Lament of the Slave

It seemed like an eternity that I stood there, panting, aching, bleeding in the silence that Pit had plunged into. Everything was still, as if time had frozen. Not my heart’s work, though. I would know. No, that was just the adrenaline still pumping through my veins and the heat of the moment.

A few gasping breaths later, everything kicked back into gear and the whole Pit erupted in cheers. Thankfully, ever ready for the Thorn Serpent’s next attack - having received no system message about my successful hunt, something I’d grown accustomed to and knew I wouldn’t get here - I kept my defenses up. And so, in relative silence, battered by the rain, I watched several men and women emerge from the beast entrance and rush toward me. Or so I thought. Their target was my prey. Obviously, they were no strangers to this, and before I knew it, they were dragging the carcass of the serpent away.

»Hey, that’s my prey,« I growled at them, still in beast language. It was my game that I had brought down, and now they were stealing it from me. Instincts.

“Hold still, shifter,” a strong male voice stopped me from going after them. The man was a healer, and he wasn’t the only one who rushed to the fighting floor. “If you keep moving, you’ll only make it worse.”

He talked about my injuries, especially the numerous thorns I still had stuck in my body, some of them quite deep. Even knowing where his concern was coming from, I couldn’t help myself from another grumble. ‘How dare this human tell me what to do?!’

“Hey, if you want to end up like the idiot before you, being dragged out when you fall unconscious from blood loss, have at it. It’ll make our job easier,” he said, gesturing to the other two healers behind him. He kind of reminded me of Marcus. In fact, the thought of him and the others in Castiana, especially Idleaf, was like a kick in the gut that brought me back to my senses.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean . . .”

“Don’t worry, the fight like yours, the atmosphere in here, it can mess with your head . . . so are we good?” he asked warily, still afraid I would bite him. I didn’t blame the guy; the thought crossed my mind.

“We are.”

“Good, don’t shift back yet. It usually makes things worse.” Obviously, he had some experience with shifters. 

“I wasn’t going to, but I don’t think I need your help either,” I said, sounding more arrogant than I meant to. The truth was, now that I was out of the fight, I could better focus on my mana and use it to boost my regeneration properly. By pumping everything I had in my core - I know, stupid, it was supposed to be my last reserve, but how else was I supposed to get used to it if I treated it like that - my bleeding stopped within a few breaths.

The healer grinned. “Don’t overextend yourself and let me . . .”

“Actually, if you could pull out the thorns, that would be enough.” Once more, I sounded too arrogant. No, that was the wrong word. Proud, I was too prideful. “Again, sorry, I’m not usually like this.”

“Again, don’t worry. Nothing unusual here or on the battlefield.”

“I’ll have to trust you on that,” I couldn’t help remarking. “ However, my regeneration can handle these injuries, really, so if you could just get those thorns . . .”

“Sure, guys,” he whistled to the two behind him and put his hand on my back. “Don’t mind if I check you out, just in case.”

I shrugged my tattered wings, missing a feather or two, and so the man did his thing while the other two, not so carefully, started to pull the thorns out of my body. “Tss,” I hissed as the woman yanked one out of my left butt cheek. How that one got there I couldn’t for the life of me remember, but I had a few in more painful places.

“What the . . . well, I’ll be damned, you weren’t lying, shifter,” the healer whistled, obviously stumped by what he saw. “Your regeneration is fucking impressive.”

“Thanks.” That kind of praise was nice to hear. It didn’t escape me, though, that his thoughts were on more than just my regeneration - the man noticed more than that.

“Don’t let it go to your head, shifter. Anyway, it would be pointless to heal. Can you walk?”

Questions about my core arose in my mind, questions that this was not the best place to ask, and so I nodded.

“Great. Let’s get you out of here . . .” he said, pausing briefly at the disapproving roar from the Pit stands. “On second thought. I think you should give these guys a show first.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ah, this is your first time here, isn’t it? It’s silly if you ask me, but they love it when the winner does, shall we say, a kind of victory dance.”

“The what?!” I barked. I hardly ever did a victory dance alone somewhere away from the eyes of others, and now they wanted me to do something so embarrassing here in front of so many? “No, thank you.”

“All you have to do is circle the fighting floor,” the female healer said with an amused smirk on her face. Dismissing her idea was on the tip of my tongue, yet the sight of the crowd and their enthusiastic cheers made me sigh. It couldn’t be any more apparent that I would make a lot of enemies if I didn’t do this.

Since the old Korra was shitting her pants at how nervous she was about this idea, figuratively speaking, I let my instincts take over. As I did so, pride and excitement washed over me and I set off on my victory lap with a yelp. It wasn’t as bad as I thought. I ran, jumped, and even glided at times, yelping with joy as the exhilaration took over. At one point, I even swung Sage, out of which a dozen thorns still stuck in the hairs shot and showered the crowd. To my surprise and relief, as I hadn’t expected that to happen, instead of being pissed off, they loved it and erupted into even more cheers.

In a way, it was surreal to see these knights acting like a bunch of excited football fans. Understandable, though. As far as I know, they’ve been stuck here for a while, a couple of years actually. This makeshift arena was one of the few places and pastimes where they could get their minds off things and have some fun, even if it was mostly fights between man and beast, something they had more than enough of on the battlefield.

Anyway, I made the round and . . .  found the healers gone. 

Understandable. Why wait for a girl who didn’t need their services? At the same time, it annoyed me. Away from prying ears, I wanted to ask them to check my . . . lady parts. That healer guy certainly noticed my core. Now I’ve lost my chance, or have I? They could still be in the tunnel. And so, while my beast self longed for further praise of my successful hunt, I made my way back to the entrance I had come through. Alas, there on the other side I found but one woman, the one who let me fight  in her place. “Damn, good battle, shifter. I enjoyed watching you.”

Hearing that tickled my pride. “Thanks, good luck out there.”

“Relying on luck is a quick way to end up dead. Remember that, rookie,” the woman smirked and made her way down the tunnel to the fighting floor without another word.

“That was actually good advice,” Geran remarked, standing with Vienlin just around the corner. A glance at them and a shiver ran through my body. From sheer thrill to dread in a heartbeat.

“I know, I know,” I blurted out before they could say a word. “I screwed up. I thought too much, again. I just couldn’t rely on my instincts alone.”

“Ah, so you’re aware,” Vienlin said, a huge grin on her face. “Good. Anyway, for your first time fighting such a beast, well done. The way you used your tail, clever.”

“On the other hand, falling back on your presence showed that you were backed into a corner there,” Geran remarked. “Or am I wrong?”

Of course he wasn’t. “I had no idea what else to do.”

He smiled and patted me on the back, somehow finding the only place that didn’t hurt. “I’m not saying it was wrong, Korra. You used what you had well and effectively.”

“It might be better to hit the Thorn Serpent with my presence first; surprise him, you know.” My tried and tested tactic I no longer consider being so brilliant.

“Would it?” Vienlin asked, obviously wanting me to tell her what good it would do me.

“I’d give that serpent a few scratches before it had enough time to . . .”

“I’m going to stop you there, Korra. When you have something like your ridiculously powerful presence on your side, using it to throw a few punches is a complete waste.”

“I completely agree with Geran. If you’re not sure that you can deal a heavy blow to your opponent like that, or even kill them. It’s better to save that kind of stuff for when you’re in a pinch. By my reckoning, you did well to restrain your urges . . . yeah, I noticed that you wanted to pounce right away.”

That was good to hear, but confusing at the same time. “Didn’t you tell me to learn to fall back on my instincts more in fights? That was the exact opposite.”

They looked at each other and laughed. “You have a long way to go. You need to learn to distinguish between urge and instinct.”

A stupid question popped into my head: Was there a difference? Luckily, this time I used my brain before I opened my mouth. Of course, there was a difference. Only, I wasn’t quite sure what the difference was.

Geran clapped his hands and turned towards the exit. “Come on, let’s go. We’ll find a place to sit, watch the matches, and talk.” My confusion was all too obvious to these two.

Finding a place for the three of us in the Pit wasn’t as much of a problem as I thought it would be, considering how many people were here. The challenge was finding a spot where we could hear each other over the noise of the crowd. In the end, we had to go pretty high.

Well, as far as the difference was concerned, it wasn’t very substantial. But if I had to sum up what Geran and Vienlin told me. Instincts were something we were born with and very hard to change. Whereas urges were derived from instincts and we had more control over them. I was a predator by nature; I had instincts and urges of one. According to them, my urge to strike the first blow came from those instincts and my lack of experience, something that had no less influence on one’s urges than one’s instincts. Should I make that first strike and fail a bunch of times, the urge would go away. The same would happen if I fell deeper into my instincts. With the ones I was reaching now, I was just scratching the surface, something I’ve known for a long time thanks to [Ancestor’s Ride]. Somewhere deep down, there was a predator who had already learned this lesson.

Honestly, if I understood these two correctly, the instincts I could access depended on my level - they were related to strength or stars, of course. Taking my system level still stuck at 122, as an example, if I were able to fully lean on my beast self, the most I’d be able to access would be the instincts of a beast at the same level, that was, the experience they had at that time. Considering that the lowest level I’d seen for a young mossbear was still close to 300, level 122 must have been basically a newborn in their case. Hell, Zeewet considered me a chick, and the idea of a level 1 drake was just ridiculous.

“How does that work when not all beasts are born as weak as us humans?” That was something I learned from Mr. Sandoval in his library. At that time, I just accepted the fact that when the beasts reached the required age for the system, they would start at the level of a hundred, for example, instead of one like humans. Now knowing how the system came into being and its purpose, it was clear to me that the newly adult humans were the unit of strength, the base from which the others were measured.

“Are the instincts I’m supposed to rely on those of the newborn beast?” I added to my question.

“Now you’ve hit the nail on the head,” Vienlin chuckled. “Does it hurt your pride?”

“As a matter of fact, it kind of does.” I didn’t like being called a girl or a kid, and this didn’t sit well with me either.

“Then there you have it. You’re not a newborn.”

“What? But . . .” I knew I wasn’t, so what the hell did she mean? That if I were a newborn, my beast pride wouldn’t be raging at the thought? To me, that was the only thing that made sense.

“In your case, though, that might not be true, Korra,” Geran spoke up and proceeded to explain. “You have access to a five-star presence. I wouldn’t find it strange if the same was true for your instincts.”

Oh, I hadn’t thought of that.

“However, the truth is, whether you like it or not, the moment you shift, whether as a half star or a star, the moment you connect with your beast for the first time, it’s like you’ve been reborn. But don’t underestimate the abilities and instincts of newborn beasts. They have it in them, and many of them would have no trouble killing an average person. The stronger the beasts, the stronger they are born.

“Give a newborn dragon a few days to adapt, and it will be an opponent even I wouldn’t want to face,” Vienlin said, now intrigued by the match on the fighting floor.

I had to take her at her word. A dragon, a drake, or a wyvern were not beasts I had the pleasure of meeting on Eleaden, thankfully.

“But does it matter?” Vienlin asked, her eyes still on the match. “If you want to get stronger as a shifter, you just have to learn to lean on your beast more, dig deeper, and eventually you’ll reach the heights of the adult beasts.”

“That’s right. There’s no point in burdening yourself with something that’s out of your control anyway,” Geran agreed with her, talking about the attitude that went with the free spirit of the shifters. It wasn’t even far from the “go with your guts” attitude Deckard adhered to. The man would get along well with both of them.

The thought of him inevitably made me think of the others, again, Harper, Freyde, Meneur, and of course Idleaf. I had tried to call her through the rune on my side at the beginning of each cycle, but so far I had not received the response I was hoping for. I had no choice but to trust that she had at least heard me, and pray that she hadn’t destroyed Castiana in my absence.

“Ah, there you are. Why so bloody high? The real fun is down there,” Knight Commander Taiult’s muttering pulled me out of my thoughts.

“It may be hard for you to believe, Taiult, but we are not here for fun,” Geran replied, annoyed with him. “We’re here to give her some real experience and pointers.”

The obnoxious guy smirked. “You mean the fight down there should help this hussy on the battlefield? You can’t be serious.”

“And what would you know?” Vienlin snapped. “You haven’t moved your hairy ass out of encampment since you were put in charge of Cages.”

Did they know each other better than I thought? It sounded like it. On second thought, Vienlin was the type to take no shit from anyone.

“Are you suggesting that I leave my post, shifter? That would be a dereliction of duty,” the Knight Commander said simply, but to say he was unfazed by her insinuation of him as a coward would be a blatant lie. Fury flared in his eyes and several veins popped out on his forehead. “Perhaps I should inform your commanding officer.”

Vienlin laughed. “Go ahead.”

The Knight Commander took a breath to speak his mind, only to pause and mutter, “I forgot you were from the fucking Rosicrucian Seventh!”

“High Commander Ronnu wouldn’t like you talking about our order that way,” Geran snapped at him, though it wasn’t the first time the obnoxious man had said that about the Seventh. “Perhaps - I - should inform your commanding officer about what you’re doing on duty.”

True. He didn’t even have to come with us to the Pit when my two mentors told him about their plan to pit me against the beasts.

Though pissed, this time the man smirked. “Good luck with that.”

“Why are you even here?” Vienlin asked, realizing that Geran’s threat had missed the mark as much as the commander’s to her.

“Just to ask if the hussy here is going back down to the fighting floor,” he said with a glance at me. “I’ve made a fair bit of coins, thanks to her.”

“You bet on me?”

“On you not passing out after the fight. So what will it be? Are you going down again or you don’t have the balls to do it anymore, hussy?”

“It’s up to you, Korra,” Geran said as I looked at the two of them. “But down there is a place where you can sharpen your claws and fangs much faster than we can teach you.”

“Not to mention that whatever we show you will be far from a real fight,” Vienlin said and added. “Besides, I don’t like mentoring gutless pussies.”

A bit of a warning, huh? Well, it didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to back out now. Still . . . I looked at the now-ending fight on the fighting floor and stretched, checking the state of my injuries. “I need a little more time to fully recover. One more fight, and then I guess I could.”

“Excellent. That’s what I like to hear. I’ll arrange it,” the Knight Commander said, muttering as he went to set up my next match. “Perhaps if I mention that in addition to the shifter, the hussy is also an Eichenralke . . .”

Well, I didn’t care; what mattered were my matches and the beasts I had to face - to endure Eleaden’s whispering through them. And I did. Before darkness fell, I clashed with several beasts.

Swamp Hound

Frost Weaver

Ironclad Boar

Blood Ram

No flyers, thankfully.