Lucky Rabbit

That night, Pandy sat beneath Thaniel’s bed, staring at her array of treasures. Thanks to the fact that she retained ten minutes of ‘human-time’ after reading to Thaniel and Geraldine, she’d finally been able to retrieve everything she left in Ms. Wellington’s office, and open all of the containers. She still had a precious sixty seconds left, which she planned to use to reorganize once she was done looking everything over.

First, of course, was the most obvious: money. She had a few copper and silver pieces left over from buying her shoes and some gifts for the children, but she wasn’t really certain what they were worth. While Gacha Love used the lower-value coins for things like buying food at festivals, that money just ‘appeared’, as it was assumed in the game that either Clara or her companion would have such small amounts. That meant there was never any change to help her determine how many copper pieces made up a silver, and how many of the little silver coins made up a gold.

So, Pandy had a pile of fourteen copper circles, each one in varying states of disrepair. As happened so often with pennies in her former life, a few even looked like they had been run over by something, and were nearly unrecognizable as coins. Six thin silver pieces sat next to the mound of copper, neatly stacked and nearly perfect. After that came six towers of ten gold coins each, which had been in the bag ‘Ms. Wellington’ was paid by the Shadow who visited her in the carriage. She had no idea if that was for a day, a week, a month, or her entire ‘job’ at Falconet. She also didn’t know if it counted as a lot, but suspected that it did, because even in late-game Gacha Love, items that cost more than a hundred gold were fairly rare.

Finally, two bags lay side by side. One was bulging and extraordinarily heavy for its size – at least one-and-a-half Thaniels – while the other was the little pink handbag that had suffered as Pandy shoved more and more into it, until now it was fraying and the seams were coming apart. The larger bag held the thousand gold coins Pandy had received for completing the Emberwrought Dungeon. Not that she’d actually counted it all, but it looked like it was about right, given the volume of the sixty gold she had counted. Besides, if it was short, Pandy would give a particular god an earful.

With a claw, Pandy pulled the pink handbag over, lifting the flap to peer in at the four equally pink pearls that had formed from Aglaea’s tears. They were still utterly mysterious – lustrous and gleaming softly, as if with their own internal light. If she were really playing the game, she would check online to see if they were vendor trash – just items meant to be sold for some ridiculous sum. They didn’t seem like quest items, but that was a possibility. They could also be reagents for a spell, or, given that this was the Gacha Love world, items to be used to form a contract with some very specific elemental. Perhaps Keros would know, whenever he deigned to speak to her again.

The next item was the empty bag she’d also gotten for clearing the dungeon. She rather desperately wanted to open it, but until she was certain she could put herself back together again, it would have to wait. The problem was that in order to test that, she would have to first acquire Dark Restoration and then explode at least a little, preferably while Thaniel was nearby but not actually present, just in case her new spell didn’t work the way she hoped it would. And she had learned her lesson about acquiring spells in Thaniel’s room, too. She didn’t think Dark Restoration would damage anything, but ‘Dark’ was right there in the name, so who knew?

That left the little book she’d taken from the defunct library. In the feeble light cast by the little lamp beside Thaniel’s bed, it was definitely blue, albeit a faded, grayish blue. The gilt was wearing off the edges of the pages, but otherwise it was somehow intact, in spite of however much time had passed since it was placed beneath the floorboard. No words were written on its cover, but when she’d dared to open it, the first page proudly proclaimed it was called Notes from the Far Side of Dawn: A Primer on Dark Magic.

Pandy had questions. First, why had Augustus allowed her to take this book? She was fairly certain he had, though perhaps he hadn’t known precisely what lay beneath the floorboard? Still, he had to know she’d taken something. He hadn’t even asked about it, and she was beginning to realize that he was almost as curious as she was, which was perhaps why he seemed to understand her in a way no one else ever had. Of course, he had Air elementals to do his dirty work for him, rather than snooping around personally, which should count as cheating.

Her second question was, why did the title of the book sound like it was meant for children, or at least students? As far as she knew, Dark mages in West Altheric had never been taught to use their magic the same way others were. So how had this book come to be written, much less machine-printed, as if there might be hundreds or thousands of identical copies to be handed out? And, of course, how had such a book come to be in this school?

Turning to the first page, Pandy let her eyes skim over the words, which were unexpectedly…cheerful.

Welcome, young mage, to a world of possibility! If you’re reading this, you have found yourself the possessor of a particularly useful and powerful form of magic. In these pages, you may discover a method of gathering shadows, a way to help others find sleep, slow decay, or even alter the passage of time.

Wait, Dark magic wasn’t just for summoning demons and raising the dead? Technically, Pandy had known that, had even taught a room full of ten-year-olds about Prince Emerson and his friend the Dark mage, who had transferred decay from crops to soil, allowing the crops to be shipped to the areas hardest-hit by drought and famine, while the affected soil had become more fertile, growing larger, healthier plants. Decay was still about death though, wasn’t it? But this book made it sound like there was far more to it.

Head whirling, new excitement taking hold, Pandy continued on, not even noticing the hours passing by as she devoured the knowledge within the book. It really was written for children, and probably elementary age children at that, because the concepts were presented in simple ways, with lots of examples, which was both helpful and frustrating, because even as she turned the last page with a careful claw, she could tell there was still so much more to learn.

But she had taken a few things from this first read-through, and she thought that they would be very helpful in getting Thaniel past his fear of Darkness. For one thing, as with most of the other elements, there were different aspects of Dark. The most common one was quite literal: the lack of visible light. These mages could manipulate shadow, hiding things from view, or even prevent sunburns by blocking certain wavelengths of light. Not that the book talked about wavelengths, but since it mentioned that people who were affected by the spell could still see, she assumed only the harmful UVB rays, and maybe UVA as well, were being prevented from passing through.

The next type of Dark mage had something more akin to a form of mind magic. They were skilled at inducing or preventing sleep, with some implication that eventually they could affect the dreams of sleepers. It was also mentioned that they could cause some form of forgetfulness, or perhaps amnesia, preventing people from remembering current or past events. There were many warnings against misuse of this magic, and it was clear that people who had it were supposed to receive specialized training.

Finally, there was the type Pandy was used to. These Dark mages were capable of altering time, or perhaps entropy. Pandy had to admit Physics hadn’t been her favorite class in school. For one thing, there were too many experiments that could go horribly awry. Superconducting magnets and metal lunchboxes were not a good combination, as it turned out.

In any case, the simplest form of this type of Dark magic was changing or shifting the weight of decay, just as Prince Emerson’s friend had done. They could halt infections, or kill invading bacteria by shortening the lives of the single-celled organisms. They weren’t healers, per se, but they could work with Light mages to help people no other magic type would have been able to save. Which brought her to the next thing she’d learned: there were actually very few kinds of Dark elementals, at least as far as the author of this book knew. While there were hundreds or thousands of Earth and Plant elementals, and dozens of different kinds of Air and Water elementals, there were only six Dark elementals listed…and one of them was simply called Demon.

Demons were elementals. Which…made sense. So much sense. At least, it did if she just ignored the name and all of the assumptions that came with it. People could summon and form contracts with them, just like elementals. Only Dark mages could communicate with them, just as other elementals dealt only with mages of their own types. No one knew where they came from or where they went, just like other elementals. Though, given Pandy’s experiences, she was willing to bet that place was called Hell, at least according to her System.

Which begged the question…how had Killian managed to form a contract with one? The implication had been that he summoned his demon while he was still a Light mage, and it either taught him how to corrupt his magic into Dark, or corrupted him through its own magic. But if you had to be a Dark mage in order to contract a demon, then he had been corrupted first. There were a number of very ugly, very worrisome thoughts tied up there, and Pandy shied away from them, instead turning to the final concept she’d taken away from the book.

Because there were so few Dark elementals, there were also very few Dark elementalists. Most Dark mages remained exactly that, never forming a contract with any elemental, except, perhaps, the smallest and weakest ones. That meant they were limited to their own innate magic, which was far weaker than elemental magic, as well as exhausting if they used too much. Over and over again, the book cautioned these elemental-free youngsters not to overextend themselves, because doing so repeatedly could make them sick or even lead to ‘premature death’.

Which was confusing, because this world was filled with mages. Yes, some people didn’t even know what type of magic they had, but most people did have magic. Moreover, they used that magic daily, for such simple things as repairing torn clothing or heating water for a bath. None of them died of it, at least as far as Pandy could remember from either Gacha Love itself or the wiki. Yes, both mages and elementalists could exhaust themselves, requiring rest in order to recover, but they didn’t die after using too much magic.

But what would Pandy do if someone was dying in front of her? What if they had an infected wound, or cancer, and she could destroy the bacteria or halt the disease? Would she stop when she felt the world closing in around her, or would she think that she could heal one more person, shift the decay from one more load of food meant for starving people? What had happened to Prince Emerson’s nameless friend?

Overhead, the bed creaked. Pandy used her nose to flip the book shut, immediately placing it into her inventory. There was no way she was letting Thaniel see this book. If the references to Demons didn’t manage to terrify him – in spite of the relentlessly upbeat tone – he would want to try everything, and until she had a better idea what his limits might be, she wasn’t going to encourage that. She hated that he was so frightened of his own magic, but they would have to figure this out carefully, not just plunge forward, will ye, nill ye. That did seem to be the preferred method for both of them, but if Thaniel’s life really was on the line, Pandy was going to keep things under control. For once.

The bag of one thousand gold went into the next spot in her inventory, followed by the handbag with Aglaea’s pearls. She’d meant to stuff the copper, silver, and as much of the Shadow gold as possible into the little purse, but the bell was ringing, and somehow Pandy had spent the whole night reading. She had wasted sixty whole seconds of humanity!

The fifth inventory spot – because of course a fresh outfit was in the first – was taken by the little brown bag. It might not look like much, but that very fact would make it enticing for a child who might be intimidated by, say, a bag of gold. She didn’t think it would affect anyone but her, but she didn’t want to find out the hard way.

Inventory full once again, she hopped out from under the bed, watching as Thaniel stretched and yawned, his eyes clenched shut. As he lowered his arms, those brilliant blue eyes opened, and he looked straight at her, a huge, welcoming smile taking up residence on his face.