The air outside the cave was sharp and damp at four in the morning, the soothing kind of cold that comes after rain, clinging to the skin and biting straight through. Gabriel's sleeping chamber had been set to wake him up this early, whether he liked it or not, rousing him from the comfortable pull of sleep and pushing him out into the darkness before the first rays of sun had even started to touch the horizon.
The glade stretched before him in silence, a wide carpet of dew-slick grass enclosed by the thick shadows of the forest. Above, the sky was a deep blue, filled with stars free from the light pollution of cities. Behind him, the mountain rose like a wall of black stone, their house carved into its base.
Gabriel's outfit, courtesy of his mother and left folded over his table with a note telling him to come outside, was as merciless as the hour: a plain black tank top, loose exercise pants, and nothing else. No shoes. Not even socks. His feet squashed against the cold drenched earth, but there was no point complaining. Eloá would hardly make him dress like this without reason.
He followed the path she had shown him the evening before - a neat, marked trail cutting through the grass and leading toward the other side of the glade. There, an artificial clearing waited, its border of conjured stone set in a semi-circle at the base of the mountain. Above that, high up the stone face, he could just make out the dark oval of another cave mouth, cut into the rock and ringed with faint runes. That, he knew, was his mother's new project: the training hall.
Gabriel sighed, tilting his head back to study it. The slope leading upward was dotted with precise indentations and protrusions, each clearly shaped by spellcraft to form handholds and footholds for climbing.
"I knew she'd start soon," he muttered under his breath. "But she could've given me a week to relax… but no, whyever would I get a break?"
As if summoned by the complaint, her voice whispered right beside his ear, so sudden and close he nearly lost his balance.
"Come on, Gabriel," Eloá teased. "Up you go."
He jumped and scowled at the mountain. "You could at least say good morning!"
Still, he put his hands to the stone and began. His strength made the climb far from impossible - half-giant blood gave him power enough that his arms and legs held easily, even though he carried a tad more weight than most boys his age. But power wasn't grace and couldn't truly make up for a dearth of skill. His movements were clumsy, every reach and pull uncertain, and sweat quickly slicked his palms.
Halfway up, her voice rang out again, brighter and more threatening this time. "Hurry it up, or I'll make the holds disappear. You can get to start it all over when you fall, I'll even let you catch a breath."
His head whipped around, eyes wide. "What!? You'll what!?"
"Don't worry, Anjo," she said sweetly. "The ground was Spongified. You won't get hurt. It'll just feel like... being hit by a train!"
Gabriel froze on the wall, mouth gaping. "That sounds like it hurts a lot!"
Her laugh echoed like bells in the dark, and he scrambled upward faster, muttering curses under his breath.
By the time he pulled himself over the ledge and into the cave, his breath was coming fast, chest heaving like he'd just run a lap around the Quidditch pitch. Eloá was waiting for him, lounging in a conjured chair that vanished as soon as she stood. She clapped her hands together, smiling.
"Very good. Fifteen minutes, forty-seven seconds. Not bad for a first try."
Gabriel leaned on his knees, groaning. "Not bad? I nearly died."
"Tomorrow," she said sweetly, ignoring the complaint, "you'll do it faster. Otherwise, I'll make the holds smaller. Or maybe I'll have you carry weights, I'm still undecided."
He let out another groan, louder this time, and dropped to sit on the cool stone floor.
When his breath finally evened out, Gabriel dragged himself up from the stone floor and turned his attention to the space around him. The cave wasn't natural - not that he expected it to be. The walls curved in a perfect dome, every surface transfigured to unnatural smoothness, broken only by small alcoves where lamps of steady blue fire burned. Their glow made the stone gleam like polished metal, a cold radiance that left nowhere for shadows to cling.
The dome had been split neatly into halves. To the right stood what could only be described as a wizard's gym - racks of gleaming weights, bars, benches, machines that reminded him of the ones he'd glimpsed on television. On the left, however, things looked less reassuring: humanoid mannequins scrawled with runes stood at attention, targets of varying shapes were set in rows, and scattered among them rested what looked uncomfortably like quidditch bludgers in an array of sizes and materials, iron and wood and some other things he couldn't even name. In the middle of the cave lay a broad circle marked into the stone, its borders inlaid with silver lines that shimmered faintly. A fighting ring.
Gabriel groaned. "Of course there's a fighting ring. Why wouldn't there be?"
His mother didn't answer with words - only with a small, proud smile as she beckoned him toward the gym side.
"I've spent much of my time since your… awakening," Eloá began, her tone light but her eyes sharp, "researching how best to bring out the potential in what you are now. Unfortunately, literature on half-giants is… scarce. Why, I wrote more on it as notes before your birth than I found in the Ministry libraries, even those they pretend don't exist."
"That's comforting," Gabriel muttered.
"What I did manage," she continued, ignoring him, "was to get my hands on some of the goblins' records. Back when they still bred all manner of troglodytes for war, they refined many methods for hardening their soldiers. But in the end-" she snorted, "-it was nothing more exotic than physical training. Their magic came from their armor and weapons. So: good, old-fashioned weight lifting will serve us just fine."
She gestured to the bench press. "I'll fashion a training regimen for you but let's start simple. I need to know your limits in order to set a baseline."
Gabriel sat under the bar, gripped it, and lifted - and nearly laughed. "Huh. This is way lighter than it looks."
Eloá's eyes glittered. "Obviously, silly." She giggled, "That's because it has no weight yet." She flicked her fingers, and the bar suddenly grew heavy. Unprepared, Gabriel let it drop straight onto his chest.
"Oof-! Yeah, that… tracks," he wheezed, shoving it back up.
What followed was a blur of sweat and grunting through exercise after exercise: bench press, leg press, deadlift, overhead press. His body strained, his breath roared, but the numbers didn't lie: ninety-four kilos on the bench, two hundred and fifty-four on the leg press, one hundred and twenty-six on the deadlift - after his Mum finally got him to stop bending his back wrong -, and seventy-eight on the overhead press.
She looked pleased, but her smile was sly. "Mhmm... Around the level of strength of a well trained adult. Certainly impressive for an eleven year old, yes? But we both know that isn't truly your limit."
Her hand dipped into a pouch at her waist and came out with a small glass vial filled with a cloudy red liquid. She held it out to him.
Gabriel eyed it like a snake. He unstopped it, sniffed, and immediately coughed. The smell stung his nose, pungent and burning. "Que porra é essa?"
"Draught of Rage. Diluted, of course." Her tone was casual, like she was offering tea. "It should bring more of your strength to the surface."
"That," he said slowly, "sounds like a terrible idea."
"Why?" she asked, amused.
He frowned. "Because last time it happened, I wasn't exactly in control, you know? I'd tell you to ask the troll, but I turned its head into soup."
Eloá stepped closer. In one smooth motion, she plucked the vial from his hand, pressed her palm against his cheek, and tilted his head up. Gabriel leaned into her touch despite himself. Her voice was soft, airy, and dangerously tender.
"You think you'll hurt me?" Her eyes gleamed. "Gabriel..." She called out his name with the tone of voice parents reserve for when their children say something exceedingly stupid but they don't want to hurt their feelings. A fond, soft kind of disdain. "Do you think you even could?"
Her thumb flipped the vial open. Before he could answer, she tipped it into his mouth. The liquid burned down his throat like fire.
"Don't forget," she whispered, a sharp smile cutting across her face. "Who, and what, I am."
The effect was instant. Gabriel's chest began to pound with a rhythm like war drums, loud enough to echo in the cavern. His muscles swelled, veins standing sharp beneath his skin. His breath came ragged, his sclera turning black, fangs sliding down his gums.
Eloá pinched his cheeks, tugging his lips back into a grotesque grin. "So?" she teased, her own smile wide and delighted.
Gabriel rolled his darkened eyes. His voice came out deeper, rumbling like stone grinding on stone. "This is dumb."
And yet he stood, grabbed the bar, and began lifting again - the weights rising as if they were little more than toys.
"No," Eloá denied, her voice ringing firm. Waving her wand and increasing his weights yet again. "Dumb would be telling my son to ignore what he is. Repression weakens. Acceptance strengthens. We'll make your nature serve you - not the other way around."
-~=~-
Steam curled around him as Gabriel leaned against the tiled wall, the hot water of the bath pounding across his shoulders and chest. He let out a long grunt as the ache in his muscles began to ease, though the relief was quickly drowned by another sensation - his body shifting back. His teeth itched as the fangs receded into his gums, the pressure behind his eyes lessened with a faint swish, and the bulk of his muscles slowly shrank, leaving him feeling hollowed out.
"Ugh…" He groaned and blew a wet raspberry, shaking his whole body like a wet dog, shivers running down his spine as the last of the Draught's effects vanished.
When he finally stepped out of the stall, he dried himself off briskly, wrapping the towel around his waist before glancing at the mirror. Staring back was the same face he had woken up with at dawn, bronze skinned, and still soft with traces baby-fat.
Gabriel blinked at his reflection for a few moments, expression blank. Then he raised his hands and made finger guns at himself, grinning.
He padded barefoot out of the bathroom, the towel trailing behind him as he followed the smell of food. The kitchen was warm, sunlight starting to spill into the glade outside, and Eloá stood at the stove singing softly as she worked. The tune clicked after a second, and Gabriel hummed along happily.
"Frank Sinatra?"
She swayed her hips slightly as she sang under her breath, voice playful: "Way down among Brazilians, coffee beans grow by the billions…"
Gabriel shook his head with a grin as she plated his food - a neat square of steaming cuscuz stuffed with cheese and ham, eggs on the side, and a cup of coffee. He took a sip of the drink, immediately gagging. "Blegh! Bitter!"
Eloá laughed, not even turning from her pan. "Yes, that 's coffee, querido."
"It's old people's coffee," he muttered, already pouring in milk and more sugar than was strictly legal.
When she finally sat down beside him with her own plate, she flicked her finger in a circle. From the living room, the television lifted, rotated, and floated neatly until it was facing them. A cartoon was playing, and Gabriel got caught in it, hoping desperately that the cat would manage the rat from hell, his mother seemed just as absorbed by it as he was.
They ate in companionable silence, the blue glow of the screen flickering over their faces. Gabriel barely noticed he'd finished until his plate was scraped clean. When Eloá moved to pick it up, he was quicker, standing and gathering both dishes before she could.
"I got it," he said, carrying them to the sink.
She chuckled warmly, watching him scrub. "Good boy."
When he returned to the table, he leaned on the wood. "So… what now?"
Eloá stretched like a cat, her arms arching above her head, her spine cracking audibly. She yawned, long and theatrical. "Now," she said lazily, "I go to work."
She pointed toward the telephone on the counter. It had an extra button with the sign of an eye on it. "If you press that, it'll call me directly. Emergency only, mind. If you're bored, the first lab is open - there are unused potion stations there if you want to brew something. You should have no reason to go to the second lab, and under no circumstances are you to try getting to the ones below."
Gabriel blinked. "The ones below - wait, how many-?"
She waved him off. "Doesn't matter. Off-limits."
"Right…"
"There's money - muggle and magical - on the TV stand if you want to go out. Floo's open, so you can visit friends or get food. The fridge is full, if you'd rather cook." She ruffled his damp hair. "The only thing I expect before I get back tonight is for you to finish reading the booklet I left in your room."
With that, she stepped outside, and with a sharp pop, disapparated.
Gabriel stood there for a moment, at loss at the newfound freedom.
The thought of swimming in the lake flickered in his head, tempting. But he sighed. The sooner he read whatever it was, the sooner he'd be free.
Dragging his feet, he trudged upstairs to his room. The "booklet" sat neatly on his desk, leather-bound and heavy. The cover bore no title, only the handmade illustration of a skull split open, a brain blooming from the crack.
He stared at it in silence, closed his eyes in prayer and then opened the first page, muttering: "Oh, good. At least it's numbered."
He flipped straight to the back. The final page read: 433.
Gabriel dropped to his knees, letting out a soul-deep whine.