Reborn Healer Chapter 21

“I was expecting you to take me to a back alley or a dump or something,” Mizuki said, looking around. “Aren’t you a little young for this?”

I settled into the booth. I didn’t come here often, but I’d come enough to be familiar with the worn fabric, the way there were dead spots in parts of the seat where any hapless fellow trying to sit down would go straight through the cushion and onto the hardwood. Judging from Mizuki’s expression, she had found one of them.

“Carl’s a frequent visitor,” I said. “He keeps after his own health, and we’ve got the odd patient with alcohol poisoning. Sometimes he’ll have us clean up after a fight. Pays us extra and gives us perks for that.”

The two of us were currently sitting in a private room in the Wings and Moons, which was a name that I personally felt made no sense as the name for a tavern, but I wasn’t the one running the business. Though we were still in the same district as the clinic, we were a good mile away and on a different street entirely.

“A symbiotic relationship,” Mizuki said.

“Quid pro quo,” I agreed. “That’s the spirit of a lot of things around here.”

Vallis had always stressed the importance of building community. That usually just meant getting free pastries and the like, but now I had to admit that he was very right about it.

“Quid pro… what does that mean?” Mizuki asked.

“Ah, basically what you were saying,” I said. “It’s from a dialect I picked up from a book. It means something for something, just prettier.”

Technically the truth. I had learned that phrase from a book, just not one from this world.

“Hmm. I’ll keep it in mind.”

A knock came at the door.

“Come in!” I called.

It clicked open, Carl himself coming in with a plate and two drinks. He had nightrose juice for me, which I personally thought tasted something like a more sour apple. They didn’t have apples here, so I had never been able to confirm.

Mizuki, on the other hand, had a beer.

“Aren’t you a little young for this?” I asked.

“Huh?” She looked at me like I’d grown a second head. “What are you talking about?”

Right. Drinking norms didn’t exist in the same way they did on Earth. I kept trying to apply logic from the previous world and experienced cognitive dissonance when things didn’t quite line up.

“It’s nothing,” I said, shaking my head.

“I’ll leave the two of you to it,” Carl said, tipping his hat to me on the way out.

After he left, we sat there for a bit, just drinking. Neither of us had properly cleaned off. Though I had given us both a quick rinse with Create Water, clearing most of the ash, there was still a lot of grime on us both that wouldn’t come off easily. Still, it was nice to have an opportunity to relax.

Not for the first time, I double-checked the net at my waist. It was an adjustable size, which was very nice when it came to trying to carry around a probably magical venom worm that was actively trying to break out at all times, but I couldn't shake the feeling that making it smaller would make it easier to breach. So far, the little bastard was still there.

“So,” I said eventually.

“So.” Mizuki grinned lopsidedly at me over the rim of her glass, lips pressed together. “You’re full of surprises.”

“Your entire existence is a surprise to me,” I countered. “Are you going to tell me who you are?”

“I have. I'm Mizuki.”

“That's not the answer I'm looking for, and you know it.” I downed half of my glass in a single gulp. “You're not from Liaren, but you came here and immediately got attacked by our City Guards. That tells me you're either running away from something or towards it. I don't want to get too nosy, because I'm sure I'll find more skeletons in your closet if I do, but I'd like to at least know what I'm dealing with.”

“I suppose you deserve at least a basic explanation,” she allowed. “Look.”

The white-haired girl opened her mouth, showing her teeth. I found what I was supposed to be looking at immediately. While most of her mouth looked normal and even surprisingly healthy given the technology level of the world we lived in, I noticed that two of her upper canines were sharper and longer than the others.

Looking at them sparked some fragment of memory, the lessons Iryn had taught me running through my head as I tried to place what that was a sign of.

“Elf,” I said. “Except you don't look that out of place until you open your mouth, so… half?”

“You're taking this surprisingly well.”

I was already familiar with the existence of other races thanks to a thorough childhood education in the Aiken, and I was pretty sure by now that my former tutor and accidental saboteur Locke was one of them. And that was very significantly further removed from any concept I had of non-human races.

Elves were easy to accept. Thanks to quite a lot of fantasy media consumption, some of which had been a little more indulgent than others, I was more than familiar with the concept of mixing the races.

“I see in textbooks that elves aren't the most welcoming of humans,” I said. “Or anyone else, really. Is that why you're on the run?”

“Perceptive one,” she said. “You've got knowledge beyond your years.”

“More like I have the curiosity to seek it out,” I replied.

The existence of public education had been a bit of a surprise to me, since I was entirely homeschooled here, but it seemed to be pretty decent, all things considered, and the libraries in the city, while often incomplete, were also often free. There's a whole lot of information available to anyone who wanted it—there were just a lot of people who didn't want it.

Back on topic, though, I wondered if her not being a pureblooded elf was actually the reason she'd run. I could guess that she was from the elven kingdom to the south, and I could guess that maybe she'd been hiding from them for years prior, but guesses were just that.

I found it hard to believe that someone could be as well-trained and apparently as well-read as her at the age of fifteen while living an entirely secluded existence from their own kingdom. All I had to work on was what I knew, and it was moronic to pretend like that painted anywhere near a complete picture.

“You need to swear that you won't tell anyone without going to me first,” Mizuki said, suddenly serious.

“I mean, I can swear, but those are just words.” It was the honest truth of things. I didn't particularly believe in honor, and while there were a number of people in this world who did, I was pretty sure I wasn't going to be able to fake it well enough for her to believe me.

She shook her head. “That's not what I mean. In the South, we are taught certain methods—rituals to create binding vows.”

I frowned. “Dark magic. That's what you're talking about, right?”

There were a number of forbidden magics—certain kinds of soul magic, almost the entirety of the Shadow School, mind magic, and the like, all of which were lumped under the category of dark magic. This sounded like something I'd read in a book on the subject.

“Not quite—well, it depends on who you ask,” Mizuki hedged. “But all we need is a drop of your blood mixed with a drop of mine and for us to both agree on the terms.”

“The terms being that I won't speak about this without your permission?”

“Yes.”

I shrugged. Nothing I'd learned so far was information that I desperately needed to transmit to someone else. “Sure. Let's do it.”

“Would you happen to have a knife on you? I left all of my ritual implements at home. Though I suppose it's not home anymore.”

“Left my scalpel in the clinic,” I said, pressing a hand to my forehead.

“That's fine. Give me your hand.”

With some amount of trepidation, I did. She brought it up to her mouth and sank a sharp tooth ever so slightly into the flesh, drawing blood.

“That's one way to do it,” I muttered. Idly, I wondered if biting people was a part of her combat tactics or if it was just the whip sword.

She did the same to her own hand, then reached into a pocket and withdrew a flat stone disc with patterns engraved on either side.

That answered a question I hadn’t voiced. Mizuki wasn't a spellcaster, so I had wondered when she'd mentioned the rituals how she would actually be conducting them. A magic item was fair enough play.

Mizuki pressed her palm against one side and indicated I should do the same with the other. We went over the terms again, and I followed suit.

I felt mana siphon itself from me and enter the ritual item, guided by my blood. Faintly, I could feel the other side doing the same thing.

A strange sensation of warmth I sensed like it was my own body, despite being visibly on the table in front of me, passed through my mind briefly, and then—

Agony. An achingly familiar soul-rending torment ripped through my body. I tried to stand, but my vision faded into a mess of stars and fuzz.

When the moment subsided, I was on the floor on my side, drenched in sweat but no longer feeling like I was about to be torn limb from limb.

Slowly, I got back to my feet.

“You didn't warn me about that,” I said drily.

“That's not… supposed to happen,” Mizuki replied. “Are you okay?”

“I appreciate the concern,” I said, not changing my tone. “I'm fine. I assume it worked?”

“I have an awareness of my core, and my end is binding. That means it is on yours too.”

To confirm her words, I checked on my own, casting a quick lesser body scan on myself.

My two cores were still there, orbiting around each other like always. The tether my father created with rebind soul was still intact, proof that I was inhuman in some way clear to my eyes.

Also clear was the fact that one of my cores had a new tether attached to it, blood red. It didn't seem to be interfering with anything, and it was definitely new, so I assumed it was the binding vow.

A ritual cast only on one core. Did that mean I was going to be able to break it?

That was definitely not something I wanted to try determining here and now.

“Looks good,” I said. “And I'm not dying from poison yet, which is also good. I assume we're on even ground now?”

“More or less. I'm offended you think I would poison you, however. I wouldn't need to if I wanted to kill you.”

Whoa, slow down a second, hot shot. “Then you can explain who you are.”

“Yes.” Mizuki sighed, setting down her beverage. “I am Mizuki of the Blood, first of my name and seventh to the birthright. Oh, that feels good to finally admit.”

“I'm assuming that means more to people who are caught up with current elven politics.”

“Right, I guess you still are a kid from the sticks. My mother is human—was human. My father is the… you would call the king here, or maybe an archlord. An authority, and a first among equals.”

“A Lord Prince,” I suggested.

“Perhaps. For many years, I have been an embarrassing secret but also a potential way to bridge the gap between kingdoms. Since I still had some use, I remained alive, well, and trained.

“That use appears to have expired. I knew this was going to happen eventually, but I didn't expect it to be so soon. If it wasn't for the help of that bastard kid, I would probably be an unmarked grave somewhere in the elven kingdom.”

“What changed?” I asked.

“I wish I could tell you.” Mizuki turned her neck so I could see the side of it, where an ornate tattoo crawled its way around her carotid. “There are vows stronger than others.”

Now if that wasn't ominous, I didn't know what was.

“So you're on the run,” I said. “Why did the city guard attack you?”

She shrugged. “My father's influence runs deep.”

“If he's that powerful, how did you get out?”

“Like I told you. The kid came and helped me. He had some ties to some group he couldn't mention the name of—”

“I'm hearing a lot of that,” I interrupted sarcastically.

“—right, sure. Anyway, he provided me supplies, directions, and distraction.”

I recalled the first conversation we’d had. “You were looking for my father. Doctor Kane.”

She nodded.

“Then who the hell told you that? You keep mentioning this kid. Come to think of it, why didn't you trust me at all if you were working with a kid all this time?”

“I call him kid because he looks like one. Not much older than you, just paler and freakier. But he's older than me, probably by a few years. Body just hasn't caught up. Something to do with a curse.”

A pit formed in my stomach. Someone who aged weird, was freaky, pale…

“What's this kid's name?”

“Does it matter to you?”

“Kind of. Besides, I'm not going to be able to tell anyone his name, right?”

Mizuki shrugged. “His name is Locke.”