Pandy’s awareness had shrunk to a flickering mote, nearly smothered beneath a dense cloud of Darkness. She struggled against it, but she was a moth, fluttering futilely as she roasted in the heat of the very flame she’d sought. Dimly, she was aware that Lady Ruth was no longer a threat, and if she made it through this, she was probably going to feel bad about that, but right now her emotions were little more than the fading light of a dying mind.
Until she saw Augustus. Augustus, who had believed her when anyone else would have laughed in her face, if they didn’t throw her in a dungeon. Augustus, who was kind to children and animals and even his elementals. Augustus, who said it had to be her or no one.
His glasses were perched rather precariously on his nose, avoiding a purpling bruise where he’d been struck in the face. His hair stood up in wild disarray, and his clothes were torn and stained. She wished she could say he still looked handsome to her, but the fact was that he would still be objectively handsome to anyone with eyes, because this was the world of Gacha Love, where everyone was unfairly pretty, even the men.
Pandy gasped in a breath, then curled forward around her empty belly. The hunger she felt wasn’t really physical, but she couldn’t clutch her psyche, so she settled for wrapping her arms around her abdomen. Her naked abdomen. While she hadn’t felt even a smidgen of embarrassment just a moment earlier, now she was all too aware that her alabaster skin was completely exposed.
Turning to her, something like concern passed over the other Demon’s face. “La-dy?” he asked, voice rasping and raw, coming from a throat that had never produced sound before.
Pandy shook her head, grabbing her waist-length black hair and pulling it over her shoulders as she looked around. Her throat threatened to close up as she saw Lady Ruth’s crumpled remains, but she skimmed over it, searching for the next threat. “Daedalus?” she croaked out. Her voice wasn’t as rough as the other Demon’s, but it wasn’t exactly molasses-smooth either.
“He ran when you appeared,” a deep voice replied, familiar and yet not. Pandy realized she’d never heard it with real ears before, and she craned her head to look up at Keros, who stood a full head taller than Augustus, and seemed entirely unaware that he was almost as naked as she was.
A few of Pandy’s former bosses had described her appearance as horrifying – usually after a run-in with a goose, an elephant, or three hundred pounds of rancid butter – but no one had ever actually run away from her before, so Pandy gave him a disbelieving look.
Keros sighed. “You are… not your usual self. I suggest you return to your body, and soon. I’m not there to hold it together anymore.”
Pandy’s eyes widened and she started to stand, realized she would flash everyone in the room if she did so, and remained in her awkward, hair-covered crouch instead. The other Demon shifted, drawing all eyes back to him. It? They looked like a boy, since Miller had had masculine features, but Pandy got the feeling Demons didn’t care much about gender identities.
“I… eat?” they said, somewhere between a statement and a question. They were looking at Bryan, who was staring down at his own ink-stained fingers and the open book in front of him. Thaniel and Lian’s father seemed completely befuddled, not even reacting as everyone turned to look at him.
“No,” Pandy said automatically, but she was squinting at Bryan. He had magic. There was no missing the not-light that didn’t-flow through his veins, collecting in the center of his chest. That… effervescence wasn’t any color Pandy recognized; certainly not the deep eggplant-black an essence stone emitted when it was filled with Dark magic, but there was no mistaking it. Augustus had it too, though his moved through his body differently from what she saw in Keros. Oddly, Bryan’s magic was leaving his body in a steady stream, not unlike what was happening to the Demon.
She didn’t even realize she’d stood until she felt Augustus’s tattered shirt settle around her shoulders. His coat was long gone, the shirt had holes – and its absence revealed bits of Augustus she’d never really had the opportunity to stare at before – but though she knew she’d probably regret it later, she didn’t take this chance to do so either. Instead, she looked at the magic in each of the occupants of the room.
If she assumed the burbling power that filled Augustus was strong but ‘normal’, then everyone else was seriously messed up. Keros’s magic blazed like a star, but it was locked into his chest, not traveling to his limbs at all. In fact, it looked like it was constantly being compressed, pressed inward like a piece of coal hoping to become a diamond.
Meanwhile, both the Demon and Bryan were in different states of power drain. Bryan had a collection of strong magic at his center, but it flowed out of him like water from a colander, vanishing the moment it broke the barrier of his skin. The Demon, on the other hand, was full of magic, but there was no gathering point within him. Instead, his entire body was evenly filled with Dark magic, which constantly seeped from him, reentering the atmosphere in an almost visible cloud.
Blinking, Pandy shook her head, which was when she saw… something else. Magic, but with no form her physical eyes could see. One of them was only a small collection of magic, the same indefinable shade of not-color that filled Augustus, flickering and spinning in the air near the chancellor. The other was stronger, brighter in a way that didn’t involve actual light, and it hung between Pandy and formerly-Miller, pulsing in agitation.
Pointing from one to the other, Pandy said, “Cieris and Zephra?”
Augustus’s eyebrows went up, and his glasses slid a little further down his swelling nose. “You can see them?”
“Yes? But no,” Pandy said, looking from them to the Demon. Why were they different? The two Air elementals seemed to have no trouble holding in their own magic, but the Demon leaked like an old battery.
A terrible pang shot through her, and Pandy curled around her belly again, though she didn’t allow her shaky legs to carry her all the way down into a crouch this time. She couldn’t afford to, because she wasn’t the only one feeling the terrible, undeniable Hunger. The miasma that had overtaken her folded up around her mind again, and she shuddered, looking at the small, filthy bundle of fur pinned to the table in front of Bryan. Bunny’s body was little more than bones and a few scraps of dry fur, and Pandy was suddenly certain that if she wanted to return to it, she needed to do so immediately. If only she knew how.
When she reached out her trembling hand, she realized that her skin was not only pale, but translucent. If ghosts were actually a thing in this world, she had to bear a fairly close resemblance to one. The other Demon looked much the same, the little color he’d started with draining away, as had the intelligence in his eyes. He was staring at Bryan Conroy with the look of a starving wolf that had just caught sight of a helpless fawn.
Before Pandy could come up with a better idea, she whirled, grasping the hilt of Lady Ruth’s knife in her hand. It threatened to literally slip through her fingers, but she tightened something that definitely wasn’t a muscle, and pulled it free from the sad pile of bunny bits. With her other hand, she grabbed a small mound of the powdered essence stone. Rather than throwing the powder, she thrust it directly inside the Demon, along with the knife. The elemental barely flinched at the passage of the blade, but when the stone set in the hilt touched him, he opened his mouth impossibly wide, resembling an Apparition as he released an unearthly howl.
Pandy stared around at the three men, who were all staring right back at her. “Help,” she said, stubbornly clinging to her two unlikely weapons, even as she felt herself being pulled into them, just like the other Demon, who looked like he was actually turning inside out.
To her complete astonishment, it was Bryan who saved her. Lunging from his seat, he took the knife from Pandy’s fading fist even as Augustus and Keros both pulled her backwards, away from the other Demon. The handful of essence stone fell down through the Demon’s body, scattering on the floor beneath him. It certainly wasn’t a tidy circle, but apparently it was good enough.
Bryan began to chant words in a guttural but not unpleasant language. He was doing something with the knife, too, but Pandy couldn’t see what it was, because Keros kept tugging on her arm even as Augustus tried to pull her into his embrace.
Keros snorted. “Hugs later. Rabbit now.” He hauled on Pandy again, and this time Augustus released her. Pandy found herself thrown across the wooden table in a very indecorous manner. She flailed, trying to sit up even as Keros held her down, but then something pressed hard against her back, and she stilled. There were only a few things on this table: the book and supplies Bryan had been using, and a dried up bunny body. That wasn’t a book pushing against her spine.
Leaning down, Keros stared fiercely into her face. “Heal yourself, Pandora. Heal yourself, or die. And this time, there’s no idiot god waiting to send you to your next life.”
Pandy closed her eyes, allowing her body to relax into the small pile of fragile bones. <Dark Restoration.> Then, after a moment’s consideration, added, <Minor Heal Pandy.> Maybe it would help?
At first she thought it wasn’t going to work. Wasn’t going to do anything. She thought the commands again, then spoke the words aloud, then began to chant it, over and over again as her rasping Demon voice started to fade. Finally, faint words appeared in the air in front of her, barely visible even in the darkness behind her eyelids.
Dark Restoration failed.
Insufficient Corruption Points remaining.
Minor Heal failed.
Cannot restore more than 15% of total body mass.
-Inor Heal failed.
Öt restore more tþan 15% of total body mæss.
այnor Heal failed.
Ĉannot rᴇᵴᵗṏre more than δεκαπέντε% of
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# System Call Initiated.
# Buffering.
...
def invoke_reset(caster):
try:
drift = getattr(caster, "state_vector", 0)
anchor = getattr(caster, "last_observed_state", drift)
if drift < anchor:
CustodianChannel.deliver("ΣΤΑΘΕΡΟΣ: interference detected")
caster.echo_resonance = (anchor - drift) or 1
CustodianChannel.deliver("ΔΕΜΣΕQ: requesting custodial reconciliation")
CustodianChannel.deliver("ΔΕΜΣΕQ: apply pending baseline revisions")
except Exception:
CustodianChannel.deliver("MITOS: synchronization deferred")
Pandy’s not-eyes crossed, and a slightly cranky-looking face appeared in the air in front of her. It was Ismara, and she was definitely trying to say something. What was it? The goddess’s lips shaped each sound in slow, exaggerated motions, and Pandy finally caught on.
“Heal, Pandy,” she croaked, and light flooded from her body, blindingly brilliant, while also not exactly visible. Augustus and Keros’s hair lifted, floating like they were underwater, an effect that was particularly noticeable on the god’s shoulder-length blonde tresses. For an instant, Pandy thought she could see their bones through their skin, and then she went pop. Literally.
There was a sound like the largest bubble ever had just burst, and the tower actually trembled, each stone reacting individually to the noise. Mortar crumbled from between them, and Pandy had a bad feeling that it would take more than a little elbow grease to make the building usable again. Augustus and Keros looked up, and then Augustus scooped Pandy into his arms, clutching her to his bare chest as he turned and ran for the door.
Pandy couldn’t see what Keros and Bryan did, but she also couldn’t do anything about it, because she was more exhausted than she had ever been in either of her lives. Frankly, she counted it as a win that her eyes were still open, and she wasn’t floating in that empty space where other non-physical beings kept bothering her.
She caught glimpses of the walls as Augustus bounded down the stairs, clinging to the inside of the stairwell as the outside walls began to disintegrate, whole chunks simply vanishing without bothering to check if that was how physics was meant to work. Once, she felt him stumble, and he cursed as he hit the wall hard, fumbling a step for some reason she couldn’t see.
Then they were past, and around, and down, and her chancellor burst out into the open air, where they found themselves surrounded by the further sounds of battle. Somehow, Pandy managed to lift her head, peering over Augustus’s protective forearm, and saw several soldiers, each looking grimly determined, and none of them unharmed, battling against a small horde of Apparitions and shambling undead. Ah, yes, now this was what she’d been expecting.
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