Lucky Rabbit

“You haven’t found any clues to where they’re holding Lian, have you?” Pandy asked once she, Augustus, and Keros were out of earshot of the children. Professor Beeswick hadn’t come along, but she knew there was no escaping the nosy presence of the Dragon, since the entire room was apparently a figment of his imagination.

Augustus’s lips flattened, and he gave a tired sigh. “Nothing,” he admitted. “We’ve tried tracking him through hair left behind in his room. We’ve tried using traces of the magic he’s done at school to at least indicate a general direction. Wherever he is, they’ve completely blocked him off from magic. Of course, we also tried canvassing carriage drivers and people who live in the area around Kestrel, as well as people who, ah, do not operate entirely within the law, but are also not part of the Shadow Exchange. Lian is a fairly memorable young man, but no one remembers seeing him.”

His eyes went back and forth between them. Pandy could tell that he wasn’t terribly comfortable with the stranger who had suddenly appeared in their midst but apparently knew everything about Pandy’s game, as well as what was going on now, but he just said, “Do you two have any ideas?”

Pandy and Keros exchanged glances. “Look, it’s… iffy.” Pandy said, grimacing. “But we had an idea.”

Keros’s brows went up. “You had an idea. My only contribution was telling you that it was terrible.”

She glared at him. “No, you said it might work!”

He shrugged. “Just because it might work doesn’t mean it isn’t also terrible.”

Augustus cleared his throat, though when Pandy glanced at him, he oddly looked more relaxed, and his eyes were twinkling. “May I ask what it is?”

Pandy shifted uncomfortably, but reached into the pocket of her pants, pulling out several sheets of folded paper. Thrusting them at Augustus, she said, “The game doesn’t actually specify where Clara and Killian have their final battle, but there are several images of her with her bo- um, friend, heading for the location. It’s implied that they just go to the heart of the enemy’s forces, and Killian is there.”

Augustus opened the first page, his lips twitching when he saw the rough stick figures on round-bellied stick horses, riding through a field of scattered lines and circles that were supposed to represent dismembered bodies. Vaguely humanoid blobs flew through the air, Pandy’s attempt at drawing Apparitions.

“All right, but there are clues in each image,” Pandy said hurriedly, before he could comment on the quality of her drawing. Pointing at a castle in the background of the first image, she added, “Look, you can see the flag here, right? It’s purple, with gold trim, and some kind of animal in the middle.”

“And Clara and Dorian are going east,” Keros added, moving his finger from the right side of the page to the left, following the ‘road’, which was really just two lines.

“That’s not Dorian,” Pandy said, though her rejoinder wasn’t nearly as sharp as it would have been even a week ago. Dorian had been a perfectly pleasant – albeit quiet – companion on the road back to Knightmere, and he had managed to take down the two low-grade Shadow Exchange operatives essentially by himself. Still, it seemed wrong not to at least try. “Look, he’s wearing a crown.”

Keros leaned forward, squinting at the page. “I thought that was a bird, trying to eat his head.”

Augustus ignored them, flipping through the pages with increasing interest. “They’re going east in all of them,” he noted. “Except this one.” Separating the stack, he flashed the page, but Pandy already knew exactly which one it was.

“South,” she agreed. “And there are mountains in the background.”

“Or the ground is about to swallow them,” Keros muttered, but nodded. “That’s the only one with no green in it, too. Not that I remember cactuses or sand, either, but the plant life and landscape were definitely different.”

“Cacti,” Pandy said, before second-guessing herself. “Cacteese?”

But the chancellor was looking through again, this time focusing on the foreground, rather than any potential landmarks in the background. He touched dozens of fallen stick figures with X’s for eyes. “These are the dead?”

Pandy flinched but nodded. “I mean, everything except Clara and… whoever, is kind of blurry. Soft focus. But yes, there are a lot of dead people. Most of them are wearing the same kind of armor Captain Reedsley wears.”

Augustus looked up, eyes distant. “No enemy bodies? At all?” He looked at Keros. “Neither of you remember seeing a different uniform or armor on any of the dead?”

Pandy shook her head. “Look at the last two.”

He did. It was difficult to tell, but the stick figures were mostly upright in these images, walking along with gaping mouths and arms held out in front of them in classic zombie fashion.

“Those are all Bound, and they’re made from your soldiers. The implication is that while there are a number of Dark elementals attacking, once a soldier is killed, they rise again to fight for the other side,” Keros said.

Augustus grimly stared down at the last page. It was nearly black with shambling figures, while the long-haired Clara figure and her companion, no longer on horseback, snuck toward a dark castle. “What’s this?” he asked, tracing a badly-drawn wall.

“The enemy hideout is kind of wrecked,” Pandy said, flushing. “Typical creepy castle, you know? It’s so much what you would expect that I never even questioned it. But surely there aren’t that many abandoned, rundown castles to the east.”

She pointed toward what she was pretty sure was east, and Augustus gently took her hand, pointing it in another direction entirely. When she dropped her arm, he didn’t release her, just wound his fingers through hers and held on.

“So you think,” he said carefully, “that Lian is being held in the same place he was in your game. Because of the spell?” Augustus looked toward Keros, who shrugged.

“It’s entirely possible. But it’s also possible that the location doesn’t matter as much as the people. We’ve also seen that it’s actively substituting people and places now,” the maybe-former god said.

“Which is why,” Pandy drew in a deep breath, “we need Clara.” Augustus’s eyes narrowed slightly, but somehow he didn’t actually look surprised. Pandy hurried on.

“Clara is the original heroine of Gacha Love. In the final battle, it’s Clara and her friend versus Killian and, um, Asparagus,” Pandy said, gesturing to herself. “If we start heading in the right direction, especially if we follow the path laid out in the game, I don’t think Kappa’s spell will be able to resist bringing us all together.”

“But you said Daedalus has taken Killian’s place,” Professor Beeswick said, stepping out from between two nearby bookcases. He was carrying a large book, which he laid open atop a study desk, revealing a detailed topographical map.

Pandy did her best not to give him the satisfaction of jumping, but Keros lifted two inches off the ground, which was a lot for someone his size. The six-and-a-half foot tall musclebound god should have made the small, graceful Dragon look dainty or weak, but somehow when Beeswick bared his teeth at Keros, it was Keros who gave way. Dismissing the smelly not-a-god, Professor Beeswick plucked the hand-drawn pages from Augustus’s grasp, leaving Pandy to respond.

“We’ve seen that the spell likes to take the easiest possible path,” she said, not looking at Keros either. It was his magic, and it somehow seemed rude to imply that it was lazy or simple-minded. “When it couldn’t kill Thaniel and it became obvious that things had changed too much for that to work anyway, it just moved on to the next plot point. By now, it’s pulled in all the major players, one way or another. And no, Killian isn’t the villi- villain now, but I bet he’ll be involved somehow anyway. Not just as a kidnapping victim, I mean.”

She glanced from Beeswick to Augustus and said again, “If we present it with the perfect opportunity to make things like Gacha Love, I don’t think it will be able to resist.”

Keros sighed. “She’s probably right. But also, Asparagus is very much supposed to die. That’s how Clara gets her happy ending. I agree that my spell is likely to jump at any opportunity to bring the story to its proper conclusion, but Pandora should stay here. If Clara and one of the love interests follows this path, that should be good enough. My magic isn’t even pretending to be picky any more. If it doesn’t bring us to Lian, it should lead us to the actual villain, Daedalus.”

Augustus tapped a finger on the open book, then snatched the digit back when the Dragon gave the offending digit a glare. To be fair, the page did look very old and vaguely crumbly around the edges.

“It seems like a stretch,” Augustus said.

“That’s because it is,” Beeswick said, finally laying down Pandy’s drawings with the expression of someone who’d just discovered a hole in their used toilet paper. “It’s a ridiculous plan. But what isn’t ridiculous is that this game has guided us every step of the way. Honestly, I suspect that if we’d simply followed the story in every way that didn’t involve someone dying, all of this would already be over. Look.”

Turning the book, his claw hovered just over the yellowed paper as he followed a line marked on the page. “This is the old trading route between the eastern and western halves of Altheric. It skims along the southern edge of the desert, and ends at the original capital, which has been abandoned by all but fools and elementals.”

Turning pages one by one, he pointed to the purple and gold flag. “A golden butterfly against a purple shield; the coat of arms of the Cheyne family. Needle Rock, a natural formation that lies half a day’s ride further east from their estate.” Landmarks were identified and checked off, leading precisely along the road, then across the southern tip of the desert. Finally, he came to the shadowy, moldering castle, where he indicated a roof that was shaped a bit like a scoop of melting ice cream. “This is a fairly distinctive image. Given enough time, it would probably be enough to lead us to the location of the final confrontation. Though I am less inclined to believe that Lian is being held in the same place, it is… a start.” 

Augustus sighed. “So you want to take a young girl, who might or might not be our enemy, head east, and hope that a semi-sentient magic spell brings you to the exact place you need to be?”

“Yes,” Pandy said.

“No,” said Keros.

“Yes,” Pandy insisted, a little shocked by the determination in her own voice. “Clara and the villain and, um, Asparagus have to end up together in order for the story to be complete.” She pointed at the map, then the papers Professor Beeswick had laid out beside it. “This will work. Lian is still important. So is Clara.”

Augustus stared down at the map, the fingers of the hand which still held Pandy’s rubbing lightly across her knuckles. Finally, he said, “Even if we find Lian, it won’t stop the war. The only way to end this, as you said, is to end the story. Kill the villain and his Dark elemental, and destroy the stone.” He turned to look back to where the sound of children’s chatter was beginning to rise again. Lunch must be over.

Pandy swallowed hard and nodded. “We need to get the heartstone out of Thaniel, then find Ismara’s stone.”

“But we have no idea where the Light stone is,” Augustus said. “My people have searched every inch of the Dunning estate. They even opened Grace’s crypt.”

Pandy stilled. She knew Grace and Augustus had been close when he was young, though they’d drifted apart after Grace got married and Augustus became the Kingsman. Ordering someone to desecrate her grave must have been very difficult. It made sense, though. Zheraphon’s stone had been buried with Preston Avington, who had probably been the Dark Champion, even if in name only. If Grace truly had become Ismara’s Champion when she held the Light stone, the parallel would have been almost too much for any plot to resist.

“She was there?” she asked finally, tightening her fingers around his.

He nodded. “I have no doubt it was her.” He cleared his throat. “There was quite a bit of damage, but she only died a few years ago. There was enough… to be sure.”

Which meant someone who knew her well had probably gone to identify her. Pandy was certain there was magic involved too, but even with DNA analysis in her old world, they still had a family member identify bodies. Unless that was just something they did on shows to build drama. Which wasn’t entirely outside the realm of possibility-

“I’m sorry,” she said, pulling herself back from her brain’s attempt to pretend like none of this was happening. Augustus gave her a small but genuine smile before leaning in and kissing her on her head. Kissing her. On the head. In front of everyone! Pandy’s face blazed, and the smile turned twinkly and slightly wicked.

“I think I know where it is. The Light stone,” Pandy said, barely managing not to hyperventilate. Why was being almost-alive so inconvenient? All eyes turned to her, and she suppressed a surge of triumph at having surprised them for once. Looking toward the sound of the children’s voices, she said, “I’ll explain tomorrow. But first, I need to see a Dark mage about some Corruption.”

With that, she cancelled Shifting Faces. She only had an hour or so left on the spell anyway, and she wanted to be able to read to Thaniel and snuggle with him at bedtime. Right now, she needed to apply her cuteness liberally, and convince Empress Glory she needed a Lap Rabbit.