Capgras Delusion

Oops. That wasn’t how I planned to reveal this. It was too late to take it back. Lyla tightened her grip on my neck. This girl was stronger than she looked, or maybe it was because I was in a ten-year-old’s body.

“You could speak and understand me the whole time?”

“No. No. Lyla. Let me explain. Don’t do this to a kid.”

“What child talks like this?”

“I’m a special kid. I’m on your side. And we are in danger!”

She finally loosened her arm enough for me to draw in a nice breath, revitalizing me so much that it tasted sweet. The relief didn’t last long because Lyla pinned me to the wall right after.

“Now explain.” She said. Her glare intensified so much that I felt a burn in my chest.

“First, the innkeeper isn’t human.”

“What is he?”

“I don’t know. But his thought patterns were too simple to be human.” And a mentally challenged person wouldn’t be able to survive alone in a ruthless forest. The content of his thoughts didn’t give me any clues, because who would actually think about the species they belonged to? I would not think about being human; Lyla probably wouldn’t contemplate being an elf, and honestly, I had no idea what was going on in her head.

Lyla scoffed at me. “Impossible. I didn’t sense any anomaly in him.”

“Don’t you think this building in the middle of nowhere is suspicious? Also, why is everything made of wood?”

“This is not the middle of nowhere.”

I tilted my head in confusion. She sounded so confident, as if I had missed something crucial. “It’s all just trees? There’s no path?” Was there a cultural gap here? I could not comprehend her thought process at all.

She shook her head. “This route is one of the most popular ways to travel between Nautia and Sikra. Where else did you think we were going?” Good question. I thought we were living the nomadic life, but I didn’t answer it because I was pretty sure the question was rhetorical.

“What about the wood part?”

“It’s wood. So?”

“No, it’s ALL wood. They used the same material throughout. How is this normal?”

“I see it as an artistic choice.” She replied while finally releasing me from her grasp, but I remained trapped in the frustrating maze of confusion. I buried my face in my hands, relishing the temporary escape. It turned out that speaking her language wasn’t enough for communication, as she bulldozed away all semblance of common sense.

“Now, explain how you could suddenly understand me. I’m sure you couldn’t yesterday.” She added.

“I couldn’t understand you even now.”

“I’m serious. Explain.” She drew her dagger. A bit of an overreaction. If only she were this cautious of the innkeeper.

“My language ability seems to be tied to the creature I’m... spiritually linked to. I’m currently linked to the innkeeper. That’s also why I know he wants to eat us.” I phrased the situation to be simple enough for even an idiot… I meant a person from a different culture to understand. With a deep breath, I resolved to hold back my prejudices until after the danger passed… I meant holding them back forever.

Lyla raised her eyebrows and rubbed her ears. After a moment of thought, she stared me in the eye. “How do you link to someone?”

“I’m not sure, but… why are you backing away from me?”

Lyla was retreating to the bed, shielding her body with her arms.

“Don’t link with me.” She warned, acting like I was some sort of serial pervert. I was seriously questioning her priorities.

“Are you scared of me? You’re probably a few hundred years old. I’m ten at best.”

“You’re definitely not ten. And I’ll have you know that I’m only fifty years old.” Lyla said with an odd confidence. I decided not to continue this argument, or at this pace, we would end up as the innkeeper’s late-night snack.

“How do you think we should deal with the creature?” I steered the conversation back to the most important issue.

“We do nothing.”

“Excuse me?”

Lyla returned her dagger to its sheath with a fluid motion. Then, she swiped a fruit out of her bag and bit into it (the fruit, not the bag). Her full enjoyment of the sweetness of the fruit and immersion in its lusciousness suggested that she had forgotten about the conversation a few seconds ago. Plus, she had told me she didn’t have any food left. A temptation rose in me to leave this woman for dead, but my surprisingly intact self-control held this childish impulse back.

I reminded myself that eating was a stress relief method for many people, that it was possible that Lyla was really contemplating our next course of action, and that the fruit could help her use the tens of neurons in her brain. She must be joking when she said we should do nothing. Then, another realization launched my exasperation back up. She wasn’t this nonchalant when she first met me!

The winner of Miss Insensitive miraculously noticed my pained expression, at least that was what I inferred from her eye movements. Or maybe she realized nothing at all, seeing that she still chowed on her fruit. The flow of our conversation completely collapsed, and at last, she finished her snack. Licking her finger to suck up all the juices in the most infuriating way possible. Her every action felt like a squeeze in my brain, so much so that I wanted to lie down and sleep and worry about the monster tomorrow.

“If we don’t fall asleep, there won’t be a chance for anything to attack us,” she said. I had to lean forward to read her face more closely, all to make sure that she was joking.

Nope. She was serious.

“Then what was the point of paying for this inn? You paid. Remember? To get some rest? Because we can’t spend another night outside?” I said. On my last straw, I clutched my head, drowning in disbelief.

“Oh, right,” the idiot finally appeared to realize the fallacy. “Sorry, I’m exhausted.”

“Then we should deal with the creature before you drift off to sleep or something.”

“How can we deal with him if we don’t know what he is? I told you, I think he is human. And elves killing humans can trigger an international incident.”

The fiery puff of irritation within me finally calmed down a little. At least she was actively thinking about the issue.

“Does that mean if I can prove that the innkeeper is a monster, you will kill it?” I said.

“Who do you take me for? I wouldn’t leave a kid for dead.” Said the same person who pointed a bow at a child she had just met. She drew out her pouty face again in a failed attempt to act cute. In our predicament, that expression was as out of place as wearing a swimsuit to your relative’s funeral. Part of her probably treated my appeal as the delusion of a child.

“Great. Let’s talk to him then.”

“What?”

I had a feeling that if I let more time slip by, Lyla would really fall asleep.

We marched to the front desk, with me leading the way. Lyla brought her bow and quiver at my insistence. Driven by the momentum, I slammed my hand on the counter dramatically. Ouch. That was unnecessary. The innkeeper stood there, in the same pose as before, arms at rest. His sight set ahead at the faraway place, while his inner voice cried out the desire to devour me, but he didn’t pounce on me.

“GO TO SLEEP. I KNOW YOU ARE TIRED. SLEEP IS GOOD.” That’s all he could say. With no expression on his face, his mouth barely fluttered.

“Thanks for the advice, but we won’t sleep,” I replied with a smile.

Impatience swirled within the innkeeper. I could feel hunger building behind his eyes; his inner voice got more muddled, but clearly conveyed murderous intent. We continued the stare-off for what felt like an eternity.

It started with only a blur. The innkeeper’s arm flew at me at incredible speed, and a sudden pain in my shoulder alerted me that I had been stabbed. Something I should’ve expected but failed to be cautious against. I glimpsed the innkeeper’s weapon, a fruit knife that I swore wasn’t there before.

Lyla charged at the innkeeper, drawing her dagger. The innkeeper didn’t react to her; instead, he was busy driving the knife down across my flesh. The pain was so excruciating that it interrupted my consciousness for a moment. When I came to, my body broke away from the blade, and I fell backwards to the ground. Lyla dug her dagger right into the innkeeper’s heart.

Another impact arrived when my head crashed onto the floor. I could swear I felt my brain jiggling inside my flimsy skull. The viscous red elixir of life leaked out from the wound left by the knife. The fear surging within me was less than expected, perhaps because my life had already been extinguished once before.

Lyla twisted the dagger, and blood spilled out of the innkeeper’s mouth, then Lyla yanked the dagger out. As soon as the innkeeper collapsed onto the counter, she kneeled to examine my wound. Using her dagger to cut off part of her shirt, she swathed it around my wound, but it only slowed the bleeding, not stopped it.

Strangely, a sense of calm washed over; the expected panic didn’t set in. I felt submerged in a tender sea, and couldn’t feel my blood anymore. In the first place, I was supposed to be dead, so these few days of extra life were already a gracious gift to me.

The inner voice of that creature persisted, now infused with anger, concocting a vicious plan of revenge on us. Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed the innkeeper morphing, his face and arms and torso twisted and muddled, shifting into a replica of the elf who was tending to my wounds. The sudden development yanked me out of the fuzzy world of my mind.

“Lyla! Behind you!”

Even though Lyla heeded my warning and turned her head to where I was looking, the fake Lyla extended its fingernails into spears that pierced the real Lyla’s stomach, where the protection of her armor didn’t reach. I screamed inside, but in my state, my voice couldn’t get out. That idiot! She should’ve worn full-body armor; then this wouldn’t have happened; then she would stand a chance. But now, that was definitely the end of her. She dropped onto the floor next to me.

The creature retracted its blades. I could hear the whispers of its hunger while I drifted in and out of consciousness. I realized the creature could change its form, which meant that all of its wounds could be healed simply by changing. Lacking any worries in its thoughts, I found it hard to imagine it would hit any limits soon. There was no way we stood a chance against that.

Desperately, I pushed down the self-defeating thoughts and drove my deliberation onto another path. With its power, the creature shouldn’t need to fool anyone with this fake inn; it shouldn’t need to learn human/elf languages. It could have just hunted us. Maybe it was cautious, maybe it enjoyed fooling its prey, maybe there was another reason. My thoughts blurred; that’s when an unfamiliar instinct emerged from the depths of my consciousness.

The introspective senses of my body fell into chaos, feeling like my innards were rearranged, and that was probably what happened; glimpses of my body melting into mush told me that much. The pain that defined my mental state vanished, leaving behind a hollowness in its place.

A burst of energy emanated from my heart, directing the blob of flesh that was me to take a shape, back into the “me” from my original world. My mind caught up with the happenings. By syncing with the shapeshifter, I inherited not only its thoughts and strength but also its ability to transform. In an instant, I closed my wound.

From its inner voice, I could infer the creature was confused and angry, mistaking me for another shifter who had violated its territory. Still in Lyla’s form, it snarled at me, sounding like a freezing middle-aged man, readying its next attack.

Fighting it in human form would not be ideal; I should transform into a battle-savvy form. The ceiling was as low as in a typical apartment, so I have to keep the height in mind. In a split second, I’d made my decision, repeating the form I wanted to take in my head; my body started to respond. My skin darkened to a greyish brown, my mouth widened, and my limbs shortened.

My transformation into a hippo was complete. I leaped onto the counter to bite at the fake Lyla, but before I could close my mouth, it extended its hands into spears that stabbed into my throat. Blood trickled down my esophagus. I bit down on the shifter’s arms, severing them. It yelled in pain in a raspy, twisted voice.

“Chop off its head!” Lyla yelled from behind me. The body structure of a hippo prevented me from turning my neck to check on her, but that could come later. At the moment, my priority lay in killing the shifter. I spat out the shifter’s arms at the side, soaked with blood and saliva.

The shifter hissed at me, but I couldn’t hear any distress from its inner voice, and reality confronted me with the reason decapitation was necessary. Its arm regrew; its clothes shifted color; its skin unfolded to allow its build to expand, morphing back to the innkeeper.

My hippo form wouldn’t be agile and flexible enough to go for its head, so I opted to transform, too. The ideal form should be able to finish the fight and let me check on Lyla. Diving into my imagination for inspiration, a flash of nostalgia reminded me of a time when I was on Earth, when I was watching a Japanese period drama. The thought guided me to the silhouette of a samurai emerging on the surface of my mind.

A physique forged from thousands of battles; a katana designed to cut through evil; a helmet and matching set of armor exuding honor. I had become the Japanese warrior I looked up to as a child.