Chapter IV.XLII (4.42) - Chiame’s Deal

  He blinked, his vision cleared. He was on the floor of Owl’s Respite in Ione’s arms with Anata staring down at him with wide eyes. Ione was trying to explain to his niece that he’d been in a dream trance but Anata didn’t appear to be listening to her.

  “Anata,” he greeted her, a bit groggily. “What’s wrong?”

  Anata pointed at him. Then sprawled her hands wide.

  “I…I don’t understand.” Kizu winced. His head hurt.

  Anata pouted. She kept making hand gestures that Kizu couldn’t parse.

  “Your soul,” she finally said. “Gone.”

  “I don’t think so.” Kizu’s head hurt and he felt dizzy as he tried to parse the information. It was clearly important if Anata actually spoke to him. And Anata had shown in the past she had some special ability to sense his soul. “Maybe it just went invisible to your sight?”

  Anata just stared at him blankly.

  “How did it go?” Ione asked eagerly. “Any side effects?”

  Kizu flexed his fingers and stretched. Everything felt normal. He created a stone using an elemental spell then launched it up into the air a meter and caught it as gravity dragged it back down.

  “Feel fine.”

  Ione nodded along, opened her mouth, then closed it and frowned. “You…can’t summon anything.”

  “Ahh.” Suddenly Kizu realized what she must have. Using him as a test subject to prove it wouldn’t mess with summoning magic wasn’t very useful if he couldn’t summon anything to begin with. There was no way to test how the potion might affect his nonexistent capabilities.

  “Just, give me a vial,” Ione said. She held out a hand and avoided eye contact with him.

  “Ione? Are you certain?”

  “It’s…whatever. I want Chiame gone.”

  Kizu placed a vial in Ione’s hand. Suddenly he was second guessing his work. And besides, different people sometimes reacted differently with side effects. He opened his mouth to call off their attempt.

  She drained the vial.

  Kizu stepped forward and caught Ione, supporting her. But Ione brushed him off and stumbled forward, shaking with rage.

  “You!” Ione shouted at the wall. “Yes. I see you. You think you can take control of me?”

  Anata tilted her head quizzically at the spot Ione was shouting at. Then she looked at Kizu.

  “Can you tell me what she’s saying?” Kizu asked her. “I promise your words won’t hurt me.”

  Anata bit her lip in thought. Then she slowly nodded.

  “The witch is making fun of her,” Anata whispered. Her voice sent goosebumps down Kizu. Even at a whisper, he could feel the power. His monster leg throbbed. “She’s not very nice.”

  “Bitch!” Ione yelled. “It’s my body!”

  Kizu had never heard Ione swear. The usually easygoing girl was bristling. Her body was tense, as if just electrocuted.

  “She is pointing at you,” Anata whispered. “At your hips. She’s saying something about babies?” Anata’s brow knitted in clear confusion.

  Kizu coughed, which earned him a quick glare from Ione.

  “Sorry,” he wheezed.

  “I’ll tear you out of me!” Ione threatened her unseen companion. “You don’t deserve to know that.” Then Ione’s eyes widened. “Wait. Don’t—”

  Ione’s head rolled back and Kizu lunged forward to catch her limp body before she fell to the floor. He shook her. Nothing. She was out. He figured it must be the same thing that he’d just experienced with Zayne. Only, Chiame was far less personable. Who knew what sort of nightmare memory Chiame might be dragging Ione through? No witch in the Hon Basin grew up with anything remotely related to a happy childhood.

  Anata stared at Ione’s body in Kizu’s arms.

  “Is this what you saw from me when you walked in earlier?”

  His niece slowly nodded, then her eyes drifted away from Ione over to the wall. She took a step forward and tapped the air nearby.

  Something flickered. And Kizu heard the echoes of a cackle.

  “Chiame?” Kizu said.

  “Yesss.” The voice wasn’t an echo this time. Instead, it came from Ione’s lips. His partner’s eyes were now open, though they’d rolled back to only show whites.

  “What can I do to convince you to leave Ione’s body?” he asked.

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  “It’s so nice here. Can’t think of much.”

  “What about a new body?” Kizu coaxed. Witches loved to barter for things. This might serve as an opportunity.

  More cackling. “Not yet learned your lesson about promising witches the impossible? Stupid boy. He’s so supremely superior to you. Even his throws of passion. Mmm. So much more…dangerous.”

  Kizu desperately wanted to take the bait and ask about the other version of himself. Figure out how that Kizu ended up existing. Especially with such a massed up head. But he needed to stay on topic and not get side-tracked.

  “I’ve been thinking about a process that might give you your own body. Theoretically, it’s very possible. I’ve seen something similar done before.”

  Chiame grinded Ione’s teeth. “It sounds out of a fairytale. And what would you want for this mythical body?”

  Good. So he’d at least gotten her attention.

  “I want a promise from you. You’ll not hurt Ione’s body or social life. You’ll stop terrorizing her. And afterwards I want you to not meddle in our lives. Leave this island.”

  “I could crush your girlfriend’s soul and seize this body as my own.”

  “And I could force feed you a potion to extinguish your soul. I’ve already killed you once,” Kizu reminded her darkly. “I’ll do it again.”

  “Ha. You just said you’d play good and not make your girlfriend drink that. You might fiddle with her summoning.”

  “I’d rather her summoning gets messed up than her lose her body to you,” Kizu said bluntly. “And that wasn’t the potion I was talking about.”

  Chiame flexed and stretched Ione’s body. She poked and prodded at it, muttering incomprehensibly to herself.

  “Fine. A deal.” Chiame extended Ione’s hand. Kizu took it and felt a chill run through his arm. “A pact formed, agreement to the terms in full. By summer solstice completed or else this deal made null.”

  The chill down his arm turned to a jolt. Kizu yanked his hand back and Chiame sneered at him. Then her head drooped.

  “Scary,” Anata said timidly.

  Kizu glanced over his shoulder at his niece. She’d remained so silent he’d forgotten about her during his discussion with Chiame. In hindsight, maybe a decent guardian would have sent her away.

  “The solstice is at the end of the quarter,” he said in hopes of relieving her fears. “That should be enough time.”

  And if not, he’d just have to forcefully remove the witch’s soul. He already had a few potential strategies and he’d develop them further alongside this more peaceful option.

  “Ow,” Ione said, sitting up. “My head hurts. Did someone slam a hammer into my skull?”

  Kizu walked over to one of his shelves and took out a chunk of stringy moss. He passed it to her.

  “Chew on this. It should help.”

  “Not a potion?” Ione asked as she bit down.

  “The jaw movement and mixture of saliva helps the potency with this particular moss. I could brew you something, but for just a headache this is simpler and uses less resources.”

  “Hmm.” Ione chewed.

  “Did you see anything while out?” Kizu asked.

  “Yes. A hovel in a bog. I was made to eat centipedes by an old woman. She kept shoving my face down into the mud and I had to slurp up bugs. I can still feel their legs crawling down my throat.”

  Kizu fidgeted. As bad as his upbringing with the crone had been, there were far worse mentors in the coven. He honestly didn’t blame the apprentices for abandoning their masters. Many had likely seen the Death Party as their only out. Not that a bad maternal figure excused attempted genocide.

  “You were there too,” Ione added. “I mean, a kid version of you with the crone. She was the reason my master was so pissed off.

  “I…I don’t remember anything like that.” Kizu frowned. “Is it possible that Chimae was messing with her past memories to make them worse?”

  No. The answer came in his head. I cannot alter what you see. The witch’s history is her own.

  “Then why can’t I…” Kizu trailed off. His memories. When he’d visited the coven over spring break one of them had mentioned holes in his memory removed by the crone. How much of his childhood was he forgetting?

  “The other version of me that stole Mae’s mother could cast hexes, right?” Kizu asked Anata.

  His niece nodded vigorously.

  “And I’ve heard he’s mentally a bit…wild.”

  “You think he’s had his memories unblocked?” Ione guessed.

  “Maybe. It’s just an idea. And it would explain why Chiame seemed so enamored by him, or, I mean, me. And if we had known one another before the crone blocked my memories then it adds another layer of connection between her and my doppelganger.”

  He pondered those implications.

  “No, Kizu,” Ione said.

  “What?”

  “Do not try to get those memories back. It doesn’t matter how much potential you might have as a hexer or witch or whatever. I want you sane.”

  “What if I just unlocked some of—”

  “No.”

  “Fine, fine.” Kizu stood and started clearing off a countertop. He then set up a beaker and laid down a cutting board.

  “What are you doing?” Ione asked.

  “Just making something.”

  “Anything in particular?”

  “Maybe a health potion or something offensive,” he said, looking through his shelves for ingredients. “I’m not sure yet. Just helps me clear my head.”

  “Can I help?”

  Kizu glanced over at Ione. Unlike before when she’d helped him by using summons, she actually stepped forward herself. He almost made a joke about a skinjacker taking her body, but thankfully realized before the words left his lips that a joke like that might be in bad taste at the moment.

  “Yeah, of course!”

  Anata stepped forward eagerly as well, waiting for instructions.

  Kizu quickly went over possible potions. He reached into his jacket pocket for a spare piece of parchment to write down the instructions for a fire protection potion. But as he did so, he felt a scrap of wood there. The chunk he’d torn off of the chaos tree during Basil’s competition. He took a few seconds to consider what he knew about the tree and what it could do. Any potion with it needed to be stabilized properly and he needed to avoid magical ingredients. But he thought he saw a path forward with what ingredients he had on hand.

  With that decided, Kizu first tasked his helpers with chopping ashen burdock root, then he pointed at a different cupboard.

  “There’s pickled cactus flesh in a jar up there. The liquid it's pickled in should be blue. Pull that down and squeeze out the juice into a bowl.”

  Anata raced over but quickly realized her lack of height posed an issue. The cupboard was far out of reach. Ione picked up Anata under the armpits and raised the girl into the air. Anata laughed as she grabbed the jar and was brought back down.

  Kizu, for his part, had already begun a different process with the chaos palm wood. He sliced it into thin strands then, after a moment of hesitation, jabbed one of the splinters into his arm. He winced, but let his blood dribble down the wood before he removed it. Then he began to massage the bloodied splinter.

  For the next few hours he, Ione, and Anata, worked on the potion together. Just the three of them. For once, there were no soul parasites or stern professors or sudden emergencies to distract them.

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