Chapter 15 - Out of the Hole

It took an embarrassingly long time for Lillia to escape the Architect’s lair. The roof opened up in the aftermath of the battle, and a ladder had descended for her, but that hadn’t solved all her problems.
Lillia had an unfortunate case of noodle arms, even in the best of times. Those had not been the best of times. After the adrenaline wore off, Lillia was simply sore, tired, and lacking the upper body strength to climb a ladder.
When she finally climbed out, she emerged onto the second-floor landing through a trapdoor that hadn’t been there before. The door to the Spellmite Challenge was still there, and still shut.
Lillia lay on the floor as black ichor seeped through her hat. If only she’d thought to sell Rickshaw just one hat, she’d have a backup for when she inevitably got dirty.
At least the new dress was clean.
The dress itself was made of a shimmering red fabric sewn together with an impossible thread that glowed under the flickering torchlight of the staircase. Layered, complicated fabric folded together around her waist to create an intricate skirt pattern, the beauty of which would have been utterly lost on anyone in this dungeon outside of Lillia.
For her part, Lillia had not had time to check the rules of her new armour, nor any of the items she’d gathered from the architect itself. All of that could wait. Right now, what Lillia desperately needed more than anything else was a nap, a rest…
Havoc.
Lillia didn’t shoot up. She didn’t have the energy to, but the thought was there. Instead, she creaked up to her feet, checking her joints several times along the way. Everything was sore and she kept having to remind herself that she hadn’t actually gotten hurt. Princesses just weren’t made to do this much work.
Once Lillia was standing, she managed her way back up the stairs toward the first landing, the home of the chitterpede and Havoc’s room. It was tomorrow. The dungeon had told her so. She could ask Havoc about the dungeon!
Did Havoc know what was downstairs? Would he be proud of her for what she’d done with the Spellmite Architect? Did Lillia care that Havoc would be proud of her? It took her a moment, but she settled on yes.
Lillia rested her hand on the door handle to Havoc’s room, and after one breath to remind herself to keep calm and stay graceful as a princess should, she pulled open the door. Congealed blood smeared across the landing, painting a fresh coat over the dried splatter that Lillia had spread before.
Havoc was starting to smell. Lillia gasped at the sight of his corpse and then immediately regretted inhaling. The princess gagged. She doubled over, but pulled back once that put her closer to a corpse than she wanted to ever be.
Covering her mouth, Lillia opened the door as wide as she could to look around it.
[Room Cleared! Opens in [1] Day]
Oh.
He had said a day or so.
This must mean or so.
Lillia closed the door gently, as if slamming it would hurt a corpse’s feelings.
That was okay. She would just sleep, and then everything would be fine. Havoc would be back, she could show him all the cool things she’d done, and he could explain what was going on.
Except Lillia didn’t need to sleep; Lillia needed to rest. So far, the only place she’d been able to do that was in the middle of the Spellmite Challenge after Rickshaw’s market. Was she going to have to find Rickshaw again? Did you only get to rest when you found a merchant? How common were merchants? Was it usual to find them on the second floor, or had Lillia just been lucky?
She was putting a lot of faith in a hobgoblin, wasn’t she?
Lillia put her hands on her hips and tapped her foot, careful to avoid Havoc’s blood on the landing. If waiting for Havoc was her current goal, she’d need to find the merchant again, and the only place she’d found him was through the doors on the second floor. That meant going back down.
Going down seemed to be the constant theme in the dungeon’s progression. Like all roads led to the capital, all progress was downstairs.
Okay, but if she was heading back to the market, she needed to bring some new items to sell. She doubted Rickshaw wanted the burned sticks from the fire, but there was one thing he might appraise kindly.
Sir Nobody’s armor wasn’t gleaming like Vianaffir had been, but it still looked sturdy. She’d just need to separate it from the skeleton.
He said he left it to her. Was it grave robbing if it was a gift?
No. Still gross though.
There was another option, the Hunting Lodge reset after a single day—unlike Havoc apparently—if she could kill the chitterpede and get more chitin, she could sell that to Rickshaw.
What would that buy her? More gross bug? Oh! Maybe a new scent of soap. She would kill for some honeysuckle.
Lillia was starting to understand why adventurers did this whole thing.
Given the choice between pulling the armour off the skeleton or killing a bug, Lillia turned to the Hunting Lodge.
“I’m not saying I won’t do it, Mr. Knight. I’m just taking a minute to think about it.”
Despite having conquered this room already, Lillia’s hand trembled as she reached for the doorknob. Yes, she’d killed the chitterpede, but that didn’t make it any less icky and sticky and potentially slimy. Of course, the Spellmite Architect had been some of those things, and—
Lillia wouldn’t say she’d thrived in that environment, but she’d managed. In the end, she was alive and it was—at least temporarily—dead.
The text had told her it was a victory. It was in writing. That meant it was true.
Every scratch, every splatter, every sign that Lillia had been here at all was gone. Rugs were once again spread haphazardly across the floor, the rusty knives were back on their tables, and the same reek of stale alcohol and oak assaulted her nose.
The door to the back room was shut.
Upon closer inspection, all of the knives were back except one. The useless [Rusty Knife] Lillia had thrown at the Architect was still in her inventory, and nothing had been left out to replace it.
As she approached the storeroom door, Lillia drew Vianaffir. Time to get to work. This princess needed a new type of soap.
Lillia unlatched the door and then kicked it inward, hoping to hit the bug and send it flying. She charged in after the door, Vianaffir first. She’d just conquered the Architect. She was the hunter now. She didn’t have to be scared. It was nothing! It was—
Misplaced confidence.
The chitterpede dropped from the ceiling and landed on Lillia’s shoulder. Before she could manage a scream the creature sank its dagger-like mandibles into her shoulder. Hot blood poured down her arm and her screaming caught up to the pain as she buckled.
Skin broke. Her shoulder tore with each movement. It was on her. It was in her.
Lillia slammed backward toward the door, trying to knock the chitterpede off. She batted it against the wall, but it held fast in her. The shock of impact bit through her shoulder. Lillia wailed.
“GET OFF!”
She tried to stab it with Vianaffir, but with one arm she couldn’t manage the angle. The sword went wide as the chitterpede’s legs slipped under the neckline of her dress. For a brief moment, it let go, pulling its serrated mandibles free. Lillia buckled. Fell. Her chest seized. The chitterpede tumbled with her and reared backward.
There was a flash of steel that almost resembled competence, it sparked off the chitterpede’s mandibles and sent it careening back into the piled oak barrels. Lillia struggled to get her feet under her. She could feel the blood. She couldn’t breathe. Her heart was pounding. Tears streamed down her face.
No. No. No. No.
She wasn’t crying. This didn’t count. She—
The chitterpede leapt forward. Lillia tried to pull her leg away from it, but it latched onto the exposed flesh under her dress. Lillia screamed again but this time, she had the angle on the thing.
Vianaffir found the its midsection and nearly cleaved it in two, spilling guts across the floor as Lillia collapsed. As she fell, the chitterpede’s mandibles dug deeper into her calf.
It twitched and writhed the upper half of its body, tearing one of the mandibles free as the other stuck fast. Then it stopped.
[Chitterpede defeated! Yay]
Blood welled around the lodged mandible and poured out the open hole on the other side. The stream pulsed with each drum of Lillia’s pounding heart.
Her arm was going numb. Her leg was going numb. She was going numb.
She had to drink a potion.
Lillia felt the tear running down her cheek and tried to wipe it off with the back of her hand but used the wrong arm. Her limp right side flopped, pain crashed over her and the princess doubled over. She tried to choke back the sobs. She really did.
She used the left hand the second time and smeared the tears across her cheeks before biting her tongue as she reached into her dress. She pulled out the viscous potion and tore out the cork with her teeth.
Lillia stopped to wipe her cheek off on her dress. She only dried the left while she felt a tear roll down the right.
The potion burned on the way down her throat. Lillia choked it down, spilling some of it down her chin as she gagged against it. Her limbs started to tingle, starting in her palms and then spreading.
All at once the pain was gone. The mandible pushed itself out of Lillia’s leg as her body sewed itself together, leaving fresh-pink skin where the holes had been.
It felt strange. Wrong.
Lillia shivered and coiled in on herself. Her chest heaved. Her skin crackled with goosebumps. She went to lie down on the floor, but had to scramble away from her blood splattered on the ground, finding a dry corner and pushing herself deep into it.
She winced as her shoulders pressed up against the wall, but the expected pain never came.
Each breath was a shallow gasp. Her heart was going to explode. She was going to die. She was going to die. She was going to—
Lillia didn’t know when she fell asleep, but she eventually did.