Lament of the Slave

The more exciting beast stuff.

Doing and learning that was within my reach. But there was a tiny snag. Geran and Vienlin wanted to see more than what I showed in the fight with Ronnu. As proper mentors should, they wanted to better understand my relationship with my inner beasts. Perfectly understandable. During those two months with them, they made it more than clear to me how important it was to not be afraid of my beast self and to get in tune with it to the point where nothing my body, in whatever form, threw at me would surprise me.

The question was how to prove to them quickly that I had this covered so we could move on. Honestly, nothing came to mind, so I brought it up.

“Getting laid,” Vienlin said immediately with a straight face.

“What the . . . !”

“In your beast form,” she added.

“That doesn’t make it any better!” Was she fucking serious? She couldn’t be, could she?

“You won’t know if it’s better or not until you try it.”

“I don’t want to,” I snapped at her, to which she growled back, warning me to keep my temper in check.

“Don’t get bitchy with me. You asked; it’s not my fault if you don’t like the answer.”

“Vienlin is right, Korra. If it’s about showing how in tune you are with your beast, then getting laid is the way to go. That way, you’ll reveal everything you’re made of.”

Somehow, hearing it from him, the more reasonable of the two in my opinion, made me accept it as the truth. In fact, it made some sense. Still . . .

“Sorry. Look, the core that I have, it messed me up pretty badly down there. I’m not ready for . . . that, beast, human or whatever.”

“You smell fine to me,” Geran objected.

“To me, too,” Vienlin nodded, which simply left me baffled. According to the Imperial Chief Healer, I wasn’t. Hell, when I had [Inner Perception], I saw for myself what the core did to my insides, to my womb. I was not fine. So why did their noses tell them otherwise? Did something change? Maybe with a passage here to the Echo through the misshapen space? Or with all their training and me leaning on my beasts? I’ve shifted into full beast more times here than in Castiana, so…? My mind raced as fast as my heart.

“Damn, are you all right?” Geran asked, my oddly strong reaction not escaping his notice.

It certainly didn’t add any credence to my words about having my beast stuff under control. “ Yeah - yeah, I am. It’s just that I was sure that my guts were a mess. The healer confirmed it; there wasn’t much he could do. Now I’m not so sure.”

“Well,” Vienlin said, leaning over to get a better sniff of my lap. “You smell fine to me. Are you sure the healer wasn’t a quack?”

“He was a three-star healer.” If someone from the Sahal Empire heard her call Lord Wigram a quack, they’d stone her.

“That doesn’t mean he can’t be a quack. I once met a bastard who . . .”

“Vienlin!” Geran cut her off. “We don’t need to hear about your flings.”

“How did you . . . ?”

“Know? Seriously? You bitched about him to me a few times.”

“Have I? Whatever. My point is that males are better at this - and the other way around. The mating stuff.”

“That’s not the point I remember. You vividly described to me how you’d cut his balls off if you saw him again.”

“So I did tell you about him. Hmm . . . interesting, anyway, it hardly changes my point,” she said, motioning with her head for him to do the thing.

“You know my nose isn’t the best. It would be better if she was in heat.”

“Wait! Shifters can go into heat?” I can’t say the thought never crossed my mind, but I always had bigger problems to deal with.

Vienlin laughed. “Of course we can, and let me tell you, it’s a wild ride.”

“It doesn’t have to be. It depends on your beast and how you handle your emotions.”

“Then I’m screwed, aren’t I? I’ve got seven beasts in me.”

“Now that you mention it, I’m even more curious,” Vienlin said, her interest piqued. “Usually it’s a once-a-year thing, but with you . . . oh, my.”

“Again, it depends on how you restrain yourself,” Geran stressed.

“You’ll miss a lot if you do, though,” Vienlin countered.

For a moment, I wondered what it would be like to be in heat, before I promptly pushed the thought aside. That was a problem for another day. “So you’re saying I’m fine?” Knowing how much the truth of what the core had done to me hurt and tormented me, I didn’t want to give myself the slightest glimmer of false hope.

“Geran?”

After a hard glare from Vienlin, the man sighed and leaned down to sniff my lap. “To my nose, you’re a fine female.”

The breath I didn’t even know I was holding left my lips. The seed of hope was planted.

“I would ask one of our healers anyway, just to be sure,” Geran added, trying to curb my elation. Too late, though. I was already wagging my tail happily from side to side, my wings fluttering with rapture. There was one question, however, the answer to which eluded me. How?

“How do you think that’s possible?”

The two looked at each other, searching each other’s eyes for an answer, only to shrug to my disappointment.

“Sorry, Korra. But even though the shifters are damn close to beasts, we’re not able to form a core.”

Vienlin nodded. “If we were, every damn magus would want to be a shifter. Can you imagine . . . ?”

I couldn’t help but shake my head in agreement with a smirk on my lips. No matter the era, mages seemed to be the same. Aspen had said something similar during my training. Wait! Could it be the mana training? It couldn’t be, could it? That would be too easy. But no matter how hard I thought about it, I couldn’t think of anything other than that I had grown more in touch with my beast self. No, that wasn’t true. There was one more thing. I was using my core more, the damn core, the source of my grief.

“As for the core and mana, you’d better ask Rairok,” Geran suggested, easily seeing where my thoughts were taking me. As awkward as it was to have such open body language, I had grown used to it by now, and so I just brushed it off, voicing my thoughts instead of bitching and fretting about it. “Don’t you use mana? I thought most high star beasts did in some way.”

“They do,” Vienlin said, scratching her nose with the claws on her right hand. “Mostly to strengthen their bodies, to make them more agile, stronger, their claws sharper, things like that.”

“I have seen beasts control nature and send out airblades.”

“Some are more magically inclined,” Geran said.

“That doesn’t make them unique, though,” Vienlin pointed out. “Every beast comes to that at some point. They learn to use magic outside their bodies. It comes naturally to them.”

“So, shouldn’t it come naturally to us?”

She grinned. “It should . . .”

“. . . and it will,” Geran finished. “Look, it’s complicated. We’re someone from both sides. Both human and beast. We take from both sides and suffer the shortcomings of both. The key is to find the balance and not get lost in just one side.”

“If it’s a beast, you’ll go wild; if it’s a human, you won’t be able to shift,” Vienlin continued. “It’s the same with magic. If you want to use it, you have to find a balance between the two. If you just rely on beast magic, you’ll get burned. If you try it the human way, you’ll never be able to put the beast spell together.”

“Then what about my poison?”

“Your what?”

Oh, I forgot, this cycle, I haven’t gotten around to telling them yet.

“That’s not really magic,” Geran explained when I told them about my poison glands, followed of course by a little demonstration and them sniffing Sage. “This is a physical aspect of your body that uses mana. There are a lot of shifters like that. Take me, for example. My muscles naturally absorb mana to make me stronger.”

My eyes immediately went to his sculpted muscles. They looked . . . well, normal. Actually, I wasn’t sure what I expected to see - his muscles glowing with mana like my runes? I’d have to be blind not to have noticed something like that a long time ago.

“Scales,” Vienlin said as I looked at her, my eyes bright with curiosity. “Scales and claws and stuff. All far tougher and sharper.”

“Damn. I was kind of proud of my poison, but now . . .” Jealousy gripped my heart - Heart of Mana. What a joke. I was a magical creature by all accounts. I couldn’t live without mana, yet what good did it do me if I couldn’t use beast magic? Couldn’t I? My whole body was absorbing mana to function, so . . . argh, that wasn’t magic.

“Could be your fur, too; it’s super soft,” Vienlin remarked, not very helpfully, as she stroked my tail. In my experience, it was better to let her do it and endure it than to fight back.

“So there’s no way to learn beast magic?” I learned human magic from Aspen. Well, not really magic, just mana control so far, which Idleaf also helped me with. I guess it didn’t make much of a difference whether you were a human, a beast, or a terrestrial creature that parasitized on worlds. It depended on how you used the mana you controlled. But wasn’t the system designed to unify those kinds of things?

No, it couldn’t have been that simple. The creators of the system were dragons, beasts, and they would not give up their magic. I wouldn’t if I were them. A thought that didn’t even matter now. This was the past. There was no system and things worked the old-fashioned way, so . . .

“Korra?” Gerran asked as I hissed in pain. Thinking about that whole magical mess was giving me a headache.

“Sorry . . . it’s just more complicated than I thought.”

“What did I say? It’s not that simple. Anyway, about your question. You can learn to use beast magic. One way is to simply wait. It will come to you naturally as you become more comfortable with your beast.”

“Much later than the beast itself, though,” Vienlin added. “We’re talking about four stars and up.”

“Shit!”

“Yeah.”

“Or you can learn their magic, but to use it you have to know human magic too and find a balance between the two,” Geran continued. “You can imagine how difficult that is.”

“Magi lie in books from morning to night,” Vienlin snarled at the thought.

Seeing these two, I understood. The shifters, no offense, weren’t the kind of people who were made for books and studying. They went the way that felt right and most natural to them; they didn’t force things. In fact, if they tried, things could go wrong for them. So the majority of them didn’t worry about how to combine the two types of magic and just hoped that one day they would just grow into it.

“Couldn’t you be taught by a shifter who already knows beast magic?” The moment I said that, my thoughts turned to Rairok and how he taught me how to use mana on my eyes, not beast magic per se, I knew. Stella taught it too, but it allowed me to see at night, my eyes . . . they were a mutation, like poison glands. It just reminded me of how different I was. I wasn’t a shifter, I was a hybrid.

Vienlin smirked. “If you’re as good as you say you are, you know how shifters are.”

I didn’t have to think long about what she meant. The way I had been taught so far was more than obvious. “Yeah, we better learn the natural way for us.” All they did was show me the way, and I had to walk it myself, make it my own, since every shifter was unique.

“Not how I would put it, but you don’t seem to be all talk. Good,” Vienlin patted me on the back. “Now I’d like to see you prove it to me.”

“All right, just . . .”

“Enough talk,” she growled. “You had me take you around the grounds. Do you know how fucking annoying that was? Now I want to have some fun.”

I wanted to protest, having so many questions, especially about my core and magic, but I’d have to be blind not to see that my mentor had reached the limit of her patience. Even Geran, arms crossed over his chest, whom I looked to in the hope of finding some understanding, seemed keen to move on. And so, knowing that pushing would only be detrimental to me as her student, I swallowed my questions, determined to inquire about my core Rairok tonight the same with the question of recalling the skill [Inner Perception] on Traiana, and sighed: “What do you have in mind?”

Vienlin grinned, fangs bared. “Let’s start with the shifting.”

And so it began, the demonstration of my shifter abilities. I was in my beast form in a heartbeat - not quite true; it took longer - talking to them in human language, sniffing them. What they told me I demonstrated to the best of my ability. Hell, when it came to the efficiency of my shifting and food in general, I even ate the raw meat Geran pulled out. Yep, during the cycles I managed to suppress my gag reflex when it came to uncooked meat. Not something I was particularly proud of this time. It was savage to eat like that; heavy on my mind. The fact that my taste buds didn’t put up much of a resistance made it easier, though.

“Not bad,” Geran smiled as I licked my lips. “A shifter of your strength, so in touch with your beast, is rarely seen.”

“Beasts,” I corrected him, my pride flattered by his approval.

“Now you’re just bragging,” Vienlin remarked, amused, her eyes telling me she took it as a challenge. “Let’s see if those beasts of yours make you a predator or just cattle.”

“Bring it . . . wait!” I said, pausing; my snide retort cut short. “Shifters can turn into livestock?”

She burst out laughing, already out of her clothes and quickly slipping into her beast form. “Wait till you see Geran’s beast.”

Ah, so it was just a tease about his bull form.

“Screw you, kitten,” the man growled, and shifted into a mountain of muscle that I would definitely not call cattle. Amused, Vienlin nuzzled up to him and purred. The sight was - surreal. You could almost forget that she was someone who could kill a human with a swipe of her paw. Hell, I found myself wanting to pet her.

“Cut it out,” Geran lashed out with his foot, which she playfully avoided. “Not the right wording, but the point remains. You are either predator or prey, in human terms, a knight or a mere civilian.”

Being prey was something that went against my nature. I wasn’t one. Yet, for some reason, it never occurred to me that the shifters didn’t all have to be predators.

“How does that even work? Why would anyone want to be a shifter if . . . ?”

“For the freedom,” Vienlin chimed in, now nuzzling up to me and purring. “Some just want to soar through the skies, others to dive into the depths of the oceans and not seek the thrill of hunting their prey.”

“Not everyone is cut out to be a knight,” Geran added.

“Not everyone wants to be,” I said, alluding to the forced conscription. In the past two months, I had learned that this was a thing even here on Eleaden in this era.

He nodded. “Sure, but that’s another matter. We’re talking about your inner drive, who you are deep inside. That’s where most shifter beasts come from.”

That was a nice thought. It made me wonder what kind of beast I would have turned into if it weren’t for my mutations, some that would love to be surrounded by flowers. A bee, perhaps? On second thought, it wasn’t a very appealing idea. Be that as it may, the truth remained: I wasn’t given much of a choice, that I was what I was.

“I am a predator.”

“Good, then prove it to us,” purred Vienlin. “Fight us.”

“F-fight you? Wasn’t my fight with High Commander Ronnu really enough?”

“Sure, it showed us that you have some fangs and claws, but I want to see for myself how sharp they are.”

“All right,” I stammered at the thought of attacking a scale-covered cougar more than twice my size and a massive bull. All my instincts were screaming at me not to mess with those two.

“You’re scared?” Vienlin taunted me.

Her provocation only reinforced my hunch. Standing up to my instincts was part of their test. That, or I was overthinking things. In any case, I shook off my caution, reminding myself of battles with young mossbears no smaller in size and strength than she was, and lunged at the cougar, emboldening myself with a fearless growl.

It worked just as I thought it would. Despite her size, she slipped away from me with incredible ease. Then again, and again. And when I finally managed to slice my claws across her scales, I knew she let me do it. To make matters worse, I didn’t leave a scratch on any of her scales.

As if not letting go of the transgression, she attacked.

Frankly, I surprised myself that I didn’t piss myself and tried to dodge instead. Seeing a beast of several tons gnashing its teeth and snarling at me was terrifying. Thankfully, all she did was push me into the mud, lie on top of me, and bite my ear, playfully, nothing too painful, just to prove her victory.

We “played” cat and mouse, back and forth, she testing different reactions of mine until she was satisfied.

Then it was Geran’s turn. The man, though more composed than Vienlin, offered to mentor me because he saw the fun in it as much as she did. So it was hardly surprising that he wasn’t satisfied with just watching or a word from the cougar, but wanted to ‘play’ with me as well.

The result of my efforts was no better, though. Worse, rather. His skin was too much for my fangs and claws, and when he rammed me, it hurt like hell.

“Not bad,” he said when I failed to escape him for the umpteenth time.

“She’s not all talk, is she?”

“No, she’s not. But her claws are very dull.” He wasn’t talking about claws specifically, but about my attacking abilities in general.

“So can you help me . . . sharpen them?”

Vienlin grinned from ear to ear, showing her sharp teeth. “Oh, we can do more than that.”