Chapter 244: Chapter 241: The Whiff of Change

The next cycle, the fifth, went much like the fourth. We fixed ourselves up, made it to the encampment, met Rairok, trained with our mentors, and waited for the end. The sixth cycle followed, then the seventh and the eighth. A few days in Echo quickly turned into a month, then two, with us no closer to getting to the battlefield, the place that held the key to our return home.

Naturally, we thought about not going through the ordeal of joining the army to get there. In fact, it seemed more and more appealing to just sneak around, even though Traiana strongly advised against it. According to her, our odds of success were not very high. In her words, we would have a better chance of finding the right misshapen space just by wandering around in the woods. Which we both knew the likelihood of that happening was next to none. Otherwise, one of those poor bastards who ended up here would have gotten out by now.

Yet when the dawn of the thirteenth cycle came, we decided to give sneaking around the encampment and going straight to the battlefield a shot.

Surprisingly, despite Traiana’s belief that we were wasting our time, which was a kind of ironic considering where we were and what she was, she did her best to come up with a workaround that would increase our otherwise non-existent odds. Our best chance was to take advantage of the confusion during the alert on the last day.

And we took it. 

With Traiana’s help, we snuck past the encampment. Or rather, we made a wide arc around the edge of the Echo and came to the clear-cut groves. Their purpose quickly proved to be our undoing. There was nowhere to hide in the bare landscape, dotted with nothing but tree stumps and hidden magic mines. We had no tools to hide us, no magic to pass undetected. Our only advantage was the ancient guide, the keeper of this place, warning us where not to tread and what to avoid lest we lose our lives.

We tried anyway; we had to.

The result? We almost got killed. 

After only a few meters of sneaking briskly through the stumps, an arrow plunged into the ground in front of us, leaving a disturbingly deep furrow. There was no way I could have reacted in time. Hell, I didn’t even know where it came from. All I knew for sure was that if it hit my leg, I’d lose it. This more than obvious warning shot gave us two options. Either risk it and make a dash for it, or surrender.

One look between Stella and me was enough to make our decision. 

Our hands went up.

There was no way we were going to make it to the battlefield - not both of us - and the pain of likely death was not worth the vain hope. So instead of finding a way home, we didn’t even get to see the battlefield and ended up behind bars. Not in the Cages that surrounded the Pit, but this time in a proper prison tent.

Honestly, there wasn’t much difference at first glance. More than a tent, it was just rows of cages covered with tarps. Our neighbors, however, were beasts of a different breed. Deserters, rule breakers, or just people who had trouble taking orders from their superiors. In almost every cage, men or women of different ages were locked side by side.

It turned out that they weren’t such a bad bunch of folks, if you ignored the jokes and insults towards Dia Eichenralke, which wasn’t hard to do since we weren’t really members. If anything, it made it easy for Stella to break the ice by laughing at the jokes with them. As if that was the magic that made us one of them, most became talkative and surprisingly eager to share why they were locked up. Of course, each and every one of them ended up here due to a misunderstanding.

Then, when they asked us what got our asses here, Stella played it the same way. In her version, we went for a walk after lunch. After a while, a flicker on the horizon - meaning the battle - caught our attention, and we went to check it out. They didn’t even let her finish, laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. You could say that almost all of them wanted to avoid the fight while the two of us rushed to the battlefield.

This time, some of the ridicule hurt. But what pissed me off the most was when I found out that here in a proper prison tent, they were given a bowl of hot soup with the bread.

After that, the thirteenth cycle, a really unlucky number, ended with us wasting a whole five days.

With the fourteenth cycle, we went back to our old ways, the first day to get ourselves together, the second to situate ourselves in the encampment, the third and fourth to train, while the fifth to wait for the end of the cycle. Well, not exactly waiting. The days of sitting on our butts and biting our nails all day long were long gone. 

Fighting among ourselves, in other words practicing in moments of emergency when we should have been ready to deploy, may have been forbidden, as we learned the hard way, but not training our aura, mana, or presence.

It was in the fifteenth cycle that things began to take a different turn.

 

***

 

“All right, that’s enough,” Ronnu bellowed as we did our best to fight her for the umpteenth time. “I’ve seen all I needed to see.”

Panting in my beast form, tongue out, I didn’t think we fared much better than ever. We were unable to get Ronnu to budge, let alone hurt her.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, shifting back. It had become something of a habit she had beaten into me, demanding that I do it every time. It helped that with training from Geran and Vienlin - as I got more in touch with my beast side - I lost some of my shyness. Not enough to show my ass and chest for everyone to ogle, though. I still covered my bits with my wings and tail. I just didn’t hesitate to do so.

“Damn, you can talk in your beast form,” Ronnu said, impressed.

“I-I-I do . . .” I stammered, biting my tongue, stunned. She never threw that kind of praise my way.

The bitch laughed hard. “. . . and you forgot how to talk while being human.”

Knowing that anything I said would only play into her hands, I clenched my fists and, like Stella, just waited in silence for her to stop cackling and speak her mind, assessing our fight.

“Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much,” Ronnu eventually said. “It’s good to have low expectations, you know. You avoid disappointment - and in your case - well, let’s just say you have some potential.”

Yeah, there it was, her pitch about - wait, what?! This wasn’t what she usually prattled on about.

“For one-star warriors, your skills need a bit more polishing, but other than that, not bad.”

Stella was speechless, and so was I. Finally, after more than two months, our efforts were recognized. The question was, what difference did it make to us?

“A bit of training and . . .”

“Wait, you’re not letting us into the battlefield?” My hopes high, I blurted out before I could stop myself. “Sorry, ma’am. I didn’t mean to . . .”

“Don’t bother. I like your guts. But for me to take you two there, you need to have more than that.”

“Do we have to be two-star warriors, ma’am?” Stella asked a question we had discussed together a few times in the evenings. No matter how we looked at it, even with all the training, it seemed impossible to make up the difference of seventy to eighty levels in just a few days.

Ronnu put her hands on her hips and laughed. “Someone is confident, good. But no, even one-star knights have their place on the battlefield. Their blades have to be sharp, though. I trust I don’t have to explain what I mean.”

No, she didn’t have to. Our skills were still not up to the standards she demanded of her men. Figuring out what it meant for us was easy. More training. How much more, I dared not even think. Honestly, sometimes I was starting to lose track of how long we’d been here. It just felt like an eternity, the kind where you do the same things until you go crazy. Which, according to Traiana, all the people who ended up here eventually went. It helped that I wasn’t alone. Stella was able to get me back on track when I needed it, and in return, I was there for her when she needed to steer her mind back on the right path.

“No, ma’am. You don’t have to,” Stella said, and I nodded.

“Good. Why the sullen looks, though? Tits up, gals. Two months and we’ll sharpen you into fine blades.”

‘Two more months! Is she fucking kidding me?!’ I would have let out a loud groan if Stella hadn’t put her hand on my shoulder to stop me. 

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“You’re going to let us train here?” my squad leader asked, even though we both knew the answer to that.

Ronnu looked hurt before she chuckled again. “Of course. We take care of our own here in the Seventh. Hey guys!” she bellowed at the onlookers, scanning the knights. “Do any of you feel like taking these two rookies under your wings? Show them a thing or two? This one is an aura warrior, a dual sword-wielder, and claims to know how to handle a spear as well. The other one, who looks like a fucking beastwoman, is a shifter. Some asshole wanted to make her a cross between a human and a beast. Who’s interested?”

Once again, I was speechless. 

Her bluntness made me feel like a piece of meat for sale, a slave in one of the Arda marketplaces I’d heard about during my captivity from the other slaves and wished I would end in. In my mind, at that moment, any place, any master, was better than Dungreen and the cellar. It turned out that time, its continuity, had its ways, and soon a trio of the knights Stella had trained under so far, Geran and Vienlin, stepped out of the ranks.

Ronnu grinned contentedly and looked at us. “Your new mentors.”

Without any need to say more, Stella and I gave them a deep bow, a sign of our gratitude. It wasn’t an empty gesture. We were both grateful for what they had taught us so far, even if they themselves were unaware of it.

“Great, that will do,” Ronnu nodded to herself and looked around. “Stouch, can you take care of the rest?”

The man in question appeared not far from us. “Certainly, ma’am.”

“Thank you,” she replied, giving us one last look. “Anything else . . . no? Then, dismissed, I’m off.”

For the first time, the little man with the mustache didn’t sneak up on us.

Having motioned for the five of them to come closer, he walked over to us, wiped the water off his mustache, and introduced himself. “As you have likely gathered by now, I am Knight Commander Stouch, one of the twelve commanders under High Commander Ronnu. If you have any questions, concerns, requests, anything, come to me and don’t bother the High Commander. Don’t let her get under your skin, though.”

“Ronnu can be quite a bitch,” Vienlin remarked, to which the other four knights smirked. “She’s a good commander, though.”

Obviously not too happy with her words, Stouch nodded. “The High Commander can be hard on her men - and she is. But she’s like that because she hates losing them on the battlefield. Anyway, let’s get on with the introductions . . .”

And so, for the umpteenth time, I introduced myself to Geranven Selarde and Vienlin Steglas; Stella did the same with her mentors, after which they introduced themselves to us.

“Usually, I would give you a tour of the Seventh’s facilities myself, but I think I’ll leave that to your mentors while I figure out where you’re going to stay,” Stouch said, which elicited a wave of disapproval from both our mentors and us. They found it a nuisance to tour us while we needed to explain to him how things were between Rairok and us. To the Knight Commander’s credit, he seemed unfazed by being confronted by three- and four-star knights. He listened to their complaints and then, in a calm, uncompromising voice, simply ordered them to do it. He did the same with us, listened to our request, smiled, and spoke calmly. “I will check with Knight Commander Tailut and Rairok. If neither of them has a problem with it, I don’t see why I should. Well, I guess that’s all from me. I’ll get back to you as soon as I know more.” He paused to take a breath, smoothed his mustache, and smiled warmly. “Welcome to the 7th Rosicrucian Order, Eichenralkes.”

 

***

 

“Fuck, I hate this,” Vienlin growled as I was just shown where the mess tent was. “This is not what I volunteered for.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, Korra. Though I have to say I agree with Vienlin on this one. I thought we’d have fun teaching the new shifter.”

“I’m not a newbie,” I argued.

“Confidence,” Vienlin leaned toward me with a grin. “I like that. You’re bound to need it, but let’s be the judge of whether you’re as skilled a shifter as you say you are, or just full of talk.”

“Sure, I’ll be more than happy to show you what I’m made of.”

She laughed. “I like your spunk.”

“Okay, last stop. Baths,” Geran said, pointing to a large tent not too different from the others. In fact, the only way to tell that it was the bath tent and not the outhouses or the recreation tent was the sign above the entrance. When Stouch first brought us here, the place took me by surprise. Instead of the bathtubs or other magical tools I was expecting, the tent contained a large dug-out pit lined with rocks and filled with clean water. The tools were used to clean and heat it. I suppose it was more cost effective to have one pit for everyone than to maintain dozens of magic tools.

I have to say, while I didn’t feel too comfortable using the place, it wasn’t bad just to take a peek. All those naked guys there were a sight for sore eyes.

“Oh, someone got excited,” Vienlin chirped, and I grunted in annoyance. I was starting to hate her nose. She was always sticking it where she didn’t need to, saying the same line every time. Nevertheless, I smelled my armpit. It wasn’t the best spot to get the strongest dose of my scent - that would be my crotch and ass - but it was enough for me to discern more than just the fact that I was sweaty after my fight with Ronnu.

That little sniff didn’t go unnoticed by any of the shifters. “Oh, you can use your nose without shifting?” Geran wondered.

“Using it, yes, telling the difference; that’s a different matter altogether.”

“It is, isn’t it?” He laughed. “I’m not very good at it myself.”

Maybe that was true compared to the other shifters, compared to Vienlin, but he was still a hundred times better than me.

“What can you tell, anyway?” Vienlin asked, leaning in to take a whiff as well.

There was no need for me to think too much about it. “My human and beast side, that’s all . . .” It took me quite a while to distinguish so little in my scent. Nevertheless, it made me proud of myself. 

“Is that really all?” 

“Well . . . there’s the faint sweet smell of apples and . . .” She pressed her finger to my lips to stop me. “Don’t say it out loud. Let the males figure it out for themselves if they can, but that’s the smell of your lust. Well done.”

I have to say, even though I’ve gotten used to her being so open about it, I blushed. No less confused, though. Wasn’t that my poison I smelled? The stupidity of it hit me in a heartbeat. My armpits didn’t have any poison glands like my tail; there was no poison between the hairs. What’s more, I smelled apples AND cinnamon, something my tail poison lacked - but something the poison of the Empress of Poison was supposed to smell like . . .

“But don’t worry, I have a way for you to quickly sharpen your sniffer,” Vienlin said, interrupting my train of thought as she threw her arm around my shoulders.

“Is that butt sniffing?”

“Oh, is that how you learned it? Great, I like you. You know, a lot of shifters have qualms about it, but being a good shifter means . . .” She went on about what I’d heard over a dozen times, Geran filling in the blanks, putting her exaggerated ways into proper perspective. It was getting a little tiresome, hearing the same thing over and over again; the passion with which they shared it with their new student not so much. I wished every teacher I had was like them.

Anyway, with the way things turned out with Ronnu, I was hoping that we could finally move on in my training from bonding with my beast side to the more exciting stuff.

 

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