Chapter III.XXVIII (3.28) - Yukiko and Lys

  Basil knew his girlfriend well. When Aoi contacted him through their scrying orbs later that night, she expressed great distress about missing the meeting with Hone. And then spent the next half an hour quizzing them all about every word Hone had said. After that, she moved onto descriptions of his laboratory. For every object Basil described to her, she would scribble down a sketch and show it to him, grilling him for corrections.

  Kizu left them to it, lending Basil his scrying orb while he climbed up into the loft. The crone’s futon was unrolled on the ground, just as before. He noticed some of the piles of her clothing had been shifted around and a babble or two might be missing, but otherwise the loft remained the same as always. It smelled of the old woman. The scent of decay tinged with roses. Basil had commented on smell earlier. The crone used what Kizu now recognized as spatial magic to extend the loft’s surface area, making the platform almost as large as the main room down below.

  But Kizu wasn’t interested in any of that. He went to the window and climbed out. Out on the roof, he stared out at the dark jungle for several minutes. Then he turned to the telescope set up at the roof’s center.

  There was a break in the canopy directly above the hut which allowed moonlight to stream down and illuminate the area. Not that the telescope needed the opening to see the sky. It was enchanted not to magnify an object like a normal telescope, but instead to give the user a point of view from whatever location it was pointed. While that resulted in basically the same thing as magnification, it allowed the crone to also point the telescope at the ground and see from the point of view from the other side of the planet. She mostly used the feature to track solar eclipses across the world.

  Kizu put his eye to the eyepiece, fiddled with the gear that controlled its distance, and looked up at the sky above.

  He tracked down all the different constellations and remembered the stories the crone had told him about each.

  Something tugged on his shirt.

  Kizu broke away from the telescope and saw Anata standing beside him. His first thought was that it was dangerous up here, she could fall. But he dismissed the thought with a smile. He’d spent many nights up here far younger than her.

  He crouched down next to her so they were eye level.

  “Everything okay? Do you want help with something?”

  She nodded and then pointed at him.

  “Alright, let’s go back inside and you can show me what you need.”

  She shook her head and then pointed at him again, her finger tapping his chest. Kizu blinked and processed her request.

  “You just…want me?” Kizu asked.

  She nodded again, more vehemently.

  “Okay, well I have the time.” He motioned for her to look into the telescope’s eyepiece. “Here, take a look through this.”

  After removing her eyepatch, she stood on her tiptoes, barely able to reach the eyepiece.

  Worried about her dropping the eyepatch, Kizu plucked it from her hand and pocketed it before launching into an explanation of what she was looking at.

  “This constellation is of the great serpent Lys slayed by the witch Yukiko. Her constellation is nearby. You’ll notice how the stars are in a circle. Do you want to know the story about why?”

  Anata broke away from the telescope and met his eyes. He recognized the longing in her eyes. She wordlessly willed him to continue.

  “It started on a day like any other. Yukiko traveled through the forest when she encountered a small snake. Unbeknownst to her, the viper was an Awakened creature named Lys. He was a rare anomaly, a creature that came to its Awakening naturally soon after its birth. However, being new to the world, he carried little power or skill. When he saw Yukiko, he shot towards her and attempted to bite her. He longed to sink his fangs into her flesh. To kill and feed. She wasn’t an especially powerful witch, but not so weak that a tiny serpent barely larger than her hand posed any threat to her.

  “She blasted it down with a paralysis hex and forgot about the experience entirely.

  “Years passed on, and while she continued to live her life, Lys, the serpent, stewed on his defeat. For many years it remained his most bitter defeat. He had known what Yukiko was when he saw her from the jungle underbrush. He had intended to kill her or die trying. But she lived and he lived.

  “From the moment of his Awakening, he had hated life. Spite drove him and he’d sworn to destroy every living creature he encountered. Birds, mice, even monkeys. They had all died easily. But Yukiko had spat in the conviction. But he grew and the defeat only fed his hatred for her and all witches. Then one day he saw another witch sitting on a tree stump sorting through her day’s foraged spoils. She never saw him. He shot forward and this time latched onto the back of her neck. He dangled there like a second external spinal cord. His venom turned her to stone while it sucked out her blood. She fell over, a dead statue.

  “The witch’s blood tasted of ancient magic and Lys gorged himself on it. It satisfied his stomach but failed to quench his thirst. That moment expanded that urge to kill. It became a need.

  “Lys began to kill other humans living in a village and fed on them but soon realized they lacked the magic of the witch. Instead of killing them all, he set himself up as their god. They brought him witches from far and wide to feed him. They saw him as their protector. After generations of harassment from the covens, they were finally able to kill witches without the covens descending on them and destroying the village. They celebrated and worshiped Lys.

  “And with each kill, Lys grew. Awakened creatures grow at an unusual rate already. It’s believed they grow to the size they subconsciously believe themselves to be. And with the witches’ blood, Lys broke through the normal limits. He could circle the entirety of the village and acted as their wall. Even dragons couldn’t match him in size.

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  “But then Yukiko heard about Lys and came to the village to see him. He had killed a dear friend of hers and she wanted to know her friend’s killer.

  “When Lys saw Yukiko, the entire village trembled with his rage. But when he went to bite down on Lys, his teeth met nothing. But she appeared a little further away and he slithered after her, completely blinded by his rage. He again bit down on nothing. This continued, Lys chasing and missing his prey over and over. Until finally he bit down on flesh.

  “He drank in deep, tasting the blood of witches and replacing it with his venom. It took only a few seconds for its bloodlust to fade and for it to recognize the pain from its tail. The blood it tasted was a mixture from all his previous victims. But by the time Lys recognized the taste, Yukiko had cast a familiar hex on him. He found himself paralyzed.

  “The spell only lasted a minute, but when it ended he was too petrified by his own venom to move. Lys died to his own bite, a rare fate for a viper.

  “Her friend avenged and the threat destroyed, Yukiko walked away from the Awakened serpent, completely unaware of their shared history.

  “And yet, Lys’ legend remained. He still serves those villagers to this day, acting as their stony wall, protecting them from the threats. It’s said that if you travel deep into the Hon Basin, you can find a strange town with a powerful stone wall. Those citizens within the town’s walls still worship the legendary Lys. They believe that, someday, he will break free of his stoney sleep and strike out once again against Yukiko and her kin.”

  Kizu finished his story and smiled at Anata’s enraptured stare. He hoped he still managed to tell the story right. It had been a long time since he last heard the crone tell it.

  Anata’s scarlet eye glowed softly in the night. Insects chirped all around them, filling the silence between them.

  Then Anata turned back to the telescope and looked through it again. She stared up at the stars.

  They spent a few more hours up on the roof, Kizu telling Anata different constellations. He doubted she’d remember even a small fraction of the different star patterns he showed her, but she listened intently.

  Before they went back inside, Anata pricked her finger with her knife and pressed a bead of blood against the skin on the back of Kizu’s hand.

  He sucked in air through his teeth, the night blasted into focus and he had to close his eyes to keep himself from being utterly overwhelmed.

  It passed after a moment and Kizu let out a sigh. He hadn’t absorbed any of Anata’s blood since before his blood transfusion. And he hadn’t had such a visceral response to the blood since back during his first few uses of it in the World Dungeon.

  He felt better than ever though. An unknown weight of anxiety eased from him and he felt more confident about their chances drawing out information from the Death Party.

  Taroe stood downstairs, speaking to Ione and Basil. The scrying orb had been set to the side, Basil’s talk with Aoi finished long ago.

  “Good,” Taroe said as he watched Kizu descend the ladder. “You’re here.”

  “You heard about everything from our talk to Aoi?” Kizu asked.

  “I did. But kid, I want to talk about the scrying you did before that. I don’t like your plans moving forward.”

  Before contacting Aoi, Kizu had used his scrying orb to get ahold of Hone. The necromancer had promised Kizu to put them in contact with the Death Party, despite warning them to do otherwise. So long as Kizu kept an antimagic barrier up, he should be able to resist the mind mage. And if he could choose where they met, Kizu could set up precautions in the area to keep them safe. It seemed the best possible way forward.

  “It’s fine.” Kizu went over to some of the crone’s pickle jars and offered one to Anata who plucked it out of the jar and stuck the entire vegetable in her mouth at once.

  “It’s not fine. If that mind mage amplifies her spells through her familiar, you could all be completely wiped.”

  Kizu looked at Taroe. The Elite looked irritated.

  “That’s possible.”

  “It’s easy. You’ll be nothing more than a blank state.”

  That was terrifying.

  “Not me,” Basil chipped in helpfully. “Or Anata for that matter. Mind magic needs to be altered for different species. And since we’re completely unique, I don’t think that mage has much experience with anything like us.”

  “That’s true,” Taroe admitted reluctantly.

  “So Ione sends us with a summon and stays behind here with Anata,” Kizu said. “I go with Basil and layer myself with an antimagic barrier, and we talk. Any problems and I’ll flee.”

  Ione raised a hand lazily. “I’m not interested in sitting around the hut all day. We’ve already spent an entire day here in the basin and you chased me away from the only magical creature we found. Before I could properly study it. Remember, I’m here to find cool new monsters. Helping you is a side thing.”

  “Your priorities are wrong,” Taroe said to her. “Even if you don’t value your life, if you have your mind scrambled you will forget your summons. Conjuring requires more knowledge and studying than most other fields of magic.”

  “What magical creature?” Kizu asked. He didn’t recall them meeting any. In fact, he’d specifically led them around a nest of vinewranglers on their return journey to keep Ione from fixating on them.

  “The kite,” Basil said helpfully. “Back at the farm. Ione thought it might have eaten you.”

  “I mentioned it might be possible. I didn’t get a good enough look at it. All I know is that it was an artificial monster species. I have no idea how it consumes its prey.”

  “Monsters can be artificial?” Kizu asked.

  “Through soul magic. Like the jellyfish under your ship. Not a lot of people mess with that branch anymore. Necromancy is the flashier path. Modern mages don’t know how to do much more than a chimera.”

  “Off topic,” Taroe stated.

  “Right.” Kizu refocused. “Ione, I’ll show you a few spots with some magical creatures later if you stay behind. But I want someone I trust here to guard Anata.”

  Ione’s eyes narrowed. “What sort of creatures?”

  “I know of a moving tree nearby. And some sort of small acid breathing primate that Mort has a rivalry with.”

  “Oh! I can have my own Mort?” Ione exclaimed. “Okay, deal.”

  Kizu was grateful Mort was not present to hear that comment. He doubted his familiar would take kindly to being compared to the sansaru. But it appeased Ione enough for her to back down.

  “Good,” Taroe said. “I will stay here as well. If you need help, use this.”

  He handed Kizu a chip of wood.

  “Bite it and I will jump to your location.”

  With the planning out of the way, the party of mages prepared their supplies, ate a meal, and retired.

  Despite a day of dangers looming before him, soon after sitting in a familiar chair in front of the fireplace, Kizu fell asleep.

  Ten Blood Curse Academia chapters (5 weeks) ahead of Royal Road.