Eighteen years after I was born, I began to hear the voices of the beasts. Each time I rode them, their voices grew louder. Among all my relatives and friends, it seemed I was the only one burdened with this curse. I remember that before me, my mother carried it, and just as the others now ignore my torment, I ignored hers. Thankfully, she no longer suffers. Now she only deals with traces and echoes of the voices that once tormented her.

As irony would have it, I come from a bloodline of pilots, or more appropriately called: riders. My father, his brothers, their parents, and theirs before them, all were riders. The blood of the first generation of riders of the air beasts runs through our veins. Blood blessed by the heavens, as others like to say when they speak of my family. Each of them felt the call from the sky at a young age. I can’t say for sure if it was the supposed heavenly voice that called to them, or the pressure of their paternal figures. To this day, my blood is treated as legendary in our homeland, and now it is my generation’s turn—where all my siblings and cousins became riders, all except me.

I remember being afraid of the beasts since I was a child, hiding my fear from my family to avoid disappointing them. Back then, I didn’t know what caused it. I thought I feared the titanic size of the beasts, or their smell of metal mixed with the fluids oozing from their open wounds, infected by the devices used to keep them under the riders’ control, to hide their true appearance. However, after hearing their voice for the first time I understood that what terrified me since childhood were the whispers of the beasts. Words spoken so softly that I couldn’t understand them.

But even those whispers carried their thirst for blood, they carried the vibrations of monstrous roars every time we rode them. From beasts the size of houses to those larger than a city square. I only felt peace when my father was the rider.

However, when I turned eighteen I left my family and my homeland to live across the ocean. Causing me to ride more beasts with unknown riders. I don’t know if the curse began because I rejected my blood’s destiny or because I separated from my family, or perhaps the beasts in this new region were older and more violent.

Ten years later, hear them clearly than ever. I understand their words and see their intentions in my dreams. They show me the tortures they will inflict upon me. They tell me of the harm they will bring upon me and all others mounted on them, placing the blame on me for the others who will suffer unjustly for my sin. Now, they explain their malevolent methods while they physically harm me through sensations that defy any sense of time or space.

They squeeze my chest. I can’t breathe.
They heat my blood.
My heart pounds like a hammer.
It slams from within my chest, trying to escape the cage of my bones.
They stab my limbs.
I lose control of my legs.

When my body is ready to surrender to the pain, I see darkness approach like mercy from God. I welcome it with open arms, and then… I feel nothing.

Just before embracing it, the beasts quiet. The torture ends and pain vanishes as if it were never there. All that remains are the memories like scars.

The few who know of my curse have heard stories of others like me. They say it’s common for the gift, as they call it, to awaken on some people whenever a beast rebels against its rider devouring him and all who were mounted on it at the time in a cloud of fire leaving just ashes behind.

I fear that next time I won’t even be able to approach one of them due to the petrifying pain they cause me. I have no one left to turn to, no place to escape. Almost no one believes in my curse. People mount the beasts not knowing what they are, trusting riders as if they could do anything to protect them if the beast rebels. It’s impossible to prove this curse exists. Even among the cursed, we can never truly prove the other one has it.

Blessed are those deaf to the beasts.

Throughout my life, I’ve seen new beasts appear—each one larger, louder, more vile. Likewise, the riders create new tools to tame them. Many claim this makes their job easier, but they fail to see that those tools have dulled their skill. Modern riders lack the inherent ability that comes from having no resources or technology, from manual work. Their blind trust in tools has been their downfall.

Blessed are those who will never have to ride another beast in their life.

The last time I rode one, I saw its true skin beneath layers of metal after a birdman, a rider’s assistant, had improperly fastened the plating along its tail. I saw its swollen, rotting, bleeding flesh trying to escape its armour, accompanied by a roar that shook every one of us already mounted on it.

I swore it would be the last time. But now, as fate contradicts me, the day draws near when I must do it again against my will. Ten years later, I find myself awaiting that day, trying to ignore the beast now furious that I had seen the true flesh of one of its own.

It only took a second of seeing it to understand what they are.

God, how did a man, as fragile as we are, in a time when technology was so crude, manage to capture one of your kind?

I curse my blood, I curse the alchemist who challenge God, reaching higher than the Tower of Babel ever could. He conceived in his damned mind the idea of navigating the skies—when god meant it only for birds and its heavenly legions.

He and his group, my own obsessed and arrogant blood, forgot the reason Babel was destroyed.

How much more must we provoke the wrath of God before he grows tired again?

Do we need him to be proud of us so badly that we end up challenging him, torturing his kind?

Forgive us for our arrogance, for our fragile and fleeting memory. Forgive us for challenging you once more. Forgive us for continuing to torture your kind. Remember us, the less fortunate, when Your patience runs out. Remember how we had no choice, and rode them against our will.