What Makes A Monster - Chapter 17
About a week before Imyra was scheduled to leave the Residence, the lab she was working in exploded. Again.
It was Olivia’s fault. Again.
Ironically enough, it was Olivia who had kept insisting on being careful with the modified heskert venom; that in such quantities, it was volatile and prone to combusting when mixed with any foreign substances. In the end, it was her who had accidentally thrown her pen into it.
They had narrowly escaped out the window and now stood imbalanced on the river surface staring and despairing at the wreckage. The blast had broken other cylinders of chemicals and the mixing of those had caused several other smaller explosions. The domino effect of the explosions destroyed both laboratories on either side of it.
After a short moment a violent coughing noise could be heard from beyond the rubble followed by a voice booming, “Olivia!”
An angry Leyla emerged from the debris, occasionally jumping over or kicking boulders out of her way.
It was funny how she did not even question who the culprit could be.
Olivia flinched and flew away as fast as she could into the opposite direction; the woods. Leyla jumped headlong into the river and furiously swam after her.
To be able to swim so fast in this current when she’s not even a water manipulator, Imyra marvelled as she watched.
“Can I just remind you that violence is not the answer!” Olivia’s voice could be heard shouting from beyond the trees.
Leyla did not answer. Her sprint after she pulled herself onto the bank was as impressive as her swimming. Even after all of Imyra’s body training, she still did not understand why anyone would choose to run when manipping zorne to fly would make the job so much easier. She doubted it, but perhaps despite being highly skilled, Leyla’s zorne pool was actually very small. Even if it was, Imyra felt no pity for a living weapon like her. If Olivia was an uncontrolled monster, Leyla was a controlled one who knew exactly what would cause greatest damage and pain.
When Imyra later reported the wreckage to Unani, some hints in their conversation confirmed her doubts in that the wall she’d had to repair when she first came to the residence was Olivia’s doing. Leyla had been Imyra’s other suspect but that deduction lacked motive and plausibility.
When Imyra asked her about it, Unani confirmed, “Oh, that? Of course. You were and still are Olivia’s burden. The moment she brought you here, you became her responsibility. That is to say, you are fated to clean up after her.” She paused. “This is regardless of any other deals you have going on with Chennae.”
Perhaps this was part of the reason why Chennae had charged Olivia to accompany Imyra on her trip back to the capital. Imyra had planned to bring it up during their afternoon session, but before she had the chance, the room exploded and it happened as stated above. Truthfully, at this moment, she felt more inclined to join Leyla in beating Olivia up than talking to her in civil tones about their future plans.
“Rest assured, you won’t have to fix these walls. You don’t have the time and it’s not urgent anyway.” Unani chuckled, “We might just have to wait for the next poor soul that comes looking for Chennae to hoist the job onto.”
“Or the next human experiment result that emerges from the underground labs?”
Unani shooed her away before she could ask or say any more.
Later that day, when Imyra was taking a Vera-endorsed break, Olivia entered the kitchen in tattered clothes. Her clothes were hanging on her body by mere threads and her hair defied gravity as it shot in all directions except downwards. Imyra doubted she was using zorne to keep it up there. For one thing, Imyra knew Olivia didn’t have the confidence to use zorne on something as delicate as hair. Aside her tattered clothes however, Olivia had no visible injuries on her body.
Vera took one look and said, “Tea?”
“That would be very welcome right now.” Olivia nodded.
“Veeeeeraaaaa, Chennae wants you in lab 402 right nooooooow.” Nara’s shout interrupted them as it was followed by her flying past the kitchen window while riding on the residence’s new pet chimera; a belderik variant with six legs, a tocesk’s green feather wings and a hedgehog head. The grotesque creature had emerged from Chennae’s underground labs some weeks ago and Nara was of the few to find it ‘adorable’.
Vera sighed as her apron removed itself from her waist and folded neatly onto an empty space on the worktop. She ordered Imyra to brew tea for Olivia before she threw another apron at her. “And cover yourself up a little.”
Olivia looked down at herself. The largest tear in her dress went from her left shoulder down to her waist and her torn underwear below it was falling out of the rip along with her left breast.
“Thank you, Vera.” Olivia said as she smiled and wrapped the apron around her torso.
After a short moment of deliberation, Vera brought out a jar of biscuits from the back of a cupboard.
“Here, have some of this with the tea.”
“You really are the best.” Olivia gave the jar a fond look before asking, “Wouldn’t you reconsider marrying me?”
“No.”
“And again, I find myself rejected.”
“If Chennae ever lets go of me, I’ll consider letting you hire me.”
Olivia’s smile died, “That’s a heartless compromise to offer now when I have no worldly assets whatsoever. And you know she’d sooner die than let go of you.”
Vera chuckled as she beckoned a large dish to emerge from another cupboard and land on the table. “While you’re here, do some of the kneading for me.”
Olivia’s eyes lit up when she saw the texture of the brown dough in the dish. “Is that ledra flour? For my leaving party?”
“I didn’t know there was going to be a leaving party, but sure, I’ll keep some of it for that.”
“What? They’re not even going to hold a leaving party for me?”
“Annd that’s my cue to leave.” She said as she hightailed it out of there.
The difference in treatment between Olivia and Imyra was too great. Or so Imyra mentally complained as she pulled the tea cart over and directly boiled the water in the pot, before rummaging around the cans of tea leaves to find her favourite zerakav leaves; a fragrant floral tea with a sour zest to it.
“You didn’t add ginger.” Olivia complained as she watched her, chewing on a biscuit with her lips dotted with green crumbs. Olivia’s pitiful demeanour disappeared the moment Vera left the kitchen as she gleefully dug into the jar of goodies.
“I don’t like ginger in my tea.” Imyra replied.
“You’re making it for me.” Olivia tried to remind her.
Imyra gave her a glare. “She offered you tea because you looked pitiful. Right now, munching on those biscuits, you look completely fine to me.”
“Are you bitter because I haven’t offered you any?”
Imyra wielded zorne to grab a biscuit from the jar and proceeded to make it land in her open mouth. She chewed and swallowed before she spoke again. “You’re only faking it to look pitiful.”
“Have you seen the state of my clothes? I think I’m plenty pitiful without faking anything.”
“Your clothes may be messed up, but I don’t see a single injury on your body.”
“They’re just hidden really well. Plus, the small ones heal pretty fast. Remember?” Olivia replied with a grin.
“And you reply so happily.”
“I just get over things fast.”
And that was what irritated Imyra about the woman. How could she smile so nonchalantly after being beaten up by Leyla until her clothes were so bloody and torn apart? If one went by her expression, it would seem like nothing at all had just happened. Whether physically or mentally, she was always fine.
“Think about this.” Olivia started after a pause of washing her hands and grabbing the large ball of rough dough. She placed a large wooden board on the table before she dropped the dough onto it and started to knead, like it was soft cookie dough. Imyra had curiously tried to knead the stuff once; it had felt like a hard lump of stone. It was the kind of dough that only softened after much kneading by a very strong person Vera always ordered the powerhouse monsters; Olivia or Leyla to do it. Olivia continued, “We were working with explosives in an abandoned lab far away from the main residence or even the main labs, right? Of all days, it’s on this day that Leyla’s this is the one woman I’ve never won against her little rat-dog-pet-thing pulls her along into the abandoned lab next door to ours where he hides his stash of dead birds. He’s tiny, he doesn’t even need to bypass the zorne-locked doors; he just crawls through whatever hole in the wall he can fit his tiny butt through.
“So, during the short time she is there, admiring his stash with a mother’s pride, next door, my hand spasms and I accidentally trigger an explosion that triggers other smaller explosions and the result? That room is destroyed along with ours and let alone the dust she accidentally ingested, the little pet she’s been raising for over five years gets hit by stray rubble, gets its lung and heart punctured before Leyla even realises and dies. The result of this for me is of course that she chases after me and beats me up to an inch of my life. Do you really not feel sorry for me at all?”
“Leyla lost a pet she’s been raising for five years. I think she’s the most pitiful one here. After the dead rat, that is.”
“Yes, and I let Leyla beat me up for it to vent her anger and grief. But you tell me, was this incident really my fault?”
Imyra didn’t answer the question. Despite herself, she added freshly grated ginger flakes in Olivia’s cup before she poured the tea.
“Honey?” she asked, opening a jar of honey.
“Always.”
“This is the first and last time I’m analysing an incident with such detail for you. It’s not a happy exercise; dwelling on my misfortune.”
“How the Neira’s nagging do you know so many details anyway?”
“As she was hurling trees and knives at me, Leyla felt the need to fill me in on what happened.” Olivia shrugged as she deployed a zorne stream to bring the cup to her lips and sip at it. Imyra’s daily torture, no, teaching, had made Olivia more proficient at controlling her zorne than controlling her own physical strength.
“I can’t help but wonder. Was that incident orchestrated by Chennae or was that really just your bad luck?”
Olivia dropped the now-sticky brown dough onto the wooden board and turned to Imyra.
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.” Olivia said as she pushed the heel of her palm into dough, “I heard you agreed to me accompanying you to your trip back to that Rose-place the capital, I mean.”
Imyra didn’t see connection between the two topics, but since she’d been meaning to talk about that too, she only nodded.
“Right. So before anything is finalised, I thought it prudent to tell you this.” Olivia looked down at her hands for a few moments before she continued, “The thing is, I’m plagued with bad luck.
“I felt that it wouldn’t be fair to let you agree to this without having you know beforehand. Consider this my disclaimer and don’t blame me for anything that happens. Because I did warn you.”
“Yes, I’ve known you for over six months now. You’d think I would realise at least that much.”
“Yes, so regardless of Chennae’s intervention or Nara’s pranks or Tona’s vindictiveness, my luck is terrible. Do you really want a talisman of bad luck following you around on your mission to gain the Throne?”
“I’m not on a mission to gain the Throne.”
“Right. You’re not. I thought that was the default setting of all eligible heirs. Come to think of it, what brings a princess like you all the way out here to a hermit’s lair anyway?”
“You’re saying this half a year after finding me dying in the forest. You never wondered before this?”
“I have. Very briefly. But I didn’t care enough to ask. I will ask then, now that it concerns me too. That is what we just confirmed, right? That you are sure you wish for me to join you to the capital.”
“I suppose.” After a long pause in which Imyra finishing the last drop of her tea, she chuckled awkwardly and continued, “I don’t exactly have much of a choice in this. You may not believe it, but the Ancient Witch is kind of a big deal out there in civilisation. My mother ordered me to bring back Chennae, instead I’m bringing back you, her representative. It’s the only compromise Chennae agreed to and it’s better than turning up with nothing.”
“Your mother, as in, the Empress.”
“Yes.”
“Your mother sent you to make a deal with the devil?”
“Stop being so dramatic.”
“What did you do?”
“What do you mean, what did I do? And why’re you asking so many questions today?”
Olivia gave her a suspicious look, “You must have done something to earn your mother’s ire to make her send you off into the Reaper’s forest on your own to look for the old hag. I’ve already heard all about how it’s not usual for forests to be this dangerous.”
Imyra looked away, “I wasn’t sent off on my own. I was just the only one of the group to survive.”
“Oh.” Olivia frowned, “But you were the only princess in that group.”
“Yes.”
“Finding Chennae is not the kind of emissary job you give to your own teenaged daughter.”
Imyra shrugged as she poured herself another cup, “Because it needed to first and foremost look like punishment. Though that’s just her excuse. And what’s ‘teenaged’?”
Olivia’s eyes widened a little, “Forget ‘teenaged’, what did you do?”
“Do you really need to know?”
“Yes!” Olivia exclaimed as she threw the knot of dough into the bowl with a bang.
Imyra sighed and pretended to think, “Contempt for authority?”
With a probing, unwavering look, Olivia waited. There was a long pause before Imyra clicked her tongue and admitted, “I refused an Advocate’s Challenge by supposedly insulting said Advocate. It was all just blown out of proportion, really.”
“Details.” Olivia leaned forward with a glint in her eyes.
Imyra took a sip from her cup, “His ‘Challenge’, you know the thing the Advocates give to all the Imperial kids to decide on who’s to get on the Throne? It was a stack of paper tests. I thought it was a big joke and I wasn’t in the best of moods so on impulse I made it burst into flames and… Anyhow, as I said, everything just got blown out of proportion.”
Olivia tripped back and fell onto the floor as she burst out in laughter. The ball of dough also ended up being flung into the air and fell splat onto her forehead. She laughed even harder and this time Imyra giggled along.
