Chapter One hundred ninety-nine – Cha-cha Into the Abyss

The actual foundation of the house was in surprisingly good condition. Floorboards were intact – except where they’d been intentionally altered – as were walls and ceilings.

The stairs were the same, each step solid beneath Pandy’s foot until she caught herself relaxing and reaching for the banister. Nope, definitely not doing that.

She ducked reflexively as her head reached the second floor, but in fact there was no trap there. In Gacha Love, there was brief animation of Clara climbing the stairs, and then she appeared at the top, so Pandy had hoped this would be safe, but it was better to be safe than headless. It would probably take ages to regrow a whole body, and Pandy had an itchy feeling between her shoulderblades that said she needed to finish and find Thaniel.

The hall ahead was wide and tempting, and Pandy probably could have survived the flamethrowers, dart traps, pitfalls, and swinging blades she would have triggered by advancing down it, but she really did want to live here someday, and it would cost a lot to fix the damage. So instead of going onward, she turned to her left, opening the door a few paces past the stairs. There were doors to her right, as well, but the rooms there weren’t connected, so she’d have to come back out to the hall anyway.

The master bedroom was the first space that didn’t look like it had been put away for storage. The huge bed – large enough for Pandy and all of the children at once – was neatly made up with a blanket covered in peachy-pink blossoms. The pillows beneath that blanket looked plump, and there were no creepy body-shapes in the bed or mysterious pools of blood to be seen. There were a few paintings on the wall, but they were pastoral and floral, not portraits with eyes that followed her as she walked across the deep, soft carpet.

Still, Pandy kept a wary eye out, and then the first few drops of water seeped from beneath the door to her right, she was ready. This time, she had her knife out before things got icky, and hurried forward, hoping to forestall the attack.

It was impossible, however. When she reached the closest point to the door, it bulged impossibly, wood creaking, then burst open, releasing a flood that instantly filled the much-larger bedroom. Pandy had already stopped breathing, and she grabbed onto a bedpost with her free hand, hoping the massive piece of furniture would hold her in place. The blankets rose up, swirling like they’d been caught in a whirlpool, wrapping around Pandy’s arms and legs, and then the things came from the bathroom.

They were horrible – worse than the eye and the apparently-bloody attack-sheet put together. Vaguely humanoid, they had rotting gray skin, swollen and split, as if they’d been put into a microwave for too long. Pandy tried not to look at the faces as they swirled around her, already knowing what she would see. Still, she caught a glimpse of something that was vaguely recognizable as Augustus before she slashed her blade through the water, cutting it apart. It dissolved into the water as if it had never been.

After that, she braced her feet on the bed, clung to the post, and grimly hacked and slashed at the things as they attempted to surround her. In Gacha Love, there would be a timer for this encounter, indicating how long Clara and her ally could hold their breath, and players almost universally hated it, because it all but required at least one gacha spin to refill it. Pandy had no such problem, but she knew that she would see the faces again and again, not in her dreams, but whenever she closed her eyes.

-10 LF

-16 LF

-11 LF

Long, ragged fingernails caught and cut at her, trying to pull her loose from her perch, tearing at her flesh, but Pandy hung on. The bedpost would break before she let go, her Strength working overtime even as her blood rose in a pink cloud around her. Pandy cast Minor Heal over and over, until the last ghastly figure was consumed by the water, and it drained back like a video being played backwards, leaving Pandy standing on the end of the bed in a completely dry room. Sheets barely clung to the bed, and blankets hung from furniture, but otherwise it was as if nothing had happened.

Pandy stared around, her knife held high, her other arm going numb where it was wrapped around the bedpost. Cautiously, she stepped down, and the carpet didn’t squish or ooze at all. She was wet, dripping actually, and she wished she could flip in and out of Shifting Faces in order to dry off, but there was still a tiny possibility that the watchers didn’t know exactly what she’d done to escape from the syrup-monster, and she didn’t want to tip them off.

She squelched over to the door that wasn’t standing wide open, and hadn’t just vomited an aquatic nightmare all over her. She was not going to look in the bathroom. Hopefully when this was over, the things in there would be gone as well.

The space she entered was lined with clothes. Tailored jackets, pants, and yellowing shirts to her left, and dresses very much like the ones Clara preferred on the other. In fact, one of the prettiest outfits in the game came from this closet, but Pandy wasn’t going to dig it out right now. Even if it fit her – which it wouldn’t – Eurydice Haupe wasn’t the type to wear a white column dress with a six-foot silver train that looked like it had been embroidered from spider silk.

Surprisingly, nothing leaped out at her, no shirts attempted to throttle her, and the floor didn’t fall out beneath her, allowing Pandy to reach the door on the other side of the literally-walk-through closet easily. The next space was a sitting room, and Pandy stopped in the doorway, warily eyeing the flowery teapot sitting on a small side-table.

Extending her hand, Pandy thought, <Scorching Sonata,> and sent a blazing musical chord straight toward the dainty porcelain thing. The lid opened, spewing water that formed into razor-edged ice-crystals. They were engulfed by Pandy’s flame, the largest ones puffing into tiny cloud of steam, and then it was over. The wooden side-table was blazing merrily, as were the curtains covering the window behind it, but Pandy slogged over and dripped on everything until they went out.

There, that was done. Now there was only one more thing to deal with, and it was the only one she was actually, kind of, looking forward to. Turning, she headed for the door that led back out into the hall. There were still two more rooms on this side of the hall, but Pandy wouldn’t go into the nursery even to become a property-owner, and the smaller, private library was beyond that. No, she would have to deal with a couple of small traps, but that was fine. The ones that demolished the hallway were behind her.

In the hall, Pandy jumped over a carpet that would have tried to eat her, and ducked under an array of darts. Well, she almost ducked under them. She took one to her left buttock, but she was immune to poison, so it was fine.

And then she was at the last door. The one she needed to go through in order to truly claim the house. But several men emerged from the atrium at the front of the house, with the familiar face of M. Piers Avington at the back.

Pandy attempted to look surprised as she took a step back. “M. Piers? Whatever are you doing here? I thought you were off to complete the preparations for your voyage. Did you forget something?”

M. Piers Avington scowled, thin, handsome face twisted in fury. “I forgot to make sure you were dead,” he told her, mask of affability entirely absent. “Get her!”

What followed was almost funny. Four men lunged toward Pandy, short, vicious knives at the ready. Pandy didn’t have any training, but what she did have was another knife and Dual Wielding. As soon as the slightly-smaller knife Augustus had given her settled into her palm, she triggered the skill for only the second time. The first, of course, was when the chancellor gave her the blades, and he’d promised to take the price of that chair out of her first paycheck.

Dual Wielding is now level 2.

+1 Agility

May I suggest you add Dancing?

Pandy’s legs weren’t getting with the program. She wasn’t exactly stumbling over her own feet, thanks to her Agility, but there wasn’t much room in the hallway with all of the people trying to kill her, and she’d almost tripped a few times already. She’d managed to disarm one of the men – almost literally, a fact which made her wince, and not just because of the screaming – but what did she really have to lose? <Use Dance. And, um, cast Dual Wielding again if it’s about to wear off. How long does it last?>

Dance successful.

You have fourteen more uses to level 11.

Style randomized. 

Chacha selected.

Advice successfully implemented!

See?

Wasn’t that refreshing?

A little faith in your helpful System goes-

Oops!

That’s going to hurt.

Pandy abruptly found herself standing on the balls of her feet, hips and arms swaying as she stepped forward, running right into the largest of the men, who grunted as he was shoved out of her way. Unfortunately, he also managed to stab her just a little before her Dual Wielding twisted and popped his weapon from his hand, but a quick Minor Heal took care of that, and suddenly, it was almost like Pandy knew what she was doing.

Three steps forward, three steps back, rock to the side, feet together, always balanced, the swings of her arms perfectly coordinated with the movement of her feet. She swung her elbow hard, striking another man hard in the, ah, groin-area, and he moaned as he sank to his knees. The man she’d disarmed sprang at her, arms spread for a bear-hug, but Pandy’s left knife found a home in his gut even as she winced, hoping the injury wasn’t as bad as it looked.

The last thug broke and ran, promptly falling into the carpet-trap, which swallowed him up. He was probably the lucky one, though, since he’d just end up in the cellar, bruised and battered but probably alive and maybe even able to escape if he really put his mind to it.

That left M. Piers Avington, and Pandy made a concerted effort to stop her Dance as she turned to him. The chacha was obviously very dangerous, and she didn’t want to accidentally kill him. Her feet stilled, and her knives dipped in front of her, suddenly feeling very awkward in her hands.

“Give me the house,” Pandy said. It wasn’t threatening, because Pandy wasn’t really a threatening kind of person, but M. Piers Avington obviously took it that was, because he backed up, hands going to the door behind him.

“It’s already yours,” M. Piers tried, large beads of sweat trickling down from his hairline.

Pandy shook her head. “No, you made it so I could come in, but you’re still the owner of the house. You just needed someone to feed to it, so it wouldn’t eat you instead.”

The man grew even paler. “You… You knew? Then why did you-?”

Pandy shrugged, raising her knives. “I knew I could survive. But can you?” This time there was a teeny bit of threat in her tone, and Pandy would have patted herself on the back for it if she wasn’t holding a bare blade.

M. Piers Avington stared, eyes huge, then straightened and spread out his arms, pressing his whole body against the door. “Grandfather! Insurrection!” he cried, and the door turned black, like an ancient, rotten log. Something shifted, and a shape stepped forward, passing through M. Piers Avington, leaving him in a crumpled heap on the floor.