Chapter 41 - Honeybee and Other Mysteries

Lillia trudged up the stairs to the next room with Cathria’s amulet sitting strangely in her inventory. It was not heavy, because it was not really there, but it carried a weight all the same.
If Cathria were still with her, she probably could have explained that. Or at least called it fascinating.
It would have been lovely to keep her around. She had a better sense for the finer things in life than Havoc. Plus, an archmage was probably useful in a fight.
At least, Lillia assumed so. Every archmage she had ever met had been well past fighting age and deep into the “wrinkled tower scholar with a thousand-yard stare” portion of life.
Was Cathria wrinkly?
Had the glass just chosen not to render that part?
There were more stairs between Cathria’s history and the room beyond, a fact Lillia only really noticed when her legs started getting sore.
Then she got truly annoyed when her thighs started to burn.
Lillia flopped down and sat on the steps to massage her thighs. One of the few advantages of the mini-dress was that she could actually do that.
How long had it been since she’d climbed a tower like this? She’d always avoided going to the west wing of the castle because the cliff side construction meant there were hundreds of stairs.
Two years? Maybe three?
As Lillia sat on the floor massaging her thighs, she sighed.
“Look at me,” she said. “Imagine the scandal. Princess Lillia covered in dirt and sitting on the floor. Not a cushion for miles.”
Absentmindedly, Lillia pulled out a piece of chitin and snapped it in her hand. Dust rained. She was wearing a long dress again. Albeit one with an accidental midriff provided by Eisel.
Lillia stood and stretched, cracking joints a princess should never have needed to crack. There were still so many stairs left.
What the hell?
Lillia sat down again for a moment after the demotivating void of a climb in front of her and pulled the second piece of chitin out of her inventory.
Huh. She had enough of these now for the boots and the dress.
She crushed it between her hands. The dress shimmered for a moment instead of breaking apart like it did when she switched between outfits. The sound of scales rattling echoed up and down the stairway.
So much for subtlety.
The scales of the dress all elongated, changing from small layered circles to spikes that jutted outward as the dress moved. The fitted scales along her ribs overlapped in hard, armored rows, while the longer pieces at her hips flared outward in jagged layers, giving the whole gown the silhouette of court fashion re-imagined by someone who hated soft things.
Lillia shifted. The dagger-like scales carved into the stone floor, and the vibration rattled through her teeth.
Unpleasant.
She stood.
As she straightened, she caught sight of her shoulders. The scales there had changed even more dramatically. Several layers had risen and locked into place, jutting outward from her upper arms in stiff, blade-like fans. The longest pieces pointed almost straight out from her body, giving her a broad, severe shape that was almost familiar.
Gigot sleeves.
That was what they looked like.
For one absurd moment, she remembered the dress she had worn as a child to her mother’s birthday ball. Pale blue silk. Puffed shoulders. A sash tied too tightly around her waist. Everyone had told her she looked like a proper little princess.
This was that dress’s murderous older sister.
Carefully, Lillia bent and gathered a portion of the hem between two fingers.
It was like picking up a bouquet of knives.
[Chitterpede Chitin Battle 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.]
“Why do all these weapons and armor pieces assume that I’ll be able to hit something more than once,” Lillia said.
The answer was a properly terrifying thought that she had mostly managed to avoid. So far in the dungeon, everything had reacted the way one would figure when hit with a sword. The Ambusher and Architect had taken more than one hit, but they had been huge.
Eisel was the exception. He’d managed to catch a sword on two fingers. If he could resist a blade like that…was that what was coming from the rest of the doors on the third floor?
How many hits could Eisel take? How many could Nennia take? When did a stab stop resulting in a stab wound?
Would Lillia ever get there? Would she just learn to live through bleeding more and more?
She couldn’t dodge forever, and she had learned what happened when she couldn’t.
At least the dresses shared a theme: keeping her on her feet or rewarding her for getting out of the way. Out of the way was the only place Lillia wanted to be.
“Okay,” Lillia said as she pulled out one of the Ambusher feathers. “Maybe we finish the climb in something a little less…prone to stabbing me.”
She snapped the feather. She was underdressed but she was alone either way.
Lillia returned to her climb. At one point she began counting steps, then pointedly stopped as it seemed to be making things take longer.
Her father had used the term ‘painfully aware’ multiple times in Lillia’s youth, she was starting to get it.
Then, all at once, she was at the top in a plain room she recognized.
Honestly it was hard to recognize anything in a featureless room. Luckily there was a skeleton draped over a chair in the middle of the room that allowed Lillia to ground herself.
“Rickshaw!”
Lillia jogged forward before her legs started yelling at her. She slowed to a regal walk to baby them. She told herself it was to maintain appearances.
Unlike last time, when the skeleton hadn’t woken up until Lillia knocked his skull off, the thing animated while Lillia was still several meters away. Its head rolled forward. Fell slightly to the side.
“Princess?!”
“Rickshaw!”
“Holy moley! You’re alive, darling.” Rickshaw sprang up from the chair, his bones rattling all the while. “Honeybee! You gotta see this. This is the princess I was talking about!”
Lillia looked around the empty room. Rickshaw spun his skull all the way around to do the same.
“Ah. Shoot. She’s not here. Ah well, don’t let that bother you. Hello, darling! You’re back! You’re alive! You’re…” Rickshaw crossed the last distance between them and took Lillia by the shoulders. “Much cleaner!”
Lillia put her hands on the skeleton’s wrists and slowly removed him from her shoulders. As friendly as they were, she was still a princess.
Friendly meant she would not have him taken away for that.
“The soap works. Thank you.”
“No! Thank you. I think! I guess…Hm.” Rickshaw scraped his finger bones against his chin. “Gotta say, I’m usually not this invested in any given adventurer.”
“Maybe it’s the dresses?” Lillia suggested.
“Nah, can’t be that. Not allowed to sell those.” Rickshaw took the signal from Lillia removing his hands and backed off by a step. “Maybe it’s just your raw charm and charisma, darling. Maybe you just stand out.”
“Do I stand out because of the dresses?”
“That is a great point, darling! See, now if Honeybee were here she’d have known that from the start.”
Rickshaw nodded. His skull rattled as he did it.
“So what can I do for you, miss? In for a visit to the traveling market?”
“Can we do that later?” Lillia asked.
“Pardon?”
“I don’t really have anything to sell,” Lillia said. “A couple parts, but Havoc needs those.”
“The hobgoblin?”
“Yeah. He’s a blacksmith.”
“Huh. Never thought to ask,” Rickshaw said. “No items? Haven’t you killed other things so far?”
“Well,” Lillia said. “I am kinda wearing everything I’ve got. Lost a bunch of weapons when I fought against Eisel.”
“Who?”
“This…” The question reached Lillia a moment late.
Then everything wrong with it arrived at once. She checked to see if the skeleton was smiling, but he technically always was. She determined that it was earnest confusion.
“You don’t know who Eisel is?”
“Should I know who Eisel is?”
“You know who Havoc is.”
“Havoc’s been here forever,” Rickshaw said. “Friendly face in the Five Point. This uh—What’d you say the name was, darling?”
“Eisel.”
“Eisel is new to me. Maybe he’s just not chatty but I’ve never had the pleasure,” Rickshaw said. “Or pain, as it were, based on the tone you don’t seem to be a fan.”
“Astute.”
“Well, I can assure you if I ever run into this Eisel guy, I will charge him double for the first item.”
“The first item?”
“Lillia, you have only bought from me once. I cannot afford to turn someone lucrative away on your behalf.” He gave her another once-over, this time stopping on the spellmite cap. Lillia instinctively swapped it to the crown.
“See, you have at least one thing to sell,” Rickshaw said. “You have two hats and one head, darling. I’ll take you into the market. I’ll get you some potions and we’ll move right along.”
Lillia held up a hand to stop Rickshaw. “I need the spellmite hat for a new friend I made.”
“You’ve been making a lot of those down here?”
“Yes. So, I cannot sell this hat.”
“And as such, you don’t want to come to my market.”
“And as such.”
“Well, what’s in it for me for letting you come later?” Rickshaw said. “You do wanna come later, right?”
“Of course. I wouldn’t miss it for the world, Rickshaw.”
“But these trips ain’t free.” The skeleton leaned in. “And so, what are you promising me if I say I’ll put it on layaway?”
“Layaway?” Lillia asked.
“It’s a peasant thing,” Rickshaw said. “What I mean is, what’s in it for me if I just leave an open offer with you?”
“We’re about to kill the Architect,” Lillia said. “We’re going to need to shop after that.”
“Your offer to me is a single boss drop?” Rickshaw chuckled. “Ah, darling. You are new and luckily I find that adorable.”
“No, we can do more than that,” Lillia said. That had been her idea but pivoting and making a deal was how all the councils worked back in court.
Lillia held out a hand and produced Hooke.
“Are you selling that too?” Rickshaw asked. He went to touch the blade but hesitated for permission. Lillia nodded. “It’s nice. Good find. What’s that drop from?”
“Havoc made it.”
Rickshaw pulled back from the blade so fast he nearly stumbled.
“Wait. Wait, wait, wait. He can’t have made this. This is an item.”
“He did.”
“Items dropped from monsters and are found in chests. Lillia, I know you’re new, but if he told you he made this, he’s lying.”
“I watched him do it. A chitterpede bloodfang and—”
“I don’t need to know the parts. It is not a crafting recipe,” Rickshaw said. “This is a legitimate item here. How is it—” He tried to pull it from Lillia’s hand. She held on for a moment, then allowed it on the second attempt.
Rickshaw reached into his eye socket and pulled out a small black orb Lillia had previously mistaken for the darkness inside his eyes. He put it close to the blade.
“I’ll be damned. Blacksmith…”
“The class?”
“That’s not a class in the way that Princess isn’t a class,” Rickshaw said. “Then again, you’re a Princess so I guess what the hell do I know? Only dedicated my whole life to this.”
Rickshaw scanned along the blade by holding the void-like orb an inch away from the metal and dragging it along. He hunched over as if his nose was pressed deep in the spine of a good book.
“How did the hobgoblin pick up a class anyway? Guessing it has something to do with you.”
Lillia nodded.
“Well, now I’m really glad you lived. Not that I wasn’t before, darling. It’s just there’s mystery and motivation to it now. Plus, good information I can bring back to the ol’ ball and chain.”
“Honeybee?”
“Course. Don’t even know why I call her that. I love her. Guess I just picked it up somewhere,” Rickshaw said.
Lillia held her hand out to take Hooke back from Rickshaw. “So that’s the deal,” she said.
“Pardon?”
“You let me enter your shop later,” Lillia said, “and Havoc makes equipment out of the extra drops I get from fighting the Architect again. Then we sell those to you.”
Rickshaw clicked a tongue that wasn’t there and then relinquished Hooke so he could pace. He blew out air without lungs. Lillia knew the sound, if he had skin, his cheeks would have been puffed out.
He started whispering something to himself, then argued against his own point. He continued to pace. Back. Forth. Back.
Rickshaw snapped back to Lillia. “All right, darling, you got yourself a deal.” As he held out a hand, a small coin appeared in his palm. There was a pirate woman on the coin.
Lillia looked from the coin to Rickshaw.
“That right there is good for one entry into the traveling market at a hearth of your choosing.”
“So the Cathedral Hearth or the Hearth of Memory?” Lillia said.
“Oh! You haven’t found a third and you’re already doing this again? Good on you. Pushin’ the envelope.”
Lillia didn’t take the coin yet. “Do you know where a third one is?”
“Oh no! I don’t know the dungeon specifically. I just know this is level two of a challenge. I visit too many places to memorize all the Hearths,” he said. “At least now that you’re past the tutorial, you shouldn’t have a revival cap in regular rooms. Boss rooms are their own problem.”
“What?”
“Once you light the entrance Hearth, you get three lives in the tutorial to reach the first central Hearth. In this dungeon, that would be the Market Fountains.”
“The Hearth of Memory,” Lillia said.
“Sure, darling. If that’s what you’re calling it.”
“But I had already been there! Why did I only have three lives back then?” Lillia asked.
“When?”
“After I lit the entrance Hearth! After the Architect?”
“You killed the Architect without a Hearth?” Rickshaw asked. “Damn. You’re more hardcore than I thought.”
“I didn’t know what a hearth was!”
“I rescind my previous comment,” Rickshaw said. “But, to be clear, you went into the second floor of the dungeon without lighting the first Hearth—which means you found the second Hearth before the first?”
“I guess so!” Lillia threw up her arms. “Nobody explained this shit to me!”
“Oh yeah, that’s the wrong order.”
“Thanks, Rickshaw!” Lillia snatched the coin from his hands. “I’ll keep that in mind. Locked in a dungeon against my will again.”
“You’re welcome, darling. Once again.” He sat back down in his chair. “I’m glad you didn’t die out there. Sounds like it was more likely than I thought.”
“Thanks.” Lillia pressed the coin into her dress and it slotted into her inventory.
[Rickshaw’s Magical Admission Coin!]
“Anything else I should know before I throw myself into worse danger?”
Rickshaw didn’t respond. His skull fell back in the chair. His eyes were not voidlike now. They were empty.
On the other side of the room, a wall shifted to reveal a door.
There wasn’t a pillow for Lillia to scream into. Her arm would do.