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 the stairs that had appeared upon her victory. She had taken her shoes off. As a lady of the court she could handle a handful of blisters on her foot for a dance, but with nothing to wrap them, it was getting ridiculous.

“Of course. All I know is that the challenge continues above, and I am talking to myself more than normal,” she said. “Going to end up like that tower mage at this rate.”

She’d pointedly avoided using the ‘Vapid Queen’ as her example of lunacy out of respect for her great-great grandmother.

Lillia looked up the stairs into the shadow above and then back down to the shoes she had to pry back on. She wasn’t sure which one of those was more insurmountable.

Even if it was just to kill time, Lillia reached into her dress to see what she had on hand.

Zero rations. She knew that much. A ruined dress. The 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. Considering the spellmite had only been wearing the cloth…was this part of the hat?

Either way, 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…it was hard to call it well when all she’d done in it was get hit, but that wasn’t the dress’ fault.

If thinking about something was close to doing it then maybe there was more to this than just slotting in dresses.

It was a familiar feeling to Lillia, hoping for a new pair of shoes. Lillia squeezed her fist shut around the Thundermite cloth and felt it disintegrate in her palm. Iridescent dust finer than sand slipped between the princesses fingers.

By the time Lillia pulled her gaze from the shine cascading from her hand, there were new shoes on her feet.

“Heels?!”

Not only heels, the kind that would have been on the cutting edge of fashion in a ballroom on the southern coast. Lillia’s heart fluttered at the silhouette of the shoes, which was good, as they were so black that a silhouette was nearly all that they were. It looked like the girl 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. For the first proper time since she’d fallen into the dungeon she felt a smile creeping onto her lips. The text followed her attention and morphed.

[Thunderstep Heels]

[Wrought of the silence between spark and lighting. These heels charge as you run. When fully charged, 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 that had taken a long time to learn and even then… The princess pushed herself off the stairs and tested a handful of steps.

The heels were more precarious than she’d have liked, but they were certainly more comfortable than putting on the same 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 floors in this place, she wasn’t about to expose herself to them 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 temping her toward the next challenge.

The door out was locked. Lillia picked up the discarded shoes and shoved them into her dress, where they disappeared into the aether. The princess shook the sparkling dust off her hands.

The stairs were the same glassy black stone as the floor of the room, seemingly having risen out of it from nowhere. A similar glow emanated from the room above, but from her angle, Lillia couldn’t see if the same runes were on the walls.

“Nowhere to go but up,” Lillia said as she pulled out Vianaffir. “Let’s see how these heels do on stairs.”

Lillia maybe should have been more cautious in her approach to the second level, but she knew she had to go there, and she knew something bad would be there. 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 room. The markings on the wall were different than the last, Lillia couldn’t make sense of these ones either. The challenge certainly wasn’t trying to switch it up between levels.

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Lillia talked herself up as she walked over. “Okay. We’re gonna touch the altar. One of those creepy little guy-things is going to pop out. But we know how it works and—”

The princess stopped right at the altar with her hand already extended. The last handprint had been too large for Lillia. 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, which made her look much better with the blade than she was.

There was nothing in the room with her. The stone floor where the stairs had been slid back into place. Lillia scanned the walls for a door. There wasn’t one.

Laugher from behind her. It was always behind her.

The spellmite she found was wearing a red hat instead of the yellow. Lillia cocked her head at the thing. Did that mean it was going to shoot red lighting? Fire? Neither of those 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 as she kept her gaze affixed on the thing’s hands. “I know how this works now. I’ve got ya.”

The red spellmite kept laughing. Lillia heard it echo off the wall behind her and come back just as clea—

Wait.

Lillia spun just as the heat singed the back of her neck. Her swing was late, following her momentum and slashing the fire as it was already licking the brim of her hat and hem of her billowing dress. The acrid smell of burning fabric seared Lillia’s throat as she stumbled out of the slash.

Both of the spellmites laughed at the princess as she dropped down to one knee in a desperate attempt to maintain some sort of balance.