Chapter- VII

Thankfully, the boy in the common room no longer lounged there as Kizu passed through again. The orb guided him through the hallways and not too far away he entered the cafeteria.

Only a few students ate at the dozens of long tables. They chatted amongst themselves in little cliques, giving it a lively atmosphere despite the lack of people. More than half the students eating were first years, several of which he recognized from earlier.

Harvey waved him over to an empty seat. Kizu sat down.

“Here’s a menu.” Harvey shoved the parchment into his hands.

Kizu scanned it and a wave of relief hit him. Assorted Fruit Bowl. Finally, some food for Mort. At the bottom of the page, it instructed him to point at the page and say the dish. He did so.

A moment later, a large bowl of fruit appeared on the table in front of him. Mort leaped down to the table and picked through the bowl, grabbing slices of banana. He nibbled on them and hummed his content.

Beside him, Harvey ripped into a hunk of beef. A large white bone still stuck out of the meat.

Kizu snacked on the fruit Mort picked out and tossed aside. He examined the room. Like the courtyard earlier, it looked to be a mesh of different cultures’ with its architectural style and decoration. Beautiful calligraphy lined the walls right next to ancient marble statues and stained glass windows. And yet, somehow it all blended together seamlessly.

“What’ve you got planned for tomorrow?” Harvey said between mouthfuls of meat.

“Nothing so far.”

“A cousin invited me to a beach party. You should come.”

“I’m more of a night person than a beach person. I’ll probably be asleep.”

“Nah, come on. I need someone else there to keep me afloat. I barely know my cousin. I’ll look like a loner loser.”

“What about your roommate?”

“He’s exactly what I’m trying to avoid looking like. Please? Your monkey will get people to come over and talk to us. Girls love cute animals.”

Mort cocked his head and smiled at Harvey, a bit of banana hanging from the corner of his mouth.

“What time?”

“Noon. It’s supposed to go until the evening though.”

Kizu sighed. No point in burning all his bridges the day after he arrived. Harvey was the only student so far that even acted as if he existed. Well, that acted that he existed and didn’t wish otherwise, he mentally added.

“I’ll be there. But I won’t arrive there right at noon. That’s way too early.”

“No problem! My cousin warned me that nobody shows up on time and that it would be embarrassing if I did.”

Kizu ate an apple slice and watched as students finished their meals. Their abandoned dishes simply vanished after they stood up. He ordered himself a loaf of bread and a block of cheese. And, after a brief hesitation, he added a piece of pound cake as well. He wrapped it all in a fabric napkin and stashed them in his satchel for later.

He brought out his orb and instructed it to bring him to the library next. Harvey declined his invitation to join him in the library, insisting he didn’t want to go there until forced to.

A wave of nostalgia hit him as he entered the double doors into the library. It matched his faint memory of it perfectly. Everywhere he looked, books. They lined the walls up to the high ceilings and continued to line them as the ceiling arched around and came down to the other side of the room. He watched as a librarian summoned a copy of a book and it zipped right off the ceiling to her hand. The high bookshelves made the library into a maze of books and he found himself lost almost instantly. This was exactly what he remembered from his time visiting the academy ten years ago with his sister.

“Excuse me,” a nasally voice said loudly. He turned and saw a short boy with a lazy eye looking up at him from behind spectacles. He wore an academy uniform, but with an orange sash across his chest that implied he worked for the library. He also had a scaly complexion along his cheeks and straw-like hair tied back.

“Yes?” Kizu asked.

“Animals are not permitted within the library at any time. Please excuse yourself and exit immediately.”

“He’s my familiar.”

“Monkeys are not listed as familiar options for academy students.”

“They made an exception for me.”

“Then you need to obtain a permit, detailing your exemption. Until then, leave the monkey at home.”

Kizu’s knuckles still ached from punching the student earlier, even still, he strongly considered a repeat offense. He felt so tired of everyone here putting up such a hostile wall of unacceptance. But he took a deep breath and bared his teeth in an attempt to smile.

“Very well, Mort will wait in the hall for me. Satisfied?”

The boy looked about to protest, but hesitated then frowned and walked away hurriedly with a backwards glance.

Kizu turned and saw what he fled from. A group of very large individuals had just walked in. There were four of them, only two looked human, but big humans at that. The other two lumbered forward, with some obvious troll blood in their veins. Kizu wondered briefly at what he might be able to brew from a half-breed troll organ or bit of bone marrow. The healing properties from the creatures were legendary. He might be able to even regrow limbs with that sort of ingredient. But he dismissed the thought almost as soon as it arose.

Reluctant to engage in another confirmation, least of all with four individuals who likely could rip his limbs off, Kizu skirted around the bookshelves surrounding them towards the exit. As he did though, a book caught his eye. Student Directory CDXCIII. He flipped through the pages and noticed it had all the final rankings for the students that year as well as brief bios. He tucked it under his arm.

“I know, no monkeys allowed,” he said to the librarian at the front desk, another student with an orange sash. “I just want to check this out and I’ll be gone.”

“Actually,” she said a bit bashfully. “Can I pet it?”

Mort jumped down to the counter and graciously allowed her to scratch his back with one hand while she assigned him a library card with her other hand. When she finished, the book seared its number into the piece of parchment.

He wondered, as he walked down the corridors back to his chambers, if Harvey actually might know what he was talking about when he said that girls like cute animals.

Mort bit his earlobe.

Back in his room, he sat on his bed and cracked open the book. He scanned the index listing until he found Kaga Anna. He felt a surge of excitement. He was interested to see how his sister ranked amongst everyone else in the academy, as well as curious what might be written in her bio.

When he flipped to her page, instead of showing her final rankings for the year, it read, EXPELLED. Where her bio should have been, everything was blackened out. At the very bottom, it read, REDACTED.

“What did she do?” he asked Mort in frustration.

The monkey gave no response beyond cocking his head, but it still gave him an idea. He pulled out his orb.

“Orb, I know you can access any current students’ standings, can you also access the records of past students' standings?”

“Are you assigning this object the name, ‘orb’?” it asked instead of answering his question.

“No. I haven't decided on a name for you yet. What do you know though?”

“Affirmative, you have access to those records.”

“Tell me about the student Kaga Anna. She should have graduated from here five years ago.”

The orb paused and seemed to thrum as it processed his request. “No student by that name has graduated from the academy. The only match for the name was an individual expelled from the academy half a year before her scheduled graduation.”

“Why?”

“You do not have authorization for that information.”

“I’m her brother!”

“But you are neither guardian nor faculty.”

He paced around the room and kept up his argument and tried to see if maybe the orb had access to older information about her studies. But every gleam of information about his sister appeared to be completely redacted. While every other student had hobbies, clubs, strengths, weaknesses, known allies, known rivals all recorded and listed, Anna might as well have been a ghost. He even went as far as to search for mention of her in the book amongst all the other names, searching for an ally or rival. Honestly, by the end of his prying, he was surprised that the academy bothered to even keep her name in the directory instead of just redacting it altogether. Then he finally spotted something. A small black line redacted a name under Shimizo Roku’s allies. There was no promise that the redacted name was Anna’s, but it was the only lead he’d found so far.

By the end of the night, he came away with more questions than answers, but at least he knew where to look. Shimizo Roku. If he tracked down that man, he might be able to give him some sort of lead as to where his sister had disappeared to. On graduation, the man had average grades across the board with the exception of elemental magic which he had placed fourth in. And despite the rabbit-hole Kizu descended through looking at all of Shimizo’s friends, he yielded no other connections to his sister. Unfortunately, neither the book or his orb had access to any information about the man beyond his schooling.

His room had no windows but a clock ticked on the wall, letting him know it was almost dawn outside.

“Okay, orb,” he said with a sigh. “Show me the way to where they dispose of the blood used for the test procedures.”

The orb lit up and guided him out of his room and out into the empty corridors. While yesterday, he had barely seen anyone all day, now the hallways seemed somehow even quieter. He felt like a drunkard as he walked down, his feet creating a ruckus with every step.

He descended down several flights of dusty stairs before the orb stopped in front of a thick metal door. First, he attempted knocking. Nothing happened. Then he tried opening it. Locked.

“Lost, boy?” said an old woman with a hunched back and yellow eyes. She emerged from the stairs behind him holding a sack.

“No, I was told to follow my orb here. To make certain my blood was destroyed.”

“Oh yes, I forgot. Hm, take out that earring and put it next to your orb over there. Along with anything else magical on your person.”

He did as she commanded, setting his earring and orb to the side on a small table next to the door.

“Oh, and the uniform too. There should be a spare set of robes behind the stairs.” She pointed a crooked finger. “Go change into them.”

The robes provided were thick wool. He slid off his uniform and folded it before shouldering on the robes and tying them around his stomach with a bit of rope. He felt like a homeless monk.

“Well, come on then.” She inserted an old iron key into the door. It creaked open. And revealed more stone steps. She handed him the sack to carry.

The lady hummed a tune as they descended down. It echoed off the walls, giving an otherwise unassuming song, a sinister undertone.

As they went further and further underground, the temperature rose. Soon, Kizu had beads of sweat rolling down his brow. He wondered why these special robes had to be wool of all things. The slope flattened out and they began to walk forward in a natural looking tunnel. At first, the only light came from a battered lantern that the lady carried in front of herself, but the tunnel itself seemed to lighten up slightly.

The lady raised a hand to stop him from moving further on. The tunnel dipped suddenly right in front of them and branched off into smaller tunnels on either side. Kizu scooted forward to look over the ledge.

A long way beneath them, a river of fire slowly churned. Sparks leapt up scores of meters and sizzled on the stones below. The sound the river made as it moved reminded Kizu of someone stacking glass bottles on top of one another. Down below, more tunnels poked into the chasm.

“Help me with this,” the lady said, gesturing at the sack he still carried over his shoulder. “Dump this all over the edge, but don’t lose that sack. It’s a good sack.”

He swung the bag in front of him and looked inside. Hundreds of vials filled with blood clinked together. He heaved it up, and dumped the contents over the ledge. Some of the vials shattered on the stones further down below, but the majority of them landed in the river and burst with a pop.

“Well, come on then,” she said to him. “No point in gawking. Blood’s been disposed of.”

With that, she turned back and walked away.