Lucky Rabbit

“Most people speak Altherican,” Isidor said, “but your accents will give you away if you say more than a few words. So try not to speak. At all. And don’t meet people’s eyes. Or smile at them.” He narrowed his eyes at Pandy, who did indeed have a teeny bit of a habit of giving people an apologetic smile when she first met them, as a sort of down payment for future shenanigans.

Everyone nodded, though only Dorian and Clara looked like they were really paying attention at this point. Edgar was adjusting the collar of the shirt Professor Beeswick had retrieved from the ‘lost and found’ for him. Pandy had doubts about how much could stay truly lost in the magical domain of a centuries-old elemental who could identify someone with a tiny sniff of their blood, but she also wasn’t going to argue the provenance of a rather shabby shirt with a Dragon.

Still, it made the remains of her fangirl heart flutter to see Edgar using some of the same uncomfortable expressions he made when talking to Gacha Love-Clara as he tugged at the ill-fitting garment. Dorian, of course, hadn’t needed to change in order to pass as a non-noble, and he stood straight and tall as he soaked Isidor’s lecture in like a sponge.

With a silent, internal sigh, Pandy admitted once again that she’d had the boy all wrong, though he, like the others, would certainly change between now and when the game was supposed to begin. Two years was a long time when you were a teenager, so who knew what could happen in the meantime?

“Keep your sleeves down and neck covered,” Isidor instructed Clara for at least the fifth time as the door shimmered behind him. It couldn’t seem to settle on a single appearance, though Professor Beeswick claimed it would be ready at any moment.

Clara nodded. She was wearing what used to be part of Lady Reedsley’s underskirt wrapped around her shoulders and up her throat like a particularly smothering shawl, and a simple hat shaded her face. Apparently the desert people tended to have darker coloring, like Isidor. While there were still some blondes, people with such pale skin were practically unheard of, so Clara would definitely attract attention. Keros was the only other person with such light coloring, and he looked very uncomfortable in a large, floppy hat someone else had ‘lost’. In spite of the fact that the god actually looked the most ridiculous, Isidor was focused on Clara.

“I understand,” Clara said, tilting her head to the side as she watched Isidor with her strangely unblinking gaze. “Is there a reason you keep saying the same words over and over? Were you waiting for my confirmation? If so, I apologize for the delay.”

Isidor half-choked, which made Edgar smirk slightly, though he didn’t actually look away from his too-long cuffs. He couldn’t seem to decide whether to roll them up or simply allow them to flap, and had gone back and forth between the two different looks several times.

With a glare, Isidor opened his mouth to say something they would probably all regret, but before he could, the library door gave an actual shudder, then creaked a deep, angry protest. Pandy would have sworn it even bulged out, then sucked back in, almost as if it was breathing.

“I remind you once again that you will not be able to return through this door,” Professor Beeswick said, his voice holding a distinct edge of exhaustion. “My domain touches here only lightly, and it will not linger. Step forward.”

As one, they turned, seeing the small figure of the librarian advancing toward them from between the shelves. And for once, he truly seemed as small as Pandy knew his human form to be. He was diminished in some essential way, and even his lustrous lilac locks were limp.

Lady Reedsley and Geraldine gave Clara and Lord Reedsley a final round of hugs. Geraldine’s face was wet with tears as she snuffled inelegantly. Eleanor was doing a bit better, with her own tears delicate gleaming trails down her pinkened cheeks, but when she finally hugged Isidor and Pandy, her sobs were no less heartfelt. Thaniel and Abbington joined in that hug, with Geraldine only a bit behind, and Pandy gained a few more Corruption Points. Even Hazel and the other elementals got in on the hugging, though Miss Cupcakes pretended the brush of her tail was Entirely Accidental.

Only Edgar and Dorian had no one to bid them farewell, and while they grabbed their backpacks, Pandy caught sight of their faces. Edgar was managing to keep his expression bland, but Dorian simply looked sad, and Pandy remembered that he was an only child, his mother having died when he was a baby, leaving him with his father.

The only time game-Dorian ever broke a rule was when he snuck into the chancellor’s office to retrieve a piece of evidence that would link him to the murders. In the game, it was just another event, and Pandy hadn’t paid much attention to his thin excuses, but the one that stood out was that his father would be ‘very upset’ if the link was made public. Now, Pandy wondered what kind of a father would suspect his son first, and defend him only if he was found innocent by others.

Edgar, on the other hand, wore the same indifferent mask with which he faced most emotional events. Only in the latter half of the game, if Clara chose him as her primary love interest, did he begin to trust her enough to show the real feelings behind that mask. Was he like that because of his personality, or because he’d been taught that his real emotions were invalid and unwanted?

With a sigh, Pandy released yet another thread of her mental image of the main characters from Gacha Love. Even with the increasing complexity of otome-game characters, her favorite game hadn’t even touched on the things these very-real teenagers were dealing with.

“Far be it from me to disrupt this tearful goodbye, but everyone who is leaving needs to get out of my library now,” Professor Beeswick growled, and when Pandy turned to look at him again, she could see the hazy form of the massive, deadly elemental hidden within the librarian. It looked like the reptile was getting ready to shed a too-small skin, and Pandy had a feeling it wouldn’t be good for anyone who was nearby if that happened.

Augustus was the first to step up to the door, and this time when Beeswick’s claw stabbed through his hand, the Dragon made no effort at subtlety. Blood ran down the door from the spot where Augustus’s hand was splayed out against it, and the bright red stream hadn’t even had time to start to clot before Lord Reedsley was there, and the scene played out again.

Edgar and Dorian were predictably unmoved by the whole thing, though both Edgar and Clara displayed a bit of macabre fascination. That left Isidor, Keros, and Pandy, but when Isidor moved up, Beeswick waved him back, gesturing for Pandy to go first. Pandy swallowed hard, reminding herself that a single Minor Heal should take care of any damage the Dragon inflicted on her. Still, it felt like a real injury for almost the first time since she saw the word ‘Deceased’ on her stat sheet.

Still, she did her best to look like she wasn’t as nervous as she was, and not only because she felt like a hypocrite for laughing at Keros. Not that laughing at Keros was okay, but how often did you get a chance to feel superior to a god? All of that superiority was gone as she placed her hand in the bloody print left by everyone who went before her.

As she did, Professor Beeswick stepped up beside her, even closer than he had been to everyone else. He leaned in, but he didn’t immediately jab a talon through her flesh. Instead, as his shoulder touched hers, she heard the Dragon’s voice in her mind.

Pain lanced through her, and Pandy’s hand spasmed as a full fifteen points of Life Force drifted away, red numbers floating across her vision. Six more trickled by as the Dragon removed his talon, and Pandy felt someone wrap the wound in soft fabric. Augustus murmured soothingly to her as Isidor tried once again to move forward, only to have Beeswick hold up a hand and turn to stare expectantly at Keros.

The god, for his part, was clutching his hand as if it had already been pierced, and he looked more than a little wild-eyed. Still, he drew in a long, deep breath, pulled his hat down so hard the sweat-stained brim threatened to tear off, and moved into place. Once again, Professor Beeswick stepped up, and again there was a pause as the librarian’s shoulder brushed Keros’s.

Pandy had no idea what the Dragon said, but a large part of the tension drained from the god’s shoulders just before his hand was cut. And cut it was. Much like the first time Pandy had gone through one of these doors, the wound looked like little more than a papercut in the soft web between Keros’s thumb and forefinger. She was still losing a few points of health every five or ten seconds from her own wound, so it seemed a little unfair, but Keros really had been through a lot lately. She tried to just be glad her friend hadn’t been badly hurt.

Then it was finally Isidor’s turn, and as he stepped up to the door, some kind of Look passed between him and Professor Beeswick. Isidor was noticeably paler than usual, with a few beads of sweat gleaming on his upper lip. But when he placed his hand on the rather gory door, that hand didn’t tremble even a little, nor did he cry out when a claw jabbed down. Pandy had half-expected that Beeswick would make this final injury the worst of all, but he was almost as gentle as he’d been with Keros. Isidor’s hand bled freely, but the wound wasn’t as wide or deep as the others.

Beneath Isidor’s palm, the door jumped, thudding like an overanxious heart. It had settled into a simple, heavy wooden door, but now thick bands of metal unfurled, snapping into place at top, bottom, and center, reinforcing the wood into a truly intimidating edifice. A large metal doorplate appeared around the doorknob, which shifted to become a sturdy iron handle, and a keyhole gaped open below that.

Reaching into his pocket, the Dragon removed what Pandy assumed was a key, even though the resemblance to any other key she’d ever seen was superficial at best. It had a round, flat part at one end for gripping, and a longer, thinner part poked out of that. The ‘key’ part of the key looked like a plus sign, however, and there were dips and divots in the metal, rather than serrated teeth.

Isidor took the key in his still-bleeding hand, exchanging another of those Looks with the Dragon librarian as he did so. Tempest had been glaring out of his pocket through this whole process – Pandy belatedly realized the cranky tortoise had been there during the hugging, and somehow hadn’t bitten anyone – but now she stretched out her neck, her body fuzzy with sparks. Some of those sparks arced to the key just as Isidor thrust it into the lock.

The key turned, and the door swung open. It was a bit anticlimactic after all the build-up, but Isidor looked like he might faint from relief, and Professor Beeswick actually looked approving. The Dragon patted Isidor on the back, turned to everyone else, and said, “Get out.”

They got. Everyone had packs containing food, water, a bedroll, and a little bit of East Altherican money, which Isidor had briefly explained to them. Pandy still hadn’t gotten her mind around the idea that West Altheric somehow expected everyone to do a mental exchange rate of one gold to seventeen silver or six hundred and twelve copper, so it was nice to discover that in East Altheric they used the much more sensible ratio of one gold to twelve silver or sixty copper. It was still goofy to someone used to a system based on fives, tens, and twenty-fives, but at least it kind of made sense.

There was a bit of fumbling as they all jostled to see who could obey the Dragon first, and their large packs got in the way. Even Augustus, who had his own kind of hidden inventory, carried a pack, because Isidor said it would look odd if he didn’t. Pandy was the only one without, since she was supposed to remain in rabbit form as much as possible.

Pandy managed to be one of the first ones through, and stumbled from the surprisingly cozy and welcoming library into a hallway lined with square gray blocks. She could only see a few of them, because the only light came through the door behind her, and then she was shoved forward as Augustus, followed by Edgar and Dorian, then Keros, and finally Clara and her father entered what turned out to be a Very Tight Space. The light vanished as Professor Beeswick firmly closed the door behind them.

“Well,” Isidor said, the unhappiness audible in his voice, “welcome to Fort Nora, everyone. My home.”