“Skye?” the teen called out her name as he poked his head into his father’s room, where the cat was laying on the foot of the bed. “Hey…”
“Oh, hi Mallory…” she said quietly. “I was afraid you were weirded out by me talking, so I’ve just been kinda hiding out in here.”
“I mean, I’m kinda weirded out by everything,” he admitted as he walked over and sat next to her. “But that doesn’t mean you have to stay away from me or anything. We’re still family. It’ll be an adjustment, that’s all. But I am curious, have you always been able to speak?”
“Only to Faedra,” the cat explained. “That’s why you heard normal cat meows from me when your seal was still active. Faeless are incapable of perceiving my true voice or mouth movements due to an innate glamour charm, which was part of my design.”
“Your design?” Mallory inquired, finding the word choice odd.
“Yasa and I were created by a group of breeders for an illegal monster fighting ring,” Skye revealed after a long sigh. “But between matches, they kept us in Faeless communities to hide us from Commonwealth authorities, so we had to be able to blend in with normal pets.”
“So Yasa can talk too?” he asked. She nodded. “I’m sorry you both had to be born into such an environment. It must have been horrible…”
“It was awful,” she confirmed. “But then your Mom and Koga saved us. Yasa went to live with him and I came here, and they provided us something we had never known - a loving home. When she died, I went to her grave and promised to watch over you as she had watched over me…”
Mallory could see her eyes begin to water, so he reached over and pulled her into his arms and held her tight. She buried her face in his chest and they cried together for a brief moment. Then the doorbell rang.
“Oh, that’s probably Emmett,” the teen realized as he wiped his tears away.
“I think I need a nap, but I’ll be down later,” Skye said as she hopped off the boy’s lap. He nodded, gave her head a few scritches, and then headed downstairs to the front door. When he opened it, he was taken aback for a moment - there stood Emmett, but his normal appearance was altered slightly. His ears were now pointed like an elf’s, and his irises were a vibrant purple.
“What?” the boy asked as his friend stared at him. Then realization dawned on him. “Oh, of course! My glamour charm doesn’t work on you anymore! I probably should have mentioned that before I showed up. Oops!”
“So, this is how you normally look?” Mallory asked as he let Emmett in and they went to hang out in his room.
“Yeah,” the boy confirmed. “I don’t know what all Koga told you, but Faedra with non-human traits have to enchant their appearance to look ‘normal’ to Faeless observers.”
“Yeah, I think he mentioned that,” the teen replied. “I had a bunch of other questions I wanted to ask you, but I think I’ve had enough information overload for one day. Let’s just play games like usual?”
“Totally!” Emmett agreed with a smile as he pulled his gaming laptop out of his messenger bag. Mallory fired up his desktop and before long they were raiding dungeons in their favorite anime-style MMORPG, Blue Protocol.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Dane House - Portland, Oregon - Monday (Mid Morning), July 22nd, 2024
After Nathaniel left for work, Koga came by to pick up Mallory in his black Jeep. Yasa was curled up in the backseat, who looked up and smiled, his face suddenly capable of displaying human expressions.
“I bet you shit your pants when you awakened to all this, huh?” the Husky chuckled in a deep voice with an American accent. Koga facepalmed. “What? What’d I say?”
The teen shook his head and laughed as he climbed into the car. They drove to Koga’s house and then went down into the basement, a place Mallory had never been allowed before. In the middle of the floor was a series of runes and symbols painted into a giant spherical shape.
“This is a Teleportation Circle,” the martial artist explained. “They’re used for fast travel between locations on the same planet.”
Mallory and Yasa joined Koga on the Circle as he snapped a finger. The runes began to glow in multiple shifting colors, almost like an RGB gaming keyboard. A breeze picked up in the room, the lights reached up to encase them in an energy bubble, and there was a bright flash. They were overcome with a sensation of time and space warping, and then the bubble shattered. They suddenly found themselves standing on a giant oval-shaped platform with dozens of Teleportation Circles and rows of high stone pillars that joined into a vaulted ceiling. It seemed to be some sort of open-air transportation plaza as many people were teleporting in and out, coming and going.
“Welcome to Aedyria, the capital city of the Commonwealth,” the older man said with a wide-armed gesture. The teen stared in wonder as he panned his eyes across the sight before him. They were standing on one of several dozen islands floating high in the sky, collectively containing one of the biggest metropolises he had ever seen. There were hundreds of trees the size of skyscrapers, windows and lights and advertisements all up and down their exteriors. Smaller huts and buildings were attached to the various branches, and all manner of magical creatures and high-tech vehicles were flying back and forth between the different islands.
“Wow,” Mallory said in awe. “It’s like Cyberpunk 2077 and Final Fantasy had a baby!”
Comments (1)
See all