Lightning cracked and shivered against Lucy’s membrane, a blazing wave of energy trying to get in.

She held it back, straining against the violent will of the blue-white light pressing in on her. It buzzed and shook, threatening to tear her apart.

Then something happened. Somehow, the magical light just outside of her body came briefly under her control and formed a layer of protection, pushing outwards against the rest of the incoming light.

It took every last effort of her will to maintain the projection, but even as she flexed her flagellum and tensed her membrane, grimacing in the struggle, she knew it was only a matter of time until she lost control. Already the barrier was failing, unable to maintain itself.

When the moment came, she surrendered to the glory of it even as the light tore her apart; hot plasmic energy ripping her limb from limb in a silent, instantaneous explosion.

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Lucy woke from her dream to a buzzing noise and the taste of metal. Hard blue light filled the room, casting half the tunnel into shadow.

But not the half she was in.

As her mind woke fully to the situation, she saw that her body was bathed in the magical blue light that was no longer contained but had somehow opened up into an illuminating arc that now lit up the part of the tunnel she was sleeping in.

The magical, possibly radioactive blue light that tastes like metal.

Fuck.

Pushing against the ground with her flagellum, Lucy vaulted to the ceiling in a surge of adrenaline, then raced out of the light.

Even when she reached the shadows, her body glowed, a ghostly projection of aura that lingered around her. It probably would have been invisible in sunlight, but here in the black depths of the ocean, it glowed like a ring of fire around her, vibrant and true compared to the washed out grey of everything else in her Awareness.

She could feel the burn of it as she cast about frantically to see if Rikorlak or Sam had been caught in the light as well. But the beam stopped well short of the curve into the main chamber. They were safe.

What happened? she thought, as her body began to shake.

The tunnel was much as she had left it. The fungus had grown somewhat, but was nowhere near the source of light.

When she’d gone to sleep, Lucy had been sure to move the magical stone far away from the fungus to make sure it wouldn’t crack the casing as it had begun to do before. She had even added more goo to the stone just to make sure this situation couldn’t happen.

Then she saw a flicker of shadow against the far wall, a familiar squirming shape. And as she looked closer at the stone she realized what had taken place.

Her little experimental worm was chewing away at the sludge that made up the encasing shell around the magical stone, its membrane happily aglow as it tore away chunks of mostly-hardened goo.

It was even working on the completely hardened layer beneath, and a couple of its tiny teeth were scattered on the ground nearby in testament.

Lucy huddled in the shadows, struggling to focus enough to pull up her status and see if she had taken any damage.

She hadn’t, but it was possible any insult to her genetic code would only make itself known in the future.

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Still, it was a good sign. And at that moment, she had more immediate concerns to deal with than possible complications down the line.

The residual magic she had absorbed was alive within her, confined to her outer membrane and cilia but slowly penetrating farther, as though it was made of liquid, not light. It burned as it pooled in her membrane channels, slowly sinking in.

Her body continued to shake, but there was nothing she could do. She tried to reach out and control it somehow or redirect the power, but it didn’t respond, tumbling through her channels in a chorus of shocks and shivers before diffusing into her cytoplasm like water into dry earth.

There, her awareness of the energy stopped, which scared her most of all. The power dissolved into her cytoplasm like salt into water, leaving behind not a trace, and leaving her clueless as to what exactly it would do to her. She couldn’t tell what happened to it when it reached her cytoplasm, only that it disappeared.

And as more and more of the glow around her began to fade inward, Lucy made her decision.

She may not have asked for this premature exposure to magic, but that didn't mean she couldn't make use of it.

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To form a connection to magic, show it who you are.

Rikorlak’s cryptic advice echoed in Lucy’s mind as she fought for control.

It was a one-sided fight. Not because the power opposing Lucy was so strong, but because it wasn’t there at all.

No matter how hard she tried to exert her willpower, she couldn’t get the magic emanating from her body to actually do anything other than glow, and even that was fading fast.

Over and over again she tried to recapture the sense of immediate physical connection to the light she’d had in her dream.

She tried everything she could think of, from verbal commands to gestures with her cilia. She thought about it until it felt like her mind would pop from the effort. Then she tried emptying her mind until she was sure the magic could do nothing but fill it up.

None of it worked in the slightest, but she kept at it, dwelling on memories of her past self and hopes for the future as she tried in vain to form some kind of intimate, personal relationship to the magic.

Most of Rikorlak’s advice had boiled down to ‘you’ll have to figure it out for yourself,’ but the idea of personal connection was clear.

So after a brief existential crisis of identity, Lucy tried to make things more personal.

She was a scientist, and asking questions lay at the heart of who she was.

But when she approached the light with all the curiosity she could muster, nothing changed. The shift in her mental approach did nothing to stir any kind of response.

As she continued to reach out for the magic, she began to wonder if what she was attempting was possible at all. She was working off what had happened in a dream and had a demonic fish who worked in IT for her teacher, after all.

Maybe the thing that drives me forward isn’t just curiosity. Maybe I’m curious because of something deeper…

Why was she curious, after all? Why was she born with a hunger to know about the world around her?

Lucy had always seen herself as a scientist and a gentle soul. She was rigorous in the lab and kind to her friends.

But when she compared that sense of identity to her more recent experience, she found that it needed adjusting.

She was curious and kind, but on a deeper, more primal level, she was fighting to stay alive. It may not have been clear in her life on the surface, but ever since she’d started this challenge, Lucy had needed to face that aspect of her humanity. She had needed to fight.

Invigorated, Lucy tried again, concentrating on the primal impulse within her, the force that drove her forward relentlessly. On her hunger to survive, which manifested itself as lust for life and curiosity for everything around her.

Curiosity wasn’t just a personality trait for Lucy, it was a way of connecting with the world. Of connecting to her deepest self.

This time, she felt the magic stir within her, and as she familiarized herself with the sensation, the feeling from her dream returned. The magic was inside her body, even if she couldn’t see it. It was a part of her.

Now that she had formed a connection with the magic dissolved in her cytoplasm, all she had to do was tell it what to do.

With a rush of excitement and energy, she pushed outwards and—

Blue light flared from her membrane, exploding outward in a static zap that pulsed for a burning moment before disappearing.

In a flash of light, all of the magic was gone. From the deep well of pooled light that had dissolved into her cytoplasm, not a droplet remained.

Now that it was gone, Lucy felt empty, like the magic had filled something inside herself that she couldn’t see.

Despite the emptiness, she was ecstatic, and her cilia wiggled with joy as she prepared for the next step. She had done it. Even if it had only lasted the briefest of moments, she had controlled the latent energy she’d absorbed, connecting with its primal nature and setting it to action in the world according to her will.

Lucy tried to recreate the sensations to do it again, but the magic from within her was well and truly gone. She wasn’t sure how long she had been exposed to the light in the first place, but whatever magic she had absorbed was used up in a second.

Before she even realized what she was doing, Lucy found herself swimming towards the radiant light that still shone from the magical stone.