Chapter 48 - Secrets of the Dungeon

For a city under siege, the streets of the castle town that Lillia had landed in were surprisingly peaceful. At least by her measure. When the history books described sieges, Lillia had always imagined pitched battles all across the town.
These streets were not almost quiet. They were quiet. After the din of battle spread across the walls, it faded into background noise to Lillia. Outside of the occasional howl of a trebuchet shot that cleared the walls and flew through the air above Lillia, there was nothing. Nobody around. Nothing really to see.
At first, Lillia had been moving quickly, trying to make her way back to the walls. Back to where she assumed she needed to be. As she settled into the peace and quiet, her path became more meandering. Lillia tried to peer through opaque windows that were mostly covered in dust and soot. She tested doors that were locked and bolted.
There was a sign outside of what used to be the market. It was simple and wooden, with letters burned into its core. Standard, cheap, ‘outside the castle’ work.
The only reason Lillia stopped was that she couldn’t read it.
The letters looked correct. They even, by her summation, were in the right order, but no matter how Lillia tried to place them together in her head, the words they formed slipped away like bar soap when she was already sitting in the bath.
When reading in her head didn’t work, Lillia tried saying each letter out loud, but even as she spoke them in order, something in her head wouldn’t allow her to weave them into a whole.
As she tried and struggled with the sign, text popped up on the interface in front of her.
[Wall Breached! - Quest Failed!]
[Quest - Hold the Breach!]
Lillia looked up to the wall. They were still far away. Had she really flown that far, or had she walked in the wrong direction at some point during her wandering?
Whatever it was, she certainly wasn’t intervening any time soon.
Back in the market, Lillia, for the first time, noticed that one of the stalls she could see was mostly unmarred by the soot and covered in luscious fabrics that had been abandoned in the siege.
Thank every god. If she could shove that in her inventory, she would have something decent to sleep on. Even if those fabrics weren’t as good as her sheets at home, they would be better than the floor or a rug taken from the Hunting Lodge.
Lillia walked past the sign and into the market. As soon as she did, the temperature plummeted, and the smell of soot and smoke that had permeated the entire castle siege faded into nothingness. Before she could ask what was going on, the text interceded.
[Secret Discovered - Good Luck]
“Good luck?” Lillia asked. Was the text wishing her good luck? That would have been out of character for what little character the text had had thus far.
Was this secret called “Good Luck”?
Did she have good luck finding it?
Something moved behind her.
Lillia spun. She swapped over to her Ambusher Boots as she did, almost losing her balance as the heel under her changed in motion.
Something was already in the air, coming from the rooftops for her.
Lillia jumped and kicked. She shot up into the air, but not quite fast enough. The blur was a cloak. And steel flashed out of it.
She was almost out of the way, but not quite. The blade dug into the side of Lillia’s boot, stabbing through the feather and fabric and digging into her calf. It was a glancing blow, the blade pulled free by the momentum of Lillia’s jump.
Lillia screamed. It was only mostly out of surprise.
Warm blood flowed within her boot.
Her attacker was completely covered in a thick black cloak from head to toe. The fabric looked coarse, the kind that would have been used to make an executioner’s hood. The blade slipped back within the cloak.
Text appeared.
[Secret Discovered: Defeat the Silencer]
Lillia held out her hand and called Hooke to it, snapping her fingers around the weapon’s handle. She brought Hooke to bear, holding it out in front of her, low with both hands like Havoc had shown her.
The Silencer didn’t move.
Lillia held her stance, but she felt herself relax.
It didn’t move.
“Hello?” Lillia asked. “Mr. Silencer or Mrs. Silencer, we don’t need to…” Lillia’s tongue was heavy in her mouth.
Her calf wasn’t bleeding anymore. What blood had come out felt cold against her skin.
All at once, Lillia’s vision swam and darkened. She stumbled forward. Hooke clattered to the ground in front of her. Everything felt so heavy all at once.
The Silencer turned and walked away.
Lillia opened her mouth to call out for anything. Help. Mercy. Anything. Her tongue was lead in her throat, falling backwards and threatening to choke her.
Everything hurt and nothing hurt. Lillia was on fire and ice cold. Her vision went red and then fell black. She crashed to the floor. She didn’t feel pain where she scraped her knees.
Maybe she should have known earlier, but Lillia understood she was already dead.
Boots off. Crown off. Dress off. Lillia tried to find the edges of the Usurper’s cloak to wrap herself in, but her numb, blunt fingers couldn’t hold onto the fabric.
She didn’t need to close her eyes, the world was already only darkness, but she did it anyway.
Then Lillia forced them open. No.
Hooke.
Hooke.
Havoc wouldn’t say it, but that sword was too important to lose here.
Lillia stretched out in front of herself, grabbing blindly at the darkness in front of her. She couldn’t tell what her fingers were touching by feel, only by shape. Flat stone. Flat stone. The road. The road. The road.
She couldn’t move her arm.
She—
Lillia couldn’t speak. She could only think about how she was her own champion. She needed to be right now. For herself. For Havoc.
[Lillia used Heiress’ Blessing on [Lillia]. Lillia fights with renewed vigor!]
Bravery didn’t mean much in the moment, but it kept her awake for extra seconds.
This death wasn’t agonizing. It was simply the truth.
Nails scratched against something that offered resistance before the floor. Hooke’s handle.
Lillia forced her hand wide and pressed her dead-numb palm against the blade. She called it home, and it vanished into her inventory.
Lillia died.

 
[You will wake at the Cathedral Hearth]
[Your Companions Rested Safely and Completely]
[It is now day [5] of your quest.]
[You have conquered [1] elite enemy.]
[You have vanquished [1] boss.]
[You have conquered [1] empowered boss]
[You have leveled up! Level 8 - Authority Increased. Abilities with the Authority Subtype now have a better chance of overcoming enemy resistance.]
[The way is shut.]
“You up, kid?”
Lillia snapped her eyes open. She was on the stone-cold floor of the cathedral. She felt like she was getting up late, like when she’d opened her eyes and it was already sunrise and she didn’t know if she had overslept.
Havoc was hovering over her. His brow furrowed.
“Good.”
Lillia sat up. She was wrapped in the Usurper’s cloak, but also covered in several skins from the Hunting Lodge.
“That was the, uh, best bed I could make.”
“Wha?” Lillia managed. Her tongue was normal, but like when the chitterpede blocked a blow that should have hurt, it felt like it should have been heavy in her mouth.
“Grabbed some stuff from the Hunting Lodge cause you were just lying there and—”
“Whe—When did we rest?” Lillia pushed her hair out of her eyes. Something lingered in the back of her head, like she’d just gotten over a headache.
“Well, I laid down a few minutes ago, by my count,” Havoc said.
“But—”
“You came back again, but this time you weren’t gettin’ up. So I tried lying down. Seems to have done the trick.”
Lillia tried to crack her neck. Nothing happened. She was in perfect health.
“Want something to eat?”
Now that Havoc mentioned it, the cathedral smelled sweet. Almost saccharine.
“Sure,” Lillia said. She still wasn’t hungry. She just missed eating. “Finally levelled up, by the way.”
“It must have been close then, after the Architect fight. I’m surprised you didn’t last time you slept.”
“Yeah.” Lillia crushed chitin as she stood up. The scales rolled out over her as she emerged from the blankets.
Havoc was busy on the other side of the fire, loading something charred onto a plate he’d stolen from the hunting lodge. “What happened with the level up?”
“My authority went up,” Lillia said. “I think that’s a stat.”
“Sounds fake. Strength is a stat. Authority?” Havoc shook his head as he handed the plate to her.
Lillia looked down at the charred chunks of meat. “What is this?”
“Chitterpede. Good eatin’—”
Lillia’s scream threatened to shatter the stained glass that held the earth at bay. They would have been crushed. It would have been reasonable.
The plate clattered to the floor.
“Lillia!”
“What the fuck?!”
Havoc’s eyes went wide at the language. What else was she supposed to say?
“You just tried to feed me a bug!”
“You gotta eat.”
“I’ll just rest—I would rather never eat again than eat that.” Lillia pointed to the chunks of chitterpede that had scattered across the flagstone as she’d thrown the plate down.
“It’s good for growing up strong and—”
“Havoc! I swear on the Wheat and Silk, if you try to justify feeding me a bug, I will not knight you.”
Havoc bent over and shook his head as he picked one of the chunks off the flagstone and popped it in his mouth. Lillia’s throat went tight. That was almost as bad as the poison.
“Thought you were getting over all that stuff.”
“Getting over it?” Lillia asked.
“Getting dirty. All that stuff you complained about.”
“First off, I don’t like it. I’m tolerating it,” Lillia said. “Second of all, there are so many lines between ‘I will get dirty’ and ‘I will eat a bug.’”
“It’s just meat.”
Lillia’s chest tightened along with her throat. She puffed out her cheeks and let the air hiss out between her lips. Finally, she allowed herself one last quick scream to let the rest of the energy out.
“I’m right here,” Havoc protested.
“Havoc, I name you knight. Sir Gross of House Ashvalin. Enjoy all the titles and honours that come with that position.”
Lillia finished knighting Havoc with a swift kick. On contact, there was a blinding light between Lillia and Havoc. The air around him was sizzling. Lillia’s bare foot was warm.
“Sir Gross?” Havoc asked as he slowly stood, having collected all the floor-chitterpede.
“Be glad it’s not worse.” Lillia huffed and crossed her arms before grabbing her crown from her mental inventory.
Hooke was in there. She’d gotten it.
A chill settled in the core of her spine as she thought about the black cloak on the Silencer she’d run into. Her first secret in the Dungeon.
Everything from the past minute, all of the freaking out over the chitterpede, suddenly felt petty in the face of what had happened.
Lillia’s jaw tensed.
Havoc’s hand landed on her shoulder. Lillia relaxed.
“Am I coming with you this time?”
“I’m going to at least take another look today before I ask you to come with me,” Lillia said. “Might even work out with the timing for emergency knighting.” Lillia offered that as the best justification she had for wanting to go in again without sharing much information. The frank truth was that most of her scouting so far was “I get blown up by trebuchets in the first five minutes.”
It didn’t exactly seem like revelation that would help them get through the room.
Havoc squinted. “You don’t know shit, do you?”
Lillia sighed.
“All good, kid. Got nothing but time.”
Lillia looked over to the space where the forge had been. Clearly it all went away when Havoc lost his class.
“Did you make something?”
“Bring back something useful, and I’ll share it.”
“Hey!”
“It’s motivation,” Havoc said.
“I want to know now.”
“Then figure something out.”
“Havoc,” Lillia made sure she was facing him and standing up straight so she had her full height to look down on him with. “You are my knight.”
“I ain’t your knight. I’m a blacksmith. If you wanna wait around for hours to make me your knight, I’ll listen.”
Lillia’s response, which was the only reasonable one, was a single, sharp inhale and exhale. “I’ll be back.”
“Give ‘em hell!”
She was already halfway down the first flight of stairs. When she was on the landing of the first floor, Lillia paused, staring at Havoc’s door.
Nothing looked different about it. Looked the same as the first time she had opened it, and the same as when she had gotten the spiraling error messages.
Lillia took two cautious steps toward it, but stopped before she touched the handle.
Whether it worked or not, it felt like Havoc’s question to answer, maybe just not a question she wanted to ask right now.
Lillia continued down the stairs.
At the final landing, Lillia realized there was a new tool in her pocket. She reached into her inventory and pulled out a piece of the Invader’s Cloth. It was dark and so thin she could almost see her palm through it as she examined it.
Lillia closed her hand around the fabric. It was so light it almost vanished instead of turning into dust. She pulled the other two pieces from her inventory for good measure and added them into the dress.
The light that shone from Lillia was black.
She was wearing a floor-length black gown of layered tulle. Where the thin layers had been gathered together to add volume, the fabric had been sewn into rose-like patterns. By the time the dress was fully formed, Lillia had dozens of layers of fabric billowing around her legs.
The upper half of the gown was different from anything Lillia had ever worn. Layered strips of the same fabric wound around her chest at various diagonals, leaving the neckline much lower and sharper than she was used to. In the end, it looked almost less like a single dress and more like she had been wrapped in bandages from her collarbones to her wrists.
She pinched the fabric. It was so thin it was nearly ethereal.
[Invader’s Tulle Gown]
[Grants the wearer a bonus to Stealth, allowing them to move unseen.]
[Grants the wearer a Dread status, inflicting fear based on the wearer’s Authority.]
[Twice per day, the wearer may cast: Dread Heiress’ Curse. This ability shares the cooldown of Heiress’ Blessing.]
Lillia wasn’t sure what to make of all of that. As she let go, the tulle kept the shape of her fingers for one strange moment before drifting back into place. She resisted the urge to pull her neckline up as she adjusted the fabric.
She didn’t feel protected in this dress, but she felt like she would be impossible to ignore.
Lillia pushed through the door, through the void, and into the siege beyond it.
“What are you doing there, soldier? Def—Ah! An invader on the walls!”
Lillia opened her eyes to find the captain who usually shoved her forward fumbling for his blade.
What?
The gown did not hide her from him. It told him exactly what she was supposed to be. Now he was going to attack.
She held out a hand and used the first thing that came to mind. “Curse you!”
[Lillia used Dread Heiress’ Curse! Highly Effective]
The guard captain froze and then stumbled back. His visor was down, but Lillia saw black smoke pouring from it. He twitched and twisted to odd angles, but stayed silent.
He dropped, his armor clattering to the floor.
[Wall Captain Defeated! - Yay!]
The dozens of men on the wall all turned to Lillia.
“Invader!”
“There!”
“Stop her!”
Lillia shrieked before a dozen blades fell on her.
[Return to the Hearth?]