How the hell was I supposed to kill that damn rat?
Seriously, my mind was blank. Yes, I was fast and sure enough on my feet to more or less avoid the beast’s attacks - though I had to admit that when it hit me; it was hard and merciless - but getting through that crystal fur was another matter entirely. My fists, my claws, my fangs. None of it worked. Once the rat curled up into a fucking geode or whatever, there was simply nothing I could do. Trying to break or rip out the crystals was as good as licking them.
And annoyingly, when curled up in a ball, the rat could still use its earthy abilities. I learned that the hard way. The second impact from the beast’s stone smash broke more of my ribs than the first, and then some of them punctured a lung on the follow-up impact with the pit wall.
No matter how much I boosted my regeneration with mana, I could still feel them aching with every move.
The ground shook. A heartbeat later, a spike the length of my tail shot out of the mud. If I hadn’t moved in time, my gut would have been pierced through and through. The beast wasn’t stupid with its aim. My paws in contact with the ground, my chest, the Crystal Rat focused on piercing those. The first would slow me down and the second would likely puncture my heart.
In that regard, my gut didn’t make much sense. If anything, it was just a big target for . . .
“Fuck! You’re so stupid, Korra!” The rat wasn’t aiming at my guts, but at my core. Not that knowing that would help me solve my problem in any way. It just made me more aware of the potential consequences - consequences I had kind of ignored in all my conflicts so far - should the rat manage to actually impale me.
And frankly. My time was running out. If I didn’t figure out how to deal with this beast soon, I might end up just like that. Impaled.
My poison was a bet that didn’t really work. At least as far as I could tell. The only upside was that the scent of apples briefly trumped the smell of stale mud. The price for that was pretty high, though. More than half of my mana, including that in my core. If I really tried, I could still release the poison two or three more times. But at this point, it was pointless.
Rolling sideways, I dodged another spike, only to find the ground beneath me softer than it should have been.
»Join us and you won’t drown.« The rat squeaked at me.
Of course, I ignored the sweet bullshit.
And since drowning wasn’t part of my plan, I beat my wings as hard as I could. Not to fly, although that would have been nice, but just enough to throw me aside.
‘Fuck!’ My back throbbed. I pulled a wing muscle.
Another tremor, another spike. This time, it grazed my side.
I couldn’t do this for long. Sooner or later, I was bound to make a mistake for which my regeneration wouldn’t be enough. There were limits to feeding it with my mana.
But what about the beast? Did it face the same problems? How much mana did the rat have left? A glance and the spark of hope was gone. In two words: a shit ton. At least my instincts said so. Nothing strange, though. After all, it was a level 200+ beast. And apparently a magical beast like me. No need for my instincts to see that.
Me being a magic beast, my ass.
The Crystal Rat could dish out one attack after another, squealing like crazy, while I had nothing to show for it but the poison gas. My knowledge of magic was too limited to use the mantle or the shield. Annoyingly, all I had to show for it was my soaked soft fur. But who knew, maybe that was the rat’s weakness, and cuddling it to death in my bushy tail or hair would work.
My hair! My mane!
When it hit me - the thought, not the rat - I had no words for how stupid I felt. Just the last cycle, and the cycles before that, I practiced mana control through my mane outside of my body. Rairok had recommended it. So how could I have forgotten?
The answer was simple. Stupidity.
Could it work, though?
Well, my instincts didn’t have an answer for that. If I wanted to know, there was no other way to find out than to try.
With the plan set in my mind, I leaned back on my inner beast(s). Something I had actually found to help me control my mane. What could I say? I had it in my blood.
Dodge, roll, withstand the tremors. There was no need to show my prey my trumps too early. Spike under my right paw, another one aimed at my core. Low to the ground, I weaved nimbly between them, and just as one was about to pierce my hind leg, I pounced.
Halfway through the jump, I pumped mana into my mane, and as my front paws touched the ground in front of the rat, already curled into a ball, my hair trailed behind me to the tip of Sage. Then I did something I’d never done before - at least not in the middle of a battle. I manipulated my hair.
At first it moved all at once, almost like a fan or a peacock’s tail. It was strangely beautiful. Not for long, though. In the very next heartbeat, the hairs of the mane split into a dozen ropers, all heading for the ball of crystal in front of me.
A shiver ran through my body.
Not from the cold, but from the sight. Like a dozen hungry serpents, my mane bit into the Crystal Rat, wrapping the ball the beast had curled up into in seconds. The moment it was done, I shoved as much mana into my mane as I could without it burning my brain.
Now the cold had crept under my fur.
The beast, however, was worse off. The rat squeaked and squirmed under my frosty wrap, but did not try to unroll itself from the ball. Instead, it attacked.
Spike after spike came out of the ground. Despite being tied to the rat by my hair like a shaggy dog to a kennel, I managed to dodge most of them in time. Most of them. Two grazed me. Unfortunately, that didn’t last forever. With a finite amount of room to maneuver and an increasing number of spikes that seemed to grow in proportion to the rat’s desperation, I quickly found myself with one in my front paw.
Not shying away from howling in pain, I let everyone know how fucking much it hurt. At which the rat squealed with undisguised glee. Or so it sounded to my ears.
Pissed off, I slammed down on the mana, hurting my brain a bit in the process, as a warning.
Of course, the beast didn’t listen. I wouldn’t either. I never did. When they told me to accept being a test subject, I didn’t give up. When they tried to take away my freedom, I fought back.
‘Fuck!!!’ The same paw, another spike. Hurt like a bitch.
The spikes, however, seemed to be gradually decreasing in quantity and quality. Instead of straight, pointed stones, almost as if shaped by a machine, the ones that now threatened to pierce me were more like worked flint. Not that this made them any less dangerous. If anything, their jagged shape caused me more damage and pain.
The smell of victory was in the air, though.
I just had to hold on a little longer. An idea that seemed to have crossed Crystal Rat’s mind as well. Just as I jumped away from another spike, my hind legs sank deeper into the mud than they should have.
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The fucking rat was trying to drown me in mud - again.
Instinct kicked in and I flapped my wings. A tried-and-true way to get out of the mire that should work, even though I was attached to the rat by my mane. And it would, most likely, if only I hadn’t pulled a muscle earlier - or my regeneration had worked faster. Not a serious injury, but one that made me howl in pain. Getting me out of that swamp was simply too much for that wing, for that muscle in my back.
Instead, thanks to my brilliant efforts, my hind legs sank deeper into the mud, quickly followed by my front paws.
I was stuck.
Driven by instinct, panic gripped me all over. I had to get out. A moment that almost caused me to let go of the mane as well, a mistake I would surely regret. Fortunately, my human self was not as sidelined as I had always feared.
Korra Grey has taken the reins.
First order of business. Stop thrashing around. All the panicked effort to get out of there did was sink me knee-deep into the ground in a few breaths. From what I remembered about quicksand and the like, the movement only made the sinking faster. And so far, this shit looked like quicksand to me.
For whatever reason, maybe luck on my part, the Crystal Rat seemed to have no greater control over the swamp than that. The beast couldn’t pull me down, and it couldn’t even seem to create spikes in it to pierce me. In fact, as far as I could tell, the rat couldn’t use any other skill while using this one.
Lucky me. If it was, I’d be dead.
The image of Vienlin flashed through my mind, scolding me. Relying on luck in battle was akin to tempting death.
With that warning in mind, stiff as a rock, slowly sinking, I moved on to the second order of business - freezing the rat to death. Not a way to die that was exactly to my liking. Not even my predatory instincts were happy with it. That wasn’t how someone, my prey, was supposed to die. But if I wanted to live, which I did, there was no other way.
The determination of the will to live established, I calmed my mana heart and steadied the flow of mana into my mane just at the edge of what was bearable for me. Even though my mana supply was more than half empty, the core completely drained, I still had enough mana to last for long minutes to come. Thus, my bloody battle with the Crystal Rat turned into a battle of wills.
The question was who would last longer, whether I would sink before the rat froze, or the other way around? Would the beast be able to maintain this ability to the end? Would I?
A thought crossed my mind and I chuckled despite the shitty situation I was in.
In a way, this was my first magic battle. A strange one, for sure. One that was not as flashy as I had always imagined. In my fantasies, I threw fire around while everything exploded all around me. The reality was more tranquil. Neither the Crystal Rat nor I batted an eyelash, both as still as sages with the world at their feet and all the time they needed in their pockets. The only evidence of our battle, the rain a good meter from my mane turning to snow and me slowly sinking deeper into the ground.
It took quite a while, but eventually, the mud touched my stomach. Not the feeling I liked, and I winced. The first time I’d moved in those dreadfully long minutes. At least that’s how it felt to me, like minutes that dragged on forever. Pretty weird, considering that sinking into the ground ought to make time fly by, right? I blamed the rat.
It just took so long to kill it.
Seriously, it took so fucking long.
Hang on! It wasn’t dead, was it?
I mean, how would I know? The rat had stopped squealing a long time ago, but I was still stuck in the swamp, now with my ass half-submerged in mud. The beast had to be alive. Otherwise, I couldn’t imagine the swamp still being here.
A frustrated growl escaped my throat.
The system made it so much easier - and more satisfying. When you saw the notification in your mind, it was like a reward, recognition for a job well done. But here, only the fact that no one was rushing to get me out of the mire told me that the fight wasn’t over yet.
Was this how dinosaurs felt when they found themselves stuck in swamps? The thought came to me as my back disappeared under the mud. Did it occur to them that in millions of years, they would turn into fossils? Was that what was in store for me? That one day they would dig up my fossilized bones and display them in a museum for all to marvel at the strange creature that once roamed the Eleaden?
Not yet, though.
For that to happen, I had to die first.
Death. That was the fear that gnawed at my will. It wasn’t the fear of death per se that slowly let panic find its way into my heart. What made my body shudder was the thought that I wouldn’t, that while stuck underground, I wouldn’t die.
If that were to happen, I had made up my mind to fry my brain with mana. Should I sink below, I would send all my remaining mana into my mane at once. In theory, something that should work and kill me. Only my experience gave rise to doubts. Back in the Castiana City Barracks, I had already messed up my body with mana, including my brain, and yet my regeneration managed to bring me back.
The mud slowly crawled up my back, between my shoulder blades, and did not stop there. The more I panicked, the faster I seemed to sink. Soon my shoulders disappeared below the surface and the cold earth gripped my neck.
I sank deeper and deeper, my hind legs never finding the bottom.
»How about we call it a draw,« I growled a little too desperately at Crystal Rat.
No reply.
Not even a whisper from Eleaden.
The damn beast was determined to see this through.
»Seriously, a tie. What do you say?«
Not even a squeak.
The mud was right under my jaw.
The time of my last breath was coming.
Were these tears rolling down my face?
Maybe. I didn’t fucking care.
“Why the hell can’t you just fucking die?”
I tasted the mud.
Huh?
Was that the bottom?
It had to be. My hind legs were actually resting on something. A rock, maybe?
If opening my mouth didn’t get more mud in it, I’d squeal with delight as relief rippled through my body.
No drowning, not today.
My joy was short-lived, however.
A new sensation came from my hind paws.
Less oppressive, I would say, but more restrictive.
The ground was solidifying. The earth that the Crystal Rat had turned into a swamp was returning to its original state.
Did I win? Did I do it? These first thoughts were quickly replaced by doubts. If the rat let go of that awful ability, it would have the free paws to use spikes on me.
The noose tightened. The solid earth had already trapped my calves. With that, my panic-stricken instincts pushed aside any thought of the rat’s further threat. Right now, I needed to at least get my head out of the swamp.
Tensing every muscle in my body, I bucked. But it was so hard - the ground wouldn’t budge. And then it happened.
Everything froze.
The mud, me, Pit, and even time seemed to stop.
Not for long, not really.
The ground shook again.
Damn, strange to be stuck in the ground when an earthquake hits, I tell you. Bloody terrifying. The helplessness. The resignation - the only option to accept the inevitable.
I was fucked.
CLAP!
CLAP! CLAP!
CLAP! CLAP! CLAP!
“Congratulations Grey, I’m impressed.”
Ronnu?
I turned my head at the sound of her voice. The woman was walking towards me. Did she jump down from the stands? She did, didn’t she? Was that the tremor?
“Truly impressed.”
The closer she got, the harder it was to look up at her. Not that her squatting in front of me made it any better. Looking at her crotch wasn’t my thing. She did, however, have the decency to put something on before coming over here, so at least I wasn’t looking at her underwear.
Strange thoughts, I know. It must have been the relief that warmed my ground-stuck body that was messing with me. Well, whatever.
“Damn, it stings?” Ronnu said as she took my mane, through which I kept pumping mana, into her hand. “Too bad you didn’t use it to fight me.”
“I-I . . .”
“Don’t get your tits in a twist. Your friend told me everything.”
Stella? Told her everything? What did she tell her?
Ronnu’s hand patting my head silenced my thoughts. “You can let go. You won.”
Did I?
I cast a glance behind the High Commander at the crystal ball, now covered in thick frost.
Was the rat really dead?
Ronnu said so . . . so it must have been.
Processing the realization was harder than I expected and even harder to let go of my magic mane. My instincts, my whole body, me, I was stuck in the fight, hell-bent on freezing the Crystal Rat to death. Nevertheless, when my brain finally grasped that it was indeed over, all the extra mane disintegrated into dust, quickly washed away by the pounding downpour.
“Good,” Ronnu patted my head again. “It’s Korra, right? Your name.”
“Y-yes, ma’am.”
“Then,” she beamed. “Let’s get you out of there, Korra.”