Lilly the Knight (Chapter 3)
Written by Taylor Lee
Genre: Adventure, Drama, and Fantasy
Audience: All ages
Chapter 3: An Unexpected Discovery
The darkness did not last, though Lilly's eyes took a long moment to understand what was happening. As she pressed forward, one careful step after another, a soft blue light began to bloom along the tunnel walls. She reached out a trembling hand and touched a cluster of crystals, no bigger than acorns, embedded in the rock like scattered jewels. They pulsed gently, as though breathing, and their glow deepened wherever her fingers passed near. It was mesmerizing, she thought.
"Oh, this is interesting," she whispered, and her voice did not echo so much as it seemed to be gathered up and carried onward, as if the tunnel itself were listening.
The frog paused ahead of her, perched upon a stone that had been worn smooth by centuries of dripping water. It turned its eyes back toward her, waited until she caught up, and then hopped onward again. This became their rhythm: Lilly would follow, the frog would wait, and together they moved deeper into the earth, deeper than any well or root cellar Lilly had ever known. Lilly figured this was a cave, but what was strange was that there was a lot of greenery down here. Caves just had rocks, she thought.
The passage widened as they descended, and the crystal light grew brighter, revealing carvings upon the walls that made Lilly wonder. Here were figures of people, small and worn by age, dancing in circles beneath carved suns and moons. There were animals unlike any she recognized, creatures with wings like moths and bodies like deer, frolicking alongside the dancers. And everywhere, woven between the figures like a written song, were symbols she could not read; loops and spirals, small stars, shapes like open hands raised in blessing.
"Who made these?" she asked the frog, though she knew it could not answer in words she understood. It only blinked at her, slow and patient, and continued.
The sound of water grew louder as they walked, until at last Lilly rounded a bend and found herself upon the edge of an underground river, black and glassy, reflecting the crystal light like a mirror of the night sky. A bridge of pale stone arched over it, its railings carved with the same dancing figures, though here they seemed to be crossing from one side of the world to another.
The frog hopped onto the bridge without hesitation.
Lilly's feet did not move so quickly. She stood at the river's edge, staring at her own reflection staring back, and felt very small and very far from home. "What if I cannot find my way back?" she whispered to no one. "What if I am lost forever, and no one ever knows what became of me?"
But even as fear and stress pressed against her heart, curiosity tugged harder still. She thought of Lord Aldric's stern instructions, of the training grounds and the terror of the coming war, of arrows and shields and things she did not wish to become. Whatever lay ahead of her now could not be more frightening than that.
So she crossed the bridge.
On the other side, the tunnel opened all at once, and Lilly stumbled forward into a sight so vast and so strange that she forgot, for a moment, to be afraid at all. She started believing the unthinkable. The tales that she was told at a young age felt more real than this.
Before her stretched an underground kingdom. A kingdom that did not feel real, but a dream she admired, the kind one woke from with a grin. It was just like the Kingdom of Eldoria, but underground. Lilly could not believe what she was seeing. What was this? Were there people under here? she thought.
It rose in tiers along the walls of an enormous cavern, so tall that its ceiling was lost in shadow far above, though even there the crystal light glimmered like a false and gentle night sky. Towers of pale stone climbed toward that darkness, and the brick road shaped the ground with curves that went nowhere. Bridges of stone and rope-vine crossed between them, swaying ever so slightly though no wind stirred this deep below the earth. Terraced gardens spiraled down the cavern walls in great rings, their soil dark and rich. Lilly could not believe how much green was underneath with no sun. “How is this possible? Vegetation needs water and the light from the sun to survive. These must be special types of plants and grass.”
"It is beautiful," Lilly exclaimed, and this time the words did echo, rolling out across the vast space, as though the whole kingdom whispered her words back to her.
The frog led her down a winding stair carved directly into the cavern wall, past archways etched with the same mysterious symbols, past doorways that opened into homes untouched by dust or decay. Lilly peered into one such home as they passed and found a small table set with wooden bowls, as though a family had only just stepped away and might return any moment to finish their supper. A tiny loom stood in the corner, a half-finished cloth of blue and silver thread still stretched upon it, patient and unfinished. A kingdom from the past that had been perfectly preserved.
"Where did everyone go?" Lilly asked, and though the frog could not answer, she felt the question settle into her chest like a stone dropped into still water, sending ripples of wonder and worry through her thoughts. So many questions kept creeping into her head.
They passed a well at the center of what must have once been a market square, its water so clear and so cold that Lilly could see straight to the bottom, where pale stones glimmered like scattered coins. She knelt and drank from her cupped hands, and the water tasted of nothing but purity itself, cleaner than any well she had known above ground. “This place is perfect; why would anyone leave this place?” she said to herself.
Further on, she found storerooms carved into the rock, their shelves lined with clay jars sealed with wax, and though she dared not open them, she could see through cracks in a few that had broken that some held grains, dried and preserved beyond all reasonable measure, as though time itself had forgotten to touch them.
"This place could hold hundreds," Lilly whispered, and the truth of her own words struck her with such sudden force that she sat down upon the cold stone steps, her mind racing faster than her frightened heart. "Thousands, perhaps. There is water. There is food, or at least the bones of food that might yet be replanted. There is shelter enough for every soul in Eldoria, and walls of solid stone besides, walls that no army could easily breach, hidden below the very ground they marched upon." Lilly felt relieved, because once she got enlisted to fight for her kingdom, she felt like that was not her calling. She always liked to help people, not fight.
The frog, as though sensing the shift in her spirit, hopped up onto her knee and looked at her with an expression she could almost call proud, though frogs, of course, did not truly smile. Still, something in its eyes seemed to say: You understand now. You see what I have seen.
"But why?" Lilly asked, rising and walking further into the heart of the sanctuary, past towers and terraces, until she came upon a grand hall whose doors stood open upon a chamber larger than the King's own throne room above. Here, carved into the great stone archway, was a final inscription, larger and more elaborate than any she had yet seen. Rows of the strange symbols marched across the stone like a story frozen in time, and at their center was carved a great sun, half-risen, as though caught between setting and rising, unable to decide which way to go.
"What happened to you all?" Lilly asked the empty hall, and her voice trembled not with fear now, but with a tender kind of sorrow, the sort one felt for a stranger's grief long past. She reached out and touched the carved sun, half-expecting some magic to answer her, but the stone remained only stone, cool and silent beneath her fingers, its secrets locked away as surely as the kingdom itself had been locked away beneath the earth.
She did not know why the people had left, whether by choice or force, whether in fear or hope. Perhaps, she thought, that mystery was meant to be uncovered another day, by someone wiser than a frightened girl who had wandered here by following a frog through the forest. For now, there was a more pressing truth pressing upon her heart, insistent as a drumbeat.
This place could save them. Lilly kept thinking and knew the King would not just move here. We had all that fortune underneath the kingdom; it would be stupid to just let other kingdoms take it. This was up to the king, she thought. He would know what to do.
The tunnel behind her led back to Eldoria, to the war camps, to King Aldwin's chamber where he sat even now with the weight of his kingdom upon his shoulders. If she could find her way back, if she could make him believe what her own eyes had seen, then perhaps no battle would have to happen. Perhaps the King could keep his gentle heart intact and still save every soul who called Eldoria home.
"I must go back," Lilly said aloud, and though her voice shook, there was a new steadiness beneath the shaking, like a sapling that bends in the wind but does not break. "I must tell the King. Yes! That is what I must do."
The frog blinked once, slowly, and hopped toward the tunnel from which they had come, as if to say: Then let us go.
Lilly cast one final glance across the sleeping kingdom, at its silent towers and its swaying bridges, at its gardens waiting to bloom again and its wells still full of clean, sweet water. She thought of the family whose supper still sat waiting upon their table, of the weaver whose cloth remained forever half-finished, and she made a silent promise to them, whoever and wherever they now were, that she would not let this place remain forgotten.
Then she turned, gathered her courage as one gathers a cloak against the cold, and followed the frog back through the tunnel, back toward the light of the world above, back toward a King who did not yet know that hope had found him in the unlikeliest of forms: a frightened girl, a patient frog, and a kingdom that had been sleeping beneath the stars, waiting all along to be found.
End of Chapter 3
©2026 TaylorLeeMedia LLC and its affiliates. All rights reserved.
This short story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or real events is purely coincidental.
