Chapter Eighty-nine – Specter Smackdown

Isidor hurried after her. “Hey! Bu- Um, Pandy? Where is this place? Why are we here? How do we get back?” He was casting worried glances behind him, as if realizing for the first time that he’d left Eleanor behind, though Pandy was certain that the princess was being watched.

Pandy paused long enough for him to catch up, then laid a finger over her lips before continuing forward. “This is the third floor,” she said as quietly as possible, though really, wasn’t that obvious? “We’re here to get something. Something I – we – need. And we’ll get back the same way we came up. Now hush.”

She crept down the hallway, and for some reason, her usual clumsiness was entirely absent. Even with an Agility of…well, whatever it was now, she managed to trip over her own feet on a regular basis, but right now, not a board creaked beneath her weight. She eyed the black cloth of her catsuit thoughtfully. Was it possible that this thing was magical?

They were in the hall now, and while actually walking through the corridor was very different from the top-down view of moving characters within a game, she moved with confidence. She didn’t even hesitate at the closed doors, even though some of them contained small items, including potions and coins. She did hesitate by the single open door, because it held a roomful of dress-maker’s dummies, all of which would come to life and attack them if they crossed the threshold.

If they beat the dummies, they would find a beautiful gown which gave a huge bonus to Reputation. Pandy didn’t care about the Rep, but the fairy-like blue and silver gown was one of her favorite outfits in the entire game. She desperately wanted to retrieve it and give it to Clara, simply so she could see the heroine wear it in person, but those dummies would be tough without Clara’s Dispel, which took off fifty percent of their health.

With a soundless sigh of regret, she moved on, only then noticing that Isidor was lagging further and further behind. She grimaced and turned back, motioning him to hurry up. Instead, he stopped completely and shook his head. Mouthing something she couldn’t make out in the dark, he began to back up.

Pandy took a step toward him, then froze as she heard something move in the utter darkness that now lay behind her. Something filled with a bone-chilling cold came to rest on her shoulder, and tiny prickles of pain broke her skin. If Isidor had been hoping to leave, he was too late.

-3 LF

+8 Corruption Points for entering Dark Aura II

-12 LF

Talons dug into her shoulder, and Pandy was lifted from her feet, lifted and thrown against the hallway wall. She hit with a hard thump that took off another ten LF, and spent a moment casting a few Minor Heals that stopped the flow of blood pouring down her arm. Fortunately, she’d been thrown back toward Isidor, so she didn’t need Corruption Points to cast it, though the Dark Aura was an unexpected bonus.

Opening her inventory, Pandy pulled out the silver knife she’d, ah, ‘borrowed’ on Thursday at dinner. It was just a butter knife, but they hadn’t used steak knives, and a butter knife would probably work just as well anyway.

To his credit, Isidor’s horrified yell sounded almost as worried as afraid, and he definitely looked relieved as Pandy stood up behind the Apparition that filled the hall. Looking a bit like a human that had been run over by a steamroller – if you ignored the fact that that would actually just make a horrible mess, rather than flattening the person involved – the Apparition stretched from floor to ceiling, curling forward rather than leaning, its body so thin that it looked like it would blow away in a strong wind.

Isidor scrambled backward as a thin, pitch-black arm snapped out toward him, and Pandy saw him go for the knife at his ankle. “Leave it!” she called out, holding up her own silver weapon. “Only silver and magic will hit it. Use Tempest!”

In Gacha Love, Clara used Dispel and Shield of Light to weaken the monster and protect them from its vicious blows. If the player had used up all of her Stamina in the previous rooms, especially fighting the dummies, then they would have to use a gacha spin to refill their energy or just count on Edgar to take the thing out by himself.

Edgar, as a Fire elementalist, was actually a formidable foe, and he could succeed without Clara’s help, but in the process, he pretty well gutted the entire floor, and the two had to flee before the advancing flames. That meant that any Clara who didn’t participate in the battle lost the best prizes, the reason Pandy had come here in the first place. Unless, of course, she abandoned Edgar to fight while she retrieved the items, an act which reduced Edgar’s Affection by twenty whole points, something that was difficult to recover from before the end of the game.

Pandy didn’t know what Isidor’s Affection was right now, if such a thing even existed in this world, but she did know that she couldn’t afford for it to drop by so much. If it did, she would probably wake up in a Hasenpfeffer, and that would be difficult to explain to Thaniel. No, she needed to help, which was why she’d procured this sturdy silver butter knife.

Isidor was no Edgar, but he wasn’t a pushover, either. Reaching up, he grabbed at the pendant that hung around his neck, pulling it off and stuffing it in his pocket. Instantly, he grew into the tall, tousled, teenage version of himself, though he was glaring at Pandy as he did so. She flashed him a thumbs-up, even as he held his tortoise in between himself and the approaching Apparition. The tortoise’s jaw was gaping, her eyes flashing with yellow power, and electricity arced across her shell, making Isidor’s too-long hair lift from his scalp.

Pandy couldn’t Bite, Scratch, or even Hop into the Apparition. It was completely incorporeal, except when it wanted to be, and when struck by the correct weapon type. Fortunately, however, it turned out that the aura surrounding it, the one that caused a Damage-over-Time effect, was a form of Dark Aura. Which Pandy was immune to. She could also heal from almost any damage, which meant that she didn’t have to try to use tactics, or dart in and out, stabbing at the thing while avoiding taking damage herself.

Instead, as lightning swelled around Tempest and Isidor, Pandy walked in and sank her knife into the immaterial monster. It jerked, letting out a screech that sounded like claws on a chalkboard, but it didn’t really look damaged. As Pandy waved her knife around inside what would have been its insides if it had any, she really missed the handy bar above the monster’s head, which would have told her how much damage she was doing.

+8 Corruption Points for entering Dark Aura II

The Apparition didn’t so much turn its back on Isidor as flip its own body inside out and backwards, its curvature shifting to indicate that it was now focused on Pandy. She nodded encouragingly at Isidor – though she wasn’t sure if he could see her through the dense shadow of the thing’s body – and continued stabbing her little knife into the space before her. The ends of the wobbly, noodle-like arms suddenly became thicker, more real, and Pandy winced as a clawed hand slashed down at her.

-12 LF

-30 LF

A scream tore from her as she flipped through the air for the second time in minutes. Nerveless fingers dropped the knife, which clattered on the floor, spinning away. Nothing she could do about that, however, since she was too busy clutching at her own arm, which hung by a scrap of flesh. It hadn’t been removed completely, which meant she didn’t have to figure out if one arm was more or less than fifteen percent of her total body mass. She gritted her teeth, trying to focus through the pain, and three more Minor Heals had the arm reattached, though it was distinctly tender when she moved it.

“Pandy!” Isidor yelled, shocked. Which was quite appropriate, under the circumstances, because a bolt of lighting as thick as Pandy’s wrist had lanced out of Tempest, directly into the – well, not heart but – center of the Apparition. It released its unnerving shriek again, doing the inside-out trick so it loomed over Isidor instead of Pandy.

“I’m okay!” Pandy called, trying to sound as upbeat as possible, given the circumstances. “It was just a, um, flesh wound.” There was a joke about that, wasn’t there? She’d probably seen it in a meme at some point.

“That was not a-” Isidor broke off as he raised Tempest to block a blow from the Apparition’s terrible claws. The talons scraped against the tortoise’s shell, emitting sparks, but doing no visible damage. “Fine,” the boy grunted, “then tell me how to kill this thing!”

Pandy was leaning down to pick up the blood-slicked knife, but paused, blinking. She’d already told him, hadn’t she? Silver, check. Magic, check. That was it. Well, that and, “Prayer? I mean, it’s a Dark monster, so Light does the most damage, but maybe you could, like, pray or something?”

Pandy herself wasn’t a religious person, though she’d been to at least one service given by each of the major religions, and a few that were, well, less mainstream. Still, gods were obviously real, at least in this world, and whenever someone mentioned Ismara, Isidor got a little shifty, so he probably either worshipped her – most likely, given that his name supposedly meant ‘beloved of Ismara’ – or worshipped some other god who didn’t get along with Ismara. Less likely, especially given that pretty much everyone in West Altheric worshipped Ismara, but he came from the border, so who knew?

Isidor ducked beneath another slashing attack, this time holding Tempest close to his body as he dodged, rather than using her shell as a shield. “Pray?” he sounded incredulous, but Pandy wasn’t sure why. It probably wasn’t any more ridiculous than telling him to use magic.

“Sure,” Pandy said, mimicking him with surprising success, except that rather than dodging backwards, she stepped in close, once again entering the monster’s aura and gaining another eight Corruption Points. She stabbed, and this time the thing actually jerked, and its scream was pitched so high that only part of it was audible to her human ears. The reaction surprised her so much that she actually jerked backwards herself, which probably saved her from losing a leg this time, as a blade-like tendril of power burst from the Apparition’s body and sliced the air where she’d been standing.

Pandy’s eyes widened as she scrambled back. That meant the thing had been reduced to fifty percent health. For the first part of the battle, it was shaped like a human, and mostly fought like one, as well. But in the second, more difficult, half, it could spawn up to three additional tendrils from any part of its body. They didn’t last long, but their mere unpredictability could be deadly. This was what Shield of Light was for.

“Watch out for-” she started, but it was too late. One clawed hand swung down toward Isidor, while a serpentine tendril lashed upwards from the floor. The boy’s eyes widened, and he jerked his hand up, then down, uncertain which to defend against.

<Hop!> Pandy thought. She was already lunging forward as she realized that it hadn’t worked. She must have gotten too far from Isidor, allowing the Apparition to separate them. It slowed her down, but in the end, it didn’t matter, because as she leaped directly through the monster, feeling a chill burrow into her bones, she took her knife with her, and its mere presence was enough to make the thing wail in agony. With enough Strength and Agility, all things were possible, because somehow her blade ended up in the right place to block the tendril even as Tempest’s shell halted the claws.

“They’ll just keep coming back,” she explained, as two more shadowy tentacles stabbed toward them with vicious intent. “Unless you do this.” Slicing her blade down, she severed a tentacle, the Apparition shrieked, and the tendril faded into motes of Darkness. In the original battle, neither Clara nor Edgar had a silver weapon, but they didn’t really need it, not between Clara’s shield and Edgar’s Fire. Apparitions were a fairly common monster after Killian was defeated the first time, however, and the Royal Knights used silver swords to fight them.

Isidor bared his teeth, twisting away from another tendril, which Pandy also severed. This one flopped for a moment before dissolving. “Which I would have known if you’d warned me ahead of time.” Tempest launched another lightning attack, causing the Apparition to arch backward into a shadowy bridge as it howled in pain or fury.

Pandy could tell both boy and tortoise were flagging, though, probably thanks to the effects of Dark Aura II, which had also touched Pandy a few more times. She used Minor Heal on him, and it took two uses before it stopped working, though she hadn’t seen any visible wounds on him. She repeated the action on Tempest, and the tortoise drank in three heals, her head lifting as she hissed at the Apparition with renewed vigor.

“I didn’t think you’d come with me if I told you,” Pandy admitted, slicing off the final tentacle just in time. Apparitions weren’t smart, at least according to the Gacha Love wiki, but the thing had sent this tendril around behind Isidor, hiding it in the flickering shadows cast by Tempest’s lightning, and Pandy only realized it was there when it lifted away from the floor’s surface and stabbed upward at Isidor’s unprotected back.

Isidor stared down at the writhing blade made of pure Darkness in horror, then looked up, catching Pandy’s eyes. “And you would be right,” he said, thrusting out a hand toward the Apparition, which was noticeably smaller now. Removing its tendrils had deprived it of substance, and it stood barely taller than Isidor now, though to be fair he was probably at least five and a half feet tall, in his lanky, still-unfinished way.

Pandy didn’t feel vindicated, because she knew that would be inappropriate. She had tricked a not-quite-fourteen-year-old into helping her with a dangerous task, and while she’d been almost certain she could heal any damage he took, ‘almost certain’ wasn’t the same as certain. She only hoped he would forgive her after he received his reward.

Pandy leaped back in, stabbing the Apparition once more, as Tempest threw another arc of lightning after her. The lightning struck Pandy’s blade, and her teeth rattled as she took more damage, this time from her own ally. Her body served to ground the strike, but since she was standing inside the Apparition at the time, the power coursed through the monster as well. With a final, dwindling scream, it stretched up, up, and up, fading to nothing. Pandy’s hand fell to her side, and she cast two more Minor Heals on herself. Being struck by lightning hurt!

Pandy’s knife fell from nerveless fingers as her knees gave out. It clattered on the ground, and Isidor slowly leaned over, picking it up. Staring at it incredulously, he said, “Is this a butter knife?”

She shrugged. “It was silver.” At least, she’d hoped it was real silver. It was always possible it was just nickel, or silver-coated, but this was a school for the richest, most high-ranking children in the country. It would have been a little embarrassing if they didn’t use actual silverware.

Isidor held the little knife up, and Pandy could finally see that it was still covered in her own blood, though at least some of it had been wiped away as she used it. Looking down, she saw that the floor was streaked and smeared with even more blood, and there was a pool down the hall a little ways, where she’d stood while she reattached her arm.

Pandy gave him a weak grin. “I’m a fast healer. How are you?”

He opened his mouth, then apparently decided it wasn’t worth pursuing, since she was obviously alive. For some definition of alive. Cradling Tempest to his body, he spun on his heel and began to stomp back down the way they’d come. “I’m leaving,” he called back, as if that wasn’t obvious. “I suggest you find somewhere else to sleep for a while.”

That…was fair. “Don’t you want to see what it was protecting?” She asked. “It’s half yours, since you helped.”

He spun, and there was a definite spark of interest in those dark eyes, before he scowled and said, “Didn’t your little story claim we only have until the next bell to get out of here? Well, I’m not wasting my time searching for something that may or may not be here when-”

“Oh, no, it’s just there,” Pandy said, pointing.