LI (51)- Blood of a Child

Kizu spent almost the entirety of the next day up on the ceiling, trying to open the hatch to get himself out of their prison while dangling by his enchanted gloves. Like his previous attempts, he gained little other than a headache.

“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 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. This girl grew up surviving off of moist mold. And he had complained about having to eat bland porridge and bat stew the crone had cooked for him. If he hadn’t already decided to take her with him, this fact would have convinced him. Nobody deserved a life like this.

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

Anata stopped and looked surprised, but she didn’t flinch from his touch anymore.

“Here,” Kizu handed her one of his ration vials. “You’re still 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 and sipped it. She copied him. Then her eyes lit up ecstasy and she smiled giddily. She took another sip.

“Not too much,” Kizu warned. “Bloating 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 appeared to relish every sip.

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

After finishing his potion. Kizu stared at the wall, at a loss at what to do. In the end, he decided to 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 his situation until either the vampiric spawn opened up the trap door again, or Mort and Ione came to save him. And while it would be smart to wait for one of those two things to happen, he was so incredibly bored already.

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 jumps were steadily approaching perfection. Though he still needed to work on the accuracy of his jumps, as he would sometimes appear a little to the side of where he intended. But even in the dozen attempts, he could already feel himself improving.

His blood ran out far too quickly. Feeling lightheaded, Kizu admitted to himself that he likely used up more of it than he reasonably should have. He lay back on his blanket spread across the ground and closed his eyes, wondering how else he could use the sudden spare time dumped him.

Then he felt a wet hand touch his cheek. Almost immediately, his senses went into overdrive. He could smell the iron of blood on his face. Hear Anata’s heartbeat as she scurried away. Then his mind snagged on that detail. Unlike his own heartbeat, Anata’s pumped far quicker. An athlete mid race wouldn’t have even come close to Anata’s. He didn’t know how he never noticed it before.

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Then came the revitalization. Gone was his fatigue from blood loss. He looked over to see Anata, cradling her hand and not looking at him. The makeshift bandage he had made for her the previous day lay unraveled on the floor, stained brown from 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 rebuking her. But when she reached Kizu, he simply rebandaged her wound. He wondered if he should reprimand her. Tell her off for not listening. But he didn’t know how to do that with a girl 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.

Kizu knew it was obviously extremely wrong to take advantage of a child like this, but his greed won over in his mind. Besides, in a way this was for her benefit too. His mastery directly correlated to their chances of escaping. Or so he justified it to himself.

“That’s fine, thank you. But you shouldn’t hurt 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 want to stab something? Lots of those people out there. Just food for thought. An option you know. I mean, 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 to Anata, 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 the quickly panicking Anata. Reassuring her he wouldn’t hurt her. Then he ran one of his bloody fingers down the flat of the blade. It shuddered under 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 fell asleep if its eye weren’t wide open, pupil quivering.

“Sojan?” Kizu asked it. “You still there?”

“Yes,” it said, quietly. A bit subdued. “I…I don’t know what it is. I’m not sure if I like it. Not human blood. But 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 much. Could you, um, maybe not stab her actually? The aftertaste is settling. Yes, definitely rancid. Do not stab.”

Kizu stared at Anata. His sibling’s child? But that made no sense. The timing didn’t match up. He might not be very familiar with children, but this girl looked far too old. Like at least twice as old looking as any Anna could possibly have had. Then again...she was supposedly only half human. Maybe human measurements of aging weren’t an accurate estimation.

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

And it would make sense why she threw off his divinations. If she was his sister’s blood. And if she was strong enough as a 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?