Waking up was the worst.

On that edge between dreams and reality, there was still hope that I would not open my eyes to the nightmare my life had plunged into. Cold, damp cellars, barred cells with slaves screaming in pain that tormented their bodies, vile concoctions twisting mine, and worst of all, my slow decline into being a beast.

Wait...the beast.

"Shit! I turned into a beast!"

My sudden scream startled not only me to sit up but also a flock of birds high in the treetops above me. Their panicked chirping made my ears ring for a moment, drowning out the frantic beating of my heart as memories of yesterday rushed back to me.

The shoelace bitch coming to check on the deranged asshole's work, the core shoved into my guts, the icy concoction, and me losing my last shreds of humanity at the end.

'Shit! Shit, shit, shit, shit.'

A beast. I had turned into a beast, a full beast, one unable to utter anything but growls and roars, driven by its primal instincts. A shudder ran through my body at the thought. The question remained, though.

How?

Was that really my voice I heard?

Fearing that I was still rambling somewhere on the brink of death, hearing the things I wished for, I gave my throat a cautious try: "H-hello...?"

'Oh, bloody f-fucking shit.'

That was my voice, my human voice, the one I dreaded not hearing again. Admittedly, for a woman, I possessed a rather raspy one, not quite melodic, but it was mine, not some bestial growl or bark. I laughed, I laughed my heart out like I hadn't in a long time, heedless of the dissatisfied cawing of the birds above me. I laughed so loud it hurt.

Wait, it hurt?

Did dying hurt?

'Are you dumb or what, Korra? Of course it did.'

Wishing for it so many times; never once did I think that death would come to me without pain. But was I really dying?

With trembling hands, I slowly reached up to my chest, dreading to touch the gaping hole the hateful bug had pierced through there. Instead, I found nothing but light scars covered by the soft white fur that had been growing between my breasts since I got Sage. Looking down, I confirmed my find. Only the startlingly dark scars peeking through the fur and tons of dried blood spoke of the wound ever being there.

'Forget the wound, you fool. Hands!'

With my eyes wide open, I stared at two human hands, not paws, but real human hands.

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Had I turned back from being a beast?

Or had I?

Following that train of thought, the spark of hope, I scanned my body, finding myself, to my great relief, not so different from before that deranged asshole had shoved the core into my body. Sure, my teeth were sharper but not longer than human ones; the tufts of fur that covered my body here and there before seemed to have grown a tad larger, the one stretching from the root of my tail up my spine surely had, but most importantly I found no other changes, no other mutations to get used to. The snout, the beast legs, the beast body, it was all gone.

"Oh, my...n-no way."

Even the beast seemed silent, the terrifying primal ferocity that had robbed me of my will nowhere to be found. My mind was as clear as it hadn't been in over a year and a half.

A shiver ran through my body. In a twisted way, it left me feeling...kind of lonely.

Was I, though?

No. I wasn't a naive little girl to think that the beast was dead. No doubt, it prowled somewhere deep down inside me, waiting for another chance to pounce like before.

'I won't give you another chance,' I vowed, determined, vexed and frustrated. The same could be said of my array and the collar. One command from that deranged asshole, and they'd get to work on my mind again.

Where was he, anyway?

And where the heck was the collar?

Stunned speechless, I frantically palpated my neck, finding nothing but the phantom feeling of having it on. That piece of accursed iron that had been sitting around my neck practically since the moment I set foot in this world was simply gone. A dream, this must have been a dream. Me still alive, being human again, even if only partially, without a collar - yes, definitely a dream, not a nightmare, a true dream.

'Then, could it be...?'

If it was that kind of dream, a good one, what about my array? Was it gone, too?

Not troubling myself to ponder any further, I delved deep into my mind to the place the asshole called Grid Forge. My first visit there, under orders from that asshole, scared the shit out of me. One thought, and I found myself on the glassy smooth surface of the lake reflecting the night sky covered with a vast, dense network of interwoven runes instead of stars. Back then, I thought I had gone crazy. I even wished I had. It would explain a lot of things, like the sudden appearance of the fucking bug and my finding myself in a cage in some dungeon. Now I knew better, though.

This place was the way people accessed the Lattice, their Grids. This was where I bound myself with that damn array. Speaking of which...well?

'This dream sucks!'

One moment, I had my hopes up; the next, I would have preferred this tormenting nightmare to end.

The array, a hexagonal formation of runic lines, still hovered brightly right above me under the lattice-covered sky, branding me as a slave. As if to ensure I would never forget this fact, it was written in the large rune in the array's very center, with the translation in Eleaden Standard below.

[₪]

[SLAVE]

Not even in my dream turned into yet another nightmare could I seem to escape that fate.

Was it just a dream, though?

It seemed too real.

More than a bit disappointed to still have the array, I left Grid Forge and immediately pinched my cheeks, then again, and then once more. But regardless of the pain - and I pinched myself pretty hard - I didn't turn back into a feral, instinct-driven beast, nor did the collar return to my neck.

In fact, as my eyes wandered all over my body, desperately searching for any changes, I found it, unlocked, the runes on it dead, lying in clumps of moss next to me, moss I didn't remember being in the cellar, moss in which I myself sat.

'Could I be...?'

Not daring to think any further, for fear that this after-all-not-so-bad dream might end if I did, I took a good look at my surroundings for the first time. To my utter awe, instead of being locked behind iron bars and sitting in a dank, fetid cellar, I found myself in the middle of verdant woods.