Chapter III.XXVII (3.27) - Mind Mage

  Kizu bolted from the room, not explaining himself to his friends or Hone as he scrambled through the tunnel and hoisted himself up into the abandoned farmhouse.

  Mort was over in the barn behind the farmhouse. That much information Kizu still clearly gleaned through their bond. Everything else though was muddled by absolute fear. When he tried seeing through Mort’s eyes, he only got the image of hay. Mort had buried his head and was shaking with fear under a haystack.

  Kizu shook with fear of his own mingling with Mort’s rush of the singular emotion. He plowed his way through the overgrown field over to the barn, trampling the wild crops and weeds. Only once he reached the barn door did he stop and consider his situation.

  Kizu dissected what he felt from Mort in an attempt to better understand what the monkey had found. Mort was afraid, but Kizu felt no pain from the bond. It should be mingled into the emotion. In fact, the more he delved into the emotion, the more he realized there was just an undirected terror emanating from his familiar. A hex. Mort had been hexed by someone.

  Kizu’s fear morphed into anger.

  Was this meant to be some sort of trap for him? If he had been thinking even a tiny bit clearer earlier, Kizu might have strongly considered using his bond as an anchor and jumping to Mort’s side. Directly into the lap of whoever had hexed his familiar. Luckily, he had lost all his brain cells in his fear and just ran this direction instead.

  Kizu looked over the field, scanning it. And not just with his eyes. He used his spellsense as well. The house itself stuck out, an enchantment had been set on the building. Probably something to help Hone deter the villagers from entering it.

  Next, a decaying black kite caught his attention. It was battered but still hung in the air over the field, the shape of an eagle. There was something magical about its aura. Not an enchanted object, but something else. An…undead maybe? It felt sort of similar to a skeleton. Regardless of the fact he’d stomped past it only seconds ago, he still ducked down behind a rotting crate. Better to be wary and out of sight.

  He wanted to look through Mort’s eyes and examine the area, but the monkey still had his face in the ground, buried under a pile of rotting straw. But now that he was closer to his familiar, Kizu could at least better pinpoint Mort’s location relative to himself. In the far corner of the hayloft.

  Even through the wood Kizu could sense a few different pinpricks of magic. Thankfully not too near Mort. But there was definitely magic inside of the barn. Not something to barrel towards unprepared.

  Kizu overlaid himself with an illusion. It camouflaged him with the barn’s wood. And not a moment too soon. His friends exited the farmhouse’s front door, obviously looking for him. From their angle, they would have seen him a mere couple seconds earlier. Anata clutched Ione’s arm as she frantically searched for him. If they approached or tried to enter the barn first, any amount of surprise he’d have on the hexer would be lost. He needed to eliminate the threat quickly and efficiently.

  He lightly tapped the wood, trying to estimate its width. Then he jumped inside the building. It was less than half a meter of movement, but it terrified him not knowing exactly what he was jumping into. He put a lot of concentration into the spell, worried about any beacons.

  In the moment he performed the spell he recalled the blood transfusion. His heart skipped a beat as his trajectory went off, only bringing him a third of the intended distance forward.

  Thankfully, he jumped into a rusted bucket and some overgrown grass. Nothing alive or that made noise. He carefully pulled his boot out from the ground and removed the bucket from around his ankle.

  Beams of light shone through the barn’s roof, illuminating patches of the dilapidated floor. Mort was in the loft above. And sitting on the loft’s edge was a girl roughly his age with white hair and a wide-brimmed, pointed black hat. She looked nonplussed as she stared down at the scrying ball in her lap, her legs dangling from the edge. She kicked them back and forth in a lazy rhythm.

  A white owl was perched on a rafter beam nearby, pruning its feathers. Not a naturally white bird like a snowy owl, Kizu noted. It was an albino barn owl with a heart shaped face and beady red eyes. Definitely the girl’s familiar.

  It took Kizu a moment of examination before he recognized the girl. She’d been at Roku’s shop the other day. Looking at his explosives section…and the Emperor had been assassinated by a necromantic explosion days later. Suddenly it made a lot more sense why Roku was so nervous when Kizu mentioned helping with the assassination investigation. Even if he was innocent of any wrongdoing, having his shop tied to it in any way would be really bad for him.

  But the girl had looked familiar to Kizu even before then. He couldn’t recall why though. Was she the apprentice of one of the witches in the crone’s coven? Maybe…what was it that Hone had said? That he might know one of the members of the Death Party. It could be her that he referred to, but Kizu didn’t have anything other than a vague recollection.

  That didn’t matter though. He could ponder her identity later. Time to act.

  The necklace around his neck hid him from detection magic and others’ spellsense. He trusted in it as he slowly shimmied along the edge of the barn’s wall. The young witch remained absorbed by her scrying orb, but she wasn’t the true threat in the room at the moment. Owls had uncanny senses. Not only did they have keen vision, but they also had phenomenal hearing. Kizu stashed his shoes in his storage ring and walked barefoot, mindful of every step.

  Thankfully, the barn itself made groans and creaks unprompted, which covered his own footfalls.

  Just as he almost slipped under the loft, a few meters from the ladder, the owl’s head swiveled, eyes focused on Kizu.

  He froze in place. He stopped breathing. His camouflage wasn’t perfectly matching up with the wooden boards behind him. An astute enough onlooker could find the inconsistencies in the grain or how the boards matched up. The owl continued to stare at him for several long seconds.

  “Rou,” the witch said, not looking up from her orb. “Go check on that group outside. I lost track of Kizu. See if you can spot him for me.”

  The bird’s attention snapped away from him. It spread its wings and launched itself into the air. A moment later, it flew through one of the gaps in the ceiling and disappeared.

  Kizu remained motionless for a little longer, staring up at the witch from below. She knew his name. One of the Emperor’s assassins knew him by name. Not good.

  His priority was rescuing Mort. But he also wanted to subdue this witch and ask her some questions.

  “Ugh,” the girl lay back, falling out of view save for her dangling legs. “So annoying.”

  Quietly, Kizu climbed up the ladder. As he pulled him up the fifth rung, he felt a crippling fear slam into him. He barely had the presence of mind to shield himself with a barrier of antimagic before he fell from the ladder. Even still his grip slipped and he had to fumble to keep himself up.

  That explained a few things. The witch constantly fed her blood into a fear hex cast in a radius around her like an aura. She likely didn’t even realize Mort was near her. Then, after another moment of analysis, he realized it wasn’t a hex at all. This was a mental spell. Hexes usually altered something about the person, changing them. This directly attacked his thoughts. Even novice mental mages were both incredibly rare and incredibly dangerous. And this didn’t seem like a novice spell.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  At the top of the ladder he peered over the lip of the loft. The witch lay back, holding her orb in her hands above her head. Whatever she saw in the scrying orb, Kizu couldn’t see it from his angle. Though he thought it was likely his companions.

  His enchanted necklace kept her from tracing him with any divination spells. She likely had been tracking him by instead targeting one of his friends with the spell. Once he ran off and left them behind, she lost sight of him.

  But he was at a loss at what to do next. He wanted to lose this witch as quickly as possible. He could gather up Mort and his friends then lay low in the crone’s hut which was protected by divination spells. Or he could attack. She likely had anti-jumping measures on her so he couldn’t risk a direct attack. He could likely appear next to her and slide his sword between her ribs faster than she could react. But that would mean killing the woman. She must be an integral member of the Death Party. That meant taking her out would weaken the group considerably. But being able to question her would reward him with priceless information. A non-lethal option might be preferable.

  Mort’s terror still battered against his emotions, making Kizu restless. He looked down at the icy ring on his finger. He needed to end this quickly.

  Before he could make up his mind, the orb slipped from the witch’s hands and slammed into her nose with a crack.

  “Ow,” the witch muttered, sitting up suddenly and holding her bloody face.

  The moment it smacked into her face, her spell faltered and Kizu felt Mort’s absolute terror wane slightly into confused fear.

  With his head somewhat more clear, Kizu sent Mort a strong impression of returning to him. He couldn’t quite convey thoughts through their bond, but Mort understood him well enough. The monkey jumped to his shoulder.

  The pop of the jump caused the witch to turn towards the pile of hay where Mort had just been. Her scrying orb rolled over to the side. Kizu wasn’t great at elemental spells and his blood still weakened him from the little strength he did have. But even still, he blasted the orb with as much wind as he could muster.

  It was just enough to change its rolling trajectory. Kizu watched it drop off the loft’s ledge. And he jumped away, gone before it smashed into the ground.

  The next moment he was back in the overgrown field. His friends all looked bewildered as he ran up to them.

  “We need to go,” Kizu said before they could say anything. “Now. There’s a mental mage. We need to get out of here before she finds us.”

  “A mental mage?” Basil arched an eyebrow. “I’ve never met one before.”

  “You don’t want to,” Ione said darkly. “Even without magic, they like to play with your head. They’re like Kizu’s ex. Nasty and always plotting.”

  “That was uncalled for,” Kizu muttered. “You’re not in any classes with her. What do you even know about Emilia?”

  “Just what Aoi told me,” Ione said.

  Before she could continue, Kizu cut her off.

  “It doesn't matter right now. We need to move out quickly. I’ll scry a message to Hone later explaining what happened. Unless we want our minds scrambled, we need to move.”

  Kizu boosted Anata onto his back and they took off, his friends right behind him.

  “For the record,” Basil huffed as they ran. “I agree with Ione’s earlier statement.”

  “What? About Emilia?”

  “Yes. She is a bit snake-ish. She actually went through a phase where she tried digging up my past before the headmaster shut down her investigations.”

  “You could have mentioned that before I started dating her.”

  Basil said something in his defense, but Kizu didn’t hear him. This was not the time for that conversation. Instead, he stared intently up at the sky. And, sure enough, he saw a white blur overhead. The owl familiar not only flew unnaturally fast, but Kizu had to focus his attention and flare his spellsense to make out the blur at all, otherwise his eyes simply slipped over it.

  Mages could cast spells through their familiars. He suspected it had some sort of memory altering aura spell like the fear one he’d experienced earlier. Something to keep it from being seen by the casual eye. An albino owl would be pretty conspicuous otherwise.

  He once again layered himself with an antimagic barrier, a task far more difficult to accomplish while running. But his command over spatial magic was decent enough that the barrier still went up, though it turned a bit shaky at times.

  Unfortunately, being able to see the owl and doing something about it were two entirely different things. He tried to create force barriers in its path to knock it out of the sky, but his barriers weren’t invisible. They had a greenish tint and the vines and leaves of a canopy decorating them. And while he managed to get them up quickly, he couldn’t do so fast enough to actually smack the bird from the air. Not from this distance. And once the owl dodged out of the way of three different barriers, it wised up and flew higher, circling them from above, far out of his range.

  Kizu dropped his antimagic barrier, the bird’s distance was far enough that the aura spell no longer hit him. He saw the white owl just as well without it. Small consolation.

  He refocused on his friends. They had been talking to him but he’d been too focused on his spells to hear them.

  “I don’t suppose either you have means in which to take out that owl?” Kizu pointed up at the bird overhead. “It’s the mind mage’s familiar.”

  Ione halted in place, causing the rest of them to slow to a stop and look back at her. She moved off the road and started scribbling in the dirt.

  “If you’d stop running for two seconds, I could get us all mounts,” Ione said as she worked. “You’re always so reactionary, Kizu.”

  A moment later, her summoning circle lit up and a large leathery bird emerged from it. Ione smiled at it and scratched its beak. It closed its multi-layered eyelids and preened under her touch. Then Ione broke away from it and pointed up at the white spec above them.

  The featherless bird cawed loudly and flapped its wings, sending up a cloud of dust across the road as it took flight.

  “She’s not magical,” Ione said as she admired her summon, “but she should be able to chase off any other bird in the sky.”

  Then she got to work on summoning two of the giant lizards they’d used down in the World Dungeon. They were subterranean creatures, not great at maneuvering in the jungle, but Ione assured them that they’d move at a decent pace so long as they stayed on the dirt road.

  Kizu noticed Ione swayed slightly as she climbed aboard her mount. That was her limit for her summons. While the lizard mounts also weren’t very magical, they were large.

  Ione and Basil rode one lizard while Kizu and Anata rode the other. Mort stuck to the jungle alongside the road, swinging and dashing between the trees, easily able to keep up with their mounts’ speed.

  Kizu watched the skies as the two avians fought. They swooped and clashed in the air. While Ione’s summon might not have the magic or dexterity of the familiar, it also could take damage without fear of death. And a hit to the owl was a hit to the mage. So it took only one close call for the familiar to retreat.

  As it disappeared from the skies overhead, Kizu let out a sigh of relief. They weren’t completely safe. The mage had been watching them through her scrying orb. She likely had several locations in the village picked out to scry from. So he led them off the road and into the jungle. He knew the area well enough to guide them back to the safety of the crone’s hut without the road.

  It was far slower going on the lizards in the jungle, but Kizu decided they were likely safer on the mounts. He and Mort could travel through far quicker on foot, but the others risked their lives if they moved in haste.

  Ione closed her eyes and appeared to doze off, but her summons remained active, following Kizu’s directions. Kizu also spotted her leathery bird creature over them in the few areas where the canopy opened up to the sky. Smart. It remained far, so as to not give away their location, but close enough to deter the witch’s familiar.

  The lizard skin flap that held him and Anata in place wasn’t made for the heat and humidity of the jungle. His legs were drenched in sweat. Or, at least, his human leg was. His monster leg appeared completely comfortable. It felt the heat, but no discomfort from it. It clearly had some type of innate heat resistance. As the adrenaline faded, his mind wandered and he wondered if he could harvest the scales of his leg for potion experimentation.

  “Well, that was an unpleasant chase,” Basil declared as they entered the crone’s property. “Aoi’s going to be annoyed that she wasn’t able to speak to Hone.”

  “She’ll have other opportunities,” Kizu said. He helped Anata down from the mount.

  But was it just a coincidence the witch happened to be at Hone’s hideout? Had they given away his location when they walked there from town? Or had the witch already been spying on the necromancer? Part of him hoped for the latter, that way he at least wouldn’t be guilty of leading the witch to Hone’s door. But both options were bad. And then there was the third option. The worst possibility.

  That Hone had sent for her after hearing from Kizu yesterday.

  And yet another question remained.

  Where was Shika?

  Ten Blood Curse Academia chapters (5 weeks) ahead of Royal Road.