Lucky Rabbit

By following her nose, Pandy paced out one side of the suspected lab, then another. She came up against what she suspected were doorframes and turned around again, searching for a way to get in. She listened closely as she crept along, but heard nothing coming from the other side of the wall. Finally, there was no putting it off any longer, and she wedged herself around until she was facing the inside of the wall, then Scratched out another box. This one definitely wasn’t square, but given the fact that she was curled up like a bean-bun inside a wall-space less than half her length, she thought a trapezoid was pretty good.

She intended to stop and listen before removing the wall chunk, but gravity had other plans, and as soon as the last corner connected, she found herself tumbling into the room. The wall slice clattered to the ground beside her, and she lay sprawled on her back, staring up at a surprisingly well-lit ceiling. After a moment during which no shouts rose up, and nothing came to smash her into bunny-butter, Pandy finally dared to roll over and look around.

The space was surprisingly innocuous, with a few shelves, some tables, and equipment that ranged from esoteric glassware to a stone mortar and pestle. What was neither surprising nor innocuous was what sat on those shelves. Body parts hung suspended in fluid, mostly unidentifiable as anything other than squidgy pinkish lumps to Pandy’s untrained eye. Never before had she been so very glad she’d never gotten into watching health-related videos.

After one more glance around, Pandy thought,

Shifting Faces successful.

02:11:37 remaining today.

She was already pulling her necklace off and putting it back into her Inventory by the time the System notifications faded from her vision. Having a preset outfit was incredibly useful most of the time, but now that she was effectively juggling three different shapes, not so much. Maybe next time she leveled up, she would leave Eurydice’s necklace off? But then she’d have to put it on most of the time, so maybe not.

Shaking her head at just how strange her problems were these days, Pandy picked up the chunk of wall and hid it beneath a table. After nudging the table over so it blocked a human-angled view of the wall, she walked over to the closest shelf and – suppressing the urge to do anything except what she was about to do – read the label on the jars.

S 27 - M/D. 0. Pancreas

S 8 - F/D. 2 (2,2). Heart

S 64 - M/N. 1 (3). Thymus

There were twenty-four jars on three shelves, all occupied by different organs taken from different subjects. These had one distinct difference from the ones in the Avington lab, however. Every one of these had a crystal embedded in its fleshy resident. In fact, sometimes the crystals were almost as large as the organ, so Pandy couldn’t even see some of the grosser parts of the lumpy mass.

All of the crystals were generally shaped like the ones in Thaniel and Bryan’s chest, but they were made of different colors – or maybe different types – of crystals. All dark, yes, but some were dark red, while others were dark green or gray or brown. It was like someone had been given a description of something, and they were trying to recreate the object from words alone. With mixed success, as far as Pandy could see, since the one embedded in Bryan’s chest apparently did something, while these were, perhaps, complete failures?

Did that mean Thaniel’s heartstone wasn’t the real god-crystal, but another, older fake? That didn’t make any sense, but it also didn’t make sense that none of these crystals looked right, since Bryan had been here for a few months now, and he had owned the original for years. With his help, they should at least look like exact copies, even if they didn’t do whatever they were meant to do. Or maybe this was an old, abandoned lab after all, and the lights were still on simply because they were powered by the same magic as the rest of the house?

With great relief, Pandy left the puzzling jars behind, moving over to a set of several thin, bound books followed by what looked like a three ring binder. Somewhat to her amusement, when she pulled that one out, she discovered that was essentially exactly what it was. Two welded metal rings held pieces of paper with holes punched at the top. Rather than turning the pages side to side, they flipped up. Quickly, she skimmed through them.

One thing she noticed very quickly was that the words written on these pages were in two different hands. The first, which usually occupied the top part of the page, looked very much like the handwriting scribbled in the margins of the book in Bryan’s rooms. The other was neater, with blocky letters, rather than script, and often accompanied numbers or even small sketches.

Very little of what she read made sense to Pandy, and she longed to just close the book up and move on, but there was something about it that made her continue skimming through page after page. Eventually, after seeing a few of the shorthand notations on the jars written out in their entirety, she figured out what they meant.

The first part was the ‘Subject Number’, followed by the person’s gender and their elemental type. So M/D was a male Dark mage, while F/N would be a female Nature mage. The next part indicated how many elemental contracts they had when they died, and the tier of those elementals. The last was, of course, the relevant body part. The book also contained a letter and number code that were probably some kind of location indicator – shelf B, jar 6, or something like that, though she didn’t see any matching markers on the shelves themselves.

Once she’d flipped through the entire notebook, Pandy picked up the bound book next to it. It had no title on the spine, but somehow when Pandy opened it, she wasn’t surprised to see Avington, Volume Six, written big and bold on the inside. Pushing the books together, Pandy compared the size of them to the hefty tome in the secret lab. She thought they were about the same size, give or take the thickness of several covers, rather than just one.

“What are you trying to do?” she murmured softly, sliding the book back into place with a shiver of revulsion. She’d love to burn this whole place down, but she couldn’t. Not yet, anyway.

Trying to copy Zhery’s stone, I’d say.

It was made by a god.

So don’t worry, they won’t succeed.

Pandy hadn’t meant the words for Keros, but that didn’t matter. Talking to him would provide a good distraction from what she’d just read, and what she was surrounded by. “I didn’t really think they would. I’m worried about what else they might find along the way. And why they’re doing all of this in the first place.” She kept her voice low, just in case someone was nearby, but it was nice to hear something other than the hollow silence of a sleeping house.

“I can answer that, if you’ll allow me,” Bryan Conroy replied from behind her.

Pandy very nearly screamed as she spun, instinctively curling her hands into defensive fists. Thaniel’s father stood in the doorway, his thinning hair in disarray, a robe pulled around his bony frame. Raising one hand in a staying motion, he stepped inside, closing the door behind him, then locked it with a click. When he turned back to her, he lifted the second hand into the air as well, showing that he held no weapons.

“If I wanted to stop you, I would have called for the guards as soon as you left my rooms,” he said, a small smile crossing his lips. “You are the being who was pretending to be my son, are you not? I wasn’t certain, but…there was something in your eyes when you asked about Alex and the Dark Magician. Something I’ve never seen in Thaniel. Besides,” the smile flickered over his face again, “my son is a Light mage, not Dark.”

“You knew?” Pandy gasped. “How? Why… Why didn’t you tell him? Do you know how worried he was? He was afraid he was a Dark mage, and he would end up like you, and-” Her teeth clicked together as she forced herself to stop talking, only to see Bryan perk up, rather than looking upset.

He took a step toward Pandy, saw her draw back, and stopped, lifting his open hands even higher. “Thaniel really is all right, then?” he asked eagerly. “He’s not,” he swallowed hard, “dead?”

Pandy’s throat tightened, and she shook her head. “He’s fine. He’s at Falconet, and he’s not really unhappy there. We just needed- I mean, we knew that-” Augh! She was terrible at this! Bryan was probably a murderer, and almost certainly an accomplice to whatever was going on in this laboratory, but all he had to do was act a little bit like a concerned father, and she folded.

Trying to take control of the conversation, Pandy waved her hands around and said, “You said you could explain all of this. Not that I’m going to just believe you. Because you could say anything and-”

“I don’t expect you to believe me,” Bryan said, his shoulders curving into his usual miserable slouch. “I wouldn’t believe me. But as long as Thaniel is safe, and you promise to do one thing for me, I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

Pandy stared at him suspiciously. “Do what?”

He motioned to his own chest. “You have to safely remove the gem from his chest. You do know about that, don’t you?” At her nod, he hurried on. “It can’t stay there. I asked my elemental and Grace’s – my wife’s – to use their power to save him, but-”

His voice broke. “I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know. The stone was just…just an heirloom, and one that came with more warnings and rules than I could count. I knew it was powerful though, and Dark magic can be used to hold the victims of illness or poisoning in a sort of stasis until they can be healed. It’s rare, and the Dark mage who cast the spell usually dies from the magic drain if the victim isn’t treated immediately, but I thought with the power of the stone, Flit and Tyne could do it. Tyne to hold his body in stasis, and Flit to do the healing. But I was wrong.”

He shook his head, tears freely flowing down his cheeks. “At first I thought it was all right, even if it wasn’t what I meant to do. He was alive, and once I blocked his memory of the accident, he was very nearly his old self. But he didn’t grow – didn’t age, barely seemed to notice the passing of the days. He was eternally six years old. And even then, I didn’t-”

Looking straight at Pandy, Bryan said, “Eventually, even if the stone continues to work, Flit and Tyne will die. I could sense it through my contract with Tyne. He was fading. So I started trying to figure out how to remove the stone without harming Thaniel.”

He waved a hand around at the lab, much as Pandy had done a short while ago. “Grace had a number of dear companions in Knightmere, and once she left the city, she became the…safe friend. The one who could be trusted to hold their darkest secrets, because she had nothing to gain by revealing them. One of those friends – I don’t know who, because she refused to betray their trust entirely, even though she was worried about them – told her about experiments done by one of the old noble houses. They were trying to discover how someone could have multiple elemental affinities, or, failing that, how to change someone’s elemental affinity or make it stronger. The friend told Grace they had even had some limited success.”

Slowly, he crossed to the books, pulling one out and opening it to the title page. “Grace didn’t know who they were – her friend didn’t tell her – but I know now. Have you heard of the Avingtons?” Pandy nodded mutely, and he went on. “They married for Air magic, then realized that without the Dark magic they started with, they couldn’t maintain their house or their position in society. They wanted to be able to keep Air, so they might be able to marry into the royal family, but they also needed Dark mages. Rather than take the chance and find a Dark mage among the lower houses or even the common people, they did…this, hoping to find a way to have it all.”

He shoved the book back onto the shelf with more vigor than was entirely necessary, then met Pandy’s gaze again. “As a Light mage, Thaniel’s magic encapsulated the Dark, like a tree with a parasite. I tried everything I could think of, and then one day I remembered the story Grace told me. I thought, if someone else could manage even a small amount of success, could I not do the same? What if I could make Thaniel into a Dark mage? Could he take control of the stone, rather than constantly fighting it? Could he live?”

His lips tightened, but his gaze never wavered. “I did bad things. Foul things. But I never hurt anyone. I swear it. I experimented on those who died of natural causes, trying to find the source of magic, the thing that makes us Light or Dark or Nature or Ice. Or, failing that, find a way to strengthen Flit and Tyne so they could survive until I had time to succeed. That’s what I was doing when the Exchange took me.”

“You weren’t trying to resurrect your wife? Grace?” Pandy blurted.

He looked shocked. “Never! Even if her body was intact, she would have been furious with me for even trying. No, all I ever wanted was to free Thaniel of the mistake I made, and allow him to live a normal life.”

Well, that put a different spin on things, at least if he was telling the truth, and somehow Pandy thought he was. At least mostly. It didn’t explain why he’d been summoning Demons, but that detail could probably wait for later.

“We’re already trying to figure out how to get the heartstone – the Dark stone – out of Thaniel. He can’t use his magic at all, and I was just beginning to realize that he hasn’t been growing, either. I have a few ideas, but there are some really smart and talented people,” and Dragons, Pandy didn’t say, “working on it.”

Bryan’s shoulders slumped again, this time in relief. “Good. I wanted him here because I think I figured out how to help Flit and Tyne.” He reached into the capacious pocket of his robe, and pulled out something wrapped in the paper-like cloth called Aetherbane. Now that Pandy had seen it several times, there was no mistaking it. It was supposed to be dangerous for mages, though, and without thinking, Pandy took a step forward, reaching for it.

Bryan pulled it back, looking alarmed. “This is Aetherbane. Wrapping the stones in this was the only way I could sneak them from the lab. I can touch it because I’m magicless, but it’s not safe for anyone else.”

Well, anyone except another magicless, a Bound, or whatever Pandy was, but she couldn’t say that, so instead she waited as he poured two gleaming stones – one white and one black – into his palm. Carefully, he transferred them to her, saying, “You must have a way to transport things, or you wouldn’t have been able to get that simulacrum into the house. Get these out and to whoever is helping you. Tell them that if they use those to help Flit and Tyne, and keep working to get the stone out of Thaniel, I’ll do whatever they want.”

Pandy vanished the stones into her Inventory, where they appeared as ‘Power Crystal - Light’ and ‘Power Crystal - Dark’. Not exactly helpful, but as Pandy understood it, the System only knew as much as she did, so that made sense.

As soon as the stones disappeared, Bryan looked relieved. “All right,” he said, “this is what I know…”