Lillia had stolen another stick from the campfire for its ash, but the fire itself hadn't seemed to get any smaller. In fact, as far as Lillia could tell, the logs hadn't burned down at all, despite her watching the fire eat them over the past hours.
However many hours it was. Lillia sighed and noted that she had to come up with a way to track time.
The stick she'd stolen was her tool to write on the flagstone floor of the cathedral. Her handwriting was immaculate and well-known in the court, but that was when she was allowed a quill and ink. Lillia had done her best, but an arm's length charred stick wasn't the best writing implement.
Not that the bar was high for her purposes. Lillia's new map was simple. She'd only been in two other rooms. One of which was marked by a gross bug with angry eyes. Then there were the angry eyes with nobody in the room she'd fallen into. Finally, there was a stick figure wearing a crown to mark where she was standing by the campfire.
She didn't truly need a map yet, but based on the name, Lillia guessed the dungeon had five rooms, maybe even five floors! At some point, she'd forget where something was and having a map to reference would be important. Or at least she figured it was better to have one and not need it than the other way around.
Before putting her stick back on the edge of the campfire, Lillia looked over to the door on the other side of the cathedral. She'd jammed it closed with a chair from the hunting lodge downstairs. That would be enough, right? Whatever was in there probably couldn't open a door handle.
"Okay, I have one more meal." As Lillia spoke, the text popped up with her inventory. "Yes. Thank you," she added before continuing. "We have a sword, and this new dress which…it's nice, and we're not going to talk about the rest of it."
Lillia took one sharp breath to rally herself, as a treat, before heading down the stairs back to the bones of Sir Nobody and the door she hadn't been into yet.
The stairway was notably colder than the cathedral. The chill seemed to emanate from the darkness further down the stairs, seeping out of nothing and into the edge of the light. Lillia stared for a moment, but turned back to the door before she could imagine anything in the shadow.
Vianaffir felt lighter in her hand than when she'd entered the first room. Maybe she was getting used to it? Maybe she'd leveled up? Lillia remembered the concept from her brief lessons on adventuring but, considering how chatty the text was, she figured it would be something you knew about. That it would feel weird when you leveled up. Like trying on a dress that you used to wear and realizing the buttons didn't close right around your chest anymore.
Whatever the cause, Lillia was as ready as she was ever going to be. It was a low bar, but she'd scrambled over it.
The door was heavier than it looked, catching on its hinges when Lillia tried to push it open with one hand. In the end, it took a grunt and a shoulder to get it wide enough for Lillia to stick her head through.
There was warm light in the room beyond, but unlike the hunting lodge, there was an actual source. Candles lined the tops of precariously stacked bookshelves throughout a towering, teetering archive. Scrolls protruded from the shelves where they were piled haphazardly. That was probably the source of the old paper smell.
Lillia led with Vianaffir point first, the tip shaking as she struggled with the awkward grip. She'd seen so many knights wield swords effortlessly in tournaments; why did the damn thing always feel so heavy?
Once she had shoved enough of the sword in that she was sure a bug would not immediately pounce at her, Lillia pushed the door further open with her foot. She nudged the creaking door inch by inch, making more sound than if she'd shoved the damn thing. Once there was enough room for her to enter, she paused and listened again.
There wasn't the crackle of a proper fire anywhere in the room. Lillia strained and could hear the flicker of the candles against absolute silence, just under the sound of her breathing.
Lillia broke the silence as she walked into the room, the scales on her chitin dress ringing throughout the archive like a set of wind chimes. The sound felt wrong in the silence. The door had literally been there waiting for Lillia, but suddenly she felt like an intruder.
There were at least two dozen shelves in the room, each piled high with scrolls that Lillia didn't have time to read. The princess stalked the aisles, leading with Vianaffir's point and pivoting whenever she thought she'd heard a sound. All the sounds were hers.
Candles shoved thoughtlessly on top of the shelves, still burning. Haphazard scrolls bunched so tight they creased one another. Stark walls made of wood so dark it was almost black.
Then Lillia found it: a trapdoor in the back corner of the room. It was flush with the floor, save for a cast-iron handle in the middle with which to open it. Several scrolls were scattered around it, as if someone had dropped them when climbing in themselves.
That was the next step. Wasn't it?
Lillia felt goosebumps under the skin of the chitin armor. It felt strange. She took another lap of the archive, checking each shelf in the vain hope that she'd missed something and the trapdoor wasn't the goal.
There had been an archive back at the castle, and a library. Lillia had been taught to read and write and, according to her tutors, she'd picked it up well, but she'd never been one to sit down and read any of the old texts. She learned the history of her kingdom, sure, but she didn't seek them out herself, despite her mother's insistence when she'd been young.
No, Lillia had always been a bigger fan of finding letters she wasn't supposed to read. There was a set end to all the histories in the archives. There was something fun about putting together the latest courtly scandal by breaking and resealing letters that weren't for Lillia. Those letters were worth taking the time to read.
In these surroundings, flanked by shelves stuffed with scrolls that looked older than anything in the archive, Lillia longed for anything else. A letter from Lady Brathwait would have been better than that. That woman had shoddy penmanship and no scandals worth reading about, but at least that was modern.
Lillia looked over her shoulder back to the trapdoor in the corner and took a deep breath.
The princess tucked Vianaffir into her belt and took one of the many scrolls off the shelf at random.
[You are not high enough level to read this document. Requires Level 10]
Lillia stared, both at the blurred text on the scroll and the glowing text in front of her.
"I beg your pardon?" She turned the scroll over, trying to see if there was anything she could glean from it, but no. The entire scroll appeared as if someone had spilled ink and then half-heartedly tried to clean it up. "I have to level up to read?"
[Lillia used 'Indignance - Level 1' - There was no target!]
Lillia threw the scroll back at the shelf it had been on, but it simply crashed into the rest of the piled paper and slowly fluttered down to the floor. Lillia kicked it for good measure and then grabbed another one.
[You are not high enough level to read this document. Requires Level 23]
"Twenty three? I'm not even level two!"
[Lillia used 'Indignance - Level 1' - There was no target!]
The princess rolled her eyes. "Yeah, yeah." She grabbed another.
[Requires level 6]
[Requires level 18]
[Requires level 4]
Lillia only opened each scroll long enough for the white text to change before letting them fall to the floor and grabbing another.
[Requires level 13]
[Requires level 10]
[Requires…]
[Requires…]
Lillia was in a sea of scrolls by the time she gave up. Dozens of broken seals surrounded her as she tried each in order. She'd sneezed almost as many times as she unleashed generations of trapped dust with each opened scroll. None of it had been worth anything. The lowest level she'd found on one scroll was level four and—
Shoot. Where was that one? Lillia stared at the pile she'd left herself and groaned.
[Requires level 15]
[Requires level 8]
[Requires…]
[Requires…]
Lillia found her prize after way too many attempts. All the scrolls looked the same, which meant it should have just been luck, but Lillia couldn't shake the feeling that she was somehow bad at this. She shoved the level four scroll into her dress.
Four was the lowest she'd found, but how long would that take? She'd killed the chitterpede already and had the dress to prove it, but as far as she could tell, she hadn't leveled up. What did levels even mean? Was it just skills? Did that mean she was level 2?
Did the scrolls explain that? Maybe if she just went through all of them—Lillia shook her head. That wasn't happening. Tactically sound or not, she needed to get a move on.
Another look over her shoulder back at the trapdoor. Nothing had changed about it. Still creepy.
She could head back to the campfire to check the map again. It was that or a couple thousand scrolls she couldn't even read. Lillia drew Vianaffir, which was a choice that almost surprised her.
Lillia 'sneaked' up to the trapdoor, her armor rattled the entire way, but the trapdoor didn't have ears to hear it or eyes to see her. As far as it knew, she wasn't even there. Tremendous success.
The handle was the only thing Lillia could grab, but just pulling it open felt intimidating. Instead, Lillia pushed Vianaffir's tip along the floorboards to catch the edge of the ring. She could picture Sir Nobody shaking his skeletal head at her and explaining that named weapons should be treasured. Of course, he wasn't alive to say that, and princesses didn't have to listen to knights if they didn't want to.
It took a moment to get the sword through the ring, and even then, when Lillia tried to lift the entire trapdoor off the tip of the sword, she couldn't manage it. If the ring had been on the edge of the door, she would have had the right leverage; instead, she threw Vianaffir down in a huff before stomping on top of the trapdoor and throwing it open. The wood slammed against the wall behind it with a resounding clatter.
Lillia froze. Lillia listened. Lillia chided herself for being 'annoyed-noisy.'
There was a thin wooden stairway that needed to be replaced under the trapdoor. Thin boards that looked barely attached to a set of rails on either side. Five steps down, shadow swept in and swallowed the stairs.
She'd dove into the darkness and found the chitterpede. She'd ventured into the pitch and had to run away. Lillia didn't know much about the dungeon, but she would never make the same mistake thrice.
Patently untrue, she'd made many mistakes dozens of times over, but that wasn't an argument she was interested in at the moment.
Lillia put the sword down by the trapdoor, stomped over to the shelf she'd mostly emptied before, and climbed it. Foot over foot and hand over hand until she was face to face with a hundred candles and way too much wax pooled at the top of the bookshelf.
The princess grabbed one candle, but it held fast. She pulled. Nothing. She pulled harder. Still nothing. Lillia yanked.
Lillia fell backward and crashed down into the pile of scrolls on the floor. Paper didn't break her fall, but it still didn't hurt.
[Chitterpede Chitin Battle Gown - 2 charges used! Charges recharge each morning.]
Lillia blinked at the text while flat on her back. Two charges? What the—
The text answered with the description of the battle gown.
[Provides a minor (+2) defensive bonus against slashing and piercing damage. The first [0/2] instances of damage the Princess would receive are instead absorbed by the armor.]
"Thanks. I guess," Lillia sighed. Using those was better than being hurt falling off the bookshelf, but she still hadn't solved her darkness problem, and she had no idea when morning was.
Lillia peeled herself out of the pile of scrolls. Several had torn on landing; the rest were just cosmetically ruined. At least there wasn't an archivist to yell at her.
Back to the trapdoor. Still dark. Still creepy. Back to the bookshelf, she couldn't pull off the top.
Lillia grabbed Vianaffir and climbed back up. Once she was at the top, she grabbed a candle for support and drew the sword. Lillia raised it high and swung down.
She couldn't equip the sword, but she could decapitate a legion of candles. She dropped Vianaffir to catch a burning candle-top before it fell down into the scrolls.
Lillia jumped back down with her prize and dropped it down the trapdoor to show her the way. The candle bounced off a stair just out of view and clattered off into the darkness.
One candle was not enough. Lillia sighed. This was going to be a process.
Lillia stopped counting after twenty candles. There wasn't a glow at the bottom of the stairs until what she figured was fifty, but was actually thirty-five. Lillia grabbed the thirty-sixth as a 'torch' and took a deep breath at the top of the trapdoor.
The air was colder as soon as she was beneath the floor. It was damp in a way that slithered into her dress and clung to her skin. She felt her hair stick to her skin, gross considering how matted it was.
Lillia held the candle out in front of her as she approached the flagstone floor. It was like the tiles back in the cathedral. Not that either of them was anything to write home about. The roof was certainly lower here, though. Lillia had ducked into secret passages in the castle when she was younger. Those had been fun when she was a child, but as soon as she was a young lady's height they weren't a fun place to hide.
It wasn't very fitting of royal stature to stoop, but it was the best Lillia could do down here. She half-crouched toward her haphazard pile of candles. The chitterpede armor cast further light as the flames danced against it, but there was still shadow circling her.
Lillia swallowed. Her throat was dry. She meant to keep walking forward. She really did. Instead, she froze and stared out into the nothing.
The cool air was dead still. It stuck to the skin, hanging so thick it felt like it was going to drip down Lillia's cheeks. The princess kept staring into the darkness. Her eyes watered. She had to blink, but she didn't want to.
In the silence, something moved. Lillia flinched. The sound of the chitin smothered whatever noise there had been.
Quiet again. Curling candle-smoke hovered around Lillia's feet. The flame's reflections danced on her battle gown and along Vianaffir's blade.
Something shifted again. Lillia spun blade first, swinging wildly through the nothing behind her. A moment after the blade's passing, a flash of metal erupted from the darkness into Lillia's stomach.
Blunt impact. Lillia gasped and stumbled back as the air shot out of her lungs. She lost grip on Vianaffir. She tried to catch it on the way down, but failed. There was another flash of metal.
Lillia stood up to run. Hit her head on the ceiling and crumpled to the floor. The world was swimming with candlelight as a copper-coloured clawed foot emerged from the shadow into Lillia's little circle of light. The princess tried to crawl away. She couldn't figure out which direction the floor was.
The creature got closer. Bent down. Lillia whimpered and covered her face. "I'm sorry," she squeaked.
She wanted to hold her breath, but Lillia couldn't do anything other than gasp for air.
"What?" the thing asked. Its voice was graveled, deep and twisted, like human words shouldn't have been coming from it.
Lillia couldn't get the air to repeat herself. A squeak would have to do.
The thing crouched in front of her. Lillia saw large, bulbous, off-yellow eyes and sharp ears. She didn't have the energy to recoil, which was probably for the best.
"You're not an adventurer. Are you?"
Lillia shook her head. It didn't help the spinning. It took too long to come, but she found the words. "I'm—a princess."
The thing, whatever it was, pulled back from her. "Well. I don't know what to do about this."