Adon lost sight of the sunlight and the outside world in an instant as the Evolution process finally kicked into gear.

He shed another layer of skin and realized that suddenly, what had been his insides felt wet and exposed. And outside.

This doesn’t seem right, he thought. Liquid moved around him within the chrysalis, and he was fairly certain that some of them had been his bodily fluids. But now they were next to him instead of inside of him.

Stay calm, he told himself. This is probably perfectly normal.

The liquid began to burn him, quietly searing wherever it touched like liquid fire. Adon had deactivated Telepathy before he entered the chrysalis, but he checked to make certain it was inactive. He did not want Goldie to hear his internal whining.

At first he was more angry than anything else. The pain made it harder for him to imagine that this was a perfectly normal phenomenon that every creature went through. How would species ever perpetuate themselves if they all had to go through something like this before they reached maturity?

Or is it just caterpillars turning into butterflies? Why?! Why is my Evolution like this? Goldie went through hers in a few hours, and she didn’t mention anything about her body dissolving…

That was what was happening around him. He could feel his limbs breaking down in the acidic juice all around him. His legs, prolegs, spines, antennae, silk spinner, silk cutters, and even his trusty mandibles—everything that he had developed as a caterpillar, everything that had made him unique or powerful, was breaking down.

Even his eyes were disappearing, though he still had some non-visual sense of what was going on around him—almost as though the chrysalis itself were still his living tissue, and he could in some way appreciate everything that happened to it or within it.

The process would have been fascinating if it was not such an unpleasant affliction.

It felt like a kind of death. Like he had died, missed his trip back to the Goddess somehow, and now he was inside an egg again. He was so helpless. The difference was that his egg stage had not been particularly painful.

In a sense, he knew, this was a form of death. The caterpillar life was over. It would never return.

As the outermost layers dissolved away, the inner tissue began to burn, and Adon achieved a level of agony that for a time erased all thought.

There was only silent, still suffering.

He couldn’t even writhe much. Every muscle he would have normally used to wiggle and thrash about in a torture-adjacent situation was burning up in the liquid fire. Gradually, the most sensitive parts of his body seemed to have been all burned away—or perhaps he had simply lost most of his nervous system and therefore could not appreciate all of the pain his body was in.

In any case, the agony died down to a dull, burning ache through most of his body. Only a few regions continued to burn with an urgency that mocked him, as if he had the power to do anything about it.

Please stop burning me, he thought at the liquid. I’ll tell you what. If you stop burning me, I’ll give you a nice wasp to burn instead. Wouldn’t that be fun? Please please please stop…

With nothing to think about but the slow and steady ongoing dissolution of his body, Adon had deduced that whatever substance was dissolving him now had probably been in his stomach before this. That was the most logical explanation for how his body could suddenly, spontaneously, without any noticeable use of magic, produce a substance to destroy itself with.

Wait, no, I have some other kind of acid-producing organ! Adon remembered that until his mandibles had dissolved, he had an Adaptation that allowed him to inject acid into his enemies’ bodies. Why did I even feel like I needed that? It was clearly overkill!

Not to mention one of the most painful ways to die imaginable.

He could see it clearly if he allowed himself to dwell on it: his body dissolving itself fully into pure goop, with nothing left to connect the nervous system to tissues and appendages. He would go to the Goddess again, and perhaps his soul would be consigned to oblivion this time. Right now, that almost seemed like a relief. At least it would end the pain.

But he could not dwell on the idea of an end to his pain.

The other major consequence of his possible death was too much at the forefront of his mind for that.

Goldie.

His friend would wait for him to emerge for a long time, perhaps indefinitely. She had waited for almost her entire life to find another intelligent life form she could converse with. She would not give up on Adon even if he somehow took longer than he should to emerge from his chrysalis. Even if he was dead in there and did not respond to telepathic entreaties.

But if he died, eventually, the sac of fluid would just decompose in front of her. She would know she was alone. Her last tie to this world besides her children, suddenly and inexplicably gone, right after she lost her mate. She would probably even feel guilty for making Evolution sound safer by downplaying whatever discomfort she might have felt when she transformed.

And what would become of her all alone in the garden? A single mother with no friends and no one to talk to? Would she devolve? Lose her ability to think rationally? He knew that solitary confinement was one of the worst non-physical punishments possible in human prisons.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Maybe she would not be alone. It was possible the Princess would take her in. But would Rosslyn recognize the spider after she had evolved, if Adon was not there to connect them telepathically? Would Goldie even be in the mindset to go anywhere with a human after she had lost her friend?

Adon spent a fervent few minutes praying to the Goddess that the extra acid in his body relative to a normal caterpillar was not going to kill him. Even if it was the only way to stop this pain for good, dying was not the answer.

Prayer seemed to be the only thing he could do in this cramped, weakened, limbless, suffering state. He found that it worked to take the edge off the pain slightly.

Hours went by, and the pain dulled further.

Adon was fairly certain that his body was more liquid than solid now, but the compensation for no longer having any apparent ability to move was that the constant pain diminished to the point that it became bearable.

I wonder if I could live like this, he thought. If I had to somehow stay in this condition indefinitely.

Then he supposed that he was going to be in the chrysalis indefinitely. At the moment, he had no indication of how long this process would take.

I wonder if it was an option to stay a caterpillar forever. Maybe that would explain why I haven’t seen other butterflies floating around in the garden. The others of my kind have an instinctive knowledge of what this process entails, and the vast majority who make it through the first week or two as a caterpillar just chicken out at this point.

Then he recalled his wish to fly.

No pain, no gain.

The pain was not so bad now, really, anyway. He could endure this for however many more hours it would take. And he had so many memories he could look through while his body was changing. Like in-flight movies.

Maybe I can try and develop some social skills. I’m sure I’ve seen some people who were cool before, even if it was just on video. If I can just copy some of them, I’ll be ready for social life when I come out as a butterfly…

He pulled up a memory, almost at random, only to realize that he was a rabbit in this one.

No, that won’t work.

Adon searched for human-specific memories and began to review the life he’d lived as the noble girl. He had died young in that life, but he had also interacted with servants and other nobles, even if he had not made any friends. His wicked stepmother in that life had enjoyed exceptional social skills.

Maybe it was time he got something for the suffering he had experienced at her hands.

—

I hope Adon is all right, Goldie thought.

It had not been long since he entered the chrysalis, but she already missed being around him. Even when they were not talking, his presence was comforting, especially at a time like the present. The pain of Red’s death was still fresh.

But she had also wanted Adon to get on with his Evolution sooner rather than later, so she had tried to downplay how lonely she would be. She might need his help chasing her little spiders around after they hatched, after all.

When will I see you again? she wondered.

Goldie had no real conception of what a caterpillar’s Evolution process was like, except that she knew it took more than a day or two. The prior time she had seen a caterpillar go into a chrysalis, she had also seen the chrysalis eaten by a possum before the insect managed to complete its transformation.

But Goldie would not allow that fate to befall Adon.

She was confident that her venom was deadlier now than it had ever been before. Potent enough, perhaps to be threatening to large mammals.

Goldie also had a more carefully considered plan to defend her friend and herself. A tried and true technique. She first secured her eggs to her friend’s plant, right next to his chrysalis; she did not want to expose them to accidental danger while she worked.

Then she began spinning a web around Adon’s plant, using her strongest silk and employing all of the surrounding plants as support beams. She had an ambitious project in mind. It would be the largest web she had ever created, and larger than any web she had ever seen before.

Its mission was not simply to catch food. She wanted to stop any threat from getting close to her or Adon without getting stuck and hopefully immobilized. She had not been prepared enough for the possibility of a wasp attack in her prior home, even though she knew that they sometimes appeared in the garden from her experience the previous year.

This time, she would be prepared for attacks from any angle. Instead of relying on a single surface, this web would have multiple faces of tightly woven silk. That way, Goldie could retreat within the structure and stand next to Adon, protected by sticky walls against attacks from all sides. She could counter attack enemies at her leisure or simply wait for them to go away.

As long as the creature was not large and strong enough to simply sweep her web away, she was confident in her web’s ability to dissuade predators. And once this web was done, she imagined that not even birds would be able to easily bypass it.

Occasionally, she stopped to kill and eat an insect that was walking nearby, just to replenish the Biomass the construction project was burning. None of the normal garden creatures posed much challenge to her anymore.

After building a particularly draining section, Goldie dropped down directly on top of a praying mantis and sank her fangs instantly into its back. It tried to whirl and strike with its scythe-like limbs, but her casual hold on its body proved instantly unbreakable.

Soon she was slurping up its insides. It was immensely satisfying, beyond the physical sustenance.

Even the mantises that she had once feared now fell victim to her sheer size and power. Killing it yielded hardly any Evolution Points, as she was now a superior species relative to any mantid. But the satisfaction of being the predator rather than the prey was more valuable than Evolution Points right now.

She could not help wondering how she would perform against larger creatures. Mammals or even birds might not be out of reach with the right approach. Spiders were good at fighting by stealth, after all.

And she was confident that when she tested her venom, it would be far more effective than ever before.

Thank you, Adon, she thought. I could not have evolved without your generosity.

Her friend had given her a new lease on life. Perhaps she would no longer need to hide from enemies inside a web. She did not yet know the depths of her own potential. Her Evolution had given her some new options. Things that she needed Adon’s help to fully exploit.

But that could wait until he was finished with his transformation. She had no reason to rush things.

Goldie looked back up at his chrysalis.

I hope you find everything you have been looking for inside.