Chapter 9 - This Has Gotten Out of Hand

“Okay. So good news is progress. Which we love for me. Call the crier. Let the people know.”
Lillia was sitting on the first step of her hard-earned stairs. She’d taken her shoes off. As a proper lady, she could handle a handful of blisters for a dance, but without footwraps, it was getting ridiculous.
“Of course. All I know is the challenge continues above, and I am talking to myself more and more often,” she said. “Going to end up like that tower mage before long.”
She’d pointedly avoided using the “Vapid Queen” as her example of lunacy out of respect for her great-great-grandmother.
Lillia looked upstairs into the shadow above and then back to the shoes waiting to be pried back on. She wasn’t sure which was more insurmountable.
Even if it only to kill time, Lillia reached into her dress to check her inventory.
Zero rations. She knew that much. A ruined dress. The one rusty knife she’d kept. Nothing from Havoc, which was a rip-off considering the trauma, and…
[Thundermite cloth x 1]
Lillia pulled out the cloth. Strangely, it was the same material as the hat. Was this part of the hat? She was already wearing the hat.
She wasn’t taking off the hat to check for holes. Lillia was fairly sure her hair was congealed to the inside now. Better that than her face.
As she ran her thumb over the yellow cloth, the text changed and Lillia focused on it.
[Equip Thundermite Cloth as a defensive item?]
Lillia looked down at her battle gown, her gaze lingering on the scorch mark right where the neckline would have been on one of her dresses back home. The chitin was doing… something. It was hard to call it well when all she’d done in it was get hit, but that wasn’t the dress’s fault.
Adaptive Regalia said she could equip ‘wearables,’ not just dresses.
Hoping for new shoes was a familiar feeling. Lillia squeezed her fist shut around the Thundermite cloth and felt it disintegrate in her palm. Iridescent dust finer than sand slipped between the princess’s fingers.
By the time Lillia pulled her gaze from the shine cascading from her hand, she had new shoes.
“Heels?!”
Not only heels, either—the kind that were cutting-edge fashion in a southern coast ballroom. Lillia’s heart fluttered at the silhouette, and thank goodness, since they were so black that a silhouette was nearly all that they were. It looked like Lillia had shoved her feet into a void. A void with cute yellow buckles. Lillia kicked her feet in the air off the edge of the steps.
[Thunderstep Heels]
[Wrought of the silence between spark and thunder. These heels charge as you run. When fully charged, they empower your kicks with a touch of lightning.]
Lillia stared past the text back at the heels. How the hell was she supposed to run in those? Lillia could dance in heels, but running? They must have been two inches longer than anything she usually wore. Lillia practiced on the steps. Back. Forth. Back.
The heels were precarious, but they were certainly more comfortable than the shoes that had been eating at the soles of her feet for the past two days.
Maybe barefoot would be better than either for movement but…ew. She’d seen the dungeon floors. She wasn’t about to expose herself more than she needed to.
Lillia bounced back and forth on her feet and found the equilibrium for her new shoes. Once she’d finished, there were only the stairs above tempting her toward the next challenge.
The door out was locked. Lillia picked up her discarded shoes and shoved them into her dress, where they disappeared into the aether.
The stairs were glassy black stone like the room’s floor. A similar runic glow emanated from the room above.
“Nowhere to go but up,” Lillia said as she pulled out Vianaffir. “Let’s see how these heels manage stairs.”
Lillia maybe should have been more cautious about the second level. Some fresh horror was likely waiting up there, but what else was she going to do? She could take ‘em.
Strangely, that confidence was reassuring. It gave her mental space to test the shoes. By the tenth step, she was bouncing up the flight.
The smell of an abandoned fireplace hooked her nose before she reached the top. Lillia slowed to a crawl, suddenly aware of how loud her dress was with each step.
An identical altar sat in the centre of the chamber. The glowing runes on the surrounding walls were equally inscrutable, but different from the last room’s.
The challenge certainly wasn’t trying to switch it up between levels.
Lillia talked herself up as she walked over. “Okay. We’re gonna touch the altar. One of those creepy little guys is going to pop out. But we know how it works and—”
She stopped at the altar with her hand already extended. The last handprint was too large. This one was perfectly made for her fingers.
Disappointingly wide, but clearly the size of Lillia’s hand as opposed to a knight’s.
Lillia swallowed. Placed her hand into the slot. The altar broke noiselessly this time. Lillia spun Vianaffir in her hand before turning around, looking much better with the blade than she actually was.
There was nothing. Lillia was alone. The stairs were gone, sealed beneath seamless stone. Lillia scanned the walls for a door. There wasn’t one.
Laughter from behind her. It was always behind her.
The spellmite she found was wearing a red hat. Lillia cocked her head at the thing. Did that mean it was going to shoot red lightning? Fire? Neither sounded good.
More laughter. The spellmite raised a hand. Lillia held Vianaffir tight and brought it to her side, ready to slash through the blast. The spellmite jumped back and forth.
“Come on,” Lillia said, her gaze fixed on the thing’s hands. “I know how this works now. I’ve got ya.”
The red spellmite kept laughing. It echoed off the wall behind Lillia and come back just as clear—
Wait.
Lillia spun just as the heat singed the back of her neck. Her swing came late, dragged by her momentum, and slashed through the fire after it had already licked the brim of her hat and the hem of her billowing dress. The acrid smell of burning fabric seared Lillia’s throat as she stumbled out of the slash.
Both spellmites laughed as the princess dropped to one knee, desperate to keep her balance.
Of course there were two.
“Wait, that’s not fair!”
Sparks showered, and red heat flashed in the air as the spellmite she was facing raised its hand.
[Lillia used ‘Indignance - Level 1’ - Burning Spellmite Countered]
“Yeah, yeah. I know! Shut up!”
[Indignance is on cooldown]
Lillia snapped to her feet, only for heat to flare behind her. At least when the Thunder Spellmite had attacked, there had been a crack of lightning. The crackle of fire wasn’t loud enough to hear until it was too late. The princess was forced to dive toward the centre of the room. She tried to pull her arms in and roll like the knights did in tournaments. She crashed into the ground instead, her arms slipping out from under her, her chin skidding on the glassy black stone.
Vianaffir slipped from her grip and skidded off.
“Oh no.”
One of the spellmites cackled—it was always the one behind her—and rapid light footsteps followed as it took off for a new prize.
“Oh no.”
Lillia scrambled toward the blade. She saw searing light to her right before she felt the fire’s heat, and Lillia dug her heels into the ground. The princess leapt backward faster than she thought she could and flame careened through the space where she would have been.
Credit where it was due: the heels worked.
By the time the fire cleared, the thieving spellmite already had a hand on Vianaffir’s pommel. Lillia sprinted. More laughter to the right. She saw the spellmite turn its focus from the sword to her.
It couldn’t lift the blade in time. Vianaffir was too heavy and Lillia was too close. The princess leapt through the air and tackled the spellmite with all the grace of an untrained salmon.
The pair tumbled across the floor, leaving the sword behind as Lillia tried to throttle the much tinier creature. If she had been aware of it, she wouldn’t have been proud of how much she was shrieking.
She had never been in a fistfight—obviously—and the spellmite fought its way past Lillia’s clumsy hands as they skidded to a stop. Burning orange light flashed on the tip of the spellmite’s finger, a mere inch from her nose. Heat sizzled against her eyes. Lillia lashed out at whatever she could, and she found the hat.
Lillia snatched the hat, and the spellmite blinked out of existence, folding into nowhere. Lillia’s knees cracked against tile as she fell through the six inches where the spellmite had been.
What?
What?!
Lillia rolled over with the hat in her hand. She checked around her. Under the hat. In the hat? There was no spellmite. There was nothing.
Confused but fairly sure she was winning, Lillia stood up and held the hat high. She didn’t know where the spellmite was, but she had the hat. If they needed the hat, she would hold on to it.
“Hey! I have your friend’s hat!” Lillia said as she turned. “You’d better back off or I’m gonna—”
Lillia couldn’t threaten to stab the hat because she didn’t have the sword. The second spellmite did.
Vianaffir looked different in someone else’s hands. It hummed with a fearsome glow, vibrating until the blade’s edges blurred and distorted as the spellmite turned it toward her. Wind whipped up around the room, spiralling first around the walls and then circling around Lillia and the spellmite.
“Okay. How about we trade? Your friend’s hat for the sword.”
The burning spellmite took a step backward. Vianaffir was clearly too large for it, but the blade moved with shocking grace, slicing through the air as if it owned it.
“It’s a very cool hat, and I just don’t think that sword is the right fit for you. You know?”
Wind stole the spellmite’s cackling before it could reach Lillia.
“How about a rusty knife? I have a rusty knife to sweeten—”
Lillia jumped as the spellmite swung the blade. Wind tore around the room, sucking inward toward Vianaffir’s tip and then slicing outward through the emptiness it left. Stone cracked in front of the swing, shattering from the air pressure.
The gale caught Lillia on the back end of the jump and threw her. She lost the hat as she tumbled, falling ass over teakettle in the perfect way to see the wind snatch the hat and tear it asunder.
Quiet. The wind stopped. Tiny pieces of fabric fluttered to the ground. The spellmite dropped Vianaffir and covered its nonexistent mouth. The sound of metal on stone rang through the room.
The spellmite didn’t laugh. It squeaked.
“What? That was you!”
It squeaked again, waving an emphatic hand at Lillia.
The princess stood up and put her hand on her chest. “My fault? You did the whole thing with the sword.”
The spellmite waved its hands more furiously and squeaked for longer. Lillia lost the plot. The first response had been easy but she couldn’t speak squeak.
Lillia took a step forward and the spellmite bent down to grab the blade. There was a crackle at Lillia’s feet as she broke into a run. The black surface of her heels burned away in a shower of sparks, revealing brilliant yellow underneath.
Honestly, slightly garish.
The spellmite heaved the blade up. Lillia leapt off the ground and lashed out with her leg. Lightning crackled on the sole of her foot as it swung through the air and crashed into the cheek of the spellmite.
A thunderous boom echoed through the room. The spellmite kinda stumbled.
Lillia’s kick was empowered. Lillia’s kick wasn’t impressive to start with.
The spellmite shook its head. Lillia snatched her sword off the ground and swung it through the creature before it could get its bearings. Vianaffir rang against the black tile. The spellmite’s hat drifted down, then vanished.
[Burning Spellmite x 2 defeated! Yay x 2!]
On the far end of the room, stairs rose from the floor. Lillia leaned on Vianaffir for support. Please don’t let the next challenge be three spellmites. That didn’t seem very fair either.