Adon rested.

His body had adapted to the acidic environment in which it rested, and now he was capable of drifting into that sleep-like state that he had periodically entered during his life as a caterpillar.

Even semi-conscious, he continued acting on the program that he had begun before, of trying to search through his human lives and find examples of good social skills that he could copy. Sadly, his past selves had been uniformly socially unsuccessful, but on the bright side, his wicked stepmother when he was a noble girl was adept at the art of human interaction—showing one face to a friend, another to an enemy, and her true self probably to no one.

As he drifted from the sleep-like state back to wakefulness, Adon recognized that something around him had changed.

Even though his eyes had dissolved away, he still had some limited sensory information on his environment—as well as an awareness of what was going on with his body.

In addition to an awareness that he was starting to form new organs and appendages, he could detect whether there was pressure on the chrysalis, how his own body was oriented relative to the pull of gravity, he could sense temperature, and he could feel light. The quality of both the light and temperature had changed.

The strange thing was that Adon’s orientation toward the environment did not seem to have changed. He could imagine that the temperature and the quality of light that fell on him might change if he fell from his plant onto the ground.

But he was still upright, which should be impossible if he had fallen. He was almost certain that he was still hanging from his plant—or hanging from something, at any rate—so he had no way of explaining why his limited sensory experience was so different.

Is it the changing of the season? A different time of day? Maybe it’s just cloudy today or something.

But those explanations did not satisfy him. Winter had been approaching, but his current environment felt warmer, not cooler. The time of day could not explain the change in temperature either. The idea of the day being cloudy was contradicted by the evidence of his senses. He felt fairly steady light coming from one direction for a long period of time, followed by the gradual onset of darkness.

Adon felt he had the mental strength to activate Telepathy, so he did it. He reached out for his friend with his mind.

Goldie, are you out there?

He did not sense the spider, however. Goldie had a warm, gentle presence. By now, it was unmistakable to him. It gave him a pleasant feeling to connect with her mind. He sensed intellects around him, but none that felt as familiar as Goldie’s. He was alone.

Wait, is that the Princess?

The familiar presence eased his sudden feeling of loneliness and gave him another clue as to where he was.

I’ve been taken somewhere, he thought. Probably by humans. Decent odds that it’s the palace.

That would explain why he had seemingly not been removed from his plant. Humans liked doing that sort of thing. Taking a plant and whatever creatures were living on it and simply moving them somewhere more convenient. Based on the changes to lighting and temperature, it would make sense if he had been moved indoors.

In which case, I’m probably safe… but where is Goldie?

Adon tried to reach out to the only mind that he recognized near him. The Princess was there for some reason. Maybe she was hanging by in case he wanted to ask someone why he had been moved and where his friend was. But his mental probe bounced off like it had hit a wall.

He waited a little while and tried again, with the same result. The Princess’s mind was closed for business for some reason.

So he gave up and returned to reviewing his memories.

Later, as he drifted between the sleep-like state and attempting to pay half-hearted attention to his environment, Adon fell into a memory he had not intended to review—one from a lifetime he had never spent any significant time thinking about.

He found himself in a strange, clumsy body.

Adon was in some underground place, and as he looked through his former incarnation’s eyes, he saw himself tearing into some other creature—a sort of reptilian monster that looked like it could walk upright—with a set of long, sharp, vicious claws.

What is my name in this life? he wondered. What am I?

But as the memory went on, he thought it possible that he might not have a name—and even that his species might not have a name. This incarnation wandered the underground without anything approximating friends or a kin group.

It never encountered humans or human-like lifeforms. The beast never had anything approaching communication with other living creatures. It did not seem to engage in abstract thought or check a Status screen. The monster appeared to live merely to ambush and prey on other creatures occupying the underground. Its body was built for efficient killing.

On the bright side, whatever creature he was—there were no mirrors or bodies of water for him to see his reflection, so he only knew that he had long, powerful claws—was at least a successful predator. It never went hungry, and as it lived on, it only grew larger and more powerful.

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But Adon managed to find the dark cloud to that silver lining.

Even when I’m a badass monster, he thought, I’m still socially isolated. Is this a defect in my soul? Shouldn’t a mindless beast running on autopilot have instincts that would lead to reproduction and the creation of some kind of a family unit?

Watching the beast go around killing and eating everything it could was depressing, and Adon considered leaving the memory behind. But in his strange quasi-dream state, he did not seem to be able to simply abandon ship and switch to a different memory.

Adon never had the chance to see if his beast self would eventually stumble upon a mate in the dark of its cave. Perhaps it was a blessing that he did not have to witness himself engaged in some undignified bestial rutting.

What actually happened was far stranger.

He felt a sudden shift within the beast. Its directionless mind achieved a kind of sudden clarity.

An image of a village suddenly popped into its mind. Humble houses made of molded mud. Adon would have found the image charming. A quaint, ancient form of housing construction. But his beast incarnation was filled with an inexplicable rage at the mental image.

It pawed at the ground restlessly as if it wanted to charge, though the empty space around it, as if that would allow it to reach the place in the image.

An imperative entered the incarnation’s mind. It was wordless but powerful and specific enough to compel action. The feeling it carried was, Go forth and destroy this place.

As his incarnation sprang into motion, moving with a sudden awareness of where the location was, Adon deliberately distanced his emotions from those of this past version of himself. He tried to understand what was going on.

I’m a monster, he thought, but something is controlling me.

There was something admirable in being able to control such a ferocious beast, in his opinion, but it also left a bad taste in his mouth. It reminded him all too much of the Red Queen who had done so much damage in the garden. Murdered his friend Red and slaughtered so many of Goldie’s eggs. All through minions just like this hapless creature.

So, is it another monster that’s controlling him? Adon wondered. A kind of King-Claw?

He tried to imagine what the super-evolved form of the creature in whose perspective he had passed this vision might be like, but drew a blank. He barely had a conception for what this incarnation itself looked like. Long claws and fur. Big. That was it.

Then he was following along for the ride as the creature moved through the darkness, every step filled with implicit confidence that the brute was moving in the right direction.

One good thing about not being intelligent is that I didn’t have the same self-doubt as a beast that I do as a human—or now, as a quasi-human thing with the body of a bug.

And the creature seemed to be making progress. As it moved, Adon could tell the beast was gradually rising through the elevation of the underground. Other creatures slowly pulled alongside it, all moving on the upward sloping path that Adon found his past incarnation ascending.

Does this mean you always knew the way out of this dark, dank place? And I’ve just been watching you kill things in this cave for no reason, when we could have been outside?

The cave widened, the number of beasts around Adon’s incarnation continued to increase, and he found himself excitedly anticipating what the outside world would look like. What sort of planet was this? It must be habitable for humans, since he had seen houses in the vision of the place his past incarnation was being sent to destroy. Would it be a world he had seen in another past life?

So far, Adon was not certain whether he repeated visits to worlds where he had already lived in the reincarnation cycle, or if they were new every time. He had begun to suspect that he did. Places from his dragon life felt familiar relative to the small number of places he had been in this life. Mainly the palace, which he had begun to believe he had flown over as a dragon at least twice.

As he questioned which world he might be on—and whether it would be a place he was actually familiar with or not—Adon’s attention was pulled back to the cave. His incarnation could see a shaft of light coming through a small opening, and now Adon knew that the beasts were, in fact, rushing toward the exit. They were all responding to the same call, it seemed to him.

He took in the sight of so many different creatures around him—larger versions of the reptilian thing his incarnation had killed, large monsters of all sizes and shapes, a group of giant sloth-like creatures, goblinoids, scaly monsters with hideous-looking tentacles—and it chilled him to recognize that they were all responding to the same master.

Not some super claw monster, then, probably. Something that stood above them all. A higher power.

The creatures took it in turns to move through the exit now. They organized themselves into an orderly, single file line so that all could fit. One would never know that these monsters had once been each others’ predators in the cave, to see their behavior now.

Adon’s incarnation burst through the cave entrance, into blinding light that hurt his head—the pain carried through time and space, piercing Adon in the present somehow.

But the creature forced itself to keep moving. It leaped and rushed forward semi-blindly, stumbling for a moment when it bumped into one of its fellows. As its eyes began to grow accustomed to the blinding light, Adon could see shapes of the other monsters all around him. The claw creature that provided Adon’s point of view began to gallop forward on its clawed feet, racing to catch up with those beasts that had the lead.

Adon knew somehow that all of these creatures, running in the same direction, were traveling the right way. Navigating to this place none of them had ever been, without fighting among themselves, all through the influence of the unseen puppet master.

His incarnation ran for an hour through dry, mountainous terrain. It seemed tireless to Adon, especially since the task seemed thankless from his point of view.

But the beasts kept going without complaint. They made neither groan nor whimper as they continued along the punishing route.

Where creatures were no longer physically capable of keeping up with the leaders, they pulled to the side and dropped behind, toward the back of the pack, but without his incarnation needing to turn its head, Adon could tell none of them actually stopped running.

Every beast was determined to fulfill the unseen master’s wordless instructions.

Then the buildings pulled into view. Adon became a bit anxious about what he imagined his past self was about to do, but he tried to control his emotions. This was not him anymore. Present-Adon was just along for the ride.

As the horde of beasts charged downhill, Adon’s attention captured a last bit of pertinent information before the carnage could begin. This must not be a world he was familiar with—or at least not a region he had ever explored.

The inhabitants who emerged from the buildings to defend their village were not humans. Though their figures were humanoid in shape, their heads were crowned with horns.