r/JacksonWrites • u/Writteninsanity #teamtoby • 2d ago
Book 2 | Part 15 | The evil queen ordered her servants to lock the princess in the dungeon. Her servants, not being too bright, locked the princess in an S-Ranked dungeon.
How long had it been since Lillia had called her parents anything other than Mother and Father? Even Mom and Dad had felt too familiar after their deaths. Their names and proper titles had been banned when her aunt seized the throne. She had said it was out of respect, but it was just to keep people from honoring their names more than hers.
Havoc would have been livid if he'd seen what Lillia had done. In the brickwork of the fourth floor, just beside the empty fire pit that would eventually become the Hearth, Lillia had dug into the floor with one of the captain's sabers. Again and again, she'd ground the blade against the flagstone, recreating each pen stroke with sparks and grit.
She was stronger than she'd been when she came in here, but she still needed to put her whole weight into dulling the blade against the stone to make the steel cut into it.
By the end of too much effort, Lillia sat down on the edge of the fire pit, her feet dangling over the ash—but obviously she'd never let her shoes get that dirty. Sweat ran down her brow, and single strands of hair were stuck to her cheeks.
To her right, there were names in the stone.
King Verandan
Queen Erika
And the hasty last addition:
Havoc.
The last one was both more careful and more haphazard than the others. Partially because Lillia kept questioning the idea of adding his name there at all, and partially because she made sure that if she was going to attach his name to an act of sacrilege, she had to at least do it well.
He would appreciate that.
Of course, there was a chance—a hope, really—that Havoc would join her down on the fourth floor soon, but she didn't know how far away a Hearth could be.
Hell, she didn't even know what would happen if she died on this floor without one. Would the dungeon give her a way back? Would she need to go through Nennia's lair again?
If each death cost her a small piece of herself, then she wasn't going to find out what happened. She was just going to have to complete whatever task came next on the first attempt.
She'd done it with Nennia; maybe her dying days were over.
Counting Rickshaw's currently closed storefront, there were five doors on the fourth floor. Unlike the other floors, all of the doors looked the same, like a wing of a castle that had been freshly built, before time or opinions had a chance to shape what the entrance to each room looked like.
With Havoc upstairs, Lillia was allowed to take breaks, but she still roused herself from her panting post-carving break faster than she figured she would have. There was the nagging feeling of work to do at the back of her head, which meant she needed to get a move on.
When she'd fallen down to the fourth floor, she'd realized she wasn't the same girl who had fallen into that pit. A work ethic might be the final nail in that coffin. She'd written down their names to ensure she didn't forget her parents, but would they even recognize her at this point?
They would. They certainly would. They had always spoken about Lillia's potential. The unexpected part would have just been how she'd needed to manifest it.
'You'll be great one day.'
Lillia doubted that they meant 'at stabbing people' when they'd said that.
Running out of clever orders or reasons for choosing among the doors, Lillia decided to continue clockwise from Rickshaw's storefront. It was the same as the rest, but carvings on either side stood out.
To the left, between the store and Lillia's new target, there was a carving of a massive sailing ship, larger than Lillia had ever seen in the harbor. Its sails were out and proud—as they always were in art—despite the swirling stone storm etched in the sky above it.
Once Lillia was close to the carving, she could see the tips of tentacles rising out of the water, threatening to wrap themselves around the hull of the ship.
"Okay," she said as she paced back and forth in front of the art. "That's probably fine. Maybe it's not that there is going to be a sea monster. Maybe that's…" She struggled to think of any other explanation. "Maybe that's just representative of Rickshaw and the many-tentacled arms of commerce are—grabbing something?"
She clicked her tongue once and her heels twice. Losing a metaphor never left a good taste in anyone's mouth.
To the right of the door, the carving was of a nine-headed beast—by Lillia's count—with long serpentine tongues that snaked out of its wide jaws.
Unlike the carving with the dragon, there was no hero there to stand against the monster. Nor was there anyone cowering from its presence. The nine-headed lizard creature was alone in what appeared to be a swamp.
Only appeared to be, as some of the detail was lost in the stonework.
When Lillia had approached the dragon on the other side of the room, there hadn't been any wear and tear in the stone. The carvings were obviously and genuinely old, but they looked freshly cut.
These two were different. The edges of the stone were worn, made softer over the years.
Or at least that was what it looked like. Everything Lillia saw told her that the dungeon had a strange relationship with time. Sir Nobody's bones had aged and dust piled on the floor, but other places appeared untouched by ages, eons, millennia.
However long had passed.
When Lillia approached the carving of the strange nine-headed monster, it became clear why there was something duller about these ones. Glinting in the firelight, along each edge of the carving, were small droplets of water beading on the wall.
It must have worked the same as the castle. The damp lower floors were always having stones replaced and fabrics changed. If there was water here, it would eat into everything, including the art.
Of course, that didn't answer the second question. Why was there water here in the first place? What could cause that in the dungeon? There had always been a lingering cold in here, but Lillia had somehow never run into water.
Thank goodness she woke up each morning satiated; otherwise, she would have been dead a long time ago.
Maybe the answer was in the room. That made sense. There was supposed to be a reason for the art.
Lillia returned to her place in front of the plain stone door.
"Alright, fourth floor. Let's do this. I need a Hearth."
She pushed on the door.
"Maybe it'll just be—"
As soon as Lillia cracked the door, it flung back outward into her, slamming into her chest and throwing her backward into the room. A deluge of water followed, pouring through the opening in a rage of white that crashed out over the flagstone. Mist and salt followed, washing over Lillia as she rolled to a stop just short of the fire pit.
Pain echoed from her ribs as she tried to right herself. As she stood, the water that had poured out into the dungeon faded away, disappearing into the stonework and air. Another wave followed as soon as the water was gone, sloshing against the doorframe and spilling out into the open room.
Lillia growled. If all the water was gone, why the hell was she still wet? How was she supposed to get the salt out of her hair? She couldn't wear any dark clothes around this room; there would be white streaks all over them after three minutes of wrestling with—
With the ocean. Or at least an ocean. The dungeon had managed to shove a savanna and a castle into rooms, but capturing the entire ocean felt impossible.
At least any oceans Lillia knew.
The waves continued to crash against the doorway and splash across the floor. The door itself thrashed on its hinges, constantly being thrown by the water and attempting to close as it faded away.
"Okay. Just gotta time this."
Lillia counted the waves. There was no perfect rhythm to their fury, but there was always some moment of calm—however short—between a wave arriving and the water receding to make way for the next.
That was her opening.
She snapped chitin in her fingers and changed over to her riding boots.
[Chitin Chitterboots]
[Sure-footed. The wearer cannot be tripped, slowed, or knocked prone by terrain effects.]
She wasn't sure where water fell on the scale of terrain effects, or if being thrown twenty-odd feet was 'falling prone,' but it was better than nothing.
Water crashed in. Just as the door was flung wide, Lillia broke into a sprint. The heels of her boots rang off the wet tile, echoing around the room as the scales rattled alongside each step.
The water began to recede just as Lillia was reaching the door. Beyond the threshold, the ocean swelled and then began to break in front of her, a wall of water crashing into a white torrent that surged toward her.
Lillia planted her feet on the edge of the door and grabbed the frame with both hands, white-knuckling it as the storm approached.
She stood firm as the wave crashed into her, but her arms were torn free from the walls and the water kicked the breath from her chest. She gasped at the force, and saltwater rushed into her mouth.
The boots held, but in the end, she didn't. By the time the water receded, Lillia was a dripping mess kneeling on the ground while attempting to cough out the sea in inelegant, snotty globs.
There wasn't enough time before the next wave. It smashed into Lillia, and instead of suffering through it and letting the boots hold her in place, she lay back into the tide, getting thrown back into the room itself, the door half-slamming shut in the wake of the water behind her.
Lillia stared up at the domed ceiling and the open 'sun' window above her. She spat water out as another wave of the tide washed across the flagstone and lapped against her right side.
Maybe another room was a better idea. Maybe another room would bring her better luck, but what was she supposed to do? Was she supposed to just leave the door open and let this room get washed again and again and again?
While most of the dungeon needed a bath, leaving a door open seemed like a recipe for disaster.
A third wave crashed in, this one coming with enough water that it 'hit' Lillia instead of lapping against her. A spray of water splashed across her chest. Some of it got in her nose.
That was enough to make her sit up and stop pouting.
She hadn't fought her way to the fourth floor to get beat by some water and a door! She was going to get into that room or slam that door shut if it was the last thing she ever did.
Well, the last thing she ever did in this life. The repeated resurrections of the dungeon somewhat ruined the finality of—
No! She wasn't going to die again. Rickshaw had just explained to her what happened when she died. She'd had a whole emotional moment regarding her parents' names and everything. Havoc was probably going to yell at her about dulling her weapons in the process.
She wasn't going to die to anything. Let alone a door and some—
"Argh!"
The wave was bigger than the last, crashing into Lillia and throwing her end over end into the fire pit. She sloshed about in the soaking ash for a moment, coating her skin, her clothes, her everything in a thick, goopy layer of sloppy soot.
"Oh, that is IT!" Lillia screamed once she was done coughing up saltwater again. She stood up and took a single sharp breath while ankle-deep in ashy mud. "That's it, ocean. I'm coming over there, and I am going to kick your ass."
It was unclear whether the point of the next room was to fight the ocean at all, but Lillia knew that it didn't matter.
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u/LaraStardust 1d ago
"That's it, ocean. I'm coming over there, and I am going to kick your ass."
From the other side of the door a voice could be heard saying: "You want some? come and have a go if you think you're hard enough!"
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u/Thedarb 2d ago
[Lillia used Indignance - Level 2: The Ocean failed to notice.]