Possible Trigger Warnings: Body Transformation, Body Horror

Chapter 12: that Hybrid, Growth

Mara's POV

"So how will this cat help me?" I asked, looking down at the fuzzy feline that my father had wanted me to train with. "Am I supposed to eat it's soul or something? If I am, then I'd rather keep the pain."

"Don't worry. It's physically impossible for you. However, if you focus on his soul enough that your body is under the notion that it believes you will devour it, it will trigger the demonic reflexes in your eye, and the pain will lessen." he explained. " Although, it's consoling to know that you wouldn't want to hurt this little beauty."

"He's pretty cute." I said, scratching behind the cat's ear. "I like dogs more though." I knew he hated dogs, so I thought it would be funny to bring it up. To be quite honest, both were amazing.

My father looked slightly offended as he gasped, putting his hand over his chest, and said, "I do not believe I raised you to think in such a way, Mara."

"I do not believe you raised me at all." I countered sarcastically.

"Yes, you're quite right." he said, giving a sigh of defeat. "Are you ready to try this?"

"Yes, but how do I pretend like I'm trying to eat it?" I asked.

"Just focus your energy into looking into Flufflemew McPurrlington's eyes. You will find the wavelength of the soul, as well as its contents. This is followed by the pain in your head. Now, I'll ask again; are you ready?"

"Sure." I said, before staring deeply into the cat's eyes into its soul.

At first, nothing happened. It was simply a staring exchange between me and this furry feline.

"Meow." I said to the cat.

"Meow!" the cat meowed, headbutting me.

Then, after a few moments, information started rushing into my brain. I could send the simple purity of the aura this cat's soul, but I could also sense the animalistic traits that Flufflemew still had at his core. I learned about all of his domestication as a docile pet, and his instincts as a beast. I could still sense more, though. I could send how warm this cat was. Not as in temperature, but in feeling. It was such a serene, pure feeling that I sensed from the cat. I sensed that this indicated that it was feeling friendly and kind; that he trusted me.

Pain throbbed after that, but, just as my father had told me, it was definitely not as bad as the first time it happened. Rather than feeling the sharp, shooting pain, it simply felt like throbbing soreness. Still, I put my hands on my head and winced in pain.

"Mara, are you alright?" he asked, obviously concerned, as shown by putting his hand on my shoulder, which caused me to flinch slightly.

"I'm fine." I declared. "It's not as bad as it's been before."

"Very well." he said, before putting a black cat with a blue eye and a green eye on my lap. It reminded me of myself, slightly. When I focused on the soul this time, I felt the same kind of information flood into my head, but this time, the pain was lessened, just as my father had said.

"That's a lot better." I said.

"I'm glad to hear that." my father commented. "When you face someone next time, the pain shouldn't be noticeable."

"Okay, but there was something else about what I felt." I said.

"Like what?" he asked.

"I didn't just sense this cat's soul, but I could sense how calm and friendly she is, and I could feel that she trusts me. It was the same way with Fluffy, too." I said, petting the kitty as she was still on my lap.

"Demons can naturally see the quality of one's soul, as well as its emotions and thoughts, as you've described. However, you need to be careful about it, and mentally lower the strength of this ability in more populated areas, or the pain you would feel would be far worse than what you felt in during your exam, and if you don't dull your senses before long, you could very well get brain damage and hemorrhage due to the overload of the senses, and it can be fatal." my father warned.

"So it'd be like the deadliest headache of my life." I said.

"Yes, the most life-threatening internal injury to a demon." he explained. "However, in some cases, it's quite useful if there is a smaller amount of souls in the area. If you can broaden your senses, it could be a powerful tool for location. For example, if you're trying to find a specific person that's within the radius of your senses, and you know what their aura is, you can find them if you follow that aura to its source. If you focus on someone long enough, you may even sense some key words of their recent memories and thoughts."

"How do I broaden the senses?" I asked.

"Demonic abilities are usually used by your own mental abilities. Therefore, if you imagine pushing your senses farther, it'll most likely happen." he said.

"Okay." I said, doing just that. Suddenly, I felt like I could see so much more of what was in that place. I sensed an abundance of souls around the room. Some were four feet away, some were fifteen. I could sense happiness, calmness, and playfulness, but I could sense the nature of a beast in all of them. I could feel the throbbing pressure in my head, as if it were crowded, when I got all of this information, which caused me to put my fingers to my temples.

"Wow, how many cats do you have?" I asked. He just laughed. I decided that I wanted to see what would happen if I tried to focus on him. I could sense happiness, just as I could with the cats, and I could sense calmness and joy, but I could also sense a beast underneath that.

I could still sense some other feeling, too, but I couldn't figure out what it was…

The black, heterochromatic kitty jumped off of my lap and walked away.

"Now, are you able to tell where Lulicia has gone just by sensing it?" he asked.

"How?" I asked.

"Close your eyes and do not use your eye to see where she is, but to simply sense where she is. You'll know when it happens." he explained.

"Okay. I can barely see anything short of blurry blobs, anyway." I said. I just relaxed and closed my eyes. Eventually, I got this flow of information in my head, this time, it also told me how far the cat was. Not with words, but the thoughts just made their way into my head.

"She's five steps away from me, and two steps to the left, I think." I said.

My father took five steps and then two to the left, where he ungracefully tripped on poor little Lulicia, given how I heard a surprised and painful meow, an "Ah!", and a thump. I tried to stand up and go see if he was alright, but pain shot through my foot and I lost my balance before falling on my knees, followed by feeling my entire front half of my body hit the floor.

"Ow."

"Mara, are you alright?" he asked. I shook my head, turning onto my back and sitting up. My voice wavered, because I was trying not to cry again due to my weakness.

"I can't even stand. That bastard Erican threw me into the wall, and now my ankle is broken." I sighed. "I know I'll have to face that relentless idiot again, but what am I going to do if I can't even stand?"

My father furrowed his eyebrows, looking at the ground, and put his finger on his lower lip before saying, "I'm not entirely sure, but maybe it won't be all that necessary, Mara."

"Why not?" I asked.

"I don't know if this will work, but if what I think will happen is going to happen, you won't have to worry about your injury after this." he explained.

"So...what's going to happen?" I asked.

"I don't know."

I squinted at him.

"Why are you giving me that look?" he asked.

"I can't see anything that isn't a foot away from me without my glasses, that's why. I wasn't even able to get my right eye checked for proper glasses because I probably would have been killed or taken for experiments or something. Erican pretty much proved how welcoming people would be of me if they saw this." I sighed.

My father reached inside his pocket and took out glasses that looked very similar to my own.

"I took these when I took you from your exam, after your partner dropped them. I should have given them to you earlier." he said, handing them to me. I put them on, relieved.

"Thank you."

"Be warned that this process has likely never been attempted by a half-demon, and it may end up hurting you much more than it will help. Also, for as long as the process takes, it will be very very painful." he said.

I thought about it, wondering if I was willing to do something like that, until I decided. It would help me put Erican in his place and make him pay for what he tried to do to me during the exam, and that outweighed the fear of the risks of whatever this was.

"What do I have to do?" I asked.

"You need to be able to recognize how you're feeling, and amplify those thoughts in your head." he explained.

I groaned internally at the thought of thinking about my feelings.

"And what will happen when I do?" I asked.

"It's as I said before, it's still unclear. You will have to trust me, Mara." he said.

"Trust me…"

If I were completely honest, I felt like I should have responded, "No way."

It didn't though, and that's what was weird. I wanted to trust him, and I felt like I did trust him.

"Okay."

I thought about how different today was. About how I woke up excited to get the exam over with and be validated as a grim reaper, and after Erican saw my eye, I barely escaped with my life. I thought of, well, what was happening now. About my father. About my demonic abilities. About me. About everything.

Seconds later, I understood why my father was so concerned about what this would do to my body, because this process triggered a tingling sensation through my entire body. Then, the tingling became stinging, and then, burning. I screamed as it seared through every inch of my skin and muscles, but it only got more painful from there, as my very core and everything inside of me started to feel that sensation. My cries soon became some sort of strangled, throaty screeches emitting from my throat as this pain continued for what felt like forever, but it was over after a few moments.

Then, I opened my eyes.

I outstretched my hands in front of me and saw how they were affected by that ordeal. They were raven black, and they had grown much longer and sharper, as if they were knives. I wiggled my fingers and clenched my fists to make sure my hands still worked, and work they did, though I nearly impaled my hands with my "nails". My arms were now raven black and thin as well, even thinner than skeletal. At my wrists began some sort of black skin, and there were two long bones in said skin on each side that structured the skin and seemed to go out from my elbows. It started at my wrists, and extended down to the two new bones on each side, before it drew in and joined at either side of my torso.

They're like bat wings...

I realized that the wings coming out of my skin had gone through my clothes, so I wrapped my new arm-wings around me immediately to cover myself. This is when I realized that the skin had somehow fused with the fabric, so nothing had fallen or torn, thankfully.

"Mara, are you alright?" my father asked. It sounded much louder than usual, though. He wasn't shouting or anything like that, but it just felt like someone turned up the sensitivity of my hearing to twice as loud as it usually was. I nodded to answer his question, but I immediately put my hands to my ears.

"Too loud." I tried to tell him, but all that came out was a series of chirps and clicks from my throat. When I tried to speak again, this repeated. I put my hands around my throat and said "What?", letting out a squeak.

"Excuse my loudness. Since this is your animal form, it's only natural for your hearing to be more sensitive, as well as your speech patterns and vocal chords to change to that of a bat." he explained, quieter this time.

I chirped again, intending to say, "Huh?"

"All demons are able to turn into a certain animal." my father said. "Typically, they are animals that people are wary or afraid of. My animal is a crow, as you already know, another demon's that I once faced is a spider, and yours appears to be a bat. However, since you are only half-demon, you can only transform into a hybrid of humanoid and bat, and your body was able to decide on what the most optimal combination of the two would be like, resulting in what you look like now."

"So how can you understand me?" I wanted to say. I clicked and chirped the question at him, deciding to give up on trying to sound normal. He understood what I was saying either way, apparently.

"Demons can understand what other demons are saying in their animal forms if they have one themselves. Therefore, I can understand what you're saying in this form, and now that you've transformed for the first time, the inverse is true."

I nodded, chirping something to him again.

"I know you're not entirely sure what you're saying, and that's why I'm trying my best to include what you're saying in my response." he answered.

I tilted my head when I sensed something a bit off in his soul, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it, or whatever appendage I had.

"Is something wrong, Mara?"

I asked my father something that might have been obscure, but it was the only thing I could think of. He gasped, as if I had accused him of something.

"No, I was not hoping that your animal form would be a cat."

I chirped a short chirp that even I knew meant, "Really?"

He sighed.

"It would have been adorable, though, but this form is cute as well."

"EEEEEEEEEEE!" I chirped angrily at him for trying to say I was cute.

"What, I can't say my daughter looks cute?"

"I thought you couldn't lie."

I realized that I didn't know what my face looked like, so I carefully pulled out the mirror from my pocket and looked.

My face was turned completely black with a thin fuzz, and my nose was extended slightly and upturned. My lips were thinner as they sat just underneath my nose. My ears had become black and pointed, as big as my hand, and my eyes were still normal.

"Now, this place isn't the best place to practice flight, but the fact that your arms are much thinner, as well as the rest of your body, will aid in flight. There is no proper space here to try such teachings, but I trust that you'll know when you need it." he explained.

"So I guess I'd just have to shake my arms a lot?" I asked.

"Yes, moving your arms fast enough will most likely suffice." he answered.

I nodded, looking at my wings, and I wondered something important.

"How do I change back?" I asked.

"If you want to change back, you've seen yourself in the mirror recently, haven't you?" my father asked.

"Unfortunately, yes." I said.

After a beat of looking sadly at me, my father said, "As unfortunate it seems for you, you need to focus on what you look like in your normal form."

I focused, and the same horrible process repeated, and I had begun screaming at the pain again. When my screeches became my usual screams, I knew I had gone back to normal.

"I've never been this pleased to be myself." I said fast I lied back on the ground, exhausted and relieved to have my voice back.

"Very good. Now that you know what that form is like, all you have to do is imagine being in that form to turn into it, but be careful. If you do it too many times in a short time period, it'll exhaust you. When changing back, it reforms your body to its usual state, removing nearly all injuries that had happened to your humanoid form, except that of a death scythe or a demonic weapon specifically designed to defy that. Your broken ankle should be fine now." my father explained. I tried rolling my ankle and pressing it on the floor, and it didn't hurt at all.

I smiled.

"Yay." I said, drained as I punched the air weakly, yet victoriously, "I don't have to think about my feelings."

"Not in this particular instance, no. Still, it's not healthy to repress your feelings so much, Mara." he said, kneeling down to me.

"It's not the most unhealthy thing I've done."

My father looked at me, clearly surprised.

"...What's the matter?" I asked.

Suddenly, a squawking noise cut through the air before my father could answer, and I drew my attention to it, only to find a hawk flying at top speed towards my face. I shrieked out out of surprise and shielded my face, but nothing happened. I lowered my hands to see that the bird was limp on the ground, with my father standing over it.

"I've taken care of it." my father said.

"Is it…" I poked it.

"Mara, I wouldn't never kill one of these creatures unless absolutely necessary, and it wasn't." he answered. I got on my knees and knelt over the hawk. It was orange with a red neck and white core, but the orange feathers were singed due to the brand burned into them, in the shape of a "J".

Jennan.

"Who would be so horrible as to use an innocent creature like this?" my father asked, kneeling down next to me.

"Well, since it has a "J" burned in it, and Erican's last name is Jennan, I'd assume it's from him. There's also a note and a pouch it's carrying." I said, pointing to it. "Honestly though, what could be in here that he thinks could lure me out?"

"There's only one way to find out, isn't there?" my father asked.

"I guess, yeah. I doubt that anything could be that bad, though." I said, opening the pouch and reaching into it to see what it was.

"It's probably something really stu-" I started, but when I looked at when I had brought out, I stopped. I stopped thinking about how stupid it probably was, as well as everything else that had crowded my mind. The only thing in my head was about what I was holding, and the realization of what that likely meant.

I was holding the skulls and chain from my mother's glasses.