Chapter III.XXXII (3.32) - Time and Space

  Necro did not return soon. Kizu hoped it was because he’d been apprehended by Taroe and now awaited a trial in Kyonaka.

  He worried about Anata, Mort, and Ione often. The last he’d seen, Anata had been escaping alongside his familiar while Ione covered for them. And he supposed that if Necro had successfully captured Anata, she’d likely be locked up in the time dilation chamber with him by now. Unless…things went even more wrong and they died. But Mort was familiar with the dangers of the Hon Basin. They should be safe. They’d be able to hide from any pursuers with ease. But that didn’t stop Kizu from worrying.

  Kizu didn’t have a great sense of time since Anata’s blood had altered his already wonky sleep schedule. But, judging by how frequently Mitsuko slept, he suspected it had been four days for them so far, which meant maybe a little over a day outside the chamber.

  Shika spent a lot of her time annoying Kizu. She showed very little interest in Mitsuko unless she thought up a game that required a third player. Kizu, thankfully, was able to keep her entertained using his notebook. But while his quill was enchanted to supply a near bottomless amount of ink, the pages in his notebook lacked any such enchantment. So she ran out of paper. But not before he managed to make a few vital objects out of it.

  Mitsuko turned out to be the only thing saving his sanity at the moment. If locked in here alone with Shika, Kizu might have gone mad by now.

  “I don’t understand this game,” Mitsuko complained for the thousandth time.

  Kizu ignored her and played a card. She understood it just fine. It was a complaint she always made when she tried being sneaky about a play.

  He bit his lip and cursed silently as she revealed her card. It trumped his own by a wide margin. She grinned, a mischievous glint in her eyes.

  Maybe now she said it because she was faking about being sneaky. Kizu couldn’t be certain. The villager was a lot more cunning than she let on.

  They played the card game Aoi’s skeletons liked on Owl’s Respite. But, unlike the skeletons, they didn’t cheat. Most of the time. That gave Kizu a chance at actually winning. Though Mitsuko probably had a few more wins under her belt. Unlike the skeletons who played completely emotionlessly, Mitsuko liked mind games. She completely shredded Shika whenever the zombie girl joined.

  When he wasn’t playing cards or some other game devised by Shika, Kizu played on the piano in the back corner of the room. He couldn’t practice magic without Anata here to replenish his blood supply, but at least he could maybe work at improving his music ranking. He spent hours upon hours practicing songs he’d memorized until the girls in the room complained and started throwing things at him.

  Anata’s blood was becoming a real issue. He found himself staring off at the walls, just picturing the visceral jolt of life a drop of her blood gave. He fantasized about it and when he slept, he often awoke in a cold sweat and looked around desperately for his niece. It also made him more snippy whenever his mind wandered to it. It was a problem. He knew that. He could only imagine what a state he’d be in without having the recent blood transfusion. Maybe he would be dead without the resistance the procedure had temporarily leant him.

  And, more than just the want for blood, Kizu often fretted about his niece’s condition. What exactly had Necro planned for his companions? He knew about the atlas and the bell. That painted a target on their backs so long as they kept the bell on them.

  “Tell me about your enchanting class,” Mitsuko said. After learning that he was a student, she’d questioned him about all of his classes at Shinzou Academy. It was the fifth time she’d asked about enchanting, though that was only her third favorite topic to interrogate him about. After his elementalist class and his combat class. He’d purposefully left out his special tutoring by Roba and Wakino, just in case there was some sort of enchantment in the room that let people on the outside listen in. Better to not reveal too much about his spatial capabilities.

  Mitsuko attempted the spells, but she was terrible at them. Not just in a beginner sort of way, she lacked any natural affinity for any of the spells he tried to show her. The greatest achievement she managed in the several days was a shaky illusion in her palm that was just a small blob of colors. Kizu had never met someone so naturally inept at magic. Except maybe Ione. But she still had an incredibly strong niche.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “It’s possible that your strengths lie in a different branch of magic,” Kizu said. “You could still be a powerful specialist. I met a woman recently who could blow things up and fling globs of lava. But she also couldn’t make an illusion any better than you.”

  Granted, he didn’t know Ueno couldn’t cast illusions. But the elementalist had stated she lacked any power with anything other than fire and earth spells.

  “I can’t do anything with rocks or fire either,” Mitsuko said grumpily.

  “There’s a lot of magic branches I don’t know. And I’ve never taught someone spellcraft before.”

  “What other kinds are there?”

  “Well, medical spells and conjuring are two massive branches that I start classes on next semester. And then there’s obscure stuff like hexes, temporal magic, soul magic, and mind magic. And there’s a lot I don’t know as well. For example, I know druids practice something unique by channeling life in a different way than soul magic and then I recently met some shamans in Northern Tross who connected to their ancestors somehow.”

  “I thought you were a witch too,” Mitsuko said. “Can’t you teach me hexes?”

  “I’m not a witch. I can often recognize hexes and know some of the rituals used to empower certain hexes but can’t channel them.”

  “How did you live with a witch and never learn a hex?”

  Kizu shrugged. He simply hadn’t. He couldn’t explain any more than that.

  Shika started poking Kizu in the side, trying to get his attention. When he looked over at her, she threw a crumpled-up page from his notebook at his face. He barely managed to lift a hand in time to swat it away. She laughed and scampered after the paper ball. She often started acting out whenever he and Mitsuko talked about magic for too long. As a zombie, Shika couldn’t perform any spells and had already vocalized several times about how left out she felt. Never mind the fact that Mitsuko couldn’t manage much more than her.

  Shika’s newest game involved trying to see who could land the paper ball on top of the highest organ pipe. Currently Mitsuko held the highest score, getting hers perched on the third tallest pipe.

  While they turned their attention to that, Kizu decided to try something new.

  He hated waiting for the door to open for them. It was exactly like it had been with Anata, the constant unease of never knowing.

  This time though, he had an idea based on what he’d managed to decipher from the glyphs. Most of it was entirely foreign to him. But he understood the purpose of half a dozen glyphs from his studies on the gate he’d created for his Enchanting C final. That might be enough.

  He sat cross-legged on the floor and focused on the area between his hands.

  His studies with Wakino had been cut short, but he’d learned a little more than just barriers from her. While barriers had been what she’d instructed him on, she’d also demonstrated a few other uses of spatial magic. Not too unlike the ring he wore, space could be stretched and condensed. By doing so, a mage could completely change the distance between two objects. It warped reality and was difficult to pull off in more than small areas unless supported by permanent enchantment glyphs.

  At first, as he channeled into the space between his two palms, he only created varying densities of barriers. He stretched the barriers and tried to instead touch the space itself. He instinctually switched to antimagic barriers, which wasn’t much closer to what he wanted. A bead of sweat trickled down his cheek from his brow. It was far from the last.

  He wasn’t sure how long it took, and he likely used up more blood than was wise, but something finally connected. He pinched his thumbs to his pointer fingers, as if able to feel the space under them like a filmy layer of slime, then pulled his arms apart.

  The space between his palms warped. It was like looking through a half-melted block of ice. The other side of the space had its proportions distorted.

  In front of him, Mitsuko was holding Shika on her shoulders. The zombie girl had detached her left arm and held it in her right, trying desperately to reach a paper ball on top of one of the organ’s lower pipes.

  Kizu slowly lifted the altered space and turned it ninety degrees. Aiming it up at the paper ball, he released it like a slingshot. The sudden impact of space snapping together caused a ripple effect and he jolted forward, falling on his face. But the paper ball also felt the impact and tumbled off the pipe, pulled towards him. It hit the ground and rolled over to him.

  He grinned at the wad of paper. A success. The further the target was away, the less of a pull his spell had on it which was why he was shoved forward with force while the ball had barely felt a minor tug in his direction. In the future, he’d keep in mind both ends of the spell to keep himself from face planting in the middle of a fight.

  “Was that an air elemental spell,” Mitsuko asked. She picked up the ball and looked down at him sprawled on the floor.

  “Something like that,” Kizu said. He pushed himself back into a sitting position and examined the room’s glyphs.

  It took him a few minutes of scanning, but he finally managed to find what he was looking for. One of the glyphs had notably dimmed. He smiled. It was a start. The room was designed for exactly the amount of space within it. His ring likely already taxed it of any wiggle room, but him creating rifts of altering space could wear down the enchantments.

  After eating some bread and swigging down a flask of pumpkin soup, he got back to work.

  When in doubt, just break the magical artifact holding him prisoner.

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