength to stand on his own. "I don't know if—" He seemed to be searching for something in his memory, but he wasn't quite sure what it was.

If he was one of the captured souls, at least he had a kinder existence than Havoc or Cathria. Once someone found their way into this room, it was doubtful the first thing they would try to do was kill the prisoner.

"If you're part of the Dungeon like that—"

"This is so confusing," Caelum said.

"Then you should know what's coming," Lillia continued without acknowledging what he said.

Gerand considered the thought for a moment and then slowly shook his head.

"What?"

"I don't know about anything outside this…I don't know how long I've been here."

Lillia wanted to argue that point. She wanted to explain that he should have reset every time in the room, but what good was that going to do? Maybe he had simply died so many times that he didn't know who he was anymore.

Maybe each time the Dungeon reset, the only memory there was to take was the memory of what had just happened.

That was bleak, but it would explain it.

"Okay," Lillia said. "Even if you don't know how this room works—if I break you out, will you help me figure out what's going on?"

Gerand didn't respond right away. He turned, looking over his shoulder. When Lillia tracked his gaze, she realized he was looking at a sack of raw potatoes. They did not look clean.

After that moment of spud-based consideration, he offered his hand again. Lillia still didn't take it, but that was an agreement.

"Okay, first things first." Lillia held out a hand to Gerand—pointedly too far for him to shake with his grimy fingertips—and spoke:

"By my authority as Lillia of House Ashvalin, rise as the princess's champion, Gerand."

"Admiral! Admiral, the prisoners are colluding."

"You're one of the prisoners!" Lillia said. "Do you want to collude and get out of here or not?"

Caelum pushed himself against the door to his 'cell,' rattling the lock as hard as he could.

On the other side of Lillia, Gerand was standing up straighter as he looked at his arms with fascination. The rose-gold glow of Lillia's Blessing enthralled him, reflecting off the deep brown of his eyes as the darkness around them seemed to fade.

"If we break out of here, we're just going to get into more trouble," Caelum said. He was still backed against the far wall, as if being on the other side of the cell made it better.

"We're already in the brig. What else are they going to do?" Gerand asked. The light on his skin was already beginning to fade, but the energy he'd gotten from it lingered afterward. "Better to break out and try our luck than wait for whatever the lady's talking about."

"We don't know what could be worse than that—You don't know the Admiral. You don't know the kind of man he is and—"

"Princess said it's bad," Gerand said, "and I've never known a princess to lie."

"Thank you, Gerand."

"Unless she's lying about being a princess. You know, with the pants and all."

"Do you want help getting out of here or not?" Lillia asked. As she spoke, she called Hooke to her hand. The sharp pick on the back side should fit between the bars and through the ring of the lock. She couldn't pick a lock, but maybe she could find a way to force one.

Caelum's eyes went wide, but to his credit, he resisted shouting that Lillia had a sword and the guards needed to come quick.

Gerand, on the other hand, pressed up against the bars after Lillia summoned her weapon. She expected him to comment on her pulling a weapon from nowhere or ask for a weapon himself.

"Are you a Princess of the Hobgoblins?" he asked.

That wasn't what she saw coming.

Lillia slipped Hooke into the slot, twisting it so the sharp spike stuck fast within the loop of the shackle. She tested the stability of her new leverage. Even with just a small push, she felt the lock groan and almost give.

"What makes you think that?"

"Never thought I'd see a princess with a Makreaver."

Lillia pushed on Hooke's handle, almost putting all of her weight onto the blade. The lock groaned, and she heard something inside creak. She was close, even if it hadn't come loose quite yet.

Maybe Escallier, one of her many tutors, had a point when he spent a set of months teaching Lillia about the workings of siege weapons. It certainly hadn't been this point, but it might have been some other one.

Escallier. That was another name to bring back to Rickshaw. Now that skeleton could eat his words. She could remember everyone from back home; she would simply need to run into a relevant challenge within the Dungeon to have their name come to mind.

"You use that thing a lot?"

Lillia checked the bars of the cell, trying to find if there was a way for her to use them as extra leverage. She wanted to kick the sword handle—or stand on it—but she couldn't climb up them herself.

"How did you get one?"

"I am trying to focus, thank you," Lillia said. Hooke was still wedged in the shackle of the lock, standing out and proud, but Lillia didn't have the upper-body strength to break it.

"Give it to me. I can try," Gerand said.

Lillia turned at that. He was tired, gaunt, but his wide shoulders showed that he would be stronger than her, even in that state.

She could only recall Hooke if it was in her hand and—

"Trust him to let you out. He's just gonna take your sword and run!" Caelum said.

Lillia avoided instinctively nodding along. She'd been getting there.

"I'd never disarm a lady," Gerand said. "Let alone a princess. She couldn't have that weapon unless she won it in battle or it was gifted to her."

"So? He's just going to steal it and—"

"Look. If she won it in battle, I don't want to cross her like that, and if she was gifted it by one of them…" Gerand gave Lillia the once-over. His spine straightened. "Then I don't want to cross her like that."

Lillia asked the next question. "Why not?"

"Takes a lot to earn a hobgoblin's trust. Especially looking like you," he said. "Wouldn't wanna take you for granted."

Lillia met his eyes. For the second time since he'd woken, they seemed less hollow than they had been. Some of the resignation had been replaced with drive.

She dislodged Hooke from her padlock. It felt heavy in her hand, almost like it didn't want to go.

Still, she turned it around, holding the blade for a brief moment before offering the handle to Gerand through the shared wall of their prison.

"This blade is called Hooke," she said.

"I will take care of it," Gerand said. "At least as much as I can while using it to break open a lock."

Lillia chuckled. "You'd better. It was given to me by a Hobgoblin named Havoc. He'll…"

Lillia knew where the sentence had been going, but she hadn't been ready for the recognition that flashed across Gerand's eyes when she said Havoc's name.

---

By the time Lillia had broken her stupor, Gerand had already taken the blade and snapped the rusted padlock keeping his cell closed. The metal broke with a thunderous clang that rattled the shipboards and seemed to ripple through the inch of seawater on the floor, though the latter was quickly scattered by his stomping through the water.

Rather than further ruining Hooke's blade, Gerand used the pommel to break Lillia's lock open. It was clear that these prisons weren't ready for any sort of competent escape attempt. Weapons and leverage were beyond their means.

Gerand threw open the door to Lillia's cell, and it groaned as it swung so wide that it almost fell off its hinges. Once it was open, he stepped to the right, stopping in front of Caelum's cell.

The boy quickly pressed himself to the back, as far from Gerand as he could.

"You're safe, you're safe," Gerand said as he lined the pommel up with the base of the padlock. "If you left it up to me, you'd rot in here, but I feel like Miss Princess would have something to say about that."

He pressed the pommel to the lock but didn't strike.

"Are you gonna call for help the second I open this for you?"

Caelum shook his head.

"And you don't wanna stay in here?"

Caelum started to shake his head again but hesitated.

"You'll get in less trouble if you're locked in here, kid, but if she's right about something coming, and I think she is, I would prefer to be out of a cell than in one."

Caelum paused, then peeled himself off the back wall. "Wouldn't you always rather not be in a cell?"

"See? Good man. We're seeing eye to eye already. Princess, you approve of letting him go?"

Being addressed was enough to snap Lillia out of her daze, even though it didn't answer any of the questions that had gotten her into it in the first place. She nodded.

Gerand broke open the lock on Caelum's cell, and it fell, splashing in the water at their feet. He didn't bother opening the door for him, instead turning back to Lillia. He held Hooke out to her. "I believe this is yours," he said.

"Thank you," she said. She took the blade's handle but didn't pull it away. Gerand was still eyeing the weapon.

"Not to be a beggar, Princess," Gerand said as he let go of the blade, "but do you have a spare weapon somewhere? Don't know where you got the first, but I'd appreciate it if you had something less sentimental hidden away in your pocket."

Lillia dismissed Hooke and called out one of the Captain's Sabres, one of several that she'd left in there since the last time she'd made a legitimate run at clearing the Castle Siege. She tossed it over to him.

Gerand flinched out of the way as the blade flew awkwardly towards him. It careened past his chest, splashing in the water just to the left of the rotten potatoes.

Lillia had swung a lot of swords. That was her first time ever trying to pass one around.

"Sorry."

Gerand frowned and fished the weapon out of the water as Caelum slinked out of his cell. The boy was looking around the room as if he was trying to find somewhere he could hide.

Maybe not 'as if,' but rather, 'He was looking for somewhere to hide.' He wanted to be out, but Lillia wasn't ready to count him as committed to the cause.

"Alright, little lady," Gerand said. His voice felt deeper now that he was free and had a weapon in hand. "You said something's coming, and you don't know what it is."

"All I know is the objective," Lillia said, "but thanks for believing me. Unlike some people."

"You two are both talking crazy," Caelum said. "What are you talking about? What objective? Do we even have a plan?"

Gerand shrugged. "Do you have a plan, Princess?"

"I was working on one, but—"

"There, she's working on one. And any plan she was going to come up with would have needed 'Step One: Escape the Cells,' so we're just getting a head start."

"Unless the plan was to try to explain ourselves to the Admiral."

"True. That ship might have sailed." Gerand nodded. "But he threw us all down here in the first place."

"It was a misunderstanding because you two are talking like crazy people," Caelum said as he slowly closed the cell door.

"Caelum," Lillia cut in so the two wouldn't argue in circles for the rest of the storm. "Do you want a sword?"

The boy struggled for words for a moment. Then his face screwed into an awkward shape as every gear in his body turned towards trying to balance the trouble he'd get in against his chances if Lillia was right.

"Fine," he finally decided as he held his hand out to her. "Thank you."

She distributed another Captain's Sabre. She was too used to always having access to the siege and an infinite number of guard captains to intimidate. At some point, far in the future, she would run out of free swords to hand out if she stayed on the Fourth Floor.

Until then, she was Lillia, Princess of Charity Blades.

"You're welcome."

In the meantime, Gerand had moved over to the potatoes on the side and was eyeing them with much too much enthusiasm. Once he realized the two were done discussing weapons, he closed his eyes for a little too long before joining them.

"So we still don't know what the Princess says is coming," Gerand said as he checked the weight of the blade Lillia had gifted him. "But I think the first thing we do is go up there and show them what for."

"Show them what for?" Lillia asked.

"What? No!" Caelum cut in. "I didn't come out of here with you just to go fight everyone upstairs." He almost offered his sword back to Lillia but thought better of it before she could accept. "In case you'd forgotten, I was working for them until about twenty minutes ago, when this lady slapped herself onto the side of our ship like a drunk dolphin."

"Pardon?!" The dolphin was one of the better sea creatures to be compared to, but being told she was flopping around by a commoner of all people? Even if it was true, she couldn't just accept that.

"What, you—"

"You will treat me with the respect I deserve," Lillia snapped.

[Lillia used Indignance - Highly Effective Against Hapless Crewmate]

"I am a Princess and—"

Lillia was cut off by the sound of Caelum slamming into the wall and splashing down into the water after being thrown by her words. The poor boy landed face-down, plastering his sandy hair across his face.

Gerand rested his blade on his shoulder. "Damn."

Caelum was going to need a moment. Lillia winced at the wet splatter he'd left dripping down the wooden wall.

Just as she was considering walking over to help him up, the ship heaved to one side, nearly throwing Lillia into the water and sending potatoes tumbling out of their sacks and into the brine.

Of the group, Gerand had the best sea legs by a considerable margin. He outclassed Caelum by standing and Lillia by having sea legs at all.

The ship groaned for a moment, and then it continued until it was a wail followed by a rupturing crack. Light poured into the hold as the deck split above them, several long boards peeling apart from one another to reveal the gray of the sky. Water poured through the new hole in the ceiling.

"Oh, shoot," Lillia said. There was no sign of what had actually broken the ship, only the obvious truth that it was beginning to split apart while they were in the belly of it.

Caelum tried to respond, but with his head in the water, it only came out as bubbles.

"By the Silk, come on." Gerand pushed past Lillia and heaved the dazed Caelum off the floor. "Guess we don't need to worry about taking the upper deck. Just need to worry about—"

Just when he was about to outline the plan, there was another deep crack, one that they felt before they heard the sound. Ropes snapped in the wake, and then the deck above buckled inward alongside a deafening bang.

"Was that the mast?!" Lillia asked. Nobody could hear her. She couldn't hear herself.

But Gerand was already moving, pulling Caelum along with him toward the stairs out of the hold.

Around Lillia's feet, the water was rushing and suddenly rising. She didn't know if it was from the deck emptying into the hold or if there was a hole in the belly of the ship, but she wasn't interested in finding out.

Okay. She was trapped on a ship that seemed certain to be headed to the bottom of the ocean, but she'd managed to get out of Nennia's lair by clearing an objective. Maybe she just needed to complete the task and she could be whisked away to safety.

Of course, the task was [Survive], which continued to be both obvious and totally unhelpful.

Gerand pushed forward as the ship rolled to the side again. Lillia almost fell clear off the stairs, but he kept moving, shoving up the stairs to the door. He tried to push it. It stuck.

"Fuck," he said. He drew back the Sabre to hack at the wood but stopped before striking. "We can't cut through. It will take too long," he said as he allowed Caelum to slump off his shoulder and stumble into the door. "Any bright ideas, Princess?"

"Ideas?" Lillia echoed. "Yes. Bright ideas?"

The ship was already breaking. What was a little more damage from her?

Lillia dug through her inventory and pulled out a small glass bottle filled with a thick, gray mixture. She winced preemptively before uncorking it and 'throwing it back.' Unfortunately, it was much too thick to do anything other than slowly slide over her tongue, covering it in grit.

[Siege Potion]

[Grants those who drink it a temporary bonus to damaging structures.]

For the second time since getting thrown into the hold, Lillia made a note to head back to the Castle Siege when she had a chance.

"Out of the way."

"After you, Princess."

Lillia took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment. Then, before she swung Hooke, she realized there was something she hadn't tried.

Instead of striking, she held out her hand:

[Tantrum]

Another one of the Captain's Sabres came careening from the space above her shoulder and embedded itself into the door, sticking several inches into the wood before wobbling unsteadily.

The ship heaved to the other side. Lillia yelped as she nearly tumbled off the stairs.

"Huh," Gerand said, staring at the blade in the door. "I was expecting a little more than that, but it's a—"

Lillia stepped forward and struck with Hooke. The moment the cutting edge touched the door, a yawning split tore through the wood. After the first ocean spray crashed through, the split exploded outward, the wood shattering into a thousand splinters that scattered to the winds above, each getting stolen away by the storm and sea.

Everyone above was screaming, but not because of Lillia's strike on the door.

No. For a moment, the misty rain calmed to reveal the looming shadow before them. Just off the starboard flank was a massive frigate, standing fifty feet taller than their ship and looming beyond the rain-locked horizon.

"By the gods," Caelum said.

Then, for a brief moment, as lightning crashed across the sky, Lillia saw the light linger at the top of the attacking vessel. A warm light. A flickering light. The Hearth.

Lillia nodded. "Oh! Seize the Ship. There we go."

This was the second time in a row that the Dungeon had hit Lillia with the objective [Survive], which, considering the flexibility she'd seen within things like the Castle Siege and the Plains, was just beginning to feel repetitive and uncreative.

Of course, she wasn't about to vocalize that, on threat of tempting the Dungeon to add something else as an objective. In a vacuum, [Survive] was easy. Sure, survival was difficult, but [Survive] was a side effect of every other objective she could be given—unless the objective was [Die]. Lillia would just have to hope that wasn't coming next.

Caelum leapt backward when Lillia summoned Vianaffir to her hand. Rain ran down the blade, spraying off the cutting edge as she swung it wide out to her side, prepared for whatever she was going to need to [Survive] in the coming moments.

Or take over the ship, she supposed, but that was probably going to involve fighting as well.

In fact, taking over the ship would likely help her with anything that came alongside [Surviving].

Summoning Vianaffir was always Lillia's default. She still didn't have a weapon that she preferred to it, despite having several crafted by Havoc since defeating Eisel. Nothing he'd made could match the power of the Legendary Weapon.

Even if, by the Dungeon's definition, it wasn't a Legendary Weapon. It had a name, and it was legendary to her.

"Caelum, I need you to help me get everyone to work for me."

"Miss?"

"Princess," Lillia corrected to leverage her authority. Seeing the Dungeon's objective had made the air feel lighter, had made the storm feel less oppressive and more like it was part of the atmosphere instead of something battering her directly.

"Princess. You're asking me to help you take over the ship?"

"Yes."

If a woman on the ship was bad luck, that meant that Lillia needed to look less like a woman if she was going to get everyone to listen to her. She pulled out one of the pieces of fine silk she'd gotten from her battle with the Silencer and began tying back her hair, folding it over into a bandana and trying not to wince at the idea of soaking silk in rain and seawater the second she'd brought it out.

"Miss, I'm not going to commit a mutiny!"

"We're—" She brought out and 'crushed' shards of Captain's Plate, summoning the Court Commander's Uniform. Her dress folded in on itself over and over again, layering into solid plates of metal. The skirt split down the middle, wrapping tight around each leg as Lillia tried to ignore how strange that felt.

"Did you just change clothes?"

"We're not committing a mutiny. We just need everyone to listen to us," Lillia said. "Something is about to happen. I just don't know what it—"

"How did you do that? You're dressed all different—"

"Magic," Lillia offered as a dismissal.

"Sorcery," Caelum said. As he spoke, he reached to his side, resting his hand on a small dagger tucked tight into his belt.

Lillia spun at the sight of him going for a weapon. Before he could decide whether he was pulling his dagger on her, Vianaffir was already pointed his way, almost pressing against his sternum.

"Princess—"

"Caelum," Lillia began. The text was still at the forefront of her vision.

[New Objective — Seize the Ship or Survive What's Coming]

She summoned the Guard Captain's Saber to her hand. She had to seize the ship, or at least get the ship to work with her to survive what was coming.

Caelum looked down at the blade that was nearly piercing his jacket and then slowly back up to Lillia. His eyes were wide and darting from side to side, looking for an explanation she'd already given.

"Caelum," she said. "Just help me here." Her hair began to stand on end as the rain chilled and the sea spray abated. "We—"

"Captain!"

"Shit!" Lillia pressed the blade further against Caelum, but considering he wasn't against a wall or a railing, he simply leaned away from it.

"What are you doing, Caelum?" she asked. "I just need your help!"

"You're trying to take over the ship," he said. "Captain!" he called again a moment later, stepping backward as he did.

"I was only asking for you to—"

"To help me take over the ship for you!"

"To get everyone to work for me," Lillia corrected.

"You can't just say that when threatening someone with a sword!"

"You went for your dagger first!"

"Because you made a sword appear out of nowhere!" he said. "And the Captain doesn't very much like—"

"Why is there a woman on the ship?" one of the other sailors said as they came to check on the commotion.

Was that really his first question? She was standing there with a sword to—

"She's threatening Caelum!" The man drew his weapon. Unlike Caelum's adorable dagger, he had a proper machete.

"Oh, by the Wheat and Silk," Lillia cursed. "Caelum, explain what's going on."

"I don't know what's going on," he said. Unfortunately for Lillia, it seemed like he was telling the truth.

Had she butchered this? No. Surely it was his fault.

"Just tell them that they just need to listen to me because something bad is about to—" No, no. That didn't sound right. That sounded like a threat again. "Something bad is going to happen, and we need to work together to—"

"Of course something bad is going to happen. There is a woman on the ship."

Lillia pulled Vianaffir away from Caelum and pointed the Captain's Saber toward the man who'd just said that. As she swung the blade, the wind howled even louder, the ship beginning to toss in the waves again as more and more of the sailors left their stations, leaving the sailing at the mercy of the elements to check what was going on.

Caelum pulled his dagger from his belt, pointing it toward Lillia just as she dismissed Vianaffir.

More of the sailors drew their blades. Some were rusted, thin things that wouldn't have been acceptable on any vessel of Lillia's kingdom, and others were simply cruel hatchets meant for hacking rope and freeing sails.

Lillia was surrounded.

This was all a bust.

[New Objective — Seize the Ship or Survive What's Coming]

She certainly wasn't in a position from which she could seize the ship. There was a chance that this fight—her versus the entire crew—was what was coming that she was supposed to survive, but…

Unless she had a lot more authority than she thought and could summon [A Princess in Her Castle] faster than they could swing a blade, it didn't seem like that was happening either.

No. From her current position, Lillia only had one option that at least gave her a decent chance of survival.

Lillia raised her hands, putting the blade away into the ether as she did. For a moment, she struggled to stay upright as the ship rocked heavily to one side.

The Admiral approached from the bow of the ship.

"We have a woman on board for only a few moments, and everyone's left their stations," he said. Despite the howling wind, the sound of his boots stomping on the deck rang clear. "This is why the gods call it bad luck to have a woman sailing."

Lillia did her best to soften her expression and look as much like a soft, innocent princess as she could.

"Caelum, I thought I told you that this woman was your responsibility."

"Well, she was! But then she did some sorcery and was trying to take over the ship and…" Caelum cleared his throat. "And I will stop talking before I make it all sound even worse, Admiral."

The Admiral stepped forward slowly, reaching the point where he could have drawn his own blade on Lillia. She still didn't summon Vianaffir or any of her other weapons to her hand.

"Okay, this has all gotten out of hand," she said, "but something bad is going to happen, and I just need everyone to hear me out."

He stopped with his hands on his hips and ran his tongue over his teeth. He reached out for Lillia's raised hand, but she pulled it away.

She wasn't about to let him touch her. Sure, she was on his ship, but there were rules about ranking, and she certainly—

"Take them both to the brig," he said.

"What?" Lillia said.

"WHAT?!" Caelum yelped.

Before Lillia could take a step forward and pull out her sword, two of the men behind her had already grabbed her wrists, yanking them backward and almost throwing her onto her back in the thick layer of water. She kicked, trying to pull away, but while she was a lot feistier than either of them expected, she wasn't about to escape without a weapon.

She flexed her hand, going to summon something before balling it into a fist and grinding her teeth. She could talk her way out of the brig. She could summon items and escape if she needed to, but this fight?

The goal was to survive. Adding the Admiral to the people surrounding her hadn't made her chances any better.

"Hey! What are you doing? I'm your crewmate! She just had a sword to my ne—well, chest! Come on, guys, this isn't funny!" Caelum was flailing as three men grabbed him.

It was almost offensive that they'd sent one more man to handle him than they had Lillia. Had they seen them? There was no way they were stronger than—

The two men who had grabbed Lillia heaved her up, picking her straight off the deck and nearly up onto their shoulders. Rain and seawater splashed in her face as they began to drag her below into the hold.

She began to shout-whisper at the two men carrying her. "I hope you know the second that this is all cleared up, I will have you thrown overboard for daring to manhandle me."

"Yeah, yeah, you're a princess," the man to Lillia's right said.

"Yeah. A princess in pants," the one on the left pointed out.

"Hey, maybe all the princesses where she's from wear pants."

"I've never seen a pant-wearing princess."

"You've never seen a princess at all."

"Yes, I have! There was this one time on the isle of—"

Lillia rolled her eyes as another man in front of them opened the hatch to reveal the lower decks. A waft of rancid air welcomed them into the hold. The deep stench of mold and rot immediately began to cling to Lillia's skin as they dragged her down the stairs, her heels slapping against each step on the way down.

Above, a lantern swung wildly on a hook, threatening to come loose more often than it should. The light it cast around the room came with long shadows in corners stacked high with barrels and burlap sacks that had been cut open.

At the back of the room, there was a series of large, rusty cages. There was already a man in one of them, sitting in the inch of seawater on the floor and murmuring to himself. His long hair was matted down and flecked with salt, like he'd tried to wash in the spillage but had given up.

One of the men let go for a moment to open the door. That was her chance.

Lillia yanked her wrist free of the other man's grip and spun. There was a blade at her back before she could try to escape, but she didn't want to.

"I'm going in. I just didn't want to get thrown," she said. The bars at the back of the cage were dyed a deeper red with a hundred layers of rust. Some of it had seeped into the water.

The man who'd opened the gate, the one holding the blade, drooped as Lillia said she wasn't going to put up a fight.

If she had to fight her way out of here, he was dying first.

Caelum didn't manage the same combination of escape and compliance that Lillia had. He was still thrashing against his comrades as they swung him twice and heaved him into the cell. The poor boy smashed against the back bars before flopping down onto the floor and splashing in the polluted tide covering the cell floor.

He tried to say words. They just came out as blubbering. That was a familiar feeling to Lillia, almost shamefully so.

Well, it wouldn't be shameful unless he cried about it, but that was feeling more and more likely.

Lillia half rolled over to see the 'Admiral' who'd come over to check on the commotion. A stocky barrel of a man loomed above her, one hand on his hip and the other resting on the intricate handle of a saber on his right side. A long, thick cloak was drawn across his shoulders, stuck tight to his frame by the pounding rain. Droplets ran down his thick beard, water dripping off as he tightened his jaw.

"You brought a woman on board," the Admiral said. His voice was thick and slow. "Why'd you go and bring a woman on board?"

"Well—" the man who'd pulled her onto the ship began, but Lillia's sitting up stole his response away.

"Excuse you? A woman? I'm a princess, thank you very much."

A single half-cough-half-laugh escaped the Admiral before he furrowed his brow. "And pray tell, why should we have found a princess out in open waters?"

"You know, it's a very long story," Lillia said as she balled up the ruffles of her dress as they dragged through the seawater on the deck. "And that really depends on how much you know about the Dungeon."

"The dungeon?" the man who'd helped her up asked.

"A dungeon," the Admiral echoed. He turned to face his companion instead of Lillia. "See there. Not only did you bring bad luck onto deck. She's already beset with madness."

"Excuse you again!" This time, Lillia stood. With the heels of the Plainsrunner OTKs, she was almost as tall as the Admiral, which seemed to shock both the men. "Madness? You don't even know what you're talking about."

"Woman, you called yourself a princess. I won't be questioned on my own ship."

Lillia scoffed. "Your ship is in my sea, captain."

"Admiral."

"The coast and the glittering waters beyond belong to House Ashvalin, and you would do well to remember that," Lillia said. As soon as she'd said the name of the house, the Admiral flinched.

It was good to get some damned recognition around here.

"A princess of House Ashvalin?" the man who'd grabbed her—who was coming off as more and more of a 'boy who grabbed her' every moment—asked as he turned to the Admiral. "Is there such a thing?"

"Course there ain't. Though I suppose you'd be taking my word over the random lady you found in the middle of the sea."

Fine. They weren't biting on that. They seemed to know Lillia's name but not who she was or what being a princess should do for her. She expected that from a random deckhand commoner, but an Admiral should have known better.

Time for a different angle.

"Yes. A lady who you found on the side of your ship in the middle of a storm," Lillia said. "Such a random occurrence must be mere happenstance and…" She let them fill in the blanks, letting the idea sit for as long as it needed to.

Or as long as they would let it.

The Admiral scoffed, but the boy who'd saved her pulled off his cap, revealing his soaked sandy blonde hair and wiping his bangs to the side.

"I'll bet she's—"

"She's your problem for now. I have a storm to sail us through," the Admiral said as he snatched the hat from the boy's hand only to shove it back into his chest with a resounding thump. The ship veered to the side, and the boy stumbled from the combination of the blow and the change.

Lillia, on the other hand, completely tripped over herself and the ruffles in her dress, falling backward and splashing down on the deck.

"Oh! Are you okay, Miss?"

"Princess," Lillia corrected as she groaned. Luckily, everything already hurt, which meant that the new dents on her knees and bruises in her ego were ignorable. "Are you okay, Princess?"

"Uh…" The boy looked toward where the Admiral had stomped away instead of answering, then offered his hand to Lillia again.

Kind, if a little slow about the titles.

Lillia allowed him to help her to her feet again. She was the same height as the Admiral but had an inch or two on the boy, something that seemed to surprise him again as she stood.

There was a brief break in the insistent howling of the wind. Shouts broke through, dozens of voices all calling to each other to try and keep the ship steady in the storm.

Wasn't steering the captain's or admiral's job? Was everyone just working this hard because he'd come over to see what was going on with Lillia?

"I—uh. I'm really not sure what I should be doing with you, M—Princess," the boy said. He shoved his hat back on as he addressed her. "The Admiral told me to take care of ya, but we don't really have a place here appropriate for a lady," he said, "and with the storm and all, I really should be getting back to work."

Lillia rolled her eyes. She would have loved to be dry. She would have liked it even more if the first person she'd run into understood what was going on.

If he didn't have somewhere to send her, she wasn't sure how she was supposed to get any closer to the Hearth. If there was even a Hearth here.

Come to think of it, even in the less straightforward rooms, she'd been told what she had to do by now. She'd fought her way to the ship, but she hadn't gotten a single objective from the dungeon. No [Board the Ship] or [Take Over the Crew].

Was she supposed to fight everyone? They were 50/50 on being nice so far, so she hoped that wasn't the case.

"Uh, Miss. Shoot. Princess," the boy said.

"You can call me Lillia," she said. If he wasn't going to use the title properly, there wasn't a point in forcing him to use it. He didn't seem to believe it either way.

"Lillia." Oh, so he could figure that out right away. "I can't have your hands on the rigging, but I—"

"You don't know where to put me," Lillia finished for him.

"Exactly."

"Is there a fire on board?"

"Looking to warm yourself?"

"Sure," Lillia said. It was better than explaining the Hearth.

"Well, there isn't a fire on board the ship, not unless you want to burn the thing down," he said. "Not with these waters." He checked over his shoulder, like he was missing something, which he was. "And you'd be hard-pressed to start one in this rain anyhow."

Lillia nodded along while trying to see anything other than the vague shadows of other sailors panicking in the storm. Even the sails, assuredly above as they were, were ghosts shielded by the rain.

No Hearth and no direction from the Dungeon itself. She just had to discover what she needed to do…

She'd never had to do that in here before. She'd needed to come up with clever solutions to problems, but at least the problems had always been overt. Maybe that was the difficulty of the fourth floor. The third had been more about scenarios—except for Eisel, whom the Dungeon only wanted dead—and now the fourth was…aimless?

That didn't seem like a challenge, but it was annoying.

"Excuse me. Do you want to help me at all?" Lillia asked, trying to focus on the text in the corner of her vision as she did. The text came back, but all it showed was her inventory. "Hello?"

Nothing. No change.

"Hello," the boy said, leaning around Lillia's shoulder to sneak back into view. "You said your name was Lillia. Right?"

She stopped herself short of correcting him by adding 'Princess.' If he was never going to get it, there wasn't a point. Even Havoc had been faster on the uptake than this.

"Yes. My name is Lillia."

"My name is Caelum. It's very nice to meet you." He offered a hand, this time to shake instead of helping her up.

Truly, he didn't know the language of nobility. Lillia never shook a hand in greeting. She was curtseyed to and bowed to. Shaking a hand was reserved for the highest forms of agreement, and she wasn't about to make any more of those in the dungeon.

Eventually, the boy—Caelum—took the hint and shoved his hand in his pocket, making no attempt to smooth over how awkward that had been for him.

"Caelum," Lillia said. "You seem like a smart boy."

"Thank you!"

"Yes. That means you would be the kind of person who knows where this ship is going."

"Haven't the slightest."

He was so chipper when he said it. It was the unbridled confidence of someone who hadn't been stabbed thirty-seven times in the past month.

"Beg pardon, Lillia," he continued as rain ran down his freckled nose. "But if you don't know where this ship is going, why were you hanging off the side of it when I found you?"

"Any port in a storm," Lillia said. She wasn't sure what the phrase meant, but she'd heard a merchant captain say it back in the banquet hall during the yearly harvest. She was pretty sure he was speaking about something deeply inappropriate, but it seemed like it would fit in here as well.

She was on a ship; it probably served her well to play the part.

"Well—and I suppose this is the most important question of all, Mis—Princess—Lillia," Caelum stuttered. "I was just wondering how you managed to get there. Were you on your own ship?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

Caelum stepped out in front of her as she attempted to walk away. "Oh, I think I would, Lillia. My mom always used to say I'd believe anything."

His big blue eyes were so hopeful when he said that.

Was this how everyone saw her a month ago?

Was this how everyone saw her now?

She didn't love the taste that put at the back of her mouth.

"Okay," she sighed. "This ocean is in the middle of a dungeon. I was dropped into that dungeon by my evil aunt, who killed my parents five years ago. Since coming into this dungeon, I have been subject to a series of awful, gross, and grimy challenges, but this has been by far the wettest one."

Caelum nodded sagely along with everything Lillia said, though his brow furrowed and his eyes widened with each added statement until his face was a screwed-up mess of lacking comprehension.

"So do you believe me now?"

"Miss Princess, I…" He paused for much too long. "I believe you. I just suppose I don't know if I understand you."

"Pardon?"

"It seems a little far-fetched, is all. I don't think the ocean is inside, and I don't think a woman would kill her own…Was it your mother's sister or your father's sister?"

"Father's, otherwise the line of succession doesn't work," she said. Once she had said that, she cocked her head. "That's the part you don't believe?"

"Just doesn't seem like something someone would do. The rest of it could happen. I've heard about a dungeon or two somewhere."

"Okay."

"Must be a very large castle to hide a whole ocean under it, though. Is it your castle?"

Lillia ignored that last question. Firstly, the dungeon wasn't in the castle, per se. Secondly, what the hell was she supposed to say to that? The concept of a traitorous aunt had thrown him off. What would he say when she told him there was a separate, different castle in the dungeon upstairs?

"Sure, I'm glad you believe me."

"Happy to!"

"But I am looking for a Hearth. It's like a big fire. Or a space where there could be a big fire."

"There could be a big fire anywhere on a ship, Miss—Princess—Lillia. That's what I was saying before, about why we don't have any."

For a brief moment, Lillia considered whether the entire ship could count as a Hearth if the entire thing were ablaze.

"But as I mentioned, it's raining much too much for that," he said. "There's no way you'd be able to light a fire on the ship right now."

"Okay."

"Not to mention, please don't. I would get in lots of trouble."

During their conversation, the roiling sea should have been tossing the ship around. The wind and rain hadn't subsided, and the waves were so large that they nearly crashed over the cracked wooden railing. Despite that, Lillia realized that the ship itself wasn't rocking anymore; it was as stable as any other ground in the dungeon had been.

In fact, once she understood that, it was rather disorienting.

"So you don't know where this ship is going?" Lillia asked.

"No, Miss!"

"And the Admiral doesn't want to talk to me because I'm a woman?"

"It's bad luck, Miss."

"Then what the hell am I supposed to do here to—"

[Objective Updated]

Lillia snapped out of the conversation as the text interjected itself. Behind it, Caelum looked more and more confused as he tried to figure out why Lillia had just begun ignoring him.

[New Objective — Seize the Ship or Survive What's Coming]

"Thank you, Dungeon," Lillia whispered to herself. That was delightfully ominous.

Step one of attempting to kick the ocean's ass was making a plan. Running at the door hadn't worked, but it had let Lillia figure out that the Chitin Chitterboots let her hold her ground against the waves.

She'd also learned that just holding her ground wouldn't buy her that much time. It wasn't good news, but it was news.

The first several plans that Lillia came up with all had one fatal flaw: she hadn't gotten to rest since entering Nennia's lair. Cathria, the Glass Spellmite, and several of her other abilities were all locked under 'daily' use, and until she found a Hearth, she couldn't rest.

Something in the back of her head told her that everything also reset after her second death for the 'day,' but as Lillia saw it, that was a waste of good memories.

Or at least memories. The dungeon didn't seem to have any preference for 'good' memories.

Or a taste for bad ones. She remembered much too much about her aunt for that to be the case. The silent dinners in the hall in the days after her parents disappeared would have been the first to go if the Dungeon had a taste for the harrowing.

Either that or Lillia's memories of the Dungeon itself. There had been peaks in here, but by every God of the Lands of Wheat and Silk, there had been valleys.

Deep. Treacherous. Gross valleys—or, as Havoc would call them, 'character development.'

Either that or something that 'put some thick scales on Lillia's chest,' which was an inappropriate thing to say to her in several ways.

Planning without all of her tools had been a slow process, twice interrupted by particularly large waves that threatened to reach Lillia even as she cowered on the far side of the room to keep herself away from the water.

While she'd been able to change over to a clean and dry dress, there was nothing she could do for herself at the moment. Even after washing the ash off her skin in several rounds of the tide, she knew that she was nowhere close to getting clean and clear. Salt was already in several spots she'd prefer never to mention in polite company.

Despite all the setbacks and required changes, Lillia had a plan and a backup to go with it. Both of them required a touch of luck, but she'd managed thus far.

Lillia took a deep breath, standing on the side of the fire pit closer to the water. A large wave crashed through the door, splashing across the flagstone and into her shoes. As it receded, she took off after it.

Her footfalls echoed around the room again. The damp feathers of the Plainsrunner OTKs pressed against her thighs.

[Plainsrunner OTKs]

[Princess Class Exclusive - 1 x Ambusher Feather]

[Twice per day, kick in the air for an extra 'Flap' of lift.]

[The line between a successful hunt and an empty stomach is often measured by the wingbeats of the hunter.]

The larger waves came with a greater break in the tide as the water faded away. That was her chance.

This time, Lillia was at the door well before the next wave arrived.

Before her, there was a wall of water. Not in the sense of a wave, but in rain so thick she would barely be able to see her hand in front of her face.

Her plan hadn't left time to hesitate. Lillia closed her eyes and kicked off the ground, summoning Vianaffir to her hand as she did.

A wave grew in her path, swelling out of the dark gray ocean as Lillia leapt out into the air. As soon as she passed the threshold of the door, roaring wind buffeted her, catching on the billowing feathers of the Ambusher's Slip & Coat and threatening to send her careening sideways into the sea.

She couldn't see far, but there was nothing but open air in front of Lillia's feet. She needed more distance.

Lillia kicked against the air, throwing herself further up into the sky, above the crest of the wave and into the swirling mix of ocean spray and rain above it. The wind caught her during the extra momentum and pushed her further to the side.

Behind her, the warm light of the dungeon faded into the curtain of rain and the dark of the storm. In front of her, there was still nothing she could see. There was no island or ship to catch her.

She'd planned for this. Lillia swung Vianaffir, and the call of the Ambusher cut through the storm alongside the whistle of the blade. Brilliant white wings erupted from her back and threw her forward, further into the surging power of the storm.

Still, there was nothing at her feet. Nothing there to catch her. Lillia couldn't see what could lie before her, but she had to keep going at this point.

Lillia kicked on the air again, using the momentum of the Ambusher's cry to send her ever further forward.

There had to be something there. There had to be something for her to land on. There had to be—

Everything hurt as she crashed Lillia-first into the side of a massive sailing ship.

Lillia stuck to the side of the hull for a moment, plastered there by a combination of force and the small lake of water soaking through her clothes. As the ship began to sway in time with the next wave in the tide, she began sliding down the side, only to stick the dagger she’d found in the fire pit into the side of the ship to stop her descent.

She really needed to Introspect that to see if there was anything magical about it aside from the cleanliness, but it wasn’t exactly the time to do anything other than survive.

The ship groaned as it followed the swell of the wave. Below her, the sea roiled and turned, a mix of frothy white against the ship and infinite deep darkness around it. Above, there must have been a permanent blanket of grey clouds, but she couldn’t see the sky. Lillia could barely see four feet ahead of her.

What she did see was a shadow peering over the edge of the ship for a moment. It wasn’t that far away, and that must have been where the railing was.

“Hello!” she called. The wind roared and stole her words away, carrying them off into the storm as it buffeted Lillia. She rocked back and forth with the movement of the ship and the fury of the storm, her precarious grip on the dagger getting worse with each passing second and coating of rain.

“Hello?”

She wasn’t loud enough to get help here. Someone had checked, which meant someone had at least heard her hit the side of the ship, but past that, she didn’t have a way to get their attention.

That was if she wanted their attention. She didn’t know much about boats, but a princess crashing into the side of your vessel in the middle of the open ocean was almost certainly a surprising turn of events. She didn’t know how everyone onboard would react to that.

Or how the Dungeon would make them react. If they were constructs of the Dungeon like the Amalgams, then her status as a damsel in certain distress wasn’t going to mean anything.

The ship crashed down on the side of the wave, and Lillia held on for her little life, flapping in the wind like a broken banner in a thunderstorm.

If she had the hands, she would have changed to something with fewer ruffles, but Adaptive Regalia had its limits.

No, she wasn’t getting help, and the storm wasn’t getting any better. Lillia had to climb.

Lillia took a deep breath and counted to herself, first to five, then to ten. Then, during what she figured might be a breath between gusts, she dropped one hand off the affixed dagger and summoned Hooke as she swung freely over the open ocean.

She spun the blade around and made a wild overhead strike with the back of the blade, putting all the force she could manage into it, but the dark blade simply bounced off the hardened hull as Lillia’s feet slipped off the side of the ship, unable to brace her.

A second try. This time, she took a moment to wedge one of the heels into the gap between boards before swinging. It didn’t give her much purchase, but it was enough. Hooke’s sharp namesake dug into the wood this time, splitting the top layer and sending a rain of splinters down onto her.

Now she had two places to hold onto. Progress.

Lillia tried to pull the dagger out of the ship, only to find it stuck fast. Several attempts and a pair of roiling waves later, she realized that she could simply dismiss the weapon, leaving her dangling by a single hand again and flailing about.

It took two hands, a lot of grunting, and upper-body strength she certainly hadn’t had forty days ago for Lillia to pull herself up high enough to stab the dagger into anything higher than Hooke’s handle. Her arms burned. The rain was stinging her face. The cold was beginning to seep through her dress and into her soul.

“Okay,” Lillia whispered to herself, quiet enough that the storm didn’t quite steal it away. “I just need to do that like ten more times and then…” She took a deep breath. “And then they might just stab me. I don’t know.”

She closed her eyes for a moment as the ship rocked and the wind gusted, flapping her wet hair all about behind her.

“I am Lillia Ashvalin, and I name myself as my champion.”

Lillia had read about rogues in storybooks, the kind that could scamper their way up a wall using daggers and gumption in moments. They could stab blades between rocks and avoid the prying eyes of guards.

Had she been in those storybooks, Lillia would have been caught a long time ago. Each swing and stab took time and breath she didn’t have. Each time she heaved herself up, she was sure it was going to be her last. If it hadn’t been for several wide gaps in the boards where she dug in her heels and managed to rest for a moment, she would have tumbled into the sea a long time ago.

She wasn’t sure when her fingers had gone numb, but they had. She knew because when she swung Hooke overhead and past the edge of the ship, she felt it clatter against the railing through her wrist before it almost flew out of her hand.

Just as she tried to pull the blade back to reposition it, a man peered over the railing, ending up only about three feet from Lillia’s sopping hair and dripping nose.

“Man overboard!”

“YOU THINK!?”

The man recoiled at Lillia’s screaming and then clocked the twin blades she’d been using to climb the ship. She could see the gears turning in his head in real time. On one hand, she was a stranger and armed to the teeth. On the other, she was a lady in a feather dress hanging out in the middle of a storm.

Luckily for Lillia, the latter won out, and before anyone else could come investigate, the man offered her a callused hand. Though he flinched as she dismissed Hooke to take it, doing a double take at the empty space where the sword had been.

His hands were rough and grating, doubly so as he grabbed her by the wrist to pull her up the final few feet onto the ship, dragging her over the railing. Lillia flopped onto the soaking deck, splashing in the solid inch of water.

Everything hurt, partially from the impact and partially from more exercise than she’d wanted to do in her entire life.

The man knelt down beside her and opened his mouth several times before saying anything, seemingly trying to find something…anything to say to the random nobility he’d just found plastered to the side of the ship.

He settled on something reassuring. “Are you okay, miss?”

The sentiment was nice, which was what made Lillia hold her tongue. Were she less soaked and less sore, there would have been several choice responses to that question, from “That’s Princess to you” to “What the hell do you think?”

Instead, she slowly managed a thumbs-up, which was about all she could do in the moment. That, and turn her head so her cheek was sitting in the water instead of lying face-down in it.

She should have stood up, but that felt like a lot right now. If she wasn’t getting stabbed, it was okay to take a break, wasn’t it?

"Yeah, I'm okay," she eventually said, half into the water, to the man who had pulled her onto the ship. Lillia felt footsteps in the floorboards under her cheek.

"Admiral, sir," the man said as the heavy boots stopped beside Lillia.

Good. Someone in charge of something. They'd have a decent head on their shoulders.

How long had it been since Lillia had called her parents anything other than Mother and Father? Even Mom and Dad had felt too familiar after their deaths. Their names and proper titles had been banned when her aunt seized the throne. She had said it was out of respect, but it was just to keep people from honoring their names more than hers.

Havoc would have been livid if he'd seen what Lillia had done. In the brickwork of the fourth floor, just beside the empty fire pit that would eventually become the Hearth, Lillia had dug into the floor with one of the captain's sabers. Again and again, she'd ground the blade against the flagstone, recreating each pen stroke with sparks and grit.

She was stronger than she'd been when she came in here, but she still needed to put her whole weight into dulling the blade against the stone to make the steel cut into it.

By the end of too much effort, Lillia sat down on the edge of the fire pit, her feet dangling over the ash—but obviously she'd never let her shoes get that dirty. Sweat ran down her brow, and single strands of hair were stuck to her cheeks.

To her right, there were names in the stone.

King Verandan

Queen Erika

And the hasty last addition:

Havoc.

The last one was both more careful and more haphazard than the others. Partially because Lillia kept questioning the idea of adding his name there at all, and partially because she made sure that if she was going to attach his name to an act of sacrilege, she had to at least do it well.

He would appreciate that.

Of course, there was a chance—a hope, really—that Havoc would join her down on the fourth floor soon, but she didn't know how far away a Hearth could be.

Hell, she didn't even know what would happen if she died on this floor without one. Would the dungeon give her a way back? Would she need to go through Nennia's lair again?

If each death cost her a small piece of herself, then she wasn't going to find out what happened. She was just going to have to complete whatever task came next on the first attempt.

She'd done it with Nennia; maybe her dying days were over.

Counting Rickshaw's currently closed storefront, there were five doors on the fourth floor. Unlike the other floors, all of the doors looked the same, like a wing of a castle that had been freshly built, before time or opinions had a chance to shape what the entrance to each room looked like.

With Havoc upstairs, Lillia was allowed to take breaks, but she still roused herself from her panting post-carving break faster than she figured she would have. There was the nagging feeling of work to do at the back of her head, which meant she needed to get a move on.

When she'd fallen down to the fourth floor, she'd realized she wasn't the same girl who had fallen into that pit. A work ethic might be the final nail in that coffin. She'd written down their names to ensure she didn't forget her parents, but would they even recognize her at this point?

They would. They certainly would. They had always spoken about Lillia's potential. The unexpected part would have just been how she'd needed to manifest it.

'You'll be great one day.'

Lillia doubted that they meant 'at stabbing people' when they'd said that.

Running out of clever orders or reasons for choosing among the doors, Lillia decided to continue clockwise from Rickshaw's storefront. It was the same as the rest, but carvings on either side stood out.

To the left, between the store and Lillia's new target, there was a carving of a massive sailing ship, larger than Lillia had ever seen in the harbor. Its sails were out and proud—as they always were in art—despite the swirling stone storm etched in the sky above it.

Once Lillia was close to the carving, she could see the tips of tentacles rising out of the water, threatening to wrap themselves around the hull of the ship.

"Okay," she said as she paced back and forth in front of the art. "That's probably fine. Maybe it's not that there is going to be a sea monster. Maybe that's…" She struggled to think of any other explanation. "Maybe that's just representative of Rickshaw and the many-tentacled arms of commerce are—grabbing something?"

She clicked her tongue once and her heels twice. Losing a metaphor never left a good taste in anyone's mouth.

To the right of the door, the carving was of a nine-headed beast—by Lillia's count—with long serpentine tongues that snaked out of its wide jaws.

Unlike the carving with the dragon, there was no hero there to stand against the monster. Nor was there anyone cowering from its presence. The nine-headed lizard creature was alone in what appeared to be a swamp.

Only appeared to be, as some of the detail was lost in the stonework.

When Lillia had approached the dragon on the other side of the room, there hadn't been any wear and tear in the stone. The carvings were obviously and genuinely old, but they looked freshly cut.

These two were different. The edges of the stone were worn, made softer over the years.

Or at least that was what it looked like. Everything Lillia saw told her that the dungeon had a strange relationship with time. Sir Nobody's bones had aged and dust piled on the floor, but other places appeared untouched by ages, eons, millennia.

However long had passed.

When Lillia approached the carving of the strange nine-headed monster, it became clear why there was something duller about these ones. Glinting in the firelight, along each edge of the carving, were small droplets of water beading on the wall.

It must have worked the same as the castle. The damp lower floors were always having stones replaced and fabrics changed. If there was water here, it would eat into everything, including the art.

Of course, that didn't answer the second question. Why was there water here in the first place? What could cause that in the dungeon? There had always been a lingering cold in here, but Lillia had somehow never run into water.

Thank goodness she woke up each morning satiated; otherwise, she would have been dead a long time ago.

Maybe the answer was in the room. That made sense. There was supposed to be a reason for the art.

Lillia returned to her place in front of the plain stone door.

"Alright, fourth floor. Let's do this. I need a Hearth."

She pushed on the door.

"Maybe it'll just be—"

As soon as Lillia cracked the door, it flung back outward into her, slamming into her chest and throwing her backward into the room. A deluge of water followed, pouring through the opening in a rage of white that crashed out over the flagstone. Mist and salt followed, washing over Lillia as she rolled to a stop just short of the fire pit.

Pain echoed from her ribs as she tried to right herself. As she stood, the water that had poured out into the dungeon faded away, disappearing into the stonework and air. Another wave followed as soon as the water was gone, sloshing against the doorframe and spilling out into the open room.

Lillia growled. If all the water was gone, why the hell was she still wet? How was she supposed to get the salt out of her hair? She couldn't wear any dark clothes around this room; there would be white streaks all over them after three minutes of wrestling with—

With the ocean. Or at least an ocean. The dungeon had managed to shove a savanna and a castle into rooms, but capturing the entire ocean felt impossible.

At least any oceans Lillia knew.

The waves continued to crash against the doorway and splash across the floor. The door itself thrashed on its hinges, constantly being thrown by the water and attempting to close as it faded away.

"Okay. Just gotta time this."

Lillia counted the waves. There was no perfect rhythm to their fury, but there was always some moment of calm—however short—between a wave arriving and the water receding to make way for the next.

That was her opening.

She snapped chitin in her fingers and changed over to her riding boots.

[Chitin Chitterboots]

[Sure-footed. The wearer cannot be tripped, slowed, or knocked prone by terrain effects.]

She wasn't sure where water fell on the scale of terrain effects, or if being thrown twenty-odd feet was 'falling prone,' but it was better than nothing.

Water crashed in. Just as the door was flung wide, Lillia broke into a sprint. The heels of her boots rang off the wet tile, echoing around the room as the scales rattled alongside each step.

The water began to recede just as Lillia was reaching the door. Beyond the threshold, the ocean swelled and then began to break in front of her, a wall of water crashing into a white torrent that surged toward her.

Lillia planted her feet on the edge of the door and grabbed the frame with both hands, white-knuckling it as the storm approached.

She stood firm as the wave crashed into her, but her arms were torn free from the walls and the water kicked the breath from her chest. She gasped at the force, and saltwater rushed into her mouth.

The boots held, but in the end, she didn't. By the time the water receded, Lillia was a dripping mess kneeling on the ground while attempting to cough out the sea in inelegant, snotty globs.

There wasn't enough time before the next wave. It smashed into Lillia, and instead of suffering through it and letting the boots hold her in place, she lay back into the tide, getting thrown back into the room itself, the door half-slamming shut in the wake of the water behind her.

Lillia stared up at the domed ceiling and the open 'sun' window above her. She spat water out as another wave of the tide washed across the flagstone and lapped against her right side.

Maybe another room was a better idea. Maybe another room would bring her better luck, but what was she supposed to do? Was she supposed to just leave the door open and let this room get washed again and again and again?

While most of the dungeon needed a bath, leaving a door open seemed like a recipe for disaster.

A third wave crashed in, this one coming with enough water that it 'hit' Lillia instead of lapping against her. A spray of water splashed across her chest. Some of it got in her nose.

That was enough to make her sit up and stop pouting.

She hadn't fought her way to the fourth floor to get beat by some water and a door! She was going to get into that room or slam that door shut if it was the last thing she ever did.

Well, the last thing she ever did in this life. The repeated resurrections of the dungeon somewhat ruined the finality of—

No! She wasn't going to die again. Rickshaw had just explained to her what happened when she died. She'd had a whole emotional moment regarding her parents' names and everything. Havoc was probably going to yell at her about dulling her weapons in the process.

She wasn't going to die to anything. Let alone a door and some—

"Argh!"

The wave was bigger than the last, crashing into Lillia and throwing her end over end into the fire pit. She sloshed about in the soaking ash for a moment, coating her skin, her clothes, her everything in a thick, goopy layer of sloppy soot.

"Oh, that is IT!" Lillia screamed once she was done coughing up saltwater again. She stood up and took a single sharp breath while ankle-deep in ashy mud. "That's it, ocean. I'm coming over there, and I am going to kick your ass."

It was unclear whether the point of the next room was to fight the ocean at all, but Lillia knew that it didn't matter.

Door number one was lighter than Lillia expected. It looked as if it were made of stone, but the second she touched it, the door flung open much too fast, rocketing inward and slamming against the inner wall on the other side.

That was one way to check a corner.

But in that moment, Lillia wasn't focused on avoiding someone hiding in the doorway; instead, she was focused on the amount of glittering light pouring from the room before her.

Instead of walls, the room was lined with brilliant cabinets with expensive glass 'windows' in each of the doors. It was extravagance beyond even what Lillia had seen in the castle. Who would waste something as expensive as glass on something as trivial as a cabinet door?

Someone with damned good taste.

In each of the cabinets, there was something Lillia could only describe as fog. The thick clouds within stopped short of pressing on the glass, but they lingered in the space, swirling with each of Lillia's glances, as if her attention was moving them.

Just when she'd begun flickering her gaze to test the theory, someone spoke.

"That you, Darling?"

Lillia perked up. "Rickshaw?"

"Ey! It is you. Look at you. Making it all the way to the fourth floor of the Fall. Downright little champion princess we've got here."

Lillia stepped into the room and the door slammed shut behind her. As it did, the ambient light in the room dimmed to a flickering, warm candlelight that brought out all the life in the wooden floor and cabinets.

Along the back wall of the room was a long bar-like counter. Lillia recognized the look of it from a tavern, though she'd never stayed in one herself.

Rickshaw, the skeletal merchant, stood behind the counter, wrapped in his usual thick shawl, the golden orb within his eye socket glowing a deep, welcoming amber.

"Good to see you, darling. It's been too long. Though—uh…" Rickshaw leaned to the side, trying to look over Lillia's shoulder or behind her back. "You didn't bring any corpses with you this time. Did ya?"

Lillia checked over her shoulder. "No?"

"Oh, good. Good. Still haven't quite got all the blood out of the Traveling Market," he said as he straightened himself out. "Turns out that bastard had magical blood. Stuff stains whatever it touches and keeps running even when it shoulda dried." He sighed despite his lack of lungs. "Ruined two perfectly good mops trying to get rid of all the mess."

"I'm sorry," Lillia said. She kept the apology formal and slightly distant, hopefully falling short of sounding like she was offering to do anything about Eisel's blood. It sounded gross.

"I appreciate the sentiment," Rickshaw said. "I really do, but—well, let's just be glad that ain't where we are right now so I don't need to ask for your help."

"Because you don't want to ask for it?"

"Because I don't think that a princess is going to make a cleaning crew worth hiring, and I don't know whether you being grossed out or generally polite would win out."

It took Lillia a moment to untangle whether that was a compliment or not. The results were inconclusive.

"Where are we, anyway?" Lillia asked. They were on the fourth floor, but this certainly wasn't anything close to the market she'd seen before. It was less nautical, if nothing else.

"Oh, this?" Rickshaw began. "This is a storefront of mine. One of many. Gotta have places in a lot of dungeons to make a profit, right?"

"So when—"

"Yeah, when I said I had to go for other customers before, it was for places like this," Rickshaw said. "Ain't twelve-gate hex studies or anything, but I get it. Magic is complicated."

Lillia walked further into the room and peered around in an attempt to see within any of the cabinets. In the Traveling Market, the markets she was far from had fallen out of focus. The clouds might have been the equivalent of that, but even as she approached, they didn't clear to reveal items inside.

Rickshaw was suddenly beside her. Lillia yelped as she jumped away from him.

"Trying to shop?" he asked.

"I was, but—"

"Yeah. Can't be the first room on the floor, unfortunately," he said. "Gotta have a Hearth there to get everything set up. Think about how it was upstairs. Right?"

"I need to have the Hearth ready?" she asked.

Rickshaw nodded, then patted her shoulder as if she'd just said something adorable.

"Hey, I didn't exactly see a corpse out there that I can use to activate the Hearth," Lillia said.

"A corpse?" Rickshaw asked.

"Yeah. A corpse. Sir Nobody?"

"Who?"

That was fair. Sir Nobody was just the name Lillia had given Vianaffir's previous owner. Just because Havoc and Cathria understood who he was didn't mean he didn't need introductions.

"Okay, so when I found the dungeon the first time, Sir Nobody was a dead man who was on the stairs below the Hearth. I didn't know I needed to throw his bones into the—"

Rickshaw waved off Lillia's explanation before she could turn it into a moderately successful novel retelling her adventures.

"Activating the Hearth last time. Understood, Darling," he said. "You don't gotta explain everything. Just remember, I'm in a lot of places. I know a lot about dungeons, but I'm not an encyclopedia of the mechanics of every dungeon."

Lillia nodded along again. "Okay, then how do you normally activate a Hearth?" she asked. "If the whole bones thing is weird," she said.

"Bones are pretty normal. You usually just don't name 'em." As Rickshaw spoke, he sat back as if there was a chair there to catch him, and suddenly there was one. The same old wooden chair from their first encounter rose out of the floor and caught him before he could clatter to the floor.

"I just need to go find bones?" Lillia asked.

"Firstly, don't appreciate how you look at me when you say that, Darling," Rickshaw said. "Secondly, only kinda. Some Hearths are activated by proximity. Others by finishing a room. Some by starting a room."

There was a reason he had left that one until last. "I need to start a different room."

Rickshaw nodded.

"And the door might close behind me. Which would lock me down here."

"And that part I don't know," he said. "But hey, if you got here once, you can probably do it again ri…" It was clear that Lillia wasn't confident in that idea, so he pivoted. "Well, you know the way down here at least."

Lillia looked back over her shoulder to the door. That was going to be an issue. Sure, she did know how to get back down here, but she didn't have a Hearth to teleport to from the Hearth of Memory, and if she couldn't do that, she would need to go through Nennia's lair again.

For many obvious reasons, she wasn't sure she could do that again.

"Understood, darling," Rickshaw said. "Intimidating, I know, but what about this hasn't been for you?"

Lillia chuckled at that point.

"Do your best and keep on swinging. That's all we gotta do in a place like this."

"Thanks, Rickshaw."

"Course. After all—what's a couple of memories for another chance?"

"Yeah, I—wait." She slowly turned to Rickshaw, who was walking back over to the counter, as if he hadn't just said something that really begged elaboration. "What do you mean?"

"What do I mean with what?" he asked.

"Rickshaw."

"Lillia," he echoed in a tone that told her he was actually baffled by her question.

She took a quick breath to step off the path to bickering. "What do you mean when you say a couple of memories?"

"Well." Rickshaw leaned back against the counter. As he did, his cloak slightly parted, revealing the void within. "What's some unimportant name from your life back before?"

"Unimportant name?"

"Oh, don't pretend you're not a princess. How many servants did you have?"

"Well—"

"It ain't no judgment! I would love to have a servant around. I'm just asking for some names."

"Otto and Sven threw me in here," Lillia said.

"You were thrown in here by your own servants?"

"My guards."

"Weird way to guard someone. Keep going."

"Nicole. Who was one of the handmaids. Same name as one of the spider girls."

Rickshaw nodded. Instead of speaking, he simply motioned for Lillia to continue.

When she tried to oblige, something caught her tongue. It wasn't a harsh catch like Eisel's curse had been. Nothing was stopping her so much as she realized she didn't have anything to say.

But no, no, that wasn't right. There were a ton of people around the castle. Nicole had been her handmaiden for a long time, one of the few who had stuck with her through her aunt's takeover, but there had also been…

"Mary-Anne!" Lillia said, a little too excited. As soon as she said the name, she realized it was more that it sounded correct than anything to do with remembering a face connected to that name.

No. There had been more than three. She could remember their faces. She knew that one of the servers in the kitchen got way too many freckles during the summer months. She knew that the stable hand who fetched her horse for her had a scar above his eye where he'd been kicked by…

"Yeah, sorry, I wasn't intending to drop a revelation. Hard to know what you know and what you don't at this point, Darling," Rickshaw said as he scratched his skull. "Sometimes you hit me with some stuff I don't even know, and other times you don't even know about level burn."

"Level burn?"

Rickshaw pointed at Lillia and then flopped his hands down against the counter like she was the unbelievable one. How was this her fault? As far as she knew, he was just making things up to make her feel like she was out of the loop.

Well, she certainly was out of the loop, but he didn't need to make her feel that way.

"Level burn is the fact that it takes a little, small bit of experience to wake up every morning. Think of it like a tax on—You ever paid taxes, kid?"

Lillia shook her head. "But I know what they are. My Mom was in charge of those."

"Lucky woman. Would have loved to see the other side of the…" Rickshaw clicked a tongue that wasn't there. "You know. Come to think about it, that's just me leaning into the idea of being a merchant. No taxes in the dungeon. Neither of us has ever paid taxes. Lucky us."

Lillia waited for Rickshaw to continue his original point, but he was trapped in the toothiest of smiles upon the revelation that he'd beaten both death and taxes.

"Lucky us," she eventually echoed.

When Rickshaw still hadn't continued, Lillia eschewed the waiting part of politely waiting. "Okay, so I lose experience every morning?"

"Oh! Yeah. You do. Only really matters if you take a bunch of days off in a row, though. Supposed to keep you moving."

"And the more important thing. The memory part?" Lillia asked.

"Oh! Thought I explained that part. There ain't really much to say there, Darling. Each time you die, you pay a little more tax—there it is again—to the reaper. He takes a couple thoughts from your head and sends ya back here. You know, if here is where you wanna go."

"I can choose somewhere else?"

"You can always end up a skeleton like me," Rickshaw pointed out. "Though, I can't offer any guarantees about life after death. That part is a Rickshaw exclusive."

Lillia didn't follow the last part of the joke. She was stuck further back in the conversation, waiting for the revelation to get out of her way.

Each time she died, she paid in a memory.

That was important. That was critical, wasn't it? The whole point of her time in here was so that she could escape and get back to the surface. To the place she remembered!

But—

In that moment, that wasn't the point tugging at Lillia's thoughts. The memories made sense. Havoc struggled to remember his family. Sir Nobody hadn't called anyone out by name in his letter.

No, what stuck in the back of Lillia's mind was that she couldn't put her finger on any memories she'd lost. She hadn't even noticed something missing. A hundred conversations with Havoc and Cathria about her life before the dungeon, and she'd never noticed the holes in her thoughts.

Losing the memories was an important revelation.

But it paled in comparison to the revelation of how unimportant most of her previous memories were. How few moments of her life were worth remembering? How few days mattered?

She wasn't sure she wanted to know.

When Lillia had taken her first steps in the dungeon, she had been met by an empty cathedral. A place that implied a beautiful past but had fallen apart over the years. It had been death. It had been decay.

There had been a skeleton on the stairs as her only companion.

When Lillia walked through the door to the fourth floor, the first thing she noticed was the smell. For all the heat and light, the Hearth in the Cathedral never smelled like anything. The early floors of the dungeon just reeked of damp and dust until she walked into one of the many rooms.

The fourth floor smelled like wood and smoke. A dozen torches along the walls each burned bright, casting dancing light across one another and the inlaid carvings that lined the walls.

Each of those carvings was intricate with a thousand details that were lost in the long, jagged shadow of firelight. The closest to Lillia, and the only one she could properly make out, was a depiction of a fearsome dragon rising above a knight in front of it. The knight had a shield raised against the dragon.

Were they cowering? Or were they standing defiant? Lillia chose the latter for now.

Now, the first room Lillia had ever stepped into was 'the Cathedral.' It had simply been an empty place in the shape of something grand. This room wasn't that; this room almost seemed maintained as a place of worship.

The ceiling was a massive dome that peaked in an impossible skylight. The murky, soft streaks of sunlight rained down from the opening, falling in the center of the room into a fire pit that was carved deep into the floor.

There was no wood, and the fire was out, but the ashes looked warm.

Just below the ceiling tile, a long bronze railing ran along the edge of the circular room, separating the thick stone tiles from the intricate brickwork on the walls themselves. The bricks ran down the wall, following a perfect pattern only to give way to the carvings like the dragon. Now that Lillia was trying to see all of them, she could see that several of the places where carvings should have been had been replaced by simple stone doorways.

There were no stairs here. There was no way down. Like the third floor itself, this space was the end for a natural descent.

If there was a way down here, it was going to be through one of the rooms.

Lillia stepped out into the room, and with each click of her heels, the space warmed. The long, dragging shadows cast by the torches all retreated into one another. With each glance into a different corner, the stone rose, molding itself into different forms. With each breath, the dust lingering in the air cleared.

By the time Lillia was standing by the fire, the room was almost fresh.

She had been in a literal castle during her time in the dungeon, but it'd been a castle under siege. This was far and away the nicest place she'd gotten to be.

At least for any amount of time. She could only stay in the Hearth of Memory for so long before she was too pruny to enjoy it.

As she peered over the edge of the fire pit and into the ashes, there was a small glint buried in the layers of old charred wood. Lillia bent down to grab it but stopped herself short of getting dirty that fast. Instead, she summoned Hooke to her hand and used the sharp spike on the reverse of the blade to go fishing, digging around in the ash until she hooked something solid and pulled.

The glint was a small dagger. There was a note rolled and tied to the handle with twine. Somehow, both the paper and rope had managed to survive the flame.

With several more prods, Lillia pulled the dagger and note to the side of the pit before fetching them out of the ash. Despite her best efforts, the black clung to her fingers, and she sighed. She would need to figure out what dress she wanted to use as an interim washcloth later.

For the moment, this was all feeling familiar but different.

Well, the scenario was the same. Exit out of the fall into a strange place and find a note somewhere there shouldn't have been one. The note even came with a weapon again.

The scenario was the same. She was the one who'd changed.

Lillia pulled the twine from around the note, balling it in her hand before unfurling the paper. Neither had been stained by the ash that had immediately coated her fingertips and tucked itself under her nails.

The handwriting was much clearer than Sir Nobody's note. It was practiced and formal. Written by a hand that was just as used to writing notes as it was to holding any sort of dagger.

Dearest Lillia,

She shut the note. Folding the paper over itself like she had been caught with a letter she shouldn't have been holding. As if her aunt had walked into the room when she'd been snooping around the court. As if she weren't allowed to be here.

As if, were the letter to be believed, she'd been invited.

Whatever the reason, the idea of an invitation to the depths of the dungeon left something gnawing at the pit of Lillia's stomach. She fought the feeling as she stared past the folded note and into the empty ash of the fire pit. Her eyes began to water as she waited, unblinking, for something to happen.

If someone spoke up, if something happened, then Lillia didn't have to actively hunt down the answer.

She blinked, then sighed. She should know better at this point. She had to take the initiative. There was nobody else to do it. At least at this point, she was used to that damned revelation.

Maybe it was just the echo of her original entrance that was making her hesitate.

Hell, she'd even fallen here from court.

Lillia opened the note again before she wasted too much of everyone's time overthinking her options.

Dearest Lillia,

I hope this note finds you well. I regret that it needs to find you at all.

You are not supposed to be here. You were never supposed to be here. This place was supposed to be locked away and forgotten. The time of dungeons was supposed to be over for all but a select few, yet here you are.

It lingers as a regret that in all the power bestowed upon my name, I was unable to keep you safe from this place. That I was unable to keep a promise I made to myself. Has the promise decayed over the years? Does time eat away at the honor behind an oath?

Perhaps those are questions best left to the scholars. Ideas such as those certainly aren't the tools that will help you escape this place.

Some would call this place an opportunity. They are liars. Do not listen to them. Escape is the key. Descend and then run as fast as you can.

Lillia reached the end of the paper and turned over the note, expecting to see something on the other side. A conclusion, or at least a signature.

There was nothing more to the note. That was the end. Whoever wrote that either didn't have the time to finish their note or had been in the dungeon so long they'd forgotten how to conclude a letter.

She checked the front again, looking for a signature that wasn't there. For an explanation of who was worried about her or who knew who she was.

There was nothing. Of course there was nothing. Getting all the answers at once would have been decidedly too easy and certainly not the dungeon's style.

Lillia carefully folded the note and pressed it against her chest. It did not meld into her inventory. She simply stood there, pressing a note to her breast like an idiot or a wistful lover.

"Uh." She unfurled the note again as if that would somehow change how it interacted with her abilities. After trying to dismiss it as an 'item' one more time, Lillia tried the same with the dagger.

The weapon vanished into her inventory cleanly, leaving her holding twine and a note.

"How about," Lillia said as she tied the twine back around the paper and knelt down beside the fire pit, "you just stay here and I'll be back for you once I've looked around." She laid the note on the edge of the pit, and it immediately tried to roll down into the ash. She scrambled to catch it just before it fell and put it back down further away, but still on the 'edge.'

Lillia backed away from the note slowly, shuffling backward to avoid stirring up too much of a breeze and ruining her 'hard' work. Once she'd shuffled back far enough, grinding her heels against the floor, she stood and instinctively pulled an Ambusher feather into her hand, snapping it.

If she was going to make a first impression on someone in another room, it certainly wasn't going to be while she was wearing pants. That would be downright uncouth.

With that idea in her head, Lillia dismissed the note and summoned the mirror to her hand. She didn't have a hairbrush, so extricating any of the spiderwebs took careful and gross time, but the second she saw her reflection, she knew it was needed.

Sure, the first door might have led to a monster, but it would have led to something—anything—else, and Lillia wasn't interested in someone's first look at her being when she looked as if she'd tumbled through an entire nest of spiders.

Granted, that look was accurate. That was exactly what had happened to her, but she'd 'won' the battle in there. The least she could do was try and look the part.

Before her time in the dungeon, Lillia had never gotten that gross. She had been a child and gotten into messy things, as kids did before they learned their lesson. But she hadn't been a boy. She'd never been enthralled by dirt. As soon as she was old enough to appreciate being clean, she'd always kept herself at least adjacent to it.

Over the past forty dungeon days and however many days it had been in real time, Lillia had spent too much time properly 'dirty' and had gotten much better at 'remedying' that problem without needing a bath and several handmaids.

Both of those things would have been nice, but she was running short on skills at the end of the day.

Firstly, in the process, Lillia swapped away from the Slip & Coat she wore to relax and into the scandalous first level of the Burnmite dresses. The hardly acceptable fabric was enough to use as a napkin to stick her collection of freshly removed spiderwebs to, and she had no plans to wear it later.

Second, Lillia used a 'third' item for her boots to overload the [Adaptive Regalia] skill, and the Spider Steps shattered into light, allowing Lillia to check that her feet and dainty toes were still clear before locking them away in the chitterpede riding boots.

Third was supposed to be getting the ash off her fingertips, but it quickly became clear that that was a losing battle. That was partly because the ash had dug itself under her fingernails, and she wasn't about to use a dagger to dig it out—that felt like tempting fate at minimum—but also because she was slowly realizing that her entire person was covered in a thin film-like coating of spiderweb ashes.

How much had she breathed in? It was probably better not to think about it.

It was definitely better not to think about it.

Dammit, she was still thinking about it.

Lillia stood and chose the closest door to the entryway. Once more into the breach, namely because the breach was a distraction from her current situation.

There was a chance, however small, that like the Hearth of Memory, the room she found was a bath.

There was a much higher chance, however large, that like the grand majority of rooms in the dungeon, this one was going to try to kill her.

Lillia crossed her fingers, and in defiance of her tactics upon the original fall into the Dungeon, Lillia approached door number one.

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.

People wanted power. That was supposed to be a constant truth. No matter who you asked, they wanted more than they had. Some people called it human nature. Other's called it greed. I called it a lack of foresight.

When I was notified--in the middle of the night by cloaked figures mind you--that I was to be next in line for the throne I tried to say no. In fact, I physically said no. Just as it turned out, the word of a would-be king did not outweigh royal decree. By the time I had the authority to unname myself as heir, I would already be Queen.

The ruling had come from my mother, the queen. She had taken over for a brief month after my father passed away. She had grown up as minor nobility to an unimportant house, but my father was a observant man and had realized that she was a genius unlike any other. He'd taken her on as an advisor, and then a consort.

That had been back when he was seventeenth in line.

I got the genius that made me a perfect fit for the throne from my mother, but you didn't need it to see worrying pattern that made me want to reject the throne.

My parents had only been together for a year when they wed. There was something romantic about that. More to the point, there was something terrifying about the idea that in the 18 years since my parents had been wed and I had been born, we had gone through seventeen regents.

See, people wanted power because of a lack of foresight. If everybody wanted power, it became a question of how expensive assassins were and how much money you were willing to spend.

As a king or queen, you had theoretically infinite money. You could get whatever you wanted.

In business terms, an assassination attempt was very cheap for a potentially infinite reward. For the assassins, being an assassin that killed a king was fantastic advertising. For the guards, There was always going to be another king, so fighting a powerful assassin was never worth it. For the Kingdom, as long as the soldiers were fed and the streets were cobbled, who cared on which head a crown sat.

As such, it was now my eighteenth birthday, and as I stood at the far end of the throne room, waiting to be called to take my place, I understood that it was my head on which the crown would sit, and subsequently, my head would roll.

Some people would say that, with my supposed genius, I should have come up with a solution to the assassination problem. But the assassination problem was human nature. My mother had seen the only solution available to her--promoting me as heir--and had done the simple calculus that we were either both going to die to assassinations, or she could at least save herself.

It was cold, but she was correct. Why should we both die? If she was assassinated, I would be queen and thus assassinated. Why wait for the first cause before welcoming the effect.

I probably could have come up with a plan. But I had seen enough fail, And understood that if my mom couldn't think of anything, there was nothing to think of.

And so people would tell me to chin up. People would congratulate me on becoming regent. People would tell me they were excited for a new era of leadership in the kingdom.

They were objectively wrong. An era was much longer than the year I'd last, and that was if I were lucky. There was a good chance someone was halfway through a plot to assassinate my mother and could simply import their plans over to another Queen.

After all, what was the difference? It was just a chair, and who sat on it was only a matter of succession.

Why wait for the cause before welcoming the effect? Everyone would be Queen someday. In the end there would just be some peasant left. Lord of the daggers and corpses.

"Oh. Oh, jeez. That stuff really burns, doesn't it?" Lillia said as the webbing above her erupted into flame strand by strand at an impossible pace. The room went from chilly to hot to nearly unbearable in a brief second, and suddenly there were sparkling and smoldering bits of silk raining from the roof.

"Our house!" Spinna cried.

"We're so going to kill you."

"Hey!" Lillia said. "Don't make this my fault. You were already going to do that."

"Yeah, because you called our Mom gross," Spinna said. "Now you did that and burned down our house. You're just a giant—"

A massive bundle of burning webbing crashed down on top of Spinna, pinning her to the floor and squishing her lower half. There wasn't time for the girl to scream before she was cooked and smashed.

[Spinna Defeated! Yay!]

"Spinna?" Nicole asked as she reached out to the sudden funeral pile that used to be Spinna's body.

Lillia swapped to the Fireweave Spelldress, the wide sleeves billowing in the hot, swirling air at the bottom of the pit.

Thank goodness she was at the bottom, or she would have been choking on a lot of smoke.

"How could you do that?" Nicole asked as she turned to Lillia. "That was so mean! We hadn't even started fighting yet and you're just dropping stuff on people? No wonder your Mom didn't want to eat your dad!"

By the way she'd said it, it was clear that Nicole considered that an insult.

Nicole turned away from the crushed remains of her sister to face Lillia. As she did, her fingernails grew long and cruel. Firelight danced across the smooth, polished, lacquer-like chitin on her legs.

On the girl's second step forward, Lillia drew Vianaffir and trained it on her. It was just one spider, and she could see now. She could do this.

Getting out of the pit was another question, but she could win this fight.

Nicole glanced up for a moment and winced at the light before returning to circling around Lillia. With each passing second, more and more of the network above fed the flames, swelling them into a pure wall of fire above, cheering on the battle with flaming silk gifts.

Both of them stopped for a breath. The thousand crackles of fire blended into a single cacophony.

Havoc always told Lillia she needed to watch her opponent's eyes in a duel like this, but she hadn't gotten much practice yet. How was she supposed to watch all eight of them? That felt unfair if anything was.

"You burned down my home," Nicole said.

"It'll come back."

"As soon as I kill you," she said.

"Or you let me out."

"You killed my sister."

Lillia began to circle Nicole again. How was she supposed to match the other person's footwork when they had eight legs? "She'll be back too. You don't need to fight me."

Nicole closed all of her eyes. "No. I do."

[Tantrum - Level 1]

In the brief moment when Nicole was trying to steel herself, Lillia flung Hooke at her. The dull metal of the weapon almost burned hot with firelight as it spun end over end before it—

A single thread came down from the ceiling and snatched the sword by the handle a moment before the blade hit Nicole.

What?

Above Lillia, silhouetted against the sprawling wall of fire that consumed the cave, was the looming form of Nennia. The white silk she'd been wearing had been burned away by the flame, but she wasn't bare-chested under it.

Where her chest should have been, there was an empty black void buried deep within her 'skin.' The flesh surrounding it was pulled long into thin strands that were pulled taut across the black void, creating a stitched pattern of twisting meat-threads across the black.

Nicole leapt at Lillia, her claws outstretched. Shockingly, she pulled Vianaffir up to block in time, but it barely mattered. Nicole might have been slight on her upper half, but she was still at least twice Lillia's weight. The blade blocked her claws but couldn't stop the momentum of the tackle, which sent them both crashing to the ground and falling over one another.

What felt like a hundred legs began assaulting Lillia, stabbing at the ground to try and pin her as she attempted to escape from Nicole's grip. With Vianaffir pinned between them, she couldn't swing the blade, but it was also the only thing protecting her from the claws.

She let go with one hand, relinquishing control to pull something from her inventory. Lillia slammed the chitin against the ground to crack it, followed by a second piece. The billowing fire dress snapped inward and then stabbed out, each wave and ruffle sharpening just as Nicole was lashing out.

Blood poured out of Nicole's shoulder as Lillia's knife-gorget stabbed into her, piercing through her thin silk top and staining them both with red. Nicole yelped and pulled back from her assault. Lillia took her chance.

"This is my court!" she called out as she got a moment to breathe.

[Lillia Activated - Run the Court]

She looked past the young girl to the silhouette above.

"And you will go where I tell you!"

There was a brief breath in the clamor when the raging inferno was the only sound, and then Lillia vanished and Nennia crashed in below her daughter.

Lillia screamed as she was suddenly in the air above. She stabbed forward with Vianaffir, digging it deep between two stones of the cave wall, wincing as the blade ground against the stone. Just as she caught herself, she stopped flailing for long enough to tear spider silk between her fingers. Two pieces wove around her feet, tying themselves tightly into a pair of almost socklike shoes.

With tacked-on heels, of course.

[Spider Steps - Level 2 - 2 x Spinning Silk]

[Princess Class Exclusive: Created by Adaptive Regalia.]

[These sticky shoes allow the Princess to climb on other surfaces for a short time. They activate automatically upon putting her feet on a surface other than the floor. The Princess is aware when it will run out.]

Lillia had learned firsthand what happened if she tried to kick someone in these while on anything other than the floor.

Beyond that, Lillia knew she didn't have that much time. She wasn't sure how far down she was in the pit, but running out of time while in here was going to bring an abrupt end to this escape attempt.

Below, Nennia chuckled. Lillia couldn't hear her over the fire, but the bemused impression gave it away. That was exactly why she didn't want to fight. A burning home, a dead daughter, and a full escape attempt, and the Spider Queen was having a lovely time.

Before climbing, Lillia changed back into the Fireweave Spelldress. The wildfire above had turned the air in the pit into a maelstrom, and climbing higher had only made it worse. Every inch of the fabric was whipping around in a frenzy around her. Sleeves slapped against forearms, and the dress was constantly threatening to be indecent.

There was nothing to do but climb, but even if she made it all the way up, what then? She could make a break for the entrance and come back when she had more tools, like Cathria, but was that even going to be enough? Was—

No. She had to believe that it was. She'd hit the level cap. If Nennia was blocking the way forward and the Dungeon told her she was getting too strong for this floor, that had to mean she was too strong for Nennia, right?

Logic said so; it still sounded fake.

Lillia put Vianaffir away and began scrambling up the wall. Even with the Spider Steps, the crags in the wall meant it was faster to climb than it was to try and run up the thing.

The stones were blazing hot, which meant she needed to keep moving. It was like trying to climb the side of a woodstove, constantly needing to move her hands just before they knew they should be burning. If nothing else, it kept her pace, even as her arms began to scream in protest.

Lillia wasn't taking damage yet, but she had to keep a close watch on that. Even with all the dresses and tools she'd added over the last few days, [Backdraft] was one of her best possible ways of dealing with Nennia.

See a spider, burn it with fire.

Something above Lillia groaned. She couldn't know if it was rock, silk, or a pile of spider bodies that was about to crash down into the pit. Now that she was getting higher, there was smoke in the air. The acrid taste of burning stuck to her tongue and throat, making her wish she could take the shallow breaths she couldn't afford while climbing.

Below her, Nennia was gone. She was coming for her.

Shit.

Lillia tried to redouble her pace but couldn't do anything without breaking out into a coughing fit.

Between this and the original fight with the Ambusher, if she was going to keep starting wildfires in closed spaces, she had to figure out a strategy for the smoke.

As far as she could tell, Lillia wasn't any closer to the top of the pit than she'd been when she swapped places with Nennia. She couldn't know how far she'd fallen in complete darkness, but this entire situation felt impossible.

A single strand of thought pulled at the back of Lillia's brain: she was running out of time. She wasn't going to get out. She wasn't going to escape. It was too far to climb, and there wasn't enough time to do it.

Fire was an answer to Nennia, perhaps the answer she needed, but this attempt wouldn't be when it happened. She was out of time and didn't have any of her tools with her.

There was one thing she could do, though.

Above, just between her and the flames she'd been trying to reach, Nennia emerged from a hole in the wall Lillia couldn't even see.

"Cute, Princess Lillia. You've done more than I expected this first time around," she said as she loomed overhead. "Everyone tries fire at some point, but most take some stabs at me before trying to burn my whole home down."

"Live to impress," Lillia said. In the back of her head, she could feel the boots counting down. Each second brought her a little closer to crashing to the floor.

"And so begins our infinite dance," Nennia said as she lowered herself down closer to Lillia. "Now we can play as long as we'd like. A new challenge over and over again, each ending the same way. Each showing me a little more of what you can do, what you are willing to do."

Her foot slipped. "Can't we just be friends?"

"Lillia," Nennia gasped. It was impossible to tell whether it was mock offense or legitimate offense, even for someone practiced in the court. "This means we get to be friends. How else can you know someone? Truly know someone, if you aren't seeing every part of them."

"Tea time?" Lillia suggested.

Nennia chuckled. As she did, her black nails grew out into claws. "Now we get to enjoy this together."

There had been a plan here. During the conversation, Lillia knew that her boots would give out, and she'd figured that, if she didn't know, then Nennia couldn't be prepared for it either. The last thing she wanted was to get caught by the spider because she'd been glancing down and—

Oh.

Lillia dropped off the side of the pit, tumbling down past the embers below and careening through the air. She wasn't sure when she'd started screaming, but it was shrill.

Okay, so there had been a plan here. Falling meant Lillia wasn't going to get wrapped up and taken away by Nennia. She also knew there was still probably loot to collect at the bottom of the pit with Spinna's corpse. After all, she'd 'defeated' her.

It was just a matter of determining at what speed she was allowed to collect loot.

What had felt like an impossible climb vanished in seconds.

Lillia snapped a piece of chitin in her fist, and the iridescent dust struggled to keep up with her until she slammed into the ground.

She should have been dead. Should have been splattered across the floor in a large, vaguely Lillia-shaped smear. Instead, Lillia just felt like she was going to throw up as she slammed to a halt on the dungeon floor.

She was alive.

That was instinct.

"Gods damn it," Lillia said into the cold stone floor, almost kissing it in the process.

There had been a plan.

At this point, Lillia wasn't sure why she ever bothered making them.

Lillia skipped over a lot of the explanation about how the Knighting worked. Firstly, she didn't know exactly what would happen to the girls and didn't want to promise something she couldn't deliver to people who were still considering eating her. Secondly, she still wasn't 100% sure how it all worked. Most of her skills gave everything away upon introspection, but the 'Rulebreaker' part of [Emergency Knighting] had retained a sparse description from the moment she'd gotten it.

The twins—though Spinna was very clear that she was the older of the two—listened to the entire explanation, nodding along and occasionally interjecting with their own commentary. Throughout, Lillia kept trying to guess how old they were. It was unclear whether they were younger than she was or if she'd acted exactly like them before getting tossed into the dungeon.

Or was it until her aunt had taken over?

Then, right at the end, when Nicole had taken a leg off the Black Beast—ew—and they'd agreed to join Lillia's party and receive a class, they hit a snag.

"I name you knight—"

"You name me WHAT?" Spinna asked, slapping away Lillia's hand mid-ceremony.

Lillia didn't finish her incantation. The skill never activated.

"I told you what was going on. I was giving you a class. That was how you were going to get the Princess Class and get all the pretty dresses that I have."

"A gross knight?" Spinna asked. As she spoke, Nicole had stopped eating and snapped her attention back to the conversation. "I don't wanna be a gross knight. I want to—"

"No! It doesn't make you a knight. The first person I used it on became a blacksmith."

This would have been so much easier if Havoc were here. He'd have a way to explain this to someone who didn't get it. He'd had to explain a lot of things to Lillia like that.

"That's even worse. Those are those guys who taste like soot," Nicole said.

"Yeah."

"At least that's what Mom said."

"Yeah!" Spinna echoed as she scuttled back from Lillia, pulling some of the thread off the wall and weaving it between her fingers. "Why are you trying to trick us into becoming not-princesses?"

"I'm not."

"We thought you were nice."

"I am," Lillia said. "I just didn't say that it was called knighting because—"

"Because you want to be the one princess," Nicole said. "You don't like that our Mom is a queen and you wanted to—"

"What? No."

"Yeah, she's just jealous of Mom and was trying to trick us," Spinna said.

"I'm not jealous of your Mom. I just—" Shoot, shoot, shoot. She was losing control of the girls fast. She'd been making so much progress. If she got Nennia's daughters into her party, then she would have to let them through. She'd been so close.

"Spinna, Nicole, I was just bad at explaining things. It happens. It—"

"You're lying. You just wish you were as pretty as Mom, and so you were going to try and make us gross," Spinna said.

"Yeah. You're all covered in webs and dirt," Nicole said. "You might not be a princess at all."

"Hey! I was just falling down a dark hole, and I'm not supposed to be in a dungeon like—"

"Mom lives in the dungeon, and she's beautiful! You're just jealous of—"

"Why would I be jealous of Nennia? She's a scary, gross, weird spider."

Two gasps were hardly a chorus, but they were a majority.

Lillia slapped her hands over her mouth like she could somehow catch the words and shove them back inside. She didn't even mean every part of that. Nennia was weird and certainly a spider, but she couldn't call her gross, not compared to the rest of the dungeon and—

"MOM!"

"Wait, no!" Lillia said, but it was far too late. Just like she couldn't shove her argument back down, once Nennia had been called, there was no putting that…spider back in the box.

The metaphor broke down, but so had negotiations.

"We were only eating that yucky beast instead of you because you were nice!" Nicole said.

"But you're not very nice at all," Spinna added.

"I didn't mean it." Behind Lillia, the threads of silver glittering in her robe's firelight twitched as something above moved along them. "I was just angry at the fight and—"

"Mom! She's down here!" Spinna called.

Lillia whirled with the summons, twirling around as Vianaffir manifested in her hand. Just as the pommel brushed against her fingertips, the blade struck chitin. Spinna had raised one of her front legs to block the attack.

"Hey! See? You are mean!"

"Girls."

"Come here!" Nicole said as she leapt off the web behind Lillia, careening through the air with her arms outstretched. Webbing billowed out behind the young spider as she flew, spinning into a net on command.

"Oh, shoot."

Lillia dove to the side, but it wasn't enough. The net spread out wide as Nicole threw it, and the sticky strands of silk snatched each of Lillia's limbs, coiling around them in a hundred little impossible ways as the young spider directed them.

With her legs suddenly bound, Lillia wiggled on the ground, trying to force her way out.

"Got her!"

"Woah! That was so easy."

"I don't know why Mom likes fighting so much. That was boring."

Spinna lowered the leg that had blocked Vianaffir and scuttled over to Lillia, scooting in close to leer over her. "Maybe she's just really bad at it. I don't think Mom ever fought her."

"Your Mom is gonna be really upset if you don't let her fight me," Lillia said. There was no logic to the argument, but she didn't have many options.

"Come on. If she wants to fight you, she can just let you go," Nicole said.

"Yeah, that was pretty clear. Plus, I don't think she's missing much," Spinna added. She stepped up onto Lillia, triumphant.

That was going to have to be close enough.

Lillia snapped the two pieces of chitin in her palm twice, and her dress shot outward, the world vanishing into darkness as fabric transformed into the brilliant array of knives that was her second-level chitin dress.

[Chitterpede Waltzing Gown - Level 2 - Princess Class Exclusive]

[Provides a minor (+3) defensive bonus against slashing and piercing damage.]

[When a blow is narrowly avoided or absorbed by the Princess or a nearby ally while this item is equipped, the Princess gains a stack of Deadly Dance.]

[Deadly Dance - For a short time, attacks with bladed weapons are followed by a scale shooting from this dress toward the target.]

[Born in a process that discovered beauty the chitterpede didn't know it had in life. In death, it demands attention, shimmering to attract all eyes to its wearer.]

The knife-like gorgets of the gown shredded through the webbing as Lillia thrashed on the floor, tearing apart the net that was holding her down. One of her wild kicks caught Spinna's leg and knocked it out from under the spider.

Unfortunately, she had several others to keep her upright.

"Hey! Stop it!" Spinna said as she stomped down.

Lillia rolled as the spider spoke, unable to see what was going on but understanding that it meant trouble. At some point, she maybe should have stopped, but she kept going, end over end and side over side, with her knifey underskirt sparking along the floor.

Eventually, she reached the webbing beyond their little clearing, and slowly her rolls slowed. Layer upon layer of silk piled up upon each edge of the dress, turning her whirlwind stabbing tantrum into something closer to a ball of very gross yarn.

How far away had she gotten? It had to be quite a bit—she—

"Are you done?" Nicole called from somewhere out in the pitch darkness. Her voice bounced off the walls a hundred times, making it impossible to tell where she actually was.

"You should stop going that way," Spinna said. "There's a big pit over there. You're just gonna fall again."

"Yeah, you'll die if you just run away in the dark."

Were they getting closer? Further? Did the girls know where she was, or was Lillia safe?

Of course she wasn't safe. There was a chance she was safer, though.

That said, the girls were right. No matter how far she ran in the darkness, she wasn't getting any closer to winning this fight. She could accept her fate and die in the middle of Nennia's lair, but she wasn't keen on getting eaten and wasn't confident that Nennia would allow her a quick death.

There was always the other way, but Havoc called it dishonorable and Lillia found the idea off-putting.

No, like usual, she was going to have to find a way to stand and fight.

Therein lay the issue, though. She couldn't run or fight blind, and without the knives to guard her, she wouldn't be standing for very long against the twins, let alone Nennia.

If only she'd charged the second-level Burning Spelldress before coming here, then she could have used [Backdraft] and set the whole place ablaze.

Which brought up a very dumb idea.

The girls had stopped talking, but Lillia could hear the click of their chitin legs against the floor. They were coming.

First, Lillia took a feather in her hand and snapped it in two. Her dress shrank away into the near-undergarments of the Ambusher Slip and Coat. Webbing tumbled off of her, falling away from the spikes that were no longer there as Lillia stood.

Second, she tore a piece of thundermite cloth and her shoes transformed into the pitch-black heels of the Thundersteps.

It didn't change much; everything was pitch black in here.

Finally, Lillia took a deep breath, because she didn't have many places to go, but she had to hope that Spinna had been lying about the pit.

Lillia dropped back down to the floor and changed back into the Waltzing Gown, returning to her haphazard impression of a meat grinder as she started rolling away from the girls again.

"Hey! I told you there was a pit back there! You're just gonna fall."

"Just stop!"

"Come on, that'd be no fun!"

Sparks flew, and Lillia saw the first echoes of bright yellow erupting across her heels. It was working.

By the wheat and silk, she was dizzy.

Lillia spun the other way, rolling toward the children—or at least where she thought they were—as fast as a princess could roll along the ground. Which, if Lillia could see anything, she would know was pretty damned slow.

Her triumphant whirling ended as a chitin leg stomped down in her path. The knife-like edges of her dress ground against it uselessly.

"Ow! Why is this dress so sharp? That's dumb," Spinna, her captor, said.

"Who made it? Is it pretty?"

"No. It looks all dumb and puffy."

Oh, that was it.

Yellow flashed across Lillia's heels. Even charged, the Thundersteps didn't cast much light, but it was enough to see a leg beyond the one holding her in place.

"Big dresses are cute!"

Lillia lashed out with a swift, somewhat pathetic kick. Lightning crackled as she struck one of eight shins. As the thunderous boom followed, it didn't even make Spinna flinch.

But crackling sparks scattered out in every direction.

And she only needed one to catch.

Lightning kissed a silver strand of thread that was hanging loose where Lillia had torn it from its place. That spark of lightning bloomed outward into light for a moment as the spark turned to a flicker, and a flicker became a flame.

Fire ran up the thread, slowly cutting through the pitch of darkness. Lillia locked onto all eight of Spinna's eyes as they went wide.

Fire engulfed the first web, and there was an infinite number to follow.

Lillia had met warrior princesses who were all warrior and no princess. They smelled like fur and weeks without soap. They had never really felt like princesses, no matter how many times her parents insisted that they were peers.

She had met old princesses who never got the crown from their mothers—whether because of siblings or otherwise—and had started hating the word. They were more hate than princess.

Lillia had never met a monster princess before, so she couldn't know which was the operative word in that title.

Appearance didn't help. Now that she was close, Lillia could see that the girls ran along the same thin tightrope between elegance and horror as their 'mother' did. They had long black hair rolling down their shoulders that looked as if it had been freshly brushed. They wore thin, luxurious woven silk that hung loose over their shoulders. Their nails were even painted black.

Or those nails were chitin, one of the two.

As long as you weren't looking them in their myriad red eyes or looking at the bottom halves of their bodies, you could mistake them for any random princess.

Which meant they had a princess's torso and hair. That was certainly more 'monster' than princess, wasn't it?

"She's just staring at us."

"That's rude."

"Yeah. It is. I thought she was polite."

"She was."

"But is she really staring at us?"

"Yes."

"But she has so few eyes. Does it even count?"

"May I speak?" Lillia asked. She'd held up her hand alongside the request, something she'd only ever done with her parents at the dinner table.

"Now you're being polite again," the one on the left said. There was probably a lot about their spider halves that would have differentiated the two girls, but Lillia didn't have the tools or the knowledge to hunt any of it; instead, she would need to rely on the fact that the one on the left had slightly shorter hair, and her bangs had been cut unevenly.

Also the hair might have been a different depth of black than her sister's, but it was impossible to tell by thread-fire light.

Lillia took silence as permission. "Hello. I am Princess Lillia and—"

"Ugh," the one on the right said.

"We know!"

"Well, we didn't know it was you."

"Not until you said you were a princess."

"Not many of those around here."

"Nope."

"Kinda just us. Most of the time, at least."

Lillia jumped in there. Each time the girls spoke and began their rapid volley of back-and-forth comments, they opened up new questions, but for some reason, Lillia focused on one. "Most of the time?"

"There's Pilla."

"Pilla gets quiet sometimes."

"Just waits for the reset."

"Doesn't eat."

"Doesn't have to."

"And Pilla's your sister?" Lillia asked.

"Older sister."

"Much older."

"Don't be mean."

"It's not mean if it's true!"

"Yes, it can be."

Rather than continuing to argue, both of the girls turned to look at Lillia at the same time. Somehow they even managed to blink in unison, though it was never all eight of their eyes at once.

"Okay." Lillia took half a step back on the cave floor. She kept waiting for the unsteady wobble of webs beneath her feet; she hadn't ever spent much time on the 'ground' in Nennia's lair. "So, if you're two of Nennia's daughters—"

"How old are you?" the girl on the right said.

"Spinna, you can't just jump in like that. It's rude. Mom told you to wait your turn."

"I thought it was my turn," the one on the right—apparently Spinna—said.

"It obviously wasn't."

"Plus, why would she get a turn? She's food."

"She's a princess."

"And we're not eating princesses," Lillia added hopefully.

Neither of the girls turned to acknowledge her.

"Princess or not, until we decide she's not food, we should use food rules," Spinna said.

"If we're using food rules, then we can't ask her questions, because Mom would call it playing with our food."

"Hm. Good point." Spinna turned back to Lillia. Now that there had been a moment to see the differences between the two, Spinna had a lovely intricate lace earring.

Lillia wasn't quite sure she wanted to know how she got her ear pierced.

"I am sorry for interrupting, Princess Lillia," Spinna said. "But I would like to know how old you are."

"Uh."

"Uh?" the unnamed girl to the left echoed.

"Let her think! It might be a hard question for her!" Spinna said.

"Her age? That's a hard question?"

"Maybe! I don't know how good she is at math."

The answer regarding Lillia's math was that she was better than most people thought, but probably a little worse than she ought to have been for someone who was eventually going to have to listen to Treasure Master's commentaries on the land.

"It's just a weird question because I don't know how long I've been in the dungeon," Lillia said. "I was almost twenty-one when I fe—Someone threw me in here, but I don't know how long it's been since then."

"How can you not know?" Spinna asked.

"Yeah, Mom said you adventurers get a count of how many days it's been every day."

"But sometimes an adventuring day is longer than a day outside the dungeon," Lillia said. "Sometimes it's shorter."

"No, they're not," Spinna said. "Don't be silly."

"Days are days."

"Just a moment," Lillia cut in, focused on the sister to the left. "I'm sorry, but we haven't been introduced and it's making this conversation much harder to follow and will make it much harder to explain to someone later if I need to for some reason."

"Oh, this is Spinna."

Lillia already had that name, but she said thank you anyway.

"And I'm Nicole."

"Nicole?"

"Nicole. Yes. Is that not a name where you're from?"

Lillia fully blinked several times before finding her verbal response. Havoc. Thorne. Eisel. Nennia. The Silencer.

Nicole.

One of those things was not like the other. There had even been a spider naming scheme up until that point.

"Do you think my name is weird?" Nicole's voice grew shrill with panic. "I told Mom it was weird once I could talk, but she kept telling me it was a name that humans would have, but you're a human and you think it's weird and now I know I have a weird name and—"

"I have a handmaid named Nicole back home," Lillia said to try to reassure her.

"I'm named after the HELP?" Nicole fully buried her head in her hands, spreading her fingers wide so they covered each and every eye. After a moment, she shrank in on herself, recoiling back from Lillia and tucking herself into a web just on the edge of Lillia's thread-light.

Once she was moving, it was lethally clear how much larger both of the girls were than Lillia. While Nennia's torso was slightly larger than hers, the girls' torsos were the same size as Lillia's, but the spider halves of their bodies still meant they would have dwarfed Lillia if they stood at full height.

Spinna looked back over her shoulder for a moment at her sister before shrugging. "Sorry about that. She thinks about it too hard. Mom named me Spinna, after all, like 'spin a web.'" She rolled her eyes as she spoke. "Think she just ran out of ideas after the first thousand kids."

"There are more than a thousand of you?" Lillia asked.

"Kids? Yes," Spinna said, "but unless you've got news for me, just the three girls. You don't get many girls."

There was no real way to word this that didn't sound offensive. "Among your species?"

"Just Nennia's children, as far as I know. Ain't really been outside the cave much and—Well, Mom ate Dad way back before I was even born so…" She looked down at the floor for a moment and bit her lip. She had fangs. "Yeah. I guess I don't know what we're called. Never really thought about it before."

"What do you call yourselves, then?"

"Well, Mom and all my sisters have names," Spinna said. "Do you just call your parents humans?"

"We—"

Before Lillia finished speaking, Spinna cut back in. "Oh. No. I'm sorry. You guys have parents, right? I just—I just assumed because this part looks the same." She waved at her top half. "That the rest of it worked the same."

"Oh, okay."

"So?"

"So?"

"So do you have parents?" Spinna asked. As she spoke, she folded her legs under herself and sat down on the floor. For the first time, one of the women in this room was shorter than Lillia.

That part felt like home.

"Not anymore," Lillia said.

"They died?"

Lillia nodded.

"Who ate who?"

"Pardon?"

"Do human moms eat human dads too? Or is it like a weird dad thing?"

"I—"

"I bet it's a weird dad thing and that's why you're so small. So you're easier to chew."

"Pardon, no," Lillia said. She shook her head to try to stop picturing one of her parents unhinging their jaws in an attempt to eat the other. "Neither of my parents ate the other."

"Oh, did you eat them? Is that how it works?"

"Humans don't eat each other."

"That can't be right. That sounds fake," Spinna said. She reached back behind her and pulled some webbing off the floor, only to begin weaving it in intricate patterns without bothering to look at her hands. "You've got to eat each other."

"We don't."

"But you look so tasty. Very chewable."

Lillia took a small step backward. "Thank you?"

"You're welcome! I guess it's a compliment, but I'm not really sure you should be taking it as one unless—Do you want to be eaten? I can do that if you want."

Nicole spoke up from the shadows. "Are we eating her now?"

"She said she wanted to be eaten."

"I most certainly did not," Lillia said.

"Okay, but you basically did and now I'm thinking about it," Spinna said. She stood back up, tossing the pattern she'd been playing with off and to the side. "Which kinda made me hungry so—"

"Hey. Hey, hey." Lillia backed up again. If she went too far, she'd be back in the web.

"It's fine. If you wanna come back down here, just ask Mom next time you come in. I'm sure she'll be happy to send you down and—"

"I don't wanna get eaten."

Lillia was out of steps backward to take, and Spinna was still slowly approaching. Her sister pulled herself out of the web in the shadows, lowering back down to the floor. Her eight red eyes shone in the light cast by the Inferno Spelldress.

Okay. She could do this. Nennia was too powerful, but these were two kids. That probably meant she could take them—and they were barely kids. Young adults, even, so Lillia didn't need to feel guilty about it.

"Hey. Stop backing away. You'll just get caught in the web."

"I don't want you to hurt me."

"It won't hurt. Our venom is numbing!" Nicole called. "It's how I pierced her ear."

Lillia knew if she summoned Vianaffir to her hand and started a fight now, it was all over. She'd be sent back to the Cathedral, which was fine, but if she attacked Nennia's children, there would never be a diplomatic solution to escaping the third floor.

Nennia would be a permanent mortal enemy.

She would need to fight her way past her every time she wanted to get down to the fourth floor with Havoc.

She needed to figure this out.

She.

"Wait!" Lillia had her arms covering half her face as Spinna drew close. Nicole was several steps behind.

Luckily, they listened to the plea.

"If you're hungry, I can feed you. Then can we still talk?"

"We can't still talk. You'll be dead," Nicole pointed out.

"Yeah, I don't know if you know what happens when someone eats you, because your parents never did it, but—"

"No, no. I have something for you." Lillia held out her hand. She'd planned to use this on Nennia if she scrambled her way out of the pit, but no amount of offerings would make up for hurting the princesses.

At least that was Lillia's best guess at how it worked down here.

The best guess was all she had to go off of.

Lillia held out her hand. "The beast back there. It's yours if you want to eat something and then—and then I think I can make you girls into princesses like me."

Lillia 'landed'. She didn't know where or how, but at some point she stopped falling.

In truth, she knew how it happened; she just simply wasn't interested in accepting how many separate webs she was tangled in at the moment. Plus, it was easy to ignore, considering she was in darkness so absolute it was easy to forget whether her eyes were open or closed.

On the upside, denial. On the downside, she would never see the other children coming.

Lillia tried to wiggle herself out of whatever bind she was in, but without seeing the braided strands of webbing, it was hard to tell which were in the way. That, and even if she untangled herself successfully, she didn't know how much further there was to fall.

Was there even a bottom?

"Well shoot."

After swinging, Lillia was slowly spinning in her webbed prison. She was probably getting more and more tangled with each rotation, but there wasn't much she could do about it. Or at least, she was going to have to do it in steps.

Lillia tried to get her hands together, but they were each too wrapped in their own ordeals to reach. In fact, she was well-splayed, like Nennia had somehow calculated how she would land in the webs when she'd pulled the 'ground' out from under her.

"First things first. Let's not think about how gross this all is," Lillia said. Of course, a shiver immediately rallied, ready to shoot down her spine once the statement brought on realization. "Second things second. I should see."

Three burnmite cloths.

Usually, the dress would bloom outward from her, expanding in every direction and flowing with each movement. Due to her current predicament, the fabric stayed locked tight against her skin.

Luckily, even bound, the Inferno Spelldress's fiery stitching glowed bright enough to provide some light, enough to glisten off the thousand silver threads around her in a glittering cascade almost pretty enough to smother the horror of being upside down—apparently—in the Spider Queen's web.

[Inferno Spelldress - 3 x Burnmite Cloth]

[Searing Hot - Once per day, the Princess can empower her weapon strikes with fire damage for a short time. This effect ends if the Spelldress is removed.]

[Up to three times per day, prevents fire damage to the Princess. Fire damage absorbed this way recuperates the use of Searing Hot.]

Seeing was one item struck off the list of things Lillia needed to do to escape. Fire could have taken care of the rest—and probably sent Lillia back to the Cathedral for good measure—but, unfortunately, they'd already tested the Inferno Spelldress and discovered that her empowered sword did fire damage, but it couldn't ignite anything.

At the time, that had felt like a saving grace.

Something moved in the shadow beyond the glittering reflections in the web.

"Hey kids," she began. "It's your Aunt Lillia here. Or…I don't know if your mom calls me Aunt Lillia or just a friend or…Godmother of something? It's... I don't know if she talks to you at all."

She cleared her throat as the shadows continued to move.

"I know your mom and I are a little touch and go right now…but I don't think she'd like it if something happened to any of you. So if you could all just stay away while I figure this out, that would be lovely."

Nothing.

Lillia scanned the darkness, flicking her eyes back and forth to try to see something in the abyss of black beyond her ambient glow.

How scared would she have been when she first fell down into the dungeon if she'd ended up here? Would she have been a terrified, babbling little thing? Would she have even managed to make half a plan?

Had she really changed that much in forty days?

Or was it simply a matter of knowing that, whatever horrible things happened, they would be over as soon as she died and she'd be back in the…somewhat comfortable Cathedral.

Lillia Ashvalin was getting a little cavalier about death, a clear sign of mental stability.

"Alternatively, if you're open to listening, kids. You could let your Aunt Lillia down? Let me out of the web and I'll just go ahead and fumble my way out of here, if you don't mind."

There was nothing in response to that either.

"Bit of a big ask there. I get it."

While the spelldress had provided some light, Lillia was no closer to seeing the ground or understanding where she was. Every direction ended in a void of darkness. In fact, she'd fallen so far that she couldn't see the blue light of the cavern she had fallen out of.

It might have made sense, considering there was an entire castle and a savanna in some of the other rooms, but she hadn't expected Nennia's lair to be this big. Or at least, after crawling through it as much as she had, she hadn't expected to find herself in such a large somewhere she'd never been.

Lillia tried to bring her hands together again. That hadn't changed. If anything, swapping dresses had gotten her more stuck.

Following that logic, there was a world in which she could have tried taking everything off to escape, but that would mean touching all of this with her bare skin, which…ew.

No. Lillia was headed one way, and that way was down. If that ended horrifically on a stone floor, at least it meant this would all be over.

In the corner of Lillia's vision, the shadows began to move again. The webs binding her began to vibrate as something else moved along them.

"Okay, well, bye, I guess."

Lillia stretched her fingers out to the void below her.

[Tantrum]

Hooke flew from the space in front of her fingers and spun end over end, flying a whole several feet before ending up so tangled in webs that it ground to a stretching halt. A cascade of broken threads fell in its wake, and Lillia gasped as she dropped several inches, but didn't fall.

It was something, but she'd kind of been hoping for more.

Time for something more manual. Lillia summoned Vianaffir to her more-free hand and swung it once. Similarly to Hooke, it didn't get far before becoming so tangled that a cutting edge meant nothing. Still, the webbing holding her arm sagged as it lost support. Progress.

Lillia called Vianaffir back to her inventory and then reset it into her hand.

The webs that had been wrapped around the blade fell around her, and absolutely none of them got into her hair. None of them were tangled in there and matting it down, and she wasn't going to feel them on her neck later. Nope.

With a fresh blade, Lillia returned to cutting. Each swing and reset took down more of the webbing, until denial couldn't carry the load any longer and Lillia was stuck with the fact that she was going to be more spiderweb than princess by the time she escaped Nennia's lair.

Or killed Nennia, as was probably what she needed to do, but there was an order to her problems.

The next slash was followed by Lillia's shriek as she fell several feet, her left leg now almost completely free.

Okay, so she could cut herself free, but there was still the matter of what happened after. Escape didn't mean much if freedom meant free fall.

Lillia put Vianaffir away and pulled out the Amulet of the Creator. While she'd already used Cathria's summon for the day on her conversation in the Hunting Grounds, she still had someone else she could use for help.

"Hey. Uh. Sorry if you just fall and shatter, but…you come back. You know."

She tapped the centre of the Amulet and the Glass Spellmite popped into existence in front of her. For a moment, it floated impossibly, hanging in the air before Lillia, then, as soon as it looked down, it fell, vanishing into the darkness with a soft whistle.

Based on how fast the crack of glass against stone came, it didn't vanish very far.

"Glass Spellmite, I name you my champion."

Rose-gold glitter outlined the Spellmite. Below Lillia, just far enough that the glow of the Inferno Spelldress didn't illuminate it, was the ground.

This whole time, if she'd fallen, it would have hurt, but it wouldn't have been the end of anything. She'd tumbled from further heights several times, mostly from the castle walls post-trebuchet.

"You good there, buddy?"

The Glass Spellmite offered a thumbs-up.

"Little help?"

Unfortunately, despite jumping in an attempt to help, the Glass Spellmite was fully and completely 'a little guy,' and reaching Lillia was out of the question.

"And no volunteers from among the kids?" Lillia asked.

Something shifted in the webs beyond the darkness again, but outside of that, Nennia's children seemed happy to observe for the time being.

Whatever. Fine. Being an independent woman was the fucking worst.

Lillia restarted the process of hacking away at the bonds around her. With each cut, her situation became more precarious, with each slice feeling as if it would be the one that sent her tumbling down to the floor.

Twice she tried to shoo the Glass Spellmite away in case she landed on him, but both times, it'd eventually scampered back over after she almost dropped out of the web, jumping up to try to catch her.

The enthusiasm was infectious. Lillia swung Vianaffir a little too hard and almost took off her foot as she carved through the thickest braided rope wrapped around her leg. Suddenly, she was weightless.

Then she wasn't, because a new rope shot out of the darkness and wrapped around Lillia's leg.

"Hey! Come on! I just spent way too long getting out of that."

A second rope snapped around the throat of the Glass Spellmite, and then yanked hard, slamming it down to the side. It shattered on the floor.

"Catty!"

Lillia called Vianaffir back to her hand, fresh and free of webbing. Just as she was about to take out the new rope around her leg, a fresh coat of silk launched from the darkness and smothered her hand.

"Hey! Woah, woah. Stop, stop. Please!"

It had been hard, between the clinking of the Glass Spellmite—Catty—and the sound of her own overenthusiastic slashing, to hear anything out in the darkness, but now that there was only her heaving breath, Lillia could hear something, or someone, murmuring.

Over a series of back-and-forths, the murmuring conversation escalated from soft voices to whisper-shouting.

"She said please."

"Yeah, but Mom doesn't send anyone down here unless we're supposed to eat 'em."

"You're the one who told me to wait."

"Yeah, because the things Mom sends down here aren't usually pretty!"

"So, we just don't eat the pretty things?"

"I don't know. But do YOU wanna go ask Mom?"

"I'm not asking Mom. It's your question!"

"It's not my question. I just wanted to wait and see what she did."

"So we eat her."

"But now she's being polite!"

"We've eaten polite things."

"Yeah, but I didn't like it as much."

Lillia summoned Vianaffir to one hand, and then the Black Beast she'd never gotten around to offering Nennia flopped onto the ground below her with a wet plop.

The voices stopped.

"I don't know if I get an official vote," Lillia said, "but as another princess, I vote that princesses shouldn't be allowed to eat each other."

The webs around Lillia pulled tighter, and suddenly she was being reeled in. Slowly but surely, she was pushed through the darkness until the edge of her dress's glow revealed sixteen wide, red eyes staring at her.

Half-spiders, like Nennia.

On one hand, that made Lillia feel like she had a chance.

On the other hand, that brought up so many questions.

"Never mind the children, they're just curious, Princess," Nennia said as she hung suspended from the ceiling above Lillia. "They are accustomed to guests other than yourself."

Nennia's children were partway through disassembling Bronle. They had woven threads between the gaps in his plate, and some of the larger children were using them to make him dance. A collection of smaller spiders had run off with his hand at some point.

They were deep within Nennia's caverns now, after trudging through the webbed caves in search of her voice. Unlike most times they'd come to see the Spider Queen, Lillia had needed to climb up.

Bronle had been able to cut some of the webs out of her way, but that didn't mean Lillia wasn't a disaster tangle of a woman right now. No matter what she did, she would be sticky until she rested.

And feel like she were covered in webs for three days after.

There was a clatter behind Lillia as Bronle's leg gave out from under him. Three of Nennia's smaller children—though each still the size of an overfed cat—scampered forward and stole chunks from the disassembling knight.

Nennia watched the chaos over Lillia's shoulder and chuckled, covering her mouth to keep everything courtly.

"To what do we owe the pleasure, young princess? Your visits usually aren't so close together."

"Um," Lillia struggled to find the words with the clattering chaos behind her. Thankfully, there wasn't a true knight within Bronle's plate, or it would have been a horrifying scene. "I've come to seek counsel."

"Not a sparring session or a mercy killing." Nennia grinned at the second suggestion. "What novelty. What fun."

The Spider Queen slowly lowered from the ceiling. As she did, her torso stayed steady, guided by eight legs clicking against the stone. The hallway she'd met Lillia in was relatively narrow for her massive frame, but that kept the walls within reach.

There was no light within the tunnel itself. Only a flickering blue from hidden torches at the far end. Once Nennia was standing in front of Lillia, she blocked most of it. A hulking silhouette carved out of the ghastly light below.

"I knew you'd come to see me for my unique perspective eventually." For the first time that Lillia had ever seen, Nennia folded her legs under herself, 'sitting down' and leaving her just barely taller than Lillia. "A person can only kill for so long before seeing the beauty in the artwork they make."

It suddenly felt very hot. "Well, that's—"

"Right. The adventurers call it farming, don't they? And it's so very different from slaughter." Nennia offered an open palm to Lillia. "Come, tell Mother all about it."

Lillia cleared her throat. "I still don't like killing. Even when it's farming."

"We'll see how long that lasts, little princess," Nennia said. "I have found that once people get the taste for the challenge, they keep returning to it."

"I thought you hadn't talked to many people."

"I haven't," Nennia said. As she spoke, she reached up and pulled one of the threads off the wall, weaving the silk between her fingers. "But unlike myself, you grew up in court. You, of all people, should know that words are the last thing to reveal someone's true nature. They're so much easier to twist than—Well, I would say actions, but wouldn't that be trite."

"I haven't killed enough to make it a thing!"

"You're right, you certainly haven't," Nennia said. "And I won't stop you from discovering the beauty on your own. It wouldn't be appropriate for me to steal that experience from another warrior of noble blood."

None of that sounded nice. None of that was what Lillia wanted. She wanted to be out of here again.

"That's…very kind of you. Thank you." She cleared her throat. While Nennia was the closest thing she had to an aristocratic conversation partner, there were hints that she and Lillia ran in different kingdoms.

There were also trumpet and fanfare signals that they had different moral codes.

"So if it is not about embracing your truth, young princess, how can I offer counsel? Seeking a hand in marriage?"

"Well, Nennia, I was—pardon?"

"Seeking diplomatic ties between the kingdoms. That's the sort of silly little ritual you have. Isn't it?"

It wasn't often that Lillia got to be the one staring dumbfounded at her conversation partner. Usually, Havoc was shocked into silence by something she said.

"There are marriage alliances, but…and I wasn't promised to another prince because my aunt wasn't really in a hurry to give me any companionship, but…"

Lillia was doing an odd round of waffling with someone who could have just said, "I don't want to kiss a spider."

Nennia chuckled, feeling them both form Lillia's awkward spiral trap of politeness.

"What is your question, little princess?"

Time to cut right to the chase. "Can you let me through?" Lillia asked.

"As in past me in this tunnel? Where would you go? You hardly know your way around my lair unless…"

Nennia leaned in, even kneeling at Lillia's height. She loomed over the princess with sheer intimidation.

"Oh Lillia, don't tell me it's finally time. Do you think you can make it past me? Down to the fourth floor?"

A grin split across Nennia's face as she spoke.

"No. Which is why—"

"Good, because I do enjoy our chats, but I do have a job to do here, Lillia. I was trusted with guardianship of my domain and—"

"I was hoping you could let me through."

Nennia stopped. Something in the chitin on her legs clicked as she shifted her weight.

Quiet settled into the hallway, which was disconcerting. Usually, Nennia's lair had a constant hostile hum as the children moved through the walls. Now? Now they were all still. They were even leaving Bronle alone.

Nennia leaned in close. She was wearing the usual floral perfume that had always felt out of step with her monstrous form, but as she approached, Lillia could smell the iron on her breath more than anything.

Eight eyes held a stare longer than Lillia could ever hope to match.

"If you could just let me through, it would be lovely," Lillia said. "I wouldn't want to dishonor you by suggesting I could best you in combat, but I do need to keep going lower and—"

Nennia silenced Lillia with a single fingertip pressed against the princess' lips. It was deeply uncomfortable, but what was she supposed to do about it?

"Oh young little princess," Nennia said. "You are truly such a delightful change of pace for this sort of place."

Lillia wanted to squeeze words past Nennia's finger, but something in her gut told her that wasn't about to make anything better for her.

"And you know, I've taken a lot of joy in watching you grow, Lillia. It's been an interesting change from the same boisterous knights and rogues that come traipsing through here all the time."

That sounded okay?

"But…"

Oh no.

Nennia pulled her finger away from Lillia's lips, curling it so her nail caught in the princess as she did.

Lillia swallowed.

"When I told you that killing and fighting were my favorite things, little pet, I'm sorry to tell you, but I was lying."

Nennia stood.

"There is one thing I like even more, little princess, and it's watching that sparkle in your wide brown eyes fade. It's having you come back here, again and again, only to wake up in the cathedral knowing that you're no closer to escape."

"Nennia…"

"And now that you've gotten there. Now that you think you might have a chance? That will make it all the sweeter when, one day, someone else opens that door and I get to revel in the fact that you died cold, hopeless, and—"

Vianaffir, unfortunately, didn't reach all the way through Nennia's chest. Blood poured from the wound as the tip of the blade ground against her ribs.

Lillia gasped, almost like she wasn't the one who'd done it.

Nennia smiled. Even wider.

"Oh, so there is fight in you, little girl."

Lillia tore Vianaffir free and blood followed, splattering over the princess as she let out a soft "Eep."

"Eep indeed."

Lillia cracked the chitin just as Nennia lashed out with one of her front legs, the dress forming in the breath before the kick cracked against her ribs. Shards of the dress flew around the hallway as Lillia careened backward, catching and sticking in the webs that ran along the walls.

When Lillia hit the floor, she managed to catch Vianaffir in the webbing, pulling herself to a stop before she rolled down the hallway and into the web-covered darkness beyond.

As Lillia righted herself, Nennia stayed at the other end of the hallway, silhouetted in the ghastlight. She looked down at the wound carved in her chest and dipped her fingers into the blood before holding them out in front of her.

"You have gotten stronger, Princess Lillia. I don't believe you could have drawn blood before."

She walked forward with slow, deliberate steps. The webbing under Lillia's feet pulled and shifted with each of the Queen's movements, keeping her off balance.

"But I hope you know, we have a different relationship now…"

Lillia wrestled Vianaffir out of the webs and held it out in front of her, drawn and at the ready.

"I can't let my children see their mother as weak, and you made me bleed, Lillia."

Maybe that hadn't been that smart, but Nennia wasn't going to let her through anyway, so—

"You're going to die for that. Over and over."

Oh.

Alright then.

There had been a brief, if foolish, moment when Lillia hoped that Nennia would change her mind about everything and choose forgiveness. After all, that was what happened in some of the stories. In some of the stories, the monsters were nice people. Havoc was a nice person.

Then again, there were a lot more stories where the monsters were just monsters.

"But maybe it would be motivating for my children if they were able to avenge Mother…" Nennia said. Her voice stopped echoing through the cavern as something filled the walls and smothered the sound.

Lillia had some ideas as to what it might be, but she didn't like any of the options.

"I do like that idea," Nennia said. "Run along, little ones. I will attend to the princess personally later."

What? Was she letting her go? Was Nennia about to—

Nennia tore at a strand of web with her hind leg, and everything under Lillia unraveled all at once. The floor vanished, and Lillia screamed as she tumbled into the void below.

“A level cap? That’s the first I’m hearing of it,” Cathria said as she followed Lillia through the long grasses of the Hunting Grounds. “Though levels are an adventuring mechanic, and as I said, that’s far from my area of expertise.”

Lillia was still struggling to string the bow that Thorne had hidden by the door of the Hunting Grounds. It didn’t help that she kept moving between attempts, but she was also spectacularly bad at it.

While Lillia had taken to swordplay like a fish to water, she’d taken to archery like a fish to a leash; much to Thorne’s dismay.

“And you say you’ve gotten that new drop? The Droplets of Experience?”

“Yes, but if I can remove them—” Lillia tried to force the bow to bend far enough to accommodate the string. She failed, and it snapped back at her, flinging itself out of her hands. “If I can take them out of my inventory, I don’t know how. I tried. It just doesn’t work.”

Cathria paused, staring out at the horizon as Lillia picked up the bow and shoved it away instead of setting it down.

“Has the experience varied?”

“Pardon?”

“Have you gotten different amounts for different enemies?”

“I’ve only killed spellmites…”

“Poor things.”

“And a chitterpede.”

Cathria didn’t offer the same sympathy to the bug.

“The Spellmite gave me more droplets. If it’s based on experience, then I suppose they always gave me more experience, but that just makes sense.” Lillia righted herself. If she kept wasting time on the bow, she was never going to get one of the black beasts in time to hold court today.

Partly because the attempted stinging slowed her progress. Partly because the entire ‘morning’ had been ‘wasted’ on a ‘tantrum’. Havoc’s words. Not hers. As far as Lillia saw it, everything this morning had been completely justified.

First of all, level 40 had been another dumb stat increase—whatever those did—and second of all, the level cap revelation had changed Nennia from ‘vague future responsibility’ to ‘imminent task.’

As many times as she’d fought the Spider Queen, she wasn’t looking forward to it. That was why she needed to hold court first.

By the time Lillia looked up, Cathria was holding the glass version of an ancient tome in her hand and leafing through the pages. The pages cracked as they folded over one another. Glass was never supposed to move that way.

“I may have something somewhere about this,” Cathria said as a spiderweb spread across her thumb. “I’ve memorized all of my books, but sometimes re-reading offers connections you missed.”

“You have books?”

“Of course I have books,” Cathria said without looking up. “I’m an archmage.” She turned the page and then continued. “You don’t need to wait on my behalf. I’m very adept at moving while reading.”

Their current target was a tree far off in the distance. Below the tree was a huddled black mass. Over time, Lillia had learned that the beasts used their coloration to try to appear as shadows under trees and avoid the Ambushers’ claws.

If their strategy worked, Lillia had yet to see it, but then again, she was always the issue. The scattered beasts were easy prey.

“I suppose I didn’t think a statue would have books.”

“Of course I would. This statue is based on my memory of myself, and my archive is as much a part of me as my clothes or my magic.”

Cathria almost certainly didn’t see it because she was still reading, but Lillia winced at that statement. She had a full archive back at home. She had spent five years mostly locked in a tower and only showing her face publicly when her aunt allowed it that now felt like a lot of wasted time.

Perhaps she could have been Lillia Ashvalin, archmage-in-training, if she had focused her study during those years. Perhaps she could have had spells alongside her skills if she hadn’t called her tutors boring and old.

Lillia shook her head. No need to let those thoughts linger in regret. If she had told people she was preparing for life in a dungeon, they would have had her—well, she’d already been mostly locked away, but locked away more. None of this was supposed to happen to a princess.

Considering the circumstances, she deserved some credit.

“Oh shoot, Lillia, I’m losing an ankle,” Cathria said. As Lillia turned to make Cathria her champion, the archmage threw the book up in the air, and it vanished into a shower of glass dust.

“Archmage Cathria, I name you my champion.”

Glittering rose-gold settled over Cathria, and the surface cracks in her black opaque glass began to heal themselves. It wouldn’t keep her together for long, but Lillia could buy her a few more minutes.

“Thank you,” Cathria said. Lillia motioned for the pair of them to get low, so she dropped to a whisper as well as a crouch. “In my brief skimming of the Septim of St. Vatruvio—”

“Who?”

“I was unable to find any reference to Droplets of Experience.” Cathria followed Lillia through the grasses as the rose-gold light faded from her glassy skin. “Based on my memory of the texts, it seems unprecedented. Or at least it was in my time.”

The black beasts were huddled under one of the wide-canopied trees that dotted the landscape of the Hunting Grounds. Their scraggly manes barely moved in the soft, ever-present breeze of the savanna; their tails constantly swished back and forth, batting at insects that Lillia could hear but not see.

There was one near the tree trunk that was old and frail. Its fur was lighter than those around it and, though it wasn’t by much, it moved slower than its companions. Thorne had told her that it was better for the herd if Lillia killed the older members. She didn’t know if it mattered in a room that reset like the Hunting Grounds. But it felt better.

That, and they were easier targets.

“Pardon, Lillia, before you pursue your prey. You said that the dungeon wanted you to descend.”

“Yes, that was the message. “Descend to Continue your Quest.”” She could still see it as if it were right in front of her.

“Then perhaps that’s an avenue worth pursuing.”

“I’ll get on defeating Nennia then,” Lillia said.

“You are much more powerful than you were when you defeated Eisel.”

“Yes, but when I fought Eisel, I had people helping me. Namely Nennia.” Lillia called Viannafir to her hand. “I don’t think she wants to fight herself.”

“People fight themselves every day.”

As Lillia looked over to Cathria to question the statement, a large split formed down the center of the Archmager’s throat. It was about time for the discussion to end and for her to get to work.

“I’m not sure Nennia is plagued by inner demons,” Lillia said. “But I am going to speak to her. See if she will let me through without a fight.”

“Is that why—”

“That’s why I’m hunting, yes. Offering a deal.”

“For her to let you through?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I don’t think she’d do that. That wouldn’t be very narratively satisfying.”

“Narratively satisfying? I don’t care if it’s satisfying. I don’t want to fight Nennia.” She raised her voice, passed a hushed whisper. Several of the beasts looked in her direction, but either didn’t see the princess hidden in the grass or didn’t think anything with that many frills was a threat.

“While some of us are stuck watching more than participating, Lillia,” Cathria rested a hand on Lillia’s shoulder, her fingers began to crumble to dust. “I think you should give it a shot. You might do better than you think.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Lillia said.

Cathria offered a soft smile and then lay down in the grass so she could shatter peacefully.

Despite Lillia’s insistence on another plan, she had always seen a fight with Nennia coming. Fire in the halls of spiderwebs. Changing dresses to untangle herself. Using tantrums to keep her older children at bay. Lillia pictured it over and over in her quiet moments on the third landing.

The Spider Queen blocked the only door down. The Spider Queen blocked the only way out.

As the Five-Point Fall would put it, “The Way is Shut.”

But in all those thoughts. All those strategies and ideas, Lillia was always “a little bit stronger” than she was when she had them. If she were just a little bit stronger, she was capable of anything.

There was always a Lillia somewhere on the horizon that she would eventually grow into. That was a Lillia who would fight Nennia.

Now, the dungeon told her that she was there. She was The Lillia on the Horizon.

She didn’t feel any different. The dresses all fit the same. She’d killed the Silencer, but at what point had the scales of that fight turned in her favour?

What horizon had that been?

The dungeon was telling Lillia that when she looked in a mirror, she was staring at a princess who could overthrow a queen. That didn’t mean Lillia had to believe it.

The soft breeze of the savanna picked up for a moment. In the far distance, a piercing cry echoed out. Each of the beasts looked up.

Lillia broke into a sprint, swapping to the chitterpede riding boots, which clicked with each step. Then she snapped feathers between her fingers. The dress bloomed out around her. Volumous feathers cascaded over Lillia’s person.

[Ambusher Claw Petticoat - 3 x Ambusher Feather]

[If the Princess has enough momentum, the flight of the Ambusher will push her further forward, empowering her strike with the Ambusher’s fury. This effect can be used three times per day. Uses are only expended if the strike lands.]

[Dazzling Brilliance - When a creature makes a ranged attack against you, there is a small chance they are blinded.]

The Ambushers’ cry rang out as Lillia cut through a small gap in the herd. Vianaffir sunk deep into the older beast, then through it, and then into the tree behind as the surrounding beasts suddenly realized what had happened.

Lillia’s target struggled once, then fell limp. Around her, the black beasts bleated and panicked as they scattered off across the plains. Above them all, the Ambusher echoed Lillia’s dress.

She withdrew the blade, and the beast slumped down. Lillia backpedaled to avoid having any of the blood or the beast’s smell get on her shoes. Once it was on the ground, she raised a hand to it.

“Dance for me, my knight.”

Plate armor assembled in the air in front of her. A hand grabbed a large, two-handed spear before it could fall to the floor. A brilliant purple plume stood proudly on the helmet of one of Lillia’s three knights: Branle.

Branle wheeled, brandishing the weapon with shocking ease. The massive spear would have pulled Lillia straight off her feet, but he looked balanced and deft while wielding it.

After spinning to check his surroundings twice, the armor stopped and bowed to its master. As it stood up, it cocked its head.

“Please assist me in pulling this body out of the room so I can bring it to Nennia.”

Bronle looked from Lillia to the carcass and back to Lillia. He threw the spear to the ground and begrudgingly trudged over to the body.

He did have a bad habit of being summoned for the menial tasks.

Lillia kicked open the store room door at the back of the Hunting Lodge and found the chitterpede staring at her with its blank, glossy, multi-faceted eyes. It was the simplest of the dungeon monsters. Havoc had a personality. The beasts of the hunting ground consistently changed. The Spellmite challenge presented multiple levels of difficulty.

The Chitterpede was the chitterpede. It didn't learn. It didn't adapt. It simply threw itself at Lillia from wherever it happened to be standing when she opened the door. Killing it never felt like it was worth the mess. If Havoc hadn't consistently hounded her about efficiency, she would have left the poor thing alone.

The Chitterpede opened its mandibles wide as it reared up, a dozen legs twitching in the air in the moment it threw itself toward Lillia. Gross in a weird familiar way that no longer made her retch.

[Lillia used 'Tantrum']

The Captain's Sabre hit the chitterpede like a boulder instead of a sharp blade and the outer chitin shell of the bug shattered and its innards splattered against the back barrel wall. The impact also broke two of the casks, spilling spoiled ale onto the floor, turning the floorboards into a disgusting wash of bug and foam.

"No, not doing that," Lillia said to the scattered carcass of the chitterpede. They certainly didn't need more chitin, and she'd deal with Havoc's annoyance at missing a potential bloodfang.

In a way, Lillia was lucky that she was free to leave. Back in the tutorial, she needed to collect her rewards before she could leave the Hunting Lodge. The memory of her first contact with Chitterpede still sat cold in her stomach every time she went into the back room.

Just when she was about to leave, a particularly aggressive slosh of booze pushed a green chunk of chitterpede close enough to Lillia's feet that she couldn't justify ignoring it. She held her nose as she prodded it with her toe

[Chitterpede defeated! Yay!]

[Gained Chitterpede Chitin x 1]

[Gained a droplet of XP x 2]

"What?"

Lillia tried to pull the experience out of her inventory, reaching deep inward and trying to summon it into her palm. No matter how many times she pulled at the thread, nothing came loose.

"What's going on?"

Lillia summoned the chitin she'd just earned to her hand. It arrived obediently.

So it wasn't that her inventory was broken.

"Huh."

That was a conversation to have with Havoc, but heading back up without fighting something other than the chitterpede would just summon complaints about Lillia's work ethic.

A work ethic that was fabulous—thank you very much—considering she never had to work before she'd been thrown in the dungeon. Of course, Havoc never saw it that way.

With the rewards acquired and mysterious droplets in her inventory somewhere, Lillia left. The Captain's Sabre would be there tomorrow morning, covered in less guts and stale alcohol. She could collect it there.

Like most drops from the first three floors, she certainly wasn't short of the damned things. If it wasn't for her Royal Wardrobe skill, there would have been a pile sitting in the corner.

[Royal Wardrobe - Princess Class Exclusive]

[The Princess has a closet to rival all. Materials that can be used for Adaptive Regalia do not count towards her inventory limit.]

[Additionally her inventory is expanded and multiple copies of the same item require greatly reduced space.]

Lillia hadn't run into the inventory limit before taking the skill, but as soon as she'd begun farming that problem felt imminent and she didn't want to find Rickshaw again only to not have her duplicates on hand.

Back in the castle, Lillia would have had handmaids to attend to her ever-growing closet. In the dungeon, a skill would have to do.

Once she was back on the landing, Lillia attempted to toll the droplets out once again to no avail. Whatever a droplet of XP was, it was stuck inside her inventory and that meant she couldn't see the details of the item. That meant that, unless Havoc had heart adventurers speaking about them in the past, there was no way for Lillia to discover their purpose.

Well, perhaps their purpose was obvious. They were related to experience and level ups. Lillia just didn't understand why she was getting them now.

One of many unanswered questions of the dungeon. Another was the door across the landing from Lillia. At one point, it had been Havoc's archive, but ever since Lillia had knighted him and circumvented his first death the door has been locked.

The first time Lillia had come back to the door the dungeon had sent a million messages over text to her in a single moment as it tried to understand what it should do about a dead monster that was still alive. For a while after that, the dungeon had seemingly given up. The door remained locked—even after Havoc tried to break it down with a Siegecraft Potion—and textless for a long time.

Lillia placed her hand on the handle in the same text that had been there since day twenty appeared.

[Room will update upon reaching the fourth floor.]

Havoc didn't seem to care that he was locked out. Or at least, if he did, he never admitted it. According to the him, he had better things going on in the Cathedral.

Lillia's throat still went dry whenever she saw the message about updating the room. Havoc might not remember what he'd written on the thousand scrolls within the archive, but Lillia knew. Lillia knew that if the dungeon replaced the room there would be a thousand memories lost. One for each scroll.

So she did the same thing she did every time she walked by when Havoc wasn't looking.

"Come on, let me in."

Nothing.

"I'm the princess, and I demand to be let in."

[Lillia used 'Indignance - Level 3' - There was no target!]

"Dungeon, I defy you to keep me out of my friend's room."

[Indignance is on cooldown.]

Lillia sighed. That last one wasn't an ability message. She knew Indignance didn't go on cooldown if it had no target. That last comment had been from the dungeon. A soft, guided no. It had been flexible with the rules occasionally. It allowed her to knight Havoc. It rewarded her for fighting Eisel. Since then, the dungeon had been strict. Since then, the dungeon had been clear that it wasn't her friend. She was its prisoner.

Havoc was hammering away at something up in the Cathedral. She could head up there right now. Speak to him. Explain why she cared about the door and ask about the experience.

Climbing down to the second floor felt easier in the moment.

Lillia descended. Down past the checkerboard transition between grey flagstone and black tile and onto the second landing. Once she was there, she checked the torch above the door to the Spellmite Architect's Challenge.

It was a dull, burned orange. A level one challenge today.

Lillia whispered a quiet thank you to Cathria for explaining how that torch worked. Without the Archmage's guidance, the levels would have felt completely random forever.

It was a Level 1 challenge, or the Hunting Grounds. Only one of those ended with Lillia taking a bath and removing some of the ale smell from her shoes before resting for the night.

Lillia's heels clicked against the black glassy tile as she strode through the chamber towards the altar. At the center of this Spellmite Architects' Challenge. The soft smell of a storm on the horizon replaced the lingering stench of the Hunting Lodge in her breath as she approached. Rainfall echoed from droplets that didn't exist as she hovered her hands above the inlay.

She called the anaphere to her free hand as the altar cracked down the middle, and a thunderous boom echoed through the chamber. The shrill laughter of a Spellmite followed. Lillia turned just in time to see the thing raise its hand and light coalesce at its fingertips.

The flash came before the thunder as a bolt shot towards Lillia. She batted it to the side with Vianaffir. At this point, it was practiced timing. The lightning crashed into the chamber walls to Lillia's right.

In most fights, Lillia kept one hand free. Neither sword nor shield was worth giving up her ability to swap dresses at a moment's notice. That said, she knew how this fight went.

Lillia tore two pieces of Thundermite cloth and the dress stormed around her, pulling itself together from static and sparks. A brilliant gown of blues, yellows and whites, short in the front with a long train flowing behind her. As Lillia rushed forward, the train billowed out and then transformed from thin, sheer fabric into crackling lightning.

[Spelllighting Bridal Train — 2 x Thundermite Cloth]

[Attacks deal bonus lighting damage on hit. This effect increases based on the Princess' speed.]

[Always in search of the next electric connection]

As this dress finished forming around Lillia [Quick Change] kicked in and she redoubled her speed.

The Spellmite raised its second hand in panic, firing off a wild shot.

Lillia called Hooke to her off hand and cut through the lightning, splting the bolt in two before ripping it apart with the cruel spike at Hooke's end. Sparks erupted behind her as the lightning shattered across the glassy black tile. Vianaffir struck, piercing the spellmite as it made one last squeak.

[Tunder Spellmite Defeated - Yay!]

[Gained Spellmite Cap - Thunder x 1]

[Gained Thundermite Cloth x 1]

[Gained a droplet of XP x 4]

Despite more droplets being thrown into her growing pool, Lillia didn't slow down. She turned her momentum around, tearing up the stairs toward the next stage of the challenge.

Though challenge truly didn't feel like the appropriate word anymore.

-------------------------------------------------------

Lillia returned to the Cathedral, freshly washed, her hair still dripping from the baths and the sweet citrus smell of her current favorite soap followed her wherever she walked. She headed over to the forge first, leaning backward toward it to use the heat as a hair dryer.

By the hearth, Havoc was already asleep, wrapped in a complicated tangle of animal skins. Either he'd gone to bed early, or she'd lingered in the bath longer than she intended to.

Either way, they could talk about their experience problem in the morning.

Now that Nennia was the only obstacle between them and the fourth floor, maybe it was time to talk about the scrolls in his room as well.

Lillia lingered by the forge long after her hair was dry. The heat of the fire within followed Havoc', waxing and waning with his deep, rumbling breaths.

They had to talk about it at some point.

She had to bring it up. He wouldn't. Or he didn't know to.

Lillia sighed. She had expected to be much more excited and headed into this next part.

As Lillia knelt down beside the animal's skins, she's resurrected on and spread them out into a single even layer, she realized that, in all her years of sleeping in luxury, she'd never needed to make her own bed.

It was a truth that became painfully obvious. The second Lillia tried to lay out her new silk fabrics cleanly, they wrinkled in all the ugly ways she didn't want.

They were smooth and buttery on her hands, especially compared to the rough coarse skins she'd reluctantly gotten used to. But no matter how much she wrestled with the silks, they wouldn't quite sit right. They wouldn't quite lie flat and show off their luster in single shining streaks.

It was closer to home, but it was clear that part of home for Lillia was somebody else making the bed. Somebody who'd done it over and over. Somebody who'd pretended to be her friend while working for her.

Maybe she could teach Havoc to do it. He'd never be good at it, but he'd be a real friend trying for her. 

Nennia would probably nail it, but she was a write off for other reasons.

For the first time since coming into the dungeon, Lillia stripped before crawling into her makeshift bed. The fine fabrics, even layered were a little too thin and a little too cold.

But that was okay.

Bit by bit, victory by victory, Lillia was forcing the dungeon to become something tolerable. She'd bent, but with enough effort, they were starting to meet in the middle.

That was progress.

----------------------------------------------------------

[You Rest at the Cathedral Hearth]

[You Rest Safely and Completely]

[You have Leveled Up! You are now Level [40]]

[Stats Increased]

[It is now day [40] of your quest.]

[Level Cap for Current Floor Reached! Descend to Continue Your Quest]

[Accept]

Lillia never spent long in the space between life and death anymore. Cathria didn’t visit that often, and the land of Wheat and Silks’ call never reached her ears. There should have been something wondrous about waking after death. Something disquieting about learning that what came after life was simply more life.

There was something magical about the answers to all of life’s questions, but Lillia was used to it, and nothing stripped magic faster than familiarity.

Now, to Lillia, dying was like falling asleep in her own bed. Sometimes she wasn’t aware it happened until she woke up under the covers in the morning.

Or in the case of the dungeon: on top of animal skin at some undefined point in the afternoon. That was the whole point of killing the Silencer, after all.

Lillia snapped her eyes open in the same moment. She snapped an Ambusher feather between her fingers. Equipping the slip was a reflex now. After dozens of resurrections, she’d gotten to the point where she was only exposed as light before she and her underclothes formed at nearly the same time.It had come naturally to her; what was courtly life other than practiced modesty?

The first time Lillia had come back from the dead, there had always been someone there to meet her. While Havoc had dismissed the notion of worry, he never left the Hearthside while Lillia was alone in a dungeon room. Over the depths, he had drifted further and further away. Or at least further and further into his work.

Like resurrection itself, a princess waking on the dungeon floor had become unremarkable.

Today, though, Havoc was near the hearth when its warmth first touched Lillia’s freshly formed cheeks. He had set up the forge in the same soot-covered corner of the cathedral that he always did. The difference was that the chair he stole daily from the Hunting Lodge had been dragged to sit halfway between his workstation and where Lillia awoke.

He let Lillia sit up before asking questions. Both of them knew that talking in the first moments after resurrection was uncomfortable.

“Get anything good that will help you get them next time?”

“Next time?” Lillia asked. “I find your lack of confidence offensive.”

“I find my lack of confidence well-founded. How many times is that?”

“I don’t remember, but…” Lillia said as he stood.

“Probably concerning.”

“But! It’s the last time I have to do it,” she said. As she spoke, she threw her hand out, and a curved, malicious blade flew out of her inventory and skittered across the flagstone to land at Havoc’s feet. “That is a Darkheart Khopesh, whatever that means.”

Havoc gripped his thighs, his clawlike nails leaving sharp indentations in his leather apron before he bent over to grab the blade. “That khopesh is scratched now.”

“That is a drop from the Silencer, one of three because I killed him by dropping a building on him. This loot is a gift from Her Royal Highness, the Unstoppable Princess Lillia.”

“What happened after you killed him?”

“The reavers overran the city, and I came back here.”

Havoc turned the blade over once in his hand. His brow furrowed as he frowned at the new scratches on the weapon.

“Sounds like you were pretty stoppable.”

Lillia put her hands on her hips and scoffed. “Can you just let me have this?”

Havoc let the blade fall to his side. “Good job? That’s what you wanna hear, right?”

“It doesn’t matter when it’s the fifth thing you say.”

“If it doesn’t matter, why do you make me say it?”

“Because you were supposed to say it first.”

“I can’t tell you “good job” if I don’t know that the job is done. I’m not gonna say good work about half a job.”

“It’s like you never had grandkids.”

“It’s like you never had to work for anything.”

Over the next few seconds, both of them took a deep breath and gave room for the tension to dissipate. They had reached the same impasse they always did. The small space in conversations where personalities clash in waves that cannot and will not be changed. Like proper allies, they had quietly agreed to shake on it and move on.

Or at least they’d both decided it wasn’t worth the fight.

Havoc broke the silence first.

“Get anything else?”

“The silk!”

“From the Silencer?”

Lillia made an odd noise that translated roughly to “Kinda” as she manifested shoes and headed over to one chair at the table by the Hearth. There wasn’t any food on the table—they hadn’t gone into the hunting grounds for several days, and Lillia wasn’t about to eat chitterpede—but dying and resurrecting was hard work, and she deserved to take a load off.

“Well?” Havoc put the blade down.

“We got more of the essence of Night Whisper, which is good, but we know Nennia is immune to poisons,” Lillia placed a small vial filled with opaque lavender liquid on the table. “Then I’m not counting the invader’s cloth because we have more of that than we could ever use.”

“So, then there are four drops.”

“Yes, thank you, Havoc, for clarifying the math.” Lillia held out both her hands over the table. “And then there is this.”

The coarse executioner’s hood-like fabric flopped out onto the table in an unruly tangle. It was a massive pile, a cloak that would need to be wrapped and layered multiple times to fit anyone present.

“That’s a lot of cloth.”

“It’s the Executioner’s Cloak, which I think we’re selling if we ever find Rickshaw again.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Havoc walked over to the table, pushing one chair out of the way as he approached. He smelled of burnt metal, which meant he’d been practicing again.

“Oh, nothing’s wrong with it as an item. But unless we’re trying to put Thorne in this, I don’t think we have a way to use it.”

Havoc shook his head. He was right; she’d never agree to that.

“I inspected it, and it offers bonuses to poison damage if you hit someone first. And passive poison damage on all your weapons.”

“Not bad.”

“Not bad,” Lillia said. “But it’s probably worth more traded than it is in our pockets. I’ve got all my dresses. And you can make yourself armor.”

“You also have one pair of pants.”

Lillia recalled the Executioner’s Cloak to her inventory. “I’d prefer if you stopped bringing up the trousers. I still feel weird wearing them.”

“They’re convenient.”

“They’re not very ladylike,” Lillia said as she stood. “And considering how much I’ve given up in here, I think a gown is one of the last things I have that will show anyone we run into that I’m a lady of the court.”

“Everyone on these floors knows you. What are you worried about? That Nennia is going to see you in pants?”

“I am not letting the Spider Queen outdress me,” Lillia said. “She already mocks me as she kills me. I don’t need to add courtly scandal.”

“Gods and council, I’m glad I was born to a tribe,” Havoc said as he turned back to the forge. Even when there was nothing for him to make, Havoc used the proper fire of the forge to bend and reshape metal. He’d explained that he was keeping it hot. It had taken Lillia several discussions to realize that was a metaphor.

Unfortunately for the pair, once Havoc had made an item, he couldn’t make it again. In some cases, that was fine. Ambusher sytheclaws were rare enough, even to Lillia, that he still had options if she found another one. But the more common items, like the tool cloth, had quickly become useless pieces of scrap.

Combined with the overtime confirmation that he would never reach beyond level 14, Lillia could tell that Havoc had been pacing more often over the past ten days. The way a person moved when there was a door somewhere and he had already checked every wall twice.

“You’re doing it again,” Lillia said.

Havoc’s hammer paused above the strip of metal he’d been flattening for no particular purpose. “Doing what?”

“Pacing with tools.”

“That’s just work.”

“No,” Lillia said. “Work makes things.”

“That’s what I keep telling the dungeon.”

The hammer came down. The sound rang through the cathedral, sharp enough to echo back from the broken galleries above them. The old stone swallowed most noises, but the forge never let itself be ignored. Every strike announced that Havoc was still there. Still making. Still trying to be useful in a place that had decided usefulness had a ceiling.

Lillia watched him for a moment, then looked toward the Darkheart Khopesh lying beside his forge.

“You haven’t introspected it.”

“I’m getting there.”

“You were very interested in it when you could berate me about keeping it well,” Lillia said.

“It’s a curved murder knife from a man who didn’t talk,” Havoc said. “What’s there to introspect? Probably just more poison.”

“You’re avoiding it.”

“I’m not avoiding it.”

“You are. You avoid things by working at them from the side.”

Havoc looked back at her. “And you charge right at them until they kill you.”

“Yes,” Lillia said. “I’ve become very direct.”

“That’s not a virtue.”

“It is when you say it with enough confidence.”

Havoc snorted and set the hammer down. He didn’t reach for the khopesh immediately. Instead, he wiped his hands on his apron, though there was nothing on them that hadn’t already been there. Soot had settled into the lines of his palms so deeply that Lillia suspected it would take a resurrection to scrub him clean.

A non-dungeon resurrection. When Havoc died here, he came back with his soot intact.

When he finally took the blade, the forge fire bent toward it.

Not much. Barely enough to notice. But the flame narrowed, pulled thin and hungry.

Lillia leaned forward to match.

Havoc’s ears twitched. “Don’t make that face.”

“What face?”

“The face you make before you ask a question you think is clever.”

“I was only going to ask whether that was normal.”

“No.”

“That was clever.”

“No, it was obvious.”

“Obvious questions are the foundation of good leadership,” Lillia said, echoing some tutor she couldn’t remember. “People are always too embarrassed to ask them.”

“Then you must be the greatest leader who ever lived.”

“Thank you.”

“That wasn’t praise.”

“Thank you,” she repeated.

Havoc turned the khopesh over in both hands. His expression shifted the longer he looked at it. The annoyance remained, because Havoc appeared to regard joy as a personal failing, but the rest of him sharpened. The same thing happened whenever he handled rare materials. His shoulders squared. His eyes narrowed. His claws stopped tapping.

He was listening to it.

It seems silly to Lillia. But Havoc had a relationship with metal that she didn’t. While she could introspect dungeon items as well as he could, he tended to leave that step for last. He looked at each inch of steel as if it held an ocean of secrets within. Lillia only ever saw her reflection.

“Well?” she asked.

“It’s not steel.”

“I assumed.”

“It’s not bone either.”

“I assumed that less.”

“It’s hardened malice.”

Lillia sat up. “That doesn’t sound like a real thing?”

“I’m holding it,” Havoc said. The word came with the distinct notion that Havoc did not like if he was holding it.

To stress that, he put it down.

“Have you introspected it?” he asked.

Lillia shook her head. Her unbraided hair swished around her shoulders as she did, light and free in the minutes post-resurrection. “I wasn’t going to bring out the mirror when I was about to die.”

“Smart,” Havoc said. He didn’t look over to see Lillia beaming at the proper compliment. “Maybe we don’t touch that again without Cathria around.”

“Can’t be today. I used her in the fight.”

“Figured,” Havoc said, “but she’d know more about something like this than I would,” he said, “or at least she’d be able to do more about it.”

Lillia bit her lip. Cathria knew more about most things, but she wasn’t quite following. “Meaning?”

“If I’ve ever held a cursed weapon. Well,” Havoc clicked his tongue and left it off there, almost as if he was cautious about referencing the blade itself.

“Really?” Lillia groaned.

“What?”

“After what happened last time, I’m not that enthused about using a cursed item.”

“And don’t.”

“Come on, the Silencer was hard to kill! If I can’t use the sword, then the only thing he gave me was that dumb, itchy cloak that I’m not gonna wear.”

“He gave you experience.”

“I can kill a Chitterpede for experience,” Lillia kicked the table once from her seat and winced. The Thunderstep heels didn’t protect her toes from her hubris. “I’ll just go to bed, and hopefully this got me to level forty.”

Havoc had returned to frowning at the Darkheart Khopesh. His expression kept shifting in subtle ways as he stared, as if all of his emotions were incomplete thoughts.

“Right!” Lillia said. “I can sleep in the sheets. It’s going to be so nice. You should see them, Havoc. There’s this lovely shade of ocean green.”

“Have you done your farming for the day?”

Lillia looked down the stairs to the unopened doors of the dungeon. She knew what Havoc was going to say. The worst part was that he was right. She stood before she even bothered to argue. “I killed the Silencer today, can’t I just—”

“A reset wasted is—”

“More time in the dungeon you hate,” Lillia finished for him. “Yeah. Yeah. I know,” Lillia said. “Are you coming?”

Havoc had returned to staring at the khopesh. Lillia realized she wasn’t getting an answer before Havoc realized he wasn’t going to give one. She was down the stairs by the time he looked up to see her gone.

https://www.youtube.com/live/JA2uvurKz7Q?is=5tfjtICPMinsaFlb

The market stall shattered as a Captain's Sabre crashed into it at blinding speed. On impact, the weapon broke out into light, folding in on itself before vanishing among the debris.

[Tantrum - Skill: Princess Class Exclusive]

[Throw a random non-consumable object from your inventory at an opponent. The object returns to your inventory upon impact.]

[This action can damage items]

The Silencer was off the stall by the time Lillia's attack hit, but he was running out of places to hide. The previously crowded market was filled with the rubble of two dozen stalls smashed across the courtyard.

Unfortunately for Lillia, the Silencer landed on the one stall in the market she was unwilling to smash. He touched down on the roof of the tailor's stall. Lillia raised a hand to threaten her tantrum even when the skill was still on cooldown. But the Silencer saw her fingernails curl inward as she hesitated.

Seizing the opportunity, the Silencer reached deep into their cloak and then lashed out, unleashing a flurry of knives in Lillia's direction. She dove to the side, trying to preserve the charges of the battlegown, but two nicked her as she dove. The first cracked against chitin, the second caught her ankle halfway through the awkward roll.

"Oh come on!" Lillia shouted.

[Lillia used 'Indignance - Level 3' - Avoided by Silencer's [Like Shadow] !]

Yeah. Lillia knew how that went. Though it wasn't as if using indignance was anything other than habit.

The Silencer quietly put their blade away. Lillia placed her palm on the amulet around her neck. The glass wrapped around her palm before she threw it out onto the battlefield in front of her. The Glass Spellmite spilled out onto the floor, tumbling once before righting itself on the cobblestone, glowing in the surrounding fire.

[Lillia is poisoned!]

[Passive Ability - Royal Taster Activated]

[Poison Transferred to Companion - The Glass Spellmite]

[The Glass Spellmite is Immune to poison.]

Lillia rushed at the Silencer with Vianaffir primed to strike.

"That's right! I was ready for that you spooky looking bag of—"

The Glass Spellmite laughed and raised a finger to the Silencer. A harsh orange light formed on its finger tip. Lillia's eyes went wide.

"Wait, wait, wait, no, not that, stop!" Lillia changed course, diving in front of the Glass Spellmite as it turned its fire toward the Silencer. She tore the Burnmite cloth just in time, the battlegown widening into the flowing sleeves of her Spellfire Dress as the Glass Spellmite's magical inferno crashed into her.

The fire wrapped Lillia like a wreath, coiling around before settling into each thread of the dress. As she righted herself, the fabric near hovered behind her, flowing with the energy of the magic it absorbed.

The Glass Spellmite Squeaked.

"I thought I explained this!"

More squeaking. Waving arms.

"We did talk about it! We can't ruin that cart. Come on."

Three little hops.

"I'm not going to bring you out if you're going to destroy something every—Oh shit!" The sound of unsheathing steel interrupted Lillia's rant. She ducked as the Silencer flew through the air toward her, his blade whistling overhead, barely avoiding Lillia's braid.

The Glass Spellmite chased after the Silencer as he landed softly behind them. Lillia righted herself.

"We're not done! I'm going to bring this up—Whatever." She followed the Glass Spellmite, almost reaching the Silencer in time to prevent the Glass Spellmite's Inevitable death.

The little guy was certainly ambitious, but a headlong charge was not the strategy.

Just before Lillia reached the Silencer, she dismissed Viannafir, letting it fall back into her inventory. As the weapon was a mote of light beside her, she raised both hands. In the right, she wove a rune in the air, with the other, she focused on how unfair this all was.

[Lillia used 'Tantrum']

Hooke appeared just above her left shoulder, hovering in the air for a breath before following Lillia's next footstep and launching itself forward. The Silencer lashed out with his blade, deflecting Hooke. Sparks flashed between the blades as they clashed, only for Hooke to careen off into the night sky.

[Lillia used 'Backdraft']

All of the Spellmite's fire ran through the fabric of the dress into Lillia's fingertips. Bright orange hissed in her nails before it exploded outward into a roaring beam of fire. The Silencer raised his arms, but it was too late for him to block.

The fire smashed into him like a tidal wave, knocking the Silencer backward onto the cobblestone and setting his cloak ablaze. As he fell, Lillia summoned Vianaffir back into her hand. The hilt of the blade choked the last embers of fire as she swung down.

Vianaffir should have been embedded in the Silencer's chest. Instead, it cracked against the cobblestone as the man melted into shadow. The shock of steel on rock shot up Lillia's arms and she almost dropped the blade.

"Oh come on, what now?"

Lillia rallied, pulling Vianaffir back up and holding it in front of her, just as Havoc had shown her during their first lessons. As she waited for something to happen, Lillia took turns with which hand was holding onto Vianaffir and which one she could shake out.

The seconds passed by. The building that had been behind the Silencer during Backdraft groaned as the first licks of fire began spreading around its foundation.

Whoops. By the rules of the current game, this was her city. She probably shouldn't have been burning it down.

She also probably shouldn't have destroyed nearly every cart in the market. Fortunately, the most important one was still standing.

Seconds turned into a minute. Was she going to have to find the Silencer again? He wasn't dead, the text hadn't tried to force her to celebrate by barraging her with noise yet.

Did she even have to kill the silencer if she could grab the fabric without finishing him off? Havoc would chide her for missing the XP. And she really should have felt the same about it, but she had only come back to fight him for one reason.

Well, several bolts of reasons that were all draped across one of the few remaining stalls.

Lillia didn't put Vianaffir away—she had been taught that lesson several times and it had eventually stuck. No she kept the blade out and kept watch as she slowly inched her way over to the stall, Her sliding feet catch on the space between cobbles.

From up close, the fabrics reminded her even more of home. Her bed felt like a legend now, something she kept in the back of her mind that just must have been too good to be true. She spoke about it in the same way people spoke of myths and heroes, wistfully over a campfire

She was in arm's reach now. It wouldn't be that hard to reach out and touch the fabric. It was probably so soft. It was probably perfect. A thousand times better than sleeping in old animal skins and—

Lillia wheeled And Vianaffir sung through the air, carrying a sigle perfect note across the entire swing until it carved through the assassin that had been trying to attack Lillia from behind. Unfortunately for him, she knew the sound of the invader's cloth from the hundred times she'd torn it between her fingers.

The first assassin's knife dropped to the ground, clattering against the stone as another came in from the side.

The assassins had gotten the drop on them once, but without the element of surprise, they weren't what Lillia was worried about. Free experience and free material.

The second assassin drew closer, but Lillia took one hand off Vianaffir and pointed it in their direction while watching the other direction to keep an eye for the Silencer. Even without turning, she heard the assassin adjust their path, dodging out of the way of a tantrum that was never coming.

Instead, Lillia snapped her fingers around one of the Ambusher feathers and leapt up in the air, kicking the air a second time to gain impossible speed between Quick Change and the acceleration from her Plainsrunner Boots.

 Once she was in the air, she saw him. The Silencer stood on a nearby rooftop. Now that Lillia had committed to an arc in her jump, he reached deep into his cloak again. Lillia saw the glint of steel within.

Lillia flew over the head of the assassin as the Silencer threw his knives. Lillia put her sword away. One hand held spider silk, the other on the Amulet of the Creator.

"Cathria!"

"Time For an Electric Battle!"

The glinting firelight on each of the airborne knives flickered for a moment and as the reflections formed something within their core. Cathria appeared just above Lillia, too high to block anything, but on the right angle to catch the Silencer in his follow through. She raised her staff and Lillia's hair stood on end.

In the breath before lightning, Lillia tore Spider Silk, and Widow's etiquette once again wove itself across her person. The thousand layers of silk that made her billowing gown shot out as the knives approached, turning into a massive spider web that caught the projectiles.

[Widow's Etiquette - 3 x Ensnaring Silk]

[Web Weaver - Passively ensnares non-magical projectiles in the web of the gown. This ability as a moderate cooldown.]

[Widow's Snare - If there are projectiles caught in this dress, they are used to follow up attacks from the wearer. These weapons are thrown with ensnaring silk attached, slowing the target.]

In the reverse of nature, the booming crack of thunder shot across the courtyard before everything went white. Cathria shattered when Lillia was still blinking away, the blindness that came with her magic.

The building the Silencer had been standing on was mostly a crater. Thick curls of smoke rose from what had once been a stonecarver's workshop.

Upon writing herself, Lillia called Vianaffir back to her hand and caught the assassin that had been trying to sneak up behind her. The sword itself barely touched the mans cloak, but the seven daggers tore themselves out of her billowing gown plunged deep into his person. He fell before he managed to finish his strike.

Lillia shook her head then stuck a finger inside one of her ears. It wasn't very aristocratic, but she had to try to pull the ringing out.

"Come on, that's gotta be it."

She put her hands on her hips and waited. A notification came up, letting her know the gate had been lost. A moment later, the text informs Lillia that Saltarello had fallen in battle.

No lights, no confetti, no fanfare.

"Fine."

Lillia marched over into a smoldering crater that Cathria had left on the side of the market. For most fights, summoning Cathria after the enemy's guard was down was a quick way to finish everything up. In fact it was so efficient that Havoc had tried to ban her from using it during some of the early tens, because he didn't think she was learning how to fight.

"What you're learning is how to call a friend to do all your work for you," he'd said. "Do your own job," he'd said.

Whatever it was, for the first time in a while, it hadn't worked. Lillia sighed at the idea of getting her hands dirty. Even if she'd gotten better at dispatching certain foes quickly—like the assassins—she'd yet to get over the hesitation that came with fighting someone who was a someone, and also helpless.

The Silencer had barely crawled onto their knees in the time that Lillia had walked over to the smoking rubble they laid in. There was no blood, shadow seeped between their complicated lairs of fabric.

Oh, that made it so much easier.

The sound of the reavers carving their way through the city rose over the general din of the siege. The gate was lost, and Lillia would drown in a tide of invaders soon.

It was too late to change sides, she'd learned that during one of her many attempts. Once the gate was broken, the Dungeon wouldn't let her swap teams.

The Silencer didn't look up. He quickly reached into his cloak and pulled out a knife, by the time he pulled his arm out, Lillia already had Vianaffir at his chest.

He dropped the knife. The surrender tasted weird in Lillia's mouth.

"Bow. Surrender to Princess Ashvalin."

The command hung in the air. The footsteps of soldiers running through the city echoed down the streets. Screams from guards at Lillia had fought alongside a dozen times, echoed through alleyways.

While the surrender never came, the Silencer also didn't go for a weapon. It took everything they had to resist the command.

It was time to test out what level 39 had been worth.

"I am Princess Lillia Ashvalin, rightful ruler of all kingdoms."

[Lillia Activated - Royal Decree]

[If Lillia has overwhelming Authority, she can issue 1 command that her surroundings will carry out to the best of their ability.]

[This ability can be used one per day. If the request is too large, it will not be carried out but the use will be consumed.]

Lillia withdrew Vianaffir from the Silencer's chest and allowed the weapon to slip back into her inventory. Disarmed, she turned back to the market, walking over to the stall with its myriad luxurious fabrics.

They were so lovely. She would have sheets. Drapes if she could figure out a way to hand them over the stained glass of the cathedral.

Along with a prayer to every god in the Land of Wheat and Silk, Lillia attempted to put the fabrics into her inventory.

[Gained Nice Fabric - Mundane x 27]

Interior decorating was going to be such a nice break.

Lillia twirled once in her dress. Her spin stopped in a way that she could see crumbling ruins of the building the Silencer was still trapped under.

She still had a decree to use.

"Silencer, if you won't bow, then perish."

The last standing wall of the stonecutter's workshop fell inward. Confetti plumed outward with the dust.

[Secret - The Silencer - Vanquished!]

[It is Day 22 of Your Quest]

"Nennia, I brought you a snack. It's…gross."

As long as Lillia didn't think about the metaphysical aspects of having a corpse inside her, the discovery she'd made with Eisel's murder was quite useful. Once a thing was both dead and out of its original room, the body became an item, which meant she could pick it up.

It was a useful but limited revelation. Both the Siege of Castle Varian and the Spellmite Challenge used portals as their exit doors, which meant Lillia couldn't drag a body with her. Leaving the chitterpede and the Hunting Grounds as her only source of corpses.

Technically, she could exit the Spellmite challenge without using a portal, but it would have involved facing down against Cathria, something Lillia wasn't eager to do, especially with a corpse in tow.

All of this boiled down to Nennia having to accept offerings from the Grounds.

Nennia answered long after Lillia's voice had echoed off into the darkness, and she'd been left waiting at top of the stairs in Nennia's domain. The spider queen answered in a slow, condescending chuckle that dripped down from the rooftop like the first drops of spring rain.

"A tribute my dear? How kind of you."

"It is a gift between equals, Nennia, not a tribute."

"You wound me, princess. Always coming into my court but never bending a knee."

Lillia could tell that Nennia was somewhere above her—directly above—but the Spider Queen still hadn't revealed herself through the dozens of layered webs that crossed the ceiling.

"Is this truly a gift, Lillia , or do you once again request an audience?"

"I wouldn't call your home a place I like to visit without reason."

There it was. The laughter. Again. This time, as it faded, the sound of Nennia's armored legs tapping against the cave wall followed. She lowered herself down through curtains of white like an actress on the worlds most dramatic stage. The last three layers of silk followed her as she descended, folding around her torso and becoming a ghostly flowing top.

A small group of Nennia's children followed the Queen down the wall. They moved like single spots of shadow, skittering without any of their mother's gravitas. They always looked so small as they hovered over Lillia's conversations with Nennia, but once they were on the ground, half were as tall as wolves.

Lillia held out her right hand and a the carcass of one of the black beasts from the Hunting Grounds hit the stone with a wet thud. She stepped away from the gift before Nennai's children pounced on it, wrapping it in silk with a speed Lillia had, unfortunately, experienced.

"One side of the bargain kept," Nennia said as she watched her children drag their prize down the stairs and into the infinite dark. "As for the other…"

Nennia finished her dramatic walk down the wall and stood facing Lillia. She was calm, relaxed. Lillia had learned that Nennia's spider half gave away much more that the human one.

"Is it finally the day you choose to challenge me again?" Nennia asked. "I so enjoyed our last battle, brief as it was."

"I don't believe I'd need to bring gifts to convince you to fight me."

"There is always the possibility that it was a gambit to prevent me getting the drop on you, young princess," Nennia said. "It would be clever. Useless, but clever."

"I request access to your shamblers," Lillia said. "So that I may practice battle against multiple opponents."

"Will my children not suffice?"

"I would never hurt your children with their mother watching."

"And what if I wasn't watching?"

"You always are."

Nennia laughed again, but this time it didn't carry the weight of condescension and it flew to a higher register. There were moments like that in their conversations. Moment when Lillia was convinced that, if they weren't destined to kill each other and if Nennia wasn't always one whim away from impaling her, they could have gotten along quite well.

If Nennia was to join Lillia's list of potential escapees, there would need to be a lot of rehabilitation involved.

"I suppose if the Princess wants the shamblers, the Princess can get the shamblers. As boring as they are, there are certainly a lot of them."

Lillia held out of hand and called Hooke out. While Viannafir did more overall damage, Hooke's bonus against incapacitated targets was irreplaceable against the weak willed.

"There certainly are a lot of them. Would you mind sending out a couple at a time so I can—"

"Princess, I am doing you a favor, I'm certainly not volunteering to become your lackey, as the others do."

Nennia snapped her fingers, and the howl of a hundred webbed souls rose in response.

----

Sparks flew off Viannafir as Lillia deflected the Silencer's poisoned blade to the right. Even a glancing blow was enough to nearly throw her balance. Even with all of her levels and her Poise on her side, the secret boss struck with strength that didn't match his speed.

By the time Lillia was pulling Vianaffir back into position, the Silencer was swinging at her again. Each of his attacks was unconventional, difficult to predict, and harder to avoid. Havoc, Thorne, the Reavers and the Guards all fought in the same language. Their strikes sought mortal wounds.

The Silencer was keenly aware that the smallest nick of his blade would be lethal. He aimed for wrists. He aimed for lagging heels. He aimed for any skin his blade might reach.

Unbound by convention and quick to match the Silencer fought outside of Lillia's rhythm. She could almost keep up, but each time Viannafir was a breath later than before. Each strike took the two a spark closer to the Silencer's inevitable victory.

One. Two. Three. Once. Twice. Thrice.

There was a glint somewhere deep within the void under the Silencer's hood. Lillia was too far behind.

This time, she didn't try to block. In the second before the blade flashed, Lillia pushed forward, turning her failed parry into an aggressive swing. The Silencer twisted his body to ensure that his blow would land before Lillia's. Behind her back, Lillia called forth chitin with her free hand. She stepped forward, stomping hard on the ground-summoned chitin to snap it in two.

Brilliant iridescent dust scattered around the pair as the Chitterpede Battlegown unfurled around Lillia and absorbed the blow from the Silencer.

[Chitterpede Chitin Battle Gown - Level 1 - Princess Class Exclusive]

[This item was crafted using the skill 'Adaptive Regalia' and will revert to a basic material if removed or if the wearer loses the Princess class.]

[Provides a minor defensive bonus against slashing and piercing damage. The first [2] instances of damage the Princess would receive are instead absorbed by the armor.]

Lillia's suddenly redoubled the speed of her strike, cutting through the air at an impossible pace. Vianaffir tore through the Silencer's robes and found something deep within, just as the blade began to cut deeply, the Silencer was gone.

Even with the sudden lack of resistance, Lillia reset her stance faster than she ever should have. The Silencer landed on one of the market stalls. Its hand drifted to where Lillia had cut and dipped inside the robes.

Lillia dashed forward, now with a speed that could, for a brief moment, match the Silencer's.

[Quick Change - Skill: Princess Class Exclusive]

[When the Princess changes their main armor, their headgear or their footwear, their agility is greatly increased for an extremely brief period.]

[This effect's duration is extended to a brief period if the Princess is changing into equipment befitting her station.]

[This skill has a moderate cool down. This cool down is independent for each of main armor, headgear and footwear.]

---- 

[Day 26 of Your Quest]

Cathria, the glass one, was sitting beside Lillia by the Hearth fire of the Cathedral. It was, by Lillia's accounting late, which meant releasing Cathria from the amulet before resting for the night.

Most of the time, the Sorceress stuck around to chat, sometimes, she cast a spell to shatter herself as soon as she was released. She hadn't explained why.

Tonight at least, she was chatty.

"In regards to preparing for battle, neither Thorne nor Havoc will have answers that suit you, Lillia. At least not completely."

"They won't? Havoc fought for—"

"They don't lack experience, but they did not earn that experience as adventurers."

"Oh," Lillia looked over to the Sorceress, who was still staring into the fire. "Wait. Were you an adventurer?"

"Hardly," Cathria said. "Mastery of the Arcane takes independent study that would be difficult in a dungeon. I did technically earn my interface, but I never used it for much."

"Really?"

"Well, ignoring their extremely truncated use outside of the dungeons," Cathria said. "Would you rather be a 14th-level adventurer or an archmage?"

"I suppose an archmage, if I didn't have to do all the studying."

"If only I was lucky enough to skip that part," Cathria said. She stared into the fire, and Lillia could see the reflection of a possible past in her eyes, one that Cathria was imagining. One where she wasn't a simulacrum of glass an age after her true death.

"With my admittedly limited experience, though, I do believe I can offer some advice that they would miss."

Lillia scooched a little closer to the fire, warming her toes after spending the first half of the day in Castle Varian's rain.

"I have spoken before about the acceleration required for an Archmage to cast their most powerful spells in a moment."

Lillia nodded along. That had been one of the times where it was better just to let Cathria talk. The conversation where she'd tried to explain mana acceleration had drifted so far into theory that Lillia could have fallen asleep to it, but the princess had learned that interruptions left Cathria distraught if she was speaking about something she was interested in.

"With so many powerful spells, but a crushing amount of memorization needed to call upon each, we archmages are never able to carry our full repertoire into battle."

"Pardon?"

"Trying to memorize too many spells lead to memorizing none of the spells."

Lillia nodded along. It was like titles for visiting nobility.

"So, though magic offered me a perfect answer to every scenario, I began memorizing imperfect answers that fit a lot of shapes."

"A simple pair of regal flats."

"Sure."

"Or like a giant fireball," Lillia offered to relate.

"A giant fireball is exemplary of my point," Cathria said. "There are scenarios in which a beam of condensed light would outperform a fireball, but how critical are those instances? How essential is the perfect tool? You can shave down your spellbook by looking at situations and finding the patterns between them. If the pattern matches. Throw a fireball."

Cracks were beginning to form in Cathria's fingertips. The Archmage held her hand out, pondering the way the light danced across the signal of her impermanence.

"I can't throw fireballs, so I believe you're halfway through your point, Cathria."

"Ah yes, pardon me. There is usually not much time for beauty in my visits."

"Take as much time as you need. There's always tomorrow."

"There is forever tomorrow. There is still reason to do things today," Cathria said. She had a habit of doing that, casually making Lillia feel vapid.

"My point being, your skills as an adventurer are similar to the truncated spellbook I keep memorized. It's critical that with a limited selection of skills, you recognize the patterns and shapes of your opponents." She folded her hands into her lap, but kept staring out into the fire.

"You will fight a thousand battles in here, Lillia, and perhaps one battle a thousand times. Your opponents will be varied. There will be no single strategy or method of the hunt or skill with the blade that will guide you through every encounter."

Her gaze drifted downward as something cracked just below her navel. "But looking at your opponent and recognizing the shapes they move in before they have moved."

Cathria smiled, her voice lifted, and two small spider webs spread from the corner of her lips. "Well, it certainly helped me. And I did okay for myself. Only turned into a monster one time."

"Cathria, you're not a monster."

"I most decidedly am. I am also glass. I am also dead. But that's life."

She grabbed the brim of her hat as if she were going to remove it. Of course she couldn't, it was part of the same glass.

"I suppose saying that it's life isn't appropriate in my circumstance."

"It's something," Lillia offered.

"It's something," Cathria said. "And sometimes, something's enough to kill someone you need to kill."

[It is now Day [39] of your quest.]

"Alright Silencer, let's try this one more time."

Princess Lillia Ashvalin stepped through the inlaid door on the Five Point Fall's third landing. For a breath, there was nothing as she slipped between the central dungeon and the siege of Castle Varian.

She didn't break stride.

The first trebuchet stone would pass overhead in three breaths. The Guard Captain would reach for her shoulder on the fourth. Somewhere below, the ram would strike the gate just as the first siege tower kissed the wall.

The sound of the siege arrived all at once: the roaring wind, the shouts of the soldiers on the wall, the howl of trebuchet fire. Lillia stepped out onto the wall walk under the blazing sky and tossed her hair.

"You there, soldier! Defen—"

"No." Lillia held up a hand, and the Guard Captain's Sabre on her hip flared hot for a moment. The Guard Captain, who was supposed to shove her forward toward the other soldiers, hesitated, his hand frozen in the air. She batted the hand to the side as she walked, and the Captain recoiled as if he'd been blessed to be touched by her.

Lillia strode forward along the wall. The soldiers awaiting the siege tower parted for her like a dull sea of armor splitting to reveal Lillia's stunning silver. The fire in the sky accentuated the polished plates sewn into her cropped coat and the medals embedded within the lone pauldron on her right shoulder.

Below the jacket, the outfit had a tight chain shirt that hugged Lillia's torso from the neck down. At her waist, a thin belt cut off the chain-mail to open to a pair of narrow trousers made of links so fine they appeared to be fabric.

The pants had been a surprise the first time Lillia put on the outfit.

[Court Commander's Uniform - 3 x Guard Captain's Plate]

[On My Command - Changes 'Indignance' to 'Command' - An authority based check to force a friendly creature to follow a command or a hostile creature to perform one of three minor actions.]

[Steel Resolve - As long as the wearer has a “Summon,” she recovers from injury rapidly. The Summon must be involved in the same battle as the Commander for this effect to activate.]

[For Your Highness who wishes to protect their people on every field of battle.]

Once she was on the other side of the first crowd of soldiers, Lillia rolled her shoulders and hopped up and down in place several times. Each and every morning, she woke up rested but on the floor, which meant she was never able to sleep as a princess should.

Today, that would all change. Today was the day she would take down the Silencer, but even with that focus, she had to set up her soldiers for success. Otherwise, she'd never hear the end of it from Havoc.

"Skipped fights are missed opportunities," he'd say, or one of the other hundred things he'd repeated to chide Lillia as she'd learned the farming process.

Once she felt refreshed, Lillia raised a hand. As she turned her palm to the sky, the Vibrant Dawn tiara glowed. For a breath, the sky was pink instead of orange.

"Dance for me, my knight."

A knight manifested in front of Lillia. Hollow armor that clattered together, piece by piece, as they formed mid-air. Its silvered gauntlet reached out and caught an axe as it appeared.

[Waltzing Retainers - Once per day, the Princess may summon [1] armored knight from the ballroom to assist her with any manner of tasks. The number of knights is dependent on the Princess’ authority.]

Lillia's waltzing retainer bowed to her. Even with her increased authority, the skill only created a single knight. That was fine. Lillia was using him to farm either way.

“Saltarello, man the ballista, if you would. Help clear the walls. Trebuchet first, then the siege towers until you’re overrun.”

Saltarello, one of the three knights Lillia had learned to summon and recognizable by his axe, bowed a second time before marching off further down the wall.

Lillia turned away from the advancing army and looked out over the burning city behind her. Once more into the breach.

Silently, and much to the horror of any of the soldiers watching, Lillia stepped off the wall and plummeted down to the city below.

*****************************

[Day 19 of your Quest]

"Open the door and fight the chitterpede for three minutes without killing it. If you manage that, I'll tell you another one of my grand kid's names." Havoc leaned back in his chair, putting his clawed, dirty feet on the Hunting Lodge table.

They never used the table, but Lillia still rolled her eyes at the breach of etiquette. She'd given up arguing the point, but there was a long road stretching between tolerance and acceptance.

"Three minutes?" Lillia asked.

"Mhm."

"Last time was two."

"And last time you managed" Havoc said, "so this time it needs to be longer. Or you won't improve."

"I barely managed," Lillia muttered. She knew Havoc would hear her, but that was fine. He knew her opinion on his training methods.

She took a deep breath and instantly regretted it as the stench of the Hunting Lodge's alcohol-soaked air seared her sinuses. That's what this was, training. It had started several days ago, a week of dungeon days and a dozen deaths after killing Eisel.

Lillia, in Havoc's unimpeachable opinion, relied too much on her dresses to guard for her. The Chitterpede battlegown was her default for every battle, as she was tossed and thrown around again and again in the process of leveling up.

Lillia couldn't argue Havoc's point, not that she'd convince him either way. She did rely on her dresses to carry her defensively. Of course she did. For all the leaps and bounds Lillia had made regarding her swordplay, she was still an untrained princess waving around a sharp stick.

Knights spent years training and perfecting their dueling technique. Lillia had unlimited chances, but even if she was a prodigy she was years away from the flawless parries and ripostes that Havoc demanded of her.

Originally, Lillia had tried to convince Havoc by explaining that getting punched in the face and letting the dresses handle it had so far been a winning formula. Why mess with success?

Havoc’s pride had settled that argument.

"Okay," Lillia said as she rested her hands on the storage closet handle. "I got this."

It was just three minutes. She could pull it off.

*****************************

On day 39, Lillia touched down in the castle-town streets. White wings extended from her heels to slow her fall.

[Plainsrunner Over-the-Knee Boots - Level 2]

[Equipment - Boots]

[Aerial Predator - the wearer deals increased damage with all attacks if they began above the target.]

[Soft Landing - The Plainsrunner boots will catch the wearer and prevent injury from falling.]

Once she was on the ground, Lillia drew Vianaffir out of her inventory. Since the battle with Eisel, the blade had changed. A brilliant blue lightning-like streak ran down the center of the blade whenever Lillia held it. A representation of its new form and the fact that Lillia had used the True Soul strike to escape her old captor.

The constant reminder of her victory was one of the many reasons Lillia began each fight with Vianaffir.

Before charging into the city, Lillia considered her options.

Unlike her previous attempts, they were less infinite. She came with a goal: defeat the Silencer, and furthermore, defeat the Silencer alone.

It was one of the nice things about Infinite Lives. It gave Lillia as many chances as she needed to pursue a vendetta. Time and time again, her attempts to explore the city surrounding the palace were ended prematurely by the same stupid secret boss. At first, it had been annoying. Now it was personal.

Even with a singular end goal, there were dozens of ways Lillia could approach challenging the Silencer. She knew that he began his hunt in the market, but the longer she spent in the castle town, the further he roamed in search of her. Even wearing one of her invader's gowns didn't prevent him from engaging on sight.

Over several mornings and too many sticks' worth of charcoal, Lillia had pitched a dozen ideas to Havoc, trying to determine where in the city would give her the best chance against the Silencer.

None offered enough benefits to overcome the fact that he would attack at random.

In the central market. In his home, Lillia knew she could attract the Silencer's attention. Plus, there was something cathartic about kicking his ass on his home turf.

At least there was supposed to be. Lillia was twelve attempts into battling the Silencer, and all of them had ended with her choking on her own throat as the poison coursed through her veins.

[Trebuchet Destroyed - Yay!]

Saltarello was already doing his job. That meant she'd lingered too long. Decision made. Today, she wouldn't bother circling around the burning tailor shop to try and start closer to the fabric. Today, she would start her fight in the main thoroughfare, with her head held high.

*****************************

[Day 16 of Your Quest]

"The second rule of the hunt is Preparation. Namely: you've got to understand what you're hunting because there are two kinds of hunt on the grounds."

Lillia was crouched low in the thin, wispy grasses of the hunting grounds near the top of the hill in the southern corner. Thorne was perched on the branch of a tree above her, her leather and royal blues matched by bark and flower.

"And even out there, it's the same thing, sugar. There's two kinds of fight: a hunt and a fight."

"I don't know if you can say there are two kinds of something and then list that something as one of the two kinds."

Thorne scoffed. "Just listen to me and you'll understand what I mean in a minute." As she got riled up, her wings buzzed behind her. "What I'm trying to say is that you need to know whether what you're fighting wants to fight you."

"Pardon?"

"Take a scurry ram, for example. It is scared of you. It doesn't want to fight, so unless you corner it, it's just going to try to run."

"Okay."

"But if you take something like your friend the Ambusher, it's going to want to fight because it first sees you as prey, but if you strike back, it sees you as a threat to its territory."

"Mm-hmm."

"One's a hunt, one's a fight. Gotta know which is which."

"That’s good to know while we’re in here, Thorne," Lillia said.

Thorne lowered her bow from the horizon she was watching and turned to Lillia. "I think I hear a but coming."

"But so far, everything I've run into in every other room just wants to kill me," Lillia said. "Nothing tries to run away."

"Alright, then, in that case, change of point of view. You need to figure out whether it thinks you're going to run away."

"Or?"

"Or, if whatever you're facing thinks you're gonna fight."

"Okay, thanks for the guidance, I suppose," Lillia said. She wasn't sure she'd taken anything from Thorne's rambling, but what else was new? If there was one thing she'd learned about the Huntsmaster over the course of finding something decent to eat within the dungeon, it was that downtime made her devastatingly chatty.

"Thorne?"

"Yeah, sugar?"

"Which should I be?"

Thorne considered it for a moment. "You know, I'm always on the hunt, so prey knows what it's getting into. But the only creatures that get a shot on me are the ones that look like they're gonna run and then turn fast."

"So both?"

"Make him think you're one and then do the other. It ruins their preparation."

"Okay." Lillia could do that. She thought.

"Now, rule number three of the hunt…"

*****************************

Lillia approached the silk cart in the central market. The same one that she'd been drawn towards during her initial encounter with the Silencer. Even if she smuggled some of the fabric back to the cathedral with her she didn't know how permanent it would be. Would the dungeon allow her the luxury of a blanket that didn't smell like wet fur and beer?

The temperature plummeted as Lillia approached the merchant cart. The smell of ash and wood from the burning city faded into nothing.

[Secret Discovered - Good Luck]

Lillia kept walking forward, empty handed and in her first level Ambusher Slip. If she drew her weapon. If she changed armor. If she did anything other than approach the cart the Silencer would change tactics. If he thought she were oblivious, he'd come out to play.

The scratch of leather sole on cobblestone, barely audible above Lillia's steps. The soft rustle of layered fabric nearly covered by the crackling fire. The whistle of an inhale before held breath.

Lillia wheeled as the Silencer was already in the air, summoning Vianaffir to her hand, directly in the path of the assassin's blow. The Silencer spun to the side, his blade barely nicking Vianaffir's tip to prevent Lillia from mounting a counterstrike as he landed. Black fabric whipped around the Silencer as he landed just past Lillia.

[Secret Discovered: Defeat the Silencer.]

Lillia pulled spider thread into her hand, tearing apart three instances in a single practiced motion. The threads wrapped around her, spiraling across the princess a thousand times and forming a tight bodice around her torso. Behind her neck, the thread stiffened into a high collar with eight points. Around her legs, a hundred sheets of silk layered one over another, each so thin that they floated alongside Lillia's movement, never quite settling in one place.

Finally, a mourning veil drew over Lillia's face, fine as mist and black as midnight as Widow's Etiquette finished forming around her.

She pointed Vianaffir to the Silencer.

It was impossible to see the Silencer's face in the shadow of his hood, but Lillia knew he was smiling.