Chapter 3: First encounter.

  With his new "sight," Lucas gingerly explored his environment, feeling out each stretch and shift of his tendrils across the rough, jagged floor. The act of dragging his amorphous form over stone was a strange blend of effort and intuition.

  His body instinctively recoiled from a faint clatter in the distance.

  The words he had just read echoed in his mind, urging him to adapt, to survive. And so, he avoided anything that sounded alive. After all, he had no clue what he was dealing with yet.

  Over time, the darkness around him became less suffocating and more familiar, even comforting. He began to feel attuned to the way his senses worked now, sensing echoes, the small shifts of air, and the subtle tremors in the ground.

  It was as if he were learning to “see” with a kind of second sight, a perception driven not by light but by sound and touch, each faint noise feeding into an emerging mental map.

  Each sound he heard helped him piece together a world in fragments, a mosaic crafted from faint echoes and delicate vibrations. Every noise, from the soft drip of water to the distant crunches and wails, painted a piece of the mental map forming in his mind.

  The rough contours of the cavern sharpened with each new sound, textures filling in like brushstrokes. This perception wasn’t passive; it demanded his full attention, his focus shifting from the absence of sight to the richness of sound and touch. The more he listened, the clearer the map became. A shifting, living representation of his surroundings.

  After what felt like half an hour of creeping through the dungeon’s endless corridors, Lucas found a narrow crevice nestled against the wall. Relief surged through him, followed by an inexplicable sense of satisfaction. His instinct told him this small, hidden space was a haven. A place he could blend into, hidden from sight, safe from predators. Almost instinctively, he wrapped himself into the crevice, pressing into the cold stone and feeling its contours close around him.

  In the silent darkness of the crevice, a strange calm washed over him.

  He thought, a faint worry nibbling at the edges of his mind. The body he now inhabited didn’t only change his physical form, but perhaps something deeper within him was shifting, too.

  The fatigue he hadn’t realized he’d been carrying began to press down, all the mental tension from everything that has happened to him recently finally caught up to him. Memories of his old life, his last moments as a human, felt like fragments of a dream, slipping further out of reach. And in the solitude of the dark, his thoughts quieted. He drifted off to a deep sleep

  Quelch.

  A wet, squelching sound woke him from his slumber. Lucas immediately snapped awake, his form flattening instinctively against the stone as his awareness sharpened. The noise came closer, a slow, steady drag punctuated by unsettling squishes and plops. Something was moving toward him, something dense and liquid, its crawling was rhythmic and unhurried, as if it knew exactly where it was going.

  Even though he had his new perception to rely on, making out precise details with his new senses was not possible at the moment. All he could make out was a very hazy mass slowly making its way towards him.

  Lucas stayed still, trying to blend further into the shadows of his crevice. The rough rock dug into him as he struggled to push himself deep in, almost trying to melt into the stone.

  The sound grew louder, wet and viscous, the air around him thickening with an acidic, stinging scent. His mind was a whirlwind of confusion and dread as he strained to identify what was approaching.

  Quelch!

  Lucas froze in place, every nerve on edge as the noise echoed down the rocky passage. The vibrations ran through his heightened senses, and he felt them deep within, a steady, slithering approach that prickled his new instincts with a jolt of fear.

  His mind screamed at him to retreat, to find somewhere safer, but his body—still clumsy, still adjusting to this new reality—remained motionless. Frozen.

  He couldn’t see it, couldn’t pinpoint the exact form of the threat, but he knew it was getting closer, its presence an oppressive, slimy weight in the darkness.

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  But the noise didn’t fade. Instead, it grew louder, its pace almost purposeful, as though it knew where he was hidden. He could feel it now, a vague, pulsating presence, something that felt alive, drawing nearer with a patient, relentless determination.

  Suddenly, the sounds stopped.

  Silence settled over the cavern, thick and heavy. Lucas held himself as still as he possibly could, waiting, hoping it would go another way though his instincts vaguely told him otherwise.

  Then, before he could process what was happening, something cold and slimy brushed against him.

  A split second later, it latched on, and an eruption of burning agony seared through him. The creature—whatever it was—clung to his form, its body ate away at him like it was made of jelly-like acid.

  The agony was blinding, consuming every part of his awareness until all he could do was thrash, his shapeless form flailing wildly against the stone walls and floor, striking everything in a desperate attempt to dislodge the creature. It held on firmly, its toxic touch dissolving layer after layer of his form. The pain was so overwhelming, all thoughts left his mind. In this moment, only two things existed, him and pain.

  He was going to die.

  Desperation overtook him, and in a frenzied attempt to free himself, Lucas whipped himself in every direction, slamming himself back against the cold stone. Tendrils lashed out wildly, seeking to bring him any ounce of respite. But the burning only worsened, the creature seemed to ooze further over him, its acidic body melting him down rapidly. The cold stone beneath him was now slick with fluids.

  The foul stench of rot and decay filled his senses, a smell so intense it nearly choked him. He felt his mind beginning to falter, the pain-numbing his thoughts as he faced the harsh realization that he was on the verge of being consumed entirely.

  At his height of hopelessness, something suddenly snapped within him. A fierce, primal instinct surged through him. It cleared away the haze of fear and agony, sharpening his focus to the extreme.

  The foreign but unmistakable instincts of a Mimic clawed to the forefront of his mind, urging him to fight, to survive. His frantic thrashing ceased, his movements grew more precise and deadly. His tendrils, once weak and flailing, began to harden, sharpening into thin, deadly points.

  With a fierce burst of movement, Lucas struck back. Fully consumed by his instincts.

  His sharpened tendrils lashed out, slicing through the creature’s gelatinous body in a blur of fury, sending splatters of its acidic form across the stone. The creature recoiled, its writhing mass momentarily disrupted, but Lucas didn’t relent. He struck again and again, his tendrils cutting deeper and faster, each hit driven by a ravenous need to destroy, an instinct that felt both foreign and empowering.

  But his foe was tenacious. Despite the punishment Lucas had inflicted, it lunged at him once more, its corrosive body latching onto him with renewed vigor.

  Its corrosive and pungent fluid seeped deeper, his form dissolving with a sharp hiss. Yet even as the unbearable pain wracked his body, Lucas felt himself regenerating.

  His Mimic form, resilient and relentless, fought to heal, knitting together his wounds even as the acid burned through him. His whole being pulsed with a force he didn’t fully understand—a dark, primal will to survive.

  The agony transformed, warping into something else—a hunger, raw and insatiable.

  His form twisted, contorting as a monstrous maw opened within him, lined with jagged teeth—a grotesque manifestation of his new reality. He lunged forward without hesitation, driven entirely by the feral Mimic instincts that had taken hold.

  With a final, savage motion, Lucas bit down on the tenacious slime. This attack ripped out a large chunk of the slime, instantly killing it. Lucas proceeded to eviscerate its remains with a barrage of tendril lashes, not giving it a chance to make a comeback.

  Its acidic form burned him from the inside as he devoured it, the taste was sharp and metallic, vile and toxic, but none of that mattered. He swallowed the creature, his body shuddering with the intensity of the act.

  And then, at last, there was silence.

  Lucas slumped down, his form quivering as the last traces of the slime’s acid faded, leaving his tendrils twitching and his surface sizzling from the corrosive assault. A sharp sickening odor still wafted in the air. But at the very least, he was alive though barely. His mind, however, was shattered.

  The battle had been savage, far more brutal than anything he’d ever experienced. The exhaustion that settled over him was inescapable, a deep weariness that dulled his thoughts to a slow crawl. He couldn’t think, couldn’t process what he’d just been through.

  Lucas lay there, trembling, his body piecing itself back together as his regeneration took hold. He was alive. He had survived the encounter. But the cost, he still felt it. The acid had eaten into every fiber of his form, and he still burned from the inside out. The healing would be slow, dragging through each painful moment, but his body would recover.

  His mind, though, was another matter.

  For a long time, Lucas just lay there, unmoving, unable to gather his thoughts. The trauma of the fight lingered, a fog of pain and fear clouding everything. The closeness of death was still fresh—so fresh, it had only been minutes since he’d felt himself dissolving, breaking apart. And he knew, deep down, this was just the start.

  His mind flashed back to his school and that blank void. His mind couldn’t fully comprehend all that had happened but this encounter had snapped him out of a daze he didn’t know he was in.

  He thought, exhaustion wearing him thin both mentally and physically. But slowly, beneath the exhaustion, a new feeling stirred. The fear and pain were still there, gnawing at him, yet something else began to take shape, a raw, quiet resolve.

  This cavern, this strange world, that presence—they were all trying to crush him, to grind him down until there was nothing left but fragments. They wanted him to fail, to fall apart, just like that slime had nearly broken him.

  But he wouldn’t let it. Not now. Not ever.

  His form shuddered as he gradually pulled himself together, his tendrils extending to brace against the cold stone walls. The regeneration process continued, patching over the damage, knitting his form back together. And even as his body mended, his mind—his Spirit—pushed him forward.

  He would survive.

  No matter what.