Procedural Memory

Not giving the creature a chance to adapt to my new form, I swung my katana at its neck. Of course, things wouldn’t be so straightforward. A metal collar emerged on its skin to block the slash of the blade. The clank reverberated in my mind, and the echo brought about a hint of despair. Killing the creature might be even more difficult than I thought.

I attempted to slice the creature from the top side, but it produced a helmet from its skin to protect its skull. And thus, with another clank, the creature remained unharmed. Retreating a few steps, I saw a movement at the edge of my field of vision. Lyla was drawing her bow. Incredibly, she had recovered from apparent fatality, leaving no signs of injury from the sneak attack; only dry blood at the site where her wound should have been. To avoid being hit by stray arrows (which was likely), I stepped aside to give Lyla the line of sight she needed. She fired an arrow right at the creature’s stomach, and it chose not to block the projectile.

Although it was impressive for Lyla to land her first shot, the arrow merely sank into the target’s flesh, inflicting no damage to it at all. Was that a taunt? Or maybe there were restrictions on the transformation. If I wanted to stretch the limits of the transformation skill, I should probably look for the weakness of the creature.

“Lyla, keep it busy for a moment.” I cried in the unusually low-pitched voice of a middle-aged man. Oh, right, I was still a samurai.

Lyla shot out one arrow after another, all thanks to her magic quiver filled with an endless stream of arrows. “I’m already doing that!” She cried. The creature let some of the incoming arrows pierce its flesh, while assembling a partial metallic chest plate to block the others. It attempted to advance toward Lyla, but the barrage of arrows kept it at bay. Even without dealing damage, the projectile dug into the body of the creature, disrupting its movement and balance. Lyla’s firing speed (probably to compensate for her aim) was so impressive that I wondered how she would fare in FPS games.

I took the chance to retreat beside Lyla. Her cover fire gave me a chance to collect myself and prepare for the next move. I closed my eyes to let my imagination blossom, a scene of dandelions and daisies sprouting from the cracks of my armor. Colorful and in full bloom, but to a certain point, my focus waned, and the imagery of my mind’s eye wavered.

My transformation ended up with fewer flowers growing than in my imagination; some of them looked half-melted, looking like wax on a summer day. The result of the experiment confirmed my speculation that complex imagery could make the transformation unstable. It was simple to maintain the imagery of a samurai that I had seen dozens of times on television, but not if I chose to add flowers all over. The creature might face the same issue, but the next question would be: why did it not cover its whole body with metal plating?

There was no time to ponder it further, because the creature was about to reach Lyla and me. I let the flowers melt back into my body, retracted my blade into my skin, and morphed back to my original form, all to simplify my form for what I was about to do next. I imagined the biggest metal fist I could manage.

The fist manifested in the blink of an eye, and I wasted no time slamming it into the creature. Clank! The fist shattered upon contact, as if it were made of glass. I leaped back, giving Lyla the chance to cover me with a few more arrows. The pieces of my fist dissolved into dust, and my hand regrew in its normal form. My failed attack gave me the insight to move forward. The size of the metal weapon that I generated seemed to be related to how brittle it had become. That explained the small-scale and incomplete metal defense that the creature employed. It must have seen humans wearing armor before, and replicated what it had seen on itself, but only partially to ensure that its defense would not break easily.

“Let’s run away,” I suggested to Lyla. Lyla glanced at the advancing creature and replied with a curt nod. As the creature was about to charge at us, I morphed my fist into a spiked shield. The creature crashed right onto it and let the spikes skewer its body. I didn’t expect the spike to deal much damage to it, but a moment of diversion was all we needed. Lyla reached for the main door, but we should have known that escape would not be easy.

Plant roots burst out of the ground and rushed to seal the door. There was nothing Lyla could do but gawk at the obstacle before her. The inner voice of the creature warned me ahead of time that it was about to use magic to stop us from fleeing, but I didn’t realize this was what it meant.

“Is that magic?” I asked while barely keeping the creature at bay with the shield.

“Maybe?” That was all Lyla could say: “Very few shifters can use magic.” I would appreciate more information, but I also understand that the situation was too dire for an exposition dump.

The creature rapidly slashed at my neck, each attack blocked by metal plates I generated, a trick I copied from it. Its main body remained pinned behind the shield. I thought it would escape by morphing its shape into something else, but it didn’t do so. Its thoughts seemed to be hyper-focused on chopping my head off, so guess Lyla was right about the way to kill a shifter. Sorry, Lyla. Sorry for doubting you. Of course, I wouldn’t say that out loud.

Despite its ingenious deceptions, the shifter had incredibly straightforward combat strategies. It knew how to block off our escape route; it even briefly changed forms during the battle, but in the end, it still behaved like a wild animal. It didn’t have an optimized combat form or any traps set in the building. The shifter could sharpen its nails into blades to be more effective, but maybe it lacked the imagination to do so. Its behavior led me to ponder the level of actual intelligence that the creature possessed, but at the moment, what mattered more was who could wield their powers better. The attacks forced me to stay on the defensive, so the advantage would not lie with a mere imitator.

“How do you use magic?” I asked.

“Not a good time to ask this,” she replied, hacking at the roots with her dagger.

“I need the answer to get us out.”

She took a deep breath. “You understand it to use it.” Wow. The buildup towards a useful answer fell flat just like that. I was so close to forgetting how frustrating conversations with Lyla could get. Then, an idea floated into my consciousness. And I allocate some of my attention to the depths of my sensations, searching for any unfamiliarity that could lurk, all the while thinking about removing the giant roots.

My gamble paid off after catching the slightest hint of a strange proprioceptive feedback, similar to what one might feel if they imagined themselves moving an additional third arm. My mind reached out and gripped onto it, not letting it slip away, forcing it out into the limelight of my inner world. Further along in pursuing this feeling, I became in sync with the root system; moving them was as natural as moving my body. I used the instincts I had inherited from the creature to hijack the roots.

“Lyla, run!” I yelled. Straining every ounce of my concentration, I forced the roots to slither in retreat underground. The bumpy surface of the door was once again visible to us, a symbol of our freedom. Busy dividing my attention between holding back the roots and the relentless attacks from the creature’s nails, I couldn’t appreciate it.

A loud bang combined with a sort of crunch followed as Lyla crashed through the door, since opening it would be a waste of precious seconds. I retracted the spikes on my shield hand and thrust the shield forward to shove it back. The unexpected action caught it off guard, and its slight backward movement was a substantial opening for me to dash out of the door.

What I did not expect was how quickly it reacted, and through a surprise attack of its own, utilizing another root that I did not sense. The sturdy cable of nature grabbed hold of my leg, refusing to let me leave. I used my shield hand to block the repetitive attacks from the creature, while trying to morph my leg to slip out of the root, but the root only grew tighter and dug into my flesh. No matter how I commanded my leg to change form, it didn’t react. I tried to detach my leg, but that seemed to be out of the limits of the shapeshifting ability.

I glimpsed Lyla’s slender figure, back against one of the moons, looking at me helplessly. No doubt choices had paralyzed her, so I had to decide for her. “Burn this place down!” I yelled. That shout shook her enough to propel her into action, and she vanished from my view without a word.

Now my focus could return to the flurry of attacks before me. And so, I also counterattacked by commanding a single root to pop up from behind the creature and wrap around it. It was not smart enough to expect plagiarism, nor was it smart enough to escape. We were in a deadlock, both constrained by roots, both trying to undo their root shackles, both steadying the root that was trapping the opponent, both filled with distressing thoughts. The dichotomy of hunter and prey dissolved, leaving only two parties wishing to survive through the ordeal.

Its thoughts revealed much about its mental state. There were frantic cries that could only manifest as low hums that were not at all similar to any sound humans could make, mounting fear that could not reach its face to cumulate into an expression, and also the complete absence of reflection or any need to make sense of the panic. The alien thought pattern prompted me to shut out my sympathy, reiterating to myself that the being before me was nothing but a monster, not to be reasoned with. All it could do was struggle mindlessly; all it could do was deceive its prey long enough to eat them; all it could do was mimic form and behavior. A mere parrot. No flexibility or intelligence to negotiate.

Smoke drifted in from the open doorway, carried by the callous wind, not reading the tension in the room, playfully delivering the excitement of a fire started somewhere nearby. A slight glow became more noticeable outside, competing against the many moons to be the brightest in the night. The smell all but confirmed it: that Lyla had started a fire as I asked her to. Then, not long after, traces of the fire peeked in from the two guest rooms behind the creature, and they spread rapidly to engulf everything in its path.

The creature sensed it too, the danger that lay beyond its field of vision. It grew more frantic, like a mouse that had fallen into a water bucket, reaching out and grabbing at air, no closer to escaping. With the shield between it and me, I could obscure my escape plan that I had in mind since I told Lyla to set a fire. With a sword in my hand, I sawed off my captured leg. I felt a sense of horror and uncanniness while doing it, hearing a languid murmur begging me to stop, but the cut did not hurt, because I severed the nerves right before.

The root maintained its grip on my severed leg, and I grew another one back on me. The creature had not yet known I was free, and it did not see how I freed myself. After all, I was monitoring its thoughts, how it fell into self-preservation, no longer interested in fighting me. It would probably flee if I let it go. However, I could not afford to do that, because after its escape, it would still prey on humans. It could not help it; the temptation of its instincts was what it had to do to survive.

As quickly as I could, I reverted my shield hand to normal while dashing to the door. Since I was still taking the form of a warrior, the brief sprint was not a problem for me. It was too late when the creature noticed me, and I sealed the door with roots. It had not given up, as any wild animals would struggle to the end, as the boar did, and I could feel it fighting for control of the roots. I heard its mind screaming desperately, more and more intensely. And the pain, I could feel its pain, while the fire spread along the wooden house to where it should be. I took a few steps back and fell onto the damp grass.

The pain grew more intense. It was the pain of being burnt alive. Deafening screams echoed in my head. Not human screams, but real screams nonetheless. It was more visceral than the feral and bumbling sound I had experienced with the boar. I gripped the sides of my head, trying to suppress the pain. No longer could I maintain my form as a samurai warrior; I morphed back to the ten-year-old body I had in this world. The voices grew incoherent, and I could no longer hear anything but a ringing that amplified as time went on until I felt my head was about to burst.

Then, everything was cut to silence. I could not even hear the flames.

That was when I lost consciousness.