“Are you serious?” Freyde’s expression spoke volumes. I must have had a screw loose because a normal person would have a glass of wine to help them fall asleep, not a dose of nerve gas. And I couldn’t help but agree with that notion.

But that’s just the way it was. “I can’t exactly control it when I’m asleep. I’d have to get rid of the skill.”

“If it’s one that’s harmful to me, I would do it,” Meneur noted. It was merely his observation, his take. He wasn’t telling me to get rid of [Tail of Poison Empress]. The taurus was simply trying to understand my reason for keeping the skill.

“Not everything that is harmful is necessarily bad,” remarked Sergeant Pinescar so everyone would hear him. As always, his booming voice made my ears hurt. “Am I wrong, Grey?”

Yeah, he wasn’t. Experience, I suppose. For all I know, he could have known someone whose own skill set him on fire every time he went to take a piss. Anyway, I nodded. “It helps me with leveling up my regeneration skill. I got a level overnight today.”

I really did. [Never-Dying] was now at level 48. Only 12 levels away from the next tier. If only it worked the other way around, too. I found leveling up [Tail of the Poison Empress] much harder. Anyway, while struggling not to react to Pinescar’s I-knew-it look, I wondered what the skill had in store for me at level 60.

Well, I didn’t get any further than posing the question in my mind.

“That’s...” Harper gushed before she actually worked out what she wanted to say. “That’s fucking cheating...and brilliant. Can I give it a try?”

“You have a regeneration skill?” I fully deserved that glance she gave me, telling me how dumb that question was: I realized that the moment it came out of my mouth.

“A General Skill, like everyone else’s. Level 82. Baking is dangerous work. Is that enough?”

“Mine’s at level 48, but...”

“Yours is not some everyday regeneration skill, Little Beast,” butted in Deckard, who finally got his laughter under control. “It’s pointless to compare them.”

Harper blinked, finding her courage quickly. “So you’re saying it would kill me, Mr. Deckard?”

“Deckard is fine. And yes, it might. Unless your skill description says so explicitly, these are not skills meant to be used against poisons. Still willing to give it a shot, girl?”

The Baker hesitated, giving it a thought. “And Korra’s skill is like that?”

Two things came to mind at that moment. 

First, I was glad I wasn’t the only one Deckard called a girl, despite her age. That night in the Drunken Filly, drunk as she was, Harper shared with me she was twenty-three. For some reason, I remembered this detail as opposed to discussing my skills with the entire tavern.

Second, even though they were my squad mates, I wasn’t keen to share too much detail about my skills with them. The overall secretiveness that prevailed among the people of Eleaden was starting to get under my skin. There was some sense to it. But to make it work between us, it was impossible to keep everything from them. Nor did I want to. The way I saw it, it was about balance, finding the line I didn’t want to cross, and saying what they needed to know without going into detail.

“No.” I shook my head at Harper’s question. “It’s a skill that regenerates damage to my body. Only it does it really well. And before you ask, the poison is a nerve poison. It's damaging my nerves, my body, so...”

“So, my regeneration should handle that, too.”

Not exactly what I was trying to convey to her, but true nonetheless. Damn, she was quick to catch on. “If you regenerate fast enough, you should be fine. It makes me drowsy.”

“Now. It makes you tired now,” Meneur grumbled, frowning at me. “Was it the same when you first got poisoned?”

A damn good point. Got to hand it to him. Our squad mage didn’t talk much, keeping a lot to himself, most likely learned from bitter experience with the warriors in his taurus clan. Living between them for more than fifty years simply left a mark on him. But when he spoke, he was proving he had the right mind for his class.

Well, as for his question…they had no idea my regeneration was so good it could bring me back to life. Not a rare thing, I understand, rare in someone as low leveled as me. I was a freak, an oddity, but I was me, and it was time to tell them.

“It killed me. Several times, actually.”

I expected them to call it bullshit; after all, I was standing right there in front of them, obviously not dead. However, they just stood there, eyes sliding over me while they tried to understand what I had just told them. Deckard knew. Back in the fight with Clay, I had exhausted myself so much that my regeneration ended up eating me up from the inside, killing me and bringing me back to life in a vicious cycle. Not again!

Whether Sergeant Pinescar knew that, I had no idea. However, judging by the fact that the man didn’t even flinch, that shit either had to get into the report, or it was more common than I suspected.

“Y-you died to it?” Freyde stammered. The half-gnome was uncharacteristically stumped the whole time we talked about my poison.

“Yeah, in my sleep, so...no biggie. You okay?” He seemed a bit pale.

“Me? I should be asking you. Seriously, how can you take it so lightly?” he asked, stopped, and took a deep breath. “Sorry, my grandmother’s biggest fear is poisoning. She checks every food and drink for signs of any. Really annoying and made me do the same.”

“Seriously, do you have to bring her up even now?” Harper fumed, tired of him talking about her all the time. Then she pointed at me. “Korra just told us she’s fucking immortal.”

“Oh, you’re immortal,” Idleaf piped in, intrigued by the information. So far, the spirit has been happily bouncing around among us the whole time, enjoying our... bickering. 

Sadly, I had to disappoint her. “No, I’m not.” On second thought, she or her elders might know ways to achieve immortality. So I made a mental note to ask her later, just out of purely academic curiosity.

“You sure?” No, it wasn’t Idleaf, but a half-gnome who asked me. “Because my gran...”

“For Traiana’s sake! Shut up about her. I’m not surprised the old hag is afraid of poisons. If I met her, I’d pour it in her drink myself just to get you to stop talking about her.”

Oddly enough, Freyde was not outraged by the idea. “If you succeeded, it would make a lot of her family and most of her friends happy.”

‘Friends?’ That’s not how I pictured friendship, nor was I the only one who found it quite strange. 

“Friends put poison in their food?” A shiver ran down my spine the moment Idleaf asked. She considered me her friend.

Whether or not Freyde understood where this could eventually lead as I did, he went on to set the record straight. “No, Idleaf. That’s not what friends do. That’s what gnomes do. There is always rivalry hidden behind friendship. Sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up. Bad memory. Still...” he said, pausing before his dark blue eyes wandered back to me. “Again, how can you take it so lightly? Damn! If you’re not lying, you’ve died...and several times.” 

Of course, it wasn’t lost on me what he was getting at. However, my run-in with poison was not my first rodeo with death. “I died with the first shot that insane bastard pumped into me, the first mutation. It was only for a few moments that my heart stopped, but it was enough for the system to inform me of my death. And with each new injection, with each new mutation twisting my body, the burden on it grew, and so did the length of time my heart was out. I died eight times before I even smelled this poison.” To emphasize my point, I stroked Sage’s fur to force out a puff of orange smoke, letting it roll in my palm. It lingered there longer than I thought it would and gave me an oddly familiar feeling, but it did the job.

“That’s...” The Bookkeeper didn’t finish the sentence. Freyde failed to find the right words.

I did, though. “Fucked up. Yeah, I know. Believe me. But...without realizing it, I started to look at death a bit differently. It’s the suffering before the death that sucks, not the death itself.”

Silence fell around me. Idleaf even had wet eyes. Why the spirit of the young World Tree was looking at me so sorrowfully was beyond me. After all, it wasn’t like I was killing myself on purpose, nor did I have any desire to die. Permanently, that is.

When a snap rang through the air, it wasn’t just my ears that twitched. All five of us looked at Sergeant Pinescar, a simple flick of his fingers, and he had all of our attention. “I’m genuinely surprised, Grey. Not what I expected from a gal who barely stuck her tits in the labyrinth.What you told us is a truth that every guard, soldier, seeker - anyone who uses a weapon for a living - will come to sooner or later. No matter where you are, you may run into things worse than death. And for your info, I have yet to meet someone or something truly immortal. Anyway, you guys have talked long enough...show them what they’ll be dealing with, Grey.”

“Yes, sir,” I said and activated the skill. There was nothing to hesitate over, especially when it took a few minutes for the poison to build up in the glands, a downside my squad should know about. 

“It takes four to five minutes before I can release the poison to maximum effect,” I assumed the explanation as soon as I shook off the mana loss. “It’s a pretty mana-intensive skill, so I can only use it a maximum of four times in a row. The poison takes the form of a yellow-orange mist, so you can’t miss it, and as I said, it smells of apples.”

“Okay, guys and gals, once you smell the poison, any poison, it’s too late. You’re fucked. The only thing you can do at that point is to stop breathing to minimize the effects, take the antidote and get out the fuck of there. Only then, when you’re sure the air is clear, can you breathe.”

“Stop breathing, sir?” asked Meneur at Sergeant Pinescar’s odd choice of words. The master guard didn’t answer right away. Instead, he glanced at Deckard, and they both grinned back.

“The first thing your instincts tell you after your little brain figures out what’s going on is to hold your breath. The dumbest thing you can do. You’ll just inhale more poison that way.”

“I understand, sir,” the big taurus replied, his head humped. He spoke for all of us, though. What the Guardsman told us sounded logical.

Seeing us mulling over it, Sergeant Pinescar smirked. “Knowing how to act is one thing. Fighting your instincts is another thing altogether. They’re carved hard into you.”

Quite true. Defying your instincts, taming the beast inside you was a struggle.

“Anyway, this could be an opportunity for you to get a taste of it for yourself.”

I would have thought Harper, who was up for any action, eager to test her regeneration, would be on board, but she seemed as stumped as I was at his suggestion. He wanted me to poison my own squad members. 

A shiver ran down my spine. 

This one was different, though. Pleasant even.

“I don’t taste anything,” Idleaf interjected after she stroked Sage, the tail I wagged mindlessly behind me, to get some of the orange smoke in her mouth. The sight of her there, mulling the poison on her tongue, orange mist rolling from her mouth, kind of reminded me of my friend on Earth when she first tasted the bong. That said, my experience with it hasn't been any better. I never found it to my liking. 

Oh, boy. Old memories that made me miserable. Yet, watching the spirit, I found myself chuckling oddly.

“That’s a figure of speech...Sergeant Pinescar meant they should experience it for themselves.”

“The human language is confusing,” Idleaf huffed, the last of the poison escaping her mouth. I chuckled again.

“No doubt about that,” said the master guard regarding the human language, not at all amused by what Idleaf was doing. “I don’t recommend you try what she just did. However, to ease your worries. We reckoned you might come into contact with Grey’s poison. I have more than enough antidote with me.”

Insightful. Thinking about it, even though I didn’t have to worry about my life, I should have carried a bottle or two with me in case I accidentally poisoned someone. Or in case I run into someone like Idleaf or Harper. Now that the Baker knew the master guard had her back, her eagerness to try the poison, to test her regeneration, was back. 

The two male members of our squad showed more sense in this matter than the females did. Neither Freyde nor Meneur seemed particularly thrilled at the idea of deliberately inhaling poison.

“I’m ready,” I announced as the pressure in the glands of my tail grew to a highly unpleasant degree. Without asking, I dashed away from them, to what I considered a safe distance, and formed a shield around my head. “I can make it bigger,” I noted before anyone could say anything about my space helmet. “I can avoid poisoning myself for a while this way.”

“And here I thought you only used brute strength. Well, call me impressed, Grey! You got more than shit for brains.”

Was that the impression he had of me? What the hell was in those reports?! On the other hand, during class evolution, I had the option to choose the Brute of a Woman as my class, so...I swallowed the snide remark I had on the tip of my tongue and just asked: “Ready?”

“Go ahead,” Sergeant Pincescar beckoned, the others nodding silently, their eyes glued to me.

Without further ado, I pushed, and as a cloud of orange, yellowish in spots, gas erupted from my tail, I began to dance. To some, it may have seemed like I lost it. I found it kind of beautiful, the way the gas trailed behind me, and also important to show others that I didn’t release the poison in one massive puff but gradually.

“Fuck me!” gushed Harper, awe in her voice. In my domain, outside the poison mist, I saw the trio staring at the expanding cloud with their mouths open. The only one missing was Idleaf. But for all I knew, she could have been standing right next to them, giggling like an idiot, and I wouldn’t have seen her, the shortcoming of my skill. It didn’t work on the magic projection.

Then, caught up in my performance, I yelped, almost wetting my panties, when something brushed against my wing. It wasn’t hard to guess who it was, though. The giggle that carried through the orange cloud could belong to none other than the spirit of the young World Tree. To teach her a lesson, I lunged after the sound of her laughter, only to find myself entertaining her in the unfair game of hide-and-seek. It lasted until I let out all the poison.

“That’s it,” I announced as I left the orange cloud and tapped out all the poison I could before lifting the barrier around my head. Then I took a cautious breath of air. It smelled of apples.

 

• You were poisoned

 

Fuck!

Stepping out of the cloud was the part I still had to work on.

“There’s more of it than I expected,” Meneur noted, staring at the orange mist hovering above the ground in front of them in a slowly expanding mass. And he wasn’t wrong. There was a hell lot of it, even more thanks to [Call of Nature]. 

“Doesn’t look like something I’d want to breathe,” Freyde remarked, at which Harper smirked. “Pussy. Can I go in, sir?”

Sergeant Pinescar shook his head with a sigh. “Take it easy, Breadbaker. Small steps.” 

A faint sneer escaped her throat as she nodded, and with a deep inhale of fresh air, moved forward. Despite her desire to see if her regeneration skill could rival mine, she heeded the master guard’s instructions and took it slowly, just one step at a time, before pausing. “Fuck me! It really smells like apples...and I’m poisoned.”

A giggle from the depths of the orange cloud came in response. I found it cute, the Baker as an incentive to go further into the denser parts.

“How do you feel, Harper?” asked Freyde, his eyes fixed on his squadmate.

“Damn good,” she shot back. “You should try it too, pointy ears.”

“Well, no, I’d rather wait and see what it does to this one dumb chick determined to get herself killed before I take a single step.”

“Smart move, actually,” remarked Sergeant Pinescar. “If you know it’s poisonous or suspect it is, it’s better to have one member test the waters than risk the whole unit all at once. Who would save your ass, then?”

There was little need to ponder his words. He was right, again.

“Now I’m feeling a little sluggish,” Harper reported, and contrary to my expectation, she turned on her heel and proceeded to walk back. The moment she crossed the imaginary line, she fell to her knees, wheezing.

The master guard was at her side in a flash, handing her a vial of black liquid. “Here, Breadbaker. Drink this.”

“I’m g-good,” she said with an effort. “...s-sir.”

“Are you sure? You don’t have to prove anything to us.”

I suspected she was more out to prove something to herself, whatever it was. “Do you know my poison almost brought the Beast of the South to his knees, too?”

They all looked at me. 

“What?! It’s true. I don’t know what the deal with his regeneration was, but since he had no resistance to the poisons, he had to take the antidote.” Okay, I admit, saying it almost brought him to his knees was an exaggeration. He just coughed and took the antidote. But an achievement nonetheless, considering he was a man at the level of 253.

Sergeant Pinescar cleared his throat, getting the attention back. “The lesson here is that the man knew his weakness and was prepared. If he hadn’t, despite his strength, he might have succumbed to the poison. Now, Welkes, Ironhoof, your turn.”

Both guys glanced at the expanding cloud, then Harper kneeling on the ground, breathing heavily, and gulped. I didn’t blame them. If I were in their shoes, I would most likely chicken out. However, things had changed since my florist days, and so in solidarity, I stepped into the orange cloud with them.

Okay, it wasn’t just some big-hearted gesture to give them courage. I was already poisoned and saw no reason why to keep my regeneration busy. Then there was that feeling I had. Whether it was when I had poison on my palm or looking for Idleaf in it, I felt an odd connection to it.

Delving much deeper than Freyde and Meneur, it didn’t take me long to figure out what was bugging me so much about it. The poison was giving me a similar feeling mana did. I mean, like the one I was able to push out of my body in a thin layer around my hand during my training lessons with Aspen.

Why was that? Simple. Because it took mana to create the poison. A fucking massive amount of it! 

With every step I took out of the cloud, the pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place within my poison-fatigued mind. The Beast, Empress of Poison. She could wield poison as a weapon, and now it made sense to me how, through mana. Sure, there could have been more to it, but it made me realize that I may have been looking at the skill all wrong all along.

I considered it a poison-making skill, while it might have been more about controlling it. Damn! Was that why I was so bad at leveling it up?

“You okay, Little Beast?”

“What?” I shot back absentmindedly, my mind slowly wading out of the mire of my thoughts, realizing that I had long ago walked out of the poison gas cloud and stared dumbly at my tail.

“If you’re all good? Do you need an antidote?”

“No. No, I don’t,” I said hurriedly, a broad smile spreading across my face. “I just had a revelation.”