Lucky Rabbit

Pandy stared at the books, and the books… well, they didn’t stare back, because they were books, but they definitely booked in a very ominous way. The shadows they cast were a little too thick, and the beautiful colors cast by the windows seemed to flow around them, tiptoeing like mice around a pile of sleeping cats.

Hesitantly, Pandy reached for the top book, the one with a pitch black cover that looked like leather, marked with metallic gold letters on cover and spine that read: Avington House. That was it. Other than the color, there was certainly nothing threatening about it, and the cover seemed to be perfectly normal leather, not someone’s eternally screaming face or the skin of a unicorn. Why, then, did it feel so cold?

When Pandy’s fingers touched the cover, it crackled, like ice exposed to sudden heat. Her fingertips turned white with frost, and in her peripheral vision she saw four, then three, then two, then one point of Life Force drift away. Automatically, she cast Minor Heal, and a healthy color returned to her blanched fingertips.

The air in the office was noticeably colder than it had been as Pandy opened the book to the title page. The words AVINGTON HOUSE were repeated here, this time in black ink on pure white paper. She turned another page, then a third, but there was nothing written anywhere else. Pandy frowned, lifting one side of the book so she could flip through the pages, and as she did, all the color drained from the room, leaving it as black and white as the book and the servants. The cold bit into her bones, making her uncomfortable in a way she hadn’t been since becoming a demonic undead rabbit.

With a soft gasp, Pandy dropped the book. The cover thunked against the desk, but the tome didn’t slide off the stack. Color flooded back into the room, and Pandy stared around, taking it all in. As far as she could tell, it looked exactly as it had when she walked in, other than the books occupying the previously empty desktop.

Pushing back her chair, Pandy stood, and as she half-expected, the books were gone when she looked down. She went over and opened the hall door, peering down toward the stairs, then back at the soft light coming from the atrium. There was no sign of Isidor or any of the elementals, but she thought she could hear quiet sounds coming from the direction of the bedrooms.

“Isidor?” she called softly. A door opened down the hall, and Isidor stuck his head out.

“What?” he asked, shoving his tousled hair back from his face. Pandy wasn’t an expert in Isidor-expressions, but there was more color in his cheeks than she was used to seeing, and if she didn’t know better, she’d say he actually looked happy.

“Did you… notice anything strange? A minute ago?” she said, and he stared at her blankly.

“No,” he said, and shut the door.

Well, he was settling right in. Pandy chuckled softly as she reentered the office. If Isidor was feeling comfortable enough to be rude – ruder – then he must be fine. Which meant the color-leeching effect had been limited either to the room or to Pandy. Now, which was it, and why was it happening?

Returning to the desk, Pandy sat back down. The books immediately reappeared, and she reached for the top one with a bit more confidence. It hadn’t stuck to her fingers or injured her in any irreparable way. She suspected that even if she was a normal person, the worst she would have had was a teeny, tiny case of frostbite.

To her surprise, however, the effects weren’t nearly as noticeable this time. It was almost like – and she snorted a bit at her own pun – the book was ‘warming up’ to her. She turned the first few pages with no effect, then cautiously repeated her previous actions, lifting the larger back portion as if she’d flip through the pages. Again, all color fled from her surroundings, but she held on and looked around the room, taking it all in.

Her first impression had been correct. Nothing but black, white, and shades of gray were visible to her. This time, she lifted the whole book from the stack. It was much, much heavier than it looked, making her strain beneath the weight, grunting slightly as she leaned back in the chair, almost tipping over before the weight settled into a steady downward pressure in her arms, pinning her firmly to the ground, but no longer difficult or uncomfortable to hold.

“You’re a very strange book,” she told it, but, being a book, it didn’t respond.

With some trepidation, she attempted to stand, half-expecting the mass of the thing to suddenly increase, or, just as likely, for it to vanish from her arms. It didn’t, but the other two books disappeared as she vacated the chair. This time she could see that a dark shadow opened up in the surface of the desk and swallowed them, eerily like a mouth engulfing a bite of food.

Holding onto the open book, Pandy crossed to the door, finding that it was closed again, though she didn’t remember shutting it. She shifted the book to her left arm and grabbed the doorknob, turning it. As she pushed it open, she looked down and caught sight of fresh letters neatly printed in the book.

OFFICE DOOR – Enchantments x2 [Shelter, Lock]

Physical condition: 98%

Cost to repair: 3 G/1 Wood

Magical Condition: 60% 

Cost to Repair: 20 LF/100 Mana/10 CP

Pandy stared at the words, reading them over and over. She released the doorknob, and the words vanished. Touched the door again, and they returned. Then she tried the doorframe, and got a similar message – oddly, while the Magical Condition was worse, the cost to repair it was lower, maybe because its overall size was smaller?

Returning to the door itself, Pandy removed three gold from her inventory and held them up. “Um, repair door?” It sounded tentative, even to her, and she was utterly unsurprised when nothing happened. She stared at the page, which clearly indicated three gold should be acceptable to it, and tried the real-life version of swiping her bank card. Placing the three coins on the page itself, she said, “Repair door.”

The gold sank into darkness very much like what had swallowed the books on the desk, but nothing else seemed to happen. Then the words shifted, changing to:

OFFICE DOOR – Enchantments x2 [Shelter, Lock]

Physical condition: 100%

Magical Condition: 60% 

Cost to Repair: 20 LF/100 Mana/10 CP

Pandy crouched down, examining the door, which had looked to be in excellent condition even before she started this. She probably should have picked something where the changes would have been more noticeable, but they would also be more expensive, and she was already running low on funds, especially for the new owner of what could only be described as a fixer-upper.

“All right,” she muttered, “now how do I repair the enchantments?” The obvious choice was to use Life Force, but how could she possibly do that? Was she supposed to cut off a finger and drop it into the book? That sounded gross and painful and she wasn’t doing it. She wasn’t giving the book her Corruption Points, either, which only left Mana.

“Repair door enchantments with Mana,” she said, and nothing happened. Again. She closed her eyes, shutting out the vaguely unsettling grayness surrounding her. How was she supposed to give the book her Mana? She could cast enough spells on it to add up to the total, but that risked damaging the book unless she picked something that didn’t do… anything.

Pandy’s eyes popped open, and she thought,

Innate Magic successful.

Four hundred fifty-eight uses to level 24.

Say when.

When? What did that mea-? Pandy swayed, her vision going dark around the edges. She suddenly felt horribly weak, but also the area immediately surrounding her looked suddenly sharper, more defined, except where it was being eaten by the encroaching shadow. Her legs gave out, and she fell to the floor, dropping the book from boneless fingers.

Rather than thudding to the floor beside her, the book vanished in a twist of shadow, allowing her surroundings to take on color again. That didn’t help Pandy, however, who lay flat on her back, head spinning and beginning to pound with painful beats that didn’t come from her heart. No, those were footsteps.

Rolling her head to the side, she gazed woozily up at Isidor and the two elementals. Nox and Nyssa both looked quite a bit more solid than the last time she saw them, and thanks to her current perspective, she saw that Nox had polished black butler-shoes, while Nyssa had on surprisingly dainty flats that were only a little fuzzy around the edges.

Isidor actually looked concerned as he knelt beside Pandy, pulling her up to a sitting position. She leaned back against the wall, squinching her eyes shut against the spinning, but she was already feeling a bit better.

“What happened?” Isidor demanded, looking her over for injuries. “Did you trip? Faint?”

Pandy glanced at her stat sheet, which confirmed her suspicions. “I ran out of Mana,” she told Isidor, and he frowned.

“What’s Mana?”

Ah, yes, System terminology. “Magic. I used all of my magic.”

He stared at her, incredulous, then stood up abruptly. “You ran out. Of magic. Do you know how dangerous that is? Not to mention difficult. Our bodies don’t just let us use up something we need to live.” He stared into the beautiful office, then back at her, clearly bewildered. “What could you possibly have used it on?”

Feeding the house and its elementals, probably, but Pandy didn’t say that. She was busy trying to figure out why this had happened. She’d definitely run out of Mana a few times, early on. The System just switched her over from Mana to LF, which, admittedly probably would have ended up with her as a Pandy-puddle this time, because she suspected the house could have taken every bit of whatever held her together, and still not have been satisfied.

This probably fell under ‘things she should have talked to Keros about before trying’, but that was a concern for later. Right now, she needed to know why the spell cut off when it reached zero, rather than continuing to… Spell. She’d been using Innate Magic. And, yes, she’d drained her Mana before, but other spells always had a set cost. Innate Magic, on the other hand, seemed to just keep working until it did whatever she’d told it to, which in this case was feed the book. Repair Avington House. Which apparently required more than eight hundred and seventy-five Mana.

Shaking her head, Pandy said, “There’s a spell on the house. Or maybe the house is magical? In any case, it allows me to use magic to repair the building. Or maybe just refresh the magic on the building itself?” She left out the fact that this apparently included Nox and Nyssa, who were going to be taking their wages in Mana, it seemed.

Isidor’s brows shot up, vanishing into his scraggly bangs, and he turned to look at the two elementals. “And you didn’t think to warn her?”

Nyssa looked down, fading slightly under his accusatory glare, but Nox just gazed back, unperturbed. “Only the true Head of the Avington Family can use the Books. It was one more test, if you will.”

Pandy sighed. She shook her head at Isidor as he opened his mouth to argue. “It’s all right. If they really have been in this house since the beginning,” Nox inclined his head, “then they’ve been through a lot, especially recently. They have a right to be wary.”

A loud, echoing clonk made them all stop talking. Pandy and Isidor stared around, but the two elemental servants were looking down, toward the front of the house. “Oh,” Nyssa said, clasping her hands in front of her as she smiled beatifically, “we have guests.”