Book 2 Chapter 8 | The Rising Tide 3/3

Lillia half rolled over to see the ‘Admiral’ who’d come over to check on the commotion. A stocky barrel of a man loomed above her, one hand on his hip and the other resting on the intricate handle of a saber on his right side. A long, thick cloak was drawn across his shoulders, stuck tight to his frame by the pounding rain. Droplets ran down his thick beard, water dripping off as he tightened his jaw.
“You brought a woman on board,” the Admiral said. His voice was thick and slow. “Why’d you go and bring a woman on board?”
“Well—” the man who’d pulled her onto the ship began, but Lillia’s sitting up stole his response away.
“Excuse you? A woman? I’m a princess, thank you very much.”
A single half-cough-half-laugh escaped the Admiral before he furrowed his brow. “And pray tell, why should we have found a princess out in open waters?”
“You know, it’s a very long story,” Lillia said as she balled up the ruffles of her dress as they dragged through the seawater on the deck. “And that really depends on how much you know about the Dungeon.”
“The dungeon?” the man who’d helped her up asked.
“A dungeon,” the Admiral echoed. He turned to face his companion instead of Lillia. “See there. Not only did you bring bad luck onto deck. She’s already beset with madness.”
“Excuse you again!” This time, Lillia stood. With the heels of the Plainsrunner OTKs, she was almost as tall as the Admiral, which seemed to shock both the men. “Madness? You don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“Woman, you called yourself a princess. I won’t be questioned on my own ship.”
Lillia scoffed. “Your ship is in my sea, captain.”
“Admiral.”
“The coast and the glittering waters beyond belong to House Ashvalin, and you would do well to remember that,” Lillia said. As soon as she’d said the name of the house, the Admiral flinched.
It was good to get some damned recognition around here.
“A princess of House Ashvalin?” the man who’d grabbed her—who was coming off as more and more of a ‘boy who grabbed her’ every moment—asked as he turned to the Admiral. “Is there such a thing?”
“Course there ain’t. Though I suppose you’d be taking my word over the random lady you found in the middle of the sea.”
Fine. They weren’t biting on that. They seemed to know Lillia’s name but not who she was or what being a princess should do for her. She expected that from a random deckhand commoner, but an Admiral should have known better.
Time for a different angle.
“Yes. A lady who you found on the side of your ship in the middle of a storm,” Lillia said. “Such a random occurrence must be mere happenstance and…” She let them fill in the blanks, letting the idea sit for as long as it needed to.
Or as long as they would let it.
The Admiral scoffed, but the boy who’d saved her pulled off his cap, revealing his soaked sandy blonde hair and wiping his bangs to the side.
“I’ll bet she’s—”
“She’s your problem for now. I have a storm to sail us through,” the Admiral said as he snatched the hat from the boy’s hand only to shove it back into his chest with a resounding thump. The ship veered to the side, and the boy stumbled from the combination of the blow and the change.
Lillia, on the other hand, completely tripped over herself and the ruffles in her dress, falling backward and splashing down on the deck.
“Oh! Are you okay, Miss?”
“Princess,” Lillia corrected as she groaned. Luckily, everything already hurt, which meant that the new dents on her knees and bruises in her ego were ignorable. “Are you okay, Princess?”
“Uh…” The boy looked toward where the Admiral had stomped away instead of answering, then offered his hand to Lillia again.
Kind, if a little slow about the titles.
Lillia allowed him to help her to her feet again. She was the same height as the Admiral but had an inch or two on the boy, something that seemed to surprise him again as she stood.
There was a brief break in the insistent howling of the wind. Shouts broke through, dozens of voices all calling to each other to try and keep the ship steady in the storm.
Wasn’t steering the captain’s or admiral’s job? Was everyone just working this hard because he’d come over to see what was going on with Lillia?
“I—uh. I’m really not sure what I should be doing with you, M—Princess,” the boy said. He shoved his hat back on as he addressed her. “The Admiral told me to take care of ya, but we don’t really have a place here appropriate for a lady,” he said, “and with the storm and all, I really should be getting back to work.”
Lillia rolled her eyes. She would have loved to be dry. She would have liked it even more if the first person she’d run into understood what was going on.
If he didn’t have somewhere to send her, she wasn’t sure how she was supposed to get any closer to the Hearth. If there was even a Hearth here.
Come to think of it, even in the less straightforward rooms, she’d been told what she had to do by now. She’d fought her way to the ship, but she hadn’t gotten a single objective from the dungeon. No [Board the Ship] or [Take Over the Crew].
Was she supposed to fight everyone? They were 50/50 on being nice so far, so she hoped that wasn’t the case.
“Uh, Miss. Shoot. Princess,” the boy said.
“You can call me Lillia,” she said. If he wasn’t going to use the title properly, there wasn’t a point in forcing him to use it. He didn’t seem to believe it either way.
“Lillia.” Oh, so he could figure that out right away. “I can’t have your hands on the rigging, but I—”
“You don’t know where to put me,” Lillia finished for him.
“Exactly.”
“Is there a fire on board?”
“Looking to warm yourself?”
“Sure,” Lillia said. It was better than explaining the Hearth.
“Well, there isn’t a fire on board the ship, not unless you want to burn the thing down,” he said. “Not with these waters.” He checked over his shoulder, like he was missing something, which he was. “And you’d be hard-pressed to start one in this rain anyhow.”
Lillia nodded along while trying to see anything other than the vague shadows of other sailors panicking in the storm. Even the sails, assuredly above as they were, were ghosts shielded by the rain.
No Hearth and no direction from the Dungeon itself. She just had to discover what she needed to do…
She’d never had to do that in here before. She’d needed to come up with clever solutions to problems, but at least the problems had always been overt. Maybe that was the difficulty of the fourth floor. The third had been more about scenarios—except for Eisel, whom the Dungeon only wanted dead—and now the fourth was…aimless?
That didn’t seem like a challenge, but it was annoying.
“Excuse me. Do you want to help me at all?” Lillia asked, trying to focus on the text in the corner of her vision as she did. The text came back, but all it showed was her inventory. “Hello?”
Nothing. No change.
“Hello,” the boy said, leaning around Lillia’s shoulder to sneak back into view. “You said your name was Lillia. Right?”
She stopped herself short of correcting him by adding ‘Princess.’ If he was never going to get it, there wasn’t a point. Even Havoc had been faster on the uptake than this.
“Yes. My name is Lillia.”
“My name is Caelum. It’s very nice to meet you.” He offered a hand, this time to shake instead of helping her up.
Truly, he didn’t know the language of nobility. Lillia never shook a hand in greeting. She was curtseyed to and bowed to. Shaking a hand was reserved for the highest forms of agreement, and she wasn’t about to make any more of those in the dungeon.
Eventually, the boy—Caelum—took the hint and shoved his hand in his pocket, making no attempt to smooth over how awkward that had been for him.
“Caelum,” Lillia said. “You seem like a smart boy.”
“Thank you!”
“Yes. That means you would be the kind of person who knows where this ship is going.”
“Haven’t the slightest.”
He was so chipper when he said it. It was the unbridled confidence of someone who hadn’t been stabbed thirty-seven times in the past month.
“Beg pardon, Lillia,” he continued as rain ran down his freckled nose. “But if you don’t know where this ship is going, why were you hanging off the side of it when I found you?”
“Any port in a storm,” Lillia said. She wasn’t sure what the phrase meant, but she’d heard a merchant captain say it back in the banquet hall during the yearly harvest. She was pretty sure he was speaking about something deeply inappropriate, but it seemed like it would fit in here as well.
She was on a ship; it probably served her well to play the part.
“Well—and I suppose this is the most important question of all, Mis—Princess—Lillia,” Caelum stuttered. “I was just wondering how you managed to get there. Were you on your own ship?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
Caelum stepped out in front of her as she attempted to walk away. “Oh, I think I would, Lillia. My mom always used to say I’d believe anything.”
His big blue eyes were so hopeful when he said that.
Was this how everyone saw her a month ago?
Was this how everyone saw her now?
She didn’t love the taste that put at the back of her mouth.
“Okay,” she sighed. “This ocean is in the middle of a dungeon. I was dropped into that dungeon by my evil aunt, who killed my parents five years ago. Since coming into this dungeon, I have been subject to a series of awful, gross, and grimy challenges, but this has been by far the wettest one.”
Caelum nodded sagely along with everything Lillia said, though his brow furrowed and his eyes widened with each added statement until his face was a screwed-up mess of lacking comprehension.
“So do you believe me now?”
“Miss Princess, I…” He paused for much too long. “I believe you. I just suppose I don’t know if I understand you.”
“Pardon?”
“It seems a little far-fetched, is all. I don’t think the ocean is inside, and I don’t think a woman would kill her own…Was it your mother’s sister or your father’s sister?”
“Father’s, otherwise the line of succession doesn’t work,” she said. Once she had said that, she cocked her head. “That’s the part you don’t believe?”
“Just doesn’t seem like something someone would do. The rest of it could happen. I’ve heard about a dungeon or two somewhere.”
“Okay.”
“Must be a very large castle to hide a whole ocean under it, though. Is it your castle?”
Lillia ignored that last question. Firstly, the dungeon wasn’t in the castle, per se. Secondly, what the hell was she supposed to say to that? The concept of a traitorous aunt had thrown him off. What would he say when she told him there was a separate, different castle in the dungeon upstairs?
“Sure, I’m glad you believe me.”
“Happy to!”
“But I am looking for a Hearth. It’s like a big fire. Or a space where there could be a big fire.”
“There could be a big fire anywhere on a ship, Miss—Princess—Lillia. That’s what I was saying before, about why we don’t have any.”
For a brief moment, Lillia considered whether the entire ship could count as a Hearth if the entire thing were ablaze.
“But as I mentioned, it’s raining much too much for that,” he said. “There’s no way you’d be able to light a fire on the ship right now.”
“Okay.”
“Not to mention, please don’t. I would get in lots of trouble.”
During their conversation, the roiling sea should have been tossing the ship around. The wind and rain hadn’t subsided, and the waves were so large that they nearly crashed over the cracked wooden railing. Despite that, Lillia realized that the ship itself wasn’t rocking anymore; it was as stable as any other ground in the dungeon had been.
In fact, once she understood that, it was rather disorienting.
“So you don’t know where this ship is going?” Lillia asked.
“No, Miss!”
“And the Admiral doesn’t want to talk to me because I’m a woman?”
“It’s bad luck, Miss.”
“Then what the hell am I supposed to do here to—”
[Objective Updated]
Lillia snapped out of the conversation as the text interjected itself. Behind it, Caelum looked more and more confused as he tried to figure out why Lillia had just begun ignoring him.
[New Objective — Seize the Ship or Survive What’s Coming]
“Thank you, Dungeon,” Lillia whispered to herself. That was delightfully ominous.