LI (51)- Blood of a Child

Kizu spent almost the entire next day up on the ceiling, trying everything he could think of on the trapdoor hatch while he dangled by his enchanted gloves. Like his previous attempts, his efforts yielded him a headache and little else.

“What do you eat down here?” Kizu asked Anata on one of his breaks.

She pointed at a corner. Kizu moved to inspect it.

A patch of slimy algae grew there. It looked moist, and smelled like curdled milk.

Anata stepped up beside him and licked the wall. Repeatedly.

Kizu gaped at her. They were forcing the poor girl to eat mold?. And he’d thought he had it bad, having to eat the crone’s bland porridge and bat stew. If he hadn’t already changed his mind about taking her with him, this tragedy would have convinced him. Nobody deserved to live like this.

“That’s enough,” Kizu said quietly, laying a hand on her shoulder.

Anata stopped, looking up at him in surprise, but she didn’t flinch from his touch anymore.

“Here,” Kizu handed her one of his ration vials. “You’re very small, so you should only need to drink about a third of it.”

She stared at it. For reference, Kizu lifted one of his own mimicked sipping it. She copied him. Then her eyes lit up with ecstasy and she smiled giddily. She took another sip.

“Not too much,” Kizu warned. “Gorging yourself will lead to all sorts of stomach issues. And I don’t have the supplies to brew any remedies here.”

She listened reluctantly. Closing her eyes, she relished every sip.

Kizu drank one himself and scowled at the taste. It tasted no better than before. He had foolishly hoped that Anata’s reaction meant the taste had improved with age.

After finishing his potion, Kizu stared at the glyphs etched into the walls. He considered resuming his attempt to thwart the runes, but in the end he opted to take a break and train. On one hand, he would be spending his limited resources by training, but on the other, he didn’t really see a way out of this situation - not until the bloodspawn opened up the trap door again, or Mort and Ione came to save him. It was frustrating, not having any control over what happened next. He felt as if he had no say over his fate. But at least while training he could better prepare himself to ambush whoever next opened that door. At any moment it might swing open. He needed to be ready. Plus, training helped him blow off some of the ever increasing anxiety.

He jumped across the room, much to Anata’s shock. She stared at him as he jumped back. Kizu occasionally left behind a sock, but, for the most part, his shorter jumps were steadily approaching perfection. At least as far as his own body was concerned. He still needed to work on his accuracy, as he would sometimes appear a little to the left or right of where he intended. Just in those dozen attempts, though, he could already feel himself improving.

His blood ran out far too quickly. When the thirteenth jump left him lightheaded, Kizu admitted to himself that he’d likely used up more of it than was reasonable. He lay back on his blanket spread across the ground and closed his eyes, wondering how else he could kill his time waiting for a miracle.

He felt a wet hand touch his cheek. Almost immediately, Kizu’s senses went into overdrive. He could smell the iron of blood on his face, hear Anata’s heartbeat as she scurried away. His mind snagged on that detail. Unlike his own heartbeat, Anata’s pumped far quicker. In fact, his own heartbeat in the middle of a dead sprint wouldn’t have even come close to Anata’s resting pace. He didn’t know how he’d never noticed it before.

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Then came the revitalization. Gone was his fatigue from blood loss, gone the lightheadedness and the full-body chill. He looked over to see Anata cradling her hand and staring at the floor. The makeshift bandage he’d made for her the previous day lay unraveled on the floor, stained brown by clotted blood.

Kizu sighed. He tore off the cuff of his other sleeve and beckoned the girl over.

She came over hesitantly, obviously afraid of him scolding her. But when she reached Kizu, he simply rebandaged her wound. He wondered if he should scold her, tell her off for not listening. But he didn’t know how to do that in a constructive way with a girl who was already so skittish. And besides… she had helped him.

“Do you…” Kizu said slowly, trying to find the right words. “Do you want to help me?”

The girl nodded vigorously.

The crone would have taken advantage of this immediately. Logically, it seemed the most rational course of action. He didn’t like it. But what other options did they have? His mastery directly correlated to their chances of escaping. He genuinely just wasn’t strong enough to save them. Using her like this, like a blood bank, was vile - but it was her surest path to freedom. Or so he justified it to himself.

“That’s fine, then. Thank you. But you shouldn’t drain yourself so much. Just a tiny bit will work.” He took out Sojan and pricked the end of his finger as an example.

The dagger’s eye on the hilt of the blade fluttered open.

“What’re we killing?” it immediately asked. Then it got its bearings. “Oh, wait, it’s still you. If you aren’t going to stab something, maybe you should consider giving me to someone who will? Lots of those people out there. Just food for thought. An option, you know. Unless of course you want to stab that fleshy person right in front of you.”

Anata cowered away from Kizu at Sojan’s words.

“Wait,” Kizu said, ignoring Sojan, “You can hear the dagger?”

She nodded.

“Of course she can hear me,” the dagger said. “I can tell just by looking at her she’s filled with the blood of a diviner.”

“The blood of a diviner,” Kizu repeated. “As in, someone talented at divining?” Someone like his sister who had dedicated years to trying to divine his location.

“Obviously.”

Kizu touched his face. A bit of Anata’s blood that hadn’t soaked through his pores yet glazed the tips of his fingers. It was unnatural how quickly his body seemed to absorb the blood. An idea came to him suddenly.

“If I was to give you some of her blood, could you tell me if she and I are related?” Kizu asked Sojan.

“Sure! Yes! Definitely! Just get to the stabbing! Finally!”

Kizu raised his empty hand to calm Anata’s mounting panic. He reassured her he wouldn’t hurt her. Then he ran one of his bloody fingers down the flat of the blade. It shuddered at his touch. Then, for the first time Kizu had ever seen it while it was awake, the blade actually went silent. He waited a minute. He would have thought it had fallen asleep if its eye wasn’t wide open, the pupil quivering.

“Sojan? You still there?”

“Yes,” it said, quietly. “I… I don’t know what it is. I’m not sure if I like it. Not human blood, though it does taste a bit like it. Definitely related to you. I would guess maybe a sibling’s child. But a child with some other creature as the second parent. Not a human. Not a human at all. It’s powerful. Maybe… a little too powerful. Could you, um, maybe not stab her, actually? The aftertaste is settling in. It’s rancid. Yes, definitely do not stab.”

Kizu stared at Anata. His niece? But that made no sense. The timing didn’t match up. He might not be all that familiar with children, but this girl looked far too old to be any daughter of Anna’s. Then again... the dagger said she was only half human.

The girl shifted uncomfortably under his scrutiny. Her normal eye did look like his sister’s. And her hair was the same raven shade of black.

If it was true, it would explain why she’d thrown off his divinations. If she was his sister’s blood, and if she was a strong enough diviner, it did seem hypothetically possible for her to hijack his divinations.

But, if it were true, that left him with two questions- who was the father? And where was Anna?