Chapter LXXXI (81) - Cats and Snakes

Kizu’s scrying orb lit up in his bag. At first he ignored it, thinking it was probably a message from Emilia again. He turned the page of his book, continuing to read about the techniques to create mist rather than steam out of elemental spells and the different functions both offered. But then it lit up a second time. And a third. He closed his book and looked down at the orb. Emilia never messaged him more than once every few days.

He reached down and found five messages from Ione.

Yo. Stop studying and get down to the town center.

We’re leaving in an hour and Knoff said you’re coming along.

Hurry it up. We’ve got a monster to go hunt. Let’s go before daylight ends. It’ll be way harder for me to get details about the creature if I can’t see it.

Kizu. If you don’t stop reading, I’m going to give some of these partiers in town a tour of your secret boat hideout.

I’m not joking. Braxton was talking about a party yacht last week in Brewing F.

Kizu stared at the messages for a minute, rereading them and processing what they said. If he understood correctly, Ione was the one Knoff was sending to go hunt down the magical creature. That…actually made sense. She might be a terrible brewer, but Ione loved monsters. No doubt she’d volunteer for the opportunity to go hunt rare creatures down in a heartbeat.

Let me go grab Mort, he sent back. Give me half an hour. I’m in the library.

Then, after a moment’s hesitation, he sent another message.

Do NOT go near Braxton.

He set the book back on the shelf where he originally found it before hurrying out of the library. The student librarian smiled at him as he left and he returned it with a nod of thanks. Thirty minutes would be cutting it close to get down to Owl’s Respite and back into town. But it was manageable so long as he jumped through the forest.

He checked his scrying orb as he walked and found another message.

I knew it! At the library studying the evening before the weekend. Half an hour is fine, just try to be quick.

While he had his orb out, he sent a quick message to Aoi, asking her to stick around Owl’s Respite tonight. He didn’t know what time he’d be back and he wanted someone on hand for Anata. He needed to go out and didn’t think dragging his niece along would be wise. Aoi shot a message back, saying she was already planning an all-nighter on the ship to get research in before leaving on the school trip. Perfect.

As he approached through the forest, Mort surprised him by jumping to his shoulder. He had known the monkey could do that, using Kizu as an anchor to travel to, but he still chose to almost never channel spells unless acting as a conduit for Kizu.

“Well, that’s convenient. Ready to go?”

Mort hummed his agreement and the two of them turned back towards town.

With the weekend in sight, students took to the Shinzou-cho with gusto. In a few days half the student body would be gone to Tross for the school trip, so spirits ran high. Kizu dodged out of the way of several drunken students staggering around. It wouldn’t be so bad if they were drinking normal beers, but Kizu recognized the bizarre side effects. It seemed like some alchemist had mixed in potions with whatever alcohol the students were drinking. That resulted in the already dubious quality of the potions unstabilizing and spontaneously transforming students into different creatures. Outside Jeri Co. Kizu spotted a classmate from Enchanting C passed out face first in the mud while halfway transformed into a pig. Another had the face of a giant fly and kept stumbling around and knocking into people. Music blared from the bar across the street. The sun hadn’t even begun to set yet.

“Good, you’re here,” Ione said in greeting as he approached the town center.

She stood beside a disheveled fisherman who was crouched over a small crate filled with chopped up bait. Kizu watched as the man dipped a finger into the squirming mound of maggots and rotten fish bits, tasted it, and nodded.

“Yes. I’m here. Weird coincidence that it’s the two of us though.”

“Not much of a coincidence. I requested you. You’re like the best brewer at the academy, so I figured Knoff could pull you into this. Better you than the creepy dude I went with last time. Now I’m particularly self-conscious, but that guy’s constant sniffing put me on edge. I don’t think I smell that bad.”

“He was sniffing you?” That was weird.

“He was sniffing everything. I think it was some sort of enhancement spell.”

And then it made sense.

“Weren’t you looking for a magical creature? You realize it was probably a way to track the monster.”

“Obviously. But that doesn't mean I had to like it. Plus it was noisy and made it difficult to nap.”

Kizu sighed. “Can you tell me what’s going on? Are we hunting some sort of monster? Do I need equipment?”

“Nah. I mean, yeah, we’re looking for a special kind of snake. A hebijikan snake, to be exact. But I don’t think we’ll need gear. I’ve got my summons, and you’ve got whatever you can do. We’re just going to follow this guy through a portal to the other side of the island.”

“The other side of the island! How far are we going exactly?”

“Um…” Ione looked over to the fisherman. He had unrolled a sleeve of hooks and was pricking his finger with each of them, testing the sharpness of their points.

“Well, I’m not exactly sure where the hamlet is,” Ione admitted. “But last time I went I returned a couple hours later. They just had me go find a gremlin causing the town problems and bring it back for Knoff. The other student did all the navigation while I sent a summon to hunt it once we got close.”

“Hm. Done yapping?” the fisherman asked. He stood and wiped his bloody and gooey hands on his pants.

“I prefer to yap then nap, but I suppose we can yap and walk now,” Ione said.

They followed him across town to a small shack. The man grumbled while he fumbled in his many pockets for a key to unlock it.

Inside the shack was a stone arch. It looked ancient, far older than the building that hid it from view. The glyphs etched into the stone were mostly different from the ones Kizu studied for his Enchanting C midterm, but he still spotted similarities. He wondered how it differed as a portal. The fisherman slapped his hands on a few of the ruins, activating the gate spell enchanted into it. As far as Kizu could tell with his spellsense, the fisherman didn’t channel anything into it. It activated via a trigger, like how he intended to design his linked bookshelves. The portal opened, a distorted swirl of color linking the two locations.

Traveling through a gate felt significantly better than jumping. There was no sudden lurch or discomfort. Kizu simply stepped through and was standing in the center of a fishing hamlet.

The only resident in sight was an old man who stood waist deep off to the side of the fishing dock. Their companion fisherman grunted at him and then entered into one of the four shacks, slamming the door behind him.

It was muggier over on this side of the island, and it took Kizu only two minutes to realize how much worse the bugs were as well. Thankfully nothing that bit him appeared to be magical, but it was still annoying having to constantly swat away insects latching onto any exposed skin.

“Come over here so I can get a better look at ya,” the man in the water called out. He placed a bucket on the wooden dock and then painstakingly pulled himself up.

“Do you need a hand?” Kizu asked, hurrying up to him.

The man waved him off. “Nah, nah. But good of you to ask.”

While he pulled himself up, Mort hopped down from Kizu’s shoulder and examined the inside of the bucket. Kizu glanced over before snatching Mort away. It was full of sea urchins colored a deep shade of purple. They wiggled about, piled up on top of one another. He recognized them from brewing recipes. These guys were venomous. Not deathly dangerous for a human, but a small monkey was an entirely different matter.

Once the old man got fully out of the water, he sat down in a nearby rocking chair with a grunt.

“So, you’re the ones Knoff sent?”

“Yes,” Kizu answered. “You have a snake infestation?”

“Not really. Just happened to bite our rat catching tomcat last week. Got Tora all bent out of shape once he woke up.”

“Tora is the cat?” Kizu asked.

“Yes, yes. Oh, I suppose I should introduce myself. My name is Jiwan.”

Kizu introduced himself, Mort, and Ione.

“Good, good. Think I met the missy a few months back.”

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Ione didn’t answer. Kizu looked over to find her distracted, poking the bucketed sea urchins with a stick.

“Probably. But, as you were saying, your cat ran after the snake?”

“Tora took off after it after recovering yesterday. Haven’t seen him since. He’s orange and has got two tails.”

Kizu blinked. “What? Why?”

“He has a planar cat ancestor,” Ione said, interjecting herself into the conversation. “It wasn’t enough for anything magical, like hopping into pocket dimensions, but it’s enough that a recessive physical trait was carried down. I noticed him last time I was here.”

“Really? Is that why?” The old fisherman considered that and nodded along. “Never knew he was part magical beast. Explains why his talent at tricking people into giving him extra meals. Smart little fiend.”

“That’s just normal cat behavior.”

“Anyways,” Jiwan continued. “If you find Tora, you’ll probably spot the snake too. Be wary of that venom though. Can paralyze you for ages. Definitely magical. And it’s all silvery too, like a vein of metal in the ground. Oh, and the snake has wings too. Just enough to flutter around.”

Ione sat down on the dock and stretched, legs dangling over the edge.

“Alright Kizu, you do your thing. Wake me up when you’ve found it.”

“What ‘thing’ are you referring to?”

“Divination. Locate the snake for us.”

Kizu considered the best way to approach the problem. Obviously, he had no link to the snake. A vague description alone wouldn’t be enough for him to detect it. However, if the cat was also hunting the snake, he might be able to swoop in at the last minute and steal the reptile from its claws.

“Do you have any Tora’s hair?” Kizu asked.

“Oh plenty. He’s got a scratching post inside over there.” Jiwan gestured at one of the shacks.

Kizu thanked him and sent Mort off to go grab some hair while he started setting up a divination ritual. This was a slightly different spell from the one used to track his sister, as Tora wasn’t a humanoid. But he’d read his sister’s book cover to cover. He knew how to tweak things in the ritual to better match a nonmagical animal.

He wished he knew how to use his scrying orb to…well, scry. If he could actually see the cat and its surroundings, he’d have a larger advantage in stealing the snake from it. But the scrying spells the crone had taught him required a set access point to spy on people. That’s what she used to watch the villagers. She set them up ahead of time in different locations spread throughout the village. The village pub, mayor’s study, schoolhouse, townhall, and a particularly large tree on a hill overlooking the village were her favorite peeping spots. Set points like those required less active maintenance than scrying on an individual. Unfortunately, not super helpful for the moment. But the thought made him consider setting up a scrying location on Owl’s Respite to better keep track of Anata. He didn’t like being away from her. Plus, then he’d know if an outsider found the ship. A project for a later time though.

When Mort returned with a handful of orange cat hair, Kizu activated the divination ritual. Unlike when he used it to track Anna, Anata wasn’t here to redirect and cause bizarre side effects. It worked seamlessly, giving him an exact impression of where the cat was in relation to his location. It wasn’t moving either. Which was a little strange, since he thought cats were usually more active in the dusk. But if the cat wanted to nap right now, he wasn’t about to argue with good fortune. It probably just burned itself out after a day hunting in the heat. Hopefully it wasn’t snacking on a magical snake.

“Okay, let’s go,” Kizu said, nudging Ione with his boot. “I’ve got a good impression of where Tora is. Let’s go find the cat first and hopefully get to the snake from there.”

“Damn, that was fast. I barely closed my eyes. Would it kill you to slow down next time?”

“No, but it might kill the snake. Come on. It’s not that far. Maybe a fifteen minute walk.”

Mort scouted ahead of them as they traveled through the forest, going directly towards the cat. Ione wanted to summon her giant lizard mount, but Kizu vetoed that. A creature that size stomping through the forest would scare off anything not both deaf and blind in a kilometer radius.

Fifteen minutes had been a generous estimate. They had to bushwack and, more than once, Kizu jumped them over obstacles.

Kizu climbed over a massive fallen tree using his enchanted gloves and offered his hand to Ione to help boost her up when Mort sent him a panicked impression.

The owl monkey had reached the site of the cat. And there was a reason it wasn’t moving. Kiu saw through Mort’s eyes a small campfire with three small green figures around it. The creatures had ears like floppy bat wings, wispy strands of black hair, and red eyes that glowed slightly. Tora was skewered on a spit, his twin tails grazing the open flame. Long dead.

Kizu quickly took in the sight, and just barely spotted a silvery length of what looked like rope coiled up to the side.

Then he jolted back into awareness of his own body as Ione yanked on his arm and he fell on her from above. Thankfully she broke his fall.

“Ow,” she said from under him. “What was that for?”

Kizu rolled off her and offered her another hand to get her to her feet. She looked at it suspiciously before dusting herself off and standing on her own.

“Sorry, Mort distracted me. He found the cat. And maybe the snake too.”

“Oh really? That was fast!”

Then he filled her in on what exactly he’d seen, and her face darkened.

“Goblins,” she said, practically spitting the word. “I can’t believe they killed Tora. There’s plenty of food options out here, but they chose the cat.”

“And maybe the snake,” Kizu added. “If it was what I saw, then it’s definitely dead but not cooked yet.”

“We need to go quickly. I won’t be able to study the snake properly as a summon if they burn it to a crisp ahead of time. Have you dealt with goblins before?”

Kizu shook his head. “I don’t think they really exist in Hon. Not that I’ve seen or heard of. They’re mythical like dragons or phoenixes.”

“Don’t let them hear you say that. It’ll go to their heads. You haven’t seen them before because the Hon Empire has nearly exterminated them. There are a few incarcerated, taken prisoner during Ilson-don’s ooze invasion, but that’s it.

“Goblins are corrupted forms of gnomes. They’re twisted and cruel by nature. The one I tried to speak to attempted to bite my nose off before I got even a word out. My father held it back by its hair. They’re vindictive, mean, and nasty.”

“But if they’re sentient, that means they can be reasoned with,” Kizu said.

“No. Remember how we found bloodspawn? Those were sentient too. But they didn’t exactly do reasoning super well. Goblins are far worse.” She paused. “But, also far stupider.”

She sketched in the dirt with a finger, creating a summoning circle. A small dark green caltrop appeared. At first, Kizu thought that was all it was, but then he noticed its tiny pair of eyes in the center. The little creature wobbled on its three points, then flopped over. It continued to flip itself, until it reached Ione’s open palm.

“What is that thing?”

“A caldrop.”

Kizu stared at her blankly.

“Okay, technically it has another name, but it’s a dialect from Edgeland that’s impossible to pronounce unless you’re extremely talented at hissing. They’re a bit like a caltrop, only they seriously drop their opponent. So I call it a caldrop.”

“What do they do?” Kizu eyed the little creature. It reminded him of one of the sea urchins they’d seen earlier.

Ione smiled, mischief glittering in her eyes. “Let’s go meet with those goblins and I’ll show you.”

Kizu kept an eye on Mort as the monkey watched the goblins. They finished cooking the cat and ripped chunks of meat from it. His stomach turned when they started playing with the cat tails, whipping one another with them and laughing maniacally. He sent another mental impression to Mort to remind the familiar to stay away and not be seen by the monsters.

“Do they have magic?” Kizu asked as they got closer. “Anything I need to know before we engage with them?”

“Yes. They’re illusionists like gnomes. They usually try using them as intimidation methods. They often turn their illusions on one another.”

“You know a lot about monsters,” Kizu commented.

“Glad you noticed. It’s sort of my thing. My only thing. Got to meet my parents’ expectations in at least one field. Failed every other.”

Before Kizu figured out how to respond to that, they reached the goblin camp. Right on time too. They crawled under a low hanging fern tree and quietly peered out from under the leaves, hidden by the encroaching darkness of dusk.

Two of the goblins had wrapped the cat tails around their necks like scarves. They danced around their campfire and started mocking the third’s lack of style. The teased goblin turned to the silvery rope behind it, obviously intending to match its companions with its own dead animal scarf.

As it uncoiled it, Kizu could tell for certain it was indeed a snake. Its feathered wings drooped.

Ione set her caldrop on the ground and they watched as it flipped itself, slowly approaching the unsuspecting goblins.

“You’re certain there’s no reasoning with them?” Kizu whispered.

“Shut up, don’t give us away.”

One of the cat tail wearing goblins stepped forward, reaching its hand out to snatch the dead snake away. Then it stepped on the caldrop. For a split second, it froze rigid as a flash of light sparked between its hair. Its eyes popped like squashed grapes. And then it did indeed, drop.

Instead of acting with concern for their fallen companion, the snake holding one turned and ran to the other side of the fire, clutching its snake treasure close. The other cat tail goblin nudged its buddy with a foot, then saw the caldrop. It picked it up with two fingers and snarled at it before tossing it in the fire. But Kizu noticed the summon fade from existence before it even hit the flames.

It then stripped its now dead companion and chittered at the sight of a bobble in its pocket. Then it took a cleaver from its bag and started hacking away at the dead goblin’s limbs. Kizu watched in absolute horror as it tore apart its companion, then took the skewer used to cook Tora, and stuck it through the severed arm. In less than two minutes, it had begun cooking its friend.

Kizu was starting to think Ione might have made the correct call on attacking these creatures on sight.

It hissed something at its still living companion, too quiet for Kizu’s translation earring to pick up. Then the other goblin approached it, looking grumpy as it handed over the snake and took the cat tail from the goblin corpse at its feet.

Kizu looked over and saw Ione already had a new summoning circle complete and was sending out another caldrop. But that still left one more goblin. And Kizu doubted it would just accept its second companion's death as easily as the first.

He eyed the canopy above them. He wondered about jumping up there to join Mort and then falling on them from above.

But before Kizu came up with a plan, the second goblin dropped while caressing its new cat tail scarf. That set the last one off. It let out a gargled scream and ran. Straight at them.

Kizu scrambled to his feet, but he was too late. The goblin waved around the snake by its tail like a lasso until it careened into Ione, tripping over her. The snake’s fangs embedded into her leg as the goblin scrambled across her. Ione froze in place. All signs of life disappeared as her body lay stiff on the ground.

Kizu’s eyes widened. His heartbeat ramped up. Not from anger, but a frantic mix of desperate dread and horror. He clenched his fists.

He tackled the goblin and started wailing on its face with his fist, completely forgetting to cast a spell first. And, when he did remember, he simply added physical enhancements to his blows.

Unlike the goblin training dummy earlier in the week, the real thing howled in rage with every hit. And he felt its bones crumble in. He slammed his fist into it again and again.

The goblin bit into his forearm, grinding his bone with its jagged teeth, but Kizu didn’t even feel that. He felt completely numb, except for the resounding sadness creeping up on him. He beat it back with every blow. His body was shaking. His vision blurred. Tears trickled down his cheek. Ione. What had it done to his friend? He should have prevented it. Acted sooner. He’d been too worried about monsters.

“Relax Kizu,” Ione said, setting a hand on his shoulder. “It’s dead.”

Kizu shook his head and blinked away the tears. Ione was crouched to his side, alive and well. Everything was fine. His body slackened and he fell back away from the goblin.

“Where did that come from?” Ione asked him.

“Sorry. You stopped moving so I thought….”

“That I was dead? I just got nicked by the paralysis venom is all.” Ione made a show of looking him up and down. “Kizu, I think you need a vacation. All that studying has you all bottled up.”

He let out a deep breath before he looked over at the goblin’s dead body. He didn’t think he’d ever killed a sentient creature before. Then he recalled the bloodspawn back in the World Dungeon. Had he killed any of them? He’d set some on fire. And dropped others in a pit. It was possible they’d died. He wasn’t certain though. But he was certain this goblin died by his hands. He stared at his bloody knuckles.

Ione was chatting about the dead snake. It was the right one that Knoff wanted for his potion. She was extremely excited as she went on about its magical properties and already speculating on how to summon a copy of one. But Kizu struggled to hear her.

He buckled over and puked next to the dead goblin’s body. After a few shaky breaths, he glanced at the pummeled body beside him and puked again. Ione stopped speaking and set a hand on his back.

“I think you’re right,” he finally said. “This weekend, I’m taking a vacation.”