Lucky Rabbit

Pandy already had her eye on a doorway on the far side of the kitchen. A grease-stained but cheerful red cloth covered it, preventing customers from seeing in, but allowing the employees to pass through easily. Now, she put on a burst of speed, launching herself toward the dubious safety of the space beyond, and heard swearing as the broom-wielder’s weapon got tangled in the red fabric. This slowed her pursuer just enough that Pandy was able to pause, taking in a room full of tables and well-on-the-way-to-drunk patrons, all of whom seemed to be staring directly at her.

A man behind the narrow bar grunted in irritation, mouth twisting in a snarl, and sent his boot crashing down toward Pandy. She dodged, then had to dodge again as yelps sounded, along with exclamations of, “You’ll owe me a pitcher for catchin’ it, Rye!” The bartender – presumably the aforementioned Rye – just offered more grunts as he continued attempting to stomp Pandy into paste.

Back and forth through the room she ran, leaving chunks of partially-dried mud behind as she bounced off a wall, a too-close-for-comfort foot, and three separate chairs. Then she caught sight of a small, dark hallway, and darted into it, finding that it ended in an equally small, dark door that stood partially open. A man stood in front of the door, taking up most of the space in the cramped hall, and his hand was already on the hilt of a weapon belted around his waist.

He lunged forward as he saw her, a knife coming down in a fast, vicious strike, but Pandy actually ran up the wall beside him, flipping over his head in an arc that dropped her through the door and sent her tumbling down a set of rickety wooden stairs. She came to a halt halfway down, shuddering and gasping for air she didn’t need, only to hear boots thud onto the battered steps.

Pandy already knew what was coming for her, so she stared down, seeing firelight glitter in at least half a dozen pairs of eyes. That way wasn’t any better, which left only one option. The stairs were formed of horizontal wooden slats roughly nailed onto longer wooden slats that ran from top to bottom. Between these poorly-made steps was pitch-black darkness, leading to whatever lay beneath the stairs. Pandy threw herself through the closest gap, desperately hoping she wasn’t going from the pot to the fire.

She tumbled through something stringy and sticky, which she identified as spiderwebs. They weren’t enough to stop her, of course, but there were a lot of them, and by the time Pandy came to a very sudden stop, she’d added another layer of debris to the beer and mud that already coated her. Staring up, she saw the eyes of a man who held a candle just within the darkness beneath the steps.

“Don’t worry about it, Vincent,” a new voice said, this one quite a bit smoother than the gruff grunts produced by the bartender. “If it’s not dead already, it will be soon. My pet’ll appreciate a snack.”

Several voices chuckled, though some of them sounded distinctly uneasy, and the light moved away. Pandy lay still for a bit longer, waiting for someone else to stare down at her, but while distant light flickered by once or twice, no one bothered with the filthy rabbit who’d fallen down the hole.

At long last, when the voices coming from beyond the stairs settled into low murmurs too quiet to understand, Pandy finally dared move a paw. The movement sent a sharp pain through her leg and hip, and she stilled again. She hadn’t received a single message about damage, so she suspected her System was still down, but she’d also used a high-level Hop and showed far more Agility than her starter stats would have allowed.

she thought hopefully, then, When nothing happened, she accepted that she was going to have to do this the hard way, and struggled to her feet. One leg dragged as she moved, and she was almost certain that her tail had come off again at some point, but it didn’t hurt too much as long as she didn’t think about it. Or move. Or breathe. The last one, at least, she didn’t have to do, so she stopped.

For an instant, she considered trying to cast Spark or Radiant Presence, but even if it worked, the light might be enough to attract the attention of the people in the basement, and Pandy would really prefer to avoid that. Instead, she used the rare glimmers of diffuse light coming from above to examine the small, narrow space in which she stood.

Behind and above her were the steps, which looked even less trustworthy from this side. Large splinters stuck out of them, and at least one had an actual crack splitting it from top to bottom. Someone besides her was going to fall through them eventually, but it wasn’t like she was going to file an OSHA violation against the Shadow Exchange, so she just ignored it and focused on the other three sides.

Ahead was a stone wall, cobbled together from mismatched rocks and something that was probably meant to be mortar, but was already beginning to crumble. More OSHA violations, but not a path to escape. To her left and right were hard-packed dirt walls, braced with wooden beams and hope. They actually looked stronger than the rocky wall, but rabbits were supposed to be good at digging burrows, weren’t they? Surely she could dig her way out if she couldn’t come up with a better idea.

And, to be absolutely honest, that better idea wasn’t exactly stepping up to volunteer. This space looked like it had been incidentally enclosed when the stairs were built, and no one had stepped foot in here since. There were even a few pieces of trash scattered around across the dirt floor, but instead of the cans and wrappers she would have expected in her old life, these were scraps of paper, a couple of copper coins, and a single broken mug.

The coins reminded her that she had an inventory – probably – and she cast her mind over the contents. Clothes, money, her currently-useless reward for completing the Emberwrought Labyrinth, and the Dark magic primer. Nope, nothing helpful there, which left her with only the things she had when she came into this world: teeth, claws, and her brain, such as it was.

As she moved around the three relatively safe sides, she realized that she was no longer dragging her paw behind her. So even if she wasn’t getting notifications, something was working, and seemed to be working a little better all the time. Now, hopefully Keros had been wrong when he said that the System coming back online would be disorienting. Or maybe the best she could hope for was that it wouldn’t be any worse than disorienting. In any case, by the time she’d circled – rectangled? – the area twice, she felt fine. Filthy, but fine.

Carefully, she scratched at the dirt walls to the left and right, but produced only a dry crumble of debris and a few shallow marks. A proper Scratch would probably do some real damage, but she was fairly certain the people in the basement would notice – if not the sound, then they’d definitely realize something was off when the building started to collapse. That left the stone wall, and while she wasn’t particularly optimistic about that, she actually found that it was almost ridiculously easy to use a claw to carve the mortar out from between the rocks.

It was a matter of minutes before she worked her way around one of the stones that didn’t look like it was holding anything else up. By the time she was done, the misshapen chunk of rock was wiggling and scraping against the nearby rocks so loudly that she was certain someone would hear. The voices blithely continued talking, however, and Pandy turned around, placing her big hind feet against the rock, hoping that she could just dislodge it with a minimum of fuss.

And came face to face with a spider. Not just any spider, either, but a spider with a body as large as she was, and legs that could touch both dirt walls at once. That was a huge no from Pandy, and while she’d never subscribed to the ‘kill it with fire’ method of pest control, she might be willing to make an exception for this thing.

Her back legs shot out, shoving hard against the loosened stone, which ground its way into the wall a few inches before getting stuck. The spider was stalking slowly toward Pandy, rubbing its fangs together like some villain in a melodrama. Pandy shoved again, harder, and this time the rock crunched. She could feel a crack forming beneath her paws, and she pushed harder, even as the arachnid leaped forward.

By now, most of Pandy’s rear end was in the hole she’d made, and she couldn’t dodge, so the spider’s fangs sank into the shoulder she turned toward it, ducking her head out of the way. She clenched her eyes tight against the pain, and in the darkness behind her lids, something shadowy moved. A streak of scattered shapes flickered in and out before vanishing again.

Pandy opened her eyes. The spider was still latched onto her, frozen with its front legs embracing her upper back, as if waiting for her thrash, scream, keel over dead…anything, really. When nothing happened, its eight eyes looked distinctly nonplussed. How such an inhuman face could show emotion so clearly, Pandy had no idea, but it did. Or at least it did until Pandy bit back.

Spiders can’t scream. They couldn’t make noises at all, as far as Pandy knew, but when her Bite chomped into its nearest leg, pulling the surprisingly meaty limb off with a really, really gross crunching sound, this spider threw itself away from her in eerie silence. There were some kind of claws on its feet, and it scratched her as it attempted to shove her away. But Pandy couldn’t afford to let it escape. This thing had to be what the smooth-voiced man had called his ‘pet’, which meant he probably wouldn’t be happy to see it come back without all of its limbs.

Leaping onto the spider’s back, Pandy bit down again, while digging into its abdomen with her back feet. Another leg came off at the point where it attached to the main body, falling aside like a forgotten toy. Something goopy squished between her toes, and the spider shuddered, attempting to use its remaining limbs to drag itself toward the pale light seeping between the steps. It was missing a pair of eyes, which oozed in a truly nauseating way, but even as its legs curled inward, those vicious fangs snapped at her, biting into one of her paws.

Pandy hung on for several seconds, waiting for the spider to struggle to its feet again, but it didn’t, and gradually she allowed herself to believe that the confrontation was over. Only then did she let go, falling to her side in the webbing-covered dirt, trembling almost as much as her victim had before it died. More shadowy shapes skittered across her vision, but they were faded, jittery words, not more spiders come to see what had happened to their leader. Or maybe not their leader, but a tiny, baby spider whose mother would be Very Displeased with Pandy. How many giant spiders could fit in a basement?

Turning away from the horrible and yet pathetic reminder of her brush with still more death, Pandy returned to her hole. Peering in, she saw that she’d been right. There were definitely cracks in the rock now. Better yet, faint light was showing through those holes. Though, on second thought, light was probably bad, because it implied that someone on the other side wanted to be able to see, and Pandy had no desire to be seen.

Still, she pushed at the rock some more, causing it to crumble further, taking more and more of the surrounding mortar with it. In spite of her best attempts to pick a non-weight-bearing rock, the wall above her rock was beginning to sag, and Pandy was worried that if she cleared any more of the pieces, it might come down. So, rather than trying to open up more space, she wiggled through, making herself as small as possible, which, it turned out, was really very small. Dust and sand joined the webs, mud, and beer already covering her, but out she popped, finding herself in another small room, but this time, not alone.