Chapter XXX (30)- The End of the Hunt
When Kizu woke up, he stared at the rocky cave wall in front of him, trying to process where he was. Then memories of his fall crashed down back to him. The rush of air and flailing limbs and grasping at the stone wall. Followed quickly by a sudden impact as his head smashed into a rock. He wondered how long he had slept for. He felt horrible. There was a lump on the back of his head the circumference of an orange.
Remembering Ione, he sat up, his back aching, and scanned the rocky ground for her.
Luckily, she wasn’t far off. Kizu limped over to her and was relieved to see her chest still rising and falling with breath. Still alive. And, remarkably, so was her little blue creature she had summoned earlier. It fluttered on its wings nearby. It made a rattling caw that sounded like a plea for help, but otherwise appeared unharmed.
But the good news just about ended there. As he looked her over, he realized Ione’s foot was pointing the wrong direction. He winced and sucked his teeth. That would not heal overnight.
Not wanting to wake her, but also knowing they couldn’t stay at the bottom of a pit under an eccentric lady’s house, Kizu examined the area. The hole had definitely widened out at the bottom. Back at the top, the opening barely looked wider than something a fox might dig. Now he could probably fit an entire classroom in the space. And the funnel shape meant climbing out would be extraordinarily difficult.
Even with his low light vision, it took him a while to make out a soot marked trail. As he followed it, he became certain it belonged to the vampire spawn and showed where it had dragged itself off to. It led Kizu to a crevice that scarred the pit’s otherwise bare wall.
Before following the ominous trail deeper underground, Kizu decided to weigh his options. And he quickly came to the conclusion he didn’t have very many. No one was likely to come looking for him. Even if he missed his combat test tomorrow, people would probably just think he wimped out and hid. And, for some reason, he doubted Ione was any more popular than him. No, waiting it out seemed like an overwhelmingly bad idea. Especially considering Ione’s foot’s condition. He didn’t have the materials on hand to brew a healing potion or poultice. And he knew next to nothing about setting a broken bone.
Briefly he considered attempting to enchant his shoes to allow him to walk up the wall. But he dismissed the idea. He could make them stick to the wall, sure, but walking included unsticking them from the wall on demand. Not an easily achievable enchantment without some sort of guide.
He closed his eyes and focused on his bond with Mort. He could feel his familiar sleeping. And for a second, the monkey’s dreams almost overwhelmed him. But he got a hold of himself. Tentatively, he pushed a mental image forward. Mort woke up. He tried to explain to the familiar that he needed help. To go find Roba. But Mort didn’t understand the impression. Instead, he sent back the feeling of hunger. Then he scampered off in search of bugs to munch on.
“Well, that was a bust,” he muttered into the dark.
He tried to think of what other resources he had. Without Mort as a conduit, his elemental magic was laughably bad. Illusions could make the place look nicer but lacked any practicality here. He did still have a few vials of potions. But nothing that would help him out of the situation. Unless he wanted to end it all and cremate himself.
The best option seemed to be shimmying himself through the crack and following after the creature. Maybe it knew a way out.
Not wanting to leave Ione behind in case there were more blood drinking monsters, Kizu lifted her up. She was surprisingly light.
Getting through the first crack was the hardest part. He took care to let Ione’s twisted leg dangle and did his best to keep it from bumping against the wall. He didn’t want to mangle it further.
After the initial tight space, the passage opened up. Even while hunched over, Kizu still knocked his head on the cave’s ceiling several times. He could already feel the lumps forming across his scalp. It would probably look like a wart-riddled squash by the end of day. The worst was when the ceiling slammed into one of his already tender swollen parts, that made him stop in place and clutch at it as he saw stars for a moment.
A scraping noise interrupted his internal grumblings. He froze. It came from further down the passage. Kizu carefully set down Ione and fingered a vial in his pocket.
The scraping grew louder. He peered around a corner and saw the vampiric spawn clawing at the wall in front of it. Its leg where Kizu had hit it with a potion earlier was a blackened chunk of charcoal that it dragged behind it. But, other than that very obvious blemish, the creature looked fine. Just a bit manic.
Suddenly, it stopped clawing at the wall. It tilted its head.
Kizu stepped forward. He needed to make this next throw land on target.
“Wait!” the spawn screamed. It dropped to the ground and cowered; arms folded over its head. “Don’t kill me.”
Kizu stared at it. The vial felt heavy in his hand. It looked human as it kneeled on the ground, its face to the dirt as it groveled before him. However, its monstrous characteristics still showed through. Its skin was paler even than a Tainted. Its hair, which tumbled down to his neck, was a translucent shade of white. But, even with those inhuman looking differences, Kizu couldn’t make himself throw the vial. Not at something that looked so pathetic.
“Why?” Kizu asked, trying to buy himself time to gain courage and secretly hoping it gave him a decent reason to strike at it.
“I just want to live. Listen, I’m sorry about before in the dungeon. I didn’t mean to threaten you or scare you. I was just so thirsty. It makes my mind not work right.”
“But you’re not thirsty now,” Kizu said skeptically.
“No! You don’t understand. It drives me. The mere thought of blood makes me irrationally giddy with thirst. I struggle to control myself. But even still, back then I didn’t attack you, did I?”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“But now you seem plenty lucid. So, the last few days, what’s been quenching your thirst?”
“Not people, if that’s what you’re thinking!” the vampiric spawn said quickly. “The vials of blood you dropped. They’ve been holding me over. I promise, nobody’s hurt.”
Kizu wanted to believe him. The monster looked so pathetic. More like a wounded animal than a fearsome stalker of the night. But Kizu still gripped the explosive brew.
“What are you doing down here?” he asked the vampiric spawn.
The monster looked up at him. Scarlet eyes glowed, reminding Kizu what he was dealing with. But then the eyes watered, softening the red to a watered-down pink. The evil predator of darkness wept. Kizu half expected the creature to cry blood. But normal tears of water trickled down its face.
“I remembered this area from a long time ago. It is a caved in part of the dungeon.”
“And you’re trying to open it back up?” Kizu said. He didn’t like the sound of that.
“Only to escape you! I just don’t want to die. Is that so much to ask for? My life used to be here. I want to live on the surface under the stars again, but if you won’t give me that, I’d even prefer to live beneath the ground. Life of any kind is better than the alternative.” It hugged itself and whimpered as it curled into a ball.
Kizu was just about to let it go. He couldn’t kill something that only wanted to live. Who was he to keep life from another? If it actively hunted people, that would be something else. But was it right to strike someone down because they might do something? By that logic, no one deserved to live.
Then he heard something scraping against the floor behind him. He whirled around and saw Ione dragging herself toward him.
“Don’t-” she started to say.
Kizu looked back to what she was staring at. The monster. While it had been crying and holding itself, it had grabbed something from up its sleeve. As it spun through the air. Kizu had just enough time to register that it was his potion vial from earlier. The unbroken one that he initially had tossed at the dirt mound too softly.
Then it made impact.
Thankfully, not with Kizu. Ione’s summoned creature darted through the air like an arrow, colliding into the potion’s path, breaking it halfway to Kizu. The explosion made Kizu take several steps backwards. But the blue winged amphibious creature looked to be in ecstasy as it consumed the blast. It fell to the cave floor with a soft burp, panting with its eyes closed as if just finishing a race.
The monster looked horrified by the result. Streams of tears still dribbling down its face, it turned away and quickly crawled back over to the wall. Then, on its knees, it began frantically beating its fists against the cave wall.
Even despite the fact it had attempted to kill him just moments before, Kizu couldn’t help feeling pity for the pathetic looking creature. It looked more like a trapped animal than the monster he had imagined it to be.
“Why did you leave?” he asked it.
It stopped clawing at the rock and looked over its shoulder at him.
“If you want to go back so badly, why did you leave? You had blood. You could have just stayed down there, right?”
“It was mine,” it said, as if that brought clarity to the question.
“And you didn’t want to share,” Ione said from behind him. He didn’t turn to look at her, instead opting to keep his complete attention on the vampiric spawn. But still, he could hear the pain in her voice. Every word came out labored.
“You don’t understand.” The creature reeled around, its body facing them. “I’m not greedy. No. If I was greedy, I would be like Kekkon. I won’t pick and choose who gets to come and go. Instead, I used the blood to leave, not to take control. I just want freedom. Is that too much to ask for? When we went down, I didn’t realize he would cast chains over us.”
“Freedom,” Kizu said the word. Despite all that was going on, his mind spiraled into a tangent. Had he ever been free? In the basin he felt free, but he knew he was chained to it by the crone. Now he should feel freer, but instead was chained to the island and the responsibilities of his family. It seemed backwards.
“Yes,” it said, nodding its head vigorously. “I just want freedom. Independence. And I want that for my friends too.”
“Your friends?”
“You see, that’s why I need to open this. Not to escape, but to free them all. They might be able exit without needing to consume blood. This door probably doesn’t require blood in your veins to pass through. If I could just open it from this side.”
“For some reason, freeing a dungeon full of vampiric spawn seems like a bad idea,” Ione said.
“Do we not have just as much of a right to live as you and your friend?”
“Usually, prisoners are imprisoned for a reason.”
“I’m innocent! All I’ve done is exist! Is that such a horrible crime? I didn’t do anything wrong! I just wanted to protect my home!”
Ione sat and began sketching lackadaisically in the dirt with her hand.
“In my experience,” she said as she finished. “They all claim to be innocent.”
She placed a palm on her drawing. Brilliant light filled the crevices she’d created in the dirt. Blinking, Kizu was forced to look away. He returned his gaze back to the spawn.
The vampire spawn frantically reached for another vial. Not one of his potions though this time. But Kizu still recognized the red swirling liquid. Blood.
It crammed it into its mouth and cracked its teeth through the glass at the same moment that Ione finished her summoning.
Kizu didn’t have enough time for his eyes to adjust back to the darkness before he was shoved out of the way by a large creature. It bellowed a deep and dangerous howl. Kizu thought it resembled an oversized bald bear. Only with more than double the normal heads.
Looking up, Kizu could make out the red glint from the vampiric spawn’s eyes. It turned away from them, back to the wall. Then the walls of the cave shook. New cracks split in the stone all around them while rubble and dust rained down from the cave’s ceiling. The spawn slipped into a crack in the wall just as the summoned creature smashed into it.
Kizu’s heart dropped. But then Ione’s creature lunged with its left head into the crack after the spawn. The shoulders of the beast appeared to dislocate at the effort, giving it further reach. A human-like shrill shriek came from within the crevice. The summoned creature grunted as it heaved the vampiric spawn back into the main cave. For a moment, the spawn dangled upside down, its blackened leg caught in the creature’s teeth. Then Ione’s creature chomped down on the leg, snapping it free from the torso.
The vampiric spawn cried out and flailed as it fell to the ground. No blood came from the stump of a leg. The inside of the monster appeared as dry as an animated skeleton.
Ione’s summoned creature laid a keg-sized paw on the spawn’s chest. Even the screams from the spawn couldn’t drown out the popping and snapping of its ribs under the creature’s pressure.
The spawn was still alive, even with every rib broken. Kizu thought it was trying to say something, but any cohesive words were scrambled by both pain and its punctured lungs. The scarlet eyes met Kizu’s, and its lips twitched slightly in a noiseless plea as Ione’s creature set its oversized foot on its head. Kizu broke away from its stare as he heard the skull shatter.