As it turned out, I was right, and when lunchtime came, no one showed up with more food, and yes, calling the tough old bread that was a stretch. And did Stella regret giving me hers? I bet she did, even if she didn’t show it. Granted, being without food for a day or two wasn’t the end of the world for either of us. It just made you grumpy - well, me, anyway.

And regarding our situation, Traiana learned as much as we already knew. The relevant commanding officers had indeed received reports about us. They knew that we had approached the encampment with the intention of joining the battle, that we were members of the now-destroyed Dia Eichenralke, and that we had been put in the Cages surrounding the Beast Pit because of that, or at least that was one of the main reasons.

Surprisingly, according to Traiana, there were a few who weren’t happy about it and thought it was dangerous. Why? They didn’t say while she was wandering around. Anyway, the decision about our placement was unfortunately not theirs alone. Besides, I guess they, like everyone else in the command, had much more important things to do than drop everything to deal with us.

In fact, I wondered why they didn’t assign our interrogation to someone further down the ranks, you know, delegate their work. We didn’t really need to talk to the general or his equivalent, just someone who could get us to the damn battlefield.

Turns out I was wrong.

Traiana was talking about people in the right positions, responsible for cases like ours, the whole time. That meant only one thing, the one thing I feared, and that was spending at least one night in the Cages.

It wasn’t the actual fact of spending the night out in the rain that I was dreading, nor was it the night itself - I wasn’t afraid of the dark; I was a big girl, after all. Not even being locked in a cage, behind bars, although not pleasant, wasn’t something I saw as a big problem and couldn’t handle it.

No, what ate at me more than anything else was the roaring of the surrounding beasts. It reminded me too much of the place where I began my journey in this world.

During the day, I managed. I focused elsewhere, on the food, on the rain, distracted myself by talking to Stella and listening to Traiana. But as night fell, things got worse.

Sure enough, many of the beasts fell silent, sleeping against all odds, something I failed at, though whenever I tried to close my eyes and fall asleep, my concentration would slip and the roar of the wakeful beasts would hit me full force. There wasn’t a moment of silence as the roaring, if not from the surrounding beasts, came from the farthest corners of the Cages scattered around the Beast Pit.

“Korra?” Stella, who sleep eluded as well, asked as I couldn’t keep my disgruntled growl under control.

“It’s the beasts around us.”

“The roaring?”

“Um-hmm.”

“You understand them, don’t you?”

“Yes, some.”

“Shit, that’s . . .” Stella said, stopping short. “I thought they were taken over by - you know what, that the beast talkers weren’t able to get anything out of them.” That was what Traiana said, and it bugged me, too. However, after listening to the beasts for more than half a day, I wouldn’t say they were exactly sane.

“It’s rage, fear and pain speaking.”

“Pain and fear? Fear?”

“I guess a lot of them get hurt - you know, being captured in battle and all that.”

“Yeah, sure . . . and the fear?” Her confusion was understandable. I, too, found it a bit hard to grasp. After all, it wasn’t the fear of being forced to fight in the Beast Pit, or even of the humans, but what I felt was the fear of what was overshadowing their minds. It was driving them crazy, demanding something of them. What? I had no idea.

“The fear of what controls them,” I eventually said.

“Oh . . . and can you tell me what that is?”

Not sure I wanted to. “No, I just feel their fear.”

“Are you going to be okay? Is there anything I can do? You know, to help you.”

“Talking to me like this is enough. Can you do it all night, though?”

It took her a while to answer. “I’m sure some girls I know could, but . . .”

“Don’t worry. I’m not the chatty type either. What to talk about, anyway?” We couldn’t just start talking about our lives here, some things that happened to us, or the stories that were told in Sahal when it was all a matter of the future.

“So?”

“So . . . ?” What did she want me to say? There was nothing to talk about that wouldn’t get us into trouble.

“You could devote your attention to practicing your skills,” Traiana remarked, standing patiently in the darkness of the rainy night outside our cages, leaning against one on the other side of the corridor.

Both Stella and I paused, giving each other a look. “W-what about skills . . . Korrey?” She asked, just as confused as I was.

“What do you mean, Ella? Practicing our skills? Here, with this on our hands?” To make a point, to show Traiana what we both saw as the problem with her suggestion, I shook the shackles that weighed down my arms and legs.

“They prevent you from using your mana, nothing more. Don’t you have abilities, skills if you will, that . . . oh, my mistake, little ones. Apologies. Although I’m intrigued. Did people in your time find a way to keep you from using your skills? The crudeness of the tools you had didn’t suggest that.”

Did they? Honestly, despite spending most of my time on Eleaden imprisoned, I had no idea. Back there, all it took to take away my freedom was a collar around my neck. Come to think of it, the only time I actually had shackles on my hands was when the slavers caught me in Labyrinth Square. However, by the time they put them on, my mana had already been bound by the magic of the runes beneath the square.

Stella shook her head in response to Traiana - her eyes on me. “We should be able to use skills - abilities that don’t require mana.”

“Ah, so it was just your lack of awareness,” Traiana said, somewhat disappointed. “For a moment, I was under the impression that the people of your time had learned to suppress the system. That would be an impressive feat, if also rather worrying. If humans could do it, so could the enemy.”

And that would defeat the whole reason - well, one of the main reasons: to bind the enemy to the same rules - for creating the system in the first place.

“True,” I breathed in response to Stella’s - Traiana’s - suggestion. “Do you have such skills?”

“Don’t you?”

Well, of all my skills, three were pure magic-oriented - four if you counted [Tail of Poison Empress]. Five passives focused on my constitution, toughness, stamina, and just generally making me harder to kill. Then there were the ones revolving around beast stuff - not exactly what I wanted to practice here, so that left me with skills like [Indomitable Will], [Spatial Domain], and the movement skills [Perfect Balance], [Dancer’s Stride], and [Roundhouse Kick]. Not exactly skills I could practice, considering the shackles.

That left me with only [Indomitable Will] and [Spatial Domain].

“What are you laughing at?” Stella asked as I chuckled softly.

“At my skills and how they suck.”

“Seriously, you have no skills to practice?”

“I do; they’re just not exactly combat ones.”

“Wait, when I said train, you thought you were going to fight your way out? What do you think the cages are for?”

“Oh, fuck you. I’m not that dumb.” To be honest, even though I knew the bars and handcuffs were made so sturdy to stop those who relied on brute strength as well as mana, I didn’t think it was that simple. Just sturdy materials - plus, runes and enchantments making them even sturdier. “Forget it. Let’s practice.”

“You thought so, didn’t you?”

“I said forget it.”

“All right, all right,” Stella said, hands in the air, surrendering, giggling with amusement. Though, as soon as she was done, she got serious. “Korra, if you need me, I’m here . . . you understand? Even if I fall asleep - which I don’t think I will - don’t hesitate to wake me up.”

“All right, I got it - thanks.”

Glad that I wasn’t alone in this mess for a change, I sat down comfortably on the wet floor and shifted my concentration to [Spatial Domain].

Spatial Domain: lvl 30

Passive III

You are the mistress of the surrounding space, and nothing in your domain will escape your attention. The space you can consider your own reaches 3m → 5m from your body, and as you grow stronger, your reach will grow too.

Tier II - You may be a master in your domain, but the dull space outside of it has been out of your reach so far. That plain colorless world has gained more shades to it, and you can now perceive it more clearly within a range of 6m → 10m.

Tier III - As your awareness of your surroundings grows, so does your defense against the prying eyes of others. Being it someone of a lower level than you, they will find it hard to read you.

Five meters of inner domain range was just enough to perceive Stella and the beasts on the other side of my cage from her - and the one behind me. In the first case, it was a sleeping beast similar to an armadillo, only bigger, bigger than a dog, though no bigger than a bear - a regular Earth bear, not the local mossbear.

The one behind me was some kind of lizard, with two tails that kept hissing, no sense or words in it - thankfully. I could see both creatures in great detail, feel their breaths, their every movement. Seriously, if I really concentrated, I could feel every scale of the lizard, every blink of its eyes, the movement of its thin tongue. As interesting as the two beasts were, in my outer domain, my perception reached beyond these cages, even to the beasts across the corridor. What details I could perceive there, however, were limited.

Eventually I got tired of that and turned my attention to Stella, wondering if I could see through her clothes if I concentrated hard enough. My interest wasn’t in seeing her naked, I wasn’t swinging that way, but in finding out the extent of this skill that had always bugged me. I meant that I could perceive my body whether I was wearing clothes or not, every hair on it, beads of sweat, and even filth if I wanted to. So why couldn’t I perceive the same things about others when they were within the inner range of the [Spatial Domain]?

Sure, I could ask, but sometimes it was more fun and satisfying to find the answers myself. Unfortunately, the answer to this particular query eluded me, no matter how hard I tried to peer under Stella’s cloak. All I could see was the damn piece of cloth and the raindrops falling on it.

Unsuccessful, I shifted my focus to the rain itself for a while. A bit silly, I know, I tried to count the drops I could perceive, only to give up a moment later. There were hundreds of them, thousands and more the longer and harder I concentrated. Another failure. Yet it was too early to give up. And so, while unable to determine their number of the raindrops before they hit the ground - or me - I did my best to feel their movement, their shape, and even their coldness.

I was improving; I did get better at wielding [Spatial Domain], I could feel it, but no message popped up in my mind to let me know. Not a single level up. Honestly, it was unbelievable how you could miss something like that. Anyway, I eventually stopped playing with [Spatial Domain] since the sheer volume of concentration put too much pressure on my mind. An unusually high pressure, in fact, which was rapidly developing into a raging headache as the night wore on.

It was just a whim, an attempt to figure out a trick to use [Indomitable Will] to block pain, since I had no other way to do so. But when I hit my mind with it, the pain subsided.

I sat there in shock, motionless, speechless.

Did I just do that, just like that? Had I finally managed to perceive the pain as an attack on my mind? Did I . . .

“Do not fight us.”

‘What the hell!’ I froze in horror at the whispering in my mind, hitting it with [Indomitable Will] even harder than before the very next second.

“Come on, give in to us . . .” the whispering sounded again in my mind, this time a bit weaker. Nevertheless, a shiver ran through my body. The way the voice sounded - so sweet, the way it played on my nerves, on my instincts, the intrusiveness of it, was terrifying.

“Fuck off,” I screamed in my mind, as if I were talking to Deckard through the link of the union rings. And strangely, it seemed to work. No more whispers.

My heart pounding, I looked at Stella to see if she was experiencing the same thing. If so, I couldn’t tell and she wasn’t in a position to tell me. To my dismay - and relief - despite the fact that she was leaning against the bars of the cage, not unlike when she practiced some of her skills, she was sleeping peacefully. Or so it seemed. Fearing that whatever was trying to get into my head could now get into her mind more easily, I reached through the bars - which was not as easy as it might seem with my hands shackled - to shake her awake.

»Leave the human be.«

I jumped and slowly turned to face the two-tailed lizard that had just hissed at me. The beast, whose hissing had made no sense so far, stared at me, a gleam of reason in its eyes. A gleam that sent shivers down my spine. That terrifying look belonged not to the beast, but to what had been whispering in my head only moments before. »Humans don’t understand - like you do.«

‘Shit! Shit! Shit!’ Doing my finest to keep my shit together, I rode [Indomitable Will] as hard as I could, turned back to Stella, and . . .

»Let the fool sleep,« came a new voice, and when I turned around again, I found the armadillo looking up at me with the same stare as the lizard.

“Are you shitting me?!” I whispered as I backed up to the bars and pressed my back against them, shifting my speech. »Who the fuck are you?«

»A friend.«

»A companion,« came from the cages across the corridor.

»Someone who will be delighted to help you.«

»If you let us in.«

Voices were now coming from all parts of the Cages; each time a different beast spoke, each word hammering at my ears, my mind - my instincts - more and more. Shit! What the . . . Traiana!

»I don’t need your help!« I growled back, looking around for our guide, only to find an empty space where she stood, leaning against the cages before. “Fuck!” I couldn’t help but curse as she took the worst possible time to wander around. Or perhaps that was why whatever it was decided to reach out to me now - though that would raise the question of how it knew about Traiana.

»Lie!« Hissed the lizard.

»We can feel your emptiness.«

»The hole in your heart.«

»Your desperation to fill it.«

»We can give you a family.«

»You can be part of a pack.«

I was unable to tell if any part of that voice - or the one it belonged to - managed to slip through my mental defenses, but at the mention of the pack, I was struck with a sudden longing. All of my instincts, even though I knew there were loners in the mix of beast blood coursing through my veins, longed to not be alone in this world anymore - I longed for it with all of my being, the human part being no exception. I wanted to be back with my family so badly that it hurt; it hurt so much that I cried.

“Stella!” I shouted her name, slamming the shackles against the bars.

“What . . . ?!” she snapped awake, immediately looking around, taking in the growling beasts. “What the fuck is going on?”

»Fool, that doesn’t change anything.«

»It does,« I growled, reaching out towards Stella.

Seeing my frightened expression and the tears of longing running down my cheeks, she took my hand and squeezed it. “What’s happening?”

»I’m not alone anymore.« I had people I could call friends, people I could count on; some even treated me like part of their family.

»Don’t delude yourself.«

»They’ll betray you.«

»Not us.«

»We - are different.«

“Korra, talk to me!”

“Shut up!” I growled, only to realize that I spoke in Standard. “Sorry, that wasn’t meant for you.”

“I got that, but . . . what the fuck is going on?”

“It’s - the darkness - it’s trying to get to me. It speaks through the beasts.”

“Shit!” she cursed, biting her lower lip and looking around the cages, listening. “I don’t hear anything.”

“I know.”

“Then . . . w-what can I do to help you? And where the fuck is . . . ?” Stella stopped herself before saying Traian’s name out loud.

“Just hold my hand.” That was enough to reassure me that I wasn’t alone - it had to be.

»You’re hurting.«

»We can make the pain go away.«

So it went on, the beasts talking one after the other, trying to bring me to join them. And I resisted, no matter what they said or how sweet their words sounded to my ears and instincts. That was until they hit my sore spot.

»You’re fooling yourself with a family that isn’t yours.«

»They may sound endearing, but the blood runs thicker.«

»Those who carry your blood are your family.«

»One that the likes of you will never have.«

»We can change that.«

»Nothing hard about it.«

»We can make you bear children again.«

»Our children.«

This was where I snapped, where I reached my limit, and as I let loose my full presence, I screamed at the top of my lungs, »Shut the fuck up!« My shackles shook, in fact the entire cage and those around it trembled under the pressure of my beast presence, which ripped far and wide, silencing all the beasts.

Finally, the entire Beast Pit and the nearby Cages fell into stillness.

It didn’t last long, though.

A few breaths later, I was weighed down by the heavy presence of a beast that matched my own. »Who - are - thee?«