Chapter 1

Everything I'd never felt before was now screaming at the back of my mind. I needed to do something to quell that need. I became more aware of what I am. Then, I felt a sense of wrongness. I wasn't quite right. What wasn't right? My body. It wasn't in the right shape. I needed it to be a perfect sphere, but I was in a random shape.

I immediately knew what I needed to do. I started to pull some parts of my body inwards and some outwards so I could shape myself into a perfect sphere. I couldn't expand my body, which was unfortunate as I knew that the bigger I am, the stronger I am. My instincts indicated that this should take a long time, but I felt that I was doing it fast.

As I worked on my body, I had more time to experience my surroundings. I saw something slowly growing beside me. I paused my self-transformation to examine this growing thing. Soon, I realized it was moss. The moss' amount of growth should take about a month.

Another thing I knew was that time passes, and I have words for those. My instincts are telling me that, but it's hard to notice them, especially the smaller units, as I don’t have any reference points. Making my body a sphere took about another month, but I was finally done, and I felt right. It felt good, but then my instincts told me I needed to do another thing, but I couldn’t.

There wasn’t enough mana in me to start carving out a room, a place that would be my home. My instincts were confused, and so was I. Was I too fast? For some reason, I felt making my body spherical should have taken a lot longer, many years, not months. Then I realized an even bigger problem. I was too big, and it would take even longer for me to fill up with enough mana to connect to the world around me the way I need to.

My mind was wandering as days went by with nothing to do. I hadn’t noticed how much of my mind it took to make my body spherical. The growth was also too slow, but occasionally I saw incredibly small bugs consuming moss, which was a lot more fun to see. One particular bug was a bit bigger than the rest and more energetic, so watching it was interesting as I didn’t know what it would do next. Unfortunately, it soon left my vision, and for the first time, I felt sad.

Being sad made me feel angry. I wanted to see more of that bug, so I tried to push my vision, and to my surprise, it actually expanded, but it took some of my mana. My instincts didn't like it as I needed to gather enough so I could start influencing the world around me, but that would take so long. So, for the first time, I didn’t listen to my instincts and started to slowly push my vision out.

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Mostly, it was more rock, but there were smaller bugs as well, and eventually, I found that interesting little bug again. I spent days watching it, and it was always surprising me. It even fought with some of its fellow bugs, which was so interesting and something even my instincts enjoyed. It was so satisfying to watch it win. Almost a month later, something incredible happened. I saw another bug, but it was so big. After I calmed down a bit, I realized that it wasn’t that big. It seemed to be looking for food, but it was long enough in my influence that I was able to learn what it was.

It was a black ant, a female one scouting for food. Soon, not finding any food, it returned to where it came from, and I lost sight of it. Once again, I spent my accumulated mana to expand my vision. Finding the ant again proved more difficult than I expected, and it took many days until I saw another ant. By that time, I was boxed in, only having one avenue to expand my vision. The room that I was in wasn’t that big. The ceiling was only about a meter at its lowest and 1 1/2 at its highest. I was at one corner of the room, and my current influence expanded a few meters.

I continued to push my vision through the open space to see more and more ants. For a moment, I thought that I should stop, but I didn’t want to as I saw more and more ants. Eventually, I expanded my vision throughout this room. The place was covered in soil, which they used to make their incredible homes. To my surprise and delight, there wasn’t only one ant colony but two. The other ones were red ants, and to even more delight, they sometimes even fought, which was so interesting to watch.

When my excitement died down a bit, I noticed how much mana I had spent. After accumulating it for so long it was almost all now gone. I hadn’t even noticed how my instincts were screaming at me, but now I could just sit back and enjoy looking at how ants lived and fought while continuing to accumulate more.

Almost a day later, I got another surprise that made me and my instincts incredibly excited. One of the ants died in battle, and I got mana from that, almost an hour worth of accumulation. The ants had tactics, which I didn’t think such small creatures would use, and the way their societies worked was so interesting. Often a lot of ants left my influence, going somewhere on top and bringing back food, and while I was curious, I was content to just watch what I could currently see.

The two ant colonies constantly expanded, and that caused them to fight more and more over territory. During all of this time, I had already gotten back everything I had spent on expanding my vision, so I was at a net positive for mana accumulation. Finally, I saw something different. Male ants had wings on them. Soon they left, and I noticed some unfamiliar ones return.

Over the next weeks, I saw how new Queens were appointed, but for the first time, a large difference between the two ants happened. The black ones' new queens stayed in the colony, but for the red ones, the Queens left. That caused a shift of strength over the next month. The black ants started to win the battle for territory as the red ants were slowly being pushed out.

It was a bit sad to see, but my attention was disrupted when something started to happen inside of me. Finally, I was full of mana, and something started to happen. I started the change. After a few days, I felt incredible stimulation that ended in an explosion that encompassed all of my vision. I finally had territory. It felt so good, and my territory was something that was mine and no one else's.

I basked in this feeling, but soon I noticed disturbances. The living creatures, mainly the ants, were blocking me from controlling the territory near them. My instincts told me to crush them, drive them out, but that was just stupid. They were giving me mana and were fun to watch. For not the first time, I felt my instincts were wrong, so I ignored them.