She removes the bag of ice from her face, revealing her scraped and swollen cheek. I’m unable to withhold my frown upon seeing it. It’s a miracle that whatever the girl did to her face managed to miss her eye, for it’d likely be swollen shut now.
“I’m fine,” she grunts, groaning as she moves to stand up.
I don’t know if I should offer her my hand or not, so I watch as she slowly comes to her feet. My training will allow her to focus on something less prone to injuring her. That is the best thing I can offer at the moment. “You need not spend so much time on your physical conditioning.”
Flashing a strange, possibly aggravated look at me, she collects her bag of things from the ground. “Where are we going?”
I scan my eyes across the yard, finding Dal and Gul perched on the outer walls. With a nod of dismissal to them, I turn to leave.
“Come. I’ll show you.”
Kae reluctantly follows me as I lead her up the winding, abandoned path behind the training complex, ascending a rough-carved recess in the cavern walls. This pathway, and the cliff it leads to, is one of the few areas within the city rings that wasn’t developed. We began to gut the walls a few decades ago with the intention of starting a fourth tier, but upon learning we were unlikely to have another half-millennia in the Abyss, the project was terminated with little to show for it.
The cooler, stronger air up here—courtesy of our closer proximity to the wind tunnels—blows the girl’s scent towards me. She must douse herself in warm vanilla and honey perfumes on a daily basis for it to be so prominent over her perspiration and the leathers she wears.
I watch as she completes the climb up behind me, her pace slowed by exhaustion.
Such a young, young woman I’ve been charged with.
She can’t even be more than a decade from her first bleeding, tasked with an honor most angels will never have bestowed upon them in the entirety of their eternal lives... I will never understand the mysterious Will of the Creator.
When she finally arrives, I find a place for us in the middle of the clearing before turning around. Again, the girl has lagged behind, instead choosing to stand at the edge. Despite my efforts to be polite, I come so close to demanding she quit wasting my time, but…
She’s looking at the city.My city. And, for reasons I do not understand, she’s taken her long, dark hair out of her braid, allowing it to blow around in the breeze. It sways like a weeping willow, calling me to sit under its branches. I approach on instinct, and as I do, her distinct sweet smell only becomes stronger. So much so, I decide to dial down my olfactory receptors. It is infuriatingly distracting.
“This is where you’ll train for the rest of the day,” I remark, and her brilliantly human eyes turn towards me. Compared to the vibrant colors of an immortal’s, the muted hazel is refreshingly natural, like a walk through a forest. I can’t keep myself from staring.
The words I mean to say are sucked from my breath, lost to thewind.
“Why here?” she asks when I do not continue.
I avert my attention from her eyes to the city to regain my thoughts. “The isolation will be better for you to concentrate on your metaphysical training. You need to be spending at least half your daily efforts on this. The power may be held by your physical form, but it cannot be accepted by a soul unwilling to meet it.” When I notice her eyes crinkle in confusion, I try to rephrase myself. “Your body is merely a conduit, and one you will be unable to use if you do not learn how.”
“For… magic? Or whatever you call it?”
I give a small nod, conceding. “We, and the Nephilim who once roamed the earth, use two types of what you humans understand as ‘magic.’ The small skills—the supernatural manipulation of existing matter—is formally known asAngelica.Celestia, on the contrary, is the essence drawn from the Aether to power a specialty skill.”
“Why not tell me that before?”
“Such terms are only used in Theory courses at the Academy these days. We normally have no use putting names and explanations to things so foundational to our nature.”
“Why’s that?”
So many unnecessary questionsfrom thisuncouth, tenderfootdilettante.“A human knows how to breathe without understanding how oxygen exchange occurs in the lungs. Only those who intend to use physiology for medicine endeavor to learn it in such detail… You, however, cannot have the luxury of simple explanations for understanding concepts, it seems.”
“I can never tell if you’re complimenting or insulting me, Abaddon.”
I blink. I had not intended to do either. Her meddlesome curiosity is quite grating, but not enough for me to lose my composure over. “I do not see how that is relevant.”
“It’s not.” She rolls her eyes at me. “How do I use my body as a conduit?”
“It would help if I understood more about what power you possess.”
“None, as far as I’ve ever known, but you guys seemed to beconvinced otherwise.”
Yes, my patience is certainly wearing thin. “Then you will allow me to inspect it.”
Her eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “What the hell does that mean?”
