Paul

The six of them left in the circle were at a loss for words. Paul couldn’t begin to imagine how much this changed. He couldn’t think about what tomorrow would be like. His problems looked more insignificant than he’d thought possible. How could anyone be mad at him after tonight? It’d be better to tell everything now and hope whatever issues people had with him would be quickly overshadowed. Perhaps he wasn’t the only one with that idea.

Lea was the first to speak, voice shaking with raw emotion. “There’ve been too many secrets. Too much silence. Not enough truth. Not enough vulnerability. A broken Carambole is the tip of my iceberg. I believe it is time I stop pretending Radio World didn’t happen.

“When we discovered John and Gaja were dead, I lost control of myself. In my weakness, I attacked you, my friends, and nearly destroyed Rana. They were my adopted parents, but I’ve always compared myself to my father and birth mother. He is a terrible, destructive monster who ruins the life of anyone he meets. His magic broke my mother’s mind so completely she could no longer physically care for herself.

“As I came to my senses and understood what I had so narrowly avoided doing through no merit of mine, but Rana’s mental tenacity alone, I feared more than anything I’d become my father. My cowardly, fragile mind retreated as far from that thought as possible—and in so doing I became like my mother. I feigned my illness, terrified of my own capabilities. Eventually, I saw the toll I took on those around me and decided everyone would be safer, better off, without me.

“Once again, Rana came to my rescue. She found me as I tried to disappear, talked some sense into me, and took me home. That night I vowed I’d one day end my father and my adoptive parents’ killer.

“During our stay with the Tsukumogami, I saw an opportunity. I met with the tool spirits to buy information. I confess, without the group’s consent I sold all our stories, information, and even memories of Red Tail.”

“Wait-wait-wait,” Cassie said, suspicion in her voice. “You sold our library? And they gave you what you wanted?”

“Yes,” Lea said. “All that selfishness for a few hints about this ‘Chimera’ monster so far above our level we couldn’t possibly prevail against.”

“It’s not just your mistake. Your story is impossible because I sold everything we had for a ‘return stone-to-flesh’ cure for my real parents.” The bat girl turned to the others. “I was going to mention it… soon—the timing didn’t feel right before! Anyway…” She shook her head to clear it. “How did we sell the same thing twice to the same people!?”

Kenta squinted his eyes and said, “Hey, Cass, how did you make this ‘deal’ if you were in a coma for most of the three days we were there?”

The bat girl waved a hand. “Oh, Rana said she’d take care of it. She gave me a whole list of cures later.”

“Cassie, when I negotiated my deal, Rana was with me the entire time.”

All eyes turned to the frog girl. She sat there idly, wearing her poker face, and staring at the fire as if the five of them weren’t holding their breaths. Seconds passed and Rana made no indication she’d noticed the direction the conversation had headed, or that she acknowledged their gazes at all.

“I believe the others and I are hoping for some form of explanation regarding this inexplicable conflict of narratives,” Lea said.

“Hmm.”

Lea persevered. “As the common link between the two stories, I think we are awaiting your perspective on events, Rana.”

The frog girl shrugged. “It’s not important.”

Paul couldn’t believe this. He didn’t understand what Rana was doing. Didn’t she see now was the time? What could she possibly have to hide that overshadowed all these other revelations?

“I don’t think it’s a matter of ‘importance,’” Daniel said. “Rather, of ‘curiosity.’ Lea’s story doesn’t feel complete now we see a hole. Even more, we feel something is wrong. The purpose of this circle is to understand one another. If you gave us an explanation, we’d return sympathy for an unfortunate event or forgiveness of mistakes.”

“They both got what they wanted. What do the details matter?” Rana spoke as if willfully misunderstanding Daniel’s detailed reasoning.

“Just answer the damned question!” Kenta said over folded arms, clearly sick of all the dancing around the issue.

“Woah!” Daniel waved his arms in negation. “Rana doesn’t have to answer anything. That’s the main part of the Safe-Sharing Space, no one has to participate if they don’t want to. We share as much or as little as we are able.”

The Kaminoke growled. “We all know she’s keeping more secrets than anyone else here. If she doesn’t go, I shouldn’t have to do this either. I refuse to answer any questions until Rana talks.”

Daniel nodded. “And that’s fine. If Rana doesn’t feel comfortable telling us, forcing her to talk is holding our acceptance hostage. It’ll drive her away. Kenta, you don’t have to tell us anything. Neither did Cassie, Lea, or Ziege. They spoke because they wanted to be understood. This all started because Paul had something to tell us, and we wanted to show our solidarity.”

This, of course, was Paul’s segue. He saw taking the heat off of Rana as a bonus. “Yeah, I’ll go ahead and get everything off my chest before I change my mind… You all saw my transformation, but I never really explained it.

“When the beast attacked us after the first mage fight, I felt really useless. Like there was nothing I could do to protect anyone. I called to my Progenitor, but he didn’t hear me. Then I remembered I had two, and I’d never called on her before.

“Pharos answered me. I saw a vision of her true body, this asteroid-sized lighthouse in space, and she spoke to me. She was terrifying—she thought nothing of using me to kill all of you, and only stopped when I told her you were my allies. She contacted Girandole, my other Progenitor, who said he didn’t want me. I suppose that’s where she got the idea…

“At any rate, we entered my Inner World with Pharos in her humanoid form. She started snooping around looking for something. My old house was there with my room upstairs. Inside was my bed, and under the pillow… a demon. She killed It so easily. I guess I have something to thank her for.

“Except, that’s when she betrayed me. I didn’t want to change. I felt better without the demon, like I could finally do something. Instead, Pharos set my house on fire… and the pain, I couldn’t move… she dragged me out, my old body burned away and… she changed me. Remade me in her image. That’s who I am now.”

Paul watched his hands intensely, forcing himself not to consider meeting their eyes. He didn’t want sympathy. This must be what Cassie meant about her blindness. He felt fine this way, better than ever before the transformation. And yet. What would they say? What would he see in their eyes? As afraid as he was of their reactions, he wanted to be free of all these secrets and lies.

“With my new body came this new… ability. I can barely describe it. Imagine having each possibility you can think of laid before you, extending a second or two into the future. Your senses expand in all directions. You perceive everything at once. Your body can only walk one path, but your mind experiences all options. Even the mistakes. Even the possibilities you didn’t want to think of but did on accident.

“Every second of every day, I have to try to control my impulses, my random thoughts, my idle curiosities. It takes so much effort to force myself to not imagine terrible things I would never actually do, because thinking of things to avoid is thinking of them. It’s not even temptation. It’s simply my overactive mind. I worry about it all the time like, ‘That’s a beautiful butterfly, I better not imagine crushing it—oops.’ The butterfly is fine, but I can’t unsee what I chose not to do.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve imagined hurting myself, felt it because they’re the same thing to me now, because I keep remembering that touching Daniel is a bad idea. I am so, so sorry to admit that I have unintentionally touched each of you inappropriately, and you have no idea when or where. That’s why I’ve been keeping my distance whenever possible. There’s a range limit on my ability to choose not to touch people—the length of my arm.

“I couldn’t gather the will to make my confession immediately, and every day I haven’t told you is another day I dug my grave deeper. I want to throw myself in the hole now. Cover me with dirt. I feel disgusting. I deserve whatever you all have to say to me.”

It took him a second to realize what he was feeling. The female body pressed against his side and the arms around him were real.

“I understand,” Cassie said as she hugged him tight. “My sense of hearing is so powerful I can ‘see’ someone’s entire body just by touching them, like I had x-ray vision. I’m constantly overhearing things I’m not supposed to, private things, embarrassing things, I can even occasionally ‘glimpse’ unlikely futures someone is considering. Admitting how much I could hear was so embarrassing, and I was always too afraid to before now.

“I had no idea what you were going through, but I want you to know I trust you, Paul. I believe you are trying not to do bad things with your power, I believe you’re being honest about your mistakes, and I believe in you as a person. I won’t judge you for what you’re not doing right now. And I won’t stay away from you, but if having me close makes you uncomfortable—say so and I promise I won’t be offended.”

Paul wished he could cry.

“I suppose this means you’ve already touched me, Paul, so I can do this.” Lea put her arms around him as well.

While Kenta and Rana put their hands on his shoulders, Daniel stayed at his place across the fire. “I’m so sorry to find I’ve unknowingly caused you pain, Paul. And I’ve never been this sad I can’t join the others as they embrace you. I wish you had told us sooner, but I’m sure we’d all rather support you than bury you.” Daniel chuckled.

“Unfortunately, that’s not the end of it,” Paul said as the others returned to their places. “I’ve been outright lying about something unrelated, but equally serious.” As he watched them brace themselves, Paul looked inward to find the core of strength within like the heart he didn’t have. They love me. They love me. They love me, he told himself, the truth reinforced by the memory of arms around him.

“We haven’t been on the T.O.’s trail since we found John and Gaja. Regrettably, I took it upon myself to decide what was best for us after what happened to Lea. Worse, the Pathfinding ability is completely gone. When Pharos burned my house in my inner world, she destroyed the candle connecting me to my Yang magic. Eliminating that allowed her Yin magic to become dominant and let her remake my body.”

“But I have your candle!” Cassie said.

Paul shook his head. “Pharos told me to give you a piece of myself so I could regain my Yang abilities when I was ready. She tricked me. The body inside this armor is a being of burning light. If I removed this helmet to kiss you and retake that piece of myself, my very presence would scour flesh from bone.

“Argh!” Kenta stood and kicked a rock so hard it ruined his shoes.

“That is extremely unfortunate,” Daniel said, ignoring the outburst. “And it sounds as if you didn’t have much choice in the matter. I can hardly hold you responsible for losing your Clair abilities.”

“This is it? This is our dead end? This is where everything stops?” Kenta stomped and kicked the turf, his hair aquiver and snarling into tangles.

Daniel nodded. “I never imagined our quest would end like this either. Not captured by mages or killed by monsters, but this… anti-climax. Who would’ve thought?”

“It was kind of obvious, though, wasn’t it?” Cassie observed. When Daniel raised an eyebrow, she continued. “After Paul transformed, think about how much our hostile-encounter rate went up. Our speed and the distance we covered only accounts for so much. With his Pathfinding active, we went weeks in the Wilderness without seeing another living soul.”

Rana nodded. “It wasn’t hard to figure out. He hasn’t used a single Yang ability since his transformation. And such an extreme physical change was a huge warning signal.”

“To be completely honest,” Lea added, “Paul already told me while we were with the Tsukumogami. I am not proud of the circumstances.”

“Did everyone know about this except me?” Kenta shouted.

“I swear I had no idea,” Daniel said. “And Wendi talks to me about most stuff, so I doubt she knew either.”

The Kaminoke barely listened. “Aren’t you all forgetting the part where he lied to us? All those times he said we were getting closer he was screwing with us!”

“I’m sorry. What I did was wrong.”

Kenta strode over and shouted at the face of Paul’s helmet, “I trusted you!”

“I deserve any punishment you think is just.”

“No, he doesn’t!” Cassie said as she approached. “He was demon-influenced at the time! Sure, he’s responsible for his actions, and lying is wrong, but giving him a punishment is piling bad on top of bad.”

Standing beside the bat girl, Rana agreed, “Paul struggled with his Pathfinding from the start. That kind of ability is extremely difficult to wield. He was afraid of getting us hurt, especially since that’s what it’d been doing. For all we know, losing that ability saved our lives.”

Kenta’s expression twisted into a snarl. “I don’t want to hear you defend him! You think you know all about what’s best for us, don’t you? WHAT ABOUT HARUMI? What about what’s best for my sister? We don’t know if she’s alive or dead! And she thinks she doesn’t have a brother anymore!

“You think you can sit in your den of secrets and tell us what’s wrong and right? Where were you before you came to the T.O.? Why did you feed Cassie in secret for a year instead of coming to the group for help?”

“Stop it!” Cassie said, but Kenta was laser-focused on Rana.

“What’s the real reason you wouldn’t let anyone else take care of Lea during her months of depression? How did you find her in the city when she had a head-start?”

“Generally speaking, fighting amongst friends is not a good idea. When people have hot tempers, they often need to spend some time alone to cool off.” Lea visibly sweated, her fists clenched with the effort of not shouting Commands for them to stop fighting and get away from each other.

His hair was a roiling frenzy like a flooding river. “When did you learn to summon hundreds of little frogs, just like Red Tail? When did you learn how to turn into a huge toad warrior? What were you doing in the Tsukumogami village by yourself all that time? How did you sell them the same stuff twice, or did you lie to Cass and Lea?”

“Back off!” Daniel joined in the shouting and confusion.

They were all yelling and arguing. Paul had never seen it this bad. What bothered him the most, though, was the look on Rana’s face. It was the face of a thunderhead on the horizon with the wind blowing their way.

It was the face of a bomb about to explode.

“And let’s not forget the worst of it all—Why is everyone pretending they didn’t have to hold you down and pray your eyes would stop glowing red. You nearly turned full-monster on us! And you have the nerve not to explain yourself? I thought monsters came from breaking some Taboo? Isn’t that what you said? What did you almost do? What were you thinking about when it happened?

“Hmm, let’s do some detective work. You’ve been against searching for the T.O. from the beginning. You said it’s a good thing we lost the Pathfinding ability. It’s almost like you don’t want to find them.

“Feeding Cass, caring for Lea, knowing more than anyone else—you’ve never tried to be the leader, but everyone depends on you. Everyone wants your opinion. Everyone expects you to save them. Everyone needs you. What would happen if we found the T.O.?—You’d lose everything. That’s motive.

“And what were the mages about to do when you turned monster? Capture us and split us up. Our lives weren’t even in danger, but the thought of that pushed you over the edge, and you kept fighting even though Daniel would’ve had a better chance of survival getting immediate medical attention.

“Why? Because we’re not people to you, we’re your possessions. And you can’t stand the thought of one of your toys being taken away. Personally, I think you just wanted to straight-up murder the hell out of that Verglas guy. It really wasn’t that hard to figure out. Kind of obvious if you ask me.”

“Your words.” Her voice was the low rumble of distant thunder. Encroaching.

“I think it’s a damn good guess.”

“Like you don’t have secretes.”

“The Kaminoke never lie.”

“Ha.” Her voice held deadly calm. “I didn’t speak before because some things are better left unsaid. Like how everything you’ve ever told us about the Kaminoke is a lie. You made it all up. Every word. Even if you were basing it off something, it’s irrational to generalize about an entire race. But even a ‘white lie’ can be dangerous when you’re hiding a terrible truth.

“You probably weren’t paying it any attention, but I did some research on the murals the Tsukumogami showed us when we arrived. Why did Matsu the cane attack you, Kenta?

“Cassie started everything by saving Tarō, and she was unconscious at the time. Easy prey. A Caprid permanently scarred Koto. Paul destabilized their society the most with his tree of glass and metal. Daniel is the same race as the reaper who killed Furiko, Koto’s lover. What’s worse than the one who killed your friend?

“The one who betrayed you. The one the Tsukumogami blame for sabotaging Koto’s battle with the reaper, the one truly responsible for Furiko’s death, was a Kaminoke.

“That was why when Matsu the cane struck, he attacked you. Maybe if I wasn’t protecting your secret we could have worked together to stop the attack from happening. As it stands, if you or any of us harmed Matsu while defended ourselves, Koto would’ve killed us all!”

Paul and the others hadn’t spoken during all this; they were too confused. No one really cared what Kenta said about the Kaminoke, right?

So why did flashes of anger, fear, sorrow, and, of all things, horror cross the boy’s face? Why did he slump his shoulders, squeeze his eyes shut and… cry?

Kenta turned and fled, his hair carrying him away at a steady pace.

Rana held her crumbling poker face together as she glanced around at the shocked faces of the others. Then she turned as well, her skin blending with the background as she Camouflaged and ran.

Cassie looked in Kenta’s direction, then after Rana with her mouth agape.

“I dreamed this. Oh, crap.”