Chapter XXXI (31)- Into the World Dungeon
The stench accompanied the vampiric spawn’s death immediately. Kizu breathed through his mouth so as to not be forced into retreat from the putrid scent. Even Ione’s summoned creature appeared disturbed by the smell. It kept lifting its paw and wiping at its nose as if to remove the stench.
Still, Kizu approached the broken and dead monster. As it turned out, the inside of it wasn’t completely dry. Instead of blood, small amounts of black ichor oozed out of it. Kizu took care not to touch the stuff as he examined the body. He couldn’t exactly perform an autopsy, but he still did his best to scan it for irregularities. The claws from Ione’s creature had punctured the monster’s chest in five different locations within its divot of a chest cavity. One of the claws had the good fortune to pierce the heart. Its broken skull lay in shards all around its shoulders. As far as Kizu could tell, the mashed innards of the brain looked normal. In fact, other than the blood’s obvious difference and the fact it smelled like it had been rotting in the sun for a week, it appeared the same as any headless body. The most important thing was that it didn’t appear to be knitting itself back together like a troll.
“I think we’re safe,” Kizu said, still watching the body.
No response.
Kizu turned, making certain to keep an eye still on the body. Ione was unconscious on the ground. As he scooped her back up, he wondered if she had fainted from exhaustion, pain, or the smell. Maybe all three. Her summoned creatures watched him as he shimmied himself and her through the newly formed crack that the spawn had created.
As far as he could tell, in a desperate attempt to escape, the spawn had drunk its remaining vials of blood at the end of the fight in a final attempt to power itself up. And it appeared the vampiric spawn had accomplished what it had set out to do. Just not fast enough. He stepped through the crack and into the dungeon.
Only the smaller of Ione’s summoned creatures managed to fit through the crack to follow them. It flapped behind him and mewed piteously. Kizu considered leaving Ione behind in the protection of her two-headed bear creature but dismissed the idea. There was no guarantee the creatures would protect her. And getting her to safety needed to take priority with her mangled leg. He wanted to minimize risk to her as well as to himself. The faster they found the exit to the dungeon, the better off they’d be. So, he carried her on.
“Quiet down,” Kizu told the creature as it whined again. “You might as well send a greeting card to every monster in the dungeon if you want us eaten.”
It murmured something unintelligible but quieted down as it sulked behind them.
Unfortunately, no paths led up. He was stuck pursuing the path that went downwards at a lesser angle. And whenever he did come across a forked path that appeared to lead up, it soon crested and continued down.
Even still, Kizu kept moving forward.
The heat picked up and more than once Kizu was forced to double back away from a chasm of liquid fire. The first time he encountered the obstruction to his path, his heart soared, believing he must be where he previously had disposed of blood samples. But after the fourth such detour, he reluctantly realized that the dungeon was full of the rivers. It wasn’t a unique landmark.
The heat of the dungeon sapped his energy, and he became progressively less cautious of the noise he made as he progressed.
Still, nothing approached him. Nothing seemed to live in this area of the dungeon. Roba had mentioned the spawn usually avoided the heat, but he expected to encounter some sort of monsters. He didn’t even see bugs. At one point when he had stopped to rest, he realized that he still wore his earring and carried his potions. But unlike last time, it hadn’t attracted anything. Neither had Ione’s summoned creature or anything on her.
Kizu closed his eyes and focused on his spellsense. And he was startled to see that he and Ione gave off nothing. But as he focused more intently on his external surroundings, he got a brief tiny pull in a direction. Hopefully the academy.
Opening his eyes, he looked himself up and down. The necklace, he realized. The enchantment on it blinded spellsenses. That was why they had encountered nothing. And it also probably meant he could cast spells down here without as much reason for concern.
Still, Kizu was hesitant to test out the theory. The vampiric spawn had made it sound as if there was an entire colony of its species locked down in the dungeon. And it mentioned friends. Kizu was not eager to encounter more.
“How do you think it managed to tear open the cave wall earlier?” Kizu asked the little summoned creature. “You would think it would have done it earlier to break through into the World Dungeon. I guess, maybe it didn’t want to waste blood.”
The creature bobbed in the air as Kizu mused out loud. It appeared to be an even less active conversationalist than Mort. But Kizu didn’t care. He continued chatting with the thing. More to sort out his own thoughts than to form any meaningful connection.
Kizu found himself telling the summoned creature all about his life with the crone. It felt good to confess the things out loud. The horrible first year where he’d cried himself to sleep every night. How he used to scurry out of the way of the crone and avoid her in an attempt to evade her ire. It felt good to say out loud his confusion about her stealing him from his home. To this day, it still made no real sense. He had convinced himself that she had just been lonely. Like an adult who adopts a dog just to neglect it later once bored. Only, she had been bored immediately. And why steal a boy? No boy would ever be allowed to join a coven or become a proper apprentice. A fact that was pointed out to him on every occasion whenever another witch visited.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“Maybe it was to spite your family.”
Kizu stopped abruptly. He looked down at Ione in his arms. She lazily looked back up at him.
She flinched and muttered a curse as he set her down. Then he sat down beside her, back against the dungeon’s wall.
“What do you mean?” he finally asked.
“Witches hold grudges. And they never forgive. Everyone knows that. If your family did anything to piss one off, I promise you she’d retaliate.”
“Then why not just kill me? Seems a lot simpler solution.”
“They already thought you were dead. That goal was accomplished. But this way, once your family finally got their plans back in order, a corrupted version of you could be dropped back on their doorstep. It’s more damaging to have kept you alive to further disrupt their lives.”
Kizu remained silent for a minute, thinking over her idea. It made a twisted sort of sense. He hardly considered himself corrupted or broken, but how would his parents see him? He wasn’t the same boy they’d last seen years ago.
“Why were you talking?” Ione asked. “It woke me up.”
“Sorry. I just needed to break the silence. It felt refreshing to unload talking to something and it took my mind off our situation. Even if it was to a fire-eating flying abomination.”
“Don’t you have your familiar to talk to?”
Kizu shrugged. “It’s different. Mort understands everything I went through. Just as I understand his life before we met. It was part of the initial ritual. There’s nothing to tell him really.”
Ione’s eyes widened. “You’re really bonded with your familiar.”
“Yes. Obviously.”
“No, I mean, like to a degree where most people would risk losing their humanity. I won’t claim to be an expert on familiars, but most of the time they’re usually not that different from a summoned creature. They’re usually considered a tool or a pet. The ritual you went through makes it sound like your equal companions.”
“We are,” Kizu said without hesitation. “He’s a better brother to me than my actual brother.”
“Well…I’ve met your brother before. It’s not a high bar.”
Again, Kizu tried to focus on his bond with Mort. He tried to ask him to tell Roba what happened. And again, Mort dismissed him. He sent back his irritation with Kizu for not bringing him anything to eat.
Kizu sighed. He supposed this was what Ione meant by equal companion. He wondered briefly about how other mages’ familiars obeyed them absolutely. He hardly wanted that for Mort though. It sounded like slavery.
“We need to focus on getting out of here,” Kizu said. “Do you have any ideas?”
“If we head back in the tunnel we fell through, I could summon something to fly us out pretty easily.”
Kizu blinked. Of course. It was that easy.
“Do you know the way back?” he asked.
“How would I know?” she shot back, incredulous. “I’ll remind you; I’ve been unconscious and being carried around like a sack of rice.”
“So, you can’t sense where the other creature you summoned is at?” Kizu’s hopes dropped. “Because I have no idea which way leads back there.”
“No.” She sighed and laid her head back against the stone wall to stare up at the ceiling. “I innately dismiss my summons if I get too far away while unconscious. There is training I could do to fix that. But I never thought it would be worth the effort.”
They stayed silent for a bit. Kizu listened to the noises of the dungeon. The soft drip of water echoing down from a cavern. The hiss of the closest river of fire. The sound of Ione breathing next to him.
“My foot hurts,” Ione said.
“I’m pretty certain it’s broken.”
“Wow, are you a trained medic? Very astute observation.”
“You’re the one who pointed out something obvious first.”
“I was complaining. Not explaining.”
Kizu rolled his eyes. “Have you ever broken anything before?”
“Yes.” She paused. The silence stretched to the point where Kizu assumed she didn’t feel like expounding. But then she continued, “When I was little, my sister was always studying. She loved spellcraft more than anything. But she could never quite get the hang of summoning. It irritated her to no end. One day, she was explaining to me how it was theoretically supposed to work, just mindlessly venting, and I decided to give it a try. It was so easy. Everything just clicked for me.”
“And she didn’t take it well?”
Ione let out a humorless laugh. “Probably not in the way you think. No, it made her furious. My position in her life altered from sister to her first rival. She wanted nothing else to do with me. Nothing, except to compare summons. Meanwhile, she threw herself into her studies. Every book about summoning she could get her hands on, she read. I tried faking incompetence, hoping things would finally go back to normal if she proved herself better than me. But it just made her angrier. She somehow always knew when I self-sabotaged. Then, one day, she came up to me looking incredibly smug. She performed a summoning. But she meshed too much of her intent into the monster. It attacked me. It didn’t have real teeth, just hardened gums. But it still managed to shatter almost every bone in my left hand.”
Kizu glanced over at her left hand. It was knit with its twin behind her head. It looked normal, unscarred.
“My parents never found out. Sene healed it perfectly. Even back then she was a prodigy at Rejuvenation and Restoration. She never asked me not to tell them, but what would be the point in ratting her out? After that day though, she never tried to summon anything again. I don’t know if it’s out of fear or defeat. And the distance between us never closed.”
Kizu studied the opposite stone wall. It was charcoal black with small, cup sized divots. Methodically, he counted them and let his mind wander to his own siblings. He didn’t remember falling asleep. He had no intention of falling asleep. But still, he dreamed.