Chapter XLIII (48)- The Beacon's Guards

Kizu gulped air as his body’s perception of the world shifted. In the next moment, he found himself subsumed in warm water, and he struggled to keep the air from leaking out through his skin. He felt the clammy touch of Ione as she flailed around in the body of a treefrog, grasping wildly for him.

Kizu clawed his way in the direction he thought was up, only to be corrected by Mort, who snatched them both out of the water and shoved them onto his back. Owl monkeys were not natural swimmers, unfortunately. With his wet fur weighing him down, he wasn’t much better off than the two frogs, but Kizu had at least taught him how to stay afloat. Mort forced himself through the water and grabbed onto the grate, shaking as the water filled the last few centimeters of the room. Then he squirmed through the bars, Kizu and Ione clinging to his back.

A loud squeal pierced through the water behind them, filled with pain and fear. The Sonney that had been riding on Ione’s lizard, which had been dismissed when she transformed, now cried out as if something was tearing it to pieces behind them. Kizu couldn’t see what was happening to it, but it didn’t join them in slipping through the grate. Despite his inability to do anything about it, Kizu still felt immense guilt about the creature’s death. It would still be safe and sound in its mushroom cavern if not for them.

In a moment, that guilt was chased away by his own pain. Kizu’s bond with Mort flooded him with a horrifying sensation, akin to someone peeling back his flesh to expose the muscle and blood beneath. Something had bit clean through Mort’s thigh. In spite of the blinding pain, though, Mort maintained his course, swimming steadfast up through the pipe system.

Their attackers hounded their heels, assaulting his familiar relentlessly. Kizu felt small teeth latch down on Mort’s left foot next. With his usual dark vision replaced by that of a treefrog, Kizu couldn’t make out what was attacking them through the murkiness of the water. Kizu’s mind spun, trying and failing to think of a solution to this problem. He didn’t even know how to use spells in this form.

He gripped Mort’s fur tighter. Then it came to him. With one froggy arm, he reached out and felt along the walls of the pipe Mort swam through, hoping. Then his hand snagged on something. A pebble. He yanked it free with all his froggy might. He couldn’t use spells like normal in this body, so he passed it to Mort’s uninjured back foot. The monkey gripped it tight, sensing its importance through their bond. And Kizu cast a spell using his familiar as a conduit.

As their pursuer attempted to bite Mort again, the tiny pebble blasted through the water, the force of the spell actually accelerating them forward as Kizu heard the crack of the makeshift ammunition striking its target.

But even with that small success, Mort still couldn’t hold his breath forever. Kizu desperately wished he knew how to manipulate water better, to propel them forward faster. Instead, he reached out and fumbled along the pipe, looking for another tiny rock to use as a counter force. This time, though, he gripped something that felt different. It was long, almost the length of him, and curved. At first he thought it was a twig, but it was surprisingly sturdy. He pulled it closer and squinted through the water. It was white. Bone white.

It vibrated slightly in his hand. Kizu immediately used his spellsense. Not only did the thing in his hand glow with magic, but so did dozens of other curved bones behind them. Rib bones, fragments of a spine, dorsal fin rays, and at the head of it all, an intact fish skull. The skeleton belonged to a species of fish he recognized in an instant. A piranha. It had fallen apart when he’d hit it with the pebble, but as he watched with his spellsense, it quickly reassembled itself.

Kizu deeply wished he could curse at that moment. He dropped the rib and let it fall into the bundle of shifting bones behind them.

He kept his spellsense active, watching as the piranha resumed its pursuit. It quickly gained on them. Mort’s swimming was degrading more and more into desperate thrashing as his air supply dwindled.

Kizu looked ahead of them. He could see light. His excitement at spotting a potential exit was squashed as Most gasped and gulped in a lungful of water. Then the bone piranha was on them.

No other option left for them, Kizu grabbed hold of Ione while still gripping Mort. Visualizing Mort was easy - even here and now, the monkey was just an extension of himself. Ione was different. He used their shared treefrog forms as an example, trying to sear her into his mind’s eye. He focused on the light ahead of them. Their destination. Then, channeling through his bond with Mort, he jumped.

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It was a reckless jump, the exact sort that Roba had warned him against trying. While Kizu had been relatively certain he could get himself and Mort to the point, he had never tried while relying on his bond’s power. Let alone with a passenger. Instead of burying them all alive, though, he felt his jump redirect away from where he’d aimed it. He completely lost control of the spell as it went awry.

Water splashed on a stone floor. The pipe they had escaped from was nowhere to be seen. He and Ione were still frogs. Mort was shaking and coughing water up next to them, bleeding and half-drowned but still very much alive.

The stone room had no doors or obvious exits. A fist-sized emerald hung in the air above their heads. When Kizu used his spellsense, the entire room lit up, the emerald brighter than everything else. It had to be a beacon like the ones Roba had described, designed to divert and pull in anyone who jumped nearby. But why trap them in this room? Had he traded one trap room for another?

After only a minute of laying there sprawled out on the floor, woozy and shaken by their brush with death, the room began to shake. Dozens of stones in the wall shifted, flipping around and sliding away to create an open archway. Through that opening came a wintry chill, carried by an arctic breeze.

“Hello?” a man’s voice called. A dark robed figure peered into the room from under the archway. “If there’s someone in here, speak up now, or I’ll seal the room off again.”

Kizu croaked. It was a weak and pathetic noise, but it was all he could manage. Thankfully, the person heard him and looked down. Regret turned Kizu’s insides to lead as he met the eyes of their savior. The red eyes.

Kizu tried to hop away, but the bloodspawn was too fast. In an instant, it had Mort, Kizu, and Ione dangling by their legs in its cold grip. Ione glared at Kizu and croaked. Kizu interpreted it as her rightly calling him an idiot.

“Look what I found!” the spawn sang as it carried them off. “Two frogs and a monkey!”

“A monkey?” another spawn exclaimed, coming into view. It looked female, with greasy black hair that fell to its waist. Its mouth was puckered, as if it had just swallowed something sour. “I haven’t seen a monkey in almost a millennium. Are you certain you know what you’re looking at?”

The three of them were thrust forward, dangling by their legs like dead pheasants.

“I know what a monkey looks like. I’m not a dullard, Zumu.”

“That remains to be seen. Are they intelligent?”

“One of the frogs made noise when I called out to them.”

“Could be a coincidence,” Zumu said, leaning in closer. “Their auras seem normal. Nothing magical about them. Unlikely to be Awakened.”

Kizu made no noise. If the monster’s spellsense couldn’t detect them, his necklace must still be working, even through the effects of the transfiguration potion.

“Maybe a complex curse? I’ve heard some are untraceable.”

“There aren’t any traps like that in our corner of the Labyrinth. You would know that if you ever went out.”

“There’s no point. Otochi’s tasks for me are here.”

“Your tasks are sitting around doing nothing.”

“I resent that. I am a guard.”

“A guard protecting us from frogs and monkeys.”

“Hey, at least there’s blood in them.”

“Have you truly fallen that low?” it asked, disgusted. “Just wait for your allotment from Otochi like the rest of us.”

“And do what with these?” the spawn raised them up higher. “Toss them?”

“Maybe give the monkey to the girl? Keep her happy. Who doesn’t like monkeys?”

“No way, monkeys can be dangerous. Have you ever seen one in the wild? I once saw one eat its own baby because it was hungry. And look at the teeth on this thing. Otochi would flay me alive if something happened to her.”

Zumu sighed loudly. “Then give her one of the frogs, and toss the others. This was probably a mage probing our security. After finding that slime in the farm, and all those triggered traps, it's no surprise.”

The bloodspawn carried them down a short hallway. The cold engulfed Kizu. It felt like they were standing on top of a mountain, not walking down a corridor of stone. When the bloodspawn reached a black metal box, about two meters across, it looked down at Kizu and Ione, eyeing them both. Then it separated him from Mort and Ione. It kicked the side of the box, causing the top to pop open.

“Anata!” the spawn called down into the hole. “We brought you something!”

The monster dumped Kizu into the box and slammed the lid shut.