Chapter 5 - Light Reading

Lillia’s map was bad.
That was not her fault. She had stolen a stick from the campfire for its ash, but the fire itself hadn’t seemed to get any smaller. In fact, as far as Lillia could tell, the logs hadn’t burned down at all, despite the fire eating at them for…
However many hours it had been. Lillia sighed and noted she needed a way to keep time.
She used the stolen stick to write on the cathedral’s flagstone floor. Her handwriting was immaculate and well-known in the court, but that was when she was allowed a quill and ink. Lillia had done her best, but a charred stick as long as her arm wasn’t the best writing implement.
She’d only been in two other rooms. The hunting lodge was marked by a gross bug with angry eyes. The room she’d fallen into was marked with another pair of nonspecific angry eyes. Finally, a stick figure wearing a tiara represented Lillia in the cathedral.
She didn’t truly need a map yet, but based on the name, Lillia guessed the dungeon had five rooms, maybe even five floors! At some point, she’d forget where something was, and a map would matter. It was better to have one and not need it than the other way around.
Before putting her stick back on the edge of the campfire, Lillia looked over to the door on the other side of the cathedral. She’d jammed the door to the room she’d fallen into closed with a chair from the hunting lodge downstairs. That would be enough, right? Whatever was in there probably couldn’t open a door handle.
“Okay, I have one more meal.” As Lillia spoke, the text popped up with her inventory. “Yes. Thank you,” she added before continuing. “We have a sword, and this new dress, which… it’s nice, and we’re not going to talk about the rest of it.”
Lillia took one sharp breath to rally herself, as a treat, before heading down the stairs back to the bones of Sir Nobody and the mystery door.
The stairway was notably colder than the cathedral. The chill seemed to emanate from the darkness farther down the stairs into the edge of the light. Lillia watched the shadows for a moment, but turned back to the door before her imagination conjured up some new horror.
Vianaffir felt lighter in her hand than when she’d entered the first room. Maybe she was getting used to it? Maybe she’d levelled up? She remembered the concept from her brief lessons on adventuring, but considering how chatty the text was, she assumed it would have mentioned a change in level. Would it feel weird when she levelled up? Like trying on a dress she used to wear and realizing the buttons didn’t close right around her chest anymore.
Whatever the cause, Lillia was as ready as she was ever going to be. It was a low bar, but she’d scrambled over it.
The door was heavier than it looked, catching on its hinges when Lillia tried to push it open with one hand. In the end, it took a grunt and a shoulder to force it wide enough for Lillia to peek through.
Warm light filled the room beyond, but unlike the hunting lodge, this room had an actual source. Candles lined the tops of stacked bookshelves in a towering, teetering archive. Scrolls protruded from the shelves where they were piled haphazardly. That explained why the room smeeled of old paper.
Lillia led with Vianaffir, point-first, the tip shaking as she struggled with the awkward grip. She’d seen so many knights wield swords effortlessly in tournaments; why did the damn thing always feel so heavy?
Once she had shoved enough of the sword through to be reasonably sure no bug would pounce, Lillia pushed the door open with her foot. It creaked inch by inch, somehow making more sound than if she had simply shoved the damn thing.
She paused and listened.
It was so quiet she could hear the flicker of the candles beneath the sound of her breathing.
Lillia broke the silence as she walked into the room, the scales on her chitin dress ringing throughout the archive like a set of wind chimes. The sound felt wrong in the silence. Lillia knew she was supposed to be in here; the door had been waiting for her to open it, but she felt like an intruder.
At least two dozen shelves filled the room, each piled high with scrolls Lillia didn’t have time to read. The princess stalked the aisles, leading with Vianaffir’s point and pivoting whenever she thought she’d heard a sound. All the sounds were hers.
Candles had been shoved thoughtlessly on top of the shelves, still burning. Scrolls bunched so tightly they creased one another. The stark walls were made of wood so dark it was almost black.
Then Lillia found it: a trapdoor in the back corner. It was flush with the floor, save for a cast-iron pull ring in the middle. Several scrolls were scattered around it, as if someone had dropped them while climbing down.
That was the next step. Wasn’t it?
Lillia felt goosebumps rise beneath the chitin armour, an unpleasantly strange sensation. She took another lap of the archive, checking each shelf in the vain hope that she’d missed something and the trapdoor wasn’t the goal.
There was an archive in her castle, and a library. Lillia had been taught to read and write and according to her tutors, she’d picked it up well, but she’d never been one to sit down and read any of the old texts. She learned the history of her kingdom, sure, but she didn’t seek old texts herself, despite her mother’s insistence when she’d been young.
No, Lillia had always been a bigger fan of finding letters she wasn’t supposed to. Histories in the archives had fixed endings. Piecing together the latest courtly scandal by breaking and resealing letters had been fun. Those letters were worth taking the time to read.
In these surroundings, flanked by shelves stuffed with scrolls that looked older than anything in the archive, Lillia longed for anything else. A letter from Lady Brathwait would have been better than this. That woman had shoddy penmanship and no scandals worth reading about, but at least her letters were about today and recent yesterdays.
Lillia looked over her shoulder back to the trapdoor in the corner and took a deep breath.
The princess tucked Vianaffir into her belt and took one of the many scrolls off the shelf at random.
[You are not high enough level to read this document. Requires Level 10]
Lillia stared, both at the blurred text on the scroll and the glowing text in front of her.
“I beg your pardon?” She turned the scroll over, trying to see if there was anything she could glean from it, but no. The entire scroll appeared as if someone had spilled ink and then half-heartedly tried to clean it up. “I have to level up to read?”
[Lillia used ‘Indignance - Level 1’ - There was no target!]
Lillia threw the scroll back at the shelf it had been on, but it simply crashed into the rest of the piled paper and slowly fluttered down to the floor. Lillia kicked it for good measure and then grabbed another one.
[You are not high enough level to read this document. Requires Level 23]
“Twenty-three? I’m not even Level Two!”
[Lillia used ‘Indignance - Level 1’ - There was no target!]
The princess rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah.” She grabbed another.
[Requires Level 6]
[Requires Level 18]
[Requires Level 4]
Lillia only opened each scroll long enough for the white text to change before letting them fall to the floor and grabbing another.
[Requires Level 13]
[Requires Level 10]
[Requires…]
[Requires…]
Lillia was adrift in a sea of scrolls by the time she gave up. Dozens of broken seals surrounded her as she tried each in order. She’d sneezed almost as many times, unleashing generations of trapped dust with each opened scroll. None of it had been worth anything. The lowest level she’d found on one scroll was Level Four and—
Shoot. Where was that one? Lillia stared at the pile she’d left herself and groaned.
[Requires level 15]
[Requires level 8]
[Requires…]
[Requires…]
Lillia found her prize after way too many attempts. All the scrolls looked the same, so finding it should have come down to luck, but Lillia couldn’t shake the feeling that she was somehow bad at this. She shoved the Level Four scroll into the invisible pocket where her dress kept impossible things.
Four was the lowest she’d found, but how long would that take? She’d killed the chitterpede already and had the dress to prove it, but as far as she could tell, she hadn’t levelled up. What did levels even mean? Was it just skills? Did that mean she was Level Two?
Did the scrolls explain that? Maybe if she went through all of them—Lillia shook her head. That wasn’t happening. Tactically sound or not, she needed to get a move on.
She looked back over her shoulder at the trapdoor. Nothing had changed about it. Still creepy.
She could head back to the campfire to check the map again. It was that or a couple thousand scrolls she couldn’t even read. Lillia drew Vianaffir, which was a choice that almost surprised her.
Lillia “sneaked” up to the trapdoor, her armour rattling the entire way. The trapdoor didn’t have ears to hear it or eyes to see her. As far as it knew, she wasn’t even there. Tremendous success.
Only the handle offered Lillia anything to grab, but pulling it open felt intimidating. Instead, Lillia pushed Vianaffir’s tip along the floorboards to catch the edge of the ring. She could picture Sir Nobody shaking his skeletal head at her and explaining that named weapons should be treasured. Of course, he wasn’t alive to say that, and princesses didn’t have to listen to knights if they didn’t want to.
It took a moment to hook Vianaffir through the ring, and even then, she couldn’t pry the trapdoor open. The ring was in the middle instead of near the edge, which meant the whole brilliant plan failed for reasons of leverage. Lillia threw Vianaffir down in a huff before stomping around the trapdoor and throwing it open. The wood slammed against the wall behind it with a resounding clatter.
Lillia chided herself for being “annoyed-noisy.”
Beneath the trapdoor, a thin wooden stairway needed replacing. Thin boards looked barely attached to the rails on either side. Five steps down, shadow swept in and swallowed the stairs.
She’d dived into the darkness and found the chitterpede. She’d ventured into the pitch and had to run away. Lillia didn’t know much about the dungeon, but she would never make the same mistake thrice.
Patently untrue—she’d made many mistakes dozens of times over—but she didn’t care to argue the point.
Lillia put the sword down by the trapdoor, stomped over to the shelf she’d mostly emptied before, and climbed it. Foot over foot and hand over hand until she was face-to-face with a hundred candles and far too much wax pooled at the top of the bookshelf.
The princess grabbed one candle. It held fast.
She pulled. Nothing.
She pulled harder. Still nothing.
Lillia yanked.
Lillia fell.
Crashed down into the pile of scrolls.
Paper didn’t cushion her fall, but somehow, it still didn’t hurt.
[Chitterpede Chitin Battle Gown - 2 charges used! Charges recharge each morning.]
Lillia blinked at the text while flat on her back. Two charges? What the—
The text answered with the description of the battle gown.
[Charges: 0/2. Charges recharge each morning.]
“Thanks. I guess,” Lillia sighed. Better to use the charges than get hurt falling off a bookshelf, but she still hadn’t solved her darkness problem, and she had no idea when morning was.
Lillia peeled herself out of the pile of scrolls. Several had torn on landing; the rest were cosmetically ruined. At least there wasn’t an archivist to yell at her.
Back to the trapdoor. Still dark. Still creepy.
Back to the bookshelf. She couldn’t pull the candles free from the top.
Lillia grabbed Vianaffir and climbed back up. Once she was at the top, she grabbed a candle for support and drew the sword. Lillia raised it high and swung down.
She couldn’t equip the sword, but she could decapitate a legion of candles. She dropped Vianaffir to catch a burning candle-top before it fell into the scrolls.
Lillia jumped back down with her prize and dropped it down the trapdoor to show her the way. The candle bounced off a stair just out of view and clattered into the darkness.
One candle was not enough. This was going to be a process.
Lillia stopped counting after twenty candles. No glow reached the bottom of the stairs until what she decided was fifty candles.
It was probably thirty-five.
Lillia grabbed the thirty-sixth as a ‘torch’ and took a deep breath at the top of the trapdoor.
The air turned colder as soon as she descended below the floor. It was damp in a way that slithered into her dress and clung to her skin. Lillia felt her hair stick to her skin, which was gross considering how matted it was.
Lillia held the candle out in front of her as she approached the flagstone floor. The flagstone resembled the cathedral’s tiles. Not that either of them was anything to write home about. The ceiling was certainly lower here, though. Lillia had ducked into secret passages in the castle when she was younger. Those had been fun when she was a child, but as soon as she reached a young lady’s height, hitting her head repeatedly ruined the game of it.
Stoop­ing was not very fitting for royal stature, but it was the best Lillia could do down here. She half-crouched toward her haphazard pile of candles. The chitterpede armour cast more light as the flames danced against it, but shadows still circled her.
Lillia swallowed. Her throat was dry. She meant to keep walking forward. She really did. Instead, she froze and stared out into the nothing.
The cool air was dead still. It stuck to her skin, hanging so thick it felt ready to drip down her cheeks. The princess kept staring into the darkness. Her eyes watered. She needed to blink, but she didn’t want to.
In the silence, something moved. Lillia flinched. The sound of the chitin smothered whatever noise there had been.
Quiet again. Curling candle-smoke hovered around Lillia’s feet. The flame’s reflections danced on her battle gown and along Vianaffir’s blade.
Something shifted again. Something shifted again. Lillia spun blade-first, swinging wildly through the nothing behind her. A moment after the blade passed, a flash of metal shot from the darkness and struck Lillia in the stomach.
Blunt impact.
Lillia gasped and stumbled back as the air shot out of her lungs. She lost her grip on Vianaffir. She tried to catch it on the way down, but failed.
Another flash of metal clipped her arm before she could recover.
Lillia lurched up to run. She hit her head on the ceiling and crumpled to the floor. The world was swimming with candlelight as a copper-coloured clawed foot emerged from the shadow into Lillia’s little circle of light. The princess tried to crawl away. She couldn’t figure out which direction the floor was.
The creature got closer. Bent down. Lillia whimpered and covered her face. “I’m sorry,” she squeaked.
She wanted to hold her breath, but Lillia couldn’t do anything other than gasp for air.
“What?” the thing asked. Its voice was deep and gravelly, twisted around human words.
Lillia couldn’t gather enough air to repeat herself. A squeak would have to do.
The thing crouched in front of her. Lillia saw large, bulbous, off-yellow eyes and sharp ears. She didn’t have the energy to recoil, which was probably for the best.
“You’re not an adventurer. Are you?”
Lillia shook her head. It didn’t help the spinning. The words took too long to come, but she found them. “I’m—a princess.”
The thing, whatever it was, pulled back from her. “Well. I don’t know what to do about this.”