What Makes A Monster - Chapter 11

The following day, Imyra awoke with her whole body in pain.

It was also the day for Chennae to extract her blood.

Imyra’s head fell back onto the pillow painfully as she scowled in displeasure. What made her displeasure that day worse was how Olivia strolled into her room at lunch time showing no sign whatsoever of their fight the day before.

It was three days later that her new training regime was set up. Imyra’s, not Olivia’s. Olivia was to teach Imyra hand-to-hand combat.

Imyra thought it was pointless as first. Should a situation arrive when she was unable to use zorne, it would be completely hopeless. Imyra, especially, was hopeless without it. Her legs hadn’t worked since she was born. How could she fight with her arms and legs when moving her legs would require zorne? What was the point of physical exertion when she did not have Olivia’s abnormal strength?

But the more she learnt of the art of the body, the more she understood its use. As the weeks went by, Olivia taught her art of falling, where to draw strength from to throw a punch, the optimum movements to generate greatest strength. She was incapable of many of the movements as they required footwork, but there were some she could master. As her body grew stronger with the constant exercise she despised in the beginning, she began to feel freer and healthier. For some reason, even her mind felt clearer.

Soon she began to learn the use of primitive weapons like knives and her personal favourite; the bow and arrow. The output and range acquired through her weak arms and wooden bow was nothing in comparison to what she could achieve with her zorne, but there was a sense of achievement when she managed to hit a target. She was born with a large zorne pool and strong zorne streams. Wielding zorne was effortless for her. The way normal people had to grow up learning to manipulate zorne and strengthen it through effort, Imyra had had to learn to control and decrease its output so as to avoid hurting her surroundings. As she built up her arm and stomach muscles, she learnt what it meant to work hard at something that did not come naturally.

Of course, there was the part of her brain that scorned her satisfaction, claiming that she was becoming more and more proletarian as she remained with these hermits but the ridicules Olivia sent her way when she wished to rest chased those thoughts away. If the woman called her ‘useless’, ‘spoilt rotten’ or ‘pathetic’ one more time, Imyra may strangle her with her bare hands.

In fact, that’s exactly what she did. Or tried to do. She failed spectacularly when Olivia batted her hand away like it was a fly and intensified the training regime.

Their roles were reversed in the afternoons when Imyra took on the role of the teacher and Olivia the role of the student. Olivia greatly lacked control of her zorne despite, or perhaps because, of her much larger than average zorne pool. She was terrible at delicate work and only good at destruction for some reason.

In the back of her mind, Imyra wondered if this would have been the state of herself, had she not the teachers and resources that were constantly available to her.

But as the weeks went by Olivia’s zorne skills became sharper, more directed, less clumsy and usable in her daily life without breaking everything she gripped. She learnt how to divide her streams more efficiently and was gaining an understanding of how to regulate their thicknesses and density according to the situation. She was years of practice away from Imyra’s ability but she was getting better despite Imyra’s constant gloating abuse. It was karma from the abuse she’d heaped on Imyra that morning. Or so Imyra liked to rationalise.

The princess was still scornful after the bouts she’d be forced to fight with Olivia by Chennae every week. She’d be the one to need at least a day to recuperate while Olivia could skip around happily without a single injury to her skin a zerg later. And Olivia would do so when she visited her room to purposely prod her injuries and elicit screams and shouts.

“If you feel like it’s so unfair, you can go ask Chennae to make you heal faster.” Olivia suggested one time with an evil glint in her eye, as she sat on Imyra’s sickbed snacking on assorted red berries.

“Oh sure, and then subject myself to being one of her lab rats like you. Don’t think I haven’t realized that every single one of you ‘assistants’ have been subject to her experiments at one point or another. You’re all freaks in some way that is completely unnatural.”

“You act like it’s a revelation, but nobody was hiding it from you. If you still hadn’t realized you really would be a complete dimwit. As Vera likes to call it.”

“You weren’t hiding it, but you weren’t open about it either.”

“Why would we spell something out to you that is none of your business whatsoever?” Olivia shrugged, popping another red berry into her mouth, smiling evilly. The red juice that leaked down from the corner of her mouth looked eerily like blood. “So? Shall I tell Chennae you want to heal quickly too?”

“No. Thank you very much for your thoughtfulness, but I’d rather have nothing more to do with her experiments apart from the blood already she asks from me. Not if it means becoming one of her lab rats anyway. The cons far outweigh the pros.”

“You could ask her to fix up those useless legs of yours, you know. That much would be child play for her.”

Imyra looked down in consideration at her broken legs in a cast covered by a blanket. She shook her head. “No. I’m not that nave anymore. I fear the price for that would be beyond what I would be willing to pay. Besides, they’ve served just fine as decoration all my life. There’s no point in making them usable now.”

Olivia stared at her for a few moments before her smile turned sarcastic. “As cute as your convictions of not becoming an experimental subject may be, you’re already being used as one, you know?”

“She may have used me for her experiments, but she hasn’t modified my genetic tissue.”

“Yet.” Olivia added.

“Yet.” Imyra conceded with a sigh as she leaned back into her pillow.

“Don’t you wonder what she does with all your blood? Why she wants it so much that she let you stay in her house and groom you to be stronger?”

With a dreadful feeling in her gut, Imyra said, “Who knows. I was a nave child when she offered the contract. I knew absolutely nothing. All I cared about was getting this job over and done with.” She laughed without humour, “For all I know, she could be practicing evil magical rituals with my blood.”

Unlike Imyra’s mirthless laugh, Olivia’s was filled with humour, “Evil magical rituals? Do you really mean that?”

“No.” Imyra said before she helped herself to some of Olivia’s berries, “She’s more of a crazy scientist than a witch. Why did people give her the moniker of witch anyway?”

“Because she’s evil?”

“Oh, yeah, there’s that connotation too.”

“But nah, she probably did it on purpose and went around spreading propaganda that she’s a witch. Crazy scientists are much scarier than mystical witches, I’d say. Maybe it was her attempt at cleaning up her rep.”

“Perhaps. With her, anything is possible. But seriously, what do you suppose she’s doing with my blood, though? I hope it’s not something too bad. Mother will kill me if I turn out to be the catalyst of some kind of apocalypse or something.”

Olivia grinned evilly, “Maybe she’s building an army with soldiers that can all use your zorne abilities.”

“Is that even possible? To give one person’s zorne talent to another?” Imyra looked mildly horrified.

Olivia shrugged, “You can’t replace zorne talent. But granting the ability to someone who never had zorne talent to begin with… perhaps.”

“Is that why Zuran can come and go as he pleases? So that Chennae can experiment on him and make him into a zorne user?”

Olivia gave her a mirthful look and did not answer.

“No, I feel like if that were the case, he’d already be able to use zorne.”

Olivia said nothing and popped some more berries into her mouth.

“She already lives forever without aging. What more does she want?”

This time Olivia did give a thoughtful reply, “Chaos for a world that ages without her?”

“That makes it sound like she’s resentful of her immortality.”

“Who knows? Maybe she never chose this life either.”

“Either? Who else?”

“What either?”

“You said either.”

“I did? No. You must have misheard.”