cedric's adventures in kingship

royal gym and royal humiliation

Cedric took a deep breath as he stepped into the royal gym for the first time ever. 

It was his New Year's Resolution to really step up this amulet-stealing business. None of his previous schemes had worked, so he really had to go all-out this year. He decided to start training hard-core mentally, spiritually, and physically so he could level up. 

He  jogged over to the pull-up bar, setting his towel and Hydroflask on the floor. He stretched, eyeing the bar up. It was at least one foot over his 5 foot 4 head.

"You think you can reach? Or do you need Mommy to lift you up?" 

Cedric narrowed his eyes as he looked up to see Zack, one of the castle guards, doing leg curls on a different machine. He was absolutely built already from years of working out here, a big difference from Cedric's skinny frame.

"Excuse me?" Cedric asked. "Well, I'll have you know, I can reach it just fine."

"I'd like to see you try," Zack said, easily doing another fifteen reps with basically no time or extra effort. 

"I will." Cedric said, but gulped as he looked up. He discreetly glanced around the floor for some kind of stepstool. But when Zack started laughing, he hurried up and tried to just jump for it. 

His fingertips could just barely graze the bar. He grunted as he squatted again, then jumped, only to stumble as he landed. 

Zack's phone camera clicked as Cedric face planted on the gym floor. "Totally showing that to the boys."

Cedric fought back tears as he pushed himself up. Why couldn't he get anything right? Why must he always suffer public humiliation like this? He dragged the stepstool over and tried again. 

This time, with the extra height, he could reach the bar! He pulled himself up once, twice, three times, then continued until he'd done twenty reps. 

"I bet you feel real stupid right now," Cedric bragged from his stepstool. 

Zack's jaw had literally dropped, clearly not realizing Cedric's incredible physique that he usually hid under his robes. "I can't even do twenty..." Then, his face twisted into a smirk. "Bet you can't make it forty."

Cedric scoffed. "Try me." He hoisted himself back up, grunting with every pull-up. "Twenty-one, two, three..." 

His entire energy was focused into these pull-ups. Somewhere around thirty, he decided to make it to at least fifty to really rub it in. Yeah, that will show him. So even as he started groaning and straining each time, he pushed himself to keep going. 

What he didn't notice, though, was that Zack had gotten up from the curling machine. He stood in front of Cedric and the pull-up bar, waiting. 

"Forty five..." Cedric grunted, slowly lowering himself. As he did, though, Zack kneed him hard in the balls. 

The air was knocked out of him as he let go of the bar, dropping onto the stepstool. He hit his back, his arm bruising on impact as he rolled onto the hard linoleum floor. 

"Holy shit," Cedric groaned, curling up into a ball. 

"That's what you get for trying to one-up me," Zack said. With a final kick to Cedric's head, he left the royal gym, leaving Cedric to cry alone on the cold, tiled floor.

"Holy shit," he repeated, wiping his eyes. He pushed himself up. His first instinct was to run to his tower to cry into a bowl of mac and cheese, but he told himself that that was the old Cedric. The new Cedric wouldn't give up at the first jerk to be rude to him.