From the beginning of today’s martial practice, I counted the number of hits I gave the log - to my training partner. And it was a hell of a lot. Three hundred and twenty-seven was the last number before I lost it, and that was an hour ago. So much for my curiosity to see how many hits it would take me to master the basic kick.

Much to my dismay, all I knew was that it took me three hours of constant kicking at a piece of wood before Deckard said: “Not bad. Decently handled roundhouse kick.”

It came out of the blue and caught me off guard. You see, I didn’t feel like I was making much progress. Instead, it seemed to me like I was stuck repeating the same mistakes over and over again, even though I tried to listen to his guidance as best I could. I wasn’t so far down as to be overwhelmed by hopelessness, but some of my initial enthusiasm was gone.

Those few Deckard’s words of praise came just in time and brought out a renewed fervor in me, made me proud. Finally, I was able to do something other than savagely swing my claws and deal blows like a brute. Even if the kick was just a basic one, it was a technique, something coordinated, and well thought out, not an attack based on instincts.

My elation didn’t last long, though. Actually, only a few heartbeats.

“Now, do the same with your left leg,” Deckard added, denying me my surely well-deserved rest and cutting my rapture short. But to be fair, I wasn’t that tired, and after what he said, sitting my ass down and doing nothing was the last thing on my mind.

“Do I have to?” I was right-handed, no doubt about that. My right arm was stronger, and I was more skillful with it. That one was simply my preferred hand. The same was true of my right leg. Only how much stronger it was, I didn’t realize until I started training my roundhouse kick. I would dare say I was basically lame on my left leg. Exaggeration, sure. Still....was it really necessary for me to learn to kick with my left foot?

Deckard gave me an are-you-serious look, and when I nodded, he just shook his head in disbelief. “Are you kidding me, Little Beast? It’s like having two equally sharp weapons and deciding to use only one because it’s prettier. Or wait, let me put it this way. It would be like having two pieces of grilled meat on a plate in front of you, and you decided to eat only the one on the right because the one on the left side got a little cold while you were eating the first. Are you gonna let that meat on the left rot away when it’s just as good as the one on the right?”

I don’t know why, but I imagined my left leg rotting away simply because I couldn’t do a roundhouse kick with it. Not a pretty picture. Actually, it sent shivers down my spine and through Sage, who visibly shuddered just like my wings. “No! I’m not gonna let it rot.”

“Good, I knew that would get through to you,” Deckard chuckled, pleased with himself and his food analogy. “You have two legs, so use both. Now stop whining and start kicking ass.”

Well, how to put that politely, when I tried, I wasn’t as kickass as I’d hoped but more lame like I feared. The kick with my left foot was...pathetic. My balance was completely off, the rotation of my hips not in sync, and the hit itself almost sent me tumbling to the ground. Like I said, pathetic.

“Don’t say a word!” I growled at Deckard, daring him to open his mouth. Right now, I didn’t want to hear his comments, well-meaning or not. They would just make me feel even more ashamed about the strength of my left leg than I already was.

Getting my bearing back together, I assumed the left leg back position and tried again. Sadly, with no better result. It was only because of my good balance, Sage, and my wings that I didn’t end up on the ground.

Deckard remained silent, just waiting for me to shake it off and ask for help.

I didn’t - I mean; it was something I had to do on my own. No longer was it about successfully landing a roundhouse kick with my left foot but about gaining confidence in it and in myself. The leg felt foreign compared to the right one, almost as if it wasn’t mine, and getting familiar with it was something only I could do, and no amount of advice could help me with that.

It took me over an hour before I was ready to talk to Deckard again without feeling embarrassed about my performance, and I still hadn’t gotten my coordination up to the level of my right leg when we first started this training.

“Harder than it looks, huh?” he asked as he handed me a piece of roast meat on a stick. He knew how to lift my spirits and calm my increasingly loud, growling stomach. It was lunchtime anyway, and so I gratefully took it and sat myself down on the ground.

His approach actually kind of cracked me up. If I were on Earth, I’d get a protein shake, not this kind of feast that made me drool - literally. Add Idleaf to the mix and I might have forgotten the whole fiasco. Unfortunately, she was who knows where and I was reluctant to call her just because I was feeling a little down.

My ears drooped, eyes closed, and mouth full; I nodded. “It is hard. Did you have the same problem?”

“Of course, it’s not just you. Unless you’re some kind of genius, you’ll always prefer one foot without even realizing it. But that’s what training is for. Enough repetition and your body will get used to it, learn it, and it becomes natural.”

“How long did it take you?”

He laughed. “That’s asking a lot, Little Beast. It’s been a long time.”

“Come on,” I didn’t let him get away with it.

“It depends on what you ask. If it’s when I’ve completely gotten rid of the preference for one foot over the other, I gotta say, never. Don’t look at me like that; it’s the truth. It’s a habit hard-wired into people. I’m of the belief that if you wanted to change that, it would be like trying to change who you are.”

“Maybe a few shots of beast essence would help.” My sarcastic remark came across more gravely than I intended.

“Has it really changed you that much, Little Beast? Were you that different before?”

His question took me aback. It was the first time he was interested in the place I came from, Earth. On second thought, that wasn’t entirely true. He was interested in me and what I was like back then, not in the place that shaped me. Nonetheless, it didn’t change the fact that it was a damn good question. How much did I change? Was I still me, the same Korra Grey that grew up on Earth?

“I crave meat more than I ever have before,” I said after I took another bite of the meat in my hand, and he laughed.

“Not exactly a trait I’d say defines who you are.”

True. “I’m more cautious of people...never was comfortable with big crowds, but now it’s worse.”

“You expect there to be someone like Dungreen among them, huh?”

“Him, Fae, slavers, mind mages,” I said, nodding. “And it’s not just that. I’m more conscious of my looks. I was never like that. Sure, I wanted to look good, but...now I’m straining my ears to hear what people are saying about me across the street.”

“This all sounds like problems coming from your head, not your heart. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to make light of it. What we experience shapes who we are. I knew a healer who couldn’t stand the sight of the wounded after he failed to heal a small child, a warrior who couldn’t take up his sword after taking the life of an enemy, heck, look at the San and others...feared soldiers of Sahal content with a quiet life here.” His voice betrayed how much that last part pained him. “Surely they have changed. I’ve changed. But at their core, they are still the same. They’ll fight if they have to. The soldier raised his sword when it was needed, and the healer saved the lives of countless others.”

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“So are you saying that no matter what beast I turn into, no matter how much I give in to my instincts, it will still be me?” That was something I found hard to swallow, unlike the piece of meat in my mouth.

“If you have control over it, over yourself, then yes.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then you lost who you are. But I thought that wasn’t an issue?”

“Yet. What about when [Beast] reaches the next tier or the one after that?”

“Is that what’s troubling you? How many levels until the next tier?”

“Ten.”

Deckard chuckled. “That won’t happen in a day, so why worry about it now? Plus, should this prove to be a problem, you can just get rid of the skill. That’s their charm. I knew a guy who had a skill that made his dick bigger...”

“No, please don’t!” I stopped him, having an idea where his story might lead.

“Are you sure you don’t want to hear it? In a way, he reminds me of you?”

“Seriously?”

“If you ignore why he had it in the first place, he ended up being fearful of his skill, but despite that, he pushed it to the limit.”

“And he still has it?”

“So, you’re interested,” he laughed at the top of his lungs this time. “But to your question, no. He eventually got rid of the skill. I’m not saying you should too. It’s just that sometimes skills can turn out to be not what we hoped for. And if they should become more of a liability, let alone control you, it’s time to get rid of them no matter how much effort you put into them.”

“Wait, the skill was controlling him?” Was that why he said I reminded him of that dick guy?

“You know how they say men think with their dicks? Well...I’d say he had similar troubles as you with your instincts.”

Ah, his urges. My eyes inevitably fell on Deckard’s crotch, and thoughts turned to mine. Yet before the blood could rush to my cheeks, dread swept my heart. What if I do lose control of myself one day?

“I know you promised me this once, but can you please promise me again that if I should lose it, you’ll deal with me? Whatever it takes.” Frankly, I’d rather be dead than running around senseless like a feral beast, let alone if I were to hurt anyone.

“Don’t worry, Little Beast. If that happens, I’ll beat some sense back into you,” he said with a warm smile, squeezing my shoulder firmly. A small gesture I found so reassuring. Idleaf had me to make sure she didn’t lose herself, but I wasn’t quite positive she would be able to tell the difference between me and me going feral, that she could keep me sane.

“Can you remind me how we got from roundhouse kick practice to here, Little Beast?”

This time the laughter escaped my throat. Yeah, how do we get to address the essence of what we are and my eventual death? “I asked you how long it took you to master the roundhouse kick with your left foot. Guess I needed to take my mind off training.”

“We could talk about food.”

“True,” I smiled and tore the last piece of meat off the stick. “So, how long did it take you?”

“As I said, I still prefer my right foot, but...” He paused, shifted his weight, and moved his left leg as if he was trying to remind himself. “...I’d say a few months at least.”

“Months? Shit!” And here I was beating myself up for it taking me a few hours to get a little bit right.

“Ah, you thought that was something you could do in a few days? Well...actually, you can. But mastering it is another matter. If you keep track of your General Skills, you will start to see kick-related skills among them. But until [Master Roundhouse Kick] pops up there, you know you have room for improvement.”

“Is there a way to keep track of General Skills?” If there was, I would love to hear about that. So far, the General Skills were one big mess for me, with no way to search or filter them. Just a long list of skills.

Deckard chuckled. “That’s an issue people have been struggling with since...I guess always. Let’s say that while the advantage of the General Skills is their variability and the basically unlimited amount you can get access to, the difficulty to search and navigate through them is one of the many drawbacks.”

“No easy way?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

A frustrated growl escaped my throat. “If only the new ones lined up at the end.”

“I know, pain in the ass. You should deal with it, though. Trust me; it’s only gonna get worse.” Yeah, I could imagine. While I had to wade through less than a hundred skills, he must have had hundreds, maybe thousands of them. “The only advice I can give you is that they fall in line together in groups. Craft related skills can be found next to each other, and so on. If you learn more than one craft, you may notice that the skills are further clustered according to the specific trade. The same goes for everything else, even martial techniques. I’m sure you’ve already got some skills in that. [Punch] or [Slap] are skills that everyone is sure to have. Find those, note where they are in your list, and then you can easily check if you’ve made progress, let’s say see if you have access to [Roundhouse Kick].”

Though not a question, the tone of his voice and the look in his eyes clearly urged me to check it out. So I did. It took me a while, but I found the grouping of combat skills in the long list, and among them, as Deckard said, [Punch]. Sadly, other than [Claw Slash], there was no other combat skill.

“I don’t have it,” I said, slightly disappointed but not surprised.

“Then that means you haven’t learned it properly yet. Time to get back to training, don’t you think?”

Hard to argue with that.

My eyes fell on the log, especially the bark on it, which showed no signs of falling off despite my efforts and suffering. If anything, just signs of my failure: red stains where the bark was soaked in my blood.

Well, to call it a complete failure would be unfair. [Unbending Resilience] and [Rough Hide] both skills grew by a level, and I got a budding combat technique under my belt. It just needed a bit more polishing. Well, a ton of polishing and even more work if I wanted to master it truly.

Taking the stance, I let out a full-on roar and performed a roundhouse kick with my right foot. I needed to make sure I could still do it, jog my memory, and gain confidence before I threw myself back into training my weaker leg. And honestly, pain aside, it felt great. To perform proper fighting techniques and not just punches and claw slashes based on instincts made me feel less like a beast.

And that was for the first time in a very long time.

Sure, my left foot’s progress was slower - partly because I was trying not to forget what I had learned and was changing legs during my log-kicking - but this time, I didn’t let it get to my head. Talking to Deckard made me realize my overly high expectations of myself, an issue that arose from my otherwise rapid growth.

Some things just couldn’t be rushed.

Of course, it wouldn’t be me if I didn’t make it even harder on myself. While Deckard was correcting my movements, keeping an eye on me to do it right - well, to the best of my ability - I remembered Blaine and his advice on pain tolerance. He argued that with some training, I should be able to fight the pain through [Indomitable Will].

When fighting the mossbear, I hadn’t found a room to do so. Now that I wasn’t in danger of being torn to pieces, I saw it as the perfect opportunity to give it a chance. According to Blaine, the pain, in which my feet were a lot, could be considered an attack on the mind, something my skill should be able to handle. The trick was to teach my mind, myself, to recognize the pain as such.

A truly tricky thing to grasp and one that turned out to be no easier than mastering a roundhouse kick, the learning of which was further slowed when Deckard decided to throw in another move. Or, more precisely, a variation of what I already learned.

“If you want to kick to the head, you need to bring your knee, your charge up higher. The higher your charge, the higher your kick.” It sounded easy, his demonstration made it look so, and after managing to get a side roundhouse kick to a decent level, it turned out to be that way. Plus, that was where my knack for doing splits, especially standing splits, shone through. Okay, calling it a knack was a stretch. Achieving this kind of flexibility required no less pain than tackling a roundhouse kick. For both of which I now owed Deckard, my mentor.

Sadly, despite all my efforts, both past and present, the blood and tears I shed, I didn’t get the [Roundhouse Kick] skill or anything like it by the time the hour was ripe to bid farewell to Fallen’s Cry. Admittedly a bit disappointing, but gaining the skill was not my goal after all. It was to learn to fight, to form my fighting technique, my combat style, and I’ve made huge strides in that. That’s why I walked content with my head held high towards the platform hidden in the grass.

“Good job today, Little Beast. Damn good job,” Deckard patted me on the back as our bare feet touched the cold black stone engraved with runes. What he said weren’t just empty words of praise to give me more confidence. I could hear sincerity in his voice, some surprise, and even a hint of pride.

And so as the white light engulfed us, I couldn’t help but smile. Perhaps not the training day I had imagined, but a good one nevertheless.