Chapter 22 – Live. Die. Repeat.

Havoc gave Lillia space as she stumbled back into the world of the living. The hobgoblin turned away from the fire, staring down the staircase deeper into the dungeon, as Lillia tied the cloak around herself and eventually discovered the chitterpede chitin was still in her inventory. Once she put it on, she was thankful that resting or dying had cleaned the battlegown.

Dying was a reset for Lillia’s form. It had felt strange in the realm beyond, to be back in a body that was unmarred by her treacherous descent through the dungeon, but now that she had her real—though bare—feet on the ground, she felt back at home.

Well, a slightly different home. The puncture scars she’d imagined had stayed with her through resurrection. Despite the reset, Lillia now had permanent reminders of her time in the dungeon.

Of course, if you counted trauma, Lillia had already been swimming in permanent reminders of her time in the dungeon.

Back in her battlegown, with her added cloak and Vianaffir back at her side, Lillia felt both strangely whole and crestfallen. She had done so much with this exact set of equipment. She’d gone so much further than she ever thought possible, but everything new she’d been wearing had been a marker of progress.

Markers that were now gone.

Lillia never gave Havoc the go-ahead to turn around, but once she’d been seated by the fire for a while, Havoc joined her, staring into the flames.

“Well, kid, now we’re even.”

“Even?”

“Long as we start when you got here, we’ve both died once,” Havoc said as he unwrapped a small leather package. There was dried meat inside it. It looked tough enough to shatter Lillia’s teeth. “You hungry? I always wake up hungry.”

Lillia continued to stare into the fire. “Not really. Thank you, Havoc.”

“Alright, more for me then. Don’t have much of this to go around anyway.” Havoc tore off a sizeable chunk of the dried meat, his fangs ripping through the tough cut as if it were slow-roasted and basted for a fortnight.

Havoc’s chewing filled the silence, underscored by the light crackle of the hearth flame. Lillia stared into the dancing fire.

“So,” Havoc began before swallowing. Lillia did her best not to physically recoil at the shattering of courtly rules. “What got you out there?”

“I don’t know.”

Havoc stopped short of taking a second bite. “You don’t know what killed you? How can you not know? What? Were you not looking? Were you worried about your hair?”

“My hair was fine,” Lillia said. She could feel Havoc rolling his eyes. “It came from above. I saw big talons, but then I was dead.”

“But you killed something in there.”

“Yeah, I got one of the…How did you know?”

Havoc took the second bite and responded with his mouth genuinely stuffed. “You’re wearing a big cloak. You didn’t have that before.”

“Right. Yeah.”

The lie sat in her mouth like a stone. She could tell herself that it wasn’t quite a lie, that she simply hadn’t corrected him, but that was how you lied in court. Someone assumed something convenient, and you let them keep assuming it.

Mom would have called it a lie.

Lillia took the hem of the cloak in her hands. The fabric was luxurious but thick. The kind that she’d seen visitors from the northern regions wear.

[Usurper Lord’s Cloak]

[A Bargain Made and Kept – The Usurper Lord’s Cloak is not lost on death.]

[Dance with Death – After narrowly avoiding or otherwise taking 0 damage from an attack, your next strike, physical or magical, is greatly empowered.]

[Bound. Cannot be removed from inventory.]

[There will come days when the sun blackens, and the sky bleeds. The dungeon will never know. Its Lord will. Plan and wait for the day of the black sun, fight for the throne you deserve.]

Lillia read the information at the end over and over. A day of black sun and bleeding sky. A dungeon lord. All of that was potentially critical information. Lillia focused on the last words.

[Fight for the throne you deserve.]

When Lillia had read the name, she had assumed that the title referred to Eisel, the strange man she had met on her journey back to the hearth. But the last line of the description sat heavy in her chest. By the time Lillia was out of the dungeon, her aunt would be queen. She would be the usurper.

Rightful ruler or not, Lillia would have to steal her parents’ throne. Stealing it back didn’t mean it wasn’t stealing.

Havoc tore Lillia out of her thoughts about the throne.

“Alright, something from above. Ready to get to work?”

“Get to work?” Lillia asked. Havoc had already stood up and walked around the fire. In the time that Lillia had been dead, he had clearly made some trips back to his cellar. Rough chunks of iron were spread around the edge of the fire, and aged but meticulously kept crude tools had been set up on the far side of the hearth.

Havoc had a table, an anvil, and what looked like a collection of rocks he’d broken off the walls.

“Well, you don’t got a lot of your shit,” Havoc said. “And clearly, what you did before didn’t work. So we need to figure out what we can do better.”

Lillia cocked her head. “Well, that’s positive thinking.”

“It’s not positive thinking, kid. It’s how life works. Make a mistake. Do it again. Do it right.”

“Oh…yeah.”

“So if we’re gonna do it right, we’ve gotta think about the problem. What do you got?”

“Pardon?”

“Your equipment: what are we working with? What are your skills, or whatever they’re called?” Havoc grunted as he pulled one of the larger rocks off the ground and placed it on the edge of the hearth.

“What are we working with?” Havoc asked. “What’s in that invisible pocket of yours?”

“My battlegown,” Lillia said. “Vianaffir. Some soap. An empty bottle. A ruined pair of slippers.”

“That’s everything?”

“I have Sir Nobody’s note.”

“That’s everything?”

“There’s a scroll I can’t read. A rusty knife.”

Havoc waited. Lillia waited longer.

“That’s everything?”

“Yes, Havoc! That’s everything. I died.”

The hobgoblin grunted and turned to the fire. “Alright. What do your skill things do?”

That conversation was longer. Havoc wanted details that Lillia couldn’t provide from memory. The hobgoblin agreed that it was stupid that she couldn’t check. He thought Adaptive Regalia was cheating and denying people the chance to do good work. He found the idea of a skill that motivated Lillia to be an obscene waste of potential.

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“That’s everything?”

“Yes!” Lillia hadn’t brought up Privileged Position. She was exhausted by the persistent questions, and that only mattered if she killed something.

Havoc was stoking a fire that didn’t need stoking. “Tell me about the room.”

That conversation took even longer. Havoc wanted details Lillia hadn’t cared about. How tall was the grass? Pretty tall. Could she see the sky through the canopy? Kinda. Were the beasts’ hooves split or solid? She didn’t know what he was asking. Did the wind change direction? She hadn’t been paying attention. Each question she couldn’t answer earned a grunt that sounded increasingly like disappointment.

“What about the dirt?” Havoc asked.

“What about it?”

“Was it soft? Hard? Muddy?”

“It was dirt, Havoc.”

The hobgoblin sighed the sigh of a man who had given up on several fronts at once.

At the end of the exhaustive explanation, the hobgoblin had finished making a sort of pile Lillia didn’t understand the purpose of. He put his hands on stout hips and nodded at the assorted rock. “Way I see it, we already got a solution for the thing diving at ya. Just wear that battlegown you got on. If the first hit doesn’t count, who cares where it comes from?”

Lillia nodded along.

“Why weren’t you wearing it in the first place? That was dumb. You said your other one absorbed fire? Were you worried about fire while you were stalking those beast things?”

Lillia stood up, and the battlegown rattled. The sound echoed around the cathedral and came back to helpfully reiterate Lillia’s unspoken point. The princess shimmied to shake the dress more. Half for the noise, half for the way the firelight danced off her scales in iridescent reflections.

Havoc nodded along. “Okay, that’s fair.” He frowned into the flames. “How fast can you change into that thing? If that flying monster is coming at you, can you put on the dress while it’s about to happen?”

“I don’t need to get dressed,” Lillia said. “It’s fast, but it only really works if I see it coming.”

“So keep better watch.”

“That and I don’t have another dress to wear right now.” Lillia let her hands flop to her side. More rattling and clinking from the battlegown. “I have nothing to change into.”

“You could just wear the cloak.”

“No!”