BLOOD CURSE ACADEMIA - PREVIOUS DRAFT EDITION -

LII (52)- The Escape

Kizu got no more clear answers from Anata. She appeared to know even less than he did. She didn’t even seem able to comprehend what family was, let alone who her parents might be. When he tried to ask her who taught her to understand his language, she just tilted her head and pointed up. From what Kizu understood, she had picked it up as an infant from divining her way up to the surface and eavesdropping on students. But that didn’t match up quite right because every time she dragged him to the surface in the coming days, everything up there was slowed down to a ridiculous degree. Trying to listen in on other students’ conversations was painfully difficult. When he tried asking Anata about the speed of everything around them, she just looked confused.

Thankfully, Anata didn’t drag him up to the surface every time he slept. He managed to get some decent sleep most days, a vast improvement on his sleepless nights at the academy.

And his days were filled with practicing. He mostly focused on improving his jumping. By the end of two weeks trapped in the box, he could manage not only over a hundred short jumps in quick succession before running low on blood, but also about half as many when he brought Anata along as a passenger. An absolutely staggering amount that would likely have taken him at least a year under normal circumstances. Likely even longer. But here, whenever he got dizzy, Anata was there, giving him a drop of her blood. She was like an endless well of power to draw on.

The only thing slowing down his progress was his leg. Whenever he jumped, he would fall slightly. While he slowly managed to jump closer and closer to the ground as he improved, it still put a lot of pressure on his damaged leg every time he jumped.

But, in the time he needed to let his leg rest, he kept himself busy by expanding his practice to other spells. It was much slower progress, as it used significantly less blood than jumping, but Kizu did practice his control over elemental spells as well. By the end of two weeks, he had almost perfect control over a pebble he had found in his shoe. He could not only send it zipping in a direction, he could actually boomerang it back to his hand. A self taught achievement.

For practice with boiling and freezing water, he had let the algae in the corner slowly drip its slime into a small cup from his pack. After straining it dozens of times through a cloth to purify the best he could, Kizu had a murky liquid to practice with. And his practice yielded results. While not the level of control he had over the pebble, Kizu could still manipulate the water out of the cup and freeze it or boil it at will. He got to the point where he didn’t even need to be touching the liquid to manipulate it, just be within half a meter of it.

Fire proved a lot more difficult to practice. Anata appeared terrified whenever he attempted to create a flame. So, he reluctantly only practiced it when she was asleep. But that meant no refills on blood in the meantime, so it was a slow pace.

With no previous instruction on how to control air, Kizu found himself at a loss at where to even begin. He wished he could have access to the books in the library, and once he had tried to steer Anata there during one of the occasions, she dragged him to the surface. Unfortunately, Anata refused to let him direct her. The closest he managed to get was wandering the school grounds with her for a few minutes before returning to the underwater ruins. She appeared obsessed with those ruins and always ended up there whenever she took Kizu with her. It unnerved him a bit, but it seemed out of his control.

When awake, other than with his fire elemental spells, Anata would watch with rapt attention whenever he practiced. He often caught her mimicking his movements out of the corner of his eye, but if he turned toward her, she would always drop what she was doing and look at the ground.

One day, while practicing jumping, Kizu popped over to the other side of the room and looked back, preparing a return jump, but stopped himself. Anata had collapsed on the floor, eyes staring lifelessly open. Kizu only had enough time to start panicking before her body lurched across the room at an unruly speed. Then she was standing beside him, looking very pleased with herself.

“Anata,” he said uncomfortably. “What did you just do?”

Her pleased expression turned to nervousness in an instant. She bit her lip, drawing blood from her sharpened canine, and looked away.

“Can you demonstrate that for me,” Kizu asked, when he realized he wouldn’t get an explanation from the girl. “Show me one more time?”

Anata glanced to the other side of the room. Then she collapsed to the floor again, a lifeless pile of flesh.

This time, Kizu was ready. With his spellsense, he watched Anata’s phantom move across the room. Then, when she reached her destination, her body snapped toward her position. It ragdolled across the room at an unprecedented speed. In the process, it knocked his pack, which lay on the floor nearby, out of its path.

Kizu stared at her. Then he remembered what Roba had told him back in his lessons. There were other ways in which one could jump. But they were significantly less safe than the method she taught him. Kizu suspected this was one of those methods. He avoided thinking about what would happen to her body if she tried to bring it through something solid.

“Anata, that’s amazing!” Kizu couldn’t help but exclaim. “Do you think that you could bring me along with you?”

Anata perked up at his praise and nodded enthusiastically. She walked up to him and tentatively touched his hand. Then he felt himself peeled away from his body; he watched as his body collapsed in a heap next to Anata’s. But it felt like she still held his hand as she guided him across the room. Then, instead of snapping back into his body, like he usually did when in this form, Anata dragged their bodies to them. Kizu couldn’t help but flinch as his body hurled into himself.

But then he stood there, feeling completely normal. An idea hatched in Kizu’s mind. He needed time to prepare it though.

Thankfully, he had more time. As nothing changed inside the box. Unfortunately, he was almost out of his sustaining food and water potions. And once he ran out, he would have to join Anata licking the algae off of the wall. Kizu dreaded that. But he also felt extremely guilty about taking all the vials with him. He could only imagine the stress and danger of needing to find food in the dungeon would have put on Ione and Mort. And he could only imagine it, because Anata refused to let him visit Mort after that first day. She always stubbornly dragged him along to the underwater ruins.

Regardless, Kizu was mentally preparing himself for the worst, when finally, the trap door above him shifted, creaking open. But neither the noise nor the movement was what first alerted Kizu to the prison opening. His bond with Mort slammed back into him, reinstating itself. It felt like slipping back into a well-worn boot. He finally felt whole again. Thankfully, he recovered in a mere moment.

“How’d you like the frog, Anata?” someone asked from above. “We had a bet going, did you eat it? Or did it starve?”

Kizu grabbed Anata’s shoulder.

“Now!” he said to her.

Despite looking terrified, she closed her eyes. Suddenly he watched their bodies collapse on the floor at their feet.

And then Anata dragged him with her up, out of the box. They flew past the vampiric spawn whom Kizu recognized as the one who dropped him in the box, and then Anata snapped their bodies to them.

Kizu’s body’s leg clipped the vampiric spawn’s jaw on its way up to him, sending the monster sprawling.

And then Kizu was back in his body. Reacting fast, before they let gravity carry them back down, Kizu reached out with a gloved hand and grabbed a hold of the ceiling. He activated the glove’s enchantment, letting him stick to the ceiling. His other hand still hanging onto Anata, he swung her across to land safely on the other side of the trap door before dropping down himself.

The vampiric spawn was still dazed, but he was lethargically getting back to his feet. Kizu wasn’t about to let it get its bearings. He threw one of his explosive vials at the monster, and shielded Anata from the sight with his body as it went up in flames.

Snatching up Anata into his arms, Kizu dashed away. His bond reestablished, he let it guide him back to his familiar. He chose the most direct path forward at every fork and let nothing distract him.

Unlike the dungeon’s previous appearance, this area was more like a stoney castle. If a castle was trapped inside a glacier on top of a mountain. There were torches on the wall, but they glowed an eerie blue and exuded cold instead of warmth. Ice coated the walls and Kizu barely managed to catch himself as he slipped on a patch of black ice on the floor. His leg protested the stumble and he could feel the enchantments on his leg brace faltering, but he didn’t slow down. It felt like the bone of his calf had splintered and only needles kept it together. But he ran through the pain. The extra weight of Anata and his pack bore down on him.

Anata seemed unaware of his pain as she gaped at the dungeon around them. Several times he noticed her eyes following a painting they passed or a suit of armor. But she clung to him as he dashed through the corridors, not showing any sign of wanting him to slow down or stop. Not that he would have, even if she verbally requested it.

Whenever they passed by another vampiric spawn, Kizu tossed another vial on the ground behind him, lighting the path behind them on fire in hopes of deterring any pursuers. It seemed to work, though he worried about leaving a trail straight to him. But he supposed that was better than the spawn directly chasing after him.

As he rounded a corner, Kizu barreled straight into someone. The collision left Kizu and Anata in a heap, but the other person managed to catch himself by putting a hand to the wall before falling to the ground.

Kizu’s immediate instinct was to hurl an explosive at the person, but he hesitated. The man’s eyes weren’t scarlet. Instead, they were a clear blue. Only then did Kizu realize what the man was carrying under the crook of his arm. The Atlas to the World Dungeon.

“Basil?” Kizu proclaimed, stunned.

“Ah, yeah, Kizu,” Basil said sheepishly. “Um, funny running into you here of all places. I was just, um, scouting ahead.”

Kizu had no idea how to process Basil’s sudden appearance. It seemed far, far too bizarre to just be a coincidence. On one hand, he was genuinely relieved to run into a friendly face in such a hostile environment. On the other hand, he almost wished Basil was horribly injured or an obvious captive. That would at least serve as some justification. But Basil looked to just be strolling through the corridors without a care. The memory of Harvey replacing Kizu with someone who had severely disfigured him still remained fresh in his mind. Insecurity clutched at his chest. The idea of Basil replacing him with….

He forced the thought out of his head. At the moment, he needed to think of Basil as a resource. Maybe an unreliable one, but a resource, nevertheless. At the end of the day, Kizu didn’t think Basil would try to get him killed. He had to trust that instinct.

“Basil, we need to get out of here. Where’s the exit?”

“Ah!” Basil said happily, obviously very relieved to not have to explain himself. “Just right this way.”

Kizu followed Basil, with Anata fidgeting in his arms.

“It’s horribly cold down here,” Basil chatted amicably, as if they weren’t rushing through enemy territory in fear for their lives. “I absolutely hate it. The cold makes my transformations stiff. And whenever I sleep, I wake up almost frozen through. It takes almost an entire hour to get myself into a normal state. I’m going to be glad to put this place behind me. Just glad I only got here two days ago. Another two and you would be taking back an ice cube.”

“You just got down here?” Kizu asked breathlessly as they walked quickly through the corridors. “Where have you been for the last two or three weeks?”

Basil gave him a side eye, brows furrowing. “With you?”

“What, you mean like in spirit? If you don’t want to tell me, just say as much.”

“No…like I was with you in the sonney chamber a couple days ago. Then I decided to, um, scout ahead. And I found you here. Carrying around a random kid.”

“She’s my niece,” Kizu said absentmindedly.

“So, you found your sister? Mission Accomplished?”

“No. Just her daughter.”

“Well, that’s great news! Now that you’ve rescued her you can introduce her to a comb. What they’ve done to her hair is horrid. A crime. The knee jerk reaction of an average stylist would be to shave her bald. Even I can barely spot the potential under those knots.”

Kizu, ignoring Basil, stopped and looked around a corner. No guards. “You’re sure this is the way out?”

“Yeah, of course. I’ve been scouting out this whole place out. Know it like the back of my hand.” Basil raised the back of his hand for emphasis. It swirled, forming into an image of a map. Then he pointed down a separate hall. “Over there are the coffins that the spawn all sleep in. Okay, okay, they aren’t really coffins. They mostly sleep on drab mats on the ground. And maybe sleep is the wrong word. They enter a trance-like meditation.” He pointed in a different direction. “If you go down that way, you’ll make it to some sort of recreational room. Tons of weird card games they use to gamble to pass the time. They’re surprisingly bad at it for immortal creatures with endless eons to pass the time.” Then he pointed down the way they were going. “And down here is our way out of this frozen abyss. Back into the Labyrinth. To be honest, I’m a bit surprised you don’t know the way out. How did you get in?”

“They have a beacon that redirects any to jump in the local area.”

Kizu reached over and awkwardly snatched the World Dungeon Atlas out of Basil’s hand. He flipped through it one handed, his other still holding Anata. They continued on down the passage, Kizu’s attention split between the book and keeping a lookout for more vampiric spawn. He did his best to ignore his throbbing leg.

Anata, for her part, had buried her face into his shoulder. She peeked out occasionally at Basil and the surrounding area. It seemed as if she was trying to decide whether to be interested in or terrified of the shapeshifter.

A quick scan of the book let him know that Basil appeared to be honest. It looked like it really was the direction towards the surface. Kizu felt relieved to be able to give a measure of trust back to his friend.

In the next room they entered, the door slammed closed behind them, shaking icicles off the ceiling. The room looked like a frozen pond. The blue fire torches blazed on the walls, casting a preternatural glow over it. Basil shifted uncomfortably, huddling in his fur lined coat.

As Kizu stepped forward, careful not to slip, he realized they weren’t alone in the room. A cloaked person was frozen under the ice in the center of the room.

Kizu glanced down at it, trying to see under its cowl. Its eyes opened. Eyes that looked akin to pools of blood with black pupils floating atop. They glowed brighter than the torches on the walls.

While Kizu stumbled back, Anata squirmed out of his arms and ran. Not away, but towards the monster frozen in the ice.

The ice cracked. The monster stirred.