Chapter 259: Chapter 256: Personal Victory

“W-what did it look like?” Stella asked me with a little hesitation.

 “I mean me, my body. Damn, that’s such a weird thing to ask.”

“You were - well, dead.”

“Seriously, Korra.”

Talking about how my friend died was no more comfortable for me than it was for her.

“Honestly, I don’t know what to tell you. That giant tentacle landed on you.” To give her a better idea, not that she needed it, I raised my hands above my head to show her how big it was. The tentacle was thicker than me standing tall. “All that was left of you was a bloody smear and a boot stuck in the ground.”

“Shit!”

A moment of silence.

“And you?”

“I got out of the way - just in time, fought for a while, but the octopuses were too much for me.”

“So they fried you.”

“No, not really. I mean, they tried. But, you know, my mane. The weight of it slowed me down, and one of the worms got me.”

Stella held her breath. “The beast dragged you underground?”

“No, I hit them all with my presence when it tried. A mistake. As soon as I shook the bastards off, I was struck by two heat rays.”

Stella nodded, then paused. “Wait, how do you know there were two?”

“I saw them coming. I just didn’t have time to dodge.”

Silence again.

“In battle, you have to keep a far broader awareness of - well, everything - than we thought, don’t you?” It wasn’t so much a question as a statement of fact. And she wasn’t wrong. Dealing with a few beasts in the Labyrinth didn’t compare at all.

“Yeah.”

“Do you have any idea how to do that? Because I don’t.”

A bit surprising. “I would have thought the city guards would have a good idea of what’s going on around them.”

She grimaced. “Sure. Except I was a rookie just like you, remember?”

“A rookie who has trained all her life for the position.”

“Not really. I didn’t always want to be a city guard.”

To say that I was shocked to hear that was an understatement. “You didn’t?!”

“Of course not. Well, for starters, there was a time when I dreamed of being a princess.”

“Oh, that.” What girl hasn’t dreamed of being one, right? “A prince and all that?”

“Yes - while most dream of one on a black warhorse, mine rode a wyvern.”

Well, that was a little different from the version I knew. “My Prince Charming on a white horse seems a little lame to me now.”

“White horse?”

“Yeah, I don’t know. An Earth thing.”

She chuckled, and I chuckled with her. “I keep forgetting that you’re not from Eleaden.”

“And I’m forgetting Earth more and more the longer I’m here . . .” Painful. Also a good conversation killer.

“S-sorry, Korra.”

“No, I should be the one apologizing. That’s my shit; none of it’s your fault. You better tell me about the wyverns. Does anyone really ride them? I thought dragons and stuff . . .”

“Not really. They’re strong beasts, but dumb as fuck.”

“I think you give them too little credit, little one,” Traiana reminded herself, listening to us in silence so far. “The wyverns I know may not have the wits of drakes, let alone the wisdom of dragons, but they’re certainly not stupid.”

“Really, because I . . . maybe they’ve gotten worse over the years,” Stella mused aloud, apparently quite sure that the ones she knew were dumb.

“Could be the war.”

Traiana nodded at my suggestion. “That would not be too surprising. After all, many species were already extinct in my time, and the whole war was about the survival of our species.”

“It’s all sad anyway, this whole war thing. The planet, Eleaden, the beasts, the humans, the elves . . .”

“That’s the way wars are, little Guardian. They hardly ever bring happiness to anyone. Or are the wars on your planet any different?”

“I could tell you a few who loved to conquer.”

The ancient woman smiled warmly, but said nothing.

“Yeah, I know, not what you meant. Well, I guess not. War is war. The old fight it and the young die.”

“That’s surprisingly insightful,” Traina marveled. 

“Not from my head. I just heard it somewhere.”

“Speaking of war,” Stella chimed in. “Do you have any advice on how to get a better grasp of the battlefield?”

“You both learned to fight, relying only on your perceptions, didn’t you? No sight?” Traiana asked back instead of answering, and when we nodded, she continued. “Then fight your enemy like that, relying on your perception and using your sight to see the battlefield.”

To be honest, even though I had a few remarks on the tip of my tongue, it made some sense. My inner domain had a range of only 5 meters, while the outer one had 10 meters. While not the best - the outer one was very limited in what I could see through it - combined with my beast senses, it might have been enough to fight my enemies. After all, down here in Echo, I learned to lean on my beast self quite a bit and even put my domain to good use.

All in all, good advice from Traiana - actually, it was stupid to think she would give us a dumb one with all her experience. 

The hard part was seeing her advice put into practice. 

Try not to look when the enemy is rushing you.

Of course, we practiced a bit, both with our mentors and in the Pit with the beasts, before jumping into battle. The results were mixed. 

We simply did not get much further than we did in the previous cycle. 

On the bright side, we knew what killed us.

 

***

 

I spat the octopus chunks out of my mouth - truthfully; I was getting used to the taste, kind of like sushi - and roared. “Earthworms!” 

The knight, who was usually the first to notice them, or at least conscious enough to alert the others, was always a few breaths slower than me. That was enough time to save someone’s life. 

To be fair, though, you could say that Stella and I had a slight advantage of knowing their attack was coming. Just a slight one. The worms weren’t exactly clockwork accurate. That was not how I had learned that Echo was working with us in it. Minor deviations spread across all cycles.

Just like now.

Worm heads popped out of the ground all over the place. Two instead of one where I had stood a few heartbeats ago. Mouths full of several rows of teeth, seemingly moving independently, strings of saliva trailing between them. Just looking at them made my skin crawl, not to mention the lack of eyes.

It was creepy.

The goosebumps hadn’t even had a chance to set in before yet another heat ray slammed into the ground. This time, however, heeding Traiana’s advice, I saw it coming well in advance - well, a few heartbeats in advance - and it missed by a long shot.

A vibration in the ground; one worm just swam under me to the other target, only to have another try to bite into my leg. Regardless of my domain and the vibrations I felt through my paws, it was like dancing in a minefield. One wrong move and you were screwed.

Honestly, seeing Stella, jealousy stung my heart. She only had two feet to keep an eye on, and better yet, boots to wear. Wading barefoot in the shit that covered the ground, literally, was disgusting.

Not that I have much time to think about it, but still . . . gross.

Octopus after octopus swarmed me, and I pounced back, taking out a few before they had time to latch on to me, where Stella took care of them. As much as it pissed me off, I felt like a flypaper, a flycatcher, a fly girl - or better yet, an octopus girl. According to Stella, what I was doing was simply a tank job, tying up the enemy, drawing their attacks to me while the damage dealers took care of them. My role in Squad Four.

Well, being a tank definitely sounded better than an octopus girl.

“Stella!” I roared at the top of my lungs.

“I see it!” she yelled back, and like me, she hurriedly fought her way through the hordes of beasts to get out of the way of the giant tentacle falling on our positions.

The impact shook the ground and, as far as I could tell, left the worms quite dazed.

Stella took the opportunity to get rid of all the suckers clinging to me, relieving me of their weight. Once again, I could move with the ease of the wind. At least for a while.

We fought, we struggled. 

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But there were too many.

Endless waves of beasts.

 

***

 

A huge tentacle, slamming into the ground yet again, stunned the worms.

It made me wonder just what the hell Ronnu was doing. From her initial attack, I got the feeling that she had this beast down pat, that she was just going to finish it off in no time. But here we were, long minutes into the fight, and the beast was still a threat to the Seventh.

Hard to blame her for that, though. I guess it was just a tougher enemy than the weaker variants that relied on numbers made it out to be.

Anyway, free of the octopus burden, worms out of the way, I got ready.

“Just tell me when,” Stella said as she slashed another octopus in half.

I nodded back and waited for the right moment. It wouldn’t be long before the octopuses swarmed us in the numbers they overwhelmed us with last time. One of the faster ones ended up shredded under my claws. I ripped another one with my teeth. Stella dissected three of them. Dozens, however, were there to swamp us.

“Poison!” I roared for all the knights around me to hear, and after seeing Stella deftly swallow the antidote in the middle of the fight, I released the poison from my tail. In a single breath, an orange cloud of gas covered us both. For a moment, the stench of the battlefield was drowned out by the scent of apples.

Now it remained to be seen how effective my poison truly was.

At first glance, not very. 

Only the small octopuses, half my size, were scared off by the gas. The larger ones came at us with the same vehemence as before. But in a few breaths, while another dose of poison was brewing in Sage’s venom glands, the first small octopus that didn’t manage to escape the cloud fell to the ground. Not long after, the tentacles of their larger counterparts began to twitch.

It was working.

For the first time, my poison worked properly in a fight.

A squeal of joy ripped from my throat. It didn’t matter that I had two octopuses clinging to my body, trying to burn through my cold mane, or that the poison hadn’t quite killed them. The exhilaration of this small personal victory surged through my body. 

What dampened my joy a bit, not really, was the reduced visibility of what was happening outside the orange gas cloud.

We made it through, though.

We made it through the swarm of beasts.

All that was left of the octopus horde were torn and shredded bits. I even managed to get a few bites out of the worms - the bastards did not seem to be affected by my poison and tasted even worse than the octopuses.

“Heat ray!” Stella shouted the warning, just a heartbeat before it came out of my mouth.

What followed left me speechless. 

We dodged the attack, and the ensuing blast of hot air blew out most of the gas. Not the surprising part. The attack hadn’t ignited the gas. Rather, it seemed to me that the gas had weakened the heat ray.

I know, most likely my wishful thinking.

Still . . .

I don’t know why, but in the back of my mind I kept thinking that the candle flame I was trying to ignite the poison with back in my early Castiana days just wasn’t hot enough to ignite the gas, that high enough heat could do the job. Thankfully, since we were on the edge of the cloud, I was wrong and my poison was an inert gas - or whatever. Magic wasn’t out of the question either. The apple-scented orange gas may be a form of magic, but I used a ton of mana to create the poison. Thus, the possibility of its magical nature playing a role was not to be dismissed so easily. After all, according to the story the librarian told me, the Poison Empress was able to control her poison with mana.

One day, perhaps.

Not now, though.

Nevertheless, it was still my small personal victory. If I hadn’t been in the middle of a battle and in my beast form, I would have kissed Sage or cuddled him.

“What the fuck are you doing?” snarled the knight who appeared in front of me, blocking the two-hundred-level beast’s tentacle attack. Embarrassingly for me, he did so while swinging his sword around in his free hand, slashing at the weaker beasts, some of which were clinging to me. The man may not have been Knight Commander Pom Nilzibarge, but he was a proper tank, as opposed to this one octopus gal.

“Fucking move!” He sputtered again, and when his mates finished off the beast, he was gone. Well, not really gone, just saving someone else’s ass.

Taking it like a slap in the face, I jumped back into the fray.

 

***

 

“Didn’t you see it coming?” Stella asked me after getting her shit together on a familiar piece of rock.

“My poison cloud - it’s hard to see out of it.”

“Even with your eyes?”

“Huh?”

“That trick Rairok taught you. I thought it improved your vision.”

“At night - it makes me see better at night,” I pointed out, stopping short. If [Midnight Shine] really was a skill derived from my origins in Witty Deer, then it should allow me to see through the thickest darkness and fucking SORCERY. 

 

Midnight Shine

Passive I (Deviant - 30%)

Humans are not creatures of the night, and not every beast is nocturnal. Yet your eyes shine at night with the light of midnight moons, revealing to your sight secrets shrouded in the thickest of darkness and sorcery. Whether human or beast, little escapes your gaze as the night is as bright as day for you.

 

“I didn’t think to try.”

“Seriously? We’re fighting in the middle of the night. What were you waiting for? For the sun to come up?”

“Does it look like night to you?” With all the magic lighting up the sky and shaking the ground, there was more than enough light. Stella knew this all too well. “Anyway, what’s your beef with me? You know how hard it is to control the mana in my eyes without making them explode. Or do you want me to go completely blind out there?”

She bit her lower lip and sighed. “Sorry, Korra. Guess the whole dying thing got to me again. I mean . . .”

“Don’t. I get it. We can take another cycle if you want.”

She shook her head. “No, just - I don’t know, it still seems so far away.”

Our way home.

I’d be lying if I said I felt any different. We were so far from reaching that point in the battle, the end of Echo. Doubts. Seeing Stella like that, doubts about our decision to go through the battle with honor crept into my mind.

“Don’t lose your spark, little ones,” Traiana spoke, her voice very soothing.  The warning behind her words was clear to both of us. Do that and you’re done for! “Believe it or not, you did well on the battlefield.”

“It didn’t feel like it,” Stella remarked, the bitterness of her deaths still in her voice. “We died.”

“Yes, you did,” Traiana confirmed. “But you met your end because you are not used to the battlefield, not because of a lack of confidence in yourself or in your abilities. I believe, and so should you, that a few more cycles and you will find your footing in battle - and thus undoubtedly find your way back.”

The part where she implied that we would undoubtedly die a few more times was not lost on me. She was right, though. We spent only a few minutes in battle each time, or so it seemed to me. Not much time to get used to the flow of such a battle - if it was something to get used to at all.

 

***

 

Finding myself once again in a cloud of apple-scented gas, ONCE AGAIN on the fucking battlefield, I heeded Stella’s remarks. Lacing my eyeballs with mana, as Rairok had taught me, I gazed at the beasts, some writhing in spasms, others charging us despite the pain the gas caused them, crazed looks in their eyes. I peered through my poison.

No big surprise. After all, it would have been stupid not to try it beforehand. An unexpected synergy of skills, anyway. 

Luck aside, it was more of a burden for me. While we fought in the cloud of poison, I was our eyes, both mine and Stella’s. It was up to me to see what was going on around us outside the cloud. Not to lose sight of the knights we were fighting alongside.

That was what got us killed in the last cycle. We went too far. There was no one to jump in and save our sorry asses.

Not this time.

It wasn’t necessary.

We fought.

We fought, giving our best.

And our best got us pretty far. 

A full hour into the battle.

Then I got stupid.

Well, to be fair, it was hard to dodge the dying rays of one of the five hundred level-one octopuses, anyway. There were just too many of them. Still, trying to stop one with my mane was pure foolishness. The concentrated heat of the ray and flour explosion that my mane saved me from in my early squad days was like comparing a candle flame to the sun.

Yeah, even with all the mana I had poured into my mane, the heat ray burned through my defenses like paper.

 

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