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 her watching the fire eat them over the past hours.

However many hours it had been. Lillia sighed and made a note to find some way to track time.

The stick she’d stolen was her tool to write on the flagstone floor of the cathedral. 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 an arm’s length charred stick wasn’t the best writing implement.

Not that the bar was high for her purposes. Lillia’s new map was simple. She’d only been in two other rooms. One was marked by a gross bug with angry eyes. The room she’d fallen into was marked with angry eyes, even though Lillia had not technically seen anything inside it. Finally, there was a stick figure wearing a crown to mark where she was standing by the campfire.

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 having a map to reference would be important. Or at least she figured 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 door she hadn’t been into yet.

The stairway was notably colder than the cathedral. The chill seemed to emanate from the darkness further down the stairs, seeping out of nothing and into the edge of the light. Lillia stared for a moment, but turned back to the door before she could imagine anything in the shadow.

Vianaffir felt lighter in her hand than when she’d entered the first room. Maybe she was getting used to it? Maybe she’d leveled up? She remembered the concept from her brief lessons on adventuring, but considering how chatty the text was, she assumed it would have mentioned that. That it would feel weird when you leveled up. Like trying on a dress that you used to wear and realizing the buttons didn’t close right around your 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 get it wide enough for Lillia to stick her head through.

There was warm light in the room beyond, but unlike the hunting lodge, there was an actual source. Candles lined the tops of precariously stacked bookshelves in a towering, teetering archive. Scrolls protruded from the shelves where they were piled haphazardly. That was probably the source of the old paper smell.

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 inside to be reasonably sure a bug would not immediately 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.

There wasn’t the crackle of a proper fire anywhere in the room. Lillia strained and could hear the flicker of the candles against absolute silence, just under 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. The door had literally been there waiting for Lillia, but suddenly she felt like an intruder.

There were at least two dozen shelves in the room, each piled high with scrolls that 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. Haphazard 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 of the room. 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 under the skin of the chitin armor. It felt strange. 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 had been an archive back at the 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 them out 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 read. There was a set end to all the histories in the archives. There was something fun about putting together the latest courtly scandal by breaking and resealing letters that weren’t for Lillia. 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 that was modern.

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]

The author’s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

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 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 as she unleashed 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, which meant it should have just been 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.