The Darkness Within

40 - Routine and Visting Friends

The next four days passed with extreme routine. Ciara woke up early in the morning, ran with her training unit for forty-five minutes, ate breakfast with her training companions, then they spent the mornings strength building or practicing hand-to-hand combat. Lunch was a light meal, something to fill bellies enough to not be hungry but not enough to want to throw it back up immediately afterward. Following lunch, they practiced combat with weapons, and for the four days they had been training Ciara had used many different kinds of weapons: swords, daggers, hatchets, spears, and even the occasional throwing knife. Then, when Ciara and a number of the witches being trained with her were thoroughly exhausted in the physical sense, they practiced magic. The end of the day, after magic training, was filled with dinner and bath time.

Despite never leaving her Goddess form, Ciara was painstakingly aware of her physical inability. Her lack of sight was becoming less and less of an issue every day; her power-sight abilities lasted longer every time she used them, she learned to better use her other senses to understand the world around her, and learned she could sense parts of her surroundings through her other powers as well when they were in use.

Her body, however, was far from ideal and the progress was much more lengthy. The reality of the fact was she had been losing weight and muscle mass from before they left Grey Forest pack and with her recent capture, she had become even more underweight- a problem not able to be solved in a matter of days.

Her body no longer could run all day as it could when she lived in the forest, she could no longer run or fight as fast, and her body felt sluggish in comparison. It only made her more determined to gain the strength back, pushing herself during training and further causing her to be exhausted in the evenings. For Ciara, that routine exhaustion was welcome, as it allowed her to sleep through the night. Tala's presence helped to counteract nightmares, sure, but nothing could compare to the comfort Lucienne's presence brought. Ciara had nightmares sleeping beside Lucienne, but they were not a nightly occurrence like they now were in the witches' barracks with a large wolf curled around her. Since the nightmares were regular once more, she was simply thankful to sleep through the night rather than waking up and getting little to no sleep.

Another thing that she had physical difficulties with was the after-effects of her wounds from the demons. Her father and his friends hadn't left deep scars on her body, only surface wounds in comparison, but Bacia had been skilled and practically started to take her body apart. It was hard to move her right shoulder into certain positions thanks to her previous wound, there was sometimes a painful twinge in her left leg that had been cut wide open in the past, the skin of her right leg that had been peeled off and the whipping scars on her back stretched uncomfortably sometimes and made her scratch at them, and the burning and stabbing to her hands made it difficult to hold weapons. Her body was a ruined machine, but she could not simply replace the parts.

So, as she stood there in the training field with a witch for an opponent and twin daggers in her hands, she embraced the pain and stiffness of her hands as they gripped the weapons. She would never get a new pair of hands, never get a new leg, never get new eyes, but she had a war to fight- to lead- and she would make do.

She leaped forward, swiping at her opponent using her power-sight to aim her attacks. The witch countered, blocking the blade with her own and Ciara had to fight the twitch of her hand and shoulder that put force on the blade. The witch then went to stab at her stomach and she turned to avoid the blade and pulled back.

The Goddess swept forward with her leg, forcing her opponent to take a step back and Ciara took advantage of that with another swipe of her blade. It was blocked, predictably, but Ciara was counting on that. When the witch attempted to swipe at her leg this time, she pushed the dagger aside with her own free blade and kneed the witch in the stomach. The female doubled over with a gasp, and Ciara pulled the knives from the witch's hands. Then, she held a blade to her opponent's throat and another to her gut above a kidney.