The Changing

by Jeremy Laszlo

  Seth had to get to the details of the transformation. The bat would likely need at least some of the human traits to make the arms usable, but would also need to retain some of its own connections in order to properly supply blood and such to the limbs considering that the two life forms’ circulatory systems were likely vastly different. So Seth went about comparing each individual pattern that had connected the arms to discover nothing of use. Fortunately he had another approach already in place, although it had not worked out so well for the bat's predecessor. One by one Seth stripped each of the connective patterns from the portion of Sara’s aura and placed it where he thought it should go within the bat's own aura, connecting the pattern of the arms with another pattern within its aura. If it had no effect, Seth simply removed it and placed it somewhere else in the same vicinity. If the placement had a negative effect he quickly removed it and tried again. After all, having veins on the outside of the body connecting your arm and torso wasn’t the most attractive feature one could have. So Seth worked placing and moving intricate pattern after intricate pattern for over an hour until he believed he had accomplished his goal. The once bat now moved his new arms with intent, flexing muscles, bending the elbow, clutching his small hands into fists and again relaxing his fingers, discovering his new appendages in earnest. It was a huge improvement over the creature flapping its dead limbs from the shoulder. Seth all the while made mental notes of each of his failures and successes before attempting another major change of the creature.

  Through working out the interconnectivity of the patterns within both the human and bat auras, Seth had been able to make some other discoveries. He now could distinguish between patterns of muscle, tendon, ligament, bone and blood vessel, though plugging them into the right places still proved difficult. It was time to tackle the next big alteration, so using this knowledge, Seth looked for a pattern that was connected by all the above, hoping he could next distinguish the legs. Searching with his magical vision and his memory alike, Seth sifted through the bat’s aura once more. Locating another large pattern that met his criteria he gave it a tug. As the pattern snapped out of place, the bat creature collapsed, ceasing all sound and movement as its head began to shrivel and disappear. Seth snapped the piece back into place as quickly as he was able, but it was too late. The beast had already expired.

  "Dammit," Seth cursed.

  * * * * *

  Ishanya peered through space and time watching the puppet called Seth dance upon the stage she had created for him. It was to be an extraordinary show, of that the goddess was certain. She watched him struggle with his newfound powers knowing the child was not up to the task of saving his lover. Ishanya took great pleasure in seeing him fail time and again with a task as easy as the one he was trying to perform. She knew no mortal could fully understand the intricacies of building a creature of flesh and blood out of life energy. Yet Seth struggled time and again to grasp things that to Ishanya were basic and simple principals. She realized he may reach some small level of success, but never would he recreate perfection as the gods had done countless times when building the world. Ishanya did not need perfection though. What she wanted was just the opposite in fact. Perfection was understood by her peers upon the immortal plane, but imperfection was not. That which they did not understand they would study for eons before reaching a decision to act. For this Ishanya needed Seth. Not only would he build a great new generation of followers for her, but also, through his pathetic responses to challenges, he would create for her the distractions she would need to destroy her enemies.

  Had Ishanya been wearing mortal flesh she would have smiled to herself, reassured that everything was going according to plan. Her puppet moved according to the strings she pulled and he showed no signs of rebelling. In fact, the goddess was certain her puny human minion had no inkling of an idea that Ishanya was involved at all.

  * * * * *

  Committing his previous failure to memory, Seth looked up to the ceiling. Picking a target he reached within the creature and stripped its wings away. This time Seth did not bother with his tunic, he simply caught it out of the air and plopped it on the ground to begin wriggling around. Seth started the process all over again, pooling a little more of his immense life force into Sara, then extracting it again, giving the creature arms and connecting each of the tenuous intricate patterns bringing the limbs to life. Finishing the deed in short order, avoiding the head this time, Seth went to work finding another pattern to try and by accident located the rib cage. This poor creature crumpled down in a heap, apparently either breaking its spine or crushing a vital organ and as such Seth was forced to start over again once more.

  Seth’s third attempt at the legs was a success, and once he had snapped the bat's leg pattern out of place, the creature fell, smacking its head hard upon the stone floor, knocking itself unconscious. Although Seth had been rather thoughtless as to how losing its legs might cause such a problem, at least for the moment the creature was quiet, allowing him to work. Using the comparison method that had worked for the arms, Seth removed a pattern from his portion of Sara’s aura in the same location, and putting it into place within the bat, he watched as the creature slowly sprouted new human-like legs. Then comparing its connections to those of the arms, Seth was able to create a patchwork of connecting patterns that had no visible ill effects. However, to be sure of his work, Seth now had to wait for the creature to regain consciousness, which fortunately, having the ability to rapidly heal, happened nearly as soon as Seth had completed the transformation. The ensuing reaction from the once bat was priceless from Seth’s perspective.

  As the bat regained consciousness it realized it had undergone yet another transformation. Managing to sit up, the blind creature appeared to stare at its legs and scream over and over again as if horrified. Seth knew that the sounds were somehow how the beasts were able to see, but just watching it scream at its legs, pause as if waiting, then scream again, then pause again, then begin the process anew was rather comical. In due time, however, the small humanoid bat began to move and flex its new legs and feet and even wiggle its toes, and shortly thereafter it even attempted to stand which resulted in more comedy, but Seth simply didn’t have the time to enjoy it.

  Seth took his mental notes, and then took a moment to relax and listen to Sara’s heartbeat and breathing. He now felt he could pull off what he planned so long as he had enough time. Not even sure if she could hear him, he told her he was working on a solution and hoped that soon he would be able to help her further. Then Seth, knowing he hadn’t the time to take a break pondered what change he should perform next. He had already located the ribcage and head. Knowing that he would have to tackle these eventually he went for the easier one first. His previous failure on the ribcage he believed was due to his being ill prepared and the bat creature’s upright position. This in mind, Seth grabbed his tunic and tossed it over the beast that still attempted to stand, but wobbling like a toddler, would fall once again. Seth quickly wrapped the tunic tightly around it and using the arms of his tunic like cords, secured the beast’s new legs together with one sleeve, and bound its arms with the other. But even bound as it was, the bat would not remain still enough for Seth to feel safe removing the protective ribcage from its body. Seeing no kind solution, Seth simply repeated what the creature had already done to itself earlier. Grabbing the bat creature's head, Seth firmly bashed it into the stone floor until the beast lost consciousness. It was a wicked and crude method, but it worked.

  Seth knew it would not be long before the creature managed to heal itself, so working quickly he located the matching patterns in both auras and quickly replaced the bat's ribcage and watched as the old one withered and another grew to replace it. There was a moment when Seth thought he had failed, when the new ribs began to form and were so small they squeezed the creature's chest cavity to an unbelievably tiny size. However, as they expanded the pressure was reduced and the creature thrived. Seth had his work cut out for him
. For although the ribcage seemed a rather simple structure of stacked bones, each of those bones was interlaced with muscles and blood vessels, added to which the new ribs came complete with abdominal muscles that would need to be properly connected through an intricate patchwork. The number of connections to the ribcage pattern in the greater scope of the total aura was immense. The human body had hundreds of connecting patterns here, and the bat had numbers near equal to those of the humans. But being able to distinguish the various connecting patterns, Seth was more easily able to compare the two and sort out their differences. Making a few minor adjustments, several dozen swaps and a couple of small alterations, in less than two hours Seth had himself a miniature batman with humanoid torso, legs and arms. Overall, if Seth could get the creature to wear a hood, it could pass as a small child, but the head was still a problem yet to be solved.

  Seth had identified the location of the head pattern already and had found out that he could not remove it as a whole. Instead he would have to work with the smaller patterns within it. It was a daunting task, for inside the head were hundreds of tiny patterns, and within some of those patterns were thousands of interconnected miniscule patterns, and within those were thousands more and Seth did not have the time to sort out millions of minute details. He would have to instead work to change the creature’s main physical features. Seth had no idea how he could alter some of those without catastrophic results. The shape of the bat's skull differed greatly from that of a human, but Seth could puzzle out no way to remove and replace it without instantly killing the beast. So for now Seth ignored the skull in an attempt to try and locate some of the actual facial features.

  Upon close investigation, Seth realized that most of the smallest and tiniest patterns were similar to those of nerve connections, and so associated them with either the spine or brain and as such steered clear of them at all costs. Some of the larger pieces, however, had their own connective patterns to both muscle and bone and so could be the mouth, lips, eyes or nose, but there were more puzzle pieces than the creature had facial features, so it was a process that cost Seth four more bats. He had already dwindled the population of bats in the room down to only nine more. Seth worked smart after losing the most human of the bats. He began with the facial features of each of the ensuing bats, saving him immense amounts of work each time and he finally worked out all the facial features and inner mouth and throat muscle structure. Seth re-mutated this final creature’s arms, legs and ribcage as well.

  Although very happy with his progress, Seth simply could not get his mind around the alteration of the skull. He could attempt to locate and change the bat's own skull pattern, but the slightest mistakes could cost him several more of the few remaining bats, if not all of them, and if they were all lost, so too was Sara. Seth believed he had located the swirling web representing the skull, having had to attach the connective patterns of muscles from the facial features all to the same bone connections. But just knowing where it was, was of little use. Seth pondered the dilemma for hours as his miniature man creature worked out some of the finer details of using his new arms and legs as well as sight. This, however, forced Seth to close his eyes to better concentrate without the distraction of an apparent toddler in the room. Seth was lost deep in thought pondering his predicament when he was struck simultaneously by both his solution and a great pain in his leg.

  Opening his eyes to see the cause of the pain Seth was momentarily frozen in shock and disgust. The small bastard had apparently managed to crawl or waddle his way across the room to Seth, and apparently had chosen Seth as an acceptable food source. It had sunk his little razor sharp teeth into Seth’s calf muscle where he now began to gnaw viciously. Appalled at the beast’s actions, Seth kicked out at the creature with his other leg, sending it somersaulting across the floor to crash in a heap against the far wall with a scream of pain and a crunch. Seth, fearing his work ruined, watched the creature a moment to assure himself he had not killed it before looking to his own leg.

  Seth bled from the dozens of small penetrating wounds, but overall the damage to his leg was not major, so retrieving his tunic he wrapped it around the injury and cinched it tight to keep pressure on the wound. Returning his gaze to the creature, his solution in hand, he simply waited for the bat to heal before he continued. But before Seth had the opportunity to progress further, the creature revealed its true nature. Seth had in fact witnessed the process before but hadn’t thought too deeply into the implications of how it could affect his work until now. For not only had the creature fed upon his flesh, but in doing so the beast had somehow siphoned off a very small portion of Seth’s immense life force. Without giving Seth the time to react to the realization, the bat creature twisted and altered Seth’s life force creating of it a small replica of its own original life force before allowing the two sparks of life to intertwine and become one. The beast began to mutate again.

  Seth watched in horror as his hours of work were destroyed. He could perform it again he knew, but it was a loss none the less. Restoring to a small degree a portion of its prior physical form. twisting and withering its new human appendages and features, the creature became grotesque, misshapen and wretched creature with long boney fingers with a thin film of flesh between them. Its legs had withered and its feet twisted at odd angles, the toes becoming pointier. Its facial features were ruined as its eyes had taken on a milky hue. Seth was distraught. He had found a way to alter the skull without killing the creature and yet the little beast had thwarted all his efforts. Even through this major setback, however, Seth found knowledge.

  With his expanded mental capacity Seth could recall memories in vivid detail, and looking to the ceiling at the remaining bats that still clung there, Seth realized that each of them had changed quite a bit from the time that they had arrived. No mortal eye would have noted the change, but through Seth’s vision of the gods he could see that each of the bats had become noticeably diminished. Each of their auras had shrunk greatly throughout the day, and Seth imagined that at this rate, none of the bats would survive another week. This fact explained the creature’s strange feeding habits. The bats had to sustain both their bodies and their souls, so to speak. As such, they gained nourishment from the animals they fed upon through siphoning off their blood, as well as replenishing their rapidly failing life forces in the process. Without feeding, the creatures would die within days, not of starvation, but their bodies would simply cease to have the spark of life within them as if they had died from old age. Seth made sense of the situation in short order, but also realized that much of the day had passed as the light filtering down from the room above had begun to fade. Fearing the bats would leave when darkness came, Seth returned to his work, starting over with the horribly mutated creature across the room from him.

  Stripping the creature of both its twisted legs and grotesque malformed arms, Seth rendered the monster immobile. Then he repeated the process to remove and re-grow the beast yet another human ribcage and abdomen, and then deciding against facial features for the moment, Seth next decided to test his skull theory. Pouring yet more of his own life force into Sara, Seth removed several small portions equal to that of the bat's aura, keeping each portion separate. Knowing he could not remove the skull pattern from the beast's life force Seth set about doing something he had done hundreds of times, although not in this capacity. It was a simple solution if it worked as Seth intended, and just as he had melded wolf with human, Seth went about extracting only the skull pattern of one portion of Sara’s aura within him, and attempted to meld the pattern with the skull pattern of the bat. Just as he hoped, within seconds the creature's skull became more humanoid. Seth repeated the process several more times and each time he melded more portions of human skull pattern to the bat skull pattern, the more human the beast appeared.

  Again and again Seth repeated the process, nearly eliminating all traces of the bat's previous skull, but for the life of him Seth could not get the two upper canine teeth to co
operate. They had become more proportionate to the rest of the human teeth in the creature’s mouth, but still looked slightly too long and a bit too sharp. No matter how many times Seth repeated the process of combining human with bat, the teeth refused to alter beyond this point. It was a minor detail, barely distinguishable in fact, but Seth wanted Sara to remain perfect when he healed her. However, he supposed this one tiny flaw could be overlooked, and so went about the process of completing the creature’s facial features for a second time. Having an almost perfect human face, Seth then restored to the beast a new pair of arms and legs, completing the transformation. But this time Seth knew he could not let the creature feed.

  Removing both the tunic from his injured leg, and the belt that held his trousers, Seth cautiously approached, remaining clear of the little man's teeth. Capturing the unsteady creature was easy enough and Seth soon had the beast hog-tied with his belt, laying face down upon the tunic. Seth admired his work appreciatively, having altered the beast’s physical appearance nearly entirely to resemble that of a miniature human. Though the physical changes were amazing Seth had one last test for the small creature, hoping he had left all the beast's inherent abilities intact. Returning to his pile of armor, Seth retrieved his sword before returning to his captive. Then, grabbing the top of the small creature’s head, Seth wrenched its neck back, exposing its throat. Careful to replicate Sara’s wound exactly, Seth drew his blade down the side of the creature’s neck slicing through both the main artery and vein there. Seth waited as the creature bled out in less than a minute. Watching the spark of life in the creature begin to diminish rapidly Seth knew inwardly that he had failed. Somewhere in the transformation process he must have damaged the beast's ability to heal swiftly. Either that or even these creatures' amazing ability was not great enough to recover from such a wound. Seth did not know which was the case as he turned to Sara, having failed her yet again.