Free Recall

Sabedra played off her flub with an awkward laugh. She lifted the torn part of her dress and waved her hand over it. The rip repaired itself. Then, she had the audacity to pat herself on the chest. “As you can see, the dress is part of my body; I can regenerate it at will.”

I didn’t ask about that. Though, a more sensible question popped up in my mind. “Why did you save me from… whatever attacked me?”

“Why do I have to answer this? I thought you wanted to test me, so test me.”

“I want to thank you for saving me, but first, I have to know why you did that.”

“It was a rainbow panther. That thing right there.” She pointed to a distant pile of black pulp. It looked less like a creature and more like a failed cookie by a first-time baker.

I asked her why, not what. But her answer was informative, so I played along with a follow-up question. “Where’s the rainbow?”

“Oh, there isn’t any rainbow. Only that they can change color and turn invisible. And during mating seasons, the males would flash as many colors as they could to attract a female. That’s how they got their name.”

“Then why did it turn black?”

“It didn’t choose to turn black. It looks like this only because I burned it crisp.” She had a proud smirk on her face. Probably waiting for me to praise her.

“You still haven’t told me why you saved me.”

“Fine, if you insist. I detected something intruding on my domain, and when I went to investigate, I sensed the special arrangement of mana in your body, so I saved you on a whim.” She particularly emphasized the “on a whim”. My guess was that she saw something she didn’t know, so she had to get to the bottom of it to preserve her belief that she knew everything.

“Good to know. Let’s move on. I will test you now.”

“What about thanking me?”

“Thanks for your whim.”

“Thank me for my generosity.”

“What do you know about the mind?” I ignored her request and moved on to another question.

“Who said you could ask me another question?”

“This is part of the test question. I will prove that you don’t know everything.”

The dragon grumbled something about insolence again. “It is part of the fundamentals of magic. The mind is sacred and cannot be altered,” she eventually answered.

“What if I told you that the mind, more specifically memory, could be manipulated by magic?” Technically, the entire brain can be operated on, but I wanted to be more specific. Even though I didn’t witness Res use magic to change memory, she probably wasn’t lying when she said that she could. That didn’t mean that magic could also modify other brain functions. Sticking my claim to only memory was my best bet.

“You’re deluding yourself. Magic cannot change minds; otherwise, every kingdom would use it to control its people.”

“I can show you if you give me a piece of paper and something to write with.”

Sabedra searched through a pile of junk in a corner of the cave. Without her giant dragon form blocking the view, I could see multiple mountains of indiscernible items scattered around, and none made of treasures. I wondered if she would ever throw out the charred corpse of the rainbow panther. At least I could appreciate her dropping me far away from her “collections”.

She eventually found some paper, a quill pen, and a bottle of ink. With the materials at hand, I decided to use the DRM paradigm, the method that is used to study false memory.

On the paper, I wrote a list of around a hundred words (the writing lessons from Lyla paid off). I intentionally included some sleep-related words, like bed and dream, on the list, but the exact word “sleep” never appeared.

The words came out like scribblings of a kindergartener, because I was forced to use my non-dominant left hand to write. It was a grim reminder that I had lost my right arm. Luckily, the writing was still legible.

Once I had completed the list, I told Sabedra to read it out loud. Then, I snatched the list from her and folded it, so she couldn’t see the words anymore. She had to recite any words that she remembered. This demonstration was a gamble, assuming that dragon memory worked like that of humans. If it went according to plan, Sabedra should remember the word “sleep” even when it wasn’t on the list.

It didn’t take long for her to recite that exact word. I could feel the corners of my lips curving up. “How confident are you that the word ‘sleep’ is on the list?”

“This is one of the words that I remember the most clearly,” she said with a smug look.

I unfolded the list and passed it to Sabedra. From one word to another that she scanned through, she couldn’t find “sleep” after her display of confidence. She strained her eyes to look through the list a few more times. The silence was telling; I completely bamboozled her.

“You won’t find it. That word has never been on the list,” I said, hoping she would admit defeat as soon as possible. Of course, we don’t always get what we want. And Sabedra’s reaction was just about what I had expected.

She spewed out flames to incinerate the list. After that display of pettiness, she turned her glare to me. “You used magic to change the list!”

“I thought you were the best at mana-sensing. Did you feel me using magic?”

“Then… Then… that doesn’t prove that magic can change memory. I misremembered the word list. It could happen to anyone.” Even if I showed her the soldiers that Res brainwashed, Sabedra could still find another excuse instead of believing that what she knew about magic was wrong. From my brief interaction with her, I already knew that she wouldn’t accept the results so willingly. I had prepared for her childish reaction, and she had just fallen into my trap, one that would leave no room for excuses.

“Since you misremembered a word, you didn’t actually KNOW what was on the list. Who knows what else you have misremembered?” From the start, unless Sabedra had gotten updates on the state of the world at every moment, it would have been impossible for her to know everything. After all, the world changes every second. She had been fighting a losing battle from the start. I merely had to put the spotlight on this fact.

But it didn’t mean the war had been won. Even if her core belief was obviously untrue, it would still be almost impossible to change without something to replace it with. And I didn’t have to change it; I just had to challenge it enough so that Sabedra would decide to get rid of me. A way to do that would be to kill me, so I shouldn’t push her too far.

Speaking of pushing her too far, Sabedra reacted to my taunting by lighting a fire in her throat as she glared at me. She might be less resilient than I thought.

“But who knows? Maybe I’m wrong. I’m probably wrong. You know everything, Lady Sabedra,” I desperately tried to retract my previous comments.

When she was in dragon form, I had the guts to dare her to burn me; maybe her absurd size made the danger seem more distant. Her human form exuded a grounded aura of bloodlust; she would actually murder me.

I continued my plea, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Let’s pretend this never happened. You know how generous you are, right? Thank you for being generous.” Sabedra showed no signs of calming down.

She sprayed out flames from her mouth… onto the ceiling. She held the stream of inferno for a while longer. And the fire ceased abruptly, as if she had unplugged its power source.

She said nothing to defend herself. Drifting onto the air, defiant of gravity, she retreated to a stack of broken furniture at a distance. I couldn’t guess her intention, but at least I noticed that she organized her hoarded items by type.