Chapter 8 – The Thunderdome

The Hunting Lodge door still said it would change tomorrow.

Havoc would be back tomorrow.

The problem was that Lillia was starting to suspect tomorrow was a lie.

For a while, when she’d been trapped in the darkness, Lillia was convinced that time had just been slipping away. She’d told herself that maybe she hadn’t been down there as long as she’d thought. She’d told herself that hours were minutes and minutes were seconds.

Lillia didn’t have a way to tell time underground, but she’d been living through minutes and seconds for her entire life. She’d eaten. Tried to practice with the sword until she got hungry. Finished the second ration. Tried and failed to take a nap. Walked around in circles. ‘Trained’ with the sword again. Got hungry.

The door in the Hunting Lodge still said that it would change tomorrow. She didn’t want to open Havoc’s door to confirm what that meant. He would be back tomorrow. It had been more than a day since that had all happened.

More than two, probably, since she’d had a proper bath. Many more before she’d get one again.

Hunger wasn’t desperate yet. That was the problem. If she waited until it was, she would be choosing the next room weaker than she was now.

The princess had stolen another stick from the fire to act as a makeshift torch. She had it in one hand and Vianaffir in the other as she stared from the landing down to the darkness of the second floor.

Lillia was going to need more rations. She could either wait longer and try to see if the chitterpede came back before she was desperate, or she could explore further into the dungeon. She wasn’t confident in her choice, but she knew what the dungeon wanted her to do.

Or at least she thought she knew.

Go now, or go later when she was hungrier and weaker. There wasn’t a winning play, but when had there been so far?

Lillia hopped twice in place, because apparently that was what courage looked like now. Her dress clattered and echoed around the stairway before she took the first step down.

Light erupted from a set of torches on either side of the stairway, illuminating the steps down to the next empty black landing. Lillia dropped her stick. At least there was light.

There were at least a hundred steps between Lillia and the next landing. The cold flagstone slowly gave way to smooth, glassy black obsidian: first a few dark stones, then scattered flagstone, then full black.

If nothing else, Lillia needed to admit that the handicraft was impressive. The transition was tasteful. If—When she made it back to the castle, she’d have to remember that patterning for when they redid the ballroom.

Of course, in the ballroom, it would transition from slate to white marble, but the method would be the same.

Lillia looked back at the knight, took his silence as permission, and headed further down into the depths of the Five Point Fall. Her steps echoed louder as she continued down the stairs. The sound carried through, past the darkness beyond the second level but never echoing back toward her. Even further down, Lillia felt like she was staring into an infinite abyss.

The princess wanted to close her eyes as she descended. She wanted to do anything to fight the feeling that she was doing something stupid, something dangerous, but she kept her head high and her eyes forward. She had to do this. Letting the fear win before the worst had started was just going to set her further back.

She’d conquered the floor above. Killed one monster. Made one friend. How much worse could the second floor be?

The temperature dropped on the second landing. Either that, or Lillia hadn’t realized it’d been getting colder as she descended. The princess could see the fog of her breath as she looked at each door of the landing. They were identical, much like the floor above.

Identically black. Identically wide. Identically foreboding.

Lillia tightened her grip on Vianaffir and tossed her matted hair out of her face. She shook her head. Once. Twice. All in an attempt to be able to choose a door. Instead, she just kept looking back and forth between them.

Her fingers were growing cold. She could feel the stiff ache that lingered in winter when you stood still too long.

If she chose wrong, Lillia was almost assuredly going to die.

People talked about death all the time in the kingdom. Dying for the king. For the queen. For her. But talking about death was not the same as thinking about it. Talking about death was putting the horror in a pretty box and pretending the lid would hold.

“Well. Maybe I was dead as soon as I came down here.”

She chose door number two. The one on the same side as the chitterpede’s Hunting Lodge. She was going to open it, but she paused with her palm against the smooth metal.

Compartmentalize. She was fine with it. Move on.

Sweat dripped cold down the back of her neck.

Whatever happened, happened. She was stuck here either way.

Her breathing shallowed like a dying river. She balled her hand against the door into a tight fist. The torches crackled above her.

It was her duty. To the kingdom. To the throne. To her parents…To herself?

Lillia’s knees buckled. She was a princess. What did she know of duty? What did she know of death? Why did she know of anything? She was a princess. She wasn’t supposed to be here.

Yet here she was.

The lost princess shoved the door open. The metal swung inward as if freshly oiled, then slammed into the inner wall with a resounding clang that echoed through the room and back into the stairway.

Nothing leapt out at her. There were no eyes in the darkness. There was no horror beyond her sight.

Lillia grabbed the makeshift torch she’d discarded on the landing and held it out into the darkness. The light shone off the glassy black stonework and pushed back the shadows.

In the centre of the room was…something. Lillia could only describe it as an altar, but it was wrong. She knew what altars to the Triplicate looked like—the castle was lousy with them—but this one had none of the right etchings and was made of the same cold black stone as the floor.

Lillia jumped forward to avoid getting smacked by the door, but it didn’t slam behind her as the ones on the floor above did. The door stayed wide open, letting the light of the stairway spill into the room beyond. The princess took another step and checked back to ensure that it was going to stay open.

The air warmed as Lillia approached the altar. First she simply couldn’t see her breath, but by the time she was within reach she could feel the heat pressing on the back of her throat, like breathing in flame without the smoke.

In the middle of the altar, there was an inlay for a hand. Lillia’s hand never would have filled the whole thing. Each of the fingers was nearly as large as both of hers.

Either way, one didn’t just go sticking their hands into strange altars without checking other options first. Even Lillia understood that much.

Lillia’s makeshift torch was sputtering as she made her way around the room, first by returning to the door and then by circling the place. The room was rounded, like the base of a tower, but Lillia couldn’t see the ceiling through the shadows, nor was there any evidence of stairs.

The room was just a circle, which seemed more difficult to build than necessary. Then again, the dungeon had begun with an underground cathedral. Lillia was far from an expert architect, but she could have done a better job with the place. Some of the extra stone could have gone to a table. Or a fireplace. Or anything with the decency to explain itself.

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Eventually, Lillia was back at the altar.

She sighed.

“Fine.”

Lillia was right about the inlay being bigger than her hand, but as she placed her palm inside, her fingers took up more of each slot than she expected. That couldn’t be right. Lillia had dainty little hands. She was small. Thin and—

The ground shook, and the room blazed to life. Crystal blue light erupted from the walls as strange symbols etched themselves into the black stone. Lillia tried to read, or at least understand, whatever was happening around her but jumped as the altar in front of her cracked down the middle with a resounding snap.

Across the room, the door slammed. Text formed in front of Lillia.

[Challenge Started]

“Challenge?” Lillia asked. She spun, trying to make sense of the runes appearing on the walls. They had stretched from floor to ceiling and were starting to bleed across the ceiling itself. The altar cracked again before fading into the same fine dust the chitin had. “How was I supposed to know about a challenge?!”

[Lillia used ‘Indignance – Level 1’ – There was no target!]

Lillia huffed and threw the torch away for the second time in the past few minutes. It clattered along the clean black, scattering ash across it as the girl held her sword with both hands. She tried to copy the footing she’d seen knights use in the tournaments. Pulling one foot back felt sturdier than standing up.

The light stopped climbing the walls while it was only a few feet onto the ceiling. The dozen light sources danced off Lillia’s armor. Reflective glints surrounded her and smothered the myriad of shadows she cast.

The room was quiet.

Which was good, right? There was no such thing as too quiet.

The smell of burning stone had vanished. In its place was something like rain that had not arrived.

Lillia turned to check behind her. Still nothing. Just the runes. The dress broke the silence with its clattering. The sound echoed. Faded. Silence settled back in. Lillia could feel sweat on her palms as she gripped the sword too tight.

Over the next few seconds, she lowered Vianaffir. Maybe she was supposed to figure something out with the runes. Had she ever read something about puzzles in a dungeon? She didn’t remember, and that sounded like a stupid concept, but at the same time.

Something moved behind Lillia. The princess spun again.

Between her and the door was a small…creature. It had the same two arms and legs as a person. It was as tall as a child but also wrongly proportioned to be one. It wore a massive electric-yellow hat, wide-brimmed and drooping low enough to almost cover its matching eyes. Its skin was also pitch black, like it had been carved out of shadow.

Lillia let Vianaffir fall further in the first seconds. Unlike the chitterpede, it hadn’t tried to pounce on her right away.

“Hey, little guy.” She held out a hand to it, as if she were trying to calm down a horse. “I’m Lillia and you—”

The creature reared back its head, and a piercing cackle filled the room from every direction. Without looking back at Lillia, it pointed towards her; something glowed on the end of its black finger.

Lillia’s hair stood on end. She dove to the side before she processed that she needed to move.

A small bolt of lightning shot across the room, zapping inches past Lillia’s face as she sat up. The cackle returned. Lillia leapt to her feet. The thing pointed again.