Chapter CVI (106) - Graft

Kizu drifted, darkness consumed his vision. His bond with Mort strained, he felt the distance between them expanding, threatening to snap the link as the pressure increased.

Then someone grabbed a hold of him. At first, Kizu thought it was the parasitical soul inside him acting, but then he realized it was as helpless as him. No, this was a different entity. Anata held him in place.

“Please,” Anata begged. “Please don’t leave me. Kizu, please.”

“He’s not dead yet!” Aoi yelled from somewhere far away. “Get him upstairs to my lab!”

Kizu barely heard the words.

“Your lab?” Basil asked.

“UP NOW!”

If he moved, Kizu didn’t feel anything. Just a dark nothingness around him with the occasional words piercing through.

“Sojan! Where the hell are you? We need to insert you!”

This time Kizu did feel something as a cold presence shifted inside him, chilling his heart.

“What’s this?” Sojan asked, the noise reverberating inside him. “There’s someone else here this time. I can’t-uhrg.”

Just like that, the cold dissipated.

“I apologize,” the aurora’s entity said quietly. “I never saw this outcome. I designed myself to keep out my kin. I’m a clot in your soul.”

“Put him there,” Aoi demanded.

He heard something shatter.

“Wait,” Basil said. “That won’t work.”

“I don’t have many other options right now!” she snapped back. “His soul is unstable. He should have already died. Even if we cauterize the wound, his soul will fade, it won’t recognize the body’s base structure. I’m not good enough to coax it into an unfamiliar form. I don’t know what Anata is doing, but she’s barely holding him in place right now. He has no pulse! He needs this!”

“Let me do something first.”

There was a pause.

“I’m inserting it!” Aoi said. “I’m channeling into his soul now!”

As if struck by lightning, Kizu jolted up.

He gripped his heaving chest, panting. Mort was clinging to his shirt, shaking and weeping. He touched his head, Anata’s circlet was perched on his brow, acting as a stabilizer for his soul. There was a child’s bloody handprint plastered onto his arm which slowly absorbed into his skin, refreshing his internal blood.

“It actually worked!” Basil said, a smile splitting his face ear to ear. His hand was missing from his body.

“What-” Kizu gasped.

Then he looked down at his leg, expecting to see the stump or a regrown version of his mangled leg.

Instead, he saw the reptilian limb from one of Aoi’s vats.

The green, scaly limb was attached by an oozy substance that Kizu recalled from witnessing Basil sleep. They’d used his body and Aoi’s necromancy to graft the limb to his body.

He flexed its toes. They responded.

The mixture of wonder and horror inside him vanished before it fully solidified.

“Anata!” He cried out. “Where is Anata?!”

Aoi, drenched in sweat, gestured over to the side of the room where Anata slumped against a wall. She had a gash on her hand where she’d cut herself. But her current unconsciousness had nothing to do with that small wound. Kizu recognized the look as her using her astral state. She’d clearly cut herself in an attempt to replenish Kizu’s blood supply.

“She can’t be here!” Kizu said. “We need to get to the World Dungeon!”

He stumbled off of Aoi’s table and collapsed on the floor next to Anata. He grabbed her in his arms and slouched against the cabin’s wall to push himself up to his feet. While unsteady, he stood. He felt no pain from the unfamiliar limb, only strangeness.

With Mort on his shoulder and Anata in his arms, he stumbled out onto the deck and back toward the crew’s quarters.

This time, when he reached his hammock, he managed to scoop everything into Allik’s ring. Potions, his atlas, the bell. Everything he needed.

Sojan’s gnome body lay crumpled on the ground next to Kizu’s bloodstain. He spotted the discarded dagger a few meters away and restuck it into the gnome’s spine.

The body’s eyes flickered open.

“Oh, good. You stabbed it. Got worried there for a second. Oh! You’re alive! That’s excellent news! Good for you! What’s that in your soul?”

“We need to go.” Even as Kizu said the words, he heard three distinct thumps on the deck above him.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“Harbinger,” a sing-song voice called out. “Where are you at?”

“What are you doing on my ship, Kusatta?” Aoi demanded.

Kizu remained completely silent. He could jump them off the ship, but not far without direct line of sight. And he’d be spotted immediately.

“Cousin? Is that you? What a lovely surprise. Well done with the dance earlier tonight! Quite the performance. Living up to your mother’s reputation.”

“Get. Off. My. Ship.”

“Can’t do that. You see, me and my friends here are on strict warlord business. Outside the authority of someone as low as you. Just a minor princess. Feel free to try again when the twenty people in front of you die and you’re the Empress. Now, have you seen the Blood Harbinger anywhere?”

“I don’t know what that is,” she said coolly.

“Little girl wearing a bat mask. Black hair and bangs. Evil looking tooth. Sound familiar? I need to kill her.”

“Kill her?!” Aoi repeated.

“Yes. As much as I love my family, I’m not here for a social call. Now stand aside.”

After a moment, he heard Inari sigh loudly, followed by the sound of something collapsing to the deck.

“Search the ship. I’ll remain here and watch for any sneaky escapes.”

“Sounds like it’s time to fight,” Sojan said cheerfully. “Blood’s been pretty diluted over the last few months of draining animals. I’m excited to get some new human blood back in the system.”

The trap door above them opened and the blue oval masked judge looked down at them.

“Attack!” Aoi commanded.

The skeletons all sprang into action, immediately leaping out of the crew quarters and tackling into the unsuspecting judge.

Inari laughed maniacally.

Kizu grabbed hold of Sojan’s shoulder, then he jumped himself, Anata, Mort, and Sojan to the deck.

Inari stood over Aoi, slamming the heel of his boot into her bloody face repeatedly. As Kizu appeared, Basil charged at the warlord from an ajar captain’s cabin but was intercepted by the other judge wearing a green oval mask. The skeletons had managed to slip a sword into her stomach, but she appeared unperturbed by it as she raised glowing hands to fight back the skeletons.

With a blast that shook the ship, the green-masked judge detonated an explosion from her palms, blasting the skeleton in front of her to pieces.

Sojan flicked his hand at Inari, firing a beam of darkness from his fingertip.

Inari’s demeanor and focus shifted instantly, deflecting the beam with an antimagic barrier as he turned toward them.

“Happy day!” he said. “You brought her to me. And here I thought I would need to sink this ship. I still might, but now I don’t need to. Just as I don’t need to punish my cousin for stupidly risking the world.” He punctuated the statement with another kick to Aoi’s head.

“You’re unhinged.” Kizu had seen flickers of the sadistic behavior before, but now it was on full display.

“Am I?” He raised his hands, palms towards them.

Kizu felt something slam into him, making him want to puke, but he held himself together. Sojan and Basil looked completely nonplussed though.

“Not humans?” Inari asked. “That hex should have worked on gnomes as well. What are you three? Scaleless Tainted? Wrong skin tones though.”

Sojan bared his teeth and launched into a complex spell, the deck around Inari’s feet began to rot and fall apart. Inari remained standing, as if held up by an invisible force. Kizu could see the ripple of wind billowing through his yukata, suspending him in place.

The two of them both laughed and Sojan raised himself up in a cloud of dark smoke at the same time that Inari climbed into the air, grasped by invisible strands of wind.

The skeletons kept Inari’s green masked lackey busy, constantly diving at her and attacking while she beat them back with powerful explosive spells. The blue masked one crouched down behind the safety of his friend and started drawing on the deck with a piece of chalk. Whether it was a summoning circle or a divination ritual, Kizu couldn’t let him finish.

He jumped, hoping to insert a fist into the man like he had with Ulric, but he had a resistance akin to the one Arclight had shown him, likely an enchantment tattooed on his body, which caused Kizu to slide off him. Thankfully, he still remained in a position to stop the summoning.

Putting all the force behind the blow he could muster, Kizu kicked the chalk out of the lackey’s hand. The man’s wrist snapped back with a pop, bending unnaturally far back, as to be parallel with his forearm. Crying out, the man clutched at his arm, huddled over the broken limb. Kizu barely even processed the sheer power of his kick before he raised his reptilian foot and slammed it down on the man’s back. The impact of the blow left a crater in the wooden deck.

The harsh snap of the man’s spine sickened Kizu, but he lacked the luxury to care at the moment. While Sojan and Inari were locked in a battle in the sky, Mort scurried across the deck to Aoi’s side, leaping over the charred bones of defeated skeletons. Once the monkey grabbed ahold of her arm, Kizu channeled through him, a practiced maneuver, sending his familiar and the princess across the lake to safety on the bank with a jump. She was now out of harm’s way.

Kizu wanted to do the same with Anata, but they came here for her and likely would ignore the rest of them to prioritize killing her. Running wasn’t an option for them right now.

Basil was left alone to defend the unconscious Anata from the green masked lackey. Finally finished with her undead opponents, she raised her hands and faced Basil, small explosions erupting in her palms.

With enhanced speed faster than Kizu could track, she lunged at Basil and grabbed his arm. She blew it apart, splattering gunk across the deck. In turn, Basil grabbed her wrist with his remaining arm and attempted a similar move, his lesser explosion grazed the woman, but she resisted any true damage.

“Ooze,” she growled at him.

Distracted by Basil, she didn’t notice the freezing potion until Kizu slammed it into the back of her head.

Like Basil’s earlier explosion, she resisted the effects at first. But Kizu had designed this potion under Allik’s tutelage. It spread, strengthening as it absorbed the moisture from her skin.

She reached up and gripped the ice consuming her. As her hands got absorbed into the growing crystal, she set off an explosion, blasting it apart and sending shards of ice everywhere. Unfortunately for her, the power required for the explosion to work, also broke through her natural resistance, taking off a part of her scalp on the back of her head. A shard of her mask shattered, revealing a human face.

Before she could heal herself, Basil reached up and jammed his half-formed hand into the fresh wound. It oozed out onto the exposed flesh and under the skin of her skull. The woman reached out and clutched at her head while it began to bubble and pop. She screamed in agony.

Suddenly Kateshi stood beside her. She waved a hand at the woman passed out on the deck. Her body healed, leaving patches of smooth skin scattered throughout her hair.

Kateshi wordlessly threw up two collars. They spun in the air before zeroing in on Basil and Kizu. Enhancing his speed for just an instant, Kizu raised his hands and caught the collar aiming for his neck. It broke it two. Then the two separate pieces shifted in his hand, twisting like an unruly snake, and clamped down on his wrist. He felt the antimagic cut off his spells. It was the same material used by Kateshi all those months ago when he had overexerted himself and used too much blood.

He was rendered completely powerless.

Then Sojan fell from the sky.