Lucky Rabbit

Pandy had almost become used to the blackness that came whenever she stretched her Mana or her body too far. It wasn’t soothing, because knowing that she’d once again effectively killed herself wasn’t exactly a comforting factoid, but it wasn’t terrifying anymore.

What was terrifying was the knowledge that she wasn’t alone. This wasn’t actually new either, but somehow she knew the thing with her wasn’t Keros. It also wasn’t the angry, hungry, spiky thing that had tried to force her out of her rabbit body at the very beginning of this misadventure, so there was that. No, this thing just focused on her, and she thought she finally knew what a tardigrade must feel like when it found itself beneath a microscope. Since that wasn’t a feeling she’d ever wanted to have, she wasn’t at all disappointed when light broke the darkness after what felt like a few dozen lifetimes.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t either bright, natural sunshine or the soft, persistent magical glow that seemed to come standard in most of the buildings in this world. No, this was the intense, blue light of a screen. It filtered around something that Pandy took a few moments to recognize as a head, tilted to one side so it rested against the owner’s fist. At least Pandy hoped the head and the fist belonged to the same person, because if not, this could get awkward.

“Well?” a feminine voice said, the head lifting as the hand dropped away. The sound of rapid typing reached Pandy, but the speaker didn’t turn to look at her. The clicking of keys continued, far faster than Pandy’s pathetic hunt and peck. Her electronics never lasted long enough for her to become proficient with them, other than her phablet, which had a touchscreen and was replaced regularly, thanks to phone insurance plans.

When it became obvious that the person wasn’t going to stop typing or say anything else, Pandy cleared her throat and said, “What?”

A sigh. “Well, aren’t you going to ask me any questions?”

Pandy shifted uncomfortably. “You seem busy. I didn’t want to interrupt.”

The clicking finally stopped, as a hand slapped against the… table? Desk? The light of the screen wasn’t that bright, and no matter how Pandy squinted, she couldn’t make out anything other than the shadowy shape of the person’s head. They turned, the light briefly outlining a fairly standard brow ridge, nose, and jaw. The hair was short, up, or nonexistent, and none of the features seemed out of place or super-sized, so it was a very generic sort of profile, and not helpful at all in identifying the person.

“You’re a lot like your father, you know,” the person said. It didn’t sound like a compliment.

“I don’t have a father,” Pandy corrected automatically, as she’d done a hundred times during her school career.

“Of course you do,” the person said, their voice going oddly gentle. “A mother, too. One who loved you very much.”

As usual in places like this – if it could be described with a word as definite as ‘place’ – Pandy didn’t really have a body, much less a need to breathe, but she felt herself choke anyway. “You know who my parents are?”

The person chuckled. “I know who everyone’s parents are, Pandora.” The light from the screen flashed, briefly illuminating an oddly familiar female profile. The blue light washed out the woman’s coloration, rendering her in grayscale. She looked tired. Exhausted, really, but the gently teasing curve of her smile was no less warm for the shadows beneath her eyes and cheekbones.

“Ismara?” Pandy managed, her brain-hamster latching onto the name like the last kernel of corn in the can.

Ismara nodded, her smile gone. “Find me, Pandy. Soon.”

The glare of light came again, but this time it wasn’t from the screen, but from all around them. This light didn’t reveal any more of Ismara’s face or body, however. Instead, the image of the goddess vanished, a dream washed away by the light of day.

“In Ismara’s name, be Cleansed!” A deep, booming voice made Pandy wince, which in turn made the already-firm object against which she laid tense up. Couldn’t they have found her a more comfortable pillow?

A flash of brilliance burned through Pandy’s eyelids, scouring them straight off her eyeballs, and she curled up, whimpering. Two hard bands tightened around her, lifting and moving her as a shadow came between her and the light.

“Hold on, Rabbit,” came Augustus’s low, urgent murmur. “I can’t take you out of here just yet, and Light magic doesn’t play nicely with Dark.”

She managed to groan, burrowing into what she now realized was Augustus’s chest. It was much wider than she would have expected, so she must be a rabbit. That tended to happen when she overextended herself, so it wasn’t all that surprising, or wouldn’t be, when she had room to be surprised by anything again.

<Minor Heal, Sir Bailey,> she thought as at least one of her brain cells came online. Then, perhaps a bit belatedly, <Minor Heal, me. Kappa, was that real?>

Minor Heal successful.

Healed Sir Bailey for 20 HP.

Minor Heal failed.

That’s not what this spell is for.

What?

What just happened?

Pandora, you went offline.

Way, way offline.

You gained another point of Life Force, and then you just… went away.

The words scurried across Pandy’s mental vision – she didn’t dare try to open her eyes just yet, if her eyelids had even regrown yet – with an urgency she rarely saw from Keros. <Minor Heal, Sir Bailey,> she thought again, then, <Did you have to do the thing where you keep my body from going splootch?>

Minor Heal successful.

Healed Sir Bailey for 20 HP.

Ah, no.

Mainly because it was too late.

Your lover gathered you up, and you just now restored enough of yourself to be more than a pile of parts.

Ew. That wasn’t good, but on a scale of ‘someone she knew and cared about was dying’ to ‘Squirrel!’ this was more on the squirrel side, though not by much. Augustus knew she fell apart easily, though Louisa and Kaden were probably a little disturbed. Assuming they even paid attention to what was going on with Pandy when Sir Bailey was bleeding out in front of them. Honestly, Pandy couldn’t blame them if they hadn’t. She didn’t even have enough bandwidth to argue about the word ‘lover’ in regard to Augustus, even though she knew she’d probably explode with embarrassment later.

<Minor Heal, Sir Bailey,> Pandy thought again, even as the Extremely Loud voice that had been exhorting the Darkness to Vacate rose to a freshly feverish pitch, and the light intensified again. Augustus was protecting Pandy with his body, and she could feel a wind in her fur that shouldn’t have been there if they were still inside, so she would be willing to bet at least one of his elementals was helping as well.

Minor Heal successful.

Healed Sir Bailey for 20 HP.

You’re almost out of Mana again, Pandora.

You need to stop.

Oh. That explained why she felt like she was lighter. Had her legs fallen off again? Augustus didn’t comment, but then, he might not even be able to tell, given how tightly he was holding her.

<Minor…> What was she doing? Something important. Why was the light so bright? And who was yelling? Did someone forget to turn off the neon sign for the bar across the street again? <Corruption.> Oh, now she was getting somewhere. Come on, brain hamsters! <Minor Heal, Sir Bailey. Use Corruption Points.>

Minor Heal successful.

Healed Sir Bailey for 18 HP.

PANDORA.

Keros was shouting again. It was never good when Keros shouted. But it was good when the other shouting shouter stopped shouting, which he had. And that was good. Wasn’t it?

“That’s all I can do,” a hoarse, exhausted voice said as the light faded. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty. I don’t know if I stopped it in time. This was a powerful curse.”

Beneath whatever was left of Pandy’s body, Augustus’s chest jerked in an aborted sob. She pried her eyes open, staring up through a haze at his face, which was twisted in anguish. She wanted to hold him. He needed her, and she was… what? A rabbit with no legs? What good was a girlfriend like that?

His jaw flexed, and one arm shifted around her, his hand appearing as it removed his tear-streaked glasses, sliding them into his pocket cache. The hand descended to Pandora’s head, improbably gentle fingers stroking her fur as he gave a final sniff before putting what she was beginning to think of as his boss-face back on. His eyes went cold and his expression impassive, though she could feel the tension in every muscle of his body.

Standing, Augustus tucked Pandy into one side of his coat, so only her nose and eyes poked out. Well, hopefully all the other important bits in between as well, though there was no guarantee of that. “Will she wake? I need to know what happened,” he said, his voice only a little rougher than usual.

Given the booming nature of the voice, Pandy had expected the exhorter to be a large man, but the person she saw looked more like a middle-aged cherub. Everything about him was round, and she guessed that in happier times his cheeks would be rosy and his eyes bright. Right now, he looked almost as tired as Ismara.

Ismara!

<I saw Ismara!> Pandy said, feeling her ears stand up as she came to her paws. She was at least mostly intact, then.

Where?

Did you speak to her?

Did she tell you how to reach her?

The cherub’s deep voice was stiff as he said, “I’m sorry, Lord Blackwood, but I don’t know. I’ve never seen such a virulent curse. They’re usually minor things, sometimes even accidental – the result of annoying a Dark mage or low-tier elementalist who isn’t even aware they’ve done anything. This was… something else entirely.”

Augustus growled a response even as Pandy answered Keros. <She knows who my parents are. My mother loved me. Oh. Loved. Past tense.> Pandy felt a stab of loss for a woman she’d never known, and who she’d spent twenty-four – twenty-five? – years believing had abandoned her without regret. That wasn’t what was important right now though. <Ismara was typing. On a computer. She told me to find her, but she didn’t say how. It seemed urgent.>

Of course it’s urgent.

We have less than eight months to save Ismara and convince her to lie to the High God.

Under oath.

My magic has gone rogue, people are dying, and my girlfriend is probably dating my worst enemy.

Pandy had a feeling she knew which of those Keros was most upset about. <Do you think Ismara is the person who created that module? The one that keeps giving me Life Force? But how would the goddess of a fantasy world even know how to code?>

You’d be surprised what a god can do when they set their minds to it, Pandora.

The words were so dry Pandy thought her eyeballs might crack.

So nothing helpful then?

<Just that she knew my parents. Which isn’t really helpful, is it?> Pandy asked.

“We must go, Your Majesty, Your Highness,” Augustus said, bowing so Pandy pressed into the arm holding her. “I won’t allow Sir Bailey’s… I won’t allow this to be in vain. I know who the traitor is now, and with every moment that passes, it becomes less likely that I will be able to retrieve Bryan Conroy alive.”

“Go,” Queen Louisa snapped, her voice almost as cool as Augustus’s. “Stop him, and bring this whole debacle to an end. We’ll take care of Lady Bailey. Oh, and Augustus?”

“My queen?”

“Be careful. There has been enough blood today.”

…

Actually, that might be incredibly important.

Most World Gods are jealous of their worlds, and all the beings on them.

Your World God is one of the worst I’ve seen.

They even keep the souls of their people to themselves.

I didn’t even question it when I first met you, but when I went back to look into your death more closely, I realized yours is a quarantine world.

No outside interference allowed.

Your soul should have been sent to the afterlife selected by your god, or else returned to start over on that same world.

<A perfectly normal truck ran me over, and then I showed up in your garden,> Pandy said, startled by the idea that there was anything unusual about her death. Never mind that, though. <And you didn’t think to mention this?>

It was done.

I assumed your former god made a mistake.

It happens to the best of us.

Yes, especially when the ‘best’ had been interrupted in the middle of their exercise routine, was worried about his maybe-ex girlfriend, and had to use the little gods’ room. <What do you think now?>

Augustus said something that Pandy missed, then he was moving. A door opened, closed, and distantly she realized that he was running.

I think we may have been looking at this all wrong from the very beginning.

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