Chapter One hundred ninety-seven – Things That Go Hop in the Knight

Pandy’s rented carriage arrived in front of Avington House as the sun descended rather precipitously toward the horizon.

Pandy climbed out and waved to the driver, who waved back quite cheerfully as he drove off. She really needed to figure out how much a gold was worth and keep some change in her inventory. Everyone always seemed so pleased when she told them to keep the change.

“There you are at last,” came M. Piers Avington’s voice as he approached, pushing aside the overgrown bushes that blocked the view of the front of the house. Though it was a ‘house’ in only the broadest sense of the word, since it was two stories high and almost as wide as the front of Falconet.

Pandy glanced toward the sun, which was hiding behind Celestine Point as if it was planning to wear the landmark as a Guising costume. She’d known Avington House was directly south of Condor, since it was marked on the game map after Clara unlocked it, but she hadn’t quite realized that would also put her straight east of the enormous hill. Now that she did know, flying back here should be easy enough, especially since the house was quite distinctive.

The surrounding homes sat in the centers of tidy lawns, looking like they were ready for a tea party or a round of golf. Avington House squatted, dark and dour, glaring suspiciously at the world over bushy bushes and trees that looked like they hadn’t been trimmed since the country was founded. M. Piers Avington lifted his feet a bit too high with each step, as sharp grass attempted to slice through his neatly pressed pants.

In stark comparison to the dilapidated house, M. Piers looked like he had a fresh haircut and new clothes. His old coat had had worn and shiny elbows, and a bit of wear around the cuffs, but now he looked like he’d just stepped off a catwalk. Some people would probably consider him handsome, but not only was he too thin and reedy for Pandy’s taste, but after Augustus and the beautiful boys, she could only see him as a plain background character.

“You said sunset, didn’t you?” Pandy asked, knowing full well that he had. In fact, he said the same thing to Clara, and the game forced her to be precisely on time.

M. Piers Avington looked toward the sun, tutting softly. “I suppose I did, but I’m sorry, I have another engagement. I was hoping you might arrive a bit earlier. It’s all right though,” he smiled in a feeble attempt at benevolent forgiveness.

Pandy ignored it, putting her hand into her pocket and pulling out the contract. “What do we need to do?” she asked, already moving past him and toward the house.

The conman actually looked a bit taken aback to find that she seemed to be in an even greater hurry than he was pretending to be, but he gamely hurried forward, just beating Pandy up the crumbling steps to the massive double doors.

“Here we are,” M. Piers Avington said, pointing to the knocker that crossed the seam between the two doors. It was a horrifying thing, with warped and twisted features, staring eyes, and a tusked maw that gripped a dangling metal ring. With a grimace, the man pricked his finger with a pin that had been tucked through his lapel, and dabbed a drop of blood on the knocker’s protruding tongue.

“Wake up,” he told it briskly. “We have a new family member to meet.” He smiled at Pandy, lowering his voice to a whisper as he smiled self-deprecatingly. “I have to tell it that, or it could become rather… cranky.” He gave a chuckle which turned awkward as Pandy refused to join in. Clearing his throat, M. Piers Avington offered Pandy the pin. “You’ll need to give it some of your blood as well, I’m afraid.”

Pandy wasn’t sure if she had to use his pin, but Clara did, so she reluctantly accepted, poking it through the skin of her forefinger, then wiping it on her pants, so no blood remained on it when she handed it back to the conman. After dabbing the single drop of blood that welled from the hole in her finger onto the door-goyle’s tongue, she stepped back and waited.

It didn’t take long. The tongue shifted, then slid over the thick lips, somehow not dislodging the heavy brass ring clenched between the knocker’s teeth. The flat metal eyes shifted, then blinked, focusing first on M. Piers Avington, and then on Pandy. It said something, the voice surprisingly pleasant, but entirely unintelligible thanks to the teeth, tongue, and ring.

M. Piers Avington nodded and smiled, holding out his hand for the contract, which Pandy passed over. He opened it and held it in front of the bulbous eyes, which scanned the words before settling on the signatures at the bottom. It spoke again, and then a click sounded out – a loud one, which seemed to resound through the surrounding space, echoing hollowly into the vast dark space behind the doors as they swung open.

The dapper man rolled the contract back up with a flick of his wrist, then handed it to Pandy with another glance toward the darkening horizon. “I’m afraid I must go, but you simply need to take this to the office and place it on the desk. The house will then recognize you as its new mistress.”

“Until you return,” Pandy said, unable to resist. She widened her eyes and gave him the best Look of Innocence she could manage, which was pretty good, if she did say so herself. Being a rabbit gave her plenty of practice.

M. Piers Avington smiled uncomfortably, already edging away. “Ah, yes, of course. After I find my love, and we marry, and, ah, come back. Yes.” He wasn’t even really trying any more, now that the thing was done.

Taking pity on him, Pandy smiled and stepped over the doorstep. Exactly as Clara did in the game, she said, “Thank you, and I hope-” The door swung shut in her face, the lock clicking with great finality. Pandy smiled. Finally, things were going exactly as they were meant to.

She wiped the smile away as she turned, trying to look frightened. Clearing her throat, she called out, “Hello? Is anyone there?” There was no reply, and the room really was dark, with the only illumination the small amount of light coming through the filthy windows. Surprisingly, all of the glass was intact, once again making Pandy wonder what this world used for glass. She’d seen a few broken and cracked panes, but it seemed to take a lot more to damage them than it would have in her world.

Raising her hand, Pandy said, “Spark.” Fire bloomed above her palm, causing flickering shadows to form on the walls behind the sheet-covered furniture.

Spark successful.

One hundred eighty-six uses remain before level 21.

Have you considered using Radiant Presence?

It would be much more effective.

Though you’ll have to use a lot of Sparks, so just ignore me.

You usually do, anyway.

Pandy sighed. “That’s because you always try to get me to do something that will attract attention to me,” she told the System, as she moved toward the hallway on the far side of the room. The foyer was surprisingly small for such a large house, but that was probably because the secret rooms took up so much space.

Why do I exist if you’re not going to use me?

I Skill, therefore I am!

Pandy stopped, her hand on the door that led into the hall. Why did that sound so familiar? “Well,” she said cautiously, “I’m about to use you a lot, so…” She pushed, and the door resisted briefly before the knob simply fell off, clattering to the ground and rolling beneath a nearby dustcloth. When that happened to Clara, the knob was in her hand, and it was the second of a series of jump-scares that always got Pandy, even though they were only pictures, and she knew perfectly well they were coming.

“Hop!” Pandy shouted, leaping backwards just as an axe dropped through the space where she’d been standing. Clara could use Shield of Light to protect herself, but without LF, Pandy’s Shield of Darkness was pretty worthless when it came to keeping her safe.

The empty suit of armor that had been stationed on the other side of the door tumbled into a clattering pile of metal, the helmet spinning idly at the threshold of the door, next to the double-bladed axe that was buried half an inch into the floorboard.

Pandy padded forward, crouching to examine the axe blade. As she’d expected, there were several more gouges in the boards just beyond where the door would have been, as well as layers of dark stains that flowed down the hall. She grimaced. It was one thing to see that in a game, but quite another to realize it meant the armor had successfully injured or killed some unknown number of real-life people before her.

Straightening, she drew in a long breath. Fortunately, she knew exactly where all the traps were, and as far as she could tell she was all but unkillable anyway. Still, getting an axe through her skull would have hurt, and Pandy scowled as she looked down the hall. It was too dark to see it, but she knew there would be stairs leading up at the end.

Now, the question was, did she go into the rooms on either side along the way, or did she just head straight there? Unlike the third floor at school, there was no real time limit here, just a limit on how much Clara could do with the elementals and the amount of Stamina she had at this point in the game. Pandy was far ahead of the young heroine of Gacha Love, so she strode a few feet down the hall and turned the first doorknob.

This time, nothing struck out at her immediately, so Pandy strode cautiously inside. She summoned another Spark, and its light illuminated what had to be a couch and some upholstered chairs, though it was difficult to see any details beneath the white cloths draped across them. Another window was to her right, but some kind of foliage had grown up in front of it, and only a few faint flickers passed through the leaves and the filth coating the glass.

“Ah, hello?” Pandy said again, and something shifted in the darkness beyond her light. A figure moved, gangly and shadowy, and Pandy Hopped toward it, moving far faster than any human had any right to. As her outstretched hand reached for it, it disappeared, seeming to melt into the darkness. Pandy halted, staring around, then cast yet another Spark. Fortunately, this place was straight out of Gacha Love, so she was using Mana rather than her dwindling supply of Corruption Points.

With two level-twenty Sparks in the room, it was actually fairly well lit, and the furniture just became sad, neglected mounds beneath moth-eaten sheets. She scuffed her foot over the dusty floor, revealing four thin, straight lines in the boards. Leaning forward, she put her full weight on the square marked out by the lines, but it didn’t even have the common courtesy to creak at her.

With a sigh, Pandy opened the next door, which was almost directly across the room from the one she’d entered through. As she did, she closed her eyes, so the brilliant flash of light didn’t blind her, as it was meant to do. There was a sort of gibbering, scratching sound, and Pandy opened her eyes just in time to see a dark shape disappear through the next door, which stood open to her left, waiting.

These first few rooms were really just a warm-up, getting Clara and the player into the correct mindset to wander through a haunted house. If Clara brought one of the boys with her, they would have conversations that varied from ‘Let’s get out of here’ – Bastian – to ‘How fascinating’ – Edgar. Pandy had actually never brought Dorian here, but he probably flexed his muscles and told Clara he would protect her. Of course, Clara was the one who ended up doing most of the work, but that was Dorian all over.

The next room held a few small tables with chairs next to them, as well as a pool table with a triangle of pool balls perfectly placed, as if someone had been about to play a game when they were called away. As Pandy walked in, there was a sudden sharp crack of sound, and the balls split apart, gliding across the green felt until all but one dropped into the pockets. The last ball spun in the center of the table, and when it came to a halt, Pandy could see that it was an eyeball, staring straight at her.

“You know,” Pandy said out loud, “that’s not really very scary. Even I can tell it’s not a real eye. Real eyes are squishy.” Striding forward, she grabbed the white ball, and to her horror, it was squishy, and sticky, but also firm, like a water balloon. She yelped and dropped it, and a nasty little chuckle came from somewhere to her right. She spun, casting a Spark just beyond the hand she extended in that direction. She saw nothing but a rack of pool cues.

This was not going to plan. Where had they gotten a real eyeball? A fresh one, anyway. She was quite certain several people had been murdered here, but in theory only one per year, and the last one should have been exactly a year ago. Their eyeballs definitely wouldn’t be so well-preserved at this point.

Are you ready for Radiant Presence yet?

Or do you want to keep finding body parts?

Either way is fine with me.

I’m not the one with Eyeball Fingers.

Pandy gagged a bit, but the System was right. “Fine,” she muttered. “Radiant Presence.”

Warmth washed out of her, forming a soft aura of light all around her body. It only extended a few inches from her skin, but it seemed to push the threatening shadows back much further. Even though Pandy was perfectly aware she looked ridiculous, it was rather comforting, and she stood a bit straighter as she turned to face the next door. It was time to enter the library, and that was no one’s idea of a good time. Well, except for Edgar, but in the privacy of her own mind, Pandy had to admit that just this once, he was on his own.