Book 2: Chapter 1 - Paint the Town Pink (1/3)

[It is now Day [39] of your quest.]
“Alright Silencer, let’s try this one more time.”
Princess Lillia Ashvalin stepped through the inlaid door on the Five Point Fall’s third landing. For a breath, there was nothing as she slipped between the central dungeon and the siege of Castle Varian.
She didn’t break stride.
The first trebuchet stone would pass overhead in three breaths. The Guard Captain would reach for her shoulder on the fourth. Somewhere below, the ram would strike the gate just as the first siege tower kissed the wall.
The sound of the siege arrived all at once: the roaring wind, the shouts of the soldiers on the wall, the howl of trebuchet fire. Lillia stepped out onto the wall walk under the blazing sky and tossed her hair.
“You there, soldier! Defen—”
“No.” Lillia held up a hand, and the Guard Captain’s Sabre on her hip flared hot for a moment. The Guard Captain, who was supposed to shove her forward toward the other soldiers, hesitated, his hand frozen in the air. She batted the hand to the side as she walked, and the Captain recoiled as if he’d been blessed to be touched by her.
Lillia strode forward along the wall. The soldiers awaiting the siege tower parted for her like a dull sea of armor splitting to reveal Lillia’s stunning silver. The fire in the sky accentuated the polished plates sewn into her cropped coat and the medals embedded within the lone pauldron on her right shoulder.
Below the jacket, the outfit had a tight chain shirt that hugged Lillia’s torso from the neck down. At her waist, a thin belt cut off the chain-mail to open to a pair of narrow trousers made of links so fine they appeared to be fabric.
The pants had been a surprise the first time Lillia put on the outfit.
[Court Commander’s Uniform - 3 x Guard Captain’s Plate]
[On My Command - Changes ‘Indignance’ to ‘Command’ - An authority based check to force a friendly creature to follow a command or a hostile creature to perform one of three minor actions.]
[Steel Resolve - As long as the wearer has a “Summon,” she recovers from injury rapidly. The Summon must be involved in the same battle as the Commander for this effect to activate.]
[For Your Highness who wishes to protect their people on every field of battle.]
Once she was on the other side of the first crowd of soldiers, Lillia rolled her shoulders and hopped up and down in place several times. Each and every morning, she woke up rested but on the floor, which meant she was never able to sleep as a princess should.
Today, that would all change. Today was the day she would take down the Silencer, but even with that focus, she had to set up her soldiers for success. Otherwise, she’d never hear the end of it from Havoc.
“Skipped fights are missed opportunities,” he’d say, or one of the other hundred things he’d repeated to chide Lillia as she’d learned the farming process.
Once she felt refreshed, Lillia raised a hand. As she turned her palm to the sky, the Vibrant Dawn tiara glowed. For a breath, the sky was pink instead of orange.
“Dance for me, my knight.”
A knight manifested in front of Lillia. Hollow armor that clattered together, piece by piece, as they formed mid-air. Its silvered gauntlet reached out and caught an axe as it appeared.
[Waltzing Retainers - Once per day, the Princess may summon [1] armored knight from the ballroom to assist her with any manner of tasks. The number of knights is dependent on the Princess’ authority.]
Lillia’s waltzing retainer bowed to her. Even with her increased authority, the skill only created a single knight. That was fine. Lillia was using him to farm either way.
“Saltarello, man the ballista, if you would. Help clear the walls. Trebuchet first, then the siege towers until you’re overrun.”
Saltarello, one of the three knights Lillia had learned to summon and recognizable by his axe, bowed a second time before marching off further down the wall.
Lillia turned away from the advancing army and looked out over the burning city behind her. Once more into the breach.
Silently, and much to the horror of any of the soldiers watching, Lillia stepped off the wall and plummeted down to the city below.

[Day 19 of your Quest]
“Open the door and fight the chitterpede for three minutes without killing it. If you manage that, I’ll tell you another one of my grand kid’s names.” Havoc leaned back in his chair, putting his clawed, dirty feet on the Hunting Lodge table.
They never used the table, but Lillia still rolled her eyes at the breach of etiquette. She’d given up arguing the point, but there was a long road stretching between tolerance and acceptance.
“Three minutes?” Lillia asked.
“Mhm.”
“Last time was two.”
“And last time you managed” Havoc said, “so this time it needs to be longer. Or you won’t improve.”
“I barely managed,” Lillia muttered. She knew Havoc would hear her, but that was fine. He knew her opinion on his training methods.
She took a deep breath and instantly regretted it as the stench of the Hunting Lodge’s alcohol-soaked air seared her sinuses. That’s what this was, training. It had started several days ago, a week of dungeon days and a dozen deaths after killing Eisel.
Lillia, in Havoc’s unimpeachable opinion, relied too much on her dresses to guard for her. The Chitterpede battlegown was her default for every battle, as she was tossed and thrown around again and again in the process of leveling up.
Lillia couldn’t argue Havoc’s point, not that she’d convince him either way. She did rely on her dresses to carry her defensively. Of course she did. For all the leaps and bounds Lillia had made regarding her swordplay, she was still an untrained princess waving around a sharp stick.
Knights spent years training and perfecting their dueling technique. Lillia had unlimited chances, but even if she was a prodigy she was years away from the flawless parries and ripostes that Havoc demanded of her.
Originally, Lillia had tried to convince Havoc by explaining that getting punched in the face and letting the dresses handle it had so far been a winning formula. Why mess with success?
Havoc’s pride had settled that argument.
“Okay,” Lillia said as she rested her hands on the storage closet handle. “I got this.”
It was just three minutes. She could pull it off.

On day 39, Lillia touched down in the castle-town streets. White wings extended from her heels to slow her fall.
[Plainsrunner Over-the-Knee Boots - Level 2]
[Equipment - Boots]
[Aerial Predator - the wearer deals increased damage with all attacks if they began above the target.]
[Soft Landing - The Plainsrunner boots will catch the wearer and prevent injury from falling.]
Once she was on the ground, Lillia drew Vianaffir out of her inventory. Since the battle with Eisel, the blade had changed. A brilliant blue lightning-like streak ran down the center of the blade whenever Lillia held it. A representation of its new form and the fact that Lillia had used the True Soul strike to escape her old captor.
The constant reminder of her victory was one of the many reasons Lillia began each fight with Vianaffir.
Before charging into the city, Lillia considered her options.
Unlike her previous attempts, they were less infinite. She came with a goal: defeat the Silencer, and furthermore, defeat the Silencer alone.
It was one of the nice things about Infinite Lives. It gave Lillia as many chances as she needed to pursue a vendetta. Time and time again, her attempts to explore the city surrounding the palace were ended prematurely by the same stupid secret boss. At first, it had been annoying. Now it was personal.
Even with a singular end goal, there were dozens of ways Lillia could approach challenging the Silencer. She knew that he began his hunt in the market, but the longer she spent in the castle town, the further he roamed in search of her. Even wearing one of her invader’s gowns didn’t prevent him from engaging on sight.
Over several mornings and too many sticks’ worth of charcoal, Lillia had pitched a dozen ideas to Havoc, trying to determine where in the city would give her the best chance against the Silencer.
None offered enough benefits to overcome the fact that he would attack at random.
In the central market. In his home, Lillia knew she could attract the Silencer’s attention. Plus, there was something cathartic about kicking his ass on his home turf.
At least there was supposed to be. Lillia was twelve attempts into battling the Silencer, and all of them had ended with her choking on her own throat as the poison coursed through her veins.
[Trebuchet Destroyed - Yay!]
Saltarello was already doing his job. That meant she’d lingered too long. Decision made. Today, she wouldn’t bother circling around the burning tailor shop to try and start closer to the fabric. Today, she would start her fight in the main thoroughfare, with her head held high.

[Day 16 of Your Quest]
“The second rule of the hunt is Preparation. Namely: you’ve got to understand what you’re hunting because there are two kinds of hunt on the grounds.”
Lillia was crouched low in the thin, wispy grasses of the hunting grounds near the top of the hill in the southern corner. Thorne was perched on the branch of a tree above her, her leather and royal blues matched by bark and flower.
“And even out there, it’s the same thing, sugar. There’s two kinds of fight: a hunt and a fight.”
“I don’t know if you can say there are two kinds of something and then list that something as one of the two kinds.”
Thorne scoffed. “Just listen to me and you’ll understand what I mean in a minute.” As she got riled up, her wings buzzed behind her. “What I’m trying to say is that you need to know whether what you’re fighting wants to fight you.”
“Pardon?”
“Take a scurry ram, for example. It is scared of you. It doesn’t want to fight, so unless you corner it, it’s just going to try to run.”
“Okay.”
“But if you take something like your friend the Ambusher, it’s going to want to fight because it first sees you as prey, but if you strike back, it sees you as a threat to its territory.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“One’s a hunt, one’s a fight. Gotta know which is which.”
“That’s good to know while we’re in here, Thorne,” Lillia said.
Thorne lowered her bow from the horizon she was watching and turned to Lillia. “I think I hear a but coming.”
“But so far, everything I’ve run into in every other room just wants to kill me,” Lillia said. “Nothing tries to run away.”
“Alright, then, in that case, change of point of view. You need to figure out whether it thinks you’re going to run away.”
“Or?”
“Or, if whatever you’re facing thinks you’re gonna fight.”
“Okay, thanks for the guidance, I suppose,” Lillia said. She wasn’t sure she’d taken anything from Thorne’s rambling, but what else was new? If there was one thing she’d learned about the Huntsmaster over the course of finding something decent to eat within the dungeon, it was that downtime made her devastatingly chatty.
“Thorne?”
“Yeah, sugar?”
“Which should I be?”
Thorne considered it for a moment. “You know, I’m always on the hunt, so prey knows what it’s getting into. But the only creatures that get a shot on me are the ones that look like they’re gonna run and then turn fast.”
“So both?”
“Make him think you’re one and then do the other. It ruins their preparation.”
“Okay.” Lillia could do that. She thought.
“Now, rule number three of the hunt…”

Lillia approached the silk cart in the central market. The same one that she’d been drawn towards during her initial encounter with the Silencer. Even if she smuggled some of the fabric back to the cathedral with her she didn’t know how permanent it would be. Would the dungeon allow her the luxury of a blanket that didn’t smell like wet fur and beer?
The temperature plummeted as Lillia approached the merchant cart. The smell of ash and wood from the burning city faded into nothing.
[Secret Discovered - Good Luck]
Lillia kept walking forward, empty handed and in her first level Ambusher Slip. If she drew her weapon. If she changed armor. If she did anything other than approach the cart the Silencer would change tactics. If he thought she were oblivious, he’d come out to play.
The scratch of leather sole on cobblestone, barely audible above Lillia’s steps. The soft rustle of layered fabric nearly covered by the crackling fire. The whistle of an inhale before held breath.
Lillia wheeled as the Silencer was already in the air, summoning Vianaffir to her hand, directly in the path of the assassin’s blow. The Silencer spun to the side, his blade barely nicking Vianaffir’s tip to prevent Lillia from mounting a counterstrike as he landed. Black fabric whipped around the Silencer as he landed just past Lillia.
[Secret Discovered: Defeat the Silencer.]
Lillia pulled spider thread into her hand, tearing apart three instances in a single practiced motion. The threads wrapped around her, spiraling across the princess a thousand times and forming a tight bodice around her torso. Behind her neck, the thread stiffened into a high collar with eight points. Around her legs, a hundred sheets of silk layered one over another, each so thin that they floated alongside Lillia’s movement, never quite settling in one place.
Finally, a mourning veil drew over Lillia’s face, fine as mist and black as midnight as Widow’s Etiquette finished forming around her.
She pointed Vianaffir to the Silencer.
It was impossible to see the Silencer’s face in the shadow of his hood, but Lillia knew he was smiling.