The door that Rickshaw had sent Lillia to was strange for two reasons. The first was the message on it about taking her first rest. The second was that she didn’t have to open the door. She simply thought about how lovely a rest sounded and she popped into existence on the other side.
Unlike when she’d traveled with Rickshaw, Lillia didn’t get the privilege of closing her eyes. She was suddenly on the edge of the fountain, ankle deep in water and screaming. She didn’t know why she was screaming. Maybe her body knew something she didn’t.
Either way, Lillia stopped.
Rickshaw had said that she needed to head to the fountain, and she certainly wouldn’t have trouble finding it. The entire room she found herself in was the fountain. Meticulously carved statues featuring all manner of creatures—most Lillia recognized, some she didn’t—were scattered around, topping pillars of various height and spewing water out into pools that melded together in a shared shallows.
The light in the room came from the pools themselves, a green-blue light somewhere deep underwater that shone through the entire place. The ripples from the fountain spray danced across the water’s surface and the ceiling in a shared waltz. As Lillia watched, something unscrewed in her chest. She flexed her hand and her fingers crackled. How long had she been wound up?
She knew the answer. As long as she’d been down here.
Lillia’s first splashing steps across the pool echoed through the room. On the far wall there was a door, presumably the exit. To either side of the door and running along the walls were sets of empty inlays, each large enough to contain a mural that would have dwarfed Lillia, but all they held was smooth, polished stone.
On closer inspection, the stone within the inlets seemed newer, or fresher at least, than that around it. It had been replaced at some point, while the rest of the walls had been worn down by humidity over time.
Lillia walked across the space, following the shallow gaps between the pools and looking down into each of them. Most were slightly deeper than the baths she was used to, some looked unfathomably deep. When she was finally near the back of the room, she paused.
This last pool was steaming. Warm water. Lillia bent to take off her heels, but stopped at the clasp as she noticed the statue standing above her.
A gorgeous princess carrying a pristine blade in one hand and a jug in the other. She stood high and proud on a pedestal that was taller than Lillia. A silver mirror had been set into the pedestal, sitting flat with the stone. As Lillia stared, some gross thing stared back. She tried smiling so her reflection would smile back. She didn’t manage it.
Lillia turned away from the statue and mirror to remove her shoe, then headed across to another statue—a sleeping lamb crying the water—to place her shoes there instead of turning around. Once she’d done that, she tried to find the clasp at the back of the battlegown’s neck that would allow her to remove it. The princess clawed for a moment.
She was gross. She was hideous. She hated all of this. All she wanted was a bath. To be undressed so she could get clean. Was that too much to asked?
Lillia removed the dress by unthinking it.
It was what she wanted. It still made her jump.
After a deep breath and an instinctual check over her shoulder Lillia rubbed her hands up and down her arms. The room wasn’t cold, but it was colder naked.
The spellcap was the last thing to go. She yanked it off quickly and cringed as her matted hair fell down onto her shoulders with a moist whap. A thousand ladies of the court would have said a thousand things about Lillia’s impropriety. Even the handmaids who were used to seeing her in underclothes would have been speechless.
Lillia didn’t know the room well enough to close her eyes on the way back to the mirror pool, so she stared at the floor. The second last thing she wanted was to look at herself right now.
The last thing she wanted was a cold bath when there was a warm one available.
The warm pool was deep. Even with the light emanating from within Lillia couldn’t see the bottom. As far as she could tell she could have jumped into it and sunk forever. It meant she would need to offer one hand as a sacrifice to the edge to keep herself properly afloat. Her mother had ensured the maids taught her to swim, but she’d never practiced it after learning how to keep her head above water.
Lillia lowered herself into the pool with her eyes closed. It was scalding, but there was a comfort in that. The princess pictured getting into a bath too early. Pictured someone shaking their head as she jumped into water fresh off the fire. She pictured kicking her legs and laughing at the redness of her skin before needing she jumped out to avoid needing to bathe again from the sweat.
The princess went underwater. The heat pressed against her eyelids and seared the inside of her nose. Her lips tingled. Her lungs complained. She could hear a heartbeat deep below. It was slow. Rhythmic. Too calm to be hers.
It was welcoming.
Lillia surfaced, pulling herself high enough out of the water that she could take a deep breath. Her hair flopped down beside her, a thin film dragging behind him. She splashed it away, sending it off to the shallows as she wiped off her face.
How was she supposed to get the soap if she couldn’t reach into her dress?
Lillia considered the question and reached toward her sternum. The soap was back in her hand before she made contact. The empty damp of the room was replaced with honeysuckle. Lillia’s heart fluttered.
It was time for battle.
Poems called women many things. Graceful. Lovely. Soft. Sweet. None of those titles applied to one dueling their hair on a bad day, and Lillia had several of those in a row.
To the soap’s credit, it worked impossibly well. Even after Lillia dropped it twice and had to duck into the water to find it, it held its shape and size.
Lillia found the waterfall pouring from the princess statue’s jug and soaked under the scalding water. Soap and gunk she didn’t want to think about sloughed off of her and she made waves to push the questionable liquid away.
A head shake. Long still-tangled hair slapped either shoulder. Lillia gripped the soap tight.
Back to war.
The cycle quite literally rinse and repeated. Lillia scrubbed more than she thought she needed to. Lillia rinsed. The water that poured out of her hair was disgusting, so Lillia scrubbed.
That said, she could see the progress. Even if there was seemingly an impossible amount of gunk in her hair and on her skin, each time there was slightly less.
Lillia lost count of the times she washed and rinsed. She also lost count of how many times she’d had to splash out her eyes. It bordered on obsessive. Even once her hair came clean she continued for more cycles, only stopping when the heat made her lightheaded.
The shallow water on the edge of the pool was cool. Lillia lay down and stared at the rippling light on the ceiling. Her chest heaved. She could feel sweat on her cheeks where she’d let herself get too warm. She hadn’t let go of the soap.
Lillia closed her eyes. With her head halfway in the water she could hear the heartbeat of the pool alongside the splash of the fountains on the surface. It smelled like honeysuckle. She smelled like honeysuckle. Lillia’s throat tightened. She squeezed her eyes tighter to hold everything in.
The princess tried to run her hand through her hair and got stuck right away. She had washed. She didn’t have a brush.
She should have asked about a brush. She would have traded a potion for a brush.
Lillia tried picking the strands apart from one another, but it was a losing battle. She counted down from ten to give herself time to accept the birds’ nest she’d have and move on.
Ten didn’t work. Lillia tried fifteen.
Twenty.
Lillia hissed and pushed herself out of the water. She stared at the mirror, at the disaster that she was. Now it was at least it was the kind of disaster she could have gotten herself into back home.
Once she’d cooled, Lillia let herself back into the pool and drifted over to the pillar. Her reflection looked more frail than she remembered. She looked like a pale fragile thing in the glass. Her sharp collarbones weren’t a sign of restraint here, they were a sign of vulnerability.
Even with tangled hair, Lillia wasn’t an adventurer. The only thing that looked the part was the scar along her shoulder.
She hated it.
She always wore dresses that covered it.
Lillia’s ran her fingers across the scar and her nails caught on the uneven skin. In all her years, she’d only gotten one. She’d been thrown off a horse while trying to follow her father on a hunt. Even as Lillia stopped tracing, her fingers and attention lingered on it as she watched herself in the mirror.
How many more was she going to get? Where? Lillia dug a nail into her cheek and tried to imagine it. What would she look like without her soft, clear skin?
She’d seen Warrior Princesses. None of them seemed that interested in being princesses once they had scars.
Lillia pressed her nail harder into her cheek until there was a pinprick of pain. She could start the scars right now. Get them over with? Would that help? Was she going insane?
She lowered her hand and text appeared on the mirror as she properly examined herself.
[Lillia Ashvalin]
[Level 1: Princess - You can level up!]
[Status: Healthy]
Oh, good. The mirror thought she was healthy. It wasn’t much, but it was a higher compliment than “dishevelled”, “a mess”, or “what a disaster”.
Below the base information there were options.
[View Skills - You can Level Up!]
[View Inventory]
[Commit to Rest - This will progress the dungeon by [1] Day]
Lillia stared at the options and then kicked off the wall out into the middle of the pool. She kept herself above water haphazardly but well enough to stare up at the statue above.
Did she have to find a princess statue every time she needed to rest?
Did progressing by one day mean Havoc would be back?
What about the chitterpede? The spellmites? Those were right downstairs.
Back to the mirror. She had to try to understand. If she was going to survive this, she needed to know what she was working with.
Lillia stared at her relfection. The tangled brown hair. The deep bags under her eyes. The skin peeling from her lips.
What could she do? What was so different about her in here?
[Indignance - Princess Class Baseline Skill - Active - Level 1]
[Leverages the Princess’ argumentative expectation into a spell-like attack. Stuns weak willed enemies.]
Lillia huffed. “Argumentative?”
[Lillia used Indignance - Level 1 - There was no target.]
Instead of speaking and proving the text right again, she scoffed. The skill list continued.
[Privileged Position -Princess Class Baseline Skill - Passive]
[As heir to the throne, the princess deserves all the finer things in life. Enemies have a greatly increased chance to drop the highest level loot available on death.]
Lillia read the skill twice. That sounded good. Really good even. Either that or it was her obsession with new clothes speaking. On the third read, it also explained why she hadn’t gotten anything from Havoc. The text called Havoc a friend, and ‘Privileged Position’ worked on enemies.
[Adaptive Regalia—]
Blah blah she knew this one.
[You can learn a new skill once you level up!]
[You can level up! Level up by resting!]
“THANK YOU!” Lillia would have kissed the mirror if she knew the last time it had been cleaned. That was information she would have gotten soon when she committed to leaving either way, but considering it was the first time the text had bothered to explain anything, she decided it was something worth celebrating.
Then.
“Uh, Mr. Mirror. How do I rest?”
Lillia pushed away from the mirror again and the abilities disappeared, returning to the list of options she’d had before. That was all the information she was getting.
[Commit to Rest - This will progress the dungeon by [1] Day]
“Okay, I can rest here, but can I rest anywhere else?”
Text didn’t change.
“Is sleeping resting? I thought it was but it didn’t seem to do anything before.”
Nope.
“Hello?”
The mirror was still a mirror, and as such said nothing. She groaned. Whatever. Fine.
Despite being ‘out of options’, Lillia didn’t rush. She took time to clean under her nails. She took time to baby the blisters on her feet—though she didn’t have bandages for them. She tested, then drank the water coming out of a bird shaped fountain.
The splashing of the room settled into the background for Lillia. Time slipped away. The princess sat with her legs dipped into the warm pool she’d bathed in until her fingers and toes were pruned beyond measure.
Everything else was out there. Gross things. Scary things. She didn’t want to go.
Lillia knew the conclusion she was going to reach. She had to accept the rest, which would probably kick her out similarly to how Rickshaw leaving had closed the market. If she didn’t accept the rest, Havoc would just be lying there in a pool of his blood.
If she didn’t accept the rest, she was never getting out of here.
Her hair was clean, if tangled. Her nails were scrubbed, if sore. She was clean, if a mess.
Lillia wasn’t ready for any of this, but she was as ready as she’d ever be.
The princess closed her eyes and thought of rest. It arrived as a consuming void. Light left. Sound muted. Touch retreated from her fingertips.
[You rest in the market fountains…]
[You rest safely and completely.]
[It is now day [2] of your quest.]
[You have conquered [0] elite enemies.]
[You have vanquished [0] bosses.]
[The way is shut.]
[You have leveled up! Choose a skill!]