Chapter XXXI (31)- Into the World Dungeon

The corpse immediately began to reek. Kizu breathed through his mouth and tried not to vomit, forcing himself not to retreat from the putrid scent. Even Ione’s summoned beast appeared disturbed by the smell. It kept lifting its clean paw and wiping at its nose as if to brush the stench away.

Kizu approached the monster’s broken body. As it turned out, the inside of it wasn’t completely dry. Instead of blood, trace amounts of black ichor oozed out of its flesh. Kizu took care not to touch the stuff as he examined the body. He couldn’t exactly perform an autopsy, but he still did his best to scan it for irregularities. The claws from Ione’s creature had punctured the monster’s chest in five different places. One of the claws had been fortunate enough to pierce the heart. The bloodspawn’s broken skull lay in shards all around its shoulders. As far as Kizu could tell, the mashed innards of the brain looked normal. In fact, other than the blood’s obvious difference and the fact that it smelled like it had been rotting in the sun for a week, it appeared the same as any other human corpse. The most important thing, though, was that it didn’t appear to be knitting itself back together like a troll would.

“I think we’re safe,” Kizu said, still watching the body.

No response.

Kizu turned, making sure to keep half an eye on the body. Ione was unconscious on the ground. As he scooped her back up, he wondered if she had fainted from exhaustion, pain, or the smell. Maybe all three. Her summoned creatures watched him intently as he shimmied himself and her through the newly formed crack in the wall that the bloodspawn had created.

As far as he could tell, in a desperate attempt to escape, the spawn had downed its last vial of blood in a desperate attempt to power itself up. It had been successful, too. Just not fast enough. He stepped through the crack and into the World Dungeon.

Only the smaller of Ione’s summoned creatures managed to fit through the crack to follow them. It flapped behind him, mewling piteously. Kizu considered leaving Ione behind in the protection of her two-headed bear summon, but quickly dismissed the idea. There was no guarantee the creatures would stick around long enough to protect her, and getting her to safety took priority with her mangled leg. The faster he found an exit to the dungeon, the better off they’d be. So, he carried on.

“Quiet down,” Kizu told the creature when it whined again. “You might as well send a greeting card to every monster in the dungeon if you keep that up. Do you want us eaten?”

It murmured something unintelligible but quieted down, sulking behind them. That was the first sign of intelligence he’d gotten from the thing.

The dungeon’s tunnels were mostly the same as the tunnel he’d used to access the blood disposal pit. But now he’d occasionally see ruins sticking out of the floor in random locations. As if buildings made of metal and stone had sunken into the earth. They were all empty husks with only the occasional relic, like a rusted chair or coat rack. But they still were obstacles that forced him to crawl and climb at several different places. More than once, he had to double-back after encountering a stone wall.

Unfortunately, no paths led up. He was stuck pursuing the path that led down at the shallowest angle. On the rare occasion that he did come across a forked path that appeared to lead up, it soon crested and continued down.

Even still, Kizu kept moving forward.

The heat picked up, and more than once Kizu was forced to double-back away from a chasm of liquid fire. The first time he encountered the obstruction to his path, his heart soared, believing they must be close to where he’d disposed of the blood samples. But after the fourth such detour, he was forced to admit that the dungeon was full of these rivers. It wasn’t a landmark he could navigate by.

The heat of the dungeon sapped his energy, and as time passed he became progressively less cautious with his footfalls.

Still, nothing approached him. Nothing seemed to live in this part of the dungeon. Roba had mentioned the bloodspawn usually avoided the heat, but he’d expected to encounter something. He didn’t even see bugs. At one point, when he had stopped to rest, he realized that he still wore his earring and carried his potions. Unlike the last time, it hadn’t attracted anything. Neither had Ione’s summoned creature.

Kizu closed his eyes and focused on his spellsense, taking the slight risk to use the enhancement spell. He was startled to see that Ione and her summon gave off no magic at all. Then he turned his spellsense outward, focusing intently on his surroundings. The World Dungeon itself emitted a general aura of muted magic. Beyond that though, he felt nothing.

Opening his eyes, he looked himself up and down, still confused about why his clothes and Ione remained invisible to his spellsense. It was the necklace, he realized. The enchantment on it blinded spellsenses. That was why they hadn’t encountered anything. And if that was the case, it likely meant he could cast spells down here as well.

Still, Kizu was hesitant to test out the theory. The bloodspawn had made it sound as if there was an entire colony of its species locked down in the dungeon. Kizu wasn’t eager to encounter more.

“Why do you think it waited until the last second to tear open the wall earlier?” Kizu asked the little summoned creature. “You would think it would have done it before we woke up and tracked it down. I guess… maybe it didn’t want to waste the blood.”

The creature bobbed in the air as Kizu thought out loud. It appeared to be an even less active conversationalist than Mort. But Kizu didn’t care. He continued chatting with the thing as he walked. More to sort out his own thoughts than to form any meaningful connection.

Kizu found himself telling the summoned creature all about his life with the crone. It felt good to confess some things out loud. The horrible first year where he’d cried himself to sleep every night. How he used to scurry like a rat from the crone’s path whenever she came near him, even if she wasn’t paying any attention to him. It felt good to put words to his confusion about her stealing him from his home. To this day, it still made no real sense to him. He had convinced himself that she had just been lonely, like any other adult that adopted a pet just to neglect it later once they got bored of it. Only, she had been bored immediately. And why steal a boy? No boy would ever be allowed to join a coven or become a proper apprentice. A fact that was pointed out to him at every opportunity whenever another witch visited.

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“Maybe it was to spite your family.”

Kizu stopped abruptly. He looked down at Ione in his arms. She lazily looked back up at him.

She flinched and muttered a curse when he abruptly set her down. He sat beside her, back against the dungeon wall.

“What do you mean?” he finally asked.

“Witches hold grudges. Everyone knows that. If your family did anything to piss one off, I promise you she’d retaliate eventually.”

“Then why not just kill me? Seems like less effort.”

“They already thought you were dead. That goal was accomplished. Maybe this way, once your family finally got their lives back in order, the witch thought she could drop a corrupted version of you back on their doorstep and ruin their lives all over again. If you think of it like that, it’s more cruel that she kept you alive.”

Kizu remained silent for a minute, mulling over the idea. It made a twisted sort of sense. He hardly considered himself corrupted or broken, but how would his parents see him? He wasn’t the same boy they’d lost years ago. He wasn’t even close.

“Why were you talking, anyway?” Ione asked. “It woke me up.”

“Sorry. I just needed to fill the silence. It felt refreshing to unload, and it took my mind off our situation. Even if I was only talking to a fire-eating abomination.”

“Don’t you have your familiar to talk to?”

Kizu shrugged. “It’s different. Mort understands everything I went through, just as I understand his life before we met. It was part of the initial ritual. There’s nothing to tell him, really.”

Ione’s eyes widened. “You’re really bonded with your familiar.”

“Yes. Obviously.”

“No, I mean like, to a degree where most people would risk losing their humanity. I won’t claim to be an expert on familiars, but most of the time they’re usually not that different from a summoned creature. They’re more treated like a tool, or a pet. The ritual you went through makes it sound like you’re equal companions.”

“We are,” Kizu said without hesitation. “He’s a better brother to me than my actual brother.”

“Well… I’ve met your brother. That’s not a high bar.”

Again, Kizu tried to focus on his bond with Mort. He tried to ask him to tell Roba what had happened. Again, Mort dismissed him. He sent back his irritation with Kizu for not bringing him anything to eat.

Kizu sighed. He supposed this was what Ione meant by equal companion. He wondered briefly about how other mages’ familiars obeyed them absolutely. Current troubles aside, he hardly wanted that for Mort. It sounded like slavery.

“In the future,” Ione said. “If you want to unload, you don’t have to talk to a mindless summon.”

She left the rest of her statement unsaid. The meaning was obvious, but when Kizu opened his mouth, he found it dry. He closed it and took a deep breath.

“Thanks, Ione.”

She shrugged off the thanks and looked away. “I mean, us deadbeats have to stick together, right?” she said after a lull.

“You’re right,” Kizu said. “We’re here in this together. But how about we don’t be here together. Let’s figure out a way out of this place. Do you have any ideas?”

“If we head back the way we came, I could summon something to fly us out pretty easily.”

Kizu blinked. Of course it was that easy.

“Do you know the way back?” he asked.

“How would I know?” she asked, incredulous. “You’re the one who’s been carrying me around like a sack of rice.”

“So, you can’t sense where the other creature you summoned is?” Kizu’s hopes dropped. “Because I have no idea which way leads back there.”

“No.” She sighed and laid her head back against the stone wall to stare up at the ceiling. “I innately dismiss my summons if I get too far away while unconscious. There is training I could do to fix that, but I always thought it wasn’t worth the effort.”

They stayed silent for a bit. Kizu listened to the sounds of the dungeon. The soft drip of water echoing down from a cavern. The hiss of the closest river of fire. Ione breathing next to him.

“My foot hurts,” she said.

“I think it’s broken.”

“Wow, are you a witch doctor? Very astute observation.”

“You started it.”

“I was complaining. Not explaining.”

Kizu rolled his eyes. “Have you never broken a bone before?”

“I have.” She paused. The silence stretched to the point where Kizu was sure she wouldn’t elaborate. But then she continued, “When I was little, my sister was always studying. She loved spellcraft more than anything, but she could never quite get the hang of summoning. It irritated her to no end. One day, she was explaining to me how it was theoretically supposed to work, just mindlessly venting, and I decided to give it a try. It was so easy. Everything just clicked for me.”

“And she didn’t take it well?”

Ione let out a humorless laugh. “She was furious. My place in her life changed in an instant, from sister to rival. She wanted nothing else to do with me - nothing, except to compare summons. She threw herself into her studies even harder. Every book about summoning she could get her hands on, she read. I tried faking incompetence, hoping things would go back to normal if she proved herself better than me. But it just made her angrier. Somehow, she always knew when I self-sabotaged. Then, one day, she came up to me looking incredibly smug. She performed a summoning, and it actually worked. But she’d imprinted too much of her own intent onto the monster. It attacked me. It didn’t have real teeth, thankfully, just hardened gums. But it still managed to shatter almost every bone in my left hand.”

Kizu glanced over at her left hand. Its fingers were knit together with its twin behind her head. It looked normal, unscarred.

“My parents never found out. Sene healed it perfectly. Even back then, she was a prodigy at rejuvenation and restoration. She never asked me not to tell them, but what would be the point in ratting her out? After that day, she never tried to summon anything again. I don’t know if it was fear that did it, or guilt, or maybe just a sense of defeat. Whatever it was, the distance between us never closed.”

“I can try to talk to her,” Kizu offered, not knowing what else to say.

“No.” There was a pause. “Don’t talk to her about me. Especially about this. I’m…scared of her. I don’t think I want that distance closed.”

“‘With time and space, all fear will dissolve or dilate,’” Kizu quoted.

“What’s that?”

“Something the crone used to say whenever I mentioned being scared. Sorry, I don’t know if that’s actually helpful, it just popped in my head.”

There was another long pause.

“Thanks for listening, Kizu.”

“That’s what friends do.”

Kizu studied the opposite stone wall. It was charcoal black with small, cup sized divots. Methodically, he counted them and let his mind wander to his own siblings. He didn’t remember falling asleep. He had no intention of falling asleep. But still, he dreamed.