People did show up, some alert to what had happened, others just curious. And as Vienlin and Geran said, they dealt with them, quickly chasing them away with a presence of their own.

“Well, that got my blood pumping.”

“Right?” Vienlin nodded, thrilled. “Do it again.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle. She was the first to ask me that. Most of the time, people were more astonished by it, and the thought of me hitting them again with my presence didn’t even cross their minds. Unfortunately for her, I couldn’t. “Sorry, Rairok says it’s because my presence doesn’t match my strength, but I need a while.”

“That’s a bummer,” Vienlin groaned. “Though presence is like a muscle. When you strain it, you have to let it recover.”

“He compared it more to a will, but that’s more or less what he said.”

“Strength, will, might, it doesn’t matter what you call it. It all means one thing, presence. And like everything else, it’s something you have to grow into. A child cannot hold a shield or draw a bow. The way I see it, you’re such a child holding the presence of an adult,” Geran said, pausing, waiting for something. “Oh, you’re not going to get your tits in a twist? Vienlin would already be bitching at me for comparing her to a child.”

“You bet your ass,” the woman in question shot back.

“I have been told the same thing, that I am a child in a way, more or less, a few times already. Besides, I’m not blind. I know I have a lot to learn,” I said truthfully. “Isn’t that why we’re here?”

He laughed heartily. “I like you.”

“You should have some pride,” Vienlin grumbled. “Otherwise, before you know it, everyone will be all over you.”

It took me a moment to weigh whether I should dare to answer. “I have my pride, believe me. I’ve just learned that sometimes it’s better to swallow it than let it push you around.”

“Looks like someone has some sense. You should listen to her, Vienlin.”

“Yeah, you wish, huh? But I have my own experience. I’ll set my pride aside, and it won’t be the only thing I have to swallow.”

That made me pause, and I wasn’t the only one. Even Geran raised his eyebrows, wondering what she meant. “What exactly are you going to have to swallow?”

“You know . . .” she said, stopping short when she realized what he was hinting at and where my mind had taken me as well. “Assholes! I meant idiots pushing me around.”

“Ahh,” we both breathed in understanding and laughed, which only pissed the shifter off more. The look she gave me was something to be concerned about. But when she opened her mouth, it wasn’t to bitch at me.

“Anyway, like I said, presence is like a muscle. And like any muscle, you can train it,” she said, holding up a finger. “Not the strength of it. That depends on your overall strength - though obviously not in your case. What you can train is the use of it, to bring that atrophied muscle back to its full strength.”

That was pretty much the same thing Rairok said to me about the presence. Just said in a more roundabout way, lacking details. Not that I wanted to tell her that. I wasn’t that dumb, nor did I have a death wish.

“Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind.”

She nodded back, satisfied that I was paying attention, and looked at Geran. “Is it time yet?”

“Time for what?”

“For you to show us your beast form.”

He put his hand on her shoulder to curb her excitement to see me shift.

“First, where are you with your communication, Korra.”

“Shit, it’s been so long I almost forgot,” Vienlin smacked her forehead. “Do you understand human language in your beast form?”

What kind of question was that? “Isn’t that a common thing?”

Geran chuckled. “Believe it or not, it isn’t. To be able to do that, shifters have to learn to find their human selves while in their beast form.”

“Oh, like when I was trying to learn to speak human.”

“You can do that?” marveled Vienlin.

“Yeah, though I still sound weird, not like me, you know.”

“Damn,” Vienlin whistled in approval. “Who would have thought? Barely a one-star shifter gal and she can already talk.”

And Geran was equally impressed. “Outstanding. This will definitely make things easier.”

I, on the other hand, was confused. “How? Couldn’t we just talk in beast talk?”

“Beast talk?” Vienlin asked. The confusion was obvious in both of them. “You can talk to beasts?”

“Yeah, they didn’t tell you? Wait, you can’t?”

Vienlin laughed and took a step closer to get a better look at me, her eyes shining with curiosity even more intensely than before. “They sure didn’t.”

“We were told about you and Rairok, but you know how he is,” Geran said, studying me no less intensely than his shifter buddy. I was an oddity to them.

“He speaks the human language,” I said, and the revelation struck me.

This cycle, I haven’t really shown that I can talk to beasts. Last night, I didn’t yell at the beasts to shut up, nor did I meet with the beast talkers. I couldn’t help but sigh at how confusing this time-looping thing was, and we were only three cycles in. What if it was ten? Or twenty? Will I remember what happened and when and what I did and didn’t do then?

That aside, a thought crossed my mind.

“If you don’t understand the beast talk, how do the beasts talk to you . . . you know, on the battlefield?”

“How do they talk to us . . .?”

“You must be a good beast talker if you haven’t noticed.” Geran cut into Vienlin’s rant. “It is not the beasts that speak to us directly, but Elea-Den who speaks through them. It can see into our inner selves and uses the language we understand best.”

“Right, for us - even though we speak Elea-Den Standard like you - it’s our native language. Judging by your accent, I’d guess Standard isn’t your first language either.”

“Tryentingye Plains,” I said, sort of reactively to where I was from, giving them my fake origin while trying to remember how the beasts actually talked to me. Was it really beast talk or Standard? It couldn’t have been English, could it? I would have noticed - wouldn’t I? Would Eleaden be able to communicate in English at all, or the way Eleaden did it, the language didn’t matter? So many questions.

A hand that landed on my shoulder snapped me out of my musings. When I looked up, Vienlin’s chest was practically in my face. “Let it go. I don’t give a shit what language Elea-Den says it’s crap to me, and neither should you. The point is to ignore it.”

She was right, absolutely right, so I nodded.

“Good. I think that was enough talking, right, Geran? Time for some practical stuff.”

This time, the barbarian didn’t argue and just gestured for us to continue. Vienlin trembled with joy.

“Then show me what a beast you are, Korra.”

I’d have to be stupid not to understand that she wanted me to shift, something I knew was coming. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but hesitate. The whole thing with them was new to me, even strange. They were shifters, the only people who could really understand what I was going through, the difficulties our beast part brought with it. It was in their eyes, the way they looked at me. They simply saw me differently than others, as one of them, even though I was an oddity to them, too. It was something I didn’t even know I yearned for.

Wagging Sage from side to side in weird delight, I stripped off my clothes and stood naked in front of them, at which neither of them batted an eyelash, and shifted into my full beast form.

Both of their eyes lit up.

“Smooth change, outstanding,” Geran said, while Vienlin pranced around me, checking me out from all sides. “I don’t know what I was expecting, but not this. Your wings, your tail, your antlers, your fur and feathers, everything is the same as in your human form.”

“I wouldn’t say exactly the same,” I argued. I was now on all fours, covered in fur from head to toe. “. . . but isn’t that how it is?”

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The stupidity of the question dawned on me as soon as I voiced it - shifters were humans, not hybrids like me. No mutations on their bodies. Nothing to guide them shifting into the beast. The wisecrack of the question aside, I did not get the answer.

Vienlin burst out laughing. “What’s with the squeaky voice?”

“Hey, that’s not nice. I just learned it a few days ago.”

She cracked up even harder, so hard in fact that she had to hold her boobs to keep them from popping out of the little wrapping that covered them.

“Don’t mind her. We’ve all been there,” Geran said after shoving Vienlin aside. “In my early days, I sounded like I lost my balls.”

At his remark, my gaze inevitably traveled down below his waist. A simple piece of cloth covered everything important, but that didn’t stop my thoughts from running wild. For once, I was glad for the fur that covered my now red face.

“Oh, someone got excited,” chirped Vienlin, to my shame, already out of her laughing fit.

Not really knowing how to react, I lifted my eyes and let my ears drop. “Sorry.”

“Sorry for what? For being healthy? I don’t care, and as for Geran, all your urge did was stir up his pride - not that pride,” she added, laughing as my eyes went back down.

Cursing myself for my behavior - which I found rather odd; I was not like that - I swallowed my shame and looked at her. “How could you tell? That . . . you know what I felt.”

Vienlin smiled and pointed to her ears, human ears. “Your breath shortened and your heart raced. It beats quite strongly.”

“Hard to ignore if you listen,” Geran agreed.

Those two just reminded me how hard it was to actually get used to my drake heart, to learn to ignore its beating that echoed in my head like a hammer striking an anvil, especially at night when I was trying to drift off to sleep.

“Yeah, it is,” Vienlin nodded, pointing to her nose. “Plus, your smell has changed.”

I blushed again, only to realize a key detail. “How can you do that? How can you hear - and smell - so well when you don’t have ears like I do? I mean ears like mine in human form. You look very human.”

Geran took over the explanation. “It’s like learning to understand and speak the human language while being a beast. Simply put, it requires shifting the necessary parts - ears and nose, for example.”

“But I don’t see you having the ears of a beast.”

“Training,” was his reply. “As with everything, it takes less and less with practice. First, I had to shift my whole ears, then just my inner ear, and now I only have to borrow small nuances from my beast and I can hear just as well.”

“I do something similar with my throat when I want to speak a beast talk in my human form,” I said, a new thought budding in my head. “Couldn’t I get rid of my ears and all that by shifting . . . no, wait, I couldn’t, could I?”

He confirmed my assumption with a nod. “I would assume not. Shifters flip back and forth between one form and another. And your base form is . . . what it is. But don’t let that get you down. You were human once, so who knows? That’s for you to find out.”

Yeah, I understood. He and Vienlin could only teach me what they knew.

“By the way, pretty impressive that you can speak beast talk in your human form,” he added appreciatively. “A good start, I would say.”

“I don’t know. It’s one of the things that came naturally to me with the mutations.”

“I would be careful about saying that out loud among shifters,” Vienlin warned. “It might provoke undue jealousy.”

“You?” I asked carefully.

“Nah, I got the basics down a long time ago. New kids, though, that’s another matter.”

“They are too rash, lacking patience and resolve,” Geran added. “The will to endure, not realizing that these are the things that make a good shifter, that there are no shortcuts.”

“Except for you,” Vienlin remarked, aptly emphasizing their point to me. In their eyes, I became a shifter far too easily.

“I died several times in the process,” I growled. “It wasn’t easy at all.”

To my shock, she patted my head, which I found oddly satisfying instead of annoying. She knew how to do it. “We realize that, Korra. The kids might not, hence my warning,” she said as she scratched behind my ear, at which my right leg twitched of its own accord. With her size, I felt more and more like her weird dog. All that was left was for me to roll over on my back so she could give me a belly rub.

Pushing the tempting thought aside, I shifted my weight and spoke another: “Why would anyone want to be a shifter these days?”

“I like her. Can we keep her?”

“Come on, Vienlin, take this seriously.”

“Fine. Why do you think, Korra? Because it’s the profession that gives you the most freedom.”

“Some like to argue that,” Geran said. “But I agree. It’s the profession that lets you be you.”

“Magi are so uptight, bound by the rules of their magic, and every weapon you use limits you in its own way. Only as a shifter can you unleash yourself to your heart’s content. You can do whatever you feel like.”

“Even hold a weapon or use magic?”

“Sure,” Vienlin nodded, grinning to herself. “That’s the freedom of it; you can.”

“With some dedication,” Geran cut in. “Just because you’re a shifter doesn’t mean holding a sword will be easier for you.”

“Technically, it will. Like hearing and smelling, you can give your muscles the power of your beast without shifting all the way. You can punch with the strength of a bear, give your legs the speed of wolves, and even hold the magic of your inner beast - let me tell you, just the right amount of shifting makes the lay all the better, and it’s a whole new experience in your beast form.”

“True, but the fine nuances and magic are a matter of three stars and above. You have to really understand your beast,” Geran steered Vienlin’s enthusiastic spiel.

She ignored him and threw her arm around my neck. “That doesn’t mean you can’t try out the bestial fun now - I’m sure Geran wouldn’t mind giving you a ride.”

“Vienlin, we’re here to mentor her!”

“She needs to learn how to have some fun, too, not just subtle shifting or beast magic.”

Red as a tomato under my fur, I froze. Not at the ease with which they talked about things I found embarrassing, but at the fact that they were both supposed to be able to use magic, or more precisely, at the fact that I was already able to. Another damned difference between me and the shifters. There was the time thing with my heart, and then mostly Sage and the poison.

“Damn, don’t tell me you already control the magic of your beast?” Vienlin asked, reading my body language like an open book, and judging by Geran’s expression, he saw through me as well. Seeing no point in hiding anymore, I told them everything -well, almost everything. Telling them that I had a Mana Heart seemed a bit much for now.

“You got me excited for nothing,” Vienlin grumbled, her voice and eyes full of mirth. She wasn’t disappointed, nor was she mocking me. She just seemed to enjoy - me - my uniqueness, my cluelessness.

“That doesn’t strike me as odd,” Geran said, a little more down-to-earth than she was. “Sure, your case is unique, but - in that, you’re no different from any other one-star shifter. Even they can unintentionally use the power of their beasts in tense situations. And your tail . . .”

“Hey,” I gasped as Vienlin took Sage in her hands and stroked him gently, smelling the poison between the hairs. “Oh my, what an amazing smell,” she exhaled in awe. “Come on Geran, take a whiff too.”

To my surprise, the huge man raised his eyebrows, interest in his eyes, and without further prompting, walked around me to sniff my tail.

“Apples? How could we not smell that before?” he wondered, puzzled.

“Right? The smell isn’t something you can just overlook.”

“It must dissipate quickly,” he mused aloud, then looked at me. “You said the poison is made of mana, didn’t you, Korra?”

“Yeah, but when I release a full dose, it stays in the air for quite a while.”

“I imagine it must be a lot of mana,” he said, and I couldn’t help but nod. It was somewhere between a third and a quarter of my mana capacity. “Then the one in your tail must be saturated just enough to dissipate before it leaves your tail.”

“Or she instinctively controls it and doesn’t let the poison go,” Vienlin added, to which I froze. The Empress of Poison, according to the old story Mr. Sandoval read to me, was able to control her poison, to move it like a living thing. My goal was to achieve that one day. And now she was telling me that I may have been doing that unknowingly all along.

“Whatever it is,” Geran said, snapping me out of my thoughts. “Your tail is nothing special either. It depends on your beast, but many shifters find themselves with a body part that functions in the same manner as your venom glands.”

Vienlin finally let go of my tail. “That shit is no different from learning to walk or fly in your beast form. It’s certainly different, new - yet something that belongs to your body.”

The question of whether their beast forms had come up with something like that tickled the tip of my tongue, but it was the way they talked about the beast forms that brought me back to the one question that had been gnawing at the back of my mind ever since I’d used my presence against those two.

“You speak of your beasts as something that differs from one shifter to another - as if you could choose.” I certainly couldn’t.

Geran and Vienlin looked at each other and nodded in silent agreement. Without further ado or words, they took off what little they were wearing - which made my eyes travel to places the sight of which made me hot - and shifted into their beast forms.

I stared, taken aback. It seemed so smooth, so effortless and painless, despite the beast they had become. Geran, a hulking man to the size of an adult mossbear, though he had little in common with the Esulmor beasts I knew. At first glance, his beast form most resembled a beefy bull, a very brawny, huge bull, two and a half to three times my size at full beast size. His head was adorned with massive horns, his maw with fangs. But the strangest thing was his feet. Instead of the hooves I had expected, he had paws.

Vienlin, on the other hand, didn’t turn into an equally strange cow with a huge udder, as I might have expected. Smaller than him, still more than twice my size, she shifted into something resembling a cougar, a feline beast covered in scales instead of fur. There was no sign of her boobs, while she had grown a large, meaty tail, equally covered in scales. Seeing her, I could understand why Geran called me cute. In her beast form, Vienlin wasn’t cute at all. She was a beast made for battle.

The two of them didn’t give off any presence, yet I instinctively whimpered at the sight of them, my instincts very clear. I wouldn’t stand in their way.

“That’s the right reaction,” Vienlin said, purring proudly.

“Indeed, it is, more than just words,” Geran huffed, no less pleased.

“So - so, h-how are you so different?” I asked, when I had found my voice again.

“Being a shifter is not something that depends on race, Korra.”

Vienlin nodded at his words and slowly walked around me like around her prey. “It’s about who you are, who you want to be, how you feel. It’s about freedom.”

“Don’t misunderstand,” Geran continued. “Your race can certainly affect what your beast looks like. After all, it’s how we perceive ourselves from birth.”

“But once you free yourself from that limitation, which is what you should have done as a beast-shifter in the first place, your options are limited only by your imagination, your desire, and your determination.”

“So a shifter can imagine being - a dog - and become one?”

“It’s not that simple. You must first understand what it means to be a dog,” Geran explained. “However, if you stay true to your heart, then yes.”

“You are obviously different, though,” Vienlin said as she sniffed me. “You were made, bound into your form. But don’t worry, we’ll teach you what it means to be free, to express yourself, to not hold back and to enjoy life.”

It sounded really good, too good - almost like I should be glad to Dungreen for what he’d made of me. I shuddered at the thought. Never. I would never be grateful.

“Are you all right?” Geran asked, and I nodded. I was fine, I really was - only now all too aware of how different I was from these two, different from all shifters. I was not one. I was a deviant, a deviant of humanity.