Book 7, Chapter Sixteen – A Bunfortunate Turn of Events

There was something familiar about the voice, but Pandy had run into more than her share of bad people recently, and most of the good people were back in the library, locked in more certainly than any key could manage. So, rather than waiting for whoever was up there to do something all of them would regret, she eyeballed the trailing roots that had emerged from the ceiling overhead.

She wasn’t sure exactly when it had shifted from smooth stone to a combination of smooth dirt and rocks, but now that half a tree was dangling through it, it was pretty obvious. Illumination filtered down through the fine tendrils and the drifting dust, flickering with an unusually clear light, without the reddish glow of fire.

Giving a hard push with her back paws, Pandy thought, <Hop!> and rocketed straight upwards, blowing through roots like a supermodel throwing back her hair as she emerged from the sea. She struck something sharp and metallic – a knife? – that sliced across her chest. Someone gasped, and the metallic thing thudded to the ground.

-12 LF

It was deep night, and Pandy had excellent vision in the dark, but when a brilliant strobe light went off, she was as blind as the next rabbit, ricocheting off of what felt like the bark of a tree, and probably was.

-5 LF

Blinking back blotches of black, Pandy shook her head, spinning in place as she tried to locate and identify her assailant. She heard the scrape of metal on rock as whatever struck her was picked up, and dodged to the side, rolling in anticipation of an attack that never came.

A brief scuffle sounded, with someone grunting softly, followed by Augustus’s voice saying, “What in the-?” There was another flash, which Pandy fortunately had her eyes closed for, since she’d determined that blindness was better than the distraction of unreliable vision, and the first voice spoke again, much clearer now that she was on the same side of the earth with it.

“Tempest, stop it! Look, I’m fine.” A person who sounded just like Isidor said, except that there was a note of… affection in his voice? He didn’t sound stiff or angry or even offended, and the very faint accent she’d noticed when they first met was stronger again. Had he been suppressing it this entire time?

“What’re you doing here, Isidor?” Augustus asked, confirming the boy’s identity even as Pandy used Minor Heal and found that it helped her vision as well.

Minor Heal successful.

Healed Pandora for 17 LF.

Eighteen more uses to  level 28.

Let him whack you with the shovel a few more times, why don’t you?

Pandy blinked a bit at this last line. It had been a while since the System was snarky with her, and this really did feel snarky, not just ‘helpful’ to the point of injury. Now wasn’t the time to wonder why her System was pouting, though, not when Augustus and Isidor were helping a filthy Empress Glory climb out of what looked like a ragged sinkhole filled with trailing roots.

Isidor hit a root with his shovel, which was probably what Pandy had smacked into on her way out of the hole, and the woody tendril released Glory’s hair, freeing the woman so she could finish climbing out of the hole. With a thunk, Isidor drove the blade of the shovel into the dirt and dragged a dirty hand across an equally dirty face. “Professor Beeswick kicked me out of the Kestrel library almost four hours ago. He told me to come here and dig a hole.” The boy pointed down into the ragged pit, then dug into his shirt pocket and withdrew a bedraggled piece of paper, which he handed to Augustus.

“And you’ve been digging ever since?” Empress Glory asked, staring at Isidor, who looked like he’d been dragged backward through the woods by a team of wild horses. “That man is a menace. Needs to be replaced.” She set her fists on her hips and shook her head, eyeing Isidor with what Pandy was coming to recognize as an expression of concern. She didn’t seem to want to admit to caring about anyone or anything, but she had spent enough time with both Isidor and Eleanor that she definitely wasn’t indifferent to either of them.

Reminded, Pandy cast Minor Heals all around, healing Augustus for three points, Glory for five, and Isidor for thirteen. The only one who seemed intact was Tempest, who was in one of her larger tortoise forms, standing almost three feet tall and sending sparks flying from her shell every time she moved. Well, Tempest and the yet-unnamed Tenebron, who Pandy could still sense, but could no longer see. The soft, occasionally eyeball-laden and giggling shape had vanished from Glory’s torso, though it was definitely still there somewhere.

Fifteen uses remain to level 28.

Or you could hit them with the shovel.

That would work, too.

<I’m not hitting my friends!> Pandy thought back, finally pushed past her limit. It was one thing to suggest injuring herself for levels, but quite another to suggest harming someone else.

Why not?

You’d heal them right away.

They’d understand.

The others were still talking, but Pandy wasn’t listening anymore. Instead, she stared at the pale letters that stained the clear night air. <Who are you?> she asked, suddenly certain that she wasn’t just talking to her silly, sulky, over-helpful System anymore.

You know who I am, Pandora.

And I know who you are.

Oh. She didn’t like that at all. But Augustus said, “-right, Rabbit?” and she focused on him as the ominous words faded from her peripheral vision.

Pandy was still in her grimy, grubby, even grungy bunny form, and she had no doubt she looked like nothing so much as a ball of dryer lint someone had dropped, kicked beneath the dryer, and forgotten about until the house burned down. Also, she needed to be able to speak and, more importantly, she needed to know if she could still transform at all, so she thought, <Cast Shifting Faces.>

Shifting Faces successful.

02:47:18 remaining today.

Four uses remain to level 11.

And that was it. No cruel thoughts, no sinister foreshadowing, just the world shrinking around her as she expanded up into her Eurydice form. “What?” she asked, her voice cracking on the end of the word.

Augustus’s eyes narrowed and he removed his glasses, reaching into his pocket to pull out a startlingly white handkerchief, which he used to clean the lenses while watching Pandy. Isidor just gave her his trademark exasperated glare – so he really was Isidor, and not a doppelganger, that was probably good – and said, “We’re only about half a mile from the house. We can be there in less than ten minutes, but we should get going. It’s almost two o’clock in the morning, but someone has to have noticed the lights and-”

He gestured to the tree whose roots he’d disturbed in his efforts. It was canted at a solid twenty degrees to one side, and while it wasn’t an enormous tree, it was more than tall enough to stand out against the moonlit sky.

“Let’s go then,” Glory said, hefting her pack up onto her back as she peered around. Apparently sighting some landmark, she started heading to the right at a surprisingly brisk pace. Isidor stared after her for just a moment, then shrugged and leaned down to pick up Tempest, who shrank down so she could fit in his hand. To Pandy’s surprise, Isidor cradled the tortoise to his chest rather than stuffing her into a pocket as he hurried after Glory.

Augustus replaced his noticeably cleaner glasses onto his nose, immediately smudging them again. He didn’t seem to notice, however, instead extending an elbow toward Pandy so she could tuck her hand through it, as if they were on a stroll through a garden on some pleasant spring day. That image was immediately belied by the rapid pace he set, and he bent his head toward her as he said, “What happened?”

Pandy hesitated only briefly, then shook her head. “I don’t know,” she murmured. “I told you about my System. The things it says sometimes to try to get me to use it?” He nodded, and she told him about the unsettling exchange she’d just had with a bunch of letters floating in the air. Honestly, right up until the part where it said it knew who she was, it all sounded a bit ridiculous. The System made absurd suggestions fairly regularly, and it was hard to say why this particular one had bothered her so much, even from the beginning.

Augustus hummed thoughtfully, then said, “Kappa… His magic created your System, didn’t it?”

She grimaced. “And caused a lot of the other things that have been happening, yes.” Though all in all, it wasn’t entirely a bad thing, was it? Yes, the magic started out trying to murder Thaniel, and that definitely wasn’t good, but it also gave Pandy all of her stats and magic, as well as creating the dungeons and items she remembered from Gacha Love. Unless all of that was Ismara? Honestly, Pandy had kind of lost track of whose fault all of this was.

“But he’s not, ah, what he was anymore, is he?” Augustus persisted. “His spell has taken on a life of its own, and the other two… are still around. Ismara and-”

Zheraphon. She shivered as the name passed through her mind, even her brain hamsters freezing in their wheel as if hoping the word wouldn’t see them. Keros said he could hear her thoughts pretty much all the time, so if… if someone else was in her mind, could they…?

The only sound was their footsteps on the cobbles of the street as they hurried through the chill night air. With each breath, a puff of cloud formed in front of Augustus, and they passed through it with the next step. No such evidence of vitality touched the air in front of Pandy’s face. She wasn’t that alive then. Not yet.

“You think Kappa’s presence was… protecting me?” Pandy finally asked, as they turned a corner and caught sight of two shivering figures standing in the empty street before a looming hulk of a house. The twisted trees were losing what leaves they’d had, and the broken front doors were clearly visible, hanging open like the gaping maw of an eel in a hole, patiently waiting for its prey to draw near enough to strike.

“You said he was using his own influence to hide himself. But it makes sense that in doing so, he concealed you as well. With him no longer present, you may now be far more visible. And we already suspect that the Dark god has found a way to insinuate himself into Clara’s System. Why not yours as well?” Augustus asked, his hand coming to rest on her own, where it clung to his elbow. His fingers were cold.

“Do you really think he can find me?” Pandy asked, starting to pull away. If Zheraphon really did know where she was, no place was safe. Worse, anyone near her was in danger as well.

Augustus tightened his grip. Pandy could have pulled away if she really wanted to, but she froze when he said, “Do you think he would have left Clara alone if he knew where she was and could do anything about it?”

“No,” Pandy admitted.

Augustus turned, pulling her into him. His lips were as warm as his fingers were cold when they pressed to hers. The contact lasted only a second, then he pulled back and rested his forehead against hers. “He only knows what you allow him to know: what the System tells him, and what you say. Ismara herself said they could only act directly through their agents. Don’t allow him to make you do or say something you’ll regret, and soon enough this will all be over. We hold more than half of the pieces in this game, and we can win it if you don’t allow him to shake your confidence.”

Confidence? Pandy almost snorted in derision, but realized Augustus was right. They could defeat this absolute schmuck of a god, and free Lian and Ismara, and maybe even get Keros his godly powers back. All it would take was some luck and a large helping of complete and total nonsense, and if there was one thing Pandy was really good at, it was nonsense.

“Come on. You can make kissy faces at each other when we’re not freezing to death,” Glory hissed, practically dancing in place as she rubbed her hands up and down her arms. She was slightly blue beneath the dirt and lingering traces of red lipstick, and Isidor didn’t look like he was doing much better, even though he’d produced a heavy coat from somewhere.

Pandy stepped away from Augustus, ignoring the twinkle in his eye as she strode between Glory and Isidor. She got worryingly close to Tempest as she did so, but for once the tortoise didn’t try to bite or electrocute her, so either elemental turtles didn’t like the cold any more than their more mundane variants, or the terrapin didn’t hate Pandy quite as much as she used to, which was a nice thought. Probably wrong, but still nice.

“All right,” she said, wincing only slightly as the gate screeched, announcing their arrival to absolutely anyone within hearing distance. Pandy tried to channel some of that brief moment of confidence as she made her way up the front walk, which was in even worse condition than it had been before the Battle for Avington House. “Let’s go see an elemental about a secret.”