NOVEL NEXT Chapter 243: Habits and Goals
The way Vienlin grinned at me made me wince. She had a plan for me and I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it.
“W-what do you have in mind?” The image of her sharpening my claws on a grinding wheel flashed through my mind. Sure, I knew Geran didn’t mean it literally when he talked about my dull claws, but knowing Vienlin for a while . . . well, she might actually consider it fun.
“For starters, you need to stop thinking so much.”
“What?” That was definitely not what I was expecting to hear.
“I stand by what I said. A shifter of your strength, so in touch with your beast, is rarely seen, but you still have a long way to go,” Geran spoke to Vienlin’s annoyance to clarify her words to me. “When you ate the raw meat, did you like it?”
“You mean, did I like it?”
“That much was obvious,” Vienlin snorted. “But did YOU like it?”
Ah, they meant my human self. “Do I have to like the same things as a human that I like as a beast?”
Both shifters smiled, as if it was the question they’d been waiting for. “The greatest shifters I know don’t differentiate between forms.”
Vienlin nodded. “You could say they’re one.”
“Didn’t you say it’s important for a shifter to remember their human roots, or they’ll go wild?”
The cougar cocked her head and gave Geran a glance. “Did we say that?”
‘Oh, shit!’ They said it to me, several times even, just not in this cycle.
Before he could answer her, she did what I would describe as a shrug. “Whatever. It’s true. Forget who you are and you’re in trouble, especially you.”
“Why me? Is it because of the mutations?”
“What? No. Well, actually, that might help you, but no . . . I was talking about rookies like you. You’re not at all ready to give up your full humanity.”
“Wait! So you’re saying that’s what shifters have to do, eventually?” If so, I sure wasn’t willing. I had accepted what I was, that I was a hybrid of man and beast, but I was still human.
Geran shook his head. “It’s not a matter of need, but something you’ll come to on your own if you don’t lose your focus. You can relate this to any profession. Take a swordsman, for example. Give a novice a sword, and they’ll cut themselves on the blade if it’s too sharp too soon. But in the end, all swordsmen strive to make the blade an extension of their arm, to become one.”
“Don’t tell me that they, too, will give up their humanity and become what? Swords?” It came out of my lips snarkier than I intended, unfortunate, especially since I think I understood what they were trying to tell me. “S-sorry, shifters, right? That’s what we’re trying to become?”
Vienlin chuckled. “Of course; what else would you want to be?”
‘A florist, for example.’ I didn’t let the thought out of my mouth. They would both just laugh at me. “So . . . you two . . . ?”
“Nah,” Geran muttered, shaking his head. “You could say I’m still a few steps away from becoming a true shifter. I can still feel the difference between my forms.”
“Same here.”
So they haven’t given up their humanity yet. But looking at the two of them, the certainty with which they spoke of it happening one day, I found it hard to imagine myself not being conscious of my mutations, my beast form.
“Don’t worry,” Vienlin bumped me playfully with her hip. “You won’t have to concern yourself with that for a while.”
A really subtle way of telling a girl she sucked.
“It’s good to know what’s ahead of you, though, your goal,” Geran added, seeing my wings and ears droop. “But even more important is not to be intimidated by the path to it. It may take you days or maybe years, but if you don’t give up, you will eventually see the end.”
“Look at it another way. Would you deny yourself another bite of the best meat just because you knew you might regret it later?”
Eating too much, huh? “No.”
Gerran growled. “That’s a stupid comparison. I’d compare it to whether you’d given up on getting home if you found a house on the other side of the river and yourself unable to swim.”
“And you think that’s better?” Vienlin barked back. “You can always find another house.”
“I meant it more in terms of family and your loved ones, and you know that, Vienlin.”
“Then you should have said it outright. But if you want a better analogy,” she said, dreaming. “Then it would be a taken male that makes your guts tingle. Would you give him up just because another female beat you to him?”
Make him cheat on her? Yeah, I’d definitely give him up. I wasn’t the type . . .
“You would, wouldn’t you?” Vienlin gasped in horror, only to lean closer. “We need to have a serious talk.”
A shiver ran down my spine, from my nose to the tip of my tail. Another talk I was sure I wasn’t going to like.
“Save it for later, Vienlin,” Geran rumbled. “We’re here to teach her how to use her claws and fangs, not to woo males.”
“Yeah, I’d love to get to that,” I blurted out, grateful to him for stopping the cougar from giving me dating advice.
“Prude spoilsports,” Vienlin groaned.
“So, I overthink things?” I asked, grabbing a straw Geran threw at me while ignoring her.
“Indeed,” Geran said, doing the same to the cougar’s fury. “You lean on your beast, you reach for your roots, but you filter it too much through your human brain.”
“You put too much thought into your actions, prude,” Vienlin said, seemingly hurt.
“You should do things on instinct,” Geran continued. “. . . not wonder if what your instincts are telling you is right.”
“So you want me to stop being human altogether?” Contrary to what I’d been told earlier, that’s what it sounded like. It didn’t make sense to me, nor did I want it to do so.
The corners of the bull’s mouth lifted in a smile. “No, Korra. What you need to learn is to do what you think about on instinct.”
“Take your little gal friend. She’s human. You think she considers every move she makes in a fight? No! That would be ridiculous.”
Sure, Stella had honed her moves to the point where they had become natural responses for her. I understood that. It was like my roundhouse kicks I learned from Deckard. In the beginning, I had to think hard about every movement of my body, from my legs to my arms to my tail to my wings to my ears. Now, while I wouldn’t say those kicks have become instinctive to me, most of the arduous process was gone and I could just focus on the kick itself.
“That could take years,” I argued.
“Same with becoming a true shifter,” Geran said. “Are you going to give up without even trying just for that?”
“No, but . . .”
“If you’re looking for immediate results, it’s a shortcut you don’t want to take, believe me,” Vienlin cut me off.
“You don’t have to tell me about shortcuts going wrong. Just look at me,” I said, spreading my wings. Being in my beast form, it didn’t have as much of an impact as if I were in my weird human form, but it got my point across.
“Ah, your sass is back; I like it.”
I just shrugged and looked at the bull. “So what . . . Am I supposed to practice until I hammer these moves into my core? Well, not the core, but . . .”
To my indignation, Geran nodded. “Yes. And that brings us to your second major shortcoming.”
“You seriously lack combat experience.”
“What?” I bristled at Vienlin’s statement. Sure, I wasn’t a seasoned fighter like them, but to say I had no combat experience after fighting mossbears, horned rabbits, two-tailed foxes, and even humans was a bit much.
“Damn, you didn’t think fighting two or three different opponents over and over again was real combat experience, did you?” Vienlin paused at my outburst.
When she said it like that, it didn’t sound as great as I thought it did in my head. Especially since my pride wouldn’t let me accept her truth and lower my head; after all, these were the experiences I’d shed sweat and blood for, the pain I’d endured impossible to forget.
“Look, Korra. We’re not saying you don’t know how to fight,” Geran said, his tone aimed at soothing my pride. It worked. “Ronnu herself acknowledged that you can. But your combat experience is obviously very limited.”
As much as I hated to admit it, there wasn’t much to argue with. “But where am I supposed to get more experience around here? The High Commander won’t let me on the battlefield.”
“And I agree with her. With your current skills, that would be a mistake. Nevertheless, there are more than enough opportunities to gain such experience here at the 3rd army encampment.”
“You mean fighting the knights?”
It was Vienlin who grinned at my question. “That would be a fine way, but there’s a better one . . .” Once again, I had the nagging feeling that I wasn’t going to like hearing what she had in mind, and so I sucked in my breath as she leaned toward me, a sparkle in her eyes. “How do you feel about fighting beasts?”
“W-wait, what? Ah, the Pit.”
“Yes, the Pit,” she nodded, happy that I got her hint right. “There are countless types of beasts for you to sharpen your claws on.”
Pretty sure she wasn’t kidding, I looked at Geran, hoping he would tell me she was. The thought of facing those poor bastards locked in cages, albeit under Eleaden’s control, made my chest tighten. “Don’t worry, Korra - beasts of your level, of course.”
“Of course . . .”
“Why so down? I thought you’d be ecstatic not to have to sit here on your ass. You know, the thrill of the fight, the hunt, and so on?” Vienlin seemed genuinely confused.
“Well, I assumed you would be the ones to show me a way to get stronger.”
My ears pricked up at Geran’s chuckle. “Isn’t that what we’re doing? We’re showing you the way. And before you get your tits in a twist, I think you’re mistaken about something.”
Was I?
“Shifters are not warriors. Our strength comes not from the way we wield the sword, but from our beast.”
“I get that.”
“I don’t think you do!” The emphasis he put on it made every hair on my body bristle. “Sure, Vienlin can teach you how to pounce properly. I can teach you how to charge something, and we will. You can do some weightlifting, run the track around the encampment, no one’s going to stop you. But what makes shifters strong is our beast. We grow as our connection to it broadens. Do you understand?”
“There is no secret move we can teach you,” Vienlin added.
“I wasn’t looking for that, just . . .” I argued, stopping short. What was I really looking for? What was I hoping to learn from them? To be stronger? Absolutely! I needed to convince Ronnu that I had what it took to be on the front lines. But there was more. Deep down, I hoped that these two would know a way to get rid of my mutations and, strangely enough, become a more powerful beast - to become the predator I was meant to be. Most of all, I longed to be understood by someone like me, to learn from them. The realization hit me with the force of a tidal wave.
“I think she understood.”
“Yes, it seems so,” Geran agreed with Vienlin.
“S-sorry for being so dense.”
“Apology accepted . . .” the cougar said gaily, nudging me with her snout. “Cheer up, your stupidity isn’t the end of the world. If I had to tell you all the stupid things I’ve done, we’d be here all night.”
That cracked me up. “Thank you. Can I just ask you one question?”
“Sure, shoot.”
“I’ve learned some martial arts in my human form so far. Is it useless?” I didn’t think so, but . . . the way they talked made me doubt.
“Not at all,” Geran said, both amused and understanding of my question. “If you haven’t forgotten, the goal of shifters is to become one with their beast. That means, among other things, that we can use the strength of both beast and human, regardless of form.”
That was how I understood the whole thing, considering everything I’d been told by them for the past two months, most of which they repeated over and over again. “So, will you show me how to do it?”
“Eager as all rookies. Don’t worry, I was the same. I wanted to learn everything and be able to do it right away. It took me a while and enough beatings to understand that if I don’t focus on one thing at a time, I won’t become a master of anything,” Vienlin said, looking at her tail. “In fact, believe it or not, I can still feel the ferule on my ass.”
Her travails aside, the answer was no. They were not going to teach me like Deckard. However, I was relieved to learn that his teaching wasn’t pointless either. It was just that, from their perspective, the time for learning that hadn’t come yet - mastering your beast came first, and other things after that.
“All right, I get it. The Pit then?”
Vienlin dropped her ears and groaned. “Come on, I thought you’d be more stubborn. I was looking forward to finally using the ferule in my storage.”
“First,” Geran laughed at the cougar’s disappointment. “Let’s fix some of your habits.”
They weren’t bad habits, per se. It was just that my attacks and movements were, shall we say, very basic. I knew how to pounce, how to swipe my paw, how to bite into my prey, all things I had learned on my own, relying on my instincts. Honestly, it was so nice when Vienlin went from being an elusive huntress I couldn’t even touch to a real teacher who showed me how to do things the right way. Same with Geran. He was no longer the mountain of muscle that wouldn’t budge no matter what I did, but someone who explained to me how to deal with a beast like him.
I had a great time.
Unfortunately, before I knew it, we were at the Cages.
“It’s her again, isn’t it?” grumbled the obnoxious Knight Commander as soon as he saw me coming, accompanied by my mentors, the two of them back in their human forms, not me. According to them, dealing with the beasts made most people uncomfortable. “Fucking Rosicrucian Seventh!” he cursed under his breath. “Look, I already told Stouch I don’t give a shit if she sleeps here at night. But that doesn’t mean I want to have anything more to do with that Eichenralke hussy. Fuck off!”
Vienlin and Geran looked at each other and grinned. They’d obviously had their share of experience with this guy. “How about betting on her in the Pit?”
The Knight Commander’s eyes lit up. “You want to put her in the Pit?”
“She needs a taste of fighting beasts,” Geran confirmed.
“Why didn’t you say so in the first place?” he bellowed, laughing. “The guys and gals will be thrilled to see some shifters down there. Follow me.”
“You didn’t say anything about betting,” I whispered to them, my guts already a mess at the thought of fighting caged beasts in front of others.
“I thought it was given,” Vienlin said with a shrug, her eyes scanning the rows of cages we were walking through. “My money’s on you, by the way, so don’t let me down.”
“You don’t even know what beast I’m going to face?”
“Isn’t she adorable, Geran?”
The man nodded with an identical smirk. “You don’t get to pick your opponent on the battlefield either, Korra. You have to face whoever comes at you and win.”
“Or are you saying you’d rather tuck your tail between your legs and run away? If so, just say so and we’ll blow the whole thing off.”
“No, that’s not . . .”
“Good. Because otherwise we’d have to part ways. I can’t stand gutless pussies.”
“Here we are,” Geran announced as we made our way through the Cages to their center, and I got my first look at the Pit. The place wasn’t too different from my expectations, it was just much bigger. As the name suggested, it was a pit dug into the ground, the walls of which were reinforced with wood, creating the gradually descending seats of this arena. The actual bottom of the pit was a flat arena stage, fighting ring, battleground, or whatever it was called, where one of the knights and the beast were fighting. The man was wielding a sword and a shield. The beast resembled something like a long-legged alligator. Both were bleeding as the fairly packed arena buzzed with excitement.