Chapter 35 – Seaglass and Brimstone

Thirty minutes into asking the mirror how to make Lillia a weapon, Havoc summoned an anvil from nowhere and boiled half the bath.

Lillia went underwater.

Again.

If Lillia thought Havoc worked carefully and wordlessly before, she hadn’t understood what attention to detail and silence meant.

Even in the clanking, half-worn armor, Havoc managed to be near silent in the pool room as he worked.

Lillia tried to relax as the hobgoblin worked; after all, this was the perfect place to do so, but no matter what she did, her nerves were on fire. She couldn’t sit still. Worse than that, sitting still felt wrong. Every door and circumstance in the dungeon had been so harrowing that her body didn’t understand the idea of quiet time anymore.

That lasted until his class had anything to say about it.

A thunderous boom echoed throughout the room. Havoc stroked his chin and marched back to the mirror.

That wasn’t helping either.

While Havoc took time to carefully check angles and test water temperatures, any of the ‘skills’ he used arrived with fury, fire and resounding clangs. A towering forge tore itself from the stone in the north corner. Another anvil arrived and then was dismissed.

Lillia hid with her head mostly underwater while Havoc examined the tools he created, went to the mirror, took notes in soot, and began the process again.

Havoc was busy with his fourteen levels of unfair skill exploration. Lillia turned to room exploration.

Something had changed since the last time Lillia had been there. She simply had not been able to see it earlier while avoiding Havoc. One of the previously empty stone alcoves had been filled. Perhaps even more importantly, Lillia was right. The alcoves had been for murals.

Inlaid into the wall was a stunning scene made from shards of glittering stone and sea glass. In the centre of the mosaic was Lillia, wrought in emerald shards and surrounded by red and yellow sea-glass fire. Before her in the scene, black obsidian shaped the Spellmite Architect.

Lillia stared at the image on the wall for too long, only occasionally glancing over her shoulder to see what Havoc was in the middle of silently discovering or banging away at. She looked so heroic in the image. All of the stone and glass came together in a way that made it look like Lillia belonged in the dungeon.

That felt wrong.

If she was going to have art of her anywhere, it was supposed to be above a throne. Hell, the dungeon even knew what a coronation portrait was supposed to look like.

Lillia took a step forward toward the mosaic. As she did, the text interjected itself.

[You have previously Conquered the Spellmite Architect. Return to the Cathedral?]

Before she could turn to Havoc and tell him to pack up all his new toys, as they were leaving. The text shifted.

[Monsters and Dungeon Natives cannot pass through the Halls Between. You would be leaving [1] companion behind.]

Lillia stared at the word companion.

Not a monster. Not a dungeon native. Companion.

Calling Havoc something more than a monster just to tell Lillia that he still wasn’t worth bringing along. Stupid text. She wanted to shout it down, but bit her tongue before Havoc investigated what was going on and said something stupid like she should leave without him.

Havoc would absolutely say that.

Which meant Lillia absolutely could not ask.

“Dammit,” Lillia said under her breath.

She had taken one bargain without understanding the price.

She was not taking an escape route that announced the price in advance and pretending she had not read it.

Once she overcame having an escape option presented only to have it taken away in the same breath, Lillia looked around the room.

There were almost a dozen alcoves along each wall.

Almost a dozen empty places waiting to be filled.

How many mosaics would Lillia make along her journey? How long was all of that going to take?

She let the first thought run wild while smothering the second. After all, a princess deserved to be sculpted in beautiful stone if paints weren’t available. The chitterpede dress was emerald, so she would be wrought from ruby in her fire dress and pearls in the Ambusher’s slip.

Not a bad selection of stones.

Plus, she could add more if she collected a second piece of thunder spellmite cloth. After her experiences with a single piece of fire cloth, she wasn’t interested in discovering what illicit getup a single piece of thunder cloth would make for her.

The text still hovered in the air in front of Lillia.

[You have previously Conquered the Spellmite Architect. Return to the Cathedral?]

She had done that. Hadn’t she? She had already fought and killed that thing once—but that had been too close. Too close.

Taking the portal out would have been sensible. Practical. Maybe even smart.

She could flash to the other side of the dungeon and get help. She could find her own way out. Havoc was probably in the safest place within the dungeon. Wasn’t she allowed to take the easy way out once? Wasn’t—

“Kid. Ready to get to work?”

Lillia shook her head. She was too far in to regret making the right choice now.

“What are we working on, Havoc?” Lillia asked.

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“See, I’ve got this set up over here. This is a…” As Lillia walked over, Havoc slowed his explanation. “This is a lot of equipment made by my skills. I can use it to make something with what you have in your…pocket thing.”

Lillia wasn’t sure she liked what Havoc had done with the place. What used to be one of the flatter areas of the room, a mix of shallows and deep pools, had been replaced with several towering, arcane-looking contraptions. Lillia had seen a smithy before. This looked nothing like one.

Havoc caught her skeptical look. “Yeah, it ain’t what I thought it’d look like either. But if this stuff does what it says it does, it should all work.”

“If?”

“Yeah. If.”

“I thought you were testing it the whole time.”

“I didn’t have any materials to test with,” Havoc said.

Lillia looked around to see if there was anyone there to back her up in that moment. There obviously wasn’t, but a princess could hope. “What was all the walking around and grunting and checking for then?”

“The positioning of everything.”

“Positioning.”

“I’ve got to make sure things are efficiently placed. Otherwise, we’re wasting time during the forging process.”

Lillia waved at the machines. “Havoc, this is like fifteen feet of space.”

“So you can tell distances.”

Lillia groaned instead of offering anything useful as a response. “So, how long is it going to take you to test this?”

“Test?” Havoc asked.

“Well, you’re going to test it over and over again, aren’t you?”

Havoc looked back at the arcane piles of stone he’d summoned from the ether. “Don’t think we have a chance for that, kid.”

“Because we don’t have enough material?” she said.

“Because we don’t have enough material,” Havoc confirmed. “Even if I do my best resizing this armor, we may still be short on anything that can cut the bastard.”

“I have all of this,” Lillia went over to the closest thing Havoc had to a table and laid out the materials she had that didn’t want to get turned into dresses: the Bloodfang, Ambusher claws, and vials of Inkblood.

It seemed like a good collection.

“What does that get us?”

Havoc scratched his chin as he grabbed the bloodfang again. “Ask me before I came in here, and I would have told you it’s not much,” Havoc said. He swapped the bloodfang for one of the claws and pressed his thumb against the edge until a pinprick of blood appeared. “But I don’t know how it interacts with the skills of the class you gave me.”

Havoc bit his tongue for a moment, as if he were trying to reckon with a half of the conversation Lillia wasn’t privy to.

“People like me aren’t supposed to have classes.”

“Well, I don’t think it can be bad,” Lillia said.

“We’ll see about that part.” Havoc took the final piece they had access to, the Inkblood and held the vial up so he could see it against the firelight of the Hearth. He squinted at the liquid. Lillia recognized the look of a treasurer checking a coin for counterfeiting.

Havoc sighed and put down the vial. He leaned over the table and supported himself with both hands, as if he were commanding a war room.

“If I get the choice, kid, what do you need? Spear to stay further away?”

“Sword,” Lillia said.

“A sword?” Havoc asked. “You want one of those prissy ceremonial weapons?”

“Swords are the best. All the knights have them.”

Havoc took a hand off the table to rub his brow. “Where did you see those knights, Lillia?”

“In tournaments.”

“Of course they’re using swords in tournaments. What did they use on the battlefield?”

“We haven’t been to war for seventy years, Havoc,” Lillia said.

He swallowed. He looked at Lillia, then past her to the statue of her on the other side of the room.

He did not ask who won.

He sighed, rapped the stone twice with his knuckles, and grabbed the Bloodfang.

“Alright. Sword it is.”

Then he stopped talking.

That was the first worrying sign.