Chapter CVIII (108) - Recovery

It took a few minutes for Basil to reform into something akin to human. In the meantime, Kizu examined Inari’s lackeys, both of whom remained alive although thoroughly beaten. While the green masked woman was a brute who could take a sword to the gut and blow things apart, the blue masked man had never truly shown his true power to them during their fight. The simple fact Inari kept him by his side scared Kizu. Judging the unknown danger to be the larger threat, Kizu clamped down Basil’s collar round his neck. Unfortunately, his own antimagic bracelet remained stubbornly stuck around his wrist. Still, he wasn’t without resources. He dumped a narcotic potion down both of their throats. It was a brew he had designed for himself ages ago in an attempt to fix his sleep schedule. Unfortunately, it didn’t deliver truly restful sleep and left the drinker in a fugue-like state for hours after, but that was hardly an issue with these two.

In the final moments before Basil finished creating a body, Kizu looked over the edge of Owl’s Respite and stared down at the dark water below. Fireworks still blasted in the distance, illuminating the lake slightly in bursts, but there was no sign of the monstrous jellyfish. And no sign of its two victims. They were dead. Kizu had killed his professor. They had tried to kill Anata and he’d had no choice. Inari’s death didn’t weigh heavily on Kizu. The prince had been a horrible person. But Professor Kateshi had taught him. She’d connected with him, praised his work ethic and his advancements. Advised him in his physical therapy and devised a leg brace to support himself. And now, she was dead. He had killed her.

He looked across the deck and spotted Anata. His niece was picking up skeleton bones and putting them in a pile. She was alive. It was a terrible trade he’d had to make, but he exchanged Kateshi’s life for Anata’s. He trembled slightly as his mind attempted to find any other solution. What could he have done? Maybe there was some third option where everyone could have lived, but Kizu didn’t know what it would have been. Kateshi would have shielded or resisted against anything except for temporal magic.

Basil reformed. Now in a male form. His ballgown hung loosely from his shoulders and he had ripped off the hem to allow him to walk easier. He set a thin hand on Kizu’s shoulder and thanked him for saving his life. They were alive.

Without a lot of other options available to them, the two of them returned to the shore via Aoi’s rowboat. Once there, Kizu dumped both of the sleeping lackeys onto the shore and traded their company for Mort and the unconscious Aoi. Basil had lost muscle mass and so it fell to Kizu to carry Aoi. He lifted her and they started down the trail back to the academy. As they walked he marveled at how well his new leg held up. He stumbled occasionally, but that was due to the strangeness of the new limb, not its effectiveness.

Aoi, Anata, Basil, Mort, and himself. The five of them had survived against a warlord. One of the most powerful people in Hon. They’d been incredibly lucky. If they hadn’t fought on Owl’s Respite with Aoi’s undead on hand, Sojan controlling the body of a powerful necromancer, and a mysterious monster under the water below them, they wouldn’t have stood a chance. But that didn’t change the simple fact. They were alive.

“Hold on,” Basil said as they entered the academy grounds. “Before we drop off Aoi at the infirmary, we need to change clothes.”

“You could have mentioned it back on the ship,” Kizu said, irritably.

“Forgive me for forgetting while I was a puddle of slop on the floor. As is though, we’re going to get more than just curious glances. Thankfully, I keep a stash over in a nearby closet.”

Basil was right. The color had never returned to Anata’s dress after she’d cast whatever spell she’d used to control the jellyfish monster. Though, he had to admit that her black mask now matched her outfit far better. And she perhaps looked the most normal out of the group. Kizu’s clothes had been drenched in his own blood and his entire leg swapped out with a new one that didn’t match his species. His pant leg severed mid-thigh. Basil’s dress was in tatters and barely still hung to him. Also, he stank horribly. Not only that, just being a man in a ballgown undoubtedly would call attention to him. And then there was Aoi. Like Kizu, her outfit was covered in dried blood. A combination of his blood from the grafting process and her own from the beating Inari had dealt her. Her face was nearly unrecognizable through the caked blood and broken nose. Kizu had been tempted to give her a health potion to heal her back up, but decided against it. Head injuries usually required more finesse, and he didn’t want her skull ending up like his leg.

Redressed in a slightly too tight academy uniform, Kizu led the others up to the infirmary.

It had been a while since his last visit, but the place looked as pristine and sterile as ever. He didn’t recognize the student staffed there, but that made sense as the only two he knew by name were Edgar and Raygen, both of whom were at the ball. In addition, he had heard rumors that Kateshi had fired Raygen after the butchered healing on Kizu’s leg, though he never followed up on the gossip.

“Professor Kateshi isn’t in right now,” the student said, looking up from his book. His eyebrows rose as he noticed Aoi’s condition. “What happened?”

“Tumble down the stairs,” Basil said quickly. “We drank a lot and her shoes broke.” He raised a shoe with a broken platformed heel.

The medical assistant barely glanced at the shoe, instead ushering them over to a bed where he started doing healing probe tests.

“She should be fine in time,” he said finally. “Professor Kateshi will want to do a full examination herself though. She usually checks in before curfew so she should be here shortly.”

Kizu fidgetted uncomfortably.

“Not tonight, Ichiro.”

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Gizrim Ballarfulur stood in the doorway with Roba at his side. The normally cheery man looked grim. He pulled on his curled mustache as he examined the group with a frown.

“Headmaster!” The student snapped to attention.

“Take a walk,” Roba instructed the boy.

He looked to the headmaster first, who nodded, then dismissed himself.

“Kaga Kizu,” Ballarfulur said. “With your niece, Anata if I recall correctly. And my ward, Basil.”

“Niece?” Roba said sharply.

“Yes. The Blood Harbinger, if I’m not mistaken.”

Kizu quickly scanned the room. His mind raced. He still had on the antimagic bracelet, but with Mort here, he might still be able to make an escape. They didn’t know about his new leg yet, could he use that to his advantage? Mort readied himself, prepared to leap from his shoulder and act as a conduit.

“Relax,” Basil said to him. “He’s known about me for over ten years. I’m still fine.”

“Correct,” Ballarfulur confirmed as he summoned a pair of chairs for himself and Roba with a snap of his fingers. “Though you’re not the same level of threat as the Blood Harbinger. Your seal is already shattered.”

“We’re not going to kill you,” Roba said quickly, glaring at the headmaster. “But we need to know what happened tonight. I intercepted a message by one of Prince Inari’s messengers about a Harbinger as she attempted to slip out of the academy. At the time, I assumed she spoke of Basil and contacted the headmaster.”

“I’m quite talented in the field of divination,” the headmaster continued, picking up his end of the story. “And discovered you four here. Care to explain?”

Kizu half expected the aurora’s splintered soul to speak up and tell him whether or not to trust the man. But it remained silent. Kizu couldn’t even be sure how much it observed.

Basil looked over to Kizu, as if asking for permission to speak, but Kizu didn’t meet his eyes, instead focusing on the headmaster in front of him. The man stroked his curly mustache, their gazes locked. Kizu held his gaze and looked into his eyes. Mort felt at ease with the man in front of them, but Kizu remained uncertain. One wrong word could be the end of everything.

After the silence stretched, the headmaster sighed.

“Roba, go fetch Knoff. Tell him to bring any truth potions on hand. I don’t like it, but I need these answers.”

“We killed Kateshi,” Kizu said.

He expected a bigger reaction from the middle-aged headmaster or his ancient looking assistant, but they simply shared a glance.

“Continue,” Roba said.

Kizu started explaining their night, Basil occasionally hopping in to add a comment. It took quite a bit of time and more than once Roba had to shoo away students attempting to enter the infirmary for non-urgent issues.

“I suspected she was up to something,” Roba grumbled when he brought up how Aoi grafted the new leg to his stump. “Reports said she was disappearing from the academy for long periods of time. I should have trusted my gut and followed up about that necromancer.”

“If you had, a few of them wouldn’t be here in front of us right now,” the headmaster pointed out. “If she has this sort of talent from being primarily self-taught, I’ll personally speak to her family about the subject of easing the restrictions on her necromantic training. But we’re deviating into a tangent, let’s recenter our attention on the story.”

As Kizu finished, Roba silently stood and dismissed herself with a jump.

“She’s checking on Inari’s followers,” Ballarfulur explained. “I’m impressed you subdued them so easily.”

“I was lucky,” Kizu said. “They didn’t expect me to know how to jump and I took one out before he could finish his spell. If it had been a normal two versus two, I don’t think we would have come out of it intact.”

“That’s speculation. What matters is what did happen. You won. And now Professor Kateshi and Prince Kusatta Inari, Third Warlord of the Hon Empire, are dead.”

Kizu winced.

“Don’t worry too much about retribution from the empire. In case you didn’t notice, a princess is currently here as well. One whose succession was above Inari’s. I’ll have my contacts spin it as Inari attempting to further his position in the empire. A lie easily believed, as he’s assassinated plenty before. When he was born, he was forty-seventh in the line of succession. No one will bat an eye at an assassination attempt gone wrong. Although, they might question how students managed the deed. I’ll have to tweak the participants a bit. Perhaps Kateshi stood against him? Hm, something for me to puzzle over.”

“Thank you,” Kizu said. “But why? Why help us?”

Ballarfulur clapped a hand on his shoulder and looked into his eyes. His brown eyes didn’t twinkle, like when Kizu had met him before. Instead, their color hardened.

“Nobody should have to apologize for their birth. Not you. Not Basil. And not Anata. We all claim an equal amount of life and an equal amount of responsibility to make good on that life. Until you violate that, I will be by your side.”

“I killed one of your teachers.”

“Your niece did,” Ballarfulur corrected. “Using an incredibly powerful glamour on that monster.”

“Does it matter? It’s the same thing either way. My actions resulted in Professor Kateshi dying. Wasn’t she your friend? Don’t you care?”

The headmaster closed his eyes and sighed, his body sagged with weariness and the weight of the world. He pulled up a seat. “I have seen many friends die. Some I’ve held and wept as they passed. Others I cut down myself. It always leaves a scar in my heart, knowing I’ll never see them again. I don’t know that death gets easier. Perhaps. But there are times when death is unavoidable. You need to find peace in your decisions. Kateshi attempted to kill someone innocent. A person you loved. She did what she believed to be right, you did what you believed to be right. You won.”

“So that’s it?” Kizu asked. “School just continues on, like nothing happened? What happens next?”

“There will be changes. Luckily, we have spring break to sort through those. I applaud your timing. I will need to call in some favors, but I already have someone in mind to fill in Kateshi’s classes. He’s an old friend. But other than him, Roba, and myself, I implore you not to share the details of your experience with anyone else. Kateshi was not the only professor to witness the atrocities of Ilosin-Don. In the meantime, I think you should go rest at your dorm tonight. I’ll have Roba clean up your boat for you but it will take a day or two.”

“Okay.”

“Oh. I still have one final question for tonight,” Ballarfulur said, leaning back in his chair. “What happened to that enchanted dagger you mentioned?”