Chapter III.XXXIV (3.34) - Zombies and Witches

  It took a while to calm Mitsuko. He’d awoken to the girl weeping again with her face buried in his chest.

  “Relax,” he said, gently pushing her off of him. “I was just scouting the area out. I thought Shika would explain that much to you.”

  He spared a glare at the zombie girl who looked near bursting at the seams with barely contained laughter. Literally. Kizu noticed the stitches across her neck strained from the effort.

  “You-you’re alive?” Mitsuko asked. “Are you a zombie like her now?”

  “Not undead. Still a warmblooded human.”

  “I thought they’d kill me if they found you dead.”

  Kizu blinked. They probably would have. They wanted Kizu for information and Shika for blackmail, but Mitsuko was here as an afterthought. They’d likely recycle her corpse and toss her into their room full of zombies. Not something to bring to the girl’s attention, however. Time to change the subject.

  “I need a couple hours to recharge, and then we’re breaking out of here.”

  In truth, he needed at least a week to get back to his full strength, but a couple hours were all he dared to risk.

  Anata still hovered nearby. She was eyeing Shika with distaste.

  “I’m not replacing you, Anata,” Kizu said, guessing her thoughts. “Shika’s an old friend of mine.”

  Anata looked at him blankly, clearly unable to understand his sped up words.

  Shika stuck her tongue out at Anata and his niece’s eyes went wide with shock as she looked from her to him. Shika’s talent for offending people extended even to Anata, who’d spent nearly her entire life abused and locked away in a dungeon.

  Anata left not long after that. But Kizu wrote out another message for her to communicate to the others before she departed. It just reassured them that he was alive and that he would contact them soon.

  Kizu tried to meditate but Shika kept pelting him with little wads of paper. Whenever he opened his eyes, she’d giggle and turn away. Unable to sort out his thoughts that way, Kizu went to the piano and decided to play some scales and think. Soon, he moved onto one of his few memorized songs, not thinking much as his fingers flew across the white and black keys.

  Mitsuko, after finishing up a nap and snacking on some bread, slid onto the piano bench beside him. She watched his fingers carefully as he played, but said nothing until he finished

  “It’s a piano, right?”

  “Yes. Have you not seen one before?”

  But of course she hadn’t. Kizu would know if anyone in the village had a piano. Occasionally, kids picked long grass and blew on them like little whistles. And there was one man who played a long horn instrument made from the bones of a rare jungle raptor, but that was it.

  “I’ve heard of them,” Mitsuko said. “We had a traveling bard visit when I was a girl. You’ve been playing it everyday since you arrived. Are you a bard as well as a mage?”

  Kizu blinked. He remembered that bard’s visit. The crone had loved mocking his performances and pointed out every imperfection. And, compared to what he’d seen in his life before arriving in the basin, he hadn’t thought much of it either. But thinking about it from Mitsuko’s perspective, that must have been a marvelous few days.

  “I’m not a bard. I’m not even very good. You should have heard my sister play. Now she was a wonderful player.”

  “Was? Did something happen to make her stop playing?”

  “No. She’s…missing. I’m looking for her.”

  “Oh.”

  Kizu brought his hands back from the keys and looked over to the room’s sealed door. The longer he procrastinated breaking the temporal enchantments, the more blood he’d have for the upcoming fight. But the tradeoff was that any minute now the door could swing open and reveal Necro.

  It was time. Kizu stood.

  “Let’s go.”

  He clapped his hands together in front of him and then focused. As his hands separated, the space stretched. A bead of sweat trickled down his brow as he created his most powerful spatial stretch yet. Then he pointed it at the remaining glowing glyph and released it.

  The carpet ripped behind him before a strip of it flew across the room and smacked into the glyph. When the cloth fell to the floor, it revealed a dull etching. The wards were down. He’d successfully depowered the room.

  His link with Mort snapped back into place. He smiled as the comforting bond reinserted itself on his soul. It felt like the warm sun breaking through the clouds that had obscured it.

  Kizu stepped up to the door, Shika and Mitsuko behind him. He took a deep breath, then opened it.

  Nobody stood in the hallway. Extremely lucky. All he needed to do was pass back into the sitting room and then he’d have a straight short over to the portal room.

  “Stay quiet,” he instructed his companions. “This next room is the most dangerous part of our escape.”

  They said nothing and Kizu didn’t look back to check on any nonverbal confirmations. He reached into his ring and fingered a firebomb potion.

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  He entered the sitting room. Part of him hoped that he would find his atlas here. He wanted to reclaim the book. But neither Necro nor his book were in the room. Instead, two witches lounged on the couch. Chiame and the white haired mind mage.

  “Oh Kizu, you change up your hair?” Chiame asked. “Bit too kempt for my normal taste, but it will help you blend in with your twin. So clever! You could swap spots and nobody and I bet no one would ever notice.”

  It took less than a second for him to understand her. She thought he was his copy. Only with a new haircut. That made sense. More sense than a prisoner escaping a time dilation chamber.

  The mind mage tilted her head like an owl examining prey. Unlike her companion, she looked more confused.

  “Yes,” Kizu said, trying to sound surly. “Where did Necro go? I need to speak to him.”

  Chiame’s eyes widened and she sat up straighter. “Otochi contacted you? What did he say? Does he like our plan? He agrees about how damn useless those Kitsune are, right? What an ass Harbinger.”

  “He’s undecided,” Kizu said. His mind raced with the sudden influx of information. “But he’s on good terms with Kumiho for the time being. It’s not something I’m supposed to talk to you about.”

  Chiame pouted. “Whatever he said, it sure has you in a grumpy mood. Where’s that smile gone?”

  Smile? Kizu had assumed any strange corrupted piece of his soul that would side with these monsters would be filled with anger and hate. But he couldn’t change tactics now. That would be suspicious.

  “Otochi isn’t happy,” he said. “It’s not something that you need to worry about.”

  Chiame batted her eyelashes at him. “Are you shielding me from his wrath? You’re so sweet, Kizu. Once Kyonaka is rubble, we should find a nice quiet spot outside this labyrinth and you can explore mine.”

  “Who’s the other mind behind you?” the white haired witch asked, speaking for the first time.

  Shika and Mitsuko fidgetted behind Kizu, out of sight, but apparently not out of range of the mind mage.

  Making a split moment decision, Kizu dropped a potion on the ground and smashed it under foot. Gray smoke exploded out of the shattered vial. Then he stepped back and slammed the door. He heard coughing inside and the sound of someone hitting the ground.

  “Cover your mouths with cloth and back off down the hallway,” Kizu commanded his companions.

  Like most brewers, he had a natural resistance to potions. It meant he needed to prepare especially potent brews for himself or for witches. Thankfully, he’d prepared these particular potions months ago. They’d been intended as sleep aids for when he spent so many sleepless nights staring at his ceiling. But he’d given up on the recipe due to their side effects. And, while in the time dilation chamber, he’d been able to modify them a bit to turn gaseous under pressure.

  Wisps of smoke escaped through the door’s perimeter. He waited for over a minute before he stepped back up.

  “Is it dangerous?” Mitsuko asked.

  “Not for me,” Shika replied.

  “It’s a sleep potion. Hold your breath, I don’t want to carry you out of here.”

  For himself, Kizu created an air bubble around his head. It was a little more tricky on the surface without the visual cue of water, but he’d performed the spell enough that very little outside air should be able to leak in.

  The mind mage lay face down on the ground with her chin to her knees and her back bent. That wouldn’t be comfortable to wake up to, but Kizu wouldn’t do anything to help her. She snored slightly.

  Chiame was nowhere to be seen. That was concerning.

  “We should kill her,” Shika said. “We can bring the body back to Pa to resurrect as undead! An undead witch!”

  “We’re not going to kill her.” Kizu still scanned the room, looking for any sign of the other witch.

  “That’s silly. She’s dangerous.”

  Shika was correct. That witch was maybe the most dangerous member of the Death Party. And Kizu knew she was directly involved with the Emperor’s assassination. If he had no other choice, yes, he’d kill her, but as it was, the white haired witch was asleep on the floor. Not a direct threat. If he had antimagic cuffs, he’d happily take the mind mage with him for interrogation. But his stomach roiled at the thought of stabbing someone in their sleep.

  “Come on, we need to move fast.”

  Shika grumbled as she crossed the room, gave the mind mage a kick while passing by, and entered into the next hallway. Mitsuko looked on the edge of passing out from lack of air, but she obediently followed as well. She made certain the door to the sitting room was shut securely behind her before she finally gasped for air.

  Kizu had a bad feeling as they walked down the empty passageway. The portal room was right in front of him. And Chiame? Kizu stopped one door before the exit and opened that door instead.

  An enchanted metal barricade barred his path. But he saw undead monstrosities stirring within. He didn’t have a key. Likely, only Necro had access to the zombie hoard. But Kizu knew a thing or two about curse breaking. He set his hand on the bars and channeled. It was a unique enchantment but not an artifact. It was a bit simple, just strengthening the bars. But whoever had enchanted it had spread the entire enchantment for all the bars, instead of enchanting them individually. Kizu grinned as he adjusted the enchantment.

  “What are you doing?” Mitsuko asked. But she sounded fascinated, not worried.

  “Moving the enchantment to unevenly reinforce one side of the metal barricade. That will leave the other weak.” Or, as weak as normal iron at least. But that was the best he could do. He could probably break it with his monster leg, but he had a different idea in mind.

  The zombies had started to take notice of him through the thin spaces between the bars and lumbered in his direction.

  Before they could get too close and block his angle, Kizu tossed a firebomb potion into the hoard. It bounced off a zombie’s soft, rotting stomach and fell to the ground. Kizu cursed and quickly prepared another, but he didn’t need to worry as a different zombie stepped on the vial, smashing it and consuming itself in a blast of fire. The hoard surged, pushing its way toward them and away from the flames.

  “Now we run!”

  Kizu hoisted Shika over a shoulder and grabbed ahold of Mitsuko’s arm as he sprinted down the hall and burst through the portal room’s door which revealed four witches, Chiame among them, all preparing spells in preparation for his arrival.

  Not even waiting to consider what trap might lay on the other side of the entryway, Kizu jumped to the far end of the room.

  All four witches swiveled their heads as they immediately locked their attention to his new location. And, in doing so, they turned their backs on the zombie hoard in Kizu’s wake. The women launched hexes aimed at him.

  That was a mistake for them.

  Kizu deflected the one hex that almost hit him with an antimagic barrier and the other three went wild. Lucky. If all four had hit his shield, he would have had trouble maintaining the barrier. Chiame glared at him in outrage.

  “You tra-” But wherever he was, Kizu never got to hear as a zombie tackled her.

  Kizu slammed his hand on the portal’s archway and activated a gate. He only could access the most recently used location, but that would be better than being in a room full of zombies and witches.

  “Let’s go!” Kizu lunged for the swirling magical gate.

  “Wait for me!” a desperate voice said. The last syllable cracked.

  He felt a hand grab ahold of his ankle as he disappeared into the gate.

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