CHAPTER LXI (61) - CONQUERED SPOILS

Privately, Kizu had hoped that maybe the skeletons would have stayed under the trapdoor. But of course, his luck dictated otherwise. When he broke to the water’s surface and scrambled up onto the slanted deck, he found himself staring down the empty nose socket of a skeleton. The red in its eyes flickered, then it reeled backward, to bring a cutlass swipe down on Kizu.

Kizu rolled to the side, dodging the sword. Then he struck with his own cutlass. And he made contact, the blade embedding into the hip of the undead. The strike landing successfully shocked no one more than Kizu himself. But he was off balance and not used to the weight of the blade. He tried to tug it free but instead it slipped out of his hand. Water splashed up as he flailed backwards into it.

At that same moment, he heard Aoi emerge from the water and immediately start launching into a long ritual in a foreign tongue. The brief image Kizu received as he floundered in the water, righting himself, reminded him a bit of a siren rising from the waves to enchant sailors. The musing was cut short as the skeleton lunged for him, attempting to skewer him with the cutlass.

At the very least, the skeleton continued to ignore Aoi, still completely focused on the closer target of Kizu.

Having soaked the skeleton when he fell backward, Kizu lifted a hand and froze the joints of the monster, stiffening it mid-lunge. That gave Kizu the time to scramble back to his feet. Then, relying on the same trick he had used on his first fight with a skeleton, Kizu grabbed the monster’s ulna and jumped. This time though, he went straight up and released the undead. And while he jumped back down rapidly before gaining any momentum himself, gravity carried the skeleton down. It smashed into pieces on the deck. The impact scattered bones in every direction.

While dispersed across the deck, the bones still vibrated with magic. After only a moment, they slowly began to reassemble, not yet destroyed. Kizu reclaimed his new cutlass from the deck and stood in a prepared stance.

The other three skeletons, likely having sensed the commotion, started to climb out of the trapdoor. They turned their attention to the trespassing humans and began their approach.

Just before they reached Kizu, all the skeletons froze. Not by elemental magic, like Kizu had used earlier. This effect yielded even more fruitful results, completely halting all the skeletons. Aoi had finished her incantation. But, instead of causing them to fall in a heap of extinguished bones, like she had done with the skeleton in the captain’s quarters, Aoi had seized command of the undead. Even the broken one on the deck ceased reassembling itself and lay still.

She had a self-satisfied grin on her face.

“They’re not destroyed,” Kizu commented, stating the obvious.

“It was only a few more sentences of ritual to seize authority.”

She didn’t even have the decency to look abashed by the fact she had needlessly risked Kizu’s life. Instead, she beamed at her newly enthralled undead.

“Why?” Kizu asked, just feeling weary from the whole thing.

“I don’t want to kill anyone,” she said, misunderstanding his question. “So finding these skeletons is better than gold. It lets me experiment without even needing to dig up graves or anything.”

“But why are you even bothering with necromancy? Did someone you love die? Do you want immortality? Do you just want to act rebellious towards your family?”

“I told you already. The necromancer I met told me about soul magic. And I thought it was interesting. It’s underappreciated and has so much more potential. People are so focused on such minor aspects about it that they completely lose sight of the amazing uses. It goes beyond just bringing things back to life. Just by scratching the surface of soul magic, you can combine it with other schools of magic for incredible combinations with completely unique effects. Souls are just so interesting.” She said the last word with extra gusto and emphasis.

“And what do you plan to do with these skeletons now? Drag them back to your dorm?”

“Of course not. I don’t see why I can’t simply stay right here. I conquered the ship so it’s mine now. I mean, sure, it might need a little work before it's a proper necromantic workshop, but it’s out of the way and has plenty of potential.”

Kizu smiled, realizing something. “Actually, I think you mean we conquered the ship.”

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She frowned at him. “I’m sorry, but if you’re hoping I’ll buy your silence, then you’re out of luck. I don’t have money.”

“No. Money would be great, but I think this is better. I just so happen to also need somewhere to lay low.”

“What could you possibly want to keep hidden?”

“My niece,” Kizu said simply.

It took a few minutes to explain the basics of Anata’s situation to Aoi, glossing over unnecessary details like her other parentage, imprisonment, and abilities. And many more minutes to convince her to let the girl stay on the boat. In the end, Aoi conceded once Kizu promised to have Mort watch over her at all times. He suspected Aoi liked the idea of having a familiar guardian near her supplies, even more than she disliked the idea of having a child near them. In fact, as soon as he had mentioned Mort, her eyes lit up in general. He didn’t need divination to foresee her badgering him about his familiar bond in the very near future.

After they came to an agreement, they decided to search the ship more thoroughly. Aoi had been right about it needing a tiny bit of maintenance. The stern’s hull had a massive hole the size of a closet and it rested on a shallow patch in the lake. Kizu had some basic woodworking skills from doing repairs for the crone, but he was far from a shipwright. And even if he was, he doubted the ship would ever be seaworthy again without some serious enchantments backing it up.

In the trapdoor where the skeletons had been stored, they found the crew’s quarters. It was the only completely dry room on the ship. Hammocks lined the wall with a table in the center of the room. Scattered cards lay strewn across it from the game Kizu had interrupted earlier. When he asked Aoi about the behavior of the skeletons, she hypothesized that the undead likely played simply out of a shadowed memory from the soul’s leftovers. Like how they knew how to walk and fight. Not because they actually understood the rules of the game. It was more like muscle memory, but for the soul. A strong necromancer could bring back more of the soul to the bones, but that wasn’t the case for her current batch of skeletons. These were nothing more than mindless minions with the furthest echos of their souls attached.

The ship’s cargo was mostly ruined, just as he had discovered earlier. But he still found a few relatively undamaged items. A small case of fishing tackle that still looked usable, a couple barrels of wine, and an enchanted spyglass which he didn’t dare to test out. Having taken the cutlass earlier, he decided to hand the spyglass over to Aoi in a gesture of goodwill. She seemed delighted by it and threw caution to the wind as she pressed it up against her eye.

“Woah!” she exclaimed. Pointing the spyglass at him. “I think this can actually see through living creatures!”

“What good is that?” Kizu asked. “So you can see through a crowd?”

“No, you dolt.” She twisted the center of it, causing the lens to change. “I can shift the settings to examine different layers of a body.”

Kizu rolled his eyes and continued to look through the final piece of loot. He had almost missed it on his search of the captain’s quarters. He had been examining the golden teeth of the fallen skeleton, but when he touched the metal, it flaked off in his hand. Frustrated, he had activated his spellsense, hoping the metal might glow and he could catch it in a bottle. It didn’t but something else did light up. A wooden box with a folded piece of parchment inside.

When he unfolded it, he was shocked to find a map. With a large red X painted onto it. As far as Kizu could tell, the only enchantment on it was one of preservation. It wasn’t magical like his atlas. It was just a map of an unknown location. Kizu pocketed it, deciding to cross reference it with some other atlases some other time before leaving back to town to fetch Anata and Mort from Finn’s neglectful care.

Surprisingly, when they returned to the ship later in the evening, his niece didn’t seem startled in the slightest by the skeletons. Sure, she stared at them for a while, but she did the exact same when meeting Aoi as well.

As for the ship itself, Anata took to it immediately. While Kizu had to crouch to enter doorways and none of the furniture fit his stature properly, the ship seemed tailor built for Anata. Even the stunted hammocks suited her perfectly. She looked genuinely ecstatic as she explored the non-submerged locations of the ship.

“No offense,” Aoi said to Kizu while Anata explored her new room below. “But your niece is kind of creepy.”

“Says the girl obsessed with skeletons and zombies.”

“That’s different,” she insisted. “That’s just a hobby and passion project, not my personality.”

“Her father kept her hidden away from society for her entire life,” Kizu said defensively. “You would be a little ‘creepy’ too if you had seen the sun for the first time yesterday.”

Aoi changed the subject, again trying to talk him into putting Anata somewhere else so that she wouldn’t interfere with her experiments.

“At the very least,” Aoi said. “Move her to a different room. The crew’s quarters is the only room that’s completely without water. I need dry conditions for some spells.”

“Exactly why she’s staying right there. Anata can’t swim.”

“You brought a child who can’t swim to live on a half sunken boat?”

Kizu sighed. “Yes. Okay, I agree that it’s not ideal. But what are my other options? She’ll be safe and out of the way here.”

Aoi frowned. “Fine. But I want to study your familiar as compensation for my benevolence.”

“What benevolence? We both have equal ownership of the ship.”

“Equal ownership?” she said, aghast. “I found it first!”

“And you would have died in it first if I hadn’t come for you.”

She continued to grumble until Kizu finally yielded and gave her permission to study his and Mort’s bond. The rituals and effects of familiar bonds weren’t a secret, but he still wasn’t eager to be poked, prodded, and questioned by a budding necromancer.

They shook on it, Aoi’s silver rings cold to the touch. After that, she went back to her new undead toys while Mort played with Anata. And Kizu finally was able to climb into one of the hammocks and pass out.