They joined a ring of onlookers at its outer rim. At the center of the ring, a man in a cook’s uniform knelt cradling several severed digits in his good hand, the other a bleeding mess. On the ground beside him a frail form lay still in death, a cleaver embedded in her skull so that her face wore a red mask.
Others in the crowd shared what they had seen, eager for the spotlight sharing gossip gave them. “The cook’s assistant went crazy and sliced the cook’s hand.” “He took the cleaver from her and turned the situation around.” “This is terrible timing for kitchen shenanigans, with the third daughter in residence.” “Commoners shouldn’t be trusted with weapons in the palace.”
Beside him, Khana huffed in annoyance. “The fifth household can’t do anything right.”
Volithur stared at the body. He couldn’t be certain, but he suspected he knew which cook’s assistant lay there. He’d never known exactly what was happening, but there was a reason everyone assumed Ava had been chasing after a ward receiving soldier training. Volithur suspected the cook deserved far worse than the loss of his fingers. He didn’t say anything that would draw attention to himself, though. That wasn’t his place as a commoner. In truth, he shouldn’t even be standing among the noble family members like he was, but he wanted to know the details.
From what he could piece together, Ava ran after the head cook with a cleaver, screaming like she was possessed. The cook had lost fingers when he raised a hand in defense. Then he gained the cleaver in a struggle and ended the life of the assistant. It seemed that the nobles expected the head cook to be let go now that he’d been maimed, so at least Ava would posthumously ruin his fortunes.
Khana pulled him away from the area as the family council descended the stairway to investigate the disturbance. The two of them escaped out of the palace to stroll aimlessly across the lawn. “On a more positive topic,” she said, “we have four weeks and three days until our wedding.”
Volithur put thoughts of Ava away. He was never responsible for saving her. He could barely manage his own affairs. “I don’t know the wedding customs here. Do I need to buy a ring or something?”
“A ring? Your first world must be a strange mix of Jinn technology and Arahant traditions. Dress nicely on the day of the ceremony, say ‘I marry Khana’, and sign the marriage agreement. If we’re lucky, the family will have a banquet after. I’m not optimistic on that count. They at least must grant us both a place at the palace dinner that night. Maybe even a toast in our honor.”
“So I don’t really have to prepare for the wedding.”
“I do expect you to look presentable. A proper hair cut would do wonders.”
Volithur reached a hand to his head. The soldiers gave each other cuts with a pair of rusty tailor’s shears. None of them could be said to have any talent at hairdressing, but they didn’t charge for their services. “I don’t have any money.”
“Maybe my uncle can get me an advance on the housing funds.”
He winced at that. “If they do give us money to live in the city, won’t we need to be careful with how we spend it?”
Khana laughed. “Uncle Rowan wants to set us up for an entire year. Your wardship will end in half that time. We will be on Tian well before we can run out of funds.”
“Khana… I don’t think the Lord General will actually send for me.”
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“Then we’ll have to remind him of your existence,” Khana said. “I’ll send him a wedding invitation through Master Zara.”
Volithur’s heart lurched. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. He’s an important person….”
“It will be fine. He never attends celebrations at the auxiliary households. When my mother married, the Lord General sent a gift instead of attending. Though she was part of the second household, so we shouldn’t expect the same. It will still be good to remind him that ‘Ward Harridan’ exists.”
Volithur almost told her the truth of the matter then. Fear of how she might react stopped him. Their marriage seemed inevitable at this point, but his future wife could enter their union with grudging acceptance as easily as joy. He didn’t see her taking the news well. There might be love, but there was also a fair bit of unfounded optimism for their future prospects.
“I need to get started on the invitation. My calligraphy skills will be sorely tested.” Khana pulled him into a quick kiss and strolled back towards the palace before he could formulate an argument against her chosen course of action.
Before he reached the barracks, he convinced himself that he had nothing to worry about. The third daughter might not even agree to carry the invitation to her father. If she did, he probably wouldn’t read it. Even in the unlikely scenario that he received and read the invitation, it would surely be beneath the mighty Lord General to retaliate against a commoner.
He placed himself in the dining hall to cultivate until lunch. An hour later, the room full of angry soldiers, it became evident that their noon delivery of bread would not be arriving. Volithur sighed and sought out the Sergeant to explain the situation with the head cook. Which led to the Sergeant sending Instructor Gordo into the city for a bread run. Which meant the slush fund used for the occasional cask of rum had been raided for a less than ideal purpose.
Dinner that day was a burnt and bland potato stew, but at least it arrived on time. The Marshal didn’t arrive to discipline Volithur, Master Corey did not return to class, and no one seemed to remember Volithur was being punished. He no longer received the full attention of his class in sparring nor had to attend private training with Instructor Lisbet. Other than the fact that he no longer had a free pass to skip afternoon conditioning because of classes in the palace, things had largely reverted to how they were in the past.
Volithur exercised, sparred, cultivated, slept, and took regular meals in the barracks. The Sergeant was too busy to spare time for their domain lessons, which gave Volithur an opportunity to resume his interrupted body enhancement. He had just started enhancing his leg muscles before he left for the fateful academic competition. Since his return, the domain exercises had stolen every bit of energy he had to spare, making it impossible for him to enhance himself.
The plan he had cobbled together from numerous manuals attacked the hamstring muscles next. They not only bent the knee, but also extended and rotated the hip. Various authors prioritized hamstring enhancement over the quads because the backs of the leg tended to be underdeveloped. The comparatively stronger quads would thus be better equipped to counter the tension of an enhanced hamstring than if the order of enhancement were reversed.
While he could have started with the lower leg like many authors advised, Volithur preferred to see the performance gains of strengthening the prime movers over the purported benefits of having more stable feet. The truth was, he would not have ‘more stable’ feet while he was enhancing his legs. The complex task of human locomotion would be drastically complicated when some of his muscle fibers became multiple times stronger than others. In other words, he would become very clumsy once he sufficiently enhanced a major muscle group.
Volithur had experienced only a slight preview of his upcoming trials when he enhanced his glutes. He had occasionally stumbled before getting used to the differences. The other stabilizer muscles had not caused any dramatic change since they were smaller muscles and more involved in maintaining proper posture and joint socket positioning than movement.
He did not look forward to sparring sessions while his coordination was impaired. His training partners didn’t know what ‘going easy’ meant. Then after he finished every muscle in his body, it would only get worse. The manuals all agreed that the adaptation period following nervous system enhancement brought with it serious challenges. Apparently increasing the speed of nerve transmission at the same time as improving every physical sense required relearning how to do something as basic as walking.