Blood Curse Academia - Orientation

Chapter XXIV (24)- The Translation

In Enchanting C, he explained his predicament to Basil. The boy (and he really looked the part today, with a face that still retained more than its fair share of baby fat) waved away his words. He told Kizu not to worry about it. Any day worked just fine.

As he spoke to Basil, he couldn’t help wondering how the shapeshifter managed to cast spells at all. From what Kizu had seen when Basil passed out, the boy didn’t have traditional blood like a human. But the more he thought about it, the more it raised questions about magical plants and other natural phenomena. How did magic work for everything else in the world? He internally bookmarked the thought and tried to focus on their lecture.

Kateshi had handed out wooden scraps to each of the students and was explaining the use of glyphs in enchantments. Glyphs were a focus point for magic, similar to how a mage’s wand worked as a conduit. While enchantments became a great deal easier to produce when accompanied by glyphs, they also came with a very clear drawback, as the glyphs themselves became a point of weakness that could be broken.

Surprisingly, Kateshi allowed Kizu to practice his glyph work, passing out the wood and carving knife to him along with the rest of the class. Unfortunately, he soon realized that she likely let him work on carving glyphs only because she knew he wouldn’t have any luck actually enchanting them so long as the bracelet she’d forced on him still hung from his wrist. Carving practice was all he got from the class that day.

And carving proved to be a lot more frustrating than he’d imagined it would. Sure, he had whittled in the jungle occasionally as a child, but this was actual precision work. He couldn’t even test his glyphs to see how well he’d done. In the end, he tossed his mangled chunks of wood in the burnables basket on the way out of class.

He went through the motions in Astronomy E, excited by the prospect of finally being able to study something in class. But he was disappointed to find pretty much everything they discussed he had already mastered. He knew where the constellations were that Professor Grove focused on, and he already had managed to get through that portion of his studying to translate his knowledge over.

He thought back to his translation work on his sister’s letter. The books and papers still remained at the infirmary. The assistants there insisted that since he hadn’t officially checked the books out, he wasn’t permitted to leave the infirmary with them.

By the end of the day, he went back to the medical wing where an assistant ran some tests and put him back in the same bed as before. Before letting him get back to his studies, they fed him a meal of fruit and solid, bland bars. The same food as the day before. Kizu recognized the taste of the fruit as the same one his father had handed him back at the capital. What had his father said at the time? Something about restoring blood after his ‘complex illusion.’ Kizu rolled his eyes. The illusion he had created back then hadn’t been all that complex at all. Just a few images overlaid upon one another. He’d barely even animated them. It was nothing in comparison to what the crone used to constantly force him to weave together to hide her cottage from nosey explorers (not that she lived in a particularly busy part of the jungle).

Work on his translation continued at a frustratingly slow pace. The main problem he encountered was that each word had several meanings in Gnomish that relied on the context of the sentences, which resulted in him creating several pages of notes of words and their relationships. When he finally stopped for the night, his fingers felt frail from overuse. He flexed them as he looked over his most recent copy of the letter.

Little brother, I hope this message finds you well. I have spent the last six years honing my divination in an attempt to break the barrier between us. Everyone assumes you're dead, but I know you’re still alive. My senses are muddled, but of that I am certain. And I will find you or die trying. Recently I have met someone who I believe has the means to help.

Kizu was a little more than halfway through the translation. If all went well, he’d finish the rest of it tomorrow. So far though, it hadn’t given any real hints to where she might have gone. He felt a spike of annoyance at the crone for setting up such irrationally powerful wards. They were such overkill, it was a wonder the Elites had managed to find her at all.

That line of thought got him wondering if it might be possible to visit the crone in prison. She almost certainly knew spells that could locate his sister. Kizu didn’t even know where he’d have to go to request access to her, though, or who he’d have to ask. For all he knew, the Elites might have executed her the day they caught her. But he doubted it. The crone being dead just seemed too bizarre. He would follow up on it in the future.

He was still thinking about where his sister might have gone when he arrived in his Music F class the next day. The class didn’t require any spellcasting or bloodletting, so it played out the same way every time. With a critter in each ear, he practiced his scales - over and over and over. The repetition was killing him. But the scales definitely sounded more fluid than they had at the start. His improvement was slow, but noticeable. And his fellow percussionists always seemed so relaxed and happy. He found himself enjoying the class more with every visit.

In his Elemental F class they were put to work heating and cooling the stream water again. Obviously unable to do so, Kizu joined Ione where she sat lounging with her feet in the water. He didn’t really understand why their professor never punished Ione’s antics in his class. She blatantly disregarded him, and was the only student who openly mocked him for being a turkey.

“What’s your relationship with the professor?” Kizu asked her.

“That of a student and a teacher,” she answered. Then she raised an eyebrow. “Why? Are you trying to insinuate something?”

“No!” Kizu said hurriedly. “Wait, how would that even work? He’s a turkey.”

“I don’t know. Like I said, our relationship is strictly that of student and teacher. Though I promise not to nark if you want to try finding out.”

Kizu ignored the jab. “He treats you better than the rest of us and you spend the entire class being disrespectful.”

“Some people just want you to shoot straight with them. He’s probably tired of people always beating around the bush about his current body.”

Kizu thought about that. He didn’t understand people very well, but that seemed to make sense. He hated it when people treated him differently as a result of his unique upbringing. He could only imagine how people might treat him if his body had been changed into an entirely different animal.

“Or it might be because I’m the prodigy student of his Summoning S class.”

“Oh. Yeah, that might have something to do with it.”

“He refuses to tell me how he ended up like that, though,” she continued. “I’ve pestered him about it relentlessly but he won’t budge.”

“Maybe he’s actually just a turkey,” Kizu suggested. “I’ve heard of animals Awakening and gaining sentience before, and all living creatures have a degree of magical affinity. That’s why we can use their parts in different potions.”

“Ha. Fat chance of that. His aunt works for the administration. I’ve seen her and she’s as human as they get. Not a feather in sight. Nope, Oasaji definitely used to be human.”

From there, the two of them began exchanging fantastical stories, theorizing as to what could have turned Professor Oasaji into a turkey. Kizu was convinced that the professor had gotten his soul mixed up in a conjuring gone wrong. Ione insisted that wasn’t how conjuring worked - and besides, who would conjure a turkey? No, she figured a hag must have cursed him. Kizu was skeptical of her theory. The only reason a hag would curse someone into an animal like a turkey would be to eat them. And Oasaji definitely hadn’t been eaten.

By the end of class, they’d tossed around a dozen different possibilities, each less plausible than the last.

Kizu considered joining Ione as she headed for the cafeteria, but decided against it. He was still on a strict diet of strange fruit and extremely dry bars. He would only be able to sit around and watch other people eat real food if he went. Not a torture he was keen to endure.

Instead, Kizu parted ways with Ione and headed for the library. He perused the labyrinth of shelves, looking for something on the use of blood. Thankfully, there was an abundance of resources on the subject. So much, in fact, that he struggled to find a place to start. As he skimmed through the contents of several books, he mostly saw longer explanations of what Arclight and Kateshi had told him. Then he found a book titled Blood of the Familiar.

Curious, Kizu flipped through the book. It explained the common use of familiars, just as Arclight had a few days back, but it went into far greater detail than what she had told him. Supposedly, familiars could act not only as conduits for a mage, but also as a second source of blood. As he flipped through the book he found himself fascinated by a section about cephalopod bonds. An octopus actually had two hearts, which supposedly doubled their recovery time, and the blood itself was altogether different from most other animals. In some specific cases, cephalopod blood could be more potent in spellcraft than normal red blood. Some mages sought the bond out particularly for that advantage.

Then Kizu found something worrying. A section about the dangers of bonds.

Bonds were the result of animals and mages finding common ground, and the benefits went both ways. Animals often gained more intelligence while humans usually gained enhanced physical traits. Though this wasn’t always the case. Sometimes the mental strain was too much for the mage. There were more than a few stories of mages actually losing themselves to the animalistic instincts that came with the bond. Kizu wasn’t worried about that though. What concerned him was the warning that followed.

Familiars could also tap into a mage’s magic.

Kizu wasn’t concerned about Mort intentionally using his magic and bleeding him dry. But, if Mort did it instinctively and at the wrong time, then Kizu might be in trouble. He resolved to spend some time with Mort and train with him. Both with him using Mort’s magic, as well as Mort using his. Of course, that would all have to wait until after he got the bracelet off.

As much as he wanted to take the book about familiars with him, Kizu couldn’t bring himself to separate from the divination book he already had checked out. Irrationally, he felt leaving the book behind would be like giving up hope of finding his sister. He resolved to return it only after he’d managed to locate her.

Kizu took note of where he’d shelved the book and headed off to Brewing S. His stomach growled but he ignored it.

When he arrived, the portly man from his previous lesson was still there. And again, everyone referred to him as Professor Knoff. Kizu thought he might be going crazy. Had he just imagined the first week’s professor? If not, they had to be brothers or cousins of some kind. Not only had his looks changed since that first day, but the professor’s entire demeanor was different. Maybe a magical mishap could have explained the physical change, but Kizu had no idea what type of spellcraft could rewrite a man’s entire personality.

After the class, Kizu approached the new Knoff as the other students all filed out of the cave.

“Professor?”

Knoff looked up from his papers and gave Kizu a genuine smile, his eyes twinkling.

“Kaga Kizu, what can I do for you? Do you have a question about the lesson?”

“Not about the lesson.” Kizu took a breath, steadying himself. “I wanted to know if I could use the brewing facilities here to practice. I have my own brewing kit, but it’s small and I don’t think it will be very efficient for the more challenging brews. Having a real cauldron would be extremely helpful.”

“Of course, Mr. Kaga. In fact, we have a room dedicated to that very purpose.”

Knoff led him over to a curtained off area at the back of the class. When he pulled back the curtain, it revealed half a dozen empty cauldrons of different sizes arranged in a semicircle. There were even countertops behind them stocked with useful tools.

“Students also have access to a variety of common ingredients. Unfortunately, you’ll need to submit a request to me if you want to use anything more esoteric, and approval isn’t guaranteed. It depends on the project.”

Kizu could not believe his luck. This was beyond anything he’d hoped for. He thanked the professor profusely, but Knoff waved away his gratitude. He welcomed Kizu to come work there whenever he had freetime. The only caveat was that Knoff always needed to be nearby to prevent injury - or theft. He also warned that selling brews created using academy resources without strict permission would result in disciplinary actions.

Once Knoff returned to his lesson plans, Kizu got to work. The first thing he did was take stock of what ingredients he had on hand. Everything was neatly labeled. It felt like paradise compared to the crone’s haphazard organization.

After recording all of the ingredients on a spare piece of parchment, Kizu jotted down a list of the equipment available to him. There were quite a few tools missing, compared to the vast collection he’d worked with back in the crone’s hut; on the other hand, certain ingredients that even the crone had struggled to find down in the basin appeared to be commonplace here. Fresh ingredients from the tropical ocean were especially plentiful.

Kizu immediately set aside some sea basilisk bone, ecstatic to work with such an elusive material. He itched to brew a de-petrification potion with it. But soon that craving was replaced with another when he saw they had actual chimera teeth. The possibilities were endless with an ingredient like that. He felt like a monkey in a fruit stand, constantly distracted by the next closest thing.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Kizu turned away from the pile of ingredients he’d gathered and saw Sene standing at the curtained entrance looking irritable.

“Professor Knoff said I could practice my brewing,” he said. Now, what to use first? Dried octopus suction cups, maybe combined with a tree frog leg? He would need to crush both into powder and mix them with sap from a spruce. Or maybe…

“He gave you permission? Unsupervised permission?” Sene sounded incredulous.

“He’s right around the corner.”

“It took me two years before I was allowed to work here without academy staff in the same room.”

“You can go ask him.”

Kizu wondered which properties differed in ice gathered from north and southern seas. He’d never had the chance to use actual samples from either hemisphere, and now he had access to both. It was astonishing, the enchanted device that Knoff used to keep the ice forever frozen inside. Ingenious, even. So many different ingredients needed to be kept in cold storage. Kizu wondered if the crone even knew such devices existed. The glyphs involved seemed so simple, even to his untrained eye.

“Even if you do have permission,” Sene continued. “I always use the room this time of week.”

“There are six cauldrons,” Kizu pointed out, still not looking up from his small pile of ingredients.

"Yes, but that one's mine. I use it every week!"

"Then you should have come directly after class to stake your claim.”

“I needed to eat dinner.” Sene sounded indignant. “A properly balanced diet is vital for any half decent mage.”

“Hm.” Kizu finally decided what his first potion would be. In each hand he weighed two different feathers from a subspecies of phoenix. One was slightly longer than the other. He set aside the shorter one and carefully picked the downy barbs off the longer feather’s rachis. He put them in a vial and carefully added a few drops of tanned swamp scorpion venom. The janjanbi soot would have to be substituted with wyvern marrow. He hoped it wouldn’t alter the results too much - he recalled reading once that the two were often switched without issue.

Sene apparently decided to start ignoring him again and went to work on her own project. Kizu watched her discretely from the corner of his eye as she poured ingredients into her cauldron. It looked like a truth potion. He didn’t envy whoever she planned to spike. The pine needles she’d added in were infamous for causing severe constipation as a side effect.

Kizu brought the filtered water of his own cauldron to a rolling boil then slowly eased the temperature down before stirring in each ingredient. He had to be careful with the timing. Too soon would result in it going up in explosive flames, and too late would harden it like stone. As he added the salve, the color and consistency changed from brown and chunky to scarlet and smooth. Kizu doused the fire and let the brew sit for a few minutes. It looked perfect. He stared at the burbling liquid. The process had all been made stupidly simple by the sheer abundance of tools at his disposal. Usually he took pride in his work but this lacked any real challenge. It felt like a hollow achievement.

Once cooled, he carefully portioned the brew out into four vials. He slid them into his jacket pocket and then got to work on cleaning up. Cleaning, the crone had taught him, was the time when more witches killed themselves than any other. It was all too easy for a careless witch to sweep two alchemically opposed ingredients into the same dustpan, resulting in a catastrophic event. The crone liked to tell the story of how her great aunt had thrown out a bucket of toad’s breath onto the same patch of dirt she’d previously thrown out a failed curse-breaking brew. Everything in a kilometer’s radius had been turned to toads - including the witch herself. When her relatives arrived, they’d been unable to discover which toad was her out of the millions in the massive crater left behind.

Obviously that was an extreme example, but Kizu was always careful just in case. He had no interest in eating flies for the rest of his life. Come to think of it, maybe that was what had happened to Professor Oasaji. He’d float the idea to Ione next time he saw her.

Again, he was required to eat at the medical wing for dinner while they poked and prodded him. Unfortunately, Raygen, the girl who had found his book, was on duty. She jabbed him with malice as she went through the tests. The results, of course, dictated another sleepless night in their care.

However, this time they determined Mort fit enough to leave the medical wing. Kizu suspected that the result had more due to do with the monkey being a menace than with him being completely healthy. Every object small enough to be moved around by a monkey had been strewn throughout the wing. Mort took great delight in hiding their things. So much so that, in the end, he opted to stay another night anyway.

Kizu returned to working on the translation. He finally hit his stride with the old language, only encountering a few snags. As he translated, his heart beat faster. His speed increased as he flipped through the dictionary pages at a manic speed. With several hours remaining before sunrise, he had a complete message from his sister.

Little brother, I hope this message finds you well. I have spent the last six years honing my divination in an attempt to break the barrier between us. Even still, I cannot break the barrier that hides you. Everyone assumes you're dead, but I know you’re still alive. My senses are muddled, but of that I am certain. And I will find you or die trying. Recently I have met someone who I believe has the means to help. He offered me a dangerous trade. And I accepted. If for whatever reason I fail, I wanted to leave this here for you. If by some miracle you do find your way home, I want you to know- I love you, little brother. And I never gave up on you.

Kaga Anna.

Kizu read through the message a hundred times, looking for hidden meanings or some sort of hint as to where she might have gone, what she might have traded, who she might have met with. He even went back to certain words to test alternate meanings in the context of the message. Nothing. The letter left him with no answers and more questions than ever.