“Err, hello?”

The worm in front of her didn’t respond, and Lucy sighed.

Right. Change in behavior does not equal sentience.

But as she continued to move around the narrow tunnel and watch the worm tracking her, she couldn’t shake the feeling that the tiny organism was somehow more aware of her than others of its kind had been. That it was curious.

Eventually, she poked it, prodding its flank gently with her hand. It slid back in the water, and still did not attack.

Well, she thought, this is a strange development.

After waiting a few more minutes to make sure the worm wasn’t aggressive, she called in Rikorlak and Sam, neither of whom seemed to know quite what to make of the strangely docile organism either.

“I don’t trust it,” Rikorlak said finally, after examining the tiny creature from all angles as it floated placidly in the water, barely moving. “I think it’s waiting to strike.”

Sam got closer, opening and closing their membrane channels. Lucy knew from previous attempts to ask that the red-membraned microbe wouldn’t be able to articulate what exactly they were experiencing as they did so, only that it was more basic than Lucy’s own Awareness.

Still, it was apparently enough information for Sam to form a definite conclusion about the worm’s character.

“He’s a good worm,” Sam declared, and Lucy swore she saw the tip of the creature’s tail waggle slightly.

Rikorlak wasn’t so sure. “Hmph. Maybe you can name him Perry the Parasite, then. Or Worm Child the Nascent Destroyer of Microbial Life.” He edged away, observing from the far side of the room.

Sam wasn’t impressed by those name suggestions but couldn’t come up with anything better, and Lucy herself knew from experience that it wasn’t wise to name an animal on which she was conducting an experiment.

Not after Gregory.

So for now, the worm went unnamed, despite its curious nature and lack of predatory instinct.

Lucy tried to remain detached, but couldn’t deny the excitement she felt shivering her membrane. Not only had the magical light not immediately damaged the worm, but after the others left, she watched as the creature slowly settled onto the ground, seeking out the beam of light to rest.

The realization that the worm specifically sought out the magical light gave her an idea, and she swam quickly over to the remains of the egg-sac from which it had burst only minutes before.

The inner liquid had all dissolved into the water by then, but the tougher outer layer remained, emanating blue light even after Lucy pulled it from the path of the beam with her dagger.

Using her tentacled arm, she quickly macerated the egg-sac, chopping it up into small, glowing bite sized bits. Then she floated back to watch.

For a moment, nothing happened. The worm had seemed interested at first as she cut up the egg-sac, but as soon as she left, it settled back down, apparently getting ready for a nap in the nice magical radiation.

Then one of the glowing bits drifted nearby, and the worm startled into alertness, its whole body going rigid for a moment before it swam closer, nudging the gooey piece before slowly, cautiously nibbling on it.

Good worm, Lucy thought, resisting the urge to pat the creature’s membrane as it started to feast, showing the first real signs of energy and darting around to gobble up the bits of glowing food. Now tell me your secrets.

She had no idea why exposure to the magical light had altered the worm’s behavior so drastically, and there was a chance it wasn’t even related.

But seeing the glow around its membrane, she couldn’t help the feelings that arose. As it fed, the worm’s blue aura strengthened, and so did Lucy’s hope.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

As the freshly-aglow worm settled down into the light once more, Lucy opened up her interface and navigated to the Shop. Then she made the purchase that, hopefully, would allow her to take the next step on her journey to understanding magic.

Despite never having successfully grown a plant in her life, Lucy was going to start a garden.

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Lucy stared at the tiny speck of spore she had just purchased, then at the stone grey walls that surrounded her on all sides.

Gardening, as it turned out, wasn’t easy in a hydrothermal vent.

Even though she was growing fungi, which didn’t need light to grow, the spores needed something to feed on. Unlike plants, fungi didn’t produce their own energy, relying like humans on other organisms to do that part of the job for them.

Surrounded by nothing but grey stone, the tiny spores she purchased had nothing on which to feed, unless Lucy was willing to sacrifice one of the few worm carcasses Rikorlak and Sam had stashed away for food.

She was hoping to avoid that, and it wasn’t until she thought about one of the other items in the Shop that she realized a potential solution.

Navigating her interface, Lucy purchased a few microtubules, the fungal variant of cytoskeleton that had appeared in the Shop after her first Evolution. She’d been meaning to spend more time experimenting with the possibilities of her interface, and from the moment she’d seen the microtubules she’d wondered at the possibilities.

A sense of vertigo came over her briefly as she saw ghostly versions of the tube-like structures moving around in her body according to her will.

When she moved them to build the structure of an arm and confirmed the selection, they slotted in like rebar, reinforcing her previously gelatinous appendage up to the hand.

Lucy would have liked the ability to make tiny little finger bones as well for better control, but that was apparently beyond what she could do right now.

Still, she reflected as she pivoted and straightened the arm, this is nice.

The real test came when she tried to use the microtubules in her arm to expel a little bit of her cytoplasm.

It worked on the first try, and before she knew it, Lucy was able to manipulate her hand at will to squirt out cytoplasm.

This wasn’t exactly the ideal long-term strategy for growing fungus, but for now it would be worth it just to see what happened.

She had long ago stopped consciously noticing the effort it took to maintain her arm, but now that she had the skeleton in place, she found that her mind felt suddenly more free.

Wishing she could whistle a happy tune, Lucy glopped out three separate patches of cytoplasm onto the stone ground, placing a single spore in each.

Then she carefully picked up the magical stone, aiming its beam like a flashlight until one of the growing spores was caught squarely in its light. The worm followed, settling down to rest once more.

With her ‘garden’ planted and her friendly new experiment coiled up happily, Lucy settled down as well, enjoying the peace of the moment.

For once, everything seemed like it was going totally fine.

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The darkness pressed in around him, as it always did.

For a moment his strength slipped, and the bubble of air shrank, sending the tips of his buzzing wings thrashing into the water behind him.

His whole body jerked in shock at the sudden reminder of his precarious position, of the thin line between life and death.

A deep red glow shone in his multifaceted eyes, flaring brightly for a moment before fading back to an ember burn.

With the flare of magic, the bubble around him expanded again, just slightly. But the glow in his eyes was duller than before, and it was a grinding test of will just to keep his wings beating.

If he didn’t find food soon, he would die.

The knowledge of it galled him. Knowledge galled him.

He’d had a name once, but he no longer knew it. Like so much else, it had been taken from him, leaving behind only an aching void and a rippling wake of half-formed memories.

There had been a life once, somewhere far from here. Friends. A family.

He pushed the thoughts away. It was easier to do that now. The once-sharp images had faded into blurry obscurity, blending with the shapes he thought he saw in the water around him as he continued to fly on, fighting just to move forward.

He wasn't sure where exactly he was anymore, but the water was working against him.

He was caught in some sort of current, he thought. So be it. Before his subjugation of Slivius he had roamed far, searching for…

He could no longer remember what he’d been searching for.

Images of shining blue light filled his mind, and he flew faster, careening into the current, his bubble of air bumping softly off objects he could barely see.

He had to escape it, he knew. Once he’d thought that light held answers, until he’d exposed that fool Slivius to it. Then he’d known that it was the evil that had changed him all along. Another image came to mind as well: a mutant microbe with hair-like sprouts.

Anger replaced fear, but eventually his hunger overwhelmed all, and he wondered what he’d been bumping into.

Had he been looking for a way back? Back to what?

There was only the future, and the dark water ahead.

Trembling, he reached out a claw, grabbing a squirming handful of something.

A delicious smell filled his bubble of air, and his segmented mouth twitched in a hungry grin.

Without thought, he devoured the egg-sac, forcing it into his clacking jaws with the hunger of a starving animal.

With questions of mutants and deadly light pushed far from his mind, he let go, beginning to feast on the hundreds of eggs around him as his bubble of air drifted with the current.