Chapter 18 - And Let Loose

Lillia tripped on the flagstone, nearly tumbling over before Havoc caught her by the collar
“Do ya know what ya did wrong there?”
“You’re going too hard!”
Havoc let go, and Lillia dropped to the floor. It was still a softer landing than it would have been.
“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.” She waited for Havoc to offer her a hand. He didn’t.
“Leader leads. Guide suggests.”
“How many guides do you know?”
“Enough.” Havoc had tucked his baton under his arm a while ago. He’d offered to show Lillia how to use the maul, but it’d become quickly apparent that ‘an enemy that blocks her attacks’ or ‘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 things she would have been taught in the castle, had she been a prince instead of a princess.
Huffing, Lillia crawled back to her feet, nursing every joint she’d bruised against the flagstone. Havoc sighed. Too slow after too little punishment.
If asked, they both would have said the lessons were going poorly, but each for different reasons.
They were still close to Lillia’s new Hearth in the cathedral, between the stairs and the fire itself.Havoc had suggested they 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.
The change was gradual, but Lillia could almost swear the room was warmer than it had been when she’d gone to get Havoc. The flames were higher, as if 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 grinding 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 stress the point and 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’d landed on her comment being stupid or a revelation. “Just don’t hit your sword on the ground. Either it’s going to get dull, or it’s legendary and good steel deserves better treatment.”
After he’d made his point, Havoc returned to the Hearth and the 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’re 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, but you don’t plan for it to perform a makrah,” Havoc explained. Even without context, that 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 in 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 should be when I have my firstborn.” She finished by waving the bloodstained right side of her dress.
Havoc opened his leather bag and pulled something out. Lillia saw it glint in his palm but couldn’t make out the shape before he hid it in his fist.
Whatever it was, he 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 fist to his lips and rested it there.
Lillia didn’t move, instead giving Havoc his time around the fire. Hers was much better than the one he had down in the cellar, anyway.
Havoc put the shining trinket back in his bag and tied it shut, then stood. “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.”
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 Hearth. The fire livened upon mention. “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 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.
“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 four floors up here. This one here, and three below. Floor one is me and the hunting lodge.”
“The chitterpede.”
Havoc pointed the stick at the angry bug Lillia had drawn on the floor. “Yeah. Sure. That.” His attention, and the stick, drifted to Lillia’s more recent drawing.
It was a blob with a cluster of stick-figure 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.”
Lillia stared at Havoc’s drawing but looked up at the last sentence. “Find a way?”
“Can’t go down further without clearing the rooms on a floor,” Havoc said. “At least that’s what I’ve heard the other adventurers saying through the trapdoor.”
“I feel like I could just keep walking down the stairs.”
“You can try. Maybe they were just a bunch of dumbasses.”
“You swear a lot.”
“You interrupt a lot.”
Lillia crossed her arms, but didn’t say anything; it would have proved Havoc’s point.
“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 middle door, he simply put a big X through it.
Lillia shuffled closer to Havoc and the drawing, almost leaning over his shoulder.
“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.” He tapped the X. “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 could be older than you.”
“I’m 73.”
“Okay, I’m not older than you. Thank the stone and silk.”
Havoc ground the tip of the charcoal stick into the floor. “You’re really going to go in there if I don’t tell you?”
“I don’t know that I will,” Lillia said, “but I…” she nodded. “Yeah, I would.”
“Fine.” Havoc threw the stick back to the Hearth. It landed straight in the center and vanished into the flames. “Nennia.”
“Nennia?” Lillia echoed.
“Nennia. Now, if you’re dead set on trying this, I’m at least going to show you how to use the club on something unthinking.”
“What’s Nennia?”
“Kid.”
Lillia threw up her arms. “What’s Nennia?”
Havoc closed his eyes and ran his tongue along his teeth. Even after taking that moment, he still let out a prolonged sigh. “I know about four things that think in this dungeon, Lillia. Long as you don’t count the dungeon itself.”
Lillia wanted to cut in there, but knew it would just derail Havoc into complaining about her again.
“Me. Rickshaw, who is—”
“Skeleton merchant,” Lillia said. “I’ve met him.”
Havoc took a sharp breath. “Yeah. That. Then the third is Nennia, she—”
“A girl! I can talk to another—”
“Kid.”
“Sorry. Just excited.”
“Don’t be.”
“You and Rickshaw were both nice,” Lillia said, “a little weird, but nice.”
“Don’t talk to Nennia,” Havoc said.
“But—”
“Lillia.” Havoc’s voice was low, as if he was worried someone would hear him. “Lemme tell you why before you argue with me.”
“Fine.”
“Somethin’ I didn’t tell you. There is a way that we don’t come back. I know that if I die outside of my room, the dungeon won’t bring me back — it’ll replace me.”
“Do you want to go back to your room? Are you scared out here?”
“Stop interrupting, and I don’t think you could kill me with that sword if I were sleeping.” Havoc looked down to the floor. “Nennia is the only monster in here that hunts. When she took down an adventurer, she wouldn’t just look around. She would try to drag other monsters out of their rooms to kill them outside.”
“Why?”
“Maybe she’s trying to level up—if she can,” Havoc said. “Maybe she just likes it. Either way. I got the space because she caught the thing running the room before me.”
“Well…”
“So, don’t go into her room,” Havoc said, “don’t open the door unless you have to, and if you have to…” Havoc clenched his jaw.
Lillia shifted her weight back and forth in the pause. Havoc clearly needed the moment, but he’d said he knew four things that think and had only named three. Much like wanting to open a door she shouldn’t, Lillia wanted to press.
The court had taught her more about minding her manners than it had about curbing her curiosity. She couldn’t stay her hand, but she could hold her tongue.
When Havoc spoke, he didn’t clarify; he changed subjects. “Maybe I should show you how to use that bat of yours.”
“I thought you just said it was hopeless.”
“Think it is,” Havoc said, “but if you die to Nennia, she’s gonna come up here and find me so…” He sighed, “I’m gonna pretend it’s not.”
“Pretend to believe in me?”
“Sure.”
“That’s what I’ve had to do this whole time.” Lillia drew Vianaffir.
Havoc shook his head.
“You said that’s above your level, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Even if you’re more comfortable with the sword. You should use the maul you got. It’s a boss weapon, so it’s going to hit hard, and because it dropped for you, you can use it.”
Lillia slowly tucked Vianaffir back into her belt. Now that she meant to put it away for good, it disappeared into her inventory. “I thought you didn’t know that much about adventuring.”
“That’s not adventuring,” Havoc said, “that’s weapons.”
“Levels?”
“I was a blacksmith before,” Havoc said, “what do you think most of those scrolls are about?”
Lillia put her hand to her chest and pulled the Architect’s Spellmaul from her dress, quickly pointing it away from herself to avoid getting black ichor on the fabric.
Havoc flinched as Lillia flung the weapon out, as if he were worried she’d lose her grip and throw the maul across the room, shattering his skull and ending his tenure in the dungeon forever.
“Okay, what can that thing do?” Havoc asked as he picked up his metal maul, which had fewer spikes than Lillia’s, making her believe hers was better.
The princess swung the weapon around several times. “Seems like a good stick.”
“What does it do, kid?”
“I can hit stuff with it.”
Havoc grumbled as he righted himself and held his weapon at his side. “What abilities does it have?”
“I don’t know if it does.”
“Have you checked?”
“Why? Would I have checked? I wanted to show it to you.”
Havoc cocked his head to the side and frowned. The hobgoblin’s expressions didn’t always match one to one with her human experience, but Lillia understood that one. She had just said something sweet, but very stupid.
“But also Vianaffir doesn’t have stats. So I didn’t think…” Lillia tried to justify her point but trailed off as she walked into a classic parental trap.
“Yeah, you didn’t think,” Havoc said. Trap sprung. “Vianaffir doesn’t have stats for you because you’re not high enough level to equip it. Just take a look, will you?”
Lillia laid the maul flat, holding it with two hands: one at the pommel and one just short of the spikes at the other end. The ichor dripped down to the flagstone and disappeared at Lillia’s feet. The princess turned the maul over, running her thumbs along the smooth ridges in the black, chilled iron.
The text changed.
[Architect’s Spellmaul - Primary Weapon]
[Strength 10. Deals a mixture of bludgeoning, piercing, and corrosive damage.]
[On hit the spellmaul applies a stack of burning ichorblood to the target, causing corrosive damage. The ichorblood on the weapon also applies this effect on hit.]
[After casting a spell or using a spell-like ability, the architect’s spellmaul deals additional damage based on the number of stacks of ichor blood on the target.]
Lillia relayed all of that information. Several times Havoc nodded and said, ‘Okay,’ as if he expected it to be the end, but Lillia just kept reading.
In the end all Havoc could do was shake his head. “What the hell?”
“Is this good? It sounds pretty good.”
Havoc walked over to Lillia and grabbed the spellmaul. For a second, Lillia didn’t let go, but after a small tug, she relented.
Unlike Lillia, who had just spun it in her hands, Havoc took his time. He swung it several times, tested the weight, examined the varied length of the spikes at the end.
By the time he’d finished, Lillia had sat back down by the fire and was struggling to use one of the many crude tools he’d brought upstairs to clear the dirt out from under her fingernails.
Havoc laid the weapon at Lillia’s side and sat down beside her. He crossed his legs instead of folding them under himself as Lillia did.
“It’s good, cold iron. It’s a powerful effect. Strength 10 is good too.”
“Oh, great!”
“It’s not a good weapon for you, kid”
“What? Why? You just said it was good.”
“Earlier, when I asked you to hit me. You didn’t.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Everything that weapon does stacks up based on how many times you’ve hit something,” Havoc said. “That maul is a weapon of attrition. You got to fight and keep fighting, but it’ll hit harder.”
“And?”
“Can’t say I see you hitting something that many times. Or lasting that long in a fight, kid.”
Lillia sighed.
Havoc’s hand drifted back over to the bag where he’d kept his trinket.
“But we can try to fix some of that part, kid. Come on.”