Prologue

The crone’s palm bled. Methodically, it dripped into the bowl of water on her lap, rippling the surface. Clear water diluted the blood, but less and less with every drop.

Kizu’s mouth dried as he watched the process. An ancient saying echoed in his mind - blood for life, and life for magic.

Heedless of her self-inflicted wound, the crone set her bloodstained knife aside and hunched over the results. The decorated wooden bowl of diluted blood appeared no different than before to Kizu, but he knew better than to interrupt her with his questions. The bowl’s contents demanded her full focus.

Only once before could he recall an instance of her using blood divination - ten years ago, the night she stole him from his family. That first time, he had babbled and whined and cried, so she had silenced him. With a wave of her hand, she had crushed his joints and sent him sprawling across the dirty cottage floor. It had been a waste, in hindsight. This time, he intended to get a good look at the spell.

“Trouble,” the crone muttered. “A deer’s limp benefits a wolf. But who is the deer and who is the wolf?”

Kizu remained still and silent. He barely even dared to breathe. Her questions were clearly rhetorical. Still, he strained his eyes to see inside the bowl. He saw no patterns or symbols, though - it just looked like a bowl of water clouded by blood.

The crone smiled as she hunched lower over the bowl, cutting off his view. Her yellow teeth shone in the dim lantern light. “Blood and water. Very fitting. Ironic, even. Tied tighter than rat tails. The two are vital for one another. And a spinal cord dangling between.”

Kizu waited.

“An old friend turns in its sleep. So many footprints in the sand. They lead in every direction. So many options. But one, a sea lion cut in two? No, a beached seal. And of course, lizards, jellyfish, foxes. Leeches, though, unexpected. Still one empty seat at the table. A shadow.” Then the crone’s eyes seemed to pop out of her skull. “So clear. Never so clear a directive as this. And so… unfortunate.”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Again, Kizu attempted to decipher what the wooden bowl was telling her. To his surprise, he actually found the liquid growing clearer. But only in a literal sense. The blood appeared to filter out of the water and dissipate as the crone channeled her spell.

“Well then, boy, what did you learn?” the crone suddenly asked him.

“That only the owner of the blood can see the results of the spell?” he guessed.

“Incorrect,” she snapped. “Any fool can see the divination. You’re just less than a fool. Your eyes are bad and your angle is even worse.”

The crone appeared to be in a temper as she pushed the bowl of water into his hands and demanded he wash it.

Dutifully, he complied, pushing past the sacks and tied up baubles that dangled from the ceiling on his way out of the hut.

The canopy overhead kept the lighting dusky even on the sunniest of days. Still, Kizu navigated the jungle with practiced ease on his way down to a little brook near the hut.

As he rinsed the bowl clean, his fingers traced the carvings along the sides of it. Predators and prey circled the rim. A leaf, an insect, a mouse, an owl, an ocelot, a human, and then back to the leaf.

Kizu yawned. He wasn’t used to being awake in the middle of the day like this, but the crone had insisted. She’d claimed this specific rite needed to be performed at the peak of the solstice for the greatest result. Why it couldn’t instead be done in the dead of night on the winter solstice, remained a mystery to him.

After rinsing out the bowl with fresh water, Kizu shouldered his way back into the hut. The crone wasn’t there. Her trinkets still dangled from the ceiling, same as they always did. She hadn’t left a single trace of her presence. Most likely, she had jumped to a different place entirely. Maybe to another witch’s hut, to gossip about whatever she had discovered in her divination. Kizu was too tired to care.

Kizu took one final look around, making certain she wasn’t going to pop out from behind a rusty cauldron or a sack of beets. Then he crawled into his little nook beside the hearth, closed the curtain, and slept.