CHAPTER XXIII (23)- Blood Magic
The first day of the second week started uneventfully. Kizu used his free time the night before to finally master elemental heating and cooling so when they practiced during class, he was left just exercising the ability for the entire period. Freezing a cup of water required less than ten seconds and boiling it barely more than that. Despite his best attempts to showcase his skills, his professor wouldn’t hear about his requests for further exercises and just waddled away gobbling to himself about overeager students overwhelming themselves.
However, not every class was quite so redundant. When he arrived in Brewing S, he immediately noted differences. The large cast iron cauldrons that had been scattered around in the previous class had now vanished. Instead, there were just the standard issue desks. And, like the cauldrons, Knoff was nowhere to be found either.
Instead of the crazed thin man with wild white hair, a portly professor warmly greeted them each as they entered the cave. All of his classmates took the changes in stride, each taking a seat at a desk. Though, notably, nobody sat next to him.
The lecture began and the portly professor began explaining about the different uses of mosses found in northern tundra biomes. He didn’t stop and explain where Professor Knoff was or why he now taught the class. Kizu found him a bit familiar though. Eventually, after studying the man for a while (instead of reading his textbook) he realized he recognized the professor from the previous week when he first arrived and was on his way to the testing tower. This was the professor who told him the haunted tree could be used in liquidization potions.
Halfway through the class, one of the students referred to the new professor as ‘Professor Knoff’ in a question directed at him. Instead of correcting the student, the professor just answered the question and continued on with the lecture. And it happened again soon after, baffling Kizu.
Despite the professor’s complete lack of similarities with Knoff, Kizu arrived at the conclusion that this man must be a brother or some other kind of relative who was filling in for their normal professor’s absence. Knoff didn’t seem like a common enough family name to have any such coincidences outside of family.
The lecture itself was entirely boring and taught Kizu nothing he didn’t already know. He noticed Sene, who was sitting two seats in front of him, scribbling down extensive notes. She must have copied every word verbatim judging by the sheer volume of sheets she carried out of class.
At lunch, an unfamiliar student sat down next to him. She had shoulder length brown hair and chestnut eyes. Though, Kizu noted, she seemed unusually tall for a girl, even sitting down she looked at least a couple centimeters taller than himself.
“Basil?” he guessed.
“Who else? Come on now, you’d have to be conceited beyond belief to think a woman as gorgeous as I would normally approach you unannounced. I’m far out of your league.”
And honestly, Kizu begrudgingly agreed. Basil’s current look made more than one head swivel throughout the cafeteria.
“Please tell me you’ll be a little less conspicuous if we try your plan,” Kizu said.
“What? Do you expect me to make myself look ugly?” Basil sounded affronted by the suggestion.
“Ugly would stand out too. Just look a bit more bland. I don’t want people remembering distinctive features.”
Basil grumbled to himself. “And you? Did you brew up a potion earlier to get you through the barrier? You had Knoff’s class today, right?”
“Actually,” Kizu said. “I don’t think I’m going to need to anymore. I still need to run a few more tests, but I think I have a safer way to access the dorms. When do you think would be the best time to get access to the dorms?”
“Oh any day during dinner,” Basil answered. “The dorms are usually the emptiest when everyone else is busy either eating. And most students eat immediately when it opens and then head to the library for studying.”
“So tomorrow at dinner time would be fine?”
“I see no problems.”
They set up meeting plans before Basil slipped away to go flirt with an enamored student. Kizu ate the rest of his meal alone, studying his divination book.
Then the dreaded time came for History F. He explained to Harvey when he entered that he didn’t want him getting on the professor’s bad side just by association with him. As a result, Harvey seemed incredibly grateful when Kizu opted to sit in the back row next to Ione for the class. A relief, since Kizu had secretly worried about offending Harvey by essentially abandoning him for the company of another person.
Ione barely even acknowledged him as he took a seat next to her. Kizu reflected that she had been a bit quiet earlier in their Elemental F class as well. By the end of class, the girl was actually snoring softly, her arm leaned against the armrest to prop her head up. Kizu felt a bit envious. Krimpit’s lesson was word for word out of the textbook. And the book wasn’t exactly a page turner.
With classes completed for the day, Kizu went straight to his room and picked up both Mort and the letter left behind by his sister. Then, with Mort perched on his shoulder, he headed down to his little study area. He shuddered slightly when he looked at the heavy door that separated him from the tunnels under the academy. That creature from the previous day still bothered him. He hadn’t reported it for fear of Roba withholding her expertise at his small failure, but it had been terrifying to witness. He actively attempted to keep it out of his mind. Thankfully, the crone had exposed him to all sorts of heinous and horrible sights in his years with her. So, he compartmentalized the previous day’s experience in his mind right next to the time the crone’s best friend had shown Kizu her living shrunken head collection. Then he did his best to completely forget about it.
“Okay Mort,” he said to the monkey as they settled in his little nook behind the stairs. “Let’s give this a try.”
Kizu sketched out the required ritual patterns on the stone and set down the physical letter in the center of it. This time during the ritual though, he channeled his spell through Mort. It seemed to enter the monkey like a stream and exit like a river. He struggled to maintain control of the channeled spell.
As he closed his eyes and focused, he emptied his mind of everything except his memories of his sister and focused on her hanko stamp’s imprint.
Again, like the ritual before, he got an impression of his sister. The divination for that much was clear. His sister was alive. He tried to focus on the actual location. He strained his mind. He could see her for a moment. Not as he remembered her, but as she must be now. She looked gaunt and malnourished with her eyes sunken with dark circles around them. Curled up in a ball with hair spread in every direction, she seemed even smaller than he remembered her before. Her black hair was a tangle and looked to have been cut out in chunks in several places, giving her whole person a rather lopsided look.
She lifted her eyes from the ground and cocked her head, as if sensing something. She slowly turned her head and looked in his direction. Only, one of her eyes had been replaced, appearing scarlet instead of black. That eye pierced through Kizu, completely petrifying him. Then she raised her hand, and everything went dark.
Kizu didn’t know how long he and Mort lay on the stones. It could have been minutes or hours. Either way, he felt incredibly weak as he pushed himself into a sitting up position. He scooped up Mort and set the monkey in his lap.
The spell was supposed to just be a tracking one. Nowhere in his book did it say anything about visions of your target. And, to make matters worse, he hadn’t even gotten a hint of his sister’s location when he saw her. The vision just showcased a nondescript, dark and blurry background.
Kizu sighed. Nothing could ever be easy.
Kizu snatched up Anna’s letter and stuffed it in his pocket. He wobbled to his feet and staggered up the stairs, not even bothering to gather up his things or clean up the chalk. The world was swimming when he reached the top of the stairs. He leaned up against the wall. And closed his eyes. His head swayed and his struggled to focus on the hallway in front of him.
He felt so tired. Beyond natural exhaustion. As he stepped forward, he missed the ground and his legs buckled underneath him.
When he opened his eyes again, he stared up at a scowling Professor Kateshi.
“Hello?” he said weakly. He blinked a few times, thinking it might be a dream. That notion disappeared when he felt a burning pain in his side.
He reached out with his bond and could feel Mort sleeping soundly on the other side of the room. He let out a breath of relief.
“Mr. Kaga,” Professor Kateshi said disdainfully. “Do you have any idea what you did?”
“Just a divination spell,” he said almost dreamily. “The side effects made me so tired though.”
“A divination spell of a strength far beyond any of your limits.”
Kizu tried to clear his head. Everything felt so foggy. As he looked around, he realized he must be in the academy’s medical wing. Rows of white sheeted beds pushed up against the walls, even the stone floor gleamed and looked perfectly sterile. A few older students rushed around in white outfits that Kizu assumed symbolized the status of some sort of assistant position to the Rejuvenation and Restoration professor. He vaguely remembered seeing a few people dressed similarly at the combat amphitheater.
Only two other beds looked to be in use, but white curtains shielded their occupants from view.
“So, I overdid it and fainted?” Kizu asked.
“You lost almost half of all the blood in your body. You’re lucky a student stumbled on you.”
“My blood?” Kizu asked. “I was bleeding out?” Why would a divination spell of all things cause an open wound?
Professor Kateshi looked irritated by his response. “No. You cast too many spells far too recently. You never allowed time for your body’s recovery. The blood cost went far beyond what the body could safely lose.”
“Wait, so my body exchanged my blood for magic?” Kizu felt lost and his head still refused to clear.
“Has no one taught you any basics of magic?” Kateshi snapped. “This academy’s failure to teach new students the basics of magical theory will be the death of it entirely. How many students need to end up here before they listen and develop a class for new mages?”
“I’m sorry?” Kizu tried.
Finally, Kateshi took a deep breath and appeared to cool off.
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“Surely, at the very least, you are familiar with the phrase- ‘blood is life and life is magic?’”
Kizu nodded. The crone used to say that to him literally every single morning.
“All magic is created from the mage’s blood. That’s the fuel of nearly every spell. As you get more practice specific fields of magic, your body will acclimatize and become more accustomed to the spells. Your body learns to use the blood more efficiently in time.”
“So, when I cast a spell, I lose a bit of my blood every time?” Kizu asked. That actually made a lot of sense. He knew blood was unique to the individual and that curses using a person’s blood were uncannily powerful. Blood being the source of all magic filled in a little gap in his education.
“Yes, and so if you spend all day casting spells, you slowly lose blood throughout the day.”
Which he had been doing all week. No wonder he always felt so tired. It went beyond his terrible sleep schedule. But the divination spell shouldn’t have been that taxing. Not with Mort amplifying its effects.
“Were you able to patch me up?” Kizu asked.
“No. As you’ll learn next semester in my Rejuvenation and Restoration class, replacing blood in someone else’s body is almost entirely impossible. Blood is one of the few things magic cannot create. Instead, you get the privilege of being bedridden for the next few days while your poor heart pumps new blood for you.”
Well, that sounded inconvenient. So much for breaking into the dorms tomorrow night. And all magical practice being put on a standstill hardly sounded appealing either. He already missed a day and a half of classes from being arrested. At this rate, he’d never manage to get out of the F classes.
“However, there are some plants that have been proven to help with the heart. My nurses will be sure to feed you a diet that should get you back on your feet sooner rather than later. You’ll likely be able to resume your classes on Friday.”
Great, Kizu thought to himself. Just in time to get pummeled in the combat test two days later.
One of Kateshi’s assistants called her away to examine another patient so she dismissed herself with the final instruction that he was only to rise from bed to use the lavatory. She closed his surrounding curtains before departing. Now alone, Kizu stared up at the ceiling and wondered at how dull his next few days were going to be. Four days of staring at the ceiling. What an absolute drag. He might go mad from sheer boredom.
After a while, he poked his head out of his curtains to call over one of the students in a white uniform. He asked her if she’d be willing to go pick up a book for him at the library. Surprisingly, she readily agreed and asked him for the title. Apparently, that was a regular duty of the students assisting in the infirmary.
He pulled out the letter and asked her if she recognized the script and whether or not she might be able to find a translation dictionary for him.
“Eh, no,” the student said. “I’ve never seen anything like this. I’m not much of a linguist. If you want though, I can bring it with me to the library and see if one of the librarians knows it.”
Kizu was loath to part with the only physical connection he had with his sister. Even if it hadn’t been enough to cast the spell properly, he still wasn’t exactly keen to let a stranger walk off with it. Instead, he copied the first two sentences onto a blank scrap of parchment and let the assistant use that as the example text.
It took several mind numbingly monotonous hours before the assistant returned. She looked more haggard than when she had left, but she carried two thick tomes under her arm.
“We had to contact the head librarian,” she explained irritably. “Everyone who spoke this language died on Ilosin-Don a thousand years before the oozes even arrived on the continent. We barely had any written records. It’s a dead language on a continent that we can’t even access anymore.”
“Oozes?” Kizu asked. Ilosin-Don sounded vaguely familiar. He thought maybe the crone had mentioned it in a story.
“You don’t know about the ooze conflict to the south? It’s been going on for the last decade.”
“Yes, of course, never mind that,” Kizu said, abruptly changing the subject. He had no idea what was happening with oozes in Ilosin-Don, but he was eager to finally read what his sister had left him. “What did you find?”
She dropped the books on his nightstand with a solid thump.
“Take a look for yourself,” she said with a huff.
Apparently, he must have been a bit too abrupt.
Kizu put it out of his mind as he leafed through the tomes. One was a translation dictionary into the universal script from an unknown language. The other was a dictionary from the unknown language to the language used in the letter.
Kizu sighed. His sister just couldn’t make it easy for him.
All of the other assistants looked a bit peeved with him and barely said more than a few words. However, he still managed to commandeer a piece of parchment from one passing by.
After a lot of cross referencing, Kizu discovered the middle language to be Gnomish. Kizu didn’t know a whole lot about the magical creatures beyond their natural talents for illusion magic. He also recalled that the crone had a few dusty old books about using pieces of them for specific brews, but Kizu had always avoided reading anything involving sentient humanoids as ingredients. As he thought about what the nurse’s assistant had said, he realized they must also be native to that southern continent. The same one as this new ooze conflict.
But knowing the origins of the middle language barely helped him at all with the language his sister wrote in. And, to make matters worse, his sister wrote in a fancy looping handwriting. Which might have been pretty, if it was not so frustrating. He already had to translate an entirely foreign alphabet, adding in discrepancies to the alphabet due to the lavish style added to the task tenfold.
He took a break to eat some lunch which a medical assistant brought him. Mort soon joined him to munch on a bit of sliced apple while he appraised Kizu’s work. Thankfully the monkey looked exhausted but otherwise just fine.
By the time night came, Kizu had finally translated two sentences, as well as a dozen of repeat words later in the message. And it didn’t change the fact that several of those words had several wildly different meanings based on their context.
What he currently had was- Little brother, I hope this message finds you well. I have spent the last six years honing my divination in an attempt to break the barrier between us.
The irony of their role reversal wasn’t lost on Kizu.
“What’s that you got there?” an assistant asked.
Kizu looked at the Tainted boy. The bronze scales across his cheeks looked dull and muted in the low light. He was the only one on night duty and he looked sufficiently bored by the task.
“I’m trying to translate a message someone left for me. But it’s not simple. She left it for me in a dead language.”
The assistant leaned over and glanced over his dozen sheets of parchment strewn across his bed.
“So, this is what bent Raygen out of shape?”
“I’m not sure,” Kizu said. He assumed he must be talking about the medical assistant earlier. “She seemed a bit touchy.”
“Yeah, she complained to everyone very loudly about how ungrateful you were. Talked about how hard the task you gave was. As if it wasn’t her job.”
Kizu thought back. He supposed maybe he could have been a bit more tactful. It added another layer to his mental exhaustion. Socializing and being polite just wasn’t something he knew anymore. He had no knack for it. Even before his kidnapping, he had struggled not to offend adults.
“I’ll apologize tomorrow,” he said. “I guess I was a bit brusque. I didn’t intend to sound ungrateful to her. I just wanted to get into the research as quickly as possible.”
“Hey now, don’t go apologizing! She needed to get knocked down a few pegs. Ever since we broke up, she’s been nothing but haughty. Flirts with every boy who looks in her general direction.”
“I’m sorry?” Kizu said. He really didn’t want to get involved.
“No, I really don’t care. Not like you probably think anyway. It’s just annoying.”
Kizu said nothing, just shuffled a few of his notes around.
“It’s Primordial,” the assistant said. “She wanted to withhold that information as payback for not thanking her, but she couldn’t keep her mouth shut about it. Blabbed to everyone about how difficult finding a Primordial dictionary was. Apparently barely anyone spoke it even back in the day. The nation that created it only allowed the nobility and their priests to learn it.”
“So, it was a spiritual language,” Kizu mused.
“Hardly. Sounded more like an elitist language from how I understand it. I’d ask Krimpit though if you want to know more about it.”
Kizu winced. “I think I’ll stick to my own personal studies.”
The older boy shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
Knowing where the language came from or who spoke it didn’t help him understand it any better. All it did was raise the question of where Anna might have learned it. It hardly seemed like something they taught in the general classes.
The assistant kept talking to him for a long while after, complaining to him all about his breakup with Raygen and how nobody took his side in it all. In his ramblings, Kizu gleamed that his name was Edgar. He apparently was a fifth year and dumped Raygen because he believed that she distracted him from his studies, and he also believed she intended to hold him back from higher education and force him into settling down.
“If I’d known what a storm she’d kick up all around her, I wouldn’t have bothered breaking up with her. It’s more distracting than dating her ever was. And I know for a fact she specifically complains about me to Kateshi in hopes of costing me a letter of recommendation from her.”
Kizu struggled to empathize. To be perfectly honest, he didn’t care in the slightest. He wanted Edgar to stop talking and allow him to return to his translating. Still, he kept nodding. He already unintentionally offended one person by being too terse, repeating the offense seemed like nothing but trouble.
Mort, however, felt his irritation. The little monkey slipped away without Edgar noticing. A few minutes later, one of the other students stuck in the infirmary woke up with a yelp.
When Edgar went to check on the disturbance and help the student, Mort climbed back on the bed to watch Kizu get back to work on the translation.
At some point at the end of the night he must have dozed off. Professor Kateshi woke him up in the morning and ran a few tests on him. When she finished, she announced him fortunate and strong enough to attend classes for the day. With the added caveat that he didn’t participate in any magical activities. Then, as if viewing him as untrustworthy, she snapped an antimagic bracelet around his wrist and explained it would pop off on its own once it measured his blood at a secure amount. She made him promise to return that night for another checkup before sending him on his way.
The silver bracelet felt cold against his bare skin. But try as he might, every attempt to take it off ended fruitlessly. When he made it to Combat F, he was growling at the thing and debating another attempt using his teeth.
Arclight, apparently hearing the news of his condition from the administration, set him on the sidelines for the entire class. So Kizu got to watch as his class ran laps for over an hour straight. He felt a measure of gratitude that he didn’t have to join them. As much as he had enjoyed running through the jungle, going in the same loop over dry and unchanging ground lacked any appeal to him.
He found his mind wandering to each of the students in his class. None of them had competed during the weekend. He wondered how bad they all really were if they were somehow worse than the last few competitors. Though, he supposed the same could be said for himself.
“I don’t understand why you don’t focus more on magical combat for a combat class,” Kizu said when Arclight walked over to him.
Arclight positively beamed at his assessment, as if he had complimented her or something. “And why are you placed on the sidelines today, Mr. Kaga?”
Kizu blinked at the change in subject. “Because I overdid my magic and passed out from blood loss.”
“Exactly! And what do you think we’re doing in this very class?”
“Running in circles?” Kizu said.
“And what does that accomplish?”
“It makes your muscles stronger?”
“Exactly! But one muscle in particular. The most important muscle for every mage.”
“Your legs for positioning?” Kizu guessed.
“Ah! Still thinking about our talk about familiars from the other day? But not quite. It’s far more important than positioning this time. The heart! The stronger your heart, the faster your body will pump new blood.”
Kizu thought about that. “So, if I’m better at running, my heart becomes stronger,” he mused. “And that will get my blood back in my body sooner.”
“Physical health is everything! So often modern mages rely solely on their abilities for everything and turn out fat and lazy. Then they suffer from heart failure and die. That is exactly the opposite from what we want from our graduates!” Arclight sounded excited that he wasn’t just writing her lessons off. “But you’re also wrong. You never get your blood back in your body. Used blood never returns. Your heart pumps new blood as a replacement.”
“Sorry, I know that. I misspoke.” Honestly Kizu hadn’t actually known that, but he’d assumed as much.
“Diet also plays a key role in your blood’s strength!” Arclight continued with fervor. “For years I have been advocating getting rid of all foods in the academy’s cafeteria that clot or otherwise prohibit healthy blood flow.”
“And you’ve been unsuccessful,” Kizu guessed. He thought back with guilt about the ungodly amount of sweets he had eaten since arriving here. Somehow, he doubted those were healthy.
“It’s been a battle, for sure,” Arclight admitted solemnly. “But, in case you haven’t noticed, I am a battle mage!” Then she bellowed a laugh that shook the ground around them, causing several of the students running to stumble.
After that proclamation, Arclight decided it would be the perfect opportunity to explain to him in detail what she believed a balanced diet consisted of. Once again, Kizu was just left nodding absently as his mind wandered off to other subjects.
He had known that blood was important to magic his whole life, but somehow nobody ever taught him that blood literally translated into it. Healthier blood meant stronger magic. So, there were actually two ways in which he could enhance his magic. Magic exercises, like he had been doing, and physical exercises. With that in mind, if he split his time training between the two of them, he likely wouldn’t find himself passed out in a random corridor again anytime soon.
Even still, he still was grateful to not be running in circles like his peers.