River died many more times.

  She hated dying. She hated dying, and she hated pain. Sometimes she would take a break from the fighting to just sit at the bottom of the well and watch the clouds float by through her tiny window into the outside world. The reprieve gave her a chance to sit and think.

  At first when she had come to this world, she had been full of self pity, crying and snotting on herself like a lost child. Now her thoughts were full of self recrimination, irritation at her own failures and mistakes when challenging the dungeon. She thought of new strategies, better ways of fighting and wielding the artifact weapons that she found in the treasure stores of the Hollow Delve.

  By now she had discovered four of the five weapons that could be found on this floor. In addition to the greatsword Lost Legacy and the hammer Shatterpoint, she had found a bow and a dagger.

  Suriel’s Bow had been a beautiful, semi-translucent weapon, a celestial work of art decorated with wisps of blue light. It conjured ghostly arrows out of thin air, and any body part struck by the projectiles would cease working, with a headshot being immediate death. River adored the weapon, taken in by the beauty of its delicate blue radiance.

  Unfortunately, however, she was no archer. Bows took a great deal of practice and skill to use effectively - both of which River lacked. She enjoyed using the bow, but her inadequate abilities with the elegant weapon had always ultimately led to her death.

  Then there was the dagger, Keen’s Edge. Out of all of the weapons she had found, this one was her favorite. It was far from the strongest - that spot still belonged to Shatterpoint, the hammer - but when she held the sleek black throwing dagger in her hand, the weapon just made sense to her. It was a hard thing to describe, but it just felt natural, like the dagger had been made for her and her alone.

  A single, glossy piece of solid black metal made up the entirety of Keen’s Edge. Its flat handle was too small to fit in the palm of her hand, instead meant to be pinched between the thumb and first knuckle of the index finger. With a blade much longer than its grip, the entire dagger from tip to handle was slightly shorter than the length of River’s hand - fairly small. Along its black blade, occasionally a faintly glowing white line would skitter across the metal, turning at sharp angles like a flicker of magical circuitry.

  It had two abilities… well, three, actually, if you counted its unnatural sharpness. The first was that she could recall the dagger back to her at any time, from any distance and even while in flight. Wherever it was, it would instantly teleport back to her hand. The second ability was that it would always land point-first when striking something, even if it was intercepted mid-flight.

  Keen’s Edge was far from the strongest weapon that River had found in the Hollow Delve, but she adored it nonetheless. She couldn’t help but love it, throwing the dagger around made her feel like a ninja. Whenever she found the small weapon, she would practice throwing the knife until the hunger pains forced her to challenge Reinard, spending days throwing the knife against the walls and training her throwing arm.

  Although River still missed at longer range, she could consistently shatter the skulls of the lesser skeletons at low to mid ranges with the throwing dagger, all at no risk to herself.

  Even without Keen’s Edge, she never died to the regular skeletons anymore. The soldier skeleton that had given her trouble in the past couldn’t put a scratch on her now. He might have been intelligent, but he still suffered from the same weaknesses as the other lesser skeletons - he was slow and weak. River could easily bash away his spear and go for a killing blow, shatter his arm bones and twist out of a grapple to regain the upper hand; simple lessons that she learned from brutal combat.

  Most of what she had learned of battle came from Reinard, now. Not only did River learn a great deal from her intense battles with the massive knight, but he had even taken to giving her instructions on fighting style and proper stance with the different weapons, saying that her untrained stance and grisly movements were an intolerable disrespect to the elegant weaponry she yielded. Evidently her untrained use of the Hollow Delve’s artifact weapons was so appalling to the knight that he had felt the need to correct it himself rather than repeatedly suffer the sight of her artless flailing that had made up River’s previous fighting style.

  Even though Reinard knew that the very techniques that he taught her would be used to try and kill him, he taught her all the same. He was helping her to kill him.

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   And she had gotten close, sometimes even aggravatingly so. She grazed his skull, bashed off his mandible, destroyed his entire lower body and blew a massive hole straight through his chest plate that narrowly missed his spine. Each time, she died.

   It was a strange relationship that River had with the skeletal knight. She didn’t hate him, even though he unflinchingly slew her each and every time she entered his chamber, and even though he was the one who kept her locked away on the first floor of this dungeon. He was just doing his job, the single purpose that kept him bound to the world: don’t let anyone pass those doors on the far side of his chamber.

  He didn’t need to teach her, he didn’t need to speak with her or show her mercy with a quick death. For that reason, River respected him. She was still going to kill him, though.

   She was tired of dying, and tired of skeletons. It was time to move forward, time to see what waited for her behind those double doors that Reinard so diligently guarded.

   River pushed open the door to the knight’s chamber and strode in. Around her shoulders was a tattered black cloak, the item she had collected from the second chest. At first glance it might have appeared to be only a mundane piece of cloth, but like all treasures from the Hollow Delve, the fabric was thick with magic. It was a subtle thing, but if one looked closely at the garment, they would see that the frayed, threadbare edges of the cloak slowly moved, shifting and crumbling off to wisp away into the air.

   With this cloak, and with Keen’s Edge in her hand, she was stronger than she had ever been.

   River walked to stand opposite the massive knight. Silently, she raised her right hand, black sleeves of her tattered cloak shifting with the movement, and brandished Keen’s Edge in a warrior’s salute.

  The skeletal knight lifted his warhammer with one hand and paid her the same respect.

   “Reinard!” River shouted across the distance between them. “I’m going to kill you this time. Prepare yourself.” There would be no conversation this time, no practicing with weapons.

   The massive skeleton said nothing, only nodded in acknowledgement. That was simply how the taciturn knight was, unspeaking so long as words were unnecessary. He lowered his warhammer and River lowered her dagger.

   And the battle began.

   River sprinted forward, hurling dagger after dagger, recalling Keen’s Edge to her hand every time the knight dodged or deflected it out of the way. This was different from how she normally fought with the dagger.

  Typically, she would keep Reinard at a distance while trying to score a lucky hit against his skull with a dagger throw, but she had since learned that such a strategy would never work. His defense was too good, and given that his skull was her obvious target, he only needed to protect a small section of his body. He could just slowly lumber after her until she was too exhausted to fight.

  No, her dagger throws right now were only a warm-up, a distraction and misdirection for her actual goal. The knight had a habit of catching the knives before they hit his face, simply holding up the palm of his left hand and letting them clink off the plates of his gauntlet. That way he could still attack with the hammer while simultaneously defending his skull.

  That exact movement and brief obstruction of his vision was what River would use against him. She had to be close, though. The closer she was, the lower the cooldown on her cloak’s ability.

  She was in striking distance and Reinard was already swinging his hammer. It would hit her.

  River threw her dagger and the knight lifted his left hand to protect his face.

  The world shifted into darkness around her for only a fleeting moment before River was behind the knight, Keen’s Edge in hand. She hurled it at the back of his head, a perfect throw. Her heart was in her throat as she watched the dagger sail towards his vulnerable skull.

  The knight inclined his head to the side, but was too slow. The dagger struck the side of his skull and blasted out a chunk of temporal bone along the side of his head, bursting out the open eye socket.

  It wasn’t enough. He was still moving.

   Reinard abandoned his hammer mid-swing, letting it clang and crash against the stone floor. The knight, nimble in spite of his heavy armor, whirled on the girl, seizing her by the left wrist. River’s left arm popped and dislocated with a blast of pain as the massive warrior heaved and threw her across the room.

  She twisted in mid-air and activated her cloak. It would be a last-ditch attack, capitalizing on the Knight’s over-committed throw. Teleporting from this distance would mean a cooldown of at least ten seconds, and the battle would be over by then. She would need to make it count.

   River appeared over the knights head, dagger in hand. Her knees cracked against the back of Reinard’s cuirass as she drove the point of her dagger into the top of his skull.

   Everything was still for a moment. River held on, propped up against the skeletal knight’s armor and shoulders, but he didn’t fall. Instead, he shuddered a step forward. Slowly, uncertainly, he raised a gauntleted hand towards his head.

  River twisted the knife and the ivory bones of the old warrior toppled lifelessly to the stone floor.