Chapter 18 – And Let Loose

Lillia tripped over her own sword lesson. Havoc caught her by the collar before she could finish tumbling across the flagstone.

“Do ya know what ya did wrong there?”

“You’re going too hard on me!”

Havoc let go. Lillia dropped to the floor. It was still a softer landing than the flagstone had originally planned for her.

“You’re letting the sword lead your weight,” Havoc said as Lillia rolled over onto her back. “Instead of letting it guide you.”

“Those mean the same thing.” Lillia waited for Havoc to offer her a hand. He didn’t.

“Leader leads. Guide suggests.”

“How many guides do you know?”

“Enough.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It’s the answer you’re gettin’.”

Havoc had tucked his baton under his arm a while ago. He’d offered to show Lillia how to use the maul, but it had quickly become apparent that “an enemy who blocks her attacks” and “an enemy who fights back with a weapon” were both well beyond the lessons she needed.

Lillia needed lessons like ‘don’t take yourself out of the fight’ and ‘your enemy wants to win too.’ The exact kind of things she would have been taught at some point in the castle, had she been a prince as opposed to a princess.

Lillia huffed as she picked herself back up, nursing every joint she’d hit against the flagstone over and over again. Havoc sighed as he watched the princess get up too slowly after too little punishment. If asked, they both would have said the lesson was going poorly, but for entirely different reasons.

They were still close to Lillia’s new Hearth in the cathedral, situated between the stairs and the fire itself. Havoc had originally suggested that they should train on the other side of the room, but Lillia had made excuses to avoid getting closer to the exit door and whatever was in there.

It was hard for Lillia to tell, as the change was gradual, but she could almost swear that the room was warmer than it had been when she’d gone to get Havoc. The flames were higher, like adding a second body to the space swelled the Hearth.

Once she was up, Lillia tapped Vianaffir on the ground twice before raising it again, putting it between herself and Havoc.

“Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“Don’t tap the blade,” Havoc said. “You’ll dull the edge.”

Lillia lowered the weapon and leaned on it. The tip ground against the flagstone. “What? It’s a legendary sword. I think it can handle some rock.”

“It’s a sword,” Havoc pointed out. “Needs an edge or it’s just a worse maul.”

“And you don’t think the legendary part of ‘legendary sword’ does anything about the sharpness?” Lillia asked.

“Is it a legendary sword?”

“Of course it—” Lillia looked down at Vianaffir. “It has a name!” She stamped her foot to accentuate the point. The sound of her heel against the flagstone echoed around the main hall.

“I have a name. Does that make me legendary?”

“You’re the only hobgoblin I know. So maybe.”

Lillia watched Havoc process her point. His brow bent, stretched, and settled. She couldn’t tell whether he had decided she was stupid or brilliant.” Just don’t hit your sword on the ground. Either it’s going to get dull, or it’s legendary and good steel deserves good treatment.”

Havoc went back over to the fire after making his point. There was a pile of his things spread around it. None of them had a place to sit yet, let alone a home.

“Are we done?” Lillia asked.

“I’m not sure we started, kid,” Havoc said as he sat down beside a small leather pouch he’d carried up from his cellar. “There’s years between you and anyone who should be in a place like this.”

“I can get better.”

“Yeah, you can. You will,” Havoc said. “You’ll get a lot better at it because you’re so shit right now.”

Lillia let out an exasperated sigh.

“You celebrate when the baby walks. You don’t plan for it to perform a makrah,” Havoc explained. Lillia didn’t have the full context but she understood when a word sounded like tradition. “You ain’t gonna duel anyone to death anytime soon, Lillia.”

This time, instead of dismissing Havoc for her own opinion, Lillia slumped. After a moment of self-pity, she slid Vianaffir back into her belt.

“What do I do then?”

“Stay here,” Havoc said. “Ain’t that bad.”

“Yes it is.”

“You’re just spoiled.”

“Havoc, it’s cold and gross and dark in here.”

“It’s cold, gross, and dark a lot of places.”

“There are no silk bedsheets here!”

“Why would you waste silk on bedsheets?”

“Ugh! You don’t get it. I’m not okay with this,” she said, “I’m not going to be okay with this. I don’t want to be okay with all of—” Lillia waved emphatically to the entire space, taking care to avoid pointing at the hobgoblin himself. “—this.”

“And?”

“And I am supposed to be home. And I am supposed to be comfy. And I am not supposed to smell. And the next time I see this much blood, it should be because I am producing an heir under extremely supervised conditions.” Lillia finished by waving the bloodstained right side of her dress.

Havoc opened up the bag and pulled something out. Lillia saw it glint in his palm but couldn’t make out the actual shape before Havoc had hidden it within his fist.

Whatever it was, the hobgoblin held it close to his chest and closed his eyes. The flickering firelight glowed on his orange skin, making it look bright and vibrant as he brought his closed fist to his lips and rested it there.

Lillia had the sudden, uncomfortable sense that she was watching something she had not been invited to see. She didn’t move. She gave Havoc his time around the fire. Her fire was much better than the one he had down in the cellar anyway.

Havoc put the shining trinket back in his bag wordlessly before tying it all back shut. Once he’d finished, he stood up. “You seriously wanna fight your way out?” he asked.

“Yeah, of course. That was the whole point of you giving me lessons,” Lillia said.

“Even if it…” He sighed before matching Lillia’s language. “Sucks?”

“It already does.”

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Havoc rolled his shoulder as he approached Lillia. It clicked in two places each time. “Alright. I ain’t really able to teach you to use a sword but that ain’t gonna be your biggest strength anyway.”

“What is?” Lillia asked.

“That,” Havoc pointed over to the hearthflame. The fire stirred at the mention, as if pleased to be included. “You come back when you die—you said three times?”

Lillia nodded.

“Three times. That’s three more than anyone else you’re fighting gets unless you reopen the door,” Havoc said. “That and you can rest there all the time, which means…” Havoc took a step forward and pulled back his fist. Lillia flinched and squeezed her eyes shut. Once she opened them, she was sure she’d just failed some kind of test.

“Hits don’t matter as long as you can walk away from them,” Havoc said. “Out there, all the training you do for war tells you not to get hurt and—”

“I don’t want to get hurt.”

“Okay. You don’t need to try to get hit but you don’t need to be a child about it either.”

Lillia nodded. She could avoid being a child. Children shouldn’t get hit anyway.

“Point there is, kid, that none of the things in those rooms can do that. At least not the ones that I know about.” Havoc walked back over to the fire and grabbed one of the half-burned sticks from the edges. After looking around for an appropriate place to draw, he found Lillia’s haphazard map on the floor.

“There are six floors here. This one here, and five floors down.” Havoc tapped the charcoal to the first landing. “Floor one is me and the hunting lodge. Easy, by the dungeon’s standards.”

Lillia looked at the angry bug she had drawn.

“That was easy?”

“Is this the uh…” Havoc pointed the stick to the angry bug Lillia had drawn on the floor.

“The chitterpede.”

“Yeah. Sure. That.” His attention, and the stick, drifted to Lillia’s more recent drawing.

It was a blob with a cluster of stick finger limbs holding a stick above its head.

“Is this the uh…”

“That’s the spellmite architect.”

“Hrm,” Havoc drew the other side of that landing. “This one is the grasslands. Wide open space.”

“What’s in there?”

“I poked my head into that room and decided not to walk through a field where I can’t see shit because of how tall the grass is.” Havoc used the stick to sketch thin lines of grass. His hand was much steadier than Lillia’s and his charcoal sketches almost looked like something. “So I don’t have much information for you… Well, if you can find a way to skip one of the rooms, that’s not the one to skip.”

“Which one should I skip?”

“If you can skip rooms, then definitely skip…” Havoc took a moment to draw the stairs and then the three—three?!—rooms on the third floor. Instead of attempting to sketch whatever was behind the door he was warning about, he simply put a big X through it.

Lillia shuffled closer to Havoc and the drawing, almost leaning over his shoulder.

The hobgoblin stopped and sighed. “You’re going to ask me what’s in there. Aren’t you?”

“Of course! You can’t just put an X.”

“I’m telling you not to go there.”

“But if I don’t know what’s in there, I’m gonna be so curious.”

“Then be curious. Stop at curious.”

“But I wanna know.”

There were the hobgoblin swear words again. Lillia recognized some of them from earlier. “Spoiled human child.”

“I’m not just a child. I’m a princess,” Lillia said. “And I don’t know how long hobgoblins live. I might be older than you.”

“I’m 73.”

“I’m not older than you. Thank the stone and silk.”