☀︎ To explain, first, what clairvoyance generally refers to: An obscure, experimental 'spell' that can be applied to one’s body to grant them the ability to both read the minds of other people near them (by way of cloning and 'extending' relevant nervous impulses through a magical current, allowing transmission of thought) and the ability to marginally shapeshift one’s own body. The clumping-together of powers is somewhat unusual for a spell, with similar applicable ones often being limited to milder abilities, such as Vampirism’s linear shifts in teeth and nail growth and Therianthropy’s plainset animal transformations. The major reason for this is complicated and mostly related to damage occuring from the legislated 'limit' imposed on the telepathy portion of the spell — an unalterable feature of clairvoyance is involuntary dilation of the pupils whenever a clairvoyant is mindreading, coded into the ability itself for the sake of detectability. Mild shapeshifting was added to account for any eye damage as a result of this, and eventually the feature expanded into fully-given control of altering any portion of one’s body; something mostly integrated into clairvoyance for the sake of showing off the full extent of researched magic… It’s important to note that the whole Phantasm Collection of spells was very much a flex in the coding world, at its core… The mildness of the shapeshifting is important, though — it’s intentionally taxing for most to greatly change body parts, and so altering one’s appearance on the fly is practically impossible, most clairvoyants having to gradually, minutely change features of themselves across multiple days to garner any visible result. Additionally, there’s no default remembered state of the body — if someone alters their form, they have to reconstitute their old look by memory, manually, meticulously, and along a duration equal to the amount of time taken to change one’s body in the first place. Taken altogether, clairvoyance is honestly… far more impressive of a commitment in theory, than in reality. Considering the later revisions of the spell that only further limited telepathy and slowed shapeshifting capabilities, there’s… only dying interest in this particular spell.
☀︎ The particular pedigree of Olzhas’ clairvoyance is remarkable for arising out of the initial 2103 wave of 'commercially available' clairvoyance. Thus, there are some irregularities in eir abilities that dissonate from modern clairvoyance. Notably, the range of eir telepathy exceeds most current clairvoyants, having a much larger 'latent range' where e can sense out more distant thoughts in a fuzzy, discordant way, as opposed to modern telepathy that has a steeper 'border' with little room for excess thoughthearing. Eir shapeshifting also works at a quicker base pace.
☀︎ Addressing the shapeshifting a bit deeper, e’s actually fairly sparse about eir usage of it, being quite anxious about the whole lack of internal body remembrance aspect… E limits eir shifting to: intermittent changes in height, mostly for utility’s sake when having to reach for oddly-placed things or, more flippantly, whenever e wishes to be imposing in conversation and intentionally 'stick out' by being taller; changes in hair length for the sake of fashionable experimentation; growing out eir nails into claws, a trick e intentionally modelled after Valerie’s Vampirism powers. Eir sharp teeth also originate from shapeshifting messing-about, though they were a trait e gave emself shortly after attaining eir clairvoyance in the first place — particularly because 'adjustment checks' for clairvoyant powers involve small physical therapy type sessions, and shapeshifting one’s teeth is something used as a control test since if something goes wrong it’s easier to fix than messing with proper flesh or whatever. Sharpening them is a classic test, and you’re supposed to shift out of it after you’re done, though Olzhas chose to maintain that look over the years due to deeming it cool. E straightens them out when eating and can easily just reform them afterward.
Outside of these tricks e’s very disciplined, refusing to mess with eir body for any arbitrary aesthetic purposes and whatnot… E’s especially sensitive about shifting anything around eir face, once again mostly just due to feelings of heavy displacement and derealisation stirring from clairvoyance’s lack of a 'template form'. E doesn’t trust eir consciousness to remember eir body precisely, and so isn’t the most fond of 'washing emself away' through meaningless changes.
☀︎ The pace of Olzhas’ shapeshifting is faster than most clairvoyants’ not just due to the more haphazard arrangement of eir abilities, but also because of eir general body shape — shapeshifting is indeed draining, energy-wise, but being a bigger guy combined with eir tolerence for exercise kind of relays a better endurance for it. That is to say things like eir alterations in height would likely take a modern clairvoyant a good few hours to slowly wear into, while e can just do it quite effortlessly in about under a minute. This is also in part to em figuring out a 'loophole' in the code where e can just inch toward a desired change in brief steps, rest for a moment, and then repeat the loop until e’s done — something gated by modern clairvoyance!
☀︎ The telepathy side of eir clairvoyance is a bit more meaty in its need for contextualisation… mostly because e’s far more reliant on it. E often 'digs around' a person’s mind upon first meeting to gauge their general reactions to things, and then slowly peters out the ferventness of eir telepathy use the more e gets to know a person. It really depends how quickly e loosens — there’s some people on the train e literally isn’t brave enough to contact without having eir clairvoyance run on in the back, and others who e literally doesn’t even try to bother with eir powers.
☀︎ The way eir telepathy develops with particular people is also something I think is interesting to explain. Basically, the first time e hears someone’s consciousness, e has to calibrate various internal sensations and 'sounds' — if a person’s thoughts are very monologue heavy, e’ll have to gradually build a repertoire of phrasing to understand them right. There’s a sort of 'static' or interference over unfamiliar thoughts, with things slowly becoming clearer the more they’re repeated — for example, when hearing word-heavy thoughts in English, e’ll get vowels and common consonants like t’s and s’s distincted quite quickly, with sounds like x’s and k’s getting recognised far slower, due to being far more rare. This extends to words: e gets filler ones like "the" or "a" solidifed quite quickly, but any unfamiliar, ultraspecific terminology that pops up in someone’s thoughts might be difficult to even pick out without it just getting clouded over. So to put it simply, repetition forms basis and familiarity for thoughts. The more e listens to a specific person’s thoughts, the easier their mind is to read. This gradual easing’s also present with more 'emotional' or 'abstract' minds, though of course it’s not as easy to describe. Something along the lines of em detecting 'blanket' emotions that e, with time, learns to match to more particular ones — for example e can note a vague 'negative' emotion if the person’s thoughts feel pressured, though it’ll take time to distinguish between specific ones like 'sadness' or 'anger', nevermind the whole natural multifacetedness and complexity of human emotion… But yes, the whole think about whittling down a reliable 'base' in a person’s thoughts and evolving that perception into something more specific persists through practically every kind of telepathic detection.
☀︎ Just to make it clear also, telepathy doesn’t just stop at just being able to 'read' an active stream of consciousness, though it’s certainly the most plainly accessible facet of a readable mind. Though Olzhas can’t just like dig down into someone’s mind and just experience all their memories or whatever, e can distinctly pick up on emotions, physical pain and 'latent thoughts' that might not even be perceptible to the person themself due to just being 'usual' and backgrounded. Though I imagine e never even taps into Isel’s mind until long after post-story, I’ll pose ver as an example: ve’s a guy with chronic fatigue and so ver typical malaise is just background noise to ver, but Olzhas, who isn’t accustomed to it, might recoil and double over from the 'weight' of it at first perception.
☀︎ Also quick aside, e can actually sort of perceive thoughts even in languages e doesn’t know, in an odd gauged-feeling kind of way more than actually putting distinct words together. Literally going to touch on it more in a second but there’s a meta rule I have for eir powers that’s something along the lines of: "If thoughts make perfect sense to the person inwardly expressing them, that sense extends to any clairvoyant privy enough to those thoughts, since their mind somewhat melds and blurs into the mind of the receiver as the procession of mindreading goes on…" Despite this I must stress the difficulty of explaining those "second-hand" interlinguistic thoughts to other people since it’s very much just… getting a very, very solid concept blasted into your mind, one that can easily dissolve upon further examination as you try to explain it sensibly. Effectively, lexical thoughts in unknown languages get translated into abstract thoughts as the clairvoyant picks up on them and absorbs them, leading to a loose unquestioned intelligibility.
☀︎ To expand on this idea… Outside of being able to detect other people’s sensations, e’s also able to project out eir own into the minds of others. Unlike eir reaches into other people’s minds, this process is typically crystal clear to the listener, with little interference. E isn’t too fond of doing this arbitrarily, thinking of it as invasive, though has a very particular use for it: forming mindlinks. This is basically a cyclical connection where e projects out eir own thoughts whilst reading the mind of someone else, allowing a 'private channel' of communication that doesn’t interfere with anything audible. The most profound use of this is the common mindlink between em and Freya, which they use to excessively complain, shit-talk and scheme out improvised bits in conversation without fear of being overheard. E also, less frequently, may utilise this setup for the sake of quickly transmitting a message during urgent ordeals — for example, if e was with someone else and suddenly happened to spot an unsettling figure in the distance, e may project the thought "Stop!" or "Careful!" into eir acquaintance’s mind as to not get too loud via vocalisation, and thus sacrifice the possibility of sneaking away from something that may be potentially dangerous… Once again though e DETESTS just spanning eir consciousness meaninglessly, and is notably more succinct and brusque with eir phrasing in the presence of strangers, rarely even revealing the entire possibility of a mindlink unless e trusts a person well enough with one.
☀︎ E prefers reading the minds of more 'slow-spoken' people, mostly because it gives em sufficient time to digest thoughts on the spot. E emself operates at a breakneck pace in the realm of thought, and stacking another layer of fast-paced drone over eir own internal monologue is enough to grant em a delectable migraine within seconds. Attestations of minds that are exceptionally pleasant to wallow in include Demeter, Dalisay and Marjolaine.
☀︎ To return to the whole point about involuntary pupil dilation during mindreading… Olzhas kind of evades this through the very simple condition of Having Very Dark Colored Eyes, Lol. But yeah it is something made less noticable by eir ocular complexion ESPECIALLY in combination with the glasses e wears, which were specifically made to mask part of eir irises by way of odd silhouetting — the lenses are coated in a magical material that operates in a manner similar to a thermal camera, albeit differentiating patterns by comparing color tones and brightness rather than temperature of nearby objects. This results in a 'cover' over eir eyes that unites eir pupil and iris into one shape, therefore removing all visible clairvoyant distinction. The catch, though, is that even the earliest variants of clairvoyant code imposed limits on full eye obfuscation — something admittedly very easily circumvented by simply deploying slight asymmetry in the design of glasses. Which is why eir glasses look so strange. The major reason why, at least: the protruding weathervane-y part of the left lens is there wholly for fun.
☀︎ Everyone on the train is fully aware of eir clairvoyance. The reason e still insists on camouflaging eir pupils is mostly for novelty’s sake, and more minorly because even despite priviness to that knowledge, eir selective usage of telepathy makes it so nobody really knows WHEN EXACTLY e’s mindreading, which still gives em a slight sleight about picking into thoughts. Naturally some people (especially skeptics and fearmongers against magic — Beatrix may come to mind) keep their thoughts enclosed around em at all times and nullify this practical trick, but e counts on people not being too versed in how clairvoyance works (and especially eir breed of it) to parlance a proper immutable defense against eir prodding.
☀︎ And despite that, an extremely important rule e holds emself to is selective awareness of the things e plucks out from people’s thoughts. Like e’s notably very cautious about not intruding in times of distress (there’s a built-in detector in telepathic code that senses things like pulse/adrenaline/etc, and if those are too high the code shuts itself off momentarily — this is an inconsistent mechanism though and it’s often e emself making the decision to retreat from an anxious mind) alongside ignoring private thoughts that e maybe shouldn’t be privy to, only acknowledging what e could plausibly garner from the person’s outloud speech. This… is pardoned in situations like when Mazin was planning to destroy the train because, yeah, that’s something that kind of concerns everyone and passing on eir intel was necessary to keep everyone safe. The whole ordeal was kind of an epitomic demonstration of why e even bothers traversing people’s thoughts… Dude is anxious and sometimes e’s right to be, and sometimes em propelling eir telepathy as a shield against it is a fine idea.
☀︎ Also since telepathy does literally work by extending someone else’s sensations into your own mind, the longer e’s mindreading the more e tends to reflect the emotions, body language and occasionally even particular jargon of the person e’s mindreading from. This sometimes extends into things like momentarily adopting foreign tics or involuntarily mimicking other people’s filler words. This is… less a feature, and more just a regular consequence of literally being exposed to the echoing canals of someone’s mind. There’s no dodgy magical 'loss of the self' or anything it’s literally just a temporary influence. E literally just cools down from these adoptations shortly after splitting away from someone’s mind, barely even noticing them occuring most of the time.
☀︎ Last note I think is important concerns the idea of people being able to 'gate' their thoughts around Olzhas, which… is kind of an uncommon unexplained thing. Again, the most frequent thing that happens when a clairvoyant intrudes on the mind of someone who doesn’t wish this is that the code simply shuts itself off, and then 'reboots' following a few-minutes wait. With some people it’s possible to sort of mask one’s thoughts into an imperceptible static that doesn’t interfere with a clairvoyant’s ability but does impede on the accessibility of that lone person’s thoughts. This occurs through a very convoluted detector in clairvoyant code which basically just hunts out the thought "I don’t want my thoughts available to clairvoyants!" and similar sentiments in someone’s mind, and then… said static filter is summoned over all thoughts until an opposing "I want my thoughts available to clairvoyants!" is expressed. Unsurprisingly this mechanism was replaced by something far more advanced in later clairvoyance iterations.
☀︎ Olzhas certainly still has to deal with it though! This feature was actually never properly explained to em, and thus it actually impacted eir first meeting with Isel. Part of eir initial intrigue about him rested in the odd static e cast upon eir mind… The whole activation of it was a complete accident on Isel’s part, who was simply in the midst of barrage of paranoid thought… Ve verself didn’t even know of clairvoyance as an available spell at the time! I’d simply say ve was inwardly expressing something along the lines of "I don’t want people to read my mind", with rough relation to the Fornax Project and ver early anxiety about being targeted by its organisers, which happened to strike that portion of Olzhas’ code and thus grant em a particularly striking sonorous experience upon initial exposure to ver… This whole thing was a mystery to the both of them for the longest time, and though I imagine Ulises issued a similar proposal for its causation, it was actually Dalisay who first managed to piece together concrete reasoning for this interference.
☀︎ Actually one more point. E has a tricky fondness for keeping eir clairvoyance a secret to STRANGERS in particular, often evading a proper introduction to eir powers and heavily mindreading and repeating a person’s internal thoughts back at them in subtle ways until the person’s like, brave enough to ask if something’s up. Most of the time it takes people like three or so separate conversations to finally inquire about eir jig. E’s deeply enthused by this riddling both because e gets to look cool (at least in eir opinion) and also since it helps em gauge how natural e sounds when mindreading, and how exactly to rephrase telepathic discoveries back at people. This learned sense for sycophancy is heavily utilised whenever e’s dealing with conflict — for example in the midst of an argument e may just pick around in someone’s thoughts to try and find out what’d be the most satisfactory thing to say, and e’ll just go forth and acquiesce to that internal demand even if e’s insincere, just for the sake of shutting a situation down. E’s only gotten better at appealing to people’s whims in this way, over the years…