Chapter Two hundred – Mori-bunned

The final boss of Avington House towered over Pandy, filling the hallway and blocking the door to the office, as well as M. Piers Avington’s fallen form.

It was, of course, the ghost of General Avington. He was a bit older and softer around the middle than the statue in Golden Park, but it was recognizably him. He even wore the same uniform – one that made the sleek, modern uniforms shown in Gacha Love seem like formal wear. This was a uniform Meant for Business, and the expression on the ghostly face was equally serious.

The dark eyepits found Pandy’s face, and… hesitated. Not long, but it was there, and Pandy felt a bit of the tension drain out of her. Since General Preston Avington was theoretically an actual person, not something created by Keros’s magic, that meant that he had self-determination. The magic would force him into this situation, but what he did with it once he was here was up to him, and that might well have included going all out in an attempt to kill Pandy.

Pandy raised her weapons, settling into her best approximation of an attack stance. It wasn’t good, and Thaniel’s weapons teacher probably would have laughed at her, but General Avington just frowned, his ghostly face looking almost perplexed. Glancing behind him at M. Piers Avington’s body, he said, “Whooooo are yoooouuuuu?”

The words were drawn out and airy, but they rumbled through the house, making it shiver as if in anticipation. Pandy swallowed hard, then swapped the knife in her left hand for the contract. Admittedly, without Dual Wielding, her fighting looked like she was attempting to butter bread, but it still seemed prudent to hang onto a weapon in her dominant hand.

“I’m, um, a member of House Avington. Your family,” she said, holding it up so he could see it. The ghost leaned forward, a wisp of phantasmal fog forming into small spectacles on his nose. The depthless pits of his eyes couldn’t move as he read, but Pandy got that impression anyway.

After a few long minutes filled only with the moaning of the injured, the glasses puffed away, and General Avington straightened again. His voice was a bit more cohesive as he said, “Yoooouuuuu rebeeeelll agaiiinst the croooown?”

Pandy shook her head vigorously. “Not at all. In fact, I think some bad people are trying to bring down the ruling family, and I’m going to help. If I can.” She couldn’t help but add that fragment of truth to this padding of her resume.

The general sank back, disappearing partially into the floor so he wasn’t hanging over Pandy quite so threateningly. Sadly, he said, “Theeere isss noooo Maaaster. I cannot aaaid.”

Pandy was ready for this. They’d gone off-script when she claimed to be fighting against an actual coup attempt, but she didn’t have Clara’s Light magic, which could evict this ghost completely, or Edgar and Kaden’s magical or martial strength. That meant she needed to convince him to move some other way. She wasn’t sure what a Master was – and why did that word keep coming up? Did this world have no Mistresses? Though that had its own connotations she wasn’t entirely comfortable with. In any case…

She thought fast. “Um, I am the Master. Mistress. The boss,” she told the ghost, drawing herself up to her not-particularly-impressive height.

The ghost froze, his features wafting out, then back in again, like a unicorn spotted in a cloud before the wind made it into a narwhal instead. He looked distinctly puzzled as he said, “Yoooouuu cannot be.”

Pandy felt her shoulders stiffen. “Why not? I mean, women make perfectly good bosses. Better than men sometimes, because at least we-”

A spectral hand pointed to the contract. “Yoooouuuu must undergooo the test. Iiissss that not why yoooouuu aaare heeere?”

“Wait, what?” Pandy squeaked, turning the contract she hadn’t bothered to have translated back around so she could stare at it. “Is that what this is?”

The figure nodded, though it was more like the head faded away from one spot and reappeared in a slightly lower one. “Wheeeennnn noooo Maaasteer exiiiists, a meeemmmber of the hooouuuse must attteeemmmpt the teeesssst eaaachhh yeeeear, untiiilll one succeeeeeds. The royaaallll familyyyy muuussst neeeveeer beee left wiiithooouuut its mossst loooyal retaaaiinnners.”

Pandy winced. That explained a lot. This wasn’t just a scam to bilk someone out of five hundred gold every year, then kill them so no one found out, this was a way for M. Piers Avington to avoid having to take the test himself. Presumably the magic had some way to pull him in and force him to try, and he already knew he would fail, so instead he found some other sucker, adopted them for a week, and sent them in to keep the house off his back for one more year. Worse, there was no way he’d figured this out himself without dying, so how long had this been going on? How many Avingtons had died because of this ridiculous – and apparently impossible – test before they figured out a way to work the system?

“So,” Pandy said hopefully, “have I passed, then? I mean, I got through all the nasty little traps and attacks, so… I win?”

The ghost heaved a sigh that sent a bitterly cold but surprisingly refreshing breeze down the hall. This time when he swelled up, miasmic armor formed around him, swirling menacingly as he raised a very solid-looking axe in one now-gauntleted hand.

“Yoooouuuu muuuussstt faaaace meeee!” he growled, the surprisingly reasonable conversation ending with what Pandy felt was unfair abruptness. She barely had time to swap the contract for her second knife, and she just depended on her Agility to roll to the side as the axe came down. Rather than passing through the floorboards, it dug in, splitting them with a terrible cracking sound. Pandy winced. That was definitely going to be expensive to fix.

<Dual Wielding. Dance!> She shouted silently as she attempted to do that really neat thing martial artists and gymnasts did, where they went from flat on their back to standing in one smooth movement. She failed, but her flailing brought her to a crouch, and allowed the axe to whiff past her again. She’d really hoped she might charm the old ghost into taking it easy on her, but there didn’t seem to be much chance of that at this point, so as soon as she felt certainty flood into her limbs again, she tried to stab him.

Dual Wielding successful.

Dance successful.

Style randomized. 

Raqs Sharqi selected.

Suddenly Pandy’s hips were doing things she was absolutely certain they’d never done before. She shimmied forward, bumped her hip, then swayed back, arms rippling. None of this ended up inserting a silver blade into the phantasmal figure ahead of her, but it did succeed in getting him to back off, at least long enough to give her what was obviously a Very Confused Look, even through the helmet that now concealed his features.

This didn’t last long, but when his axe next came down, it seemed that Pandy’s skills had once again reached some sort of compromise. She turned into the long sweep of the axe, hips swaying, raising her knife overhead to block the attack. The sound of metal clashing against metal was oddly muffled, and there was no way a five-foot-something person should have been able to block an overhand blow from a seven-foot-something behemoth, but Pandy’s muscles barely twitched as her wrists turned, capturing the edge of the axe between her blade and crossguard.

Holding it, she moved in again, hip bumping as she pulled and twisted, attempting to throw the ghost over her shoulder. It failed, since he was mostly incorporeal, but she felt a shock of cold and Corruption Point notifications flooded across her vision.

+5 Corruption Points for entering Dark Aura II

+5 Corruption Points for entering Dark Aura II

+5 Corruption Points for entering Dark Aura II

+4 Corruption Points for entering Dark Aura II

For a moment Pandy was shocked – and blinded – but her body continued on, shimmying and swaying inside the ghostly warrior’s long reach. One knife held General Avington’s axe away from her, while the other stabbed and sliced in a very deliberate way. All the while, the notifications continued pouring in.

But it made sense, didn’t it? Pandy had always assumed that Clara’s power had exorcised the ghosts from this place, but were ghosts even an option in this world? Didn’t it make more sense that these were Dark elementals, or the manifestation of some lingering Dark magic, and Clara had done what she did, Dispelling or Purifying it? Which meant the flurry of scuttling things in the downstairs library had probably been Duskin, but why hadn’t Pandy seen them the way she had in the underground harbor? Were those Duskin trying to be seen, or were the ones here trying not to?

But these were questions for a time when a maybe-ghost-maybe-elemental wasn’t trying to kill her. It would have been nice if she could see the numbers flying off of him, the bar of his not-exactly-health – Life Force? – being whittled away, but she couldn’t. What she could see was the weakening of his aura, which was already less than what she’d gotten from the Apparition on the third floor, but more than Elias Keating had had to offer.

+3 Corruption Points for entering Dark Aura II

+4 Corruption Points for entering Dark Aura II

+3 Corruption Points for entering Dark Aura II

+3 Corruption Points for entering Dark Aura II

Down to three each time she got close enough, which was often, because this particular dance really liked to sway in close, then dip back out with a graceful arabesque. The swings of the axe were slower now, and the axe itself was wisping away at the edges, only the forward blade still thoroughly solid. Pandy had a sudden idea, and with far more deliberation than she’d managed since invoking the skills, she forced the next ripple of her arms to carry her knife through the handle of the axe, even though that allowed the blade to shave a river of fire off her other arm. Blood flowed, making the hilt of her knife slippery, and it fell from her grasp.

But the fight was over. The head of the axe fell to the floor, dissolving into nothingness just as surely as the horrible gray things in the Master Bedroom. And, like there, the damage to the house also reversed itself around her, broken walls reforming and split floorboards returning to their pristine, albeit dusty, condition. Well, that was handy.

Slowly, the general fell to his knees, armor joining the axe wherever bits of elementals or ghosts went when they didn’t need them any longer. He hung his head. “I yield, Lady. You may pass.” This time there was no drawn-out, hollow breathiness, just a calm and perhaps even relieved voice that vanished along with the kneeling warrior.

Slowly, Pandy lowered her remaining weapon, then managed to force her body to stillness. She crouched to pick up the bloody weapon, casting a quick Minor Heal as she did so. Then she cast several more into the nearby area, relieved to see that she got three names back as being healed.

That meant she hadn’t actually managed to kill anyone, which was a great relief. Yes, all right, they started it, but normal people attacking Pandy was a bit like a toddler throwing a tantrum at an adult. The toddler couldn’t do more than cause an infection with a particularly nasty bite, and the adult really shouldn’t retaliate with deadly force.

M. Piers Avington, of course, wasn’t dead or injured. Instead, he’d just passed out after giving the house all of his magic in order to summon General Avington. Pandy knew this because if Clara brought Kaden with her, he had the Knights of the Royal Eagle arrest the perpetrators, and later filled Clara in on what they learned about M. Piers.

And speaking of the Knights. Pandy cleared her throat. “Sir Bailey? Are you there?”

The silver-armored figure appeared from the dark, uncertain space that was the atrium. There was some blood on their armor, which made Pandy suspect they’d already been helping in some way, in spite of their promise not to interfere.

“You can, um, take them away now. If that’s all right?” Pandy said. Augustus had already given the knight their orders, but Pandy was supposed to let them know exactly when to fulfill those orders, and she was distinctly uncomfortable with this responsibility.

“Yes,” came the calm, unidentifiable voice from within the featureless helmet. “I stabilised the two most injured, and restrained them.” Ah, that was what they’d been doing. Pandy appreciated it. She really hadn’t liked the idea of herself as a murderer, even in self-defense, and that one man had definitely been missing an arm, which seemed like a Bad Thing.

Sir Bailey hesitated, then asked, “Is Lord Avington dead?”

“Dead?” Pandy asked, slightly startled. “No. Just out of magic. He shouldn’t be a threat for a while.” She thought about the various attacks. Other than the traps, they all had one thing in common. “I think he’s a Water mage. Maybe an elementalist.”

The helmet nodded. “We’ve been following him since he was brought to our attention,” they said. “We’ll take care of it.” Their head tilted curiously. “Would you like me to take you to…?”

“Oh!” Pandy said, entirely unable to help the probably-goofy smile that crossed her lips. “Would you? That would be lovely. But first-” she turned to face the door the ghost-elemental had been guarding, and, reaching across M. Piers Avington’s comatose body, she turned the knob. It clicked open easily, and she stepped forward, glad once again that she was wearing pants rather than a skirt. No matter how unconscious the sleazy conman was, she didn’t want to expose her bloomers to him.

“I have one more thing to do,” she told the knight, “but I’ll be right back.”