16: Encounter
The tunnel dropped deeper than Lilith had guessed, like a root gnawing into the dark earth.
From outside, the house looked small, so she’d thought the passage would dead-end in a few steps. Instead, she kept walking, sinking like a pebble in a well, with no clue when the stash would show.
She spiraled through the twisting shaft, one dizzying left turn after another, until the world felt like a spinning lantern. Only then did a shut stone door surface from the gloom.
She nicked her finger with a small knife. Warm red beaded up; she smeared a few drops across the stone. The slab yielded under her push with the weight of a waking mountain. At the threshold she hesitated, breath tight. Then the Little White Dragon shifted the Astrolabe to her left hand, drew the Shattered Ark with her right, and lowered her body like a hunter slipping through reeds.
“Shine.” She flicked the Astrolabe. Starlight flickered like frost, but it wasn’t enough, so she cast a broader glow, a moon poured into a bowl.
White light rippled out from her like calm water, washing the sunless room clean. Lilith ducked behind a stone sarcophagus and popped her head up, a curious wren peeking over a branch.
The chamber wasn’t big. Maybe twenty paces long, a bit more than ten wide. For someone as petite as Lilith, it felt just right: not so tight she couldn’t weave, not so open she’d get pinned to the flat like a nail.
A corridor ran straight from the door she’d entered, slicing the room like a spear. Six sarcophagi sat in mirrored ranks on either side. The house outside had screamed Western medieval, but these coffins carried no cross or cathedral. They were Pharaoh-cold—more Egypt than Europe, more linen and lime than stained glass. Why this mix-and-match, who knew.
She sniffed. The air crawled with corpse-stink, a damp cellar smell that clung like wet rope. Not thick enough to choke her—good. Her dragon nose hated rot like fire hates rain.
It wasn’t leaking from the coffins. So the stink likely belonged to something that had climbed out of one.
If they crawled out, then the coffins should be empty, right? She tilted her head left and right like a fox weighing a henhouse, made sure no one lurked nearby, then reached out with those sinful little claws and eased a lid aside.
Called it. Lilith grinned, slid a hand into the coffin, and scooped up a fistful of coins. They chimed like rain as she poured them into her satchel. Too bad she wasn’t spatial-type anymore, and the system’s storage had long since bricked. Otherwise, she’d haul the whole graveyard home.
Maybe it was a dragon’s hoard-habit, maybe it was the RPG creed of never leaving a dungeon empty-handed. Either way, Lilith wrecked all six coffins with the patience of a squirrel stripping a grove.
Curse it, a loot cap feels like a cheap rule that kills civilizations. She piled everything by the door like a miniature treasure hill, picking through the shine for keepers while her heart muttered curses like summer thunder.
Why does inventory management even exist? Every pack-rat soul would weep.
After a few minutes of Inventory Crisis 7, she stuffed a few pricier-looking jewels and a couple of scrolls into her satchel. She gave the remainder—a mound of gold as bright as noon—a last, aching glance, swallowed hard like gulping a stone, and headed for the far door.
This one was solid, a stubborn tooth in an old jaw. It probably needed some hidden switch. Lilith chose the old shortcut. A few drops of blood, a quiet promise, and the door unlocked like frost melting off a latch.
“Didn’t expect the blood key to be the MVP,” she murmured, eyeing her finger. Ever since she’d turned dragon, tight doors had stopped being a problem. Bliss like stepping into warm sun.
Once, those doors had nearly driven her mad in the Demon King’s castle. Now, the grudge tasted sweet, like tea after rain. She’d make every designer of one-way doors respect her someday. Deeply. Reverently.
She pushed the slab. Beyond it stretched a room four or five times bigger, a dry lakebed of stone. No sarcophagi here. Just a lone figure planted in the center like a dead tree that wouldn’t fall.
From the shape, likely a man. The body was shriveled, skin hugging bone like paper on a frame. Pale yellow bandages wrapped him head to foot, the color of old parchment, a mummy fresh from a dusty cradle.
Well—maybe not fresh. More like one that had crawled out a long time ago and forgotten how to breathe.
Lilith slid the Astrolabe back across her spine; Shine’s halo was wide enough that she could keep the light and free both hands. The Little White Dragon crouched, fingers tightening on the Shattered Ark. She flowed forward like a cat, belly close to the ground, circled behind the mummy, raised the broken blade, and drove it into his neck.
“Gaa!” The mummy seized the steel that jutted through his throat, loosing a rasp like sand in a bellows. He thrashed, bones creaking like dry branches.
“Whoa, strong.” Shock flickered cold first, then focus. She couldn’t budge the blade. His strength met hers head-on, and his life was stubborn as a ghost’s; half his skull was hanging, and he still kicked like a mule.
“Try this.” Lilith locked her grip on the Shattered Ark. His hands were clamped to the edge of the Broken Sword. That still counted as a strike.
The pink-white blade bloomed with light, a petal of dawn. Power surged. The mummy’s strength guttered like a candle in wind. She blinked—and saw his hands were no longer hands. The blade had flared wider by a handspan and pared them clean off.
He saw it too, with the head she’d just cut down.
The Little White Dragon lifted her gaze, nerves taut like a drawn bow. Whether the noise had woken them or the stinking green ichor had called them like a horn, several more mummies hauled themselves from the floor and fixed their empty eyes on Lilith.
She raised the Shattered Ark, tugged her trench collar like a duelist tightening a scarf, and sprinted for the nearest corpse.
Make it quick. She could not stand the smell clinging to these things like swamp fog.
