Blood Curse Academia - Orientation

Chapter IV (4)- Welcome to Shinzou Academy

The next few days followed a simple pattern. Every morning an obnoxious bleating noise would wake him up and not stop until he went downstairs to the breakfast table. He’d sit there with his family as they ate soup and rice in silence. Then he’d promptly go back to sleep until the evening. When he woke up, a cold lunch would be sitting outside his door. If anything was edible for Mort, the monkey demanded it with hums and Kizu forfeited it immediately.

Dinners were by far the most difficult portion of his new life. Thankfully, they didn’t go out to eat again, but even still the chopsticks they used to eat drove him mad. He wanted to just spear the food through like a kabob. At one point, he followed through with the temptation and received an hour-long lecture about table manners for his troubles, allwhile Finn smirked mercilessly from across the table.

After dinner every evening, he spent his time reading. The house’s library proved to be extremely different from the crone’s. Not a single book was even remotely similar. Instead of water-damaged sheets of ancient papyrus listing off ingredients for a potion of deep slumber - half of which called for reagents from animals long extinct - this library contained books on politics and how to influence others socially, rather than with magic, and all of them looked like they’d been printed yesterday. Most of them he found incredibly dull and repetitive. It seemed like the authors were actively trying to copy the sentiments of their peers, with only a token effort made to change the wording. Without fail, he found the ‘make eye contact’ tip in every single book, along with the ‘firm handshake’ maxim. But after abandoning those books out of sheer boredom, he found a small stash of fictional adventure books. Finn’s name was stenciled on the inside cover of each one in a mark of ownership. Surprisingly, Kizu found them really fun and engaging. The longest running series was about an archmage-turned-pirate who ruled the seas, liberating people from a tyrannical mainland government.

However, when he approached Finn about them, thinking of maybe connecting with his brother through shared interest, the younger boy got incredibly red-faced and stormed off. Kizu was quickly coming to question why he bothered. To drive that point home,all of Finn’s books disappeared from the shelves a few hours later.

At night, Kizu and Mort scavenged the mountainside for food. They found both a small chestnut tree and a small peach tree not too far away. They were hardly Mort’s favorite foods, but far better than nothing.

On their final night at the mansion, they sat by the peach tree and ate under the stars. Mort wiped his tiny juice-covered hands in Kizu’s hair as he ate, then licked the rest off of his palms.

“We should stock up on these. We don’t know what options the academy will have for you. Better if we have something to fall back on for a few days.”

Mort purred and climbed up onto his head. They stared down at the city spread out beneath them. Daitoshi. His family had dozens of maps of the Hon empire in their library, but no amount of lines on parchment could depict the true grandeur of the city.

Every imaginable color of light twinkled and moved down below. The city looked alive. The mansion, removed from it all, felt unnaturally clean and alien in comparison. It lacked any of the energy he saw in that city’s dazzling skyline. It reminded him of the jungle’s vibrant life. While the crone’s home had been cramped and uncomfortable at times, there had always been something happening. He couldn’t wait to put his family’s empty building behind him.

The mansion felt like a completely foreign place to both him and Mort. He hoped he would enjoy the island a bit more than this, though a part of him regretted accepting his place in the dorms so quickly. The more he strained his memory from his life before the witch’s basin, the more he recalled fond experiences with Anna in the villa. Of course, every time he dwelled on it, the larger part of him recalled that living here meant sharing a living space with Finn. So all regrets died soon after they were born.

That night he went to bed earlier than he would have back in the basin, before even the sunrise. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to help him much. He still felt dead on his feet when they left the next morning. He dozed off in the carriage until his father gripped his shoulder and shook him awake.

“Quickly, or you’ll be late for the send-off. If you miss your room assignment, there won’t be another opening for at least two days.”

“My room?” Kizu asked, still groggy. He had no idea what room his father was talking about. A glance out the window showed him the carriage was parked in the middle of the city.

“Yes, yes, now come along or be left behind.”

So Kizu did as bidden, too tired to ask any more questions. They left the carriage behind and approached a large stone building. It appeared to be a renovated ancient ruin. It looked utterly out of place compared to the rest of the city’s modern Hon architecture. The style was completely different with stone pillars and tall windows. Its structure almost appeared crooked in comparison to everything else around it, as if it had sunken into the ground unevenly. Nobody else seemed to find anything off about it, though. People bustled in and out of it, just like any of the other surrounding buildings. The majority of people in the area wore the finer garments of the upper class. Some more traditional kimonos, but most, like his parents, opted to wear tailored suits and jackets. He noted a few street rats loitering outside the building, hocking newspapers and shining shoes. He also spotted at least one of them picking a well-dressed man’s pocket.

He made certain not to lose sight of his family as they navigated through the throng of people. The passages inside the building were no less crowded, and they were interwoven like a spider’s web. White marble statues looked down at him in clear distaste. He noticed them shift on their pedestals as he passed, frowning at his back.

Finally, they halted outside a door. His mother removed Finn’s overcoat and started fussing over his tie. At that point Kizu came to the realization that while Finn wore a uniform, he was still wearing a change of the clothes given to him by the Elites before his interrogation. Earlier in the week he had declined the over-the-top clothing his parents had offered, instead only accepting an equally plain, uninteresting shirt and pants. He also still had a set of clothes the crone had weaved for him a couple years ago in his bag, but he kept that a secret, as his mother had attempted to burn it the day after his arrival. As he looked Finn’s outfit up and down, he decided he’d made the correct decision. Silk frills adorned his brother’s elbows and his knees, and his necktie poofed out ridiculously from his chest. The shirt’s ruffles looked like bunched up seaweed.

“Now Finn, make certain to properly guide Kizu to the testing facility once you arrive. They’ll take care of everything else from there. Do you understand?” his mother asked his brother.

Finn made some token noises of agreement that Kizu knew to be insincere and then the two of them were pushed forward into the room.

“Wait, you’re not coming along with us?” Kizu asked as the door began to close behind them.

“No, no. Have fun, and stay safe.” His mother shooed them away.

“We will see you at the end of the semester,” his father said. “Make us proud!”

And just like that, the door slammed shut.

Kizu turned on his heel and examined the waiting room. A dozen other people roughly his age sat on couches and benches, waiting for whatever it was that came next. With the exception of the youngest few, each of them wore a uniform like Finn’s. Though, thankfully, Kizu noted that theirs all lacked the frills.

Kizu also noted that every single one of them, without exception, was gawking straight at him.

Finn, for his part, did his best to pretend they weren’t related and stepped away from Kizu the moment that they entered.

Trying to ignore the stares, Kizu walked to the far side of the room, towards a girl his age sitting alone on a couch. She looked around frantically as he approached, anywhere other than at him, and flinched when he sat down next to her.

“My name’s Kaga Kizu, mind if I sit here?” he said, trying to be polite.

The girl looked horrified as she excused herself and scampered away to a chair in the furthest corner of the room from him.

“Welcoming,” he muttered to himself. He sighed and rested his head against the back of the sofa. Mort climbed out of his bag and curled up around the back of his neck, causing several nearby students to begin whispering. A part of him was curious about what they were saying, but he was too tired to focus. He stroked the monkey’s back, ignoring the stares, until they both ended up drifting off.

He awoke with a start as the other students started scurrying out of the room. Nothing seemed different, but he followed them out anyways. Outside, students filled the passageways, emerging from dozens of other doors in the hall. Unsurprisingly, Finn was nowhere to be found.

“Testing facility,” Kizu said to Mort. “Just got to find where that is and everything will be sorted out in no time.”

Following the stream of people, they were quickly washed out into the open air. The building he exited had the same stone exterior as the one he had entered, but as he looked around his eyes widened. In books he’d seen depictions of the castles across the sea, stone fortresses that kept out invading armies. Hon didn’t have anything like that. The few castles he’d seen from his home country involved moats and layers of walls. Nothing like what he saw before him. These were instead towers that jutted up in stone spires. But, as he craned his neck to see the entire courtyard, he saw the familiar patterns of his home as well. The entire square seemed to be a hodgepodge of different architectural styles. As if someone had snatched the structural sensibilities of a dozen different nations, mashed them all together, and dumped the result out onto a single plot of land.

Whether it was because of his hair, his clothes, or the monkey perched on his head, people continued to give him quizzical looks as he passed through the courtyard. But no one appeared outright hostile like in the room that had brought him here. He took a bit of comfort in that, at least.

The students, like the buildings, seemed to be from all over. And not just in regards to their nationalities, either. He saw one person - creature? - in a student uniform whose head was covered completely in quills, like a porcupine. He spotted several other students with reptilian scales on their faces. And there was even a girl who seemed to float through the crowd, her feet dragging in the dirt behind her.

“Excuse me,” Kizu said to a boy who looked to also be from Hon. “Can you point me in the direction of the testing facility?”

The older boy looked at his hair and scoffed. Then he pointed left and walked away.

He asked three more students for directions. Each of them pointed in a completely different direction.

Kizu was quickly coming to the realization that the students of Shinzou Academy might not have a reputation for friendliness.

The sun, bearing down on him like a burning weight, made the walk more work than it had any right to be as he moved in the direction the latest student had pointed him toward. No signs or notices informed him of any testing place as the students’ numbers thinned out. After about half an hour of wandering and trying to find clues, he asked another person - this time an elderly adult who he assumed was a faculty member of some kind. As he approached, he noticed the patterns across his face. Instead of flesh, his skin looked like the sanded down grains of wood one might see on a puppet. The man swept the cobblestones with a sparsely bristled broom and didn’t even look up as Kizu spoke to him.

“Oh, lost?” he said, his voice kind and understanding. “First-years need to take their test before being escorted to their dormitory. To reach the testing facilities, please pass under the statue of Harold and through the Root Corridors, then make your way up the western tower on its left-hand side. It’s a straightforward path. If you reach the drowned men, you’ve gone too far. There should be signs for other first years once you get close.”

He thanked the old wooden man and turned around to follow the new directions.

The statue of Harold, it turned out, was just a giant stone foot. He watched as a younger student, not wearing any uniform, hopped down a tunnel under the pinky toe. Kizu followed.

As he jumped down into the hole, the toe of the statue shifted. His feet hit the ground a moment later, the impact rattling through his bones.

The Root Corridors fascinated Kizu. As he wandered down the tunnel, he spotted dozens of different rare varieties of tree roots that he’d only ever seen sketches of. He longed to harvest them to resupply his now nonexistent stock of brewing ingredients. Mentally, he took inventory on everything he recognized. Spotted oak roots weaved through the dirt overhead alongside banyans and tamarinds. He stopped and stared at a birch root. At first glance, it looked natural and healthy, but the longer he stared, the more he noticed the off-color.

“Out of all the roots to stop and stare at, why choose this one?” a jovial voice asked.

“Something is wrong with it.” Kizu glanced at the portly man who’d posed the question, then focused back on the root. “I think maybe it’s been poisoned. It looks ill.”

“An interesting deduction.” As the portly man approached, Kizu noticed he reeked of a thousand different spices, all of them smothered by the overwhelming stench of garlic. “Why jump to poison though? Perhaps it’s only been overwatered.”

“That’s not impossible, but the soil around it is dry. It looks more like the nutrients in the soil are off. It wouldn’t have grown so large if the soil was normally like that, so something must have changed recently.”

“Hm. Very interesting. And you’re a first-year student?”

“Sort of,” he said. He found himself uncommonly relaxed and words started tumbling out. “I’m sixteen, but I was abducted as a child. and raised by my kidnapper. I was recently found and brought back. And now my parents signed me up here.” While nothing he said was a secret, it felt odd divulging it so openly.

“Abducted? That’s terrible. By whom, if you don’t mind my prying?”

“The crone.”

“Is that a title?”

“It’s the only name she ever referred to herself as.”

“I’m unfamiliar with her. So, a witch raised you?” He sounded delighted with curiosity. “I thought all they wanted from boys was a meal? But that explains the green hair and familiar. You become more interesting by the moment, young man. I look forward to seeing you in my class.”

Kizu watched as the chubby man turned and began to walk down the path towards the statue foot. Then he stopped.

“Oh, and you’re not too far off. The plant is haunted. Don’t be taking any slivers of it without supervision. Mishandling it often results in radical liquefaction.” And with that, he rounded a corner and disappeared.

Haunted. In one of the crone’s old manuscripts, he’d read of how a haunting might corrupt living creatures. But it had spoke mostly of minor possession that sickened and caused mood swings in humans. It had said nothing of plants. He wondered if the haunting of plants amplified the magical properties normally drawn out from them. He wished he had a way to test the theory.

As the smell of the man cleared, so too did Kizu’s mind. It wasn’t nearly as potent as a truth serum, but the man wore a perfume that loosened his tongue. Kizu’s mind thumbed through possible ingredients as he continued down the tunnel.

He stopped in front of a stone stairway that led upward. An old wooden sign hung above it.

WE TE R TO E.

He followed it up, but soon became uncertain of his path. There wasn’t a sign of anyone else, no matter how far he walked. After some time, he considered retracing his steps to see where he’d deviated, but decided to stick with it a bit further.

When he reached the top of the tower, his fears were put to rest. A group of first years sat there on the floor, an old man standing in the center of them with a clipboard in hand.

“Wait,” Kizu said as he examined the old man, who also had a wooden face. “You’re the same man who gave me directions. How did you get here before me?”

The wooden man swung his head towards him. His empty mouth hung open as he spoke. “My name is James. I apologize, you must be mistaking me for one of my brothers. Please give me your full name and I will locate the appropriate test materials for you.”

“Kaga Kizu.”

“Thank you, I ask for your patience as we wait for all first years to arrive.”

He took a seat on the ground. The girl next to him said something, and at first, he thought she just spoke too quietly. When he prompted her to say it again, though, he realized she spoke a different language altogether. He made an apologetic gesture, but she frowned and looked away as if he’d insulted her. Then her ears folded in on themselves, blocking any more attempts of communication.

Kizu counted about three score first years. Not very many in total. He suspected more of them had already been tested. And he was easily the oldest in the room. One or two others trickled in after he sat down, but then several minutes passed. He was beginning to wonder if maybe the test was some sort of arbitrary task like figuring out what they wanted.

Then a boy rushed inside, panting and looking around the room with eyes too big for a human skull. He wore no shirt, showing off a bare chest speckled with gray scales that glistened with sweat.

“Harvey Hugo,” he hissed between gasps for breath. As he spoke, Kizu noted that his teeth were filed down to points.

“Very good. Now that all of you are in attendance, please remain silent as you fill out the test in front of you.” The wooden man raised an arm stiffly, as if on strings, and papers and quills appeared in front of them.

Kizu picked up the first stack and leafed through it. It asked questions about political alliances and positions of the known world’s nations. He barely even understood the questions as it went into hypothetical solutions to civic issues based on the law as written. He had no idea the succession details of the Hon Emperor and how that deferred from Edgeland’s democratic leaders. Suddenly, he wished he had bothered to listen to his parents while they gossiped over dinner. He strained his memory to recall anything of their conversations, but his search came up blank.

He skimmed through each question but didn’t have the slightest clue for anything asked.

Deciding it was a lost cause, he picked up the stack labeled Numerology. It was filled with complex equations combined with different graphs and statistics. Everything in it went far beyond his very basic understanding of arithmetic. Feeling grim, he set that one to the side as well.

The third stack was Brewing. His heart leapt, but he tempered his excitement. He still only knew the very basics of brewing techniques and recipes, as the crone had often reminded him. However, once he started the test, he found himself fighting a smile as he answered the questions. It listed some of the easiest potions to brew and only asked the most rudimentary questions about the process, like if you stirred them clockwise or counterclockwise. They didn’t even ask for a proper list of the ingredients, only that you pick them from a list with a true or false. Once, he caught an awkwardly phrased trick question which listed crickets as a reagent instead of grasshoppers, but that was the only thing in the whole packet to give him pause. He crossed it out and wrote grasshoppers beside it.

In the end, none of the potions even called for magical ingredients. Everything listed was mundane, things you’d find in any forest in the northern hemisphere. It barely even touched on true herbology.

Surely the other tests hadn’t been this bare-bones? But, as he glanced around the room, other students sweated over the questions, staring at them intently. They looked as he’d felt minutes earlier.

“Please refrain from looking at other test takers' pages,” James said without looking at him.

Kizu picked up the next stack. History. The crone had taught him well over a thousand years of history. And, if this test left out political history, then he thought it was fair to say he knew a decent bit. But as he looked through the questions his confidence quickly died. While this test focused more on the actual events, rather than the politics involved, the questions listed historic occurrences, some of which he was familiar with, and then left spaces blank for the dates. Kizu felt affronted. The idea of boiling down these historical behemoth movements to a single year, it felt so idiotic. Why did it matter if Hon invaded Tross on the first of the month or the tenth? What mattered was that it had occurred, and the atrocities that had followed. It irritated him that these people had put the entire test’s emphasis on a date.

As he flipped to the final pages, some of the questions allowed him to write in his own response. There, he found something he could properly answer. “Why were the witches of the Hon Basin exiled and trapped within their jungle?” An easy question that he filled out in depth. He filled the entire page with his vast knowledge of the subject.

He reviewed his single answer with pride, before moving on to the last stack of papers. Astronomy. He felt confident in his knowledge of star constellations and their meanings, right up until he started reading it. Nothing was listed by the names he knew. He struggled through the test as he tried to associate the names of constellations on the test with the names the crone had taught him.

Underneath the Astronomy stack, a single sheet of paper, labeled Music, asked two questions - ‘What instrument do you play?’ Followed by, ‘What do you evaluate your skill to be? Novice, Average, Expert, Professional.’ Kizu played nothing. So he just left the questions blank, like so many others.

Only one other student finished before him, a girl with porcupine-like quills obscuring her face. She raised her hand in a tiny wave when she noticed him looking.

While waiting for everyone else to finish testing, Kizu leaned against the wall and dozed off. Nobody questioned him, and he regained bleary consciousness as the last few tests were finishing up. His aching body told him he’d slept in that awkward sitting position longer than he’d intended.

As the final first-year finished, James approached and picked up the stacks of paper, bringing them to a table at the back of the tower. Then he brought out dozens of vials and passed them around.

“Please press this to your thumb, it will extract blood which we can use to identify your skill levels in different fields of magic.”

Kizu stared at it, horrified. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. But as he frantically looked around, all the other first years did as James requested without hesitation.

“You can’t be serious,” Kizu said.

“Are you facing a difficulty, Kaga Kizu?” James asked.

“Yes. Difficulty understanding why you’re so blatantly collecting our blood in preservative vials!”

“I apologize if this practice displeases you. It is designed to help place you in classes of your appropriate skill level.”

“Find some other way to test me. I’m not doing this.” Using one of those blood samples, someone could easily create cursed objects or completely destroy his health with minimal effort. It was especially frightening based on the unfriendliness of the people he’d met since leaving the basin. It would be like swimming in a pond full of caimans and expecting not to be bit.

“Once again, I apologize if this action distresses you. I assure you that the blood will be properly disposed of after your evaluation.”

“Stop being so dramatic,” one girl said. “You’re acting like you’ve never done a blood withdrawal before. It’s silly.”

Kizu’s eyes widened. “You mean this is common practice?”

“Mr. Kaga, if you do not comply, we will be forced to take action to suspend you.”

Everyone else in the room looked either irritated, amused, or confused.

Slowly, he brought the vial to his thumb. It pricked him and a trickle of red blood settled in the bottom of the glass. Perfectly preserved blood. The sight made him feel ill. He took a moment to mark it with his quill’s ink before he handed it over to James.

“If it’s being properly disposed of, then you won’t mind if I watch it be destroyed, correct?”

“Your concern will be noted, and your request sent to the headmaster’s queries.” James took each vial and set them on the back table.

“Professor Arclight will now see you down at the northern courtyard,” James continued. “She will be overseeing your final evaluation. Combat.”