NOVEL NEXT Chapter XL (40)- The Dagger's Enchantments
Chapter XL (40)- The Dagger's Enchantments
The water beneath the boardwalk glowed an eerie green as they crossed it. Kizu wanted to stop to examine it and maybe take a couple samples for research, but Basil pulled him along into the common room hut. The cleaning supplies had already started scrubbing every exposed surface. Dodging out of the way of a mop handle, Kizu wondered why he had never seen anything like it in his own dormitory at night.
They both entered the painting and arrived back in the academy’s hallway. Kizu let out a sigh of relief.
“I don’t suppose you have any idea what the academy would do with all of my sister’s things?” Kizu asked as he dropped his illusion while they walked.
“Probably toss it,” Basil said nonchalantly. “But I guess it's possible they stored anything useful. If you can use illusions to trick the painting into letting you into the girls’ dorms, you probably could make an illusion to look like a James and get into the storage rooms.”
The last thing Kizu wanted at the moment was to engage in another infiltration. But he filed the info away. At least it was something to go off of.
When they reached the dorm, instead of going to bed, Kizu collected Mort and decided to go on a walk around the academy grounds. The activity and movement helped him sort his thoughts. And he hoped it might loosen up his cramped leg.
Not for the first time, he wished there were better trees for climbing at the academy. Not only did most of the trees on campus look pretty scrawny and weak, they all had their lower branches pruned. He missed the abundance of vines at the Hon Basin. The trees at the academy looked too…manicured and artificial.
Twice, he almost ran into Jameses who patrolled around the grounds. Both times, he managed to duck out of sight just in time. After the second encounter, he found himself redirected to a familiar courtyard. The one where he had discovered the box full of enchanted objects.
Mort leaped off his shoulder and began dashing in and out of the shrubs.
The necklace was incredibly useful, Kizu reflected as he watched Mort pulling up some flowers. He wondered what he could accomplish if he managed to figure out how to use all three items. But then again, what good was an enchanted book? He tried to imagine what you could accomplish with an enchantment on a book. Get it to read the text to you? Maybe cause illusionary images for immersion? That seemed like a lot of work to enchant page by page for very little gain. But then again, apparently Aoi’s diary had been enchanted. Maybe it was just set up as a security measure like that. On further thought, the necklace buried alongside it nullified any enchantment like that. It had worked for the diary, so it had precedent to protect him from any direct enchantments the book might contain.
Mort hummed from under a bush. Kizu walked over to see what he wanted. He blinked. The dirt had been dug up recently. And whoever had done it hadn’t bothered to replace it. Heaps of soil stood beside a crater in the flowerbeds. Kizu glanced around. It wasn’t exactly where he’d dug up the box, but it was close. Close enough for it to be an unlikely coincidence. And the dirt looked to have settled as a result of rain. So, the dig hadn’t been recent. Someone had come looking for what he had found buried here.
“Come on, Mort,” Kizu said, a shiver running up his spine. “We’re going back to our dorm.”
Thankfully, despite being significantly less careful on his return, he encountered no one on the way back.
He opened the door of his bedroom and immediately went to the box hidden under his bed.
It wasn’t there.
He checked all around, crawling further under and sweeping the area with his arms. He found stray articles of clothing, but nothing else.
“What are you doing squirming around under your bed?” Basil asked. “Are you stuck?”
“No,” Kizu said. Not a complete lie, though it was admittedly a very tight space. “I had a wooden box under here.”
“Oh, that? I moved it.”
Kizu scrambled to get out from under the bed, knocking his head on the wooden frame before managing to pull himself out.
“You what?” he asked, nursing the new lump.
“Moved it over there.” Basil pointed to the corner of the room. “I needed something to stack this new batch of clothing I just finished. I didn’t want it on the ground, but it wasn’t ready to be hung up yet.”
Kizu reached under the pile of clothes and yanked out the buried box. He opened it. Both the dagger and the book still remained untouched. He let out a sigh of relief.
“What’s that?” Basil asked. “A book? Wait, a hidden book under your bed…don’t tell me-”
“They’re enchanted objects I found buried in a courtyard outside,” Kizu interrupted. He knew no good would come from Basil finishing that speculation. Besides, his imagination likely would make it more interesting than the actual truth. “I don’t know what they do.”
“What’s the book got in it?” Basil asked, obviously still hopeful.
“I don’t know. I haven’t been able to figure out the enchantments and it’s too dangerous to just open.”
“It’s too dangerous to open a book.” Basil stared at him flatly.
“I don’t know what kind of curse could be laid on it. It might suck me into a pocket dimension prison.”
Basil crossed the room and picked up the book before Kizu could protest. He flipped through its pages. He glanced up.
“It’s just a book of maps. It has some stuff written in the footnotes. Talk about disappointing.”
A book of maps? Kizu carefully took the book from Basil and opened it to a random page. Unfortunately, it wasn’t written in the universal script. But Kizu recognized the language. Primordial. He groaned. Why couldn’t anything just be simple?
“What about the dagger?” Basil asked. While Kizu had been distracted by the book, the changeling had snatched it up and was holding it up to the lamplight.
“Well, seeing as you haven’t devolved into a murder fueled wraith, I imagine the enchantment must happen after you cut something.” Kizu grabbed at it to put it back in the box. But Basil pulled back a bit, causing Kizu’s palm to lightly brush up against the blade.
A line of blood trickled down his palm. Kizu immediately snatched a piece of cloth from the ground and pushed it with a thumb against the cut to stop the bleeding.
“Whoops, my bad,” Basil said.
Kizu glared at him. He didn’t feel any different, thankfully. So, at the very least the knife wasn’t imbued with powers to freeze someone’s bloodstream or light them on fire. The only thing he felt was extreme irritation with Basil.
“That’s probably normal.”
Kizu’s eyes widened, and he looked around for the source of the voice.
“I didn’t get a very good drink there, mind reinserting me? Just for a minute. Pleeeeease?”
“Basil,” Kizu said. “Was that you?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry I stabbed you. I already apologized, what more do you want?”
“Listen,” the voice said. “I’ll do anything you want. Poltergeist driving you bonkers? No problem. Gnome stolen your socks? Consider it vanquished. Giant centipede cramping your style? Well…actually, you’re on your own with that one. I can’t stand the things. Not that I can do much standing at the moment. I swear, centipedes don’t know how good they have it. I’d kill for just one fiftieth of the amount of legs they have. Selfish bastards.”
Kizu looked over at the dagger in Basil’s hand. The hilt’s pommel, once a normal black steel, now had a small yellow eye protruding from it. It winked at Kizu. Or maybe it just blinked. Hard to tell when it only had one eye.
“Basil,” Kizu said cautiously. “Give me that dagger.”
Basil handed it over with exasperated over the top dramatics, obviously not noticing the eye yet.
“Yes. Now stab him,” the dagger said. “Just lunge forward and slice. It’s easy. Like one to three movements total. Five if you’re really bad.”
“He doesn’t have blood,” Kizu told the dagger.
“Oh.”
“Who doesn’t have blood?” Basil asked, confused. “The dagger? Good, I was worried I pricked you. Have you named it already? I’ve always wanted to name a sword. Something elegant with class.”
“My name is Sojan!” the dagger boomed. “I am the most powerful weapon in creation! And the wisest. And the smartest. And the most dashing. And I have a knack for poetry too.”
“You can’t hear it?” Kizu asked Basil. He held up the knife, showing the eye pommel.
“No?”
“It says its name is Sojan.”
“It talks?”
“Actually,” the dagger interrupted. “I relay thoughts directly into your mind. But I could talk. You just need to stab someone with me first.”
“I’m not stabbing anyone,” Kizu told it.
“You’re the most boring human I’ve ever met.”
“You should ask it about your book,” Basil said.
“Oh, that thing?” the dagger said contemptuously, responding directly to Basil’s suggestion. “It’s just a map of the Labyrinth. Nothing near my league of dashing amazing abilities.”
“Which are?” Kizu prompted.
“You know,” Basil said. “I really hate being left out of a conversation. Especially when half of it comes from a knife that looks like it belongs in a sacrificial rite to summon eldritch gods.”
“Oh! I like him,” the dagger said. “I do look rather good, don’t I? But I’ve definitely had my fill of beauty sleep. How about we go stab someone real fast?”
“How long were you asleep for?”
“How should I know? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s kind of difficult to keep track of time when you’re asleep. I mean, I’m magic and magnificent, don’t misunderstand, but I’m not magic in that way. You should stab someone. Preferably in the back.”
At this point, Mort decided to hop onto Kizu’s shoulder and look down at the knife.
“A monkey?” the dagger said. “You know, I’m desperate. I’ll even take that. Please just stab something.”
“That’s my familiar.”
“Even better!”
As if able to hear the blade, Mort hopped away from it and scampered up into his nest in the rafters.
“Damn. How high can you jump? I don’t like being thrown, but I’m not saying that option is completely off the table.”
“It doesn’t seem fair to me that you get to hear a sentient dagger and not me,” Basil complained.
“Trust me,” Kizu told him. “You’re better off.”
Instead of quipping back, the dagger yawned in his mind and closed its eye slowly, as if nodding off.
“Ugh,” it complained. “That was fast.” Then its eye closed.
It once again looked like a normal dagger. Well, normal might be a reach. It still looked like a jagged shard of metal that fell out of a death knight’s pocket. But it didn’t look overtly magical anymore.
“Well,” Basil said. “What are you waiting for? Let’s go stab something with it.”
Kizu sighed.