Chapter IV.LIV (4.54) - A Deal

  Kizu stood in Aoi’s laboratory facing the necromancer down. She defensively stood between him and the largest of her vats, arms outstretched as if to shield the vat from him.

  “No way! It’s my clone!”

  “Just hear me out, I think this is the best solution—”

  “Use the spare Sojan body if you must. You can’t touch this.”

  “I would, except the coven doesn’t accept men. And the original soul is human, not from a gnome. I don’t even know if her soul would be able to adapt to such a wildly different body. You know that better than anyone.”

  “That witch killed my brother!”

  That was an argument that Kizu had no rebuttal to. He chewed on his tongue as he considered what to say next. Meanwhile Aoi’s glare stared him down, a fire in her dark eyes.

  “She’ll kill Ione too, unless we do something about it,” Kizu finally replied. “This is the best solution I can come up with.”

  “I know you’ve been devising soul disrupting potions,” Aoi pointed out. “Use one of those.”

  “I’ve made progress,” Kizu admitted. “But not enough. I can destroy a soul, but my recipes lack finesse. I can’t surgically dissect a piece out of a soul. I even tried experimenting going the other way and made it extremely potent, but nothing works. Either too strong and eliminate the original soul alongside the parasite, or too weak and it does nothing but cause a few days of soul sickness.”

  Aoi ground her teeth and she glanced over her shoulder at the clone.

  “There’s another reason as well,” Kizu continued. “Stina said if I offer a soul to the Tross covens, their protection will extend to me. At least for a time. They’ll be able to keep Chimae under control and I’ll finally be safe from the Hon witches.”

  “Witches,” Aoi spat. “I’m so tired of witches!” She dropped her arms and began pacing around her laboratory, tugging on her braids and muttering to herself.

  Kizu looked at the juvenile version of Ai floating in the vat. Even with his assistance supplying the age enhancing potions, the body was still only a few years old at most. It was curled up, black hair floating off its scalp. With her de-aged to such a degree, he could see Aoi’s resemblance to her sister, Kiiroi, even more clearly than back at their family’s palace. The body looked more like a toddler version of Kiiroi than it did Aoi.

  “Ahhh!” Aoi screamed in frustration. She hurled a scalpel at the wall. It stuck there, wobbling on impact.

  Kizu let the princess vent a bit more, watching as she tossed together bone amalgamations with magic only to burst them into pieces with blasts of necromantic energy. Eventually, Aoi sat down on the floor among the scattered bones and just held her head.

  “Is it difficult to create those?” Kizu asked. He sat down next to her.

  “Create what?” Aoi muttered, not looking at him

  “Those bone constructs. Like the one you fought me with at the obstacle course. Isn’t it difficult to tie together different dead bodies like that?”

  “There’s a trick to it. A bad necromancer fuses the souls together. A good necromancer segregates and delegates the sections.”

  “Doesn’t fusing them together make it easier?”

  “To control? Yes. But it’s weaker. You’re spreading it thinner that way. It’s better to have them separate and give one soul authority over the rest. Especially if you intend to maintain the personality of the remains’ previous occupant. Personality gets a lot more muddled if you start grafting souls together. Of course, that isn’t as applicable here where the bones are so old and disconnected from their soul.

  “And it’s important to note that authority falls apart if the undead separate too much. So placing one in charge of the others has its limitations. But I still feel the parts of the whole are more powerful and it gives me the ability to repurpose the bones easier in future projects as well.”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “I see.”

  A bit of silence stretched between them.

  “Sojan’s golem is out of juice?” Aoi finally asked.

  In response Kizu pulled out the black, serrated dagger and passed it to her. She took it and ran a finger down the flat of the blade.

  “It ran dry a while ago,” Kizu said. “ I think I actually have cracked the ichor recipe. I need to let it simmer for a couple days first before I know for certain. But he was weirdly at peace with going to sleep for a while. I think his time inside the jellyfish changed him.”

  “His body isn’t ready either,” Aoi said, gesturing at the other clone vat in the room. “Maybe if it wasn’t a gnome, we might be able to insert him. But it's still months off before it will have enough blood to support his consumption. Even my toddler clone is already bigger than that body.” She lapsed into another silence for a minute, staring back at her clone’s body. “I hate this. It’s my body she’d be running around in.”

  Kizu considered. “What if…what if we changed your body? I think I could develop a potion or salve to let it develop in a bit of a different trajectory. It would still be your flesh and blood…but with a bit of a different appearance at least.”

  Aoi sighed. “Fine. But on one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I want the body cursed. If it ever sets foot inside Hon, I want it to burst into flames…wait, no. I want it to liquify. Painfully.”

  “I don’t know any hexes,” Kizu said, exasperated.

  “That’s my condition. Take it or leave it.”

  Kizu closed his eyes and considered. Aoi sounded dead set on this course. And it made sense. A younger clone of her with an evil witch inside it was a lot to ask for from someone. Especially when that someone was royalty. Could this actually mess up future royal successions? Probably not. But still….

  “Fine. Just give me a couple days to figure something out. I’ll ask Stina to help me after Parents’ Day.”

  Aoi nodded slowly. “I know I’ve asked this before. But I still don’t understand, why can’t you cast hexes? Shouldn’t you be a master at the craft?”

  “I…I think I actually might be able to. Or, at least I think I could at one point.” Kizu mulled over his response. “I have two things standing in the way. One is a mental block that the crone put over my memories. I don’t actually remember how to cast the spells. Or even which hexes I could cast in the past.”

  “I can get in touch with my family’s contacts,” Aoi offered. “It’s extremely rare, but I know mental healers do exist.”

  “That leads me to my second reason. I have a chunk of my soul missing. And since it’s capable of curses, I don’t think I would be able to.” Again, Kizu hesitated before continuing. “And even if I was still able, I think those memories were removed for a reason. From all reports, my other self doesn’t seem all that…sane.”

  Aoi slowly nodded in understanding. “You worry bringing back the memories to access the information might also break you mentally.”

  “That’s my theory,” Kizu admitted.

  “Capture your evil twin and question him about it,” Aoi suggested.

  Kizu smiled. “Honestly, I’m hoping I never have to see him again. I don’t think the information is worth the headache and danger.”

  Aoi scoffed. “Somehow I doubt that’s going to happen. You should prepare for his inevitable return. Also, if you think those memories could make you snap, take care around any mind mages. It likely is a lot easier for them to unblock something covered up than other methods of causing madness in their victims.”

  “I was already pretty unsettled by mind mages. Thanks for adding an additional reason to fear them,” Kizu said dryly.

  She patted him on the shoulder then stood up. “Anytime. Glad we were able to sort through that. Get those hexes etched into the clone’s body and we can talk more about this.” She still didn’t sound happy about the prospect. “Do you have anywhere to be right now? I could use your help with a different experiment.”

  “Sene has demanded the Student Council to all report to her in preparation for Parents’ Day. She’s meant to give closing remarks to the event and wants feedback on it.”

  “Annoying,” Aoi grumbled. “I heard her discussing that speech with Krimpit after our last Politics S class. Something about uniting in the face of tragedy.”

  After bidding Aoi goodbye, Kizu stepped through the portal over to Taroe’s home. Anata ran up to him as he entered the living room and pushed a paper up towards his face.

  “Woah, what’s this?” Kizu took a step back to get a better look at the paper. It was a drawing of a teenager with green hair in a blue academy uniform, a girl with an eyepatch, another girl with a red fox tail, and a white fox at her heels. Over to the side was a man with his body split between two distinctly different looks and a smirk on his face. Next to him was an angry bearded man. And lastly, there was a girl passed out on the far side with Z’s over her. Scrawled across the top was the Universal Script’s character for ‘Family.’

  Anata pushed the paper at him again.

  Kizu smiled and tenderly took the picture from her. He quickly enchanted the gift, the spell making the paper more durable.

  “Thank you.”

  Anata nodded happily then darted off.

  Kizu stared at the drawing for a long time. Notably, there was no sign of his parents or Finn. But there was a smudged space behind Anata. Kizu wondered if that had been meant for Otochi or Anna.

  “Anna,” he whispered. “Where are you? Why did you leave?”

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