This time my uppercut connected, and damn, that hurt. The movies made it look easy, but when my clenched fist hit Freyde’s chin, I thought I was going to scream. Bone on bone, it was a wonder one of my fingers didn’t break.

Amateur mistake, that’s what I heard echoing from the ranks of the onlooking guardsmen, and it was. I blamed Deckard. He hasn’t taught me anything yet. That and the fact that my previous sparring partner had a layer of fat so thick under his skin that he couldn’t even feel my blows. It was like punching a pillow. A fucking massive pillow with teeth and claws that mauled me so many times it was hard to count. Seriously, I tried.

Should I use my claws, like, back there? To draw blood.

Deciding not to right now I moved around, not stopping, and despite the unexpected pain, aimed for the maybe-an-elf’s unarmored thigh. My left fist was weaker, that was a fact. Though it did the job just as well. To Freyde’s credit, he tried to cut me. He was just too slow, and his blade passed through empty air.

Advantage, I had the edge, something I’d never had before. A whole new feeling that was so exhilarating it scared me and drove me to pounce on Freyde, show him who’s boss at the same time. So not to give in to my instincts and get my thoughts together, I did what I thought was the only sensible thing to do, and after three strikes, I took my distance from the bookkeeper turned swordsman.

Not my eyes, though.

“Well,” Freyde breathed, rubbing his chin. “That felt familiar.”

“What do you mean?” I cocked my ears, having never fought him before.

He took a step to the side, limbering up the leg I punched. “I’d like to say this is the first time a woman has hit me, but you don’t know my grandmother.”

The guy had granny issues, no doubt.

“Comparing her to your grandma, slick move, man.” Came a scoffing woman’s voice from the ranks of the watching city guards. A few more of these remarks reached my ears, most of them more distracting than helpful.

Although, being compared to his grandma was not exactly flattering.

“I thought you were ready?” I growled. Not exactly a delicate question either.

Still in a fighting pose, ready for my next attack, he admitted that. “Not as much as I thought. You’re damn fast.”

Was I? I’m not saying I went at it half-heartedly, but I could have put in more effort, been faster. Was the 33% from [Swift as a Whip] really that much? What’s more, I didn’t even use the double speed. Was that it, then? A smooth win. Or was I jumping to conclusions? Like me, the not-quite-elf could have skills he hasn’t used yet.

“Well, try to keep up,” I said and launched at him again. My intention was to go for his other side, not to repeat my attacks. However, Freyde swung his sword the moment I moved and right where I wanted to hit him from. Fluke? If so, he was damn lucky because the same thing happened again two breaths later when I went for his throat. Changing my position briskly yet again, it was only my third punch that I managed to land after narrowly avoiding his sword. He went too wide with the slash.

Did he get faster? No. Did he use a skill? Most likely, he seemed to be able to predict my attacks somehow and respond by a hair's breadth earlier. In this strange way, he compensated for his lack of speed.

It was quite interesting and challenging to find a way around it. Basically, I had to go further with my speed and make my attacks less predictable. Even so, I only managed to land about a quarter of my strikes.

Distancing myself again, I growled: “How the hell are you doing that?” My low voice sounded more frustrated than I wanted it to.

“How are you avoiding my sword slashes?” he returned my question, no less frustrated than I was. “Some sort of spatial awareness?”

“You don’t have one?” I asked back. It would be strange if he didn’t own such skill as a swordsman. That honest smile he gave me said it all. He had one. There just wasn’t that much he could do about it...meaning about me.

The cries for blood from the crowd of watching guardsmen that reached my ears just as I was pondering how to approach my next attack made me look down at my fur-covered hands. Was it time to get my claws out? The implications of that gave me pause. I wish I could say I never killed, but it wasn’t true. My hands were already stained with the blood of others. With these furry hands, I ripped a man’s throat out. Sure, he was not a good man. He was a fucking slaver who tried to take my freedom! Yet a man, nonetheless.

A valid self defense, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell myself. The awful truth was, it didn’t make me any less of a killer. Was I capable of it again? A jarring question that struck my mind.

Actually shaking, I took a deep breath. It didn’t do much to calm my emotions, though. Raising my eyes from my hands, I looked at Freyde. He wasn’t a slaver, just a less-handsome-elf. He didn’t deserve to die or be hurt for that.

“You okay, girl?” echoed Deckard in my mind, not missing my distress. As infuriating as that was, I was glad to hear his voice.

“I don’t know if I can do it,” I fessed up to him.

“What do you mean? You’ve done more than well so far.” I was glad to hear that. But not the problem that was weighing on my mind.

So I clarified. “...hurt him. I don’t know if I can hurt another person.”

To his credit, he didn’t mention my escapades in the barracks or the city. He said nothing about the people I hurt in my desperation not to end up with a collar around my neck. “I see. My fault, girl. It’s been a while since I’ve trained anyone.” Deckard said, considering his next words. “It’s perfectly normal for you to feel that way. Quite the contrary, if you didn’t, it would mean there’s something wrong with you.”

“So, how do I get over it?” I blurted out, pressured by the situation. Freyde noticed too that something was wrong, and it was only a matter of time before he took advantage of my hesitation.

“There’s no easy way if that’s what you’re asking,” he said, crushing my hopes for a quick shortcut to becoming a cold-blooded killer. “You struggle with your own empathy. The important thing is to just get it straight in your head. To realize where you are, who you’re fighting, and why.”

“Like?” Easier said than done, especially when you had to dodge sword slashes. This time Freyde showed no concern for my well-being and took the initiative.

“You’re in a barracks, not in the wilderness or deep in a labyrinth. Your opponent is someone you can beat, not a bloodthirsty monster or an fucking killer for hire after your throat with three times your strength. Lastly, and I would say most importantly, is to ask why.” His calm, casual tone was something I needed in this dire situation I was in.

“I’m practicing....dueling.” What to actually call this farce was lost on me. What’s worse, Freyde seemed to be getting better. Or was it just my feeling, my inner struggle, that was slowing me down?

“More of a friendly brawl. You’re not trying to kill this guy, and he’s not trying to kill you. Hurting each other is another matter.” Deckard paused for a brief moment waiting until I dodged another attack. Very narrowly. “You’re expected to get hurt. He expects it, and so should you. What do you think is gonna happen when he hacks you with that sword? You’re gonna bleed. Then make him too.”

To avoid Freyde’s sweep, I had to go down almost to a split. As his sword went over, I found myself in the perfect situation to give him a few bloody marks. My instincts were screaming at me to get my claws out and attack. I didn’t.

“Still hesitating? If you’re afraid of losing control. I and others are here to stop you. There are a few healers here too,” he pointed out.

These were all things I was aware of, even the healers. Their uniforms were impossible to miss. Yet, it was good to hear it from someone else rather than constantly running it over in my mind. It gave it a different perspective.

Shit! I cursed as I was forced to leap away from the downward slash. The grandmother-hating-elf buried his sword in the sand just millimeters from my foot.

Unable to roar properly, I expressed my frustration at my inability with a loud growl baring my fangs. For a moment, I thought I’d made a mistake and used my bestial presence when Freyde took a step back. The lack of response from anyone else told me otherwise.

With a racing heart and a knot in my stomach, I extended my claws. The widened eyes of the bookkeepers told me he didn’t miss it. Freyde actually changed his stance slightly, going on the defensive, waiting for me to move. A breath later, I did.

One powerful flick of the wings, and I was there, looking for a gap in his defenses. It must be said that there were far fewer of them than at the beginning of our struggle. He seemed to get better and better as the fight went on. Not faster, better at reading my attacks.

There. I found the gap. When he did his sweep from right to left, his entire right side was exposed. I moved, picking his flank as a target. Couldn’t have been easier if only I hadn’t wrapped my outstretched fingers into a fist at the last second.

As my own claws that I hadn’t retracted in time dug into my palm, a mind-numbing pain ran from my hand to my shoulder. Only the experience gained in my training with mossbear kept me moving. Not fast enough, though. Even with the double speed I used for the first time in the fight, Freyde managed to chop me across the right shoulder.

A painful hiss escaped my throat, and a daunting thought crossed my mind. Another shirt ruined!

While struggling to send mana into the wounds to boost my regeneration, I distanced myself from the bookkeeper yet again. There was no way to describe what I just did as fucking stupidity. Hesitating in the middle of an attack was the worst thing I could have done.

The price for that idiocy was four bloody holes in my palm and a cut shoulder.

“Do you need a healer?” Freyde’s question completely threw me off. What? Healer? For something like this? Sure, the bloody gash on my shoulder wasn’t your typical kitchen knife cut. It went fairly deep into the muscle. However, even without truly lowering my eyes, I could see that my wounds had already stopped bleeding and were healing despite my unusually uncooperative mana.

Along with my sigh, another frustrated growl escaped my throat. “More like a slap!” That was what I needed.

“Good of you to realize that,” Deckard remarked, pouring salt in my wounds. Swallowing a curse, I looked down at my leg, which Sage was rubbing against like some kind of cat. Even though I couldn’t hug him right now, it was oddly comforting.

All right. I shook my wings. Get your act together, Korra!

Ah, Freyde. “Sorry, no need!” I said to his question about the healer. To prove my point, I rolled my shoulder. It was painful to do, a reminder not to make that mistake again.

His nod was all I got from him. He was well aware that he himself had just narrowly escaped getting wounded.

My focus renewed, I dug my toes in the sand and, for the umpteenth time, threw myself at this future-predicting-elf. He really read me better and better with each attack. Thus, finding a gap in his defenses was getting harder.

Using my bursting speed, I jumped through his defensive sweep, ending in a roll exactly where I wanted and slashed at his armor-unprotected thigh. With a sickening feeling, my claws dug into the flesh. The painful shout he let out a breath later, when I was already out of reach of his sword, made me feel even worse.

Freyde was wounded, and his blood was on my hands, literally.

When I looked down at them, I had to swallow the bile that had welled up in my throat. There wasn’t much blood. I was used to being covered in it. Only this one wasn’t mine. It belonged to the person I hurt.

I couldn’t put it off any longer. It was time to use my crutch.

That’s how I saw [Indomitable Will]. I mean, in these situations where the slave collar was not trying to take control of my mind or the mind mage was trying to destroy it. It was an easy way out, like a stress pill. Something I tried to avoid taking and deal with the situation on my own...or with the help of Sage.

Annoyingly, I didn’t get away without it this time.

As the magic of the skill blanketed my mind, the disgust I felt for myself faded. It wasn’t completely gone, just hidden away. The reason remained, though. I was still very aware of what I had done and would have to do, and it went against every fiber of my being, at least the human part.

[Indomitable Will] didn’t make me an emotionless cold-blooded killer, only calmed my troubled mind, protected it from itself.

With raging emotions I couldn’t control gone, my heavy breathing has eased. I stopped trembling, and the sight of my bloody hands no longer made me want to retch. It also put into a different perspective the words Aspen said to me earlier: ‘The state of your mana reflects the state of your mind.’ A moment ago, it was swirling inside me like a raging storm. Now it was back to its calm state.

“Fuck, that hurts,” Freyde cursed, drawing my attention back to him. Standing on a leg that was bleeding was hard for him, not to mention the pain. Still, he struck a defensive pose when he saw me crouch, the position I took before each series of attacks.

Was that rude of me? Not ask if he needs a healer?

If he did, he would have said so.

Thus I plunged ahead, showing him my self-taught fighting style in its brutal form, claws, fangs, growls, and more. Freyde, and I had to give it to him, stood his ground and did his best to keep me off his ass. His uncanny foresight kept me from striking a blow longer than I thought, but not forever.

Using my explosive speed at just the right moment allowed me to go inside his defended zone and shred his left arm just above the elbow. To his fury, it also let me dodge his sword just as quickly. Sure, it put pressure on my muscles and tendons. In moderate use, it was a hell of an advantage, though. So great that after I dug my claws into his other arm a few moments later, he called for a healer.

A smart and inevitable choice, as he had trouble holding his sword with his injured hands. Me? I had no reason to get one. My wounds were almost healed.

“I’ve never met a half-terran who was so hard to read.” He grumbled, sitting on the ground while a man in a healer’s uniform knelt beside him, doing his job.

That caught me by surprise. It was the first time anyone had ever said something like that about me. So far, I’ve been an open book for everyone, my thoughts for all to see.

Freyde chuckled. “At least in a fight, and I’ve trained with a couple of terrans.”

“Here?” I wondered. Rayden said Meneur was the first one among the city guards.

“No, at City Hall,” he shook his head and moved his hand at the healer’s command to test its strength. “I trained there for years, after work, when I saved up enough money. Every terran...and human I fought was focused on their target. It was fairly simple to read their intentions. You, I don’t know...”

“Stay still!” the healer snapped at him as he threw up his hands.

“Sorry...eh, at one moment, you’re going to attack from my right, only to change your mind halfway through thinking about...food?” He let out a sigh. “I don’t know. Maybe it is this fight that got into my head.”

I stayed still because he was damn good at noticing something like that during a fight. Yeah, the thought of whether I’d be able to eat lunch after this crossed my mind during the fight. A little while ago, I was having trouble keeping the contents of my stomach in. What’s more, all the time I was fighting my instincts, which were telling me one thing and reason another. That hasn’t happened to me before. Not to that extent, and thinking about it, the cause must have been [Indomitable Will].

Anyway, it was embarrassing to admit that he found reading my intentions difficult because of my scattered brain thoughts. Were they the reason I won? Nah.

“You’re good to continue,” the healer announced as he stood up, finished with his work. Freyde nodded, got on his feet as well, and tested his healed body before grabbing his sword again and resuming his defensive stance.

“Seriously?” I questioned. “I thought we were done here.”

“I can still fight.” He argued, then flashed me a grin. “And even though it doesn’t look like it, I had fun.”

“It’s a way to get to know each other better. I told you that,” Deckard remarked through the union rings. “So, show him who he’s up against.” If it was really about getting to know each other, I’d find it more pleasant to sit down for a cup of coffee, share our stories.

Well, there was no coffee here on Eleaden, or at least I hadn’t found it yet, so with a sigh, I crouched down and showed Freyde my fangs in a grin. “Try to keep up.”