Book 7, Chapter Twenty-two – Home Is Where the Hare Is

“Pandora,” Pandy said, the answer slipping from her before she could stop to think about it. Preston froze, as still as Pandy’s friends, before his hand darted out, snatching Pandy’s arm in a grip that felt like tissue paper over twigs. Pandy thought the hand would shatter if she pulled away, so since nothing happened to her as a result of his touch, she held very still because the idea of turning someone’s dead arm into dust was icky.

The general’s black eyes searched hers, a desperate tension pulling his body taut, but he finally shook his head and released her. “Not my Pandora,” he murmured, and Pandy couldn’t tell if he was more relieved or disappointed. His fluffy beard twitched. “At least the family hasn’t forgotten her entirely.”

He stepped back, shoulders straight, back rigid, like a soldier standing to arms. He wasn’t that much taller than Pandy, and though he had probably shrunk some in old age or after death, she doubted he’d ever been more than five foot eight inches tall. Still, there was something about him, an innate assumption of authority and respect, that made Pandy correct her own posture.

Before they went any further, however, she needed to know one thing. Gesturing to her friends, she said, “Are they all right?” They weren’t even breathing, and their eyeballs had to be drying out by now.

He nodded. “I’ve simply placed them in stasis for the duration of our conversation. They won’t even be aware that any time has passed.”

Just like that? Now that was the kind of useful skill Pandy would like to have. Imagine being able to put a cheesecake into stasis, and take it out a few days later, perfectly cold and fresh. Though stopping poison was probably a related skill, since she only prevented it from doing further damage, rather than actually cleansing it. Worse, she had to keep feeding her spells, so-

“How long can you keep them like that?” Pandy asked. “I thought Dark mages had to keep putting magic into ongoing spells.”

Preston looked approving, but spoke like a schoolteacher with high expectations. “True. And I am an elementalist. Please use the correct terminology, Lady Pandora.”

Elementalist meant he still had a contract with an elemental, and Pandy was almost certain she knew who his were. “This won’t hurt Nox, will it? Or Nyssa?”

Fluffy old-man eyebrows rose. “Not if we hurry.”

There was a bit of dry humor in that, and Pandy forced herself to stop and think. She had a million questions, and she was almost certain he could answer a large number of them, but right now the most important one was- “Do you know of a room, completely lined with books, with a door hidden behind a bookshelf that can’t be opened from the inside, and no windows?” She gestured from where she stood to the wall behind the coffins. “About fifteen feet wide?”

There was a pause, and then, to Pandy’s crushing disappointment, Preston shook his head, but said, “I can think of several, actually. There was a bit of a fad for such rooms after… after Cyra became queen, and some of the desert people were raised to nobility.  The nomads used something similar but far more dangerous to test their youth. In our version, guests would be locked in, and expected to figure out how to free themselves. Of course, they had only a set amount of time, but they could always yield and ask to be released early. Some people enjoyed them so much that they changed the room and its puzzle every time someone figured it out.”

“That would have been in the old Altheric capital, right?” Pandy asked, leaning forward. They’d assumed that Lian had been taken to East Altheric, since everything seemed to point that way, but narrowing it down to a single city was an improvement.

The dead general frowned. “Possibly, but you’d be more likely to find such a thing near the desert. We are the ones who made it into a game, but the old nobles of Velgrad would never have lowered themselves to alter their ancestral homes in such a way. It was most popular in Astrug, I believe.”

Astrug. Astrug… Why did that sound familiar? Pandy’s hamsters desperately dug through the piles of random information stored in her brain, but came up empty-pawed. Was it something from Gacha Love? Keros would have known, if he was still lurking in her brain. As it was, she didn’t even dare think the word too loudly, for fear that the hacker in her System would pick up on it and use it against them.

The black in Preston’s eyes expanded, making him look like a slightly more gothic version of himself. His caterpillar-brows pulled together, and he said, “We’re running out of time, Lady Pandora. I have enjoyed our talk, however unusual the topic, but the time has come for the reason I left this… memory here, for you to find.”

Stepping back once more, he turned and held open the lid of the smaller coffin. One which, Pandy noted with dread, was almost precisely her-sized. “Come,” Preston said, looking back at her with a face that seemed far more skull-like than it had any right to while still covered in skin. His whole body had slumped in on itself, the once-broad, straight shoulders drooping. His clothing hung slack in places that should have been filled out with flesh.

“Hurry, Pandora,” he said, his lips drawing back from yellowed teeth. “Or lose everything you have come to find. Forever.”

Well, that seemed a bit dramatic, but Pandy cast one last glance toward Augustus, Isidor, Empress Glory, and Tempest. As she did, something shifted beneath and within Glory’s shirt, and the woman’s eyes blinked very, very slowly. They really were all right, then, and either Preston’s hold on them was fading, or Glory was breaking free, thanks to her elemental or the fact that she was a Dark mage. Either way, Pandy wasn’t their only hope, which was always a good thing.

Taking a long, slow breath, Pandy marched forward, straight into the coffin. She knew perfectly well that there was nothing but a wall behind it, but somehow she half-expected a portal to open and carry her away. Instead, she just smacked her nose on the hard wooden bottom. There was a pause, then Preston cleared his throat. Pandy’s cheeks burned, but she flipped around, staring into his melting eyes as he closed the lid in her face.

It was dark and quiet inside the box. Pandy could hear her own breathing, and was once again reminded that she probably wasn’t just pretending to breathe in order to look like she was alive. In some small part, she might be alive. Which led to the question: how long would it take her to smother to death in a pinewood box? How much air could there be in here? Surely it wasn’t airtight though. Right?

Even if the lid didn’t fit well enough to prevent air from passing through, it did an excellent job of keeping out even the smallest amount of light. The blackness was complete, and Pandy was as blind as anyone else would be in the same situation. As the seconds stretched on, she stared straight ahead, wondering what would happen if she just pushed the lid open again. Was it locked? If so, she could punch out the sides instead. She hadn’t felt it move, so she was still in the lab, just standing there in a closed coffin like an-

Pandora.

Pandy froze. She’d become accustomed to voices in her head, but this was something else. This was like hearing her own voice talking to her, entirely unprompted. It was already dark, but Pandy found herself squinching her eyes shut, trying to find the place that voice had come from.

Th-thump.

That wasn’t a voice. That was… a heartbeat? Her own heartbeat? Surely not, and yet… It took a very long time, but eventually the sound repeated. It was sluggish, almost reluctant, but it was definitely the beating of a heart. Presumably hers, but really there was no telling. No, well, maybe-

She tried to lift her fingers to her throat, to feel for the elusive heartbeat, but there wasn’t enough room. She could, however, press her fingers against the inside of the opposite wrist, and she did so, counting hippopotami until she felt a tiny flutter beneath her fingertips, accompanied by a th-thump rushing behind her ears.

That was new. A few doctors had examined her, in both rabbit and human form, and they always seemed to find a heartbeat, but when she tried, she’d come up empty every time. She didn’t think that was just because she’d been doing it incorrectly. Pandy had had surprisingly extensive experience in checking to see if people were alive.

Pandora.

The voice was louder this time, and she realized it had come at the exact moment her heart beat. Pandy was still afraid to speak to her System, accidentally or otherwise, so she whispered, “Who’s there?” If the voice said ‘banana’, she was definitely punching her way out of this box.

Instead, it said, What… do… you… want?

What did she want? Well, at this exact moment, she wanted to not be in a coffin. But otherwise… “I want to save Lian,” she said, still quietly, as if afraid someone outside the box would hear. When there was no response, she went on. “I want to save Ismara, and Kappa, and make sure that Thaniel and Izzy and Ellie and everyone else is happy. I maybe even want to be a teacher, even though the kids probably know more than I do, and if I can be alive, I want to-”

Pandy’s voice broke beneath the weight of everything she wanted, but images continued to tumble through her mind. Thaniel, grinning as he swung his wooden sword, hair golden in the sunshine, growing like every other child his age. Eleanor, digging in a pot, dirt up to her elbows, as she loosened the roots of a plant that had grown too large for its container. Geraldine, still wearing the largest, fluffiest dress possible, but astride a horse the size of Soot and holding a sword like Thaniel’s. Isidor, his wary expression relaxed at last as he walked together with Lian, Edgar, Kaden, and even Dorian, deep in a discussion of some esoteric fact. All safe and happy and living their lives the way they wanted to.

And Pandy… Pandy was with Augustus. Here, in this house, with Nox and Nyssa and, somehow, all of the children, maybe including Lian, and definitely including Isidor. Empress Glory could live in the servants’ quarters, or if she wanted the creepy basement, she could have that, because in spite of her prickliness and the way she dodged personal questions, she had saved them, and she didn’t seem to have anyone else, and that meant she needed someone, and Pandy was someone, and-

A single image, one of many, solidified, gaining definition and color, until Pandy could almost forget she was standing in a coffin, and believe that she was instead in the office of Avington House. The office that conformed perfectly to what she wanted, even though until the moment she’d seen it, she never would have been able to put into words that a room full of soft whiteness and glowing color and fantastical creatures was precisely right.

Preston Avington stood behind that desk, looking just as he had in Gacha Love, when Clara first entered the room. This time, however, an elemental stood on each side of him. Nyssa was as solid as Pandy had ever seen her, her hands twisted into ribbons as she watched Pandy with something like desperate hope. On Preston’s right, Nox stood, taller than his master, his curved shoulders the only sign that he was anything other than human. His emotions were far less obvious than Nyssa’s, but there was still a kind of hunger in his gaze as it rested on Pandy.

“You wish to protect those you love,” Preston said, and Pandy nodded. She liked easy questions. But he didn’t stop there. “Will you be faithful to West Altheric, and its royal family? Serving them in times of need, and supporting them in times of peace?”

That was harder, but Pandy thought about Eleanor, and Kaden, and even Louisa. “As long as they don’t try to hurt anyone I care about,” she said carefully. Kaden wasn’t a kind person, not as he was in the game, before he met Clara, but he already loved Eleanor, and he was fair. He would be a good king, and he wouldn’t go around getting them into wars or throwing people in dungeons for no reason. Besides, this Kaden wasn’t grown yet, and maybe he still had time to learn that opening himself up to other people didn’t always mean they would try to take advantage of him.

That answer wasn’t exactly what Preston wanted to hear, Pandy could see that, but in the end, he was a man who had joined a war against his own king because he knew that was the right thing to do, so he was well aware that blind obedience to a sovereign wasn’t always a good thing.

“Will you make this place your home for the rest of your life, however long it shall be, and care for it and its elementals as they care for you?” Preston asked. Both elementals swayed forward, Nyssa’s distressed, knotted fingers now reaching the floor. This was the question they cared about, and it was also an easy one.

But Preston wasn’t done. “And will you make certain that you have a successor who can do the same, even if that successor is not blood of your blood, or the person you love the most. Will you pass them over in order to protect this house?”

Well, Pandy didn’t have ‘blood of her blood’, and wasn’t likely to, especially if the whole thing with Augustus didn’t work out. Who knew what Pandy would be if and when she returned to life? Who knew if humans and elementals could marry or… or… Yes. There were no certainties to be found there, but what Pandy did know was that Avington House was the first place she’d ever truly felt at home, even with as little time as she’d actually spent here.

This was where she belonged, and even though she knew she should pass it to Clara, Clar-Ascyra had two loving parents and a home of her own, and Pandy didn’t want to give this one up. When the game was over, this was her life – or unlife, at the moment – and Avington House was her home. The least she could do for the house, and for Nox and Nyssa, was to make sure that whoever it went to after her loved and needed it as much as Pandy did.

“Yes,” Pandy said, and someone stabbed a fishhook through her heart.