Chapter 4 - Ickier Bridges

What was the point of being pushed one bridge too far if the other side only held a series of grosser, ickier bridges?
In the morning, when she’d woken up in her silky sheets, Lillia would have had some choice words for anyone who suggested she wear a bug shell.
The first word was “Guards!” The second and third were “Seize them.”
There were no guards here; the closest thing was a skeleton on the landing below Lillia. This was her metaphorical tower. That would have made Lillia one of those princesses from her old stories, except those stories had been less gross, and there had usually been a handsome prince only ten pages away.
There was no prince, and she was in a mangled gown soaked through with things she didn’t want to name. Lillia glared at the words floating in front of her until they stopped making her skin crawl and began to make her skin itch.
[Equip Defensive Item - Chitterpede Chitin?]
“I’m not gonna do it. I’d rather die.”
The text didn’t respond. The text never responded. That was fine. She knew what she had to do, but she was a princess, which meant complaining was her birthright.
[Equip Defensive Item - Chitterpede Chitin?]
“I said never,” Lillia reaffirmed.
This place had at least made picking a skill and grabbing her rations connected to her thought. The text kept asking about the chitin as her attention waxed and waned. That meant she was still considering it.
No, she wasn’t! That was ridiculous. A princess would never…
Despite being beside the fire, Lillia shivered. Several strands of the princess’ chestnut hair fell in front of her eyes. Her wonderful hair was already matted and tangled instead of straight and silky, just one of a thousand things that would mortify her if she saw them in a mirror.
Fine.
Lillia reached toward her dress and thought about the chitin. She tried to think of it as anything other than gross chunks and bile, but she still hesitated on the edge of her dress before plunging her hand into the ‘pocket’ within.
It was clean, smooth, slightly iridescent in the dancing firelight, and lighter than she thought it would be. If she hadn’t known where it had come from, Lillia might have believed it was a new luxury standard. There was a reason people went diving into the dungeons of their own accord.
[Equip Defensive Item - Chitterpede Chitin?]
Lillia rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Sure. You win.”
She turned the chitin repeatedly in her hand. How was she supposed to pronounce that again?
The chitin dissolved. That was the only word for it. The piece in her hand broke apart into something finer than dust and swept across her skin like an icy wind. Lillia yelped and nearly threw herself into the campfire trying to brush it off, but it was already gone. Or rather, it was already done.
Lillia’s dress hadn’t dissolved. It was simply gone. She uncurled and her new gown rattled. A thousand little plates had been woven over one another to match the billowing gown she’d been wearing. The rainbow sheen of the chitin shimmered in dozens of different ways in the fire’s glow. Lillia might as well have been wearing gemstones.
She’d never been one for subtle dresses, but this was pushing it.
There were two main differences from the dress she’d been wearing—besides the fact that it was made of bug, which Lillia was decidedly choosing to ignore. The first was that she had lost the swooping neckline she’d worn to distract courtiers; it had been replaced with a tall collar that only cut off near her jaw. The second, and most critical development, was that the new dress came with gloves.
As long as Lillia didn’t consider that gloves meant she was always hands-on with the bug, that was a massive improvement. Plus the bug was already touching much worse places.
The text changed as Lillia focused on the details of the dress. She continued to look past it for a time, catching the shimmer of the chitin in the firelight and observing the details, from the way the scales grew dull near her throat to the fact that her gloves ended in almost sharp-tipped fingers. Practically claws.
[Chitterpede Chitin Battle Gown - Level 1 - Princess Class Exclusive]
[This item was crafted using the skill ‘Adaptive Regalia’ and will revert to a basic material if removed or if the wearer loses the Princess class.]
[Provides a minor (+2) defensive bonus against slashing and piercing damage. The first [2] instances of damage the Princess would receive are instead absorbed by the armour.]
[Born in a process that discovered beauty the chitterpede didn’t know it had in life. In death it demands attention, shimmering to attract all eyes to its wearer.]
Lillia frowned at the description. First, she didn’t understand what most of that meant in practical terms. Second, she didn’t appreciate the idea that the dead bug had agency.
The new armour was comfortable, unfurling around Lillia as she stood up and stretched her legs. Compared to anything a knight would wear, it was still ill-suited for battle, but Lillia had lived in dresses and gowns since birth. Battlemasters might have suggested pants, but Lillia would have felt ridiculous in anything that didn’t flow as she moved.
Before moving on, Lillia twirled twice by the fire, letting the shimmer of the chitin dance around the room. Whatever the skill had done, it was impressive. Lillia was lithe—she preferred skinny—but she was taller than most of the other women in court. Stretching and multiplying the chitterpede’s shell to cover her body seemed impossible.
Once she’d finished spinning, Lillia caught herself beaming, almost showing teeth. It was unbecoming of her station to smile with anything other than her lips. Besides, she couldn’t waste all day spinning.
Now that she was drier, Lillia could enjoy the fire for its own sake instead of simply needing it because she was wet and cold. It would have been nice; a warm fire was always tempting. Sleep would have been nice as well. Instead, Lillia’s gaze lingered on the stairway down into the depths of the earth.
She had food to eat tomorrow morning, whenever that was, and that was it. As long as she’d decided her aunt wasn’t coming back to apologize, there wasn’t much else to do. She would be down here until…
Until?
In his note, the knight on the landing said he’d been down in the dungeon for “too long.” Even after his death, he’d been on the landing long enough for his bones to brown and for his clothing to rot away.
It had been a long time since anyone else had been down here. A long time since Sir Nobody had given up.
Did that matter? If she was too young to take back the throne, then she was too young to stay trapped forever and too young to give up as he had. She had youthful vigor on her side. It was time to explore.
Another room waited for Lillia down the stairs. Another potential bug stood ready down in the dark below. Another horror hiding in the shadows of torchlight.
Lillia stared at the stairway.
No thank you. Not yet.
Lillia pulled a stick from the edge of the everburning campfire and lit it in the blaze. It wouldn’t burn as long as a torch would, but the light it cast danced off the chitin and shone around her. The princess walked quickly back toward the entrance where she’d gotten thrown in, fast enough to preserve the light, but not so fast as to put it out.
She’d walked every inch of the room she’d fallen into, but she’d never seen it.
The wooden door back to her original prison was ajar, almost inviting her back inside. Lillia paused with her hand on the door. The room had been empty before, but that didn’t promise safety now. The chitterpede had hidden, something else could as well. Lillia drew Vianaffir and squeezed its handle as she pushed the door open.
Her first prison was larger than she remembered, but that could have been the dark playing tricks. The light reflecting off the princess’s armour shone against the flagstone, but didn’t even reach the far wall.
Each of Lillia’s steps was marked by a rainbow shimmer as she strode out into the darkness. She kept turning to check the door behind her, ensuring it was still there as she walked far enough into the room to lose sight of it. A slice of light cutting through the shadow was all that remained.
A rot settled in the pit of Lillia’s stomach. She’d been in this room before, hadn’t she? She’d paced it a hundred times and had never needed to walk this far. A chill found her spine and tucked in beside the rot. She tightened her grip on the torch and Vianaffir, white knuckles only hidden by her new gloves.
Lillia checked the door behind her.
The fire at the end of her ‘torch’ struggled. If it went out she’d be able to find her way back by the glow of the campfire. Right?
Lillia held the torch high, trying to spread the light as far as she could around herself as she crept forward into the circling darkness. Ten steps. Twenty. Thirty.
A single flagstone was out of place in the centre of the room, lighter than the rest and sitting just below the floorline. There was blood on the corner of the stone. Lillia didn’t know if it was hers.
Lillia stopped short. She’d read enough stories to avoid stepping on the blatantly ‘wrong’ stone but that didn’t mean she wasn’t curious. The princess squinted into the darkness around her. There was nothing other than the crack in the open door.
Then there was a glow. Above her. Lillia saw the text as she looked toward a ceiling that was impossibly far away.
[The Five Point Fall]
[SSS Class Dungeon]
[Incomplete. The way is shut.]
Lillia’s light snuffed out as she read, caught in a wind that shouldn’t have been there. She strained her eyes against the darkness to try to see beyond the text. Cold settled in the back of her throat as she waved the ‘torch’ around, trying to spur her fire back to life. Her fingers were suddenly frozen numb in their gloves.
Something scratched in the darkness around Lillia. Claws? Daggers? Something razor-sharp drew across the flagstone. The sound echoed off every wall she couldn’t see, melding into a hissing cacophony that latched onto her spine.
Lillia threw away the useless stick and took Vianaffir in both hands. She held the blade straight out in front of her, pointing it far into the darkness. She was off-balance. She couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
The scratching was nowhere and everywhere. Beside her and far away. Lillia tried to catch her breath, but everything was shallow and staggered. Chitin rattled as Lillia shook and spun, desperate to see something in the infinite dark.
A thin slice of light broke the darkness as Lillia turned in place. The glow of the campfire outside. A golden saviour.
What if the sound was coming from something close to the door? What if—
Whatever it was, it wasn’t blocking the light right now.
Lillia took off toward the door. Her dress clattered as she sprinted across the room, the heels of her slippers clacking against the flagstone with each quickening step.
The scratching turned into a grind that Lillia felt in her teeth before she heard it with her ears.
Lillia let one hand fall off Vianaffir, struggling to hold the blade in the other as she pumped her arms as fast as she could. Ten steps. Twenty. Thirty.
The sound was everywhere and nowhere, so Lillia dove. The princess crashed into the half-open door with her shoulder and tumbled out into the glow of the cathedral. As she rolled over, she fell on the sword. It should have cut her. It didn’t.
Lillia took too long to right herself, lying on her back and pointing Vianaffir toward the wide-open door. The darkness stared back at her, but nothing followed her out of it.
The seconds dragged on. The heartbeat in Lillia’s ears gave way to the crackling fire behind her. The pit in her stomach acquiesced to soreness. The chill in her spine slid down into the flagstone.
The princess didn’t move. Not until long after her breath had steadied and her eyes had started to wander. Each time she thought about heading back to the fire, she readjusted her grip on the blade and tried to see something in the void beyond the door.
Had there ever been anything there? Was she just that scared?
Lillia swallowed her heart back down and forced deep breaths. Eventually, she lowered her sword and allowed herself to blink. Lillia lay on the ground and sniffed twice. A single sob wracked her body. She didn’t cry.
The ceiling of the cathedral looked as if it had been beautiful at one point. There had been murals up there before. Lillia could trace the lines with her eyes where the murals had broken away. There had been chandeliers too. Empty chains hung uselessly from wooden rafters erected between the stone arches. The lone chain above the campfire swayed, pushed by the swirling air above it.
Was that all part of the dungeon when the knight had been here? Or was this a church before it was the entrance of…what was the name? The Five Point Fall.
Lillia pulled herself off the floor, chitin clattering as she dusted herself off and shook her head. Her hair fell down in chunks instead of soft brown strands. She was still trembling, but holding on to Vianaffir helped.
If nothing else, she could take solace in one thing. She knew that something being grade A meant it was good or strong. By that logic, an SSS-class dungeon was so far down the alphabet that the chitterpede might be one of the worst things she ran into down here.