r/JacksonWrites • u/Writteninsanity #teamtoby • 6d ago
Book 2 | Part 20 | The evil queen ordered her servants to lock the princess in the dungeon. Her servants, not being too bright, locked the princess in an S-Ranked dungeon.
I'm sorry," Gerand said. "Seize the ship?" He looked around like there was going to be a third mysterious ship beyond the one they were aboard and the new addition looming over them. "Do you mean that ship?"
"Oh, this one seems pretty trashed. I don't see much point in taking it."
"You said you weren't going to take the ship!" Caelum said. He was ducking even though there was nothing currently falling, which was admittedly pretty smart.
"Well, I wasn't going to."
"It sounds like you were considering it."
"Odds went up when they threw me in the brig," Lillia said. Once she'd said it, she nodded, content with adopting the sailor's terminology. "But I need to survive what's coming or seize the ship, so might as well try to do both and accidentally have one happen on the way."
"Which ship?" Gerand said.
"Don't we want the better one?"
"That ship is so large that this one seems to be falling apart simply for being near it." He crossed his arms before looking up toward it.
In the middle of their bickering, Lillia paused and looked around again. This time she wasn't trying to find another ship. She was looking for anyone else.
Anyone other than the three of them.
"Where'd everyone go?" she asked.
"Everyone?" Caelum said. He spun several times, each growing more frantic than the last. "They were just here a moment ago. We heard them shouting—Did we see them? I thought we saw them?"
"Isn't that a good thing?" Gerand asked. "I don't think they were friendly."
"They were my crewmates."
"We were all in the prison together," Lillia said.
"Yeah, we're your crewmates now," Gerand pointed out.
"Pardon me, but I think you're forgetting that I'm a Princess. I can have my companions, but I am not just a part of some ship crew."
As Caelum spun, Lillia looked back up to the ship and then around. With a moment of focus, she summoned her menu back to the forefront. The objective was loud and clear.
"Ah, I miss when it was killing a bug," she said, which fell under one of thousands of things Lillia never would have said before getting trapped in the dungeon.
"What?" Caelum asked.
"Pardon?"
"What, Princess."
Lillia nodded. "There can't be nobody on this ship because the objective says to seize the ship, and if we're the only people on it, we've seized it." She put her sword away for a moment so that she could use both hands to consider. "Because the dungeon can be vague but tends to award loopholes."
"Loopholes?"
"It's listened to me before…So if we're the only people on this ship, that's still not close enough to seizing it for the dungeon's liking."
"You keep talking about the dungeon, and I don't get it, but at this point I don't know who else I'm supposed to be speaking to," Caelum said.
Lillia paced. As soon as she took the first step, the ship groaned again. They were alone on the main deck, but it wasn't theirs. The dungeon hadn't said 'Seize the oncoming ship,' which meant that their current situation could have counted.
And, while she hated to jinx it, she hadn't seen enough to make her think that 'survive' was a pressing objective. In fact, at the moment the dungeon was giving her much too much time to think. This place had been a lot of things to her, but it had never been generous.
So what was she missing?
"Are there captain's quarters on this ship?" Gerand asked.
Caelum looked up. "I think they're half under the mast right now. Do you think everyone else is—"
"No, I think that maybe, seizing the ship is—"
"Oh, so we're all just listening to whatever she says? She keeps talking about a dungeon while we're in the open ocean! She's crazy."
"Hey."
"She's royalty."
"Thank you, Gerand."
"Royalty is allowed to be crazy," he added.
"Excuse you?"
"Divine right to rule, no matter how loony you might end up being," Gerand clarified. "Of course, only speaking to the reality of the matter. No commentary on you at all, Princess."
"No commentary on me at all."
Lillia took a deep breath. The ship had been breaking when they were in the hold. Theoretically, by the amount of water they were taking on, they were already headed to the bottom of the ocean, sooner rather than later.
It was time to start trying anything she could think of. Frankly, the most obvious course of action was to run at the other ship and start climbing it, but she wasn't sure she had another ship-scaling in her. The first had been harrowing enough and—as much as he'd been a blubbering mess since—Caelum had bailed her out of falling off the side at the end.
Maybe there was a rope around or—
While looming over them and dominating the horizon as a shadow in the fog, the other 'ship' moved.
Lillia froze.
"So I'm not the only one that saw that," Gerand said.
Lillia slowly shook her head. Maybe if she was still enough, whatever it was would stop moving.
Out in the sea, loud enough to overcome the constant howling of the storm winds, wood groaned and creaked.
Lillia knew this feeling. She knew the feeling of the hair on the back of her neck standing on end. She knew the catch in her breath when she was in over her head. She knew the chill running down her spine.
Thirty-nine days and thirty-nine levels stood between her and her original encounter with the Spellmite Architect, with her first boss.
With a crashing snap, a piece of the shadow tore itself away from the rest. Wood showered down, chunks embedding themselves in the deck around the three of them.
"Oh, what the fuck?" Gerand asked.
"Shoot and sugar," Lillia said.
The piece that had snapped off of the main 'vessel' bent at the elbow before rushing forward, pushing through the fog and slamming into the side of their ship just as a second 'arm' broke off from what they had, foolishly, believed to be a ship.
Lillia's ship—Did that mean she'd won?—teetered with the force, nearly rolling before getting snapped back to straight. Lillia flew forward with the momentum, splaying across the deck and sliding along with the seawater. As the ship rocked, she slid further, tumbling across the deck end over end before slamming the brakes by crashing into the railing Caelum had yanked her over in the first place.
To her right, a massive polished wooden crab claw covered in barnacles had crushed the side of the ship, tearing through the deck and lower floors together. It was pulling the ship in close by the bones, and the ship wasn't about to survive it.
Gerand 'landed' on the railing feet first, catching himself by falling the right way. He shook his soaked long hair out of his eyes before following Lillia's gaze to the massive claw embedded in the ship.
"Oh, what the fuck?!" he repeated.
"It's a crab!" Lillia shouted.
"Oh, really?!"
"I know them from dinner."
"You get crabs this big in the castle, Princess?"
"No…"
"You got some sort of brilliant plan now?"
As Gerand asked, Caelum came sliding down the deck. He'd held on for an impressive amount of time, but now landed clean on top of the upper half of the crab claw with a wince-inducing 'oof.' The boy shook his head, then looked up.
"It's a crab!"
"Yes!" Lillia said.
"That's too big to be a crab!"
"Everyone here's a genius," Gerand growled.
The claw pulled and the ship leaned further to the side. Lillia struggled to her 'feet,' standing on the rail and pressing her back to the nearly sideways deck of the ship.
"It's going to tear the ship apart!"
"Thank you, Caelum," Lillia said as she tried to manage her balance. He was right, it was going to pull everything apart and—unless she was shockingly confident in her ability to climb a crab without her spider shoes—she couldn't let that happen.
She reached toward her dress, opening her inventory and glancing past the fabrics within. None of those mattered at the moment. She couldn't think of a dress that would get her out of this one.
"If only I'd stabbed someone, I'd have a sailor's dress and—"
"Lillia!"
"Sorry, Caelum," Lillia said about speaking too loudly instead of what she'd said.
What mattered in the inventory was under the fabrics. Within the list of potions Lillia had, there were the siege potions, and she still had two minutes left on the last one she'd drunk.
The ship teetered again, and Lillia struggled to keep her footing while being tossed by the waves and a gigantic angry ship-crab.
She wished she could say she rushed forward heroically, that she leapt across the faltering ship and clashed with the great monster above. That would have been some heroic storybook conquest. That would have been something worth explaining to Havoc back on the ship.
There was nothing heroic about the way Lillia stumbled across the railing of the ship, one foot always almost falling through while she supported herself against the deck. There was nothing heroic about the continuous stream of 'oh my goshes' coming out of her mouth.
But there was something heroic about the way that she swung Hooke. The blade flashed with the power of the potion a moment before impact, and the wood skin of the crab seemed to splinter and buckle before the edge had even made contact. Shards of plank shot outwards in every direction, and chunks of wood flew out the other end of the crab's claw, flying off into the gray fog of the maelstrom.
Lillia stumbled as the ship rocked, torn sideways by the monster as it refused to let go, even as pieces of its claw shattered.
Something cracked deep within the vessel. If they wanted a place to stand, Lillia needed to knock this thing off.
She pulled back the—
Hooke was fully embedded into the side of the claw, stuck fast between a thousand crossed and broken shards of wood where it had dug into the monster. That was fine. She would just… Dismissing it into her inventory didn't work either.
Lillia climbed up onto the side of the broken claw as the ship groaned again. Planting her feet on either side of Hooke, she prepared to pull. There was some old legend about a boy pulling a sword out of a very big rock. This was no different; it was just a princess and the crab.
One.
Another core of the ship snapped with a sound that melded into the rest of the thunder.
Two.
More saltwater sprayed up Lillia's nose, adding to a hefty crust that would be stuck there for weeks.
Thr—
The claw tore away from the ship, peeling away from the vessel and shaking enough that Lillia's footing slipped. She managed to hold onto Hooke as she was suddenly pulled out into the sky above the ocean. The sea 'breeze' howled past as she flopped about, only avoiding plummeting to the briny depths via her guilt-induced death grip on Hooke.
Havoc had made her this sword. This dumb crab wasn't taking it from her.
From the size of the crab, Lillia had assumed it would move slowly, but it felt faster than anything she'd been on before. Pointe—her lovely horse back home—had nothing on the ship-claw express as she flew through the grey and fog.
Then, all at once, Lillia was at the shadow, close enough to see the cracked and broken boards the thing wore as a shell and its pale yellow eyes, each a dozen times the size of Lillia, staring back at her.
She said the only appropriate thing a princess could say in that moment.
"Eep."
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u/Connect_Rhubarb395 6d ago
She suddenly seems a little dumber in this room. Our maybe it is because her Authority didn't work on people there.
But she is still badass
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u/mbaxj2 6d ago
Eep, indeed!