The way from the road fork to Esulmor Forest could not be more different from my first one in the opposite direction. Sure, even then my body was writhing in fear, but the rush of seeing the outside world completely overwhelmed any worries I had. Sitting there next to Mr. Scoresby, I had felt hopeful for the first time in a year and a half in this world. Now? That hope was slipping away, ready to vanish any second. The only thing keeping it alive was the thought that maybe - just maybe - not everything was gone yet.

  'Surely, Rayden will send someone for me. Probably that Deckard, just like the Shadowbreakers feared. She promised to keep me safe.' A slim hope to cling to, for sure. All I had was the word of a woman who didn’t have to give a damn about what happened to me now. Castiana was free of mind mages, just the way she wanted.

  'Shit! I'm fucked, aren't I?' The thought sent a chill racing down my spine to the tip of my tail, making Sage wriggle in my arms. But it wasn't just the thought that had me rattled. With every step closer to Esulmor, to that shoelace bitch, my nightmare, the knot in my stomach twisted tighter.

  'Vara and Elira!' Reminding myself that I wasn’t in this alone made it a bit easier. Even if dragging those two along weighed on me. And then, well, there was Harcon, former city guard, Master Guard even, now in the service of my so-called master. Just as Elira had hoped, he didn't seem comfortable with the idea of mind mages gaining their own beast core through me. The downside? There was no way of knowing if he would actually go along with what he said, and the fact that he was willing to kill me in order to keep me out of their hands. Honestly, terrifying and relieving at the same time. For sure, better dead than ending up on an operating table somewhere, unable to die because of what the shitty Fae had made of me. Lost - and more than that.

  'Fuck you, you bloody, fucking buggers!'

  If only I had the guts to shout it out loud. That would help - somewhat. It might even get a chuckle out of the guardswomen, especially Vara, caged up with me on this rattling wagon. But it wouldn't have made a lick of difference to my quagmire. The darkness under the tarp would still gnaw at my nerves, and the rumbling of the wagon would continue to overpower my regeneration.

  Seriously, how that worked was one big mystery to me. Even without pouring mana into it, my regeneration could stop the bleeding in just a few breaths. But for some damn reason, it couldn’t do a thing about the bruises on my ass - just like last time.

  'Does riding a wagon require some weave?'

  A question I got an answer to without even asking. "Fuck my tits! My ass hurts more than my ribs right now," Vara groaned, shifting around to find a more comfortable position to sit in. "If I'd known... tsk... If I'd known I was getting kidnapped and hauled around on a wagon for hours, I would've picked [Rider's Rear] as one of my weaves."

  "No, you wouldn't," Elira retorted, shifting her position as well. "What else would you do with that weave? City guards don't ride scalehoofs."

  "Well, I hear the weave makes some grown-up stuff way more fun."

  "What grown-up stuff?" Elira asked, clueless, looking completely lost, while my hands found their way to my butt, my cheeks burning.

  "Do you really want to know?"

  Seeing her friend's look, Elira figured it was something better left unsaid, shaking her head.

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  "I thought so," Vara smirked. "What about you, Korra? That awesome regeneration of yours isn’t really helping, huh?"

  "Yeah..." I didn't really know what to say, worried that anything I said would set Vara up for another lewd comment. The same, however, seemed to be the case with Elira, who immediately took up the explanation, more than happy to change the topic.

  "It's nothing unusual. There are plenty of exceptions to what regeneration based weaves can handle."

  "There's more than the… you know?" Ever since I had learned about what the runes engraved on my chest could do, I had considered them basically a double-edge cheat.

  "Well, yes, if you set aside that they're usually unable to regenerate entire limbs or bring you back from the dead, then the most common problem is calluses - or bad eyesight. They're things you don't normally see as - well, damage."

  'Hold on, what about the fucking core? Didn’t that count as damage to my body?’

  "Bullshit," Vara argued. "It will heal your... cough... sore tired muscles from a day's worth of heavy toil, but not the calluses? I call it the Lattice shit-fuckery. There's plenty of that in every weave."

  "That’s just you not understanding your own weaves, Vara."

  "Are you calling me stupid?" she fired back, her tone light and teasing, with no trace of anger.

  "No, I'm just saying it takes understanding your own weaves for them to do what you want."

  It wasn't hard to understand what she was saying, but I had my doubts. According to Mr. Sandoval, I should be able to understand Standard, albeit poorly, without the weave. Even before I had [Equilibrium] among my weaves, I was able to move, though clumsily because of all my new limbs, and while I wasn't sure about my spatial perception without my [Spatial Domain] weave, I knew that Sage wouldn't lose her apple scent if I were to choose to swap [Tail of Poison Empress] for something else. My regeneration then was a case in itself. With the Fae runes carved on my chest, I wouldn't lose it, no matter what. As such...

  "Err... r-rather than knowing your weaves,” I said, struggling with how to put it. "...isn't it more about knowing your body?"

  "You mean get to know your arse better?" Vara burst out laughing, and honestly, she was spot on. The whole idea was absurd. Still, there might have been some truth in it - if I hadn’t shut myself off from the core and had made an effort to understand it and my own womb, maybe my regeneration would have sorted everything out. Who knows? Maybe it would drive the core out of my body, treating it as the foreign object it was.

  "But talk about knowing your body..." Vara said, suddenly unusually serious. "I'm at my limit."

  "What?" Elira blurted, fear written all over her. "Is the pain that bad? Hold on, I’ll ask Harcon if he has another potion.”

  "For tits' sake, I'm not dying, El," Vara stopped her. “But can you ask him to pull over? I really need a break - like right now. I’m about to piss myself. What? Don’t tell me you two don’t need to go! We’ve been on the road for ages. And with all the rattling and pain... I'm honestly surprised I held out this long."

  "Thanks for the reminder, Vara." Elira broke the awkward silence that had ensued. "Now I won’t be able to stop thinking about it. Anyway, I'll ask..."

  ─◇─◇─◇─

  Unsurprisingly, no stopping.

  Still, in a way, it caught me off guard. The Shadowbreakers went to great lengths to throw anyone off our scent, yet they didn’t seem to care that it now smelled of piss under the tarp on the wagon. In the end, not even Elira was able to hold it back. Nothing I could hold against the two; but pressing my ears to my head in the corner of the cage, trying to block them out, took me back to Dungreen’s cellar. Not the worst of the things that happened there, still...

  "Are you alright, Korra?" Elira asked, as another shiver crawled down my spine. "If you need to go too..."

  "No. No, I'm fine. It's just... it's the forest. It gives me the chills." Not a lie. Even though I couldn't see outside the cage, for whatever reason, I could feel the forest getting closer. It was like a shadow growing in the setting sun, reaching for me. So when we halted for the second time since Castiana, I didn’t need the tense whinnies from the scalehoofs or my so-called master's grumbling to know we had reached the edge of Esulmor.