Chapter 13 - Where the Hearth Can't Reach

[Heiress’ Blessing - Supportive Selected! Don’t forget to anoint your champion!]
[Experience used. You are now level 2]
[It is now day [2] of your quest]
[Wake up?]
Lillia considered the question. There really wasn’t anything else she could do. Her thoughts were there to feel the text, but she herself wasn’t anywhere.
There was nothing. No Lillia. No dungeon. Nothing but the interface and her thoughts.
An existential crisis for another time.
Lillia accepted the offer to wake up.
Lillia either slept standing up or she hadn’t slept at all. She was back in the room where she’d met Rickshaw, upright on the hardwood where the chair would have been.
Out of habit, the princess tried to blink away the tiredness but there was nothing to blink away. It was as if her body had just been waiting for her to return.
Not only that, but Lillia felt good, great even, better than she had been coming out of the bath. The princess dragged her teeth across her bottom lip. It was smooth, plump, unmarred by her chewing.
Lillia hopped back and forth between her feet. She was bouncy. If all of this cost was a measly existential crisis that was a pretty good deal. Lillia felt like she hadn’t been sleeping on a dungeon floor. Lillia felt like she hadn’t been hit by a literal actual lightning bolt. Lillia felt like she’d had a proper bath instead of the wrestling match from before the rest…
 
The princess snapped her hand under her hat to check her hair. It was neatly folded over on itself. When she pulled the hat up for a moment, it tumbled out in nearly untangled cascades. Lillia hopped several times in place before replacing the hat, letting her hair remain down for the time being.
It took several deep breaths for Lillia to stop beaming. Several more to calm down enough to examine her surroundings. On the far side of the room, across from the now missing stairs she’d used to climb up, there was a full stairway carved out of the wall.
The other stairs in the ‘challenge’ had all followed along the wall, running along the lines that the flagstone had set on the floor before it. These stairs smashed through where the structure had been, as if they were thrown in at the last minute as opposed to planned and incorporated.
As Lillia looked at the stairs, runes lit on stone banisters on either side, followed by a torch above the archway that had been punched into the wall. The flame was blood red. Lillia pulled Vianaffir out. The room cooled.
Whatever joy and confidence she’d gained in the past minutes retreated into the background as she stared at the door. That was obviously the end of the challenge and…and—
Lillia shook her head to try and throw the nerves onto the floor around her. She’d managed her way through all the spellmites coming up here, and she was level 3 now! That was three times as powerful as she’d been this morning.
She didn’t know what that really meant, but it had to mean something good. Didn’t it?
She was ready for this. Lillia was ready for this. She…
Lillia’s hand was shaking. She squeezed tighter on Viannafir’s hilt to quell the tremble and allowed herself a chance to pace and prepare. Back. Forth. Back.
Whatever was up those stairs was next. There was quite literally nowhere to run, and even if she could have, that wouldn’t have gotten her any closer to getting out of here. Without climbing the stairs, Lillia couldn’t even leave this room, let alone the dungeon.
Maybe Rickshaw would come back and welcome her to—
No. Lillia marched before she could convince herself to stand still and wait.
If the dungeon said there was one way forward, Lillia had to take it. At least until she figured out how to knock down some walls. At that point she’d remodel the whole damn place before walking into a place so obviously ominous.
The second Lillia’s foot touched the first step a shock shot up her spine that corrected her posture. The princess jumped back and then tested the step again. No repetition. She tapped Vianaffir on the second step. There were no sparks, nothing to indicate that what she’d felt was anything more than anticipation building to a point of overflow.
Okay. If it was nothing that meant she could do this. Lillia took several steadying breaths, tucked her hair back behind her ears and pressed on. She wasn’t about to let a little jolt stop her.
Halfway up the staircase the lights on either side of Lillia dimmed, as if her vision was narrowing in on the shadow at the summit. With each step, the darkness clawed further into the edge of her vision, vignetting even as Lillia slowed her climb. There was no light above for her to hold onto, but somehow she still understood where the center of her vision was.
The text intervened before she would have been in true darkness. Which was good, because that would have been the last straw.
[The shadows darken. The hearth cannot reach here. Death stays with those who die.]
It was an ominous message, but meaningless. Lillia rolled her eyes at the attempt to scare her. Of course death was deadly. She didn’t want to die, but she didn’t need someone to remind her that people died if they were killed.
Still.
[Death stays with those who die.]
Lillia had been facing horrible things so far. She’d been hit by lighting and attacked by a bug for the altar’s sake. That said, so far things those things had stopped at horrible. There was something about this message that felt…final.
Sure, she’d been helpless in front of Havoc after getting walloped, but there was an abstraction between getting hit and what could come after it. When it happened she’d been worried about the pain. She’d been worried about getting hit again. She hadn’t really been worried about what happened when too many of those stacked up.
Lillia bit her lip even though there was no peeling skin to pull on. This dungeon was awful, that didn’t mean she was ready for the Wheat and Silk.
Of course even a princess was barred from the Wheat and Silk if she died doing nothing when something needed to be done. It was never supposed to be her fate, but if Lillia was going to go down, Lillia was going to go down fighting.
The princess almost tumbled as she stepped up toward a stair that wasn’t there. Her heel clattered against the flagstone floor and the sound echoed out into the shadows.
The text—the warning, faded away into nothing.
Lillia’s eyes hadn’t been closed, but the world flashed into light as if she’d opened them.
There was a third altar in the center of the massive room she’d found herself in, but that was the only similarity to the other arenas she’d fought in below. The floor here was littered with debris. Statues that had been sculpted from the same glassy black stone as the floor lay shattered across the ground by the dozens. Multiple large piles of the same discarded art had been shoved against the walls. Gleaming glittering piles of trash.
Where there weren’t piles, the walls glowed red hot. Something simmered beneath the surface of the black. Lillia checked behind her to ensure there was only a stairway.
“Alright, Lillia. Three of them this time. Probably. You just need to avoid tripping and you’re good.”
Lillia nudged one of the statue pieces on the ground with her foot. It didn’t come loose. Lillia bent down and saw that something had melted the glass together. As she checked the seam, she found what would have been the ‘face’ of the stature.
It was screaming.
A bead of sweat dripped down Lillia’s back. It was warm in here, despite the chill in Lillia’s spine.
Lillia stood up, stepping carefully around the discarded glass limbs. As she weaved her way toward the center of the room and altar awaited her. Within it sat a hand print. Her hand print. Perfected and adjusted for the fact that the overnight rest had fixed the places where she’d chewed her nails. Lillia lowered her hand into the slot. Hesitated.
The text had even reminded her.
Lillia pulled away from the altar and took a deep breath. There was nobody else around so, even though it felt dumb.
“I anoint myself as my champion!”
Her words echoed off the hundred broken statues in the room. It sounded strange after so many open spaces. Once silence had taken root, she figured that meant it hadn’t worked.
She’d anointed champions in tournaments before. It was usually a joke. She would pick a knight who looked nervous to add to the pressure they felt. You weren’t allowed to pick a knight who was likely to win, it was considered gauche.
Lillia was picking herself. That would have been a comedic goldmine in the court.
She had to do it right. How had she done it before?
“I, Lillia of House Ashvalin, anoint…you, Princess Lillia, as my champion.”
Something tingled in Lillia’s fingers, starting from Vianaffir’s hilt and climbing through her nails. Lillia continued.
“May you bring my grace to your blade. Bring your honor to…my house.”
This was ridiculous.
“Rise. Princess Lillia. Fight with my blessing.”
[Lillia used Heiress’ Blessing on [Lillia]. Lillia fights with renewed vigor!]
A deep breath. Lillia waited for something to happen outside of the tingling in her fingers. Even that faded away after a while and she was stuck staring at the altar not knowing what the hell she’d just done.
Why did she have to get a new skill as soon as she left the mirror? Now she couldn’t check it! This was dumb. This was unfair. She withheld vocalizing her frustration to avoid triggering a message about her indignance having no target. It did have a target, it was just the whole situation.
Whatever. Like everything else she’d done so far, she would need to figure out the best way to use her new skill, alongside what it did, in the moment. She just had three spellmites to kill about it.
Lillia placed her hand in the altar. For a moment it was burning hot on her palm. If it hadn’t been for the chitin glove, Lillia would have burned herself.
The altar didn’t crack, it melted away into the floor, dripping downward through the glass and sizzling as it did. As if vanished into the floor Lillia backed away. Nothing in the room had changed.
This trick again. Not this time.
Lillia kept Vianaffir at the ready, turning heel once every few seconds to watch her own back. Then, once it had been uncomfortably long…a drum sounded somewhere under the floor. Lillia looked down at her feet.
The drum pounded again.
She couldn’t see anything through the glassy black floor. There wasn’t anything under it, was there?
The drum found rhythm. A high whine emanated from the walls. Like icy wind through bare branches.
Lillia took a cautious step backward, her foot hooked on one of the many limbs jutting from the ground. The princess fell on her tailbone.
Drums. Drums. Drums.
The ceiling wasn’t glassy black. It was just black. Still water. Something moved under the surface.
Lillia scrambled back to her feet. The ceiling bulged. Lillia craned back her neck. The weight of the sword pulled at her shoulder. Her legs wanted to move but she couldn’t look away. Black liquid ichor poured down the walls in thick rivulets.
“I, Lillia of House Ashvalin, anoint me, Princess Lillia, as my champion.”
Lillia swallowed nothing. The ceiling stopped shifting for a moment. The air had grown thick, like a blanket lying over Lillia and threatening to smother her.
“May you bring my grace to your blade.”
The center in the ceiling, above Lillia opened wide, a maw into the void. One. Two. Three black limbs twisted around each other to emerge. Each one wrong in a way Lillia couldn’t name. Too many joints all bending in directions that made her stomach lurch. Lillia choked down the scream.
“Bring your honor to my house.”
Three more twisted limbs heaved a starved and broken form from the void. Ichor clung tight to its skin and to the long obsidian staff in two of its twisting, shifting hands. It didn’t move like anything should move. Lillia was going to die.
“Rise.”
The drums stopped. The body of the wretched thing bulged, a head pulled free of the core, surrounded by the six limbs. The head was smooth. Featureless. Dripping ichor stuck to each inch of it, but for one horrible second Lillia knew it was looking at her anyway. She needed to run.
“P—princess Lillia.”
The head spun on too long a neck. Seven sick green eyes tore themselves open across the creature’s skin. They all turned to Lillia. Her legs were weak. Her knees threatened to give out. Vianaffir’s point scraped the glass floor. She had to hide.
“Fight with my blessing.”
The fear that had wrapped its icy hand around Lillia’s spine recoiled, burned away by the blessing. Lillia locked her legs and raised the blade with both hands. It felt heavier, but she could carry it.
[Lillia fights with renewed vigor!]
The creature pulled two limbs off the ceiling, the empty hands hung with twisted twitching fingers. Ten to each. Eyes opened in each of the palms. The thing’s head shivered, peeled itself back. It reared like it was going to roar. It couldn’t without a mouth, but it thrashed against that truth.
The text interjected itself into the brief moment.
[SLAY THE SPELLMITE ARCHITECT]
[YOUR PARTY]
[LILLIA]
[NOBODY]
[NOBODY]
[NOBODY]
[NOBODY]