Lucky Rabbit

Not that long ago, Pandy had spent a mostly happy summer at the Dunning estate, blissfully unaware that she was a Demon Queen-in-waiting and the little boy with whom she spent her days was doomed to die a tragic and fiery death. She and Thaniel had explored the grounds as thoroughly as Pirate Pete with a poorly drawn treasure map, which was actually one of the boy’s favorite games.

Pandy spent a lot less time wandering the inside of the house, mainly because Bryan Conroy and the groundskeeper, George, acted like closeted serial killers. Several months later, however, she got to spend quite a bit of less-linear ‘time’ exploring Thaniel’s dream-world. In his mind, Thaniel was a Very Small Boy in a Very Large House, so the scale was all off, but the layout was right.

Now, Augustus disappeared when the forest surrounding the house faded into bushes, then tall grass that had once been a lawn. Whatever magic George had used to keep the horticultural encroachment at bay, it had vanished with him, leaving behind overgrown pavers and rose bushes that were already escaping their beds. One moment Pandy was hopping along on the chancellor’s heels, dodging daunting dandelions, and the next he was gone, leaving not a single snagged thread or broken blade of grass to tell her which way to go.

Deciding that meant it was time to split up, Pandy forged onward, depending on her small size to avoid notice, rather than any Skill or Spell. There was probably enough shade in the tangled depths that she could have cast Shield of Darkness, but she couldn’t forget what it was like to be Preston Avington, ‘feeling’ his cousin’s Dark magic. Better to just be a particularly adventurous rabbit.

Pandy didn’t see or hear anyone until she had almost reached the door leading to the kitchen, where she and Thaniel so often snuck in to ‘steal’ a muffin or a piece of fruit left conspicuously on the counter by the cook, Marta. She was about to hop out and see if she could work the latch with her paws when something shifted in the shadows beneath the balcony overlooking the rear gardens. It wasn’t much, but Pandy froze, ears standing straight up, belly pressed to the earth.

It took another minute, maybe even two, before the movement came again, and Pandy made out a line of darkness that wasn’t the same as the one beside it. Once her eyes caught the subtle play of reflected light, she could see that it was a leg, covered in black fabric. The leg met up with a torso, then arms, topped with a deep hood that flowed into a short cape, covering only the head and shoulders. A pale face gleamed in the depths of the hood, but Pandy couldn’t pick out any particular features. Certainly not enough to tell her if this was someone she had seen before. The shape was too small to be Kidnapper Leo, too large to be Miller, and definitely not female, so probably someone new.

Sinking back just a paw, Pandy considered. There were only three real entrances to the building: this door, the front door, and the door to the tower. Thaniel’s memory had shown a door that led directly from the tower into the house, but that must have been blocked off at some point in the past two years, because the tower door now led only to the tower, though Pandy knew from experience that the windows were also semi-reasonable access points if you were small enough.

Speaking of windows, she wondered if any of them might have been helpfully left open. It would probably look a teeny weeny bit odd if a rabbit leaped five to fifteen feet up in order to wiggle through a small gap, but she might have to risk it. Maybe one of the windows on the side of the building, away from the doors, which were almost certainly being watched?

Just as she was backing up in preparation for a scamper to her left, a soft hiss split the air. At first, she thought she was about to find out if a Bound snake could swallow an undead-ish rabbit whole, but then the skinsuit-clad man by the door staggered and fell limply to the ground. The next thing she knew, the kitchen door clicked and swung open about an inch, just before a strong breeze slid down her fur and pulled on her tail. Hard.

Pandy took off, exactly like a real rabbit that had been spooked by something inexplicable. Her Pandy-brain knew Augustus must have seen her conundrum and sent one of his elementals to help, but her rabbit-bits said something scary had snuck up on her and she needed to get away from it. She reached the door just in time to wriggle through before the door thunked into place and the latch reengaged. From there, she darted beneath the kitchen table and took stock.

In Thaniel’s dream, this room was never dark or silent. There was always someone here; tending the fire, baking bread, preparing a meal, or cleaning up after a long day. By the time real-life Pandy arrived, this was Marta’s sole domain, and the woman only came in from her home in a nearby village for a few hours every day. Even when she wasn’t there, however, there were recently-prepared food items for Thaniel, Lord Bryan, and Cassie, the young woman who was supposed to watch Thaniel. The scent of good, hearty food lingered at all times, and no dirt dared gather beneath her watchful eyes and ready broom.

Now, after several months of disuse, dust bunnies huddled beneath the furniture, and a few intrepid spiders had left cobwebs in the corners of the room. Pandy watched those cobwebs warily, but she didn’t see or sense the spiders that made them, much less the kind of Duskin-Bound spiders they’d had to deal with several times already.

There was just enough dust that she might be able to make out footprints or drag marks where bodies had been hauled through on their way to being thrown in the midden. Pandy wasn’t even certain what a midden was, but a vague sense of context clues told her that was definitely where dead bodies went. Hopefully the lack of drag marks meant she and Augustus had beaten Edgar and Dorian here and the boys were still alive and intact. Or, more likely, they just hadn’t been dragged through the one room in the house Pandy had seen so far.

The good news was that she didn’t hear screaming or chanting, nor did she smell blood. If it was going to turn out that blood was a thing she could smell Particularly Well, it was reassuring not to smell it. The bad news was that she was going to have to keep looking.

The pantry door was closed, but Pandy paused and pressed an ear against the heavy wooden door. She couldn’t make out the sound of heavy breathing, sobs, or anything else Particularly Concerning, so she didn’t try to open it. Without thumbs, it wasn’t worth it unless she came up empty everywhere else, so she continued onward. Like other similar kitchens in this world, this one had double swinging doors. She dug in her claws and shoved against what looked like a heavy door, only to tumble tail over ears when it opened easily.

Even in the dreamscape, Pandy hadn’t spent much time in this part of the house, because the Family wasn’t encouraged to enter the servants’ area. A small and curious boy was particularly likely to get into trouble in the working part of the house, so while Pandy knew which doors led to which rooms, she didn’t know enough to know what might be different or suspicious. This meant she crept along slowly, her nose running a mile a minute while her ears swiveled to and fro. She went past a few workrooms and the servants’ sleeping quarters, using every one of her senses.

As it turned out, she needn’t have worked at it so hard. The moment she came within olfactory range of the blood, the scent very nearly smacked her upside the head. Her head whipped around, she drew in a long sniff, and she was off, hopping along halls and up stairs until she came to the part of the house where Thaniel’s family spent most of their time. Bedrooms, offices, the library, the nursery and playroom, even a small private room for dining as a family, they were all here.

Also here was the blocked-off door to the tower, which apparently came out in what had once been Bryan’s office before he went full hermit. There were shattered bricks and mortar scattered in the hall, where someone had roughly shoved them out of the way while excavating the old doorway, and even Pandy could figure out that the tower was just on the other side of what used to be an unbroken wall.

A number of people were in that office, because Pandy could hear multiple voices lifted in some rather heated discourse. She could also almost feel the cold emanating from the room, so she was guessing there were Dark mages, Dark elementals, or more likely both in there. That didn’t make her particularly inclined to approach with any speed, so instead she turned to her right at the intersection before the short hall that led to the office, following her nose.

Blood had soaked into the carpet in front of Lian’s old room. Not much. A few drops here and there. Pandy tentatively tried licking one, but for once got nothing. Was it too dry? Had it absorbed too well, and even her System couldn’t get data from carpet fibers? Either way, she could tell there was more beyond that door, so it wasn’t all inside people where it belonged.

Something moved beyond that door, partially obscuring the light that trickled through the crack at the bottom. One patch of shadow, then another, in a predictable pattern. Someone was pacing just inside the room. Was it Lian? Somehow, she didn’t think so. The smell of the blood wasn’t right for Lian, which was a very odd thing for someone who had once considered herself mildly hemophobic to realize. So, if Pandy trusted her maybe-Demonic senses, who was in there?

Stopping outside the door, Pandy wished again that she’d held onto even a few seconds of human-time. Yes, the door might be locked, but it also might not be, and thumbs would answer the question in five seconds or less. As it was, Pandy was going to have to think outside the box.

Looking down the hall, Pandy saw that the door to Thaniel’s old room was slightly ajar. His window was less than fifteen feet from Lian’s, and there was a conveniently rabbit-width ledge connecting the two. She hopped onward, pausing only to give the bedroom beyond the open door a quick glance before slipping inside.

Neither Thaniel nor Cassie had been good housekeepers, so the little boy’s room hadn’t exactly been spotless even before the house was all but abandoned. The dust here was quite a bit thicker than in the previously-immaculate kitchen. There were a few smudges just inside the room, as if someone had entered, looked around, then left again. She supposed they also could have taken an extra-long stride over to the carpet in the center of the room, but that seemed like a lot of effort when these people obviously didn’t care if anyone knew they’d been there. In fact, it almost seemed like they were trying to make as much of a mess as possible.

Pandy, on the other hand, didn’t want to leave any more of her distinctive bunny-prints behind, so she made one long hop to the middle of the room and the worn, slightly stained carpet. From there, she hopped up onto the bare mattress, then finally over onto the wooden windowsill.

Either it was narrower than she remembered, or she’d grown slightly, which seemed very unlikely. Her paws started to slip, and she dug in her claws, coming up onto her hind feet before grabbing the bottom edge of the window with her front paws.

Rabbit anatomy wasn’t particularly suited to the motion, but Pandy had Strength and Agility on her side. She tugged. The window didn’t budge. She tried harder, the claws of her front toes digging deep furrows into the wooden window frame. So much for leaving no trace. The wood creaked. The glass shivered. Pandy didn’t notice. She strained, and the window shattered, the frame buckling at the point where the latch held it closed. Glass rained down around her, and she spilled out into the open air, feeling something slice deep into her belly.

-11 LF

Shouts came from down the hall. A door slammed open. Footsteps headed in her direction. Thinking fast, Pandy hauled herself along the ledge to the left, trailing blood, before healing herself and falling backwards. She cast Wings of Glory as she dropped, then spun back parallel to the ledge, around the small but ferocious gargoyle that perched on the ledge between Lian and Thaniel’s windows. Her paws touched stone, the wings vanished, and she hunkered against the far side of a statue that looked like the unfortunate love child of a saber-toothed tiger and a Tasmanian Devil.

From there, she could just make out part of Lian’s room, including the bed, where two bound figures lay. One of them was worryingly still, but the other was thrashing violently, and even as Pandy watched, he rolled off the bed, briefly looking directly toward Pandy as he fell. Even without his glasses, she’d know that face anywhere. She’d just found Edgar, and she was willing to bet the oversized body that still lay on the bed was Dorian.