Chapter 8

Pain

"You've got to be kidding me."

"No, I'm hundred percent serious. Hurt me."

Ceres put her hand on her hips.

"Adam, what is the point of me learning how to fight if my semblance..."

Adam interrupted her.

"You cannot control Altering and I'm sure you can't use it when you're on meds. So, please, attack me."

So Ceres tried. She tried to punch him, kick him and even slap him. Adam blocked all of her attacks without effort.

"This is not about making you an assassin." - he told her later - "It's about learning control over yourself."

Adam forced her to fight for two hours. In two hours she managed to actually reach him only once. The good thing was she was so exhausted she didn't put up a fight when he forced her to eat.

"You're gonna need a weapon." - said Adam, drinking his juice - "What would you like to fight with?"

"I don't need a weapon," - she replied - "I just need to unlock my semblance again."

Adam sighed.

"Look, Ceres. It's not always good to show off your semblance to every enemy you fight. You need something that would help you channel your Aura to use Altering more effectively."

"A sword?" - she asked reluctantly.

Adam smiled a little.

"You never told me how and where were you hiding my weapon. I couldn't find it anywhere."

Now she was even more reluctant.

"I can't tell you, I made a promise to someone I would never..."

"From our experience we can safely say some promises are better off not kept." - Adam interrupted her feeling a bitter taste in his mouth. His mind immediately reminded him of Blake.

Ceres was silent for a moment, processing everything.

"Are you familiar with cults?" - she asked him. Adam blinked.

"What do you mean by that?"

Ceres breathed heavily.

"I told you about how Lana was taken by SDC. I never told you where she was taken from."

She embraced her arms.

"We were raised by an Atlesian cult. They were worshiping some kind of god. Every day we would pray to the god to make Atlas a better place to live. We had something holy to pray to – a golden petal. That petal was everything we had."

Adam listened to her carefully.

"We had a high priestess, too. She was guarding the petal with her immense power. And one day I sneaked up to the temple and tried to steal the petal. The moment I touched it..."

Ceres looked down and raised her hand to the air. She opened her fingers and something cracked in the air. A little balls of colorful flames shot from under her fingertips.

"I could do this." - she said quietly - "Of course, the priestess found me in a second. But she wasn't angry. She taught me how to use it. She told me it was magic."

"What happened to the petal?" - Adam asked.

"It turned gray and disappeared. Soon enough the cult was found by Atlesian military and wiped out. The high priestess was nowhere to be found."

Ceres drank the rest of her juice.

"But...that magic took a toll on me. It started to break my mind slowly. First it was the feeling of fear. Then it turned into my memories being tangled. Then..."

"The delusions." - he finished her sentence. Ceres nodded.

"The priestess told me the petal should have killed me, because humans are not supposed to use magic anymore. But it didn't."

Adam saw how painful these memories were to her. He stood up, put the dishes in the sink and came to her. He put his hand on her shoulder.

"I'm sorry."

They were working out everyday in the morning and in the evening. Ceres was exhausted, but Adam was pressing her to not give up their routine.

Sometimes he was lending her his sword to teach her how to use it properly. Sometimes he was telling her to attack him with magic. She was good at using her techniques against him, but he could tell she was in desperate need of weapon. Her attacks were unstable and she missed a lot of targets Adam made out of cans.

"I think I have found a weapon just for you." - Adam said someday. Ceres almost choked on her food.

"What?"

"There's an old abandoned temple in the woods. It's small and closed, but I've heard about a weapon hidden there."

"Are you asking me to go with you to desecrate a temple? What part of "I was raised by a cult" you didn't understand?"

Adam cackled.

"You know, since your eyes are in different colors I never know which eye I should be looking at."

"Pick up one." - Ceres said looking resigned.

"Nobody prays in that temple either way." - Adam shrugged his arms - "It's abandoned."

"You really have no idea of correct social behaviors." - Ceres blinked - "Normal people do not desecrate temples and steal from them!"

"You stole the petal." - Adam said and Ceres blinked again. Once again, Adam was right.

Ceres should have known better than to let Adam handle the locks. He just insolently destroyed the lock with his sword and in theatrical manner invited her into the ruins.

"I hate you." - she murmured, accepting the invitation.

The ruins were cold and dark. It reminded Ceres of ancient ruins filled with traps awaiting the thieves she once saw in an old book. She snapped her fingers and small ball of light appeared next to her.

"If you scare me here I'm going to kill you." - said Ceres, going downstairs. She was barefoot and it was freezing cold down there.

"Are you afraid of darkness?" - he asked her. Ceres averted her eyes to him. Adam stopped wearing his blindfold a couple weeks before (or a couple days before, the girl was not entirely sure, the thing was he was not wearing it anymore). She got used to seeing his scar, and he wasn't uncomfortable showing it to her.

"I'm not." - she replied.

After a few minutes they reached the bottom of the temple. It was small indeed. There was a lonely tomb in the center of the hall. Something was reflecting light of Ceres' magic.

"What is it?" - she asked, blinking to see better. Adam came closer to the tomb and took the shiny thing.

"This, my dear Ceres, is a khakkara." - Adam said, giving the staff to her, but she was looking at something else.

"Adam, look." - she said, pointing at the wall - "It's the emblem of her. It was the symbol of our cult."

"I thought your cult was located in Atlas."

"It was." - she nodded - "I think it's a temple of believers that escaped Atlas."

"And you had no idea your temple was there?"

"I was too high most of the time to even go to the woods." - she admitted with embarrassment - "I had no idea someone escaped Atlas beside me."

"I think it is you of all people who should have it." - Adam handed the staff to her once again. On the top there was small emblem of high priestess. The metal was cold and it had beautiful gold color.

"How did you even find this place?" - Ceres asked.

"I found clues in some of your books when I had no better thing to do than reading." - he admitted, helping her make a step through broken staircase.

"Do you have a name for it?" - he asked when they were in a car again. Ceres found out she can fold the staff, making it smaller and more comfortable to carry.

"I have no idea." - she sighed and turned left, driving out of the woods.

"I may have a suggestion."

She turned her sight to Adam for a moment. He looked really relaxed. In fact, he was even smiling a little. He still resembled the Adam she found dying in a river in his pale complexion, beautiful turquoise color of the eye and his scar across his face that was the proof what humans did to him, but he seemed a little more sane than then. He was once again calm and composed.

"What is it?"

"Planetaria." - Adam replied, looking at her in the eyes - "It goes well with your name."

Ceres thought for a while.

"It's a really nice name. The more I think of it the more I like it."

"I'm glad you like it."

Next morning they clashed with their weapons for the first time. Ceres was good in her defense, but Adam managed to cut her a couple of times.

"It's not fair your weapon can negate Aura!" - she said resentfully and moved her fingers above the injury, letting the magic heal it.

"It's not fair you can use magic." - he replied - "Is this how you healed my wounds by the river?"

"Yeah, it's the same spell. It reverses space in reference to time. So I didn't heal you, I reversed your body to the time when it wasn't hurt. It's probably the strongest of my spells." - she admitted - "I'm not very powerful with my magic, though."

Adam attacked her, but she blocked his sword with gold rings of her khakkara and twisted it, so he had to let go of his weapon. Adam's sword hit the ground.

"Good!" - he said. It could be seen his pride was blooming.

Ceres sat on the big rock, all covered in sweat.

"Do you still want to go back to sniffing powder?" - he asked all of a sudden.

Ceres averted her eyes to look at him.

"I do." - she admitted - "I still cannot stop thinking about Dust, about the rushes when I was doing it intravenously, about the pain in my nose. But my mind is more clear now."

"I know what you mean. Each day I think about what I was doing the past months and I can't stop thinking what mess I've done." - Adam sighed.

"Is it a small pinch of remorse I hear?" - she cackled. His muscles tensed a bit.

"I regret going after Blake. It brought me only pain." - Adam admitted - "But now my mind is more perspicuous than ever. And I'm not going to meet her ever again."

"You went after her because of me." - she said sounding a little ashamed - "Until we met at Beacon your mind was exactly where it was supposed to be. What do you want to do after you leave me?"

Adam blinked, shocked a little.

"What makes you think I would leave you?"

Now the one who was the most shocked was Ceres.

"I mean… you're a free spirit, Adam. And you want to make humans pay, don't you? That's why I think you're gonna leave me. Besides, you don't even like me. And I don't like you."

"Now that's a nice delusion you have here." - Adam pointed his sword to her throat. She trembled in shock.

"By no means I'm going to leave you. You forced me to respect you; something that no one ever did. That's right, I do not like you. But I do respect you."

He took his sword away and reached his hand to Ceres.

"You're cooking today."