Lillia pulled herself up the last step to the third floor of her first, and hopefully final, challenge. She knew it was likely to be one of many, but it was too early in her whole 'dungeon torture' process to be negative about what was coming next. If she didn't know what was next, she was still allowed to hope it was easier than what she'd done.
This room was at least different. While the first two had similar runes on the wall and identical altars, this room was smaller and much plainer. The soft blue light had been replaced by flickering torches every several feet along the walls. Closer to the center of the room, the black flagstone gave way to haphazard planks and then a solid wood floor that looked like it had never been polished.
In the middle, instead of an altar, there was a skeleton wrapped in raggedy robes draped over an old wooden chair, the kind people found in the corner of an inn that didn't match any table. Someone had sat the skeleton on the chair and left it there; its head was leaning so far back it looked as if it had a broken neck.
If Lillia had known how muscles and ligaments kept a skeleton together, its being assembled would have been a red flag, but she understood neither of those things.
What Lillia understood was that, alongside her first cautious step into the room, the skeleton twitched. The princess drew Vianaffir, and torchlight ran along the sharp edge of the blade as she held it at the ready.
The chitin battle gown made it impossible for Lillia to sneak up on anything; she'd learned that several times at this point, but if the skeleton was going to move, she needed to do something about it. Lillia tightened her grip on the sword and held it out to her side as she got low, ready to break into a run.
One deep breath. Lillia was getting used to that process. Almost as if she allowed herself the one moment to become someone other than the her she pictured in her head. It didn't help; she still felt wrong holding a sword and scared in each moment between the swings but, like pulling back her foot to change her sword stance, it felt like something she should do.
With the reminder in her head, Lillia pulled her right foot backward. It was silly, she was much too far away to do anything about the skeleton.
Lillia broke into a sprint. The weight of the sword pulled her to the right as she ran, but she heaved her weight to keep her on her target. The skeleton shifted as she approached.
Ten steps away, the skeleton snapped its head up.
Five steps away, Lillia started her swing.
Three steps away, the skeleton's jaw dropped.
One step away, Lillia's sword clashed with the wood of the chair, catching in the splinters. The force of the jam threw Lillia off balance. The chair slid along with the swing and then tipped over. The princess, the skeleton and the sword crashed down to the ground, tumbling over each other across the wooden floor.
Lillia stopped herself on her back. There was a femur on her chest. Lillia screeched and kicked, which did nothing itself, but the wiggling that came along with it let her bounce the bone off of her. When the femur landed, it hit with a dull thud, like there was nothing under the wood but dirt.
Something scraped along the hardwood behind her. Before Lillia could wheel around, a voice cut in, nasally and whining. "Oh, come on! Who the hell doesn't say hello these days?"
Lillia craned her neck backward and blew strands of hair that had escaped her hat off her nose. The skull was on the floor behind her. Its eyes had narrowed, which was supposed to be impossible.
"Yeah! You. Hey you! What the hell?" the skull asked.
Lillia stopped, looked back at the thing, and sighed. Sure. This was how things were going to go. The knight's bones had been unsettling enough, but now they were talking. Did that mean the knight was giving her the silent treatment? Could it have explained everything to her and—
"Girl."
"Your Majesty."
"You a queen?"
"Princess."
"Your Highness," the skull corrected. "If you're saying you're a princess, that would be the title."
Lillia was still staring at the ceiling. There was nothing worth looking at back there, but she didn't want to stare at the skull, and looking backward was going to hurt her neck. "The kingdom is led by a steward. I am the heir apparent and—"
"Princess. I don't need to know your life story," the skull said, "I need to know why the hell you tackled me first thing."
"You're a moving skeleton," Lillia suggested.
The skull sputtered—a sound that should have been impossible for a thing without lips—and then scoffed. "Just a moving skeleton? That's rich."
Lillia started the process of peeling herself off the floor. Each time was a little slower than the last, and she'd smacked her knees on too many tiles today for her to move at anything other than a snail's pace. "Are you something else?"
"Am I something else?" the skull asked. It seemed oddly confused by the question, considering that was exactly what it was. "Lady, I'm…"
Lillia stood up mid-sentence and faced the skeleton. It wasn't the first time she'd rendered someone speechless with her looks. She just wished that it was for a better reason and that the speaker was better to look at themselves.
"What the hell happened to you?"
"This whole place happened to me!" Lillia said. "This place is a nightmare! Do you know what those spellmite things are? They're mean!"
"They're beginner—"
"They laughed at me the whole time! And there was this gross bug and…" Lillia caught her breath as she sped up. The words were tumbling out too fast for her to maintain, and she just broke down into a cough. "Now I'm talking to a skeleton."
"Not just a skeleton," the skull hopped forward. Lillia flinched, but stopped herself short of jumping. "You know anything about bones?"
Lillia nodded.
"Know what order they go in?"
"What?"
"You did this," the skull said. As he spoke, the femur Lillia had kicked off herself rattled against the floor. "Least you can do is help me reassemble."
"Oh."
"So, do you know anything about bones?"
"I think—"
"You've said enough," they sighed. "I'll take care of it."
The bones scattered around the room by Lillia's 'attack' began to tremble and then shimmy along the ground toward the skull. Lillia stepped out of the way of an…oddly shaped bone after it tapped against her shoe twice.
"Everyone's got a skeleton inside them," the skull muttered as the pieces assembled into a pile. "Does that get us any respect? No, all that gets us is covered in gross fluids. Then they look at us like we've got two heads when we ask them to help us find a wrist bone…"
Lillia wasn't fully listening, but she crossed her arms at the implication that she was filled with gross fluids. She'd encountered too many of those in the past days, and all of them were on the outside.
By the time the skull, who had rudely neglected to introduce himself or ask Lillia's name, had finished getting the top half of their person together, Lillia had grabbed the chair and Vianaffir so that she could sit down and wait for the skull to be done with its work. The chair was shockingly uncomfortable, even when Lillia sat cross-legged in it, as she hadn't been allowed to in court. Multiple parts of the chair back jutted into Lillia's spine at strange angles no matter how she sat.
The skull—now half a skeleton—walked across the floor on its arms, hobbling over to some of the larger leg bones to push them together. Lillia joined it for a moment once she understood the assignment.
Was she supposed to do that? Wasn't Lillia supposed to fight the things on each floor of the challenge? Havoc had been able to talk, and she'd gotten him to work with her. The spellmites couldn't be convinced, but…they only laughed. Laughing was like talking. Wasn't it? Maybe it was even better. Lillia knew noblemen who could talk forever but never laugh; none of them impressed her.
Now that the skull had arms, it was pulling pieces onto itself instead of letting them shimmy together. It was a faster process, but it was certainly closer to deliberate than quick. As the thing was adjusting its pelvis into the right place, it spoke.
"So. Why'd you do that?"
"What?" Lillia asked as she sat back down and folded her legs over one another.
"You ran in here with a sword and tried to hit me," it said before stopping assembly to use its hands to talk. "Which, also. You missed."
"Am I not supposed to fight you?" Lillia asked. She looked around as she asked. There were no stairs in the room. Even if she had just walked around the skull there was nowhere for her to go.
"What? Why would you fight me?"
"I've had to fight everything else in the challenge."
"Lady. Princess. Your Highness," the skeleton went over all the options as it pulled itself across the floor and grabbed its cloak. "But why me?"
Lillia ran her tongue along her teeth and looked away from the skull for a moment. She opened her mouth to speak several times before finally committing to one of them. "Well, you're—"
"A skeleton?"
"In the room," Lillia properly finished. Once she'd processed the interjection, she shrugged. "But also that."
"Yeah, well, ain't anyone teach you manners in that fancy castle of yours?" the skull finally had both legs and was a proper skeleton again. It righted itself on jittery, jumbling legs before wrapping the cloak back over its shoulders. As the cloak fell, it covered more than it should have, extending and draping impossible shadows over any gaps in the fabric.
A golden glint hovered in the center of the skull's left socket now that it was complete.
"None of the manners involve skeletons," Lillia pointed out.
The skeleton walked over to Lillia and loomed over her. Even without the heels, she would have been taller than it while standing, but she wasn't. "What about the rich?"
"The rich?" Lillia asked.
"Gold. Silver. All of it," the skeleton's eye sockets narrowed.
"…I don't believe there is a good answer to that question based on the…look you're giving me."
The skeleton continued to glare for several breaths, but its brow softened after that until it started to match Lillia's expression of genuine confusion. "You're not an adventurer. Are you?"
"What?" Lillia asked. "I'm wearing all this stupid stuff. I have a sword. I'm gross! What makes you say I'm not one?"
The skeleton pulled back from Lillia, meaning it was no longer looming and simply addressing. "Well, for one. You don't seem to know who I am."
Lillia shook her head.
"Rickshaw." The skeleton stuck out a hand from its cloak to shake Lillia's, but she didn't take it right away. "Merchant."
"Your name is Rickshaw?" Lillia half asked before remembering her manners, despite the location. "Princess Lillia Ashvalin." She shook his hand. It was shockingly warm.
"Pleasure, Lillia." Rickshaw pulled his hand back into his cloak. "First time in a dungeon?"
"Yeah."
"Well, have no fear, young lady. That's what I am here for."
Lillia shot up. "To get me out?"
"Well…No. Not that. I am here for all your economic needs." Rickshaw took two steps back from Lillia. He was wearing boots despite clearly never having put any on. "But you should be glad you ran into me. Tell me what you need and I can find it."
"A way out?"
"Materially, darling."
"A bath."
"Objects, darling."
"A…A key to the door out."
Rickshaw didn't have the words in time to keep up with the barrage. The skeleton sighed. "Anything you need as a turn of phrase, my darling," they said. As Lillia's shoulders slumped, they continued. "But don't get too down. That was my fault. I started too broad, and you lacked the needed context to…" Rickshaw snapped their fingers a couple of times, doubly impressive without skin. "To wrangle the possibilities I'd laid out before you."
Lillia stared at the floor for a moment. It had been a mistake, but for a brief second the discussion of getting out had sparked an ember of hope somewhere deep in her stomach. At least it had been snuffed out quickly. The princess looked up as Rickshaw laid a bony hand on her shoulder and guided her back down into the chair. He crouched to match her.
"I'll keep a long story short to avoid any confusion," he began. "I am a merchant who deals in the goods of the dungeon. I am here. I am on your side. I want you to succeed. However that might be. Okay?"
"Can you help me fight?" Lillia asked.
"I am here to help you succeed economically."
"So, no?"
"No. But I will always be happy to talk about it whenever you find me."
Lillia sighed. Rickshaw crouched even lower to stay in her drooping vision. Eventually he pushed up the brim of her cap to stay in view.
"Lillia. You're a princess. I haven't met one before, but I have met noble women, and all the ones I've met have gotten cheered up by a little shopping."
The princess met his gaze and carefully tucked the parts of her bangs that had escaped their hat-prison back within their cage. The skeleton with the weird name was right. She had set her sights too high, but buying something usually was a good way to cheer her up.
Not that she had any money on her, but that was what a name and title were for.
"Yeah. Okay."
Rickshaw snapped back up. "Great choice, my darling. You are going to love this!"
The text appeared in front of Rickshaw even as Lillia was making an effort to look past it. Behind the white text, the skeleton's single golden eye shone brighter.
[You're being invited to Rickshaw's Traveling Market: Accept?]
Lillia closed her eyes. Anywhere but here sounded good.