Chapter 31
KAE
Last night, I thought it was a fluke. I thought I was only feeling so excessively clumsy because my body had been inactive for so long. This morning, though, I know something is up, because I don’t almost fall down the stairs again—I succeed in it.
Somehow, I manage to misjudge the distance between the first and second step, start slipping into the splits, overcorrect by pulling the handrail too hard, and end up swinging my head into the banister.
The whole ordeal is incredibly pathetic, earning me some very concerned questions from the nearby locusts, even though I’m clearly fine.
So fine that a golden angel on the lobby couch doesn’t even come check on me because he’s too busy dying from laughter.
He stops immediately when I make it down the stairs and start storming over to him.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Dusk says with fake fear, jumping to his feet. “Not so fast there, granny! You might slip again!”
“You want me to punch you in the face? Because that’s how you get punched in the face.” I raise my fist to follow through, but he clamps his hand over it with supernatural speed.
“Darling, I would strongly advise against that.” His eyes flick down to my captured hand. “Hell, you would have broken your fingers on human skin with that thing. What even is this? I thought I taught you how to make a proper fist—”
“Turn your invincibility off. I need to get even with you.” I’m snarling, fuming. “I know you can handle it. Come on. Do it.”
I can tell the infuriating bastard is really fighting back laughter. “Unfortunately, darling, it doesn’t work like that. And we should probably get you to Raphael, or that little hit you took is going to turn into a nasty bruise.”
I cringe to even think about bothering Raphael with something like this.
“I’m fine.” I missed my eye, and I don’t have a concussion. That’s all that matters. “But I’m skipping breakfast now.”
“Oh, come on! You can’t be serious. You’re fifteen minutes late, and you’re not even going to go now?”
“You’ll bring me a protein bar when you’re done, won’t you? You owe me one for being such an ass.” Snatching my hand back, I dart towards the door. “Bye! You know where to find me!”
I’m on the training field for all of five minutes before I fully realize where my clumsiness problem is coming from.
When Raphael’s mad scientists pumped up my muscles, they must have failed to account for whatever neurotransmitters are required to connect them to my brain.
All the extra muscle hangs onto my preexisting ones like…
well, like dead weight. Except it’s not dead, because it does move. Just not very well.
In other words, I’ve never been so uncoordinated in my entire life.
Take rope climbing, for example.
On a bar, I can dead hang exponentially longer now, and doing a simple pull-up is fairly easy.
But trying to combine those two things into a functional movement?
Coordinating one of those tricky foot locks on a rope to actually maneuver up?
I’m completely incapable of it now. Incapable.
All of my stupid extra muscle mass won’t listen to complex instructions.
The best I can do is ascend with only my arm strength, which is unreasonably and unnecessarily taxing.
By the time Dusk shows up, I’m huffing and puffing about my predicament. He listens to me rant for approximately thirty seconds before insisting I practice punching the heavy bag instead.
“Since you can’t make a proper fist anymore,” he claims, but I know he just wants me to let some frustration out by hitting something.
It works for a bit, enough to satisfy Dusk to leave me alone so he can run his errands, and then it royally backfires—quite literally.
I accidentally put too much of my weight behind one punch, sending the bag swinging, fast and hard.
Thanks to centripetal force, it slams into me before I can even react, and I’m knocked right onto my ass.
I lay on my back, staring at the Abyss’s false sky, as the bag keeps swinging in the background on its rickety chain, mocking me.
Everything hurts. For a moment, I wonder if my tailbone might be broken—but then I decide I’d be certain if it actually were. So, I get up, pat the dust off my pants, and check to make sure nobody saw me... I’m in luck, it seems.
“At least there aren’t any witnesses this time,” I mutter to myself, beginning to walk it off. One of my guards is likely still hiding somewhere in the distance, but I'm pretending they don’t count. “Small wins, Kae. Celebrate the small wins.”
Running on a flat surface around the dome turns out relatively okay. I only trip three times within an hour. Jumping hurdles, however, is a miserable failure that nearly ends in a sprained ankle.
Fairly upset that I didn’t even make it halfway through the day, I lay down on a bench inside the dome’s hallways, an icepack on my forehead and a towel over my face.
I get five minutes of peace, maybe, before I’m rudely interrupted.
“Kae?” Even if I can’t see anything more than his hulking shadow, I recognize Abaddon’s deep voice immediately.
“You’re early,” I grumble, not budging from my position. “We’re not supposed to meet until three.”
“What happened to you?”
“Picked a fight with the stairs. Lost. Picked a fight with the punching bag. Also lost. There’s a trend, you see.”
“How badly are you injured? Do you need a healer?”
“Eh… I’ll survive.” Groaning, I sit up and take the items off my head—just in time to see his eyes widen slightly at the sight of me.
I can’t say I blame him. I’m covered in various shades of black, blue, purple, and yellow.
It’s unsightly. Hideous, really. “Raphael’s muscle enhancements are just incredible, by the way.
I’m sure they’ve been rigorously tested in clinical trials. ”
“Your adjustment was not meant to be this challenging,” he says flatly, either completely missing my sarcasm or ignoring it. I don’t know if that’s supposed to be an apology or an insult, and I don’t particularly care to sort it out at the moment.
“Well, sorry to disappoint. Shit happens.”
I might have an unusually high pain tolerance, but I’m not sure. I’ve never quite figured out if it’s just me or if it’s a universal product of the joys of womanhood.
But, hey, at least I was able to get a long prescription to have birth control down here—I can’t imagine attempting all this while feeling like someone’s repeatedly punching me in the abdomen. And stabbing me. And twisting the knife...
The King surveys me again for a moment before saying, in complete seriousness, “You should not injure yourself so much. It isn’t good for you.”
“It’s not like it was intentional, Abaddon.” I can’t keep my eyes from rolling. It’s better than shouting ‘No shit, Sherlock’ at him, at least. He wouldn’t even understand the reference. “Where are we training today?”
Continuing to give me the same blank, appraising stare, he suddenly pulls out a plastic-wrapped sandwich from seemingly nowhere.
“Here,” he says, shoving the meal into my hands. “Eat it as you follow me.”
I cock an eyebrow, wanting to laugh at the absurdity of his reluctant empathy. For the life of him, he just cannot behave normally, with normal emotions.
Still, though, I quietly accept his little peace offering.
I usually skip lunch, but gaining what must be twenty pounds of muscle cranked my metabolism to… maximum. And then some. I’m unbearably hungry.
I only realize halfway through eating that I’m not exactly sure what kind of meat is on it. Oddly enough, though, I don’t really care anymore.
Abaddon leads me out the far side of the training yard wall, taking us up to a small back door that I’ve never bothered to investigate. Before it, he stops, turning to look at me. “It would be much more efficient if you would let me fly you there.”
“If I could fly and you couldn’t, would you want me flying you around everywhere?”
“That is a strange question—”
“Yes, well, just let it keep you up at night then.” I roll my eyes, huffing. “Where are we going? Is there another way to get there?”
“Is this about your fear of heights? I won’t drop you.”
“Just answer the question, Abaddon.”
“A more isolated location to train,” he grumbles, pushing the door open with a magic wind.
It reveals a path, the cobblestone less worn from use than the main ones we travel, cutting between the cavern walls and some thorny brambles. Because of its sloping incline, I can see it leads up towards the castle, into a thick grove of Abyss-fruit trees.
At least there are no steps for me to fall on.
As we walk in mutual silence, I can’t stop pondering the topic of transportation. Everything here is built for flight and cart-hauling. I am a fish trying to climb a tree.
“You could just get me a horse,” I blurt out.
“We’ve never kept a pet in the Abyss.” The king looks at me, genuinely confused, as we reach the castle. Besides the shady grove hiding it, the side door is nearly identical to the one I’m used to.
“It’d be for riding, not to pet.” How many times today is he going to make me want to roll my eyes? Either my patience is shot from all my injuries, or he’s being especially obtuse. “You know, since you’re so concerned about my efficiency in traveling?”
“What of the camels? Are they not satisfactory?”
“I don’t know if you noticed, Your Highness, but they were rentals.
They’re not here anymore.” I pause, letting him open the side door of the castle for me—because now he wants to be a gentleman, apparently.
“Besides, camels are Dusk’s thing, not mine.
I prefer horseback riding… Or dirt bikes, but that’d probably disrupt the peace too much here. ”
We walk a few paces before he opens the next door he comes across, motioning me inside, where a spiraling stone staircase awaits us. It looks identical to the one in his bedroom, and I can only assume it leads up another turret.