Cassie

Before you get too excited, let’s get one thing straight. Actually, you should know a few things about me before we get back to the action. First, I don’t go in for all your sight-based phrases. I don’t ‘see eye-to-eye’ with anyone, I won’t ‘see what you mean,’ and I’ll never ‘look out below’ or ‘watch where I’m going.’ I don’t advertise this because it gives people the wrong idea but, the fact is, I’m blind.

Stop. I know what you’re thinking, and I’m stopping you right there. All I mean is my eyes don’t work, but I’m no more ‘disabled’ than the colorblind. I can read facial expressions; plus, I have a bunch of hyperacute bonus senses. Believe me, I don’t miss much for lack of eyesight.

I have extremely sophisticated echolocation, which is even better than it sounds. Instead of a small cone of sight like most people, I perceive everything around me all at once. I can tell the relative positions of people and objects from their heartbeats and the echoes of footsteps and voices.

On top of that, I can hum at ultrasonic frequencies for more detail. We’re talking full 3D modeling, a significant upgrade from sonar. I can do ultrasound imaging of internal organs with a touch.

And let’s not forget the common light gem found at any Terminal works by beaming monochrome images of its surroundings into your mind. I can ‘see’ anything in range of Aurvandil light like anyone else. I’d have mine on all the time if it weren’t a waste of magic and a shining beacon to every nearby mage and monster.

The only things I’ve never seen firsthand are colors and the sky, so it’s not a big deal.

For the record, it’s not normal for Chiropterans to be blind. I’ve been told my exceptional Hearing is due to my Yin predominance. I don’t know if it’s related. Mom said I was the first Yin-dominant in a decade, the first blind girl in a century, and the best Precognizant born to my whole colony since they split from a larger branch a thousand years ago.

But I don’t want to talk about that right now.

Funny story—not funny ha-ha, just odd—the first time I ‘saw’ color was in prison. It was the second-most sad I’d ever been, captured and alone. Well, the others were also imprisoned, and we could talk, but we weren’t together—when I heard something strange. My ability to ‘Hear’ electromagnetic waves is more magical, like my Clairaudience, than biological. With concentration, I tuned myself until the noise resolved into pictures unlike anything I’d imagined.

The beauty of everyday things fascinated me: rocks and grass, the distant stars in the sky, misty rainbows, and people. For the longest time, I simply watched, though not with my own eyes, able to forget my troubles while enjoying the spectacle. Of course, I shared everything with my friends. I think TV may have saved us all during those three years.

More on prison later.

Okay, I know my wings and leg-hands are kind of weird. In the colony, though, we just called them ‘hands.’ It’s only with humans around it gets confusing, and I need to say ‘leg-hands’ the way Daniel does. I’m flexible enough to wash my hair, so nothing practical has ever been an issue.

I think what gets people is how, because they’re in the place of feet, my leg-hands are bigger than you’d expect for my size. I’m tiny. Short and skinny. I’m fourteen and still look like a boy.

Biologically, when I hang upside down and relax, my weight pulls my leg tendons taught to clench my hands. I don’t feel lightheaded from inversion, so it’s way better than any bed. I used to sleep like that all the time when I lived with my parents.

My flight is partially physical, though powered by magic. I can fly faster and farther than an animal my size and wingspan, but I need to flap my wings to make it work. It’s all in the technique. Holding my wings open as if I’m about to take off feels like a step short of levitation. If I flutter a bit, I can get my hands off the ground to mess with something without falling over.

There is literally nothing like soaring through the sky. It’s a huge part of who I am, and to be honest, I can’t imagine myself going long-term in a relationship with anyone who can’t fly. It’s something that can’t be explained.

Without saying anything, I can connect with another flier because I know we’ve both felt the lurch of fear when the wind in your wings fails and you fall a few feet. We both know what it’s like to play chicken with gravity as you pull out of a dive an instant before it’s too late. We both know the ache in your muscles as you push yourself to go higher than you ever have before and the joy of breaking through that cloud bank to the private expanse that’s always been waiting there for you where no one else can reach. Where, maybe, now we can go together.

Part of me wants to tell everyone else what they’re missing because I love flying so much, but I don’t want to rub my gift in their faces. I’m sorry if you’ve never gotten the chance, but there are plenty of races that know what I’m talking about.

Maybe that Gryphon friend of yours could take you for a ride?

Sorry if I ramble. I’m still getting a feel for this.

Something I hate is when people can’t understand how I can like something and not like it at the same time. One doesn’t cancel out the other.

People are beautiful. I love people. Really. I’m not even talking about beautiful minds or hearts. I find people genuinely pleasant to listen to. Their bodies tell stories, and every wrinkle adds to a lifetime made flesh. It’s true art. Voices, heartbeat, breathing; people are living music.

People are disgusting. You never thought about the downsides of having super hearing, did you? I must listen to every smack of lips, crunch of teeth, click of jaw, every swallowed lumpy mouthful, every plop in a stomach, every growl and grumble and twist and squeak of gut. People are stuffed with complicated, noisy, messy machinery they think little of and do not understand.

My ultrasonography is always on. Turning it off for me would be like you closing your eye. Sonography doesn’t penetrate people without physical contact, so when someone touches me, I get an earful of their insides, whether I like it or not. We’re talking graphic details of guts and tubes and muscles and bones, all with the touch of a finger.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

People like to pretend that side of things doesn’t exist, that there is only beauty in the human form. That we can ignore the ugly side of life as long as it’s not brought up in polite conversation. Some people think they can get away with an un-spoilt image of grace and dignity if they eat with refinement and step into the ‘powder room’ when they feel the need. No one made of flesh will convince me they don’t fart.

Yet, even if they’re noisy and silly and smelly, I think I can still love people.

I mentioned before I can Hear the future. Echoes of future events rippling backward through the timeline, converging probabilities extrapolated from the present… I’m not sure how it works, and I don’t need to know. What matters are three things:

One, I can sense a cone of possibilities expanding from every living thing along the timeline. A cone has dense and sparse sections, thinning into vague background noise as it expands outward. These cones form from all the overlapping sonographs of a person’s potential future positions. When they sleep, their cone contracts to a quiet blur of slight movements and swells again as they wake.

Two, with deep concentration or in my dreams, I can Listen to Auditions of the far future. Usually, there’s no way to predict the future by more than a few seconds with so many conflicting influences and diverging decisions. However, there are moments of clarity, like islands in the stream of time, where multiple choices lead to the same conclusion. These convergencies can be fuzzy impressions or come clean as a bell depending on their relative certainty. Some events transcend location and time if they’re nearly guaranteed to happen eventually.

I’ll explain later why this is my most frustrating ability.

Three, when my life is in danger, my Listening goes into overdrive. It’s an instinctual thing I can’t control. It saves me when I need to dodge in a split second, but it also happens when there’s nothing I can do, and I end up super stressing out about it. My most potent Auditions occur before life-changing moments.

There’s one other thing I need to say before this goes any further. Blood is delicious. I realize that’s not true for most races, but I find it tastier than anything. To describe it, I’d say it’s like drinking hot fudge and coffee, coating your mouth like melted chocolate. It goes down smooth but savory and warms your whole body, fills you with energy, makes you feel you can do anything, makes you feel alive and strong and safe.

I know that doesn’t justify what I did to Rana. I understand what I did was wrong, but I think I have my own side of the story you need to hear. All I want is a chance to present a fair argument. Not now, though, later.

Let me shortly summarize the story so far: After I met Nyctea and joined the Traveling Orphanage, a demon attacked us, and most of the kids got separated from the adults. We were caught by humans and imprisoned for three years. After that, we broke out and ran around for another year. Now a group of Nephilim mages and their tracker are after us.

I’m not going to lie; Hearing the howl in my Audition when he locked onto our scent didn’t scare me—it terrified me. I hiccupped with fear.

“They have a tracker.”

“There are ways of dealing with a tracker,” Rana said, her tongue having been healed with my wings by the healing coin’s aura post-battle. The frog girl put a comforting hand on my shoulder, but Daniel caught her eyes with a glare. She retrieved her hand.

He knew. I’d suspected my horrified reaction when Rana spat blood after the mage fight gave me away, but this confirmed it. Daniel knew I’d taken so much of my best friend’s blood she couldn’t form a toadstone to save her life—literally.

“What kind?” Rana continued without pause. She wouldn’t let this unfolding drama lose them a second of their head start.

“How should I know what he is?” I asked. My Auditions can be funny things. I felt confident the tracker was a ‘He,’ but other details were muffled as if covered in cotton balls. Looking back, I’m guessing his magical mists obscured my Clairaudience. At the time, I didn’t know he was a Black Dog.

“If we don’t know what we’re dealing with, we’ll have to rely on speed,” Daniel said, not putting much stock even in my ‘He.’ The young Angel of Ruin’s bony fingers tapped his severe chin in contemplation. His magical inability to eat food kept his BMI in the anorexic category, but I’ve come to like his gaunt features. “We can lose them flying over bad terrain or sabotage our trail as we go. Cassie?”

I indicated the flaw, “Sure, I can fly us, but I’ll attract attention in my giant bat form. Rana’s Camouflage has limits,” We’d tested it, and nobody but Rana could move while Camouflaged, let alone fly, “And so does my Hearing. We’ll find more trouble in a day than we have in the last year.” The others’ faces fell as they recalled some of our narrowest escapes.

“Then we should make a stand,” Kenta said. His prehensile hair reflected his argumentative mood, lashing the air like tiny whips. Some tendrils still dripped bestial slobber. “Take the hard battle before we have to fight an impossible one.”

“Guys, my Auditions may not give me all the details, but Praxithea, Kleodora, and Ansbach are less than a quarter of what’s chasing us. No amount of luck could win us that fight.”

“Fortunately, we have someone better than luck.” Daniel looked to Paul, who gave them a thumbs up. The candle boy’s new suit of armor—not medieval but a cross between lantern and diving suit—gave his presence a new solidity. That and his newfound confident posture made you want to put your faith in him. I managed a little smile.

“Paul’s Pathfinding does tip the scale in favor of fleeing,” Lea agreed from her demure, cross-legged seat on a carambole. The gravity-manipulating beachball hovered three feet above the ground while seven marbles orbited her head. She kept herself at a distance from the others… and me. A sad consequence of her unruly magic, which influenced anyone who saw, heard, or, especially, touched her.

Kenta nodded, resigning himself to follow the group’s decision.

“I’ll give Danny my vote… if we’re voting?” Wendi said, raising one of her mammoth hands. The devil girl’s show of loyalty twisted a knife in my heart. I wished again I’d been brave enough to properly befriend her after the latest bout of amnesia.

“Then let’s get in the air.”

They were right. Better to strive for the slim chance of escaping the futures my Auditions foretold than admit defeat. Still, it’s one thing to know it and another to live it. I wondered which was better, false hope or no hope. Surrendering to doom would’ve been easier than what the future had in store for us.

I spread my wings, reaching for my magic as I launched skyward, and my body shifted. My claws and teeth sharpened, my face elongated into a carnivorous snout, my clothes became fur, my legs shriveled, and my tail lengthened. This was my comfortable animal shape, that of a common pipistrelle bat enlarged twenty-fold—granting me a thirteen-foot wingspan. I hadn’t gained or lost mass; I could stay like this all day if I wanted, but I would be no bigger than a hang glider.

I opened the floodgates, and strength shot into my muscles. As my body expanded, I heard cracks and pops as if stretching after years of sleep. Nice, but not enough lift to carry everyone. I started pumping—hand-cranking water out of the well—it’s a lot more work, but it gets results. I flexed and stretched as my size increased in bursts of exertion. Finally, my chest broadened into the hull of a grand ship skimming the breeze, and my wings became one enormous sail thirty feet wide.

This greater shape is a struggle to maintain as power uncontrollably leaks through my pores like sweat. My parents could get much larger, but they knew a lot more about Therianthropy and could take much more efficient shapes. As it was, I could hold this size for an hour max if I were willing to utterly exhaust myself for the day.

While the others got directions from Paul, I swooped low, and everyone hopped on. Wendi grabbed my left claw with one hand and held Daniel in the other. Kenta took my right claw, wielding Paul in lantern form while Rana rode between my shoulders with Lea in balance scale form.

I couldn’t land as a giant bat, unable to take off from the ground. Most bats can’t. They need a drop to catch the wind in their wings.

For a moment, I thought I heard another howl from our pursuers. This was going to be a long hour.