Lucky Rabbit

The silence became extremely awkward as Pandy considered her answer. After all, the truth was that yes, that was exactly what she was here for. In fact, that was basically the unspoken law of videogames. The ancient king/mage/god whose tomb/tower/temple you were there to raid hadn’t looked into the future, said, ‘Ah, this fellow seems like a nice chap, I’m going to leave all my goodies to them’, and then gone off to die.

No, lairs and dungeons were there to be plundered, and the things thus plundered had almost universally belonged to someone who was too dead to give permission when the player got there. Eventually, Pandy cleared her throat and said, “No?” thus proving that players – even the nice ones – couldn’t be trusted.

The dark, looming curl of the Apparition shifted away from her, taking his cool and comforting aura with him. For whatever reason, Nox and Nyssa didn’t have a Dark Aura, which was something else that would probably be very edifying when it was finally explained, but in this form he did at least bring that pleasant, air-conditioner feel with him.

Somewhat to Pandy’s disappointment, Nox shrank into himself, solidifying and filling out until he was no longer two-dimensional. As he did, the cool feeling faded with him, and Pandy was left in the dry lab air, sniffing this world’s version of formaldehyde.

“Only Lord Avington’s true heir may claim the necklace,” Nox told her, the black, expressionless pits of his eyes fixed on Pandy.

Tentatively, she raised her hand. “Um, isn’t that what the contract was for? And the-” She wiggled her hips and mimed slashing with two knives, mimicking the battle in which she’d defeated the ‘ghost’ of General Avington, who had probably also been Nox.

“No,” said Nox.

Pandy waited, but it seemed that was all she was going to get. Finally, she cleared her throat and said, “I do need money to repair the house, and the necklace is worth-”

“No,” the Apparition said again, and this time his voice was even colder than his Corruption Pointless aura.

Pandy tucked her hands behind her back like a scolded child. She bit her lip, glancing back at the house of horrors through which she’d so recently hopped. Well, it looked like she came down here for nothing, and that was really sad. And gross.

“Psst,” came a hissing whisper, and Pandy finally saw the dark, wispy, head-shaped protuberance coming from Nox’s side. Nyssa’s face was stretched into an expression that looked entirely unnatural with her bottomless orifices. She was smiling.

“You should read the book,” she told Pandy, tilting her head-bump toward the one on the desk as Nox continued to ignore her presence. That is, there was no way he could have actually missed the fact that Nyssa was there, could he? But he continued to glare at Pandy, without even a flicker of what passed as his eyes.

Okaaaay. But didn’t the book also belong to dead people? In fact, there were a great number of things in this room that had to count as the personal property of the dead. It didn’t get much more personal than somebody’s spleen-in-a-jar.

With great care, Pandy lifted the – surprisingly heavy – lid of the coffin and set it back in place, half-expecting that either Nox or the corpse would grab her at any moment. General Avington remained inert, however, and Nox actually drifted backwards a bit further, which would have been much less disconcerting if Nyssa hadn’t remained still, which resulted in her head protruding from his chest.

Without looking away from Nox and Nyssa, Pandy reached behind her for the relatively innocuous book that lay on the desk. “I’ll just, um, take… this…” It vanished into her Inventory, and Nox didn’t twitch, though Nyssa’s maw opened in what was probably meant as an encouraging smile. Pandy took another step toward her previous Spark, which still hung in the air a bit down the path between the shelves.

“Yep. Glad we had this chat,” she said, “but I really need to just-” She stuck one finger up on each side of her head like rabbit ears, and when neither Apparition responded, thought, <Cancel Shifting Faces.> By the time her vision steadied, both Apparitions were gone. She really wished they’d stop doing that.

Feeling defeated – but not de-feeted – Pandy hopped back through the shelves lined with jars. Entirely against her will, however, she found her eyes drawn to the tiny labels, especially on the jars with the bits she found the most unidentifiable. She’d never done particularly well in biology, possibly because her luck and labs had resulted in any number of fires, chemical spills, and flying frog fragments.

Pausing in front of a jar containing a peacefully floating nose, Pandy looked at the label, then the one on a jar of what looked like a toe, but was called a ‘hallux’. There were definitely two different writing styles involved – both neat and easily read, but different in ways she couldn’t define without words like ‘loopier’ and ‘crossier’, which would probably make a handwriting expert tear out their hair.

In as much as Pandy had thought about it at all, she had assumed some individual Lord or Lady Avington had been a few cards short of a deck. No one chopped up other people and jarred them like pickles unless they were at least as loopy as the handwriting on the jar of Hallux. But here was evidence that at least two people had done exactly that. Glancing around, Pandy counted what looked like at least three other handwriting samples, including one that was drawn over what looked like the faded remnants of the original words. So this had been going on for a long time, and was the work of many people. Extra bonus ick.

Her first Spark had gone out by the time she reached where it should have been, but she didn’t bother to recast it. The faint light from the nearest flickering flame, along with her bunny eyes, allowed her to see the shape of the narrow steps, and she hopped up until she emerged into the peaceful, sunlit office, its primarily white decor painted by the beautiful colors of the stained glass windows.

Only after kicking the bookshelf closed behind her did Pandy sprawl on the carpet, legs splayed and ears flopped. That had been both better and worse than she feared, but the most important thing was that it had been a miserable failure. She had completely failed to get General Avington’s Medal, which was a game item that could either be sold for four hundred and eighty gold or given to Prince Aiden for a significant boost in his Affection. Pandy had no particular interest in buttering up the prince, but she could definitely use almost five hundred gold.

<Kappa?> she asked, wishing once again that she had someone to talk to about all of this. <Are you back yet?> She knew he wasn’t. Besides the fact that her System had returned to the same unhelpful, uninteresting version she’d started with – though thankfully the behind-the-scenes changes Keros had made had stuck – there was a strange emptiness in her head.

She paused at that thought, knowing that if Keros could hear her at all, he would have commented on just how empty her head was, but no text filled her vision. She sighed, sinking even further into the thick rug, and thought, <Inventory.> She might as well see what she’d gotten.

Slot One – Small blue book of unknown age and origin, entitled Notes from the Far Side of Dawn: A Primer on Dark Magic

Slot Two – Unknown Pink Summoning Pearls (Qty: 3)

Slot Three – Faded Tome. Untitled. Found in the Research Lab in Avington House.

The first thing Pandy’s eyes were drawn to was not the book, but the contents of Slot Two. The pearls from Aglaea had been sitting in her Inventory for so long that she’d almost forgotten about them. Now, not only was one missing, but they were called ‘Summoning’ Pearls, rather than ‘Unknown Unknown’ Pearls. Had Pandy accidentally used one to call Aglaea here? Was that why the goddess had come in spite of the fact that she was obviously frightened? Could Pandy use one of these to force Aglaea to come when she called? Why would the goddess have given something like that to a puny transmigrator her boyfriend had almost accidentally stuck in a rabbit? Pandy had no doubt that that was exactly what Aglaea had done. In spite of her efforts to seem air-headed and fluffy, the goddess was extremely intelligent.

Producing one of the pearls, Pandy rolled it around beneath her paw. It was beautiful, there was no doubt of that – vaguely elongated, cast in a shimmering shell pink that seemed to have its own internal light source, it glistened as it passed between the strands of the carpet. But try as she might, Pandy couldn’t see anything magical about it other than its luminescent shine. Should she try calling Aglaea again, just to see if it worked the way she thought it did? Probably not a good idea, given the way the goddess hurried away.

With a thought, Pandy swapped the pearl for the Faded Tome. As the description said, there was no title on the cover or spine, and when she opened to the front page, there was no author, either. No surprise, really. Who would want to lay claim to anything found down there? Well, except Pandy, but that was only because she was short on funds and materials to repair the house.

Speaking of which, could she put all the jars into the Big Book and use the glass and the wood the shelves were made of? It would be a very efficient method of getting rid of the evidence of past misdeeds, though she would be concerned about anything produced by the book from those materials. What if she someday needed bone china for something? Did that have real bones in it? No? Well, it would when she made it.

Feeling a little green, she turned a few more pages, coming to the first entry. There was no convenient explanation, written in a serial-killer scrawl, only tidy columns of what looked like numbers, dates, body parts, and names – presumably of the donor or victim, whichever they had been. The first entries were the usual sorts of things: brains, eyes, hearts, hands. As she turned the pages, however, the objects being… studied? became smaller and more precise. The fingernail of the left pointer finger. A philtrum, which she was pretty sure was part of the lip. Uvulas and olecranon and something called a mylohyoid filled the later pages.

And then it stopped.

As she drew closer to the end of the book, the ink had gone from faded to near illegibility to dark and clear, and the paper itself had changed several times, making Pandy wonder if this one book was actually made up of a number of older books. This idea was supported by the changes in handwriting, with each new ‘author’ starting on a fresh page, often with wobbly, uncertain letters that steadied as they went on.

The final few pages were crisp white paper, with ink so blue that it would have looked black in any but the bright light that filtered through the clear lower panes of the windows. Unlike most of their predecessors, the writer started with a firm hand.

To Whom It May Concern,

I hope this missive finds you well in mind and body, and that the Avington name has been cleansed by the actions I am about to take. Long ago, our ancestor, General Preston Avington, stole something that did not belong to him, thus allowing Nora to bring an end to the war begun by Mad King Lawrence. Trusting no one else not to be tempted by what it offered, Nora left this object to him. Forgotten, it was buried with him, and when it was, our power, too, began to fade.

Generations of Avingtons grew weaker and more desperate, desiring nothing more than the mortal power and wealth that remained ever beyond their grasp. One such began the research which resulted in the monstrosities you see around you. Year by year, death by death, they attempted to find the source of magic. What made one person more powerful than another? What determines the elemental affinity of a human being? Is it possible to change that affinity by manipulating the flesh?

The results were many, but first and foremost was madness. Those who participated in this ‘research’ inevitably shifted from using volunteers or the bodies of those who died naturally to acquiring subjects who did not participate willingly. This is the legacy of Avington House, and today it ends.

I am going to the king with what I know. I can only hope he will recognize that I knew nothing of this until my brother’s untimely death, when I became the head of the Avington family. Perhaps our ill-gained knowledge can be turned to better use, wiping clean at least some of the blood spent to acquire it.

May Ismara watch over me and the innocent members of our house, those few who remain. In Her name, I am,

Lord Philip Avington

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