Book 2 Chapter 5 - This Time We Mean It 2/3

“Oh. Oh, jeez. That stuff really burns, doesn’t it?” Lillia said as the webbing above her erupted into flame strand by strand at an impossible pace. The room went from chilly to hot to nearly unbearable in a brief second, and suddenly there were sparkling and smoldering bits of silk raining from the roof.
“Our house!” Spinna cried.
“We’re so going to kill you.”
“Hey!” Lillia said. “Don’t make this my fault. You were already going to do that.”
“Yeah, because you called our Mom gross,” Spinna said. “Now you did that and burned down our house. You’re just a giant—”
A massive bundle of burning webbing crashed down on top of Spinna, pinning her to the floor and squishing her lower half. There wasn’t time for the girl to scream before she was cooked and smashed.
[Spinna Defeated! Yay!]
“Spinna?” Nicole asked as she reached out to the sudden funeral pile that used to be Spinna’s body.
Lillia swapped to the Fireweave Spelldress, the wide sleeves billowing in the hot, swirling air at the bottom of the pit.
Thank goodness she was at the bottom, or she would have been choking on a lot of smoke.
“How could you do that?” Nicole asked as she turned to Lillia. “That was so mean! We hadn’t even started fighting yet and you’re just dropping stuff on people? No wonder your Mom didn’t want to eat your dad!”
By the way she’d said it, it was clear that Nicole considered that an insult.
Nicole turned away from the crushed remains of her sister to face Lillia. As she did, her fingernails grew long and cruel. Firelight danced across the smooth, polished, lacquer-like chitin on her legs.
On the girl’s second step forward, Lillia drew Vianaffir and trained it on her. It was just one spider, and she could see now. She could do this.
Getting out of the pit was another question, but she could win this fight.
Nicole glanced up for a moment and winced at the light before returning to circling around Lillia. With each passing second, more and more of the network above fed the flames, swelling them into a pure wall of fire above, cheering on the battle with flaming silk gifts.
Both of them stopped for a breath. The thousand crackles of fire blended into a single cacophony.
Havoc always told Lillia she needed to watch her opponent’s eyes in a duel like this, but she hadn’t gotten much practice yet. How was she supposed to watch all eight of them? That felt unfair if anything was.
“You burned down my home,” Nicole said.
“It’ll come back.”
“As soon as I kill you,” she said.
“Or you let me out.”
“You killed my sister.”
Lillia began to circle Nicole again. How was she supposed to match the other person’s footwork when they had eight legs? “She’ll be back too. You don’t need to fight me.”
Nicole closed all of her eyes. “No. I do.”
[Tantrum - Level 1]
In the brief moment when Nicole was trying to steel herself, Lillia flung Hooke at her. The dull metal of the weapon almost burned hot with firelight as it spun end over end before it—
A single thread came down from the ceiling and snatched the sword by the handle a moment before the blade hit Nicole.
What?
Above Lillia, silhouetted against the sprawling wall of fire that consumed the cave, was the looming form of Nennia. The white silk she’d been wearing had been burned away by the flame, but she wasn’t bare-chested under it.
Where her chest should have been, there was an empty black void buried deep within her ‘skin.’ The flesh surrounding it was pulled long into thin strands that were pulled taut across the black void, creating a stitched pattern of twisting meat-threads across the black.
Nicole leapt at Lillia, her claws outstretched. Shockingly, she pulled Vianaffir up to block in time, but it barely mattered. Nicole might have been slight on her upper half, but she was still at least twice Lillia’s weight. The blade blocked her claws but couldn’t stop the momentum of the tackle, which sent them both crashing to the ground and falling over one another.
What felt like a hundred legs began assaulting Lillia, stabbing at the ground to try and pin her as she attempted to escape from Nicole’s grip. With Vianaffir pinned between them, she couldn’t swing the blade, but it was also the only thing protecting her from the claws.
She let go with one hand, relinquishing control to pull something from her inventory. Lillia slammed the chitin against the ground to crack it, followed by a second piece. The billowing fire dress snapped inward and then stabbed out, each wave and ruffle sharpening just as Nicole was lashing out.
Blood poured out of Nicole’s shoulder as Lillia’s knife-gorget stabbed into her, piercing through her thin silk top and staining them both with red. Nicole yelped and pulled back from her assault. Lillia took her chance.
“This is my court!” she called out as she got a moment to breathe.
[Lillia Activated - Run the Court]
She looked past the young girl to the silhouette above.
“And you will go where I tell you!”
There was a brief breath in the clamor when the raging inferno was the only sound, and then Lillia vanished and Nennia crashed in below her daughter.
Lillia screamed as she was suddenly in the air above. She stabbed forward with Vianaffir, digging it deep between two stones of the cave wall, wincing as the blade ground against the stone. Just as she caught herself, she stopped flailing for long enough to tear spider silk between her fingers. Two pieces wove around her feet, tying themselves tightly into a pair of almost socklike shoes.
With tacked-on heels, of course.
[Spider Steps - Level 2 - 2 x Spinning Silk]
[Princess Class Exclusive: Created by Adaptive Regalia.]
[These sticky shoes allow the Princess to climb on other surfaces for a short time. They activate automatically upon putting her feet on a surface other than the floor. The Princess is aware when it will run out.]
Lillia had learned firsthand what happened if she tried to kick someone in these while on anything other than the floor.
Beyond that, Lillia knew she didn’t have that much time. She wasn’t sure how far down she was in the pit, but running out of time while in here was going to bring an abrupt end to this escape attempt.
Below, Nennia chuckled. Lillia couldn’t hear her over the fire, but the bemused impression gave it away. That was exactly why she didn’t want to fight. A burning home, a dead daughter, and a full escape attempt, and the Spider Queen was having a lovely time.
Before climbing, Lillia changed back into the Fireweave Spelldress. The wildfire above had turned the air in the pit into a maelstrom, and climbing higher had only made it worse. Every inch of the fabric was whipping around in a frenzy around her. Sleeves slapped against forearms, and the dress was constantly threatening to be indecent.
There was nothing to do but climb, but even if she made it all the way up, what then? She could make a break for the entrance and come back when she had more tools, like Cathria, but was that even going to be enough? Was—
No. She had to believe that it was. She’d hit the level cap. If Nennia was blocking the way forward and the Dungeon told her she was getting too strong for this floor, that had to mean she was too strong for Nennia, right?
Logic said so; it still sounded fake.
Lillia put Vianaffir away and began scrambling up the wall. Even with the Spider Steps, the crags in the wall meant it was faster to climb than it was to try and run up the thing.
The stones were blazing hot, which meant she needed to keep moving. It was like trying to climb the side of a woodstove, constantly needing to move her hands just before they knew they should be burning. If nothing else, it kept her pace, even as her arms began to scream in protest.
Lillia wasn’t taking damage yet, but she had to keep a close watch on that. Even with all the dresses and tools she’d added over the last few days, [Backdraft] was one of her best possible ways of dealing with Nennia.
See a spider, burn it with fire.
Something above Lillia groaned. She couldn’t know if it was rock, silk, or a pile of spider bodies that was about to crash down into the pit. Now that she was getting higher, there was smoke in the air. The acrid taste of burning stuck to her tongue and throat, making her wish she could take the shallow breaths she couldn’t afford while climbing.
Below her, Nennia was gone. She was coming for her.
Shit.
Lillia tried to redouble her pace but couldn’t do anything without breaking out into a coughing fit.
Between this and the original fight with the Ambusher, if she was going to keep starting wildfires in closed spaces, she had to figure out a strategy for the smoke.
As far as she could tell, Lillia wasn’t any closer to the top of the pit than she’d been when she swapped places with Nennia. She couldn’t know how far she’d fallen in complete darkness, but this entire situation felt impossible.
A single strand of thought pulled at the back of Lillia’s brain: she was running out of time. She wasn’t going to get out. She wasn’t going to escape. It was too far to climb, and there wasn’t enough time to do it.
Fire was an answer to Nennia, perhaps the answer she needed, but this attempt wouldn’t be when it happened. She was out of time and didn’t have any of her tools with her.
There was one thing she could do, though.
Above, just between her and the flames she’d been trying to reach, Nennia emerged from a hole in the wall Lillia couldn’t even see.
“Cute, Princess Lillia. You’ve done more than I expected this first time around,” she said as she loomed overhead. “Everyone tries fire at some point, but most take some stabs at me before trying to burn my whole home down.”
“Live to impress,” Lillia said. In the back of her head, she could feel the boots counting down. Each second brought her a little closer to crashing to the floor.
“And so begins our infinite dance,” Nennia said as she lowered herself down closer to Lillia. “Now we can play as long as we’d like. A new challenge over and over again, each ending the same way. Each showing me a little more of what you can do, what you are willing to do.”
Her foot slipped. “Can’t we just be friends?”
“Lillia,” Nennia gasped. It was impossible to tell whether it was mock offense or legitimate offense, even for someone practiced in the court. “This means we get to be friends. How else can you know someone? Truly know someone, if you aren’t seeing every part of them.”
“Tea time?” Lillia suggested.
Nennia chuckled. As she did, her black nails grew out into claws. “Now we get to enjoy this together.”
There had been a plan here. During the conversation, Lillia knew that her boots would give out, and she’d figured that, if she didn’t know, then Nennia couldn’t be prepared for it either. The last thing she wanted was to get caught by the spider because she’d been glancing down and—
Oh.
Lillia dropped off the side of the pit, tumbling down past the embers below and careening through the air. She wasn’t sure when she’d started screaming, but it was shrill.
Okay, so there had been a plan here. Falling meant Lillia wasn’t going to get wrapped up and taken away by Nennia. She also knew there was still probably loot to collect at the bottom of the pit with Spinna’s corpse. After all, she’d ‘defeated’ her.
It was just a matter of determining at what speed she was allowed to collect loot.
What had felt like an impossible climb vanished in seconds.
Lillia snapped a piece of chitin in her fist, and the iridescent dust struggled to keep up with her until she slammed into the ground.
She should have been dead. Should have been splattered across the floor in a large, vaguely Lillia-shaped smear. Instead, Lillia just felt like she was going to throw up as she slammed to a halt on the dungeon floor.
She was alive.
That was instinct.
“Gods damn it,” Lillia said into the cold stone floor, almost kissing it in the process.
There had been a plan.
At this point, Lillia wasn’t sure why she ever bothered making them.