Chapter LVI (56)- Academy Bells

Again, the entire labyrinth seemed to shift. This time though, the spawn appeared to be as ill-prepared for the change as his companions. The dungeon did not flip, but tilted, throwing everything and everyone to the side.

Kizu kept the bell clenched in his fist as he tumbled. He rolled with the impact, quickly recovering. The ringing of the bell sent a reverberation down his arm, completely numbing it.

Before the spawn could recover, he rang the bell again. This time he also channeled through the bell, like how he would cast a spell using his familiar bond. He didn’t have a specific spell in mind, only his power and intent. He wove the two together in the same way he would for a divination ritual.

Information overwhelmed his senses. It lasted less than a second, but he understood the dungeon in that moment. It was alive. And if it wasn’t yet sentient, it was close. It was dynamic. It grew and adapted, and Kizu realized that it was aware enough to hate, because it hated being still. It despised stagnation. The bell called its attention to him and let him speak to it, as much as a thing like it could be spoken to. It allowed him to guide its growth, and speed things up. Then his focus slipped, and he lost control of the dungeon as it instead shifted the area around them. It felt like it was stretching after a nap, moving for the sake of moving.

Again, everyone ended up in heaps all around him. A bloodspawn clawed at him, attempting to wrestle the bell out of his hand. It almost succeeded - the numbness had spread from Kizu’s arm, up the entire right side of his body, making every movement unwieldy. Thankfully, Sojan grabbed ahold of the creature and sank his teeth into its calf. Sojan jerked it back, more like a wolf than any type of man.

The third time Kizu rang the bell, he was fully prepared.

With the soft chime, he coaxed the World Dungeon into shifting, opening up new tunnels under the spawn to send them down into the lower layers. He felt the dungeon’s approval at his suggestions, like a bolt of lightning down his spine. The electric zap cut through the numbness and Kizu had to shut his eyes tight, lest they pop out of his skull.

Chasms opened under the feet of all the bloodspawn. Several tried to leap away, but their footing vanished with no warning. He heard one swear loudly in a foreign language, reaching toward Anata with a clawed hand as it fell into the void below.

Ringing the bell again, Kizu closed those chasms. He also asked the dungeon to open a path leading up to the surface. It complied, more than agreeable to his requests. Again, Kizu found himself breathless as another jolt went through him. His vision blurred. The next thing he knew, Ione was by his side, shaking him.

“I’m fine,” he lied, trying to sit up. It took him a moment to realize the dungeon wobbling was due to his vision. Large black spots dotted his line of sight, blotting out and obscuring large swathes of his vision.

Basil said something, but he couldn’t quite make out the words. He could hear the sounds fine; they just didn’t make any sense. Basil cocked his head and made the same sounds again at him.

“I don’t understand.” Kizu reached up and touched his ear. Where his earring usually hung, there was only a bit of residue from crumbling metal.

“We can’t talk to him now,” Ione said. “Until we get new earrings back at the academy.”

“You can still understand us though?” Kizu asked Basil.

He nodded. Kizu had a suspicion that Basil didn’t mind losing out on the ability to answer questions for the rest of their return journey.

Something to worry about later. Kizu looked over the corridor. The holes that had opened up in the ground had completely sealed over, trapping the bloodspawn somewhere deep beneath their feet, and now a slanted path led straight up. A quick glance at his atlas told him there were no traps ahead. Just a straight shot to the surface. In fact, it seemed to actually cut through the paths and rooms that it encountered, creating dead-ends for those passages in favor of clearing them a way.

Kizu took stock of his companions. Ione was covered in dirt and had heavy bags under her eyes, but otherwise appeared uninjured. She was looking over her massive bear summon, which was in far worse condition. The constantly shifting labyrinth had broken its leg, and one of its necks, too.

Mort jumped onto Kizu’s head. Throughout the fight, he had managed to stay out of danger for the most part. He was definitely in the best condition out of all of them.

Basil was swaying like a drunkard, or maybe an anemic, and had absorbed all but one of his arms back into his body. His roommate gave him a shaky thumbs up with his one working arm, and managed a weak smile.

Sojan lay sprawled on the ground, a broken, mangled mess. Still in the old blood spawn’s body, it smiled up at him with wicked fangs. No blood flowed from the many gouges that riddled the body, but its skin was even more pale than was usual for the creatures. Even if the body was in good enough condition to continue on - and it wasn’t - the blood seemed almost completely drained from it. Kizu yanked Sojan from the spawn’s chest and pocketed the blade. The monster spasmed a bit, but then lay still.

Finally, Kizu looked over Anata. Still strapped onto Ione’s summoned lizard creature, she looked unharmed, but her entire body was shaking. She wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“Okay,” Kizu said. “Let’s keep moving. This path should lead us back to the surface.”

The spawn might have fallen deeper into the dungeon, but better to not chance any more encounters with them. Otochi very well might send more reinforcements. Kizu had no way of knowing the number of spawn that lived down here.

Kizu took one step forward and immediately crumpled to the ground. His leg throbbed.

Ione sighed and dismissed her injured bear. Then she went about sketching on the dungeon floor with a piece of chalk. A minute later, another of her lizard creatures crawled out of the summoning circle. She climbed aboard.

“This is my limit for creatures this size,” she explained. “I’m already lightheaded, so if anything happens to these guys, you’ll have to walk.” She shooed the lizard carrying Anata closer to Kizu.

Leaning against it, Kizu rose to his feet, putting all his weight on his good leg. Then he hoisted himself up onto the lizard. He felt Mort, on his head, flinch in pain as a result of their bond. Kizu’s bad leg had to be manhandled into position, and pain was too soft a word for how that felt, but he managed to get himself into a sitting position behind Anata. She was still shaking, but it lessened slightly as she looked over her shoulder at him. He pulled the lizard’s skin flap up, the sticky skin securing them in place.

Ione’s lizard shambled over to Basil, and he took the hint. He said something unintelligible before winking and heaving himself up to sit behind her.

As they walked the ascending path, Kizu kept one arm on Anata to stabilize her while she dozed, and held the atlas propped open in the other. He kept expecting the dungeon to shift back at any moment. He noticed other areas on the map move, but his path remained still. Stagnant, even.

“What do you know about her?” Ione asked, sidling her giant lizard up beside his.

“Who? Anata?”

She rolled her eyes. “No, the other half-monster, half-human creature that’s drooling on your arm right now.”

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Kizu glanced down. Sure enough, there was a damp spot on his sleeve where Anata rested her head. But over the last few weeks his clothes had been through a lot worse than a bit of slobber, so he didn’t care enough to move her.

“You think I could have that, actually?” Ione asked, gesturing at his wet sleeve. “I mean, it seems like a fair trade for dragging me down here. I’ll even swap you outfits. Basil designed them to be matching, so it would just be a matter of refitting it to you.”

“No, full stop,” he said. “And besides, you said you broke the enchantments on your clothes - why would I want yours?”

“What about some of her hair? I mean, that can’t be that bad. Just a couple strands.”

“You’re being creepy.”

She grumbled and eyed Anata.

“Well then, what are you going to do with her? Hide her under your bed?”

Kizu thought about it. “I’ll send a letter to my parents. She’s their grandchild. They’ll probably want to take custody.” Maybe ‘want’ wasn’t quite the right word, but they’d do it.

“And your sister?”

“If she hears about Anata, maybe she’ll come home.”

“Like she did for you?”

Kizu winced. There was a stupid, egotistical part of him that hoped nothing would change.

“I’d rather she came home safely,” he said, pushing past it. “Better that than have her out there in the unknown. If she hears about Anata, there’s a chance.”

“Okay, but if she doesn’t? What’s your next step?”

Kizu considered it. “I’ll try tracking down a friend of hers. I found a record that listed someone as an ally of Anna. I mean, at least his ally’s name had been redacted, so I assume it must have been Anna. He’s my only real lead on where to go next. At the very least, he might be able to explain her mindset leading up to her expulsion.”

Ione looked at him consideringly. “You really are tenacious.”

“You’d do the same for your sister.”

She cocked her head, deep in thought for a moment. She frowned slightly.

“You’re right,” she finally said. “But I think maybe for different reasons. Being related doesn’t mean the same thing for everyone. I mean, would you go to these lengths if your brother disappeared tomorrow?”

“Yes,” Kizu said without hesitation.

Ione blinked, stunned for a moment. “Really? He despises you.”

“So I should hate him back? He’s my brother.”

“Didn’t he get you arrested back when the semester started?”

“Yes. But can’t you hate the actions of someone without hating the person?”

“Aren’t we all just the sum of our actions?” she asked in reply.

“No. We’re people.”

There was a pause.

“What does that even mean? Yes, people are more than what they outwardly do, but they’re also more than just what they look like or who they’re related to. In fact, I’d claim both those things are absolute nonsense. I am literally identical to my sister. There is not a spec of flesh that’s different. But I am not my sister. We are very different people. Anyone with half a brain can comprehend that. And you are not your brother. You’re Kizu. That girl beside you isn’t her father. She can choose to be different. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t let her anywhere near the surface. And if you actually thought differently, I doubt you would either. People make choices and are in turn branded by those choices. If you want to love someone despite their actions, that’s on you. But that doesn’t make them something they’re not.”

“Maybe you’re right,” he admitted after digesting her sudden lecture. “I definitely would still try to find Finn… but maybe not as single-mindedly. It’s easy to say, and I’d like to think I would, but maybe that’s not realistic. Can I still love him without really liking him all that much? Is that too contradictory? Although, come to think of it, if I helped him, maybe he’d change his mind about me.”

“If I rescued my sister,” Ione said. “She would probably hate me for the rest of her life.”

Kizu stared at her, lost for words.

“Like I said, we have a different relationship.” She gave him a sad smile.

It was only then that Basil decided to chime in with a nonsensical string of words and a wink.

Ione groaned. “I forgot; he can still understand us. What do you think he just said?”

Basil smirked at them both.

“My guess?” Kizu said. “Something about your sister and relationships.”

Ione wheeled on him. “You stay away from my sister! Keep in mind this is my lizard you are riding on. I will shove you off and leave you down here. Don’t think for a second that I won’t. It is within my rights as the summoner.”

Basil simply raised his one remaining arm and gave her a thumbs-up in reply.

—

The tunnel brought them directly to the door leading up into the academy. There were no more corners or forks, only the seemingly endless slope upwards along a slightly curved path. No other piece of the dungeon interfered or connected with their path. Kizu found himself marveling at the small bell’s power. With this and the World Dungeon Atlas combined, the relics deep below the earth could be uncovered with ease. He couldn’t shake the idea that it had all fallen into his lap incredibly conveniently. Maybe there was some sort of all-knowing god watching out for him, tipping the scales in his favor after a life of misfortune under the crone. He remembered hearing that some of the people in Edgeland worshiped a being like that. Though, if it did exist, it seemed to only help out in the strangest circumstances.

The rest of his party slept, trusting the summoned lizards to follow the path. Even Basil dozed off after a while, his body slowly melting like candle wax onto Ione. Kizu alone remained awake, his mind wandering between his schoolwork and what his next course of action would be for finding his sister, back and forth, until the door finally came into view.

They awkwardly dismounted and a groggy Ione dismissed her summons, and they shuffled back into the academy. And just like that, it was over.

Everything looked exactly the same as they’d left it. Logically, that made sense. It had only been a few days. But for Kizu, it felt extremely odd. After nearly a month beneath the earth, most of it spent in cold confinement, to stumble into his little study area under the stairs and find the chalk marks still fresh on the ground was bizarre. As if the entire experience had only been a strange dream.

He turned around to comment on it and found Anata standing on the other side of the doorway, wide eyed. A moment of panic washed over him as he realized that Anata was half-Blood Lord, and the bloodspawn couldn’t normally leave the dungeon. He lifted a hand toward her, and she stepped through the threshold to take it. He let out a sigh of relief.

“Well, that was a miserable experience,” Ione said. “Especially since you decided to bring the most interesting monster home with you. Next time, I'll stay back and sunbathe on the beach. Now, if you don’t mind, I have an overdue appointment with my bed.”

“Wait,” Kizu said. “Can you take Anata with you?”

Despite claiming to be sleepy, Ione perked right up at the request. “Really? I do have quite a few experiments I want to try. Like, how long can she hold her breath? Can she touch silver without burning? She seems to understand words, but is her tongue unable to form complex movements? That shouldn’t be the case, not when pure blooded Blood Lords can speak just as well as humans, but you never know-”

Anata gripped his hand tighter and looked up at him with her big, mismatched eyes.

“Nevermind,” Kizu said with a sigh. “You go on. I’ll see you in class.”

“Are you sure? How are you going to smuggle her into your dorm?”

Kizu slipped his necklace around Anata’s neck. Then he cast a simple illusion spell over her, making her look like a stuffed potato sack. Mort then leaped atop her, appearing to sit on top of the sack.

The hardest part of getting back to his rooms wasn't bringing Anata. She followed behind him obediently - though she did get distracted by some students playing with a ball that was enchanted to follow the closest person, attempting to strike them - and one of the nice things about being in a magic academy was that nobody questioned a potato sack waddling down the hall. Everyone kept to their normal morning routines. Kizu was even pleasantly surprised, when he cut through a sunny courtyard without thinking and Anata walked right on through behind him without issue. If she’d inherited any sort of sun allergy, it was too weak to tell.

No, the hardest part was physically walking there. He leaned on Basil’s support, but Basil wasn’t that much better off than him. What the changeling ended up doing was transferring most of his mass and muscle to one side. So, between the two of them, they managed to have two functional legs.

As expected, Anata passed through their dorm’s painting seamlessly, Kizu’s necklace working perfectly. From there it was just a short march to their room. And finally, after all that work, Kizu collapsed face-first onto his bed. The assault of exotic scents from Basil’s perfumes gave the room a comforting, almost nostalgic, aroma. It felt so good to finally be back in a real bed. He repositioned to make room for his niece at the foot of his bed.

“Don’t leave the room,” Kizu muttered to Anata, who still looked like a sack of potatoes, as he slipped off into sleep. It was dreamless, and wonderful.

Naturally, when he woke up, Anata was gone.