The stalactite that pierces my pool started to change. It has grown thicker as my attention was on expanding the crack even more. The place where my tendrils stored the blood had been warped as stone fragments started to pile inside the stored blood. Small channels through the stalactite channel blood into the cavity I made at the top while other channels under it slowly siphon blood away. I don’t understand why it is doing this, but the blood flow is slow enough that it doesn’t drain faster than it refills itself, so I see no reason to stop it. The ceiling has grown as fast as before and beyond the black sand. Along the edge of my sight, I see movement under the sand. Too much movement.

I spread my tendrils from the edge onto the sand and grow toward the movement. When I got close a strange shadow jumped into the air and cut my tendrils. That shadow pulled my cut tendrils under the sand and away from me. I watched it swim away in shock and as the pain reached me rage boiled my pool as even more fumes were released. I sent several large parts of myself out of the pool toward the strange shadow. These tunneling parts were different from before when the fire imps attacked me. Before they were darkness that could be easily seen through as they slowly moved through the sand but now they were tendrils wrapped together tightly as quickly charged through the sand along the stone bottom. These new parts quickly left beyond my normal sight so I sent a few above the sand to see if I could find the erratic movement of that shadow.

‘It probably ate too many burning imps. Would I have become that if that man didn’t give me those crystals?’ I wondered to myself as I scattered my parts further apart finding the path that the shadow left behind overlapped itself. The tendrils that the shadow took had been consumed because no matter how hard I tried to look through them I found nothing. ‘That thing was vile.’ I thought to myself as my parts followed down the overlapping paths. I didn’t know I could feel such a thing for anything besides the imps but this thing had been twisted by them. ‘It would be a mercy to destroy that wayward shadow.’ I thought before I found a divet in the sand. Traces of a pool of shadow and black sand as an erratic shadow ate up what remained of the pool. The 2 parts of me that found the shadow released power as more sand turned black and their tips opened up as the tendrils untangled revealing a muddy purple hue. The shadow quickly ran up the divet away from the parts but they quickly dived onto the shadow and pulled it apart.

Rage roiled inside my mind seeing the empty pool. I believed it would be a matter of time before I found the worms that had left and helped grow the ceiling but now my very own shadows are eating themselves. The shadow tasted more like burnt flesh than any of the shadows I’ve ever tasted as my parts finished tearing it apart. I sent those out to find more as another part found 2 walking on top of the sand. They were walking on 4 points as they moved quickly in one direction and then to another but as my part opened up swallowing one up whole from underneath the second ran away quickly. Quickly into the mouth of another part. These shadows' sizes ranged from between a Rat’s finger to the size of his hand as flashes of images of spiders appeared in my mind. It didn’t quite fit as these shadows only walked on 4 points and had holes in their bodies that I could see through. They moved by moving their back legs over the top of the front ones over and over again. Still, I’ll call them spiders for now.

It seems that this area is infested with these damn things to the point that I had to send 1 part of me back to my pool because it ate too many and I started to feel imp essence start to fight with mine in the piece. Thankfully I did find some worms and pools out here but they all were tainted with imp essence so I had to release my power in them by giving up a piece of myself to them. I even saw a twisted pool that had so many of those spiders crawl out quickly as the liquid swirled. It took more effort and I felt drained as I had sent so many at that pool but in the end, I was able to outlast it. I had my parts scout further out to find and get rid of all these damn spiders and spider pools as I refocused on my pool. The pool had started to foam with all the excess imp essence I had gathered. ‘What will I do when the invasion comes? Everything is spreading fine because there is nothing but shadows but once their fire comes all these pools and even the ceiling will be twisted.’ I thought to myself as I pushed the imp essence toward the crack at the bottom of my pool. It had grown well and now could fit an imp’s arm and with all of this imp essence should speed up the process well.

More fragments piled in the stalactite through my tendrils but I noticed more holes had formed in it and paths outward the rest of the ceiling. The blood being led out of the stalactite is different from the blood that was being fed into it. It tasted different but I don’t understand why the ceiling is doing it. The shadows that make up the ceiling are very different from the worms or even myself so many of the things it does I don’t understand but this change seems to have a reason. My focus moves to the growing crystals under the sand, the crystals growing in my pool have all poked out of the sand pushing the miasma further up. The other pools had started to grow even more crystals and some even had so pointing out of the sand. Near my pool, the ridge had been covered with pointy crystals that hid the sand. Flashes of a field of grass growing pop up in my mind, probably Rammstein’s. The only issue is that the crystals weren’t my original attention and as the crystals grow the less miasma I have to fight against the fire that is coming. ‘Well if all the sand was replaced with crystals then they probably couldn’t so much as start a fire.’ I thought as the image of Dra struggling to start fires brought joy swirling in my mind.

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I watched as the crystals grew and the ceiling changed as my separated parts hunted down the spiders. The constant movement and hunting kept, my mind spinning not letting myself slow at all. I was starting to feel the strain of having my focus on something for so long without a chance to stop. If I pulled my parts back to me then the spiders would grow in mass again and may become a threat to my spread across the layer but my mind can’t keep up with everything. Right now I have several dozen separated parts hunting in all directions but more and more kept appearing whenever I thought I could pull back. My thoughts went toward the bodies of the surface, they had so many parts working together but their minds didn’t bear the strain. Even imps had several pieces of meat that worked independently of their own although the surface creatures were far more robust. The meat in the skull, the brain, seems to do all the work for them, and even more. I had to hold onto my memories of all the things I ate and most of them had been lost to my hunger but none of them had to deal with that. Why?

I had torn and abused enough bodies to know how weak it all is but even I had to admit I didn’t fully understand them completely. Every action that I made required my mind to swirl and strain to do so but for them, the brain did the repetition and the processing sparing the mind the strain. The very act of growing my tendrils across the ceiling and releasing power to fuel the miasma took to a portion of my mind despite it being so simple. My pool swirled and some of the liquid bubbled over the ridge coating the crystals as my mind strained being pulled in so many directions. What remained of my attention looked toward the jagged crystal buried under the sand near my pool. It sent a vile feeling through me but maybe it had the answers. Maybe if I could eat it I could better understand or maybe grow my mind even further. The primal part of my mind resisted as tendrils slowly dug through the sand and pulled the crystal into the pool.

The crystal started to break as the liquid of the pool ate at it. As the energy of the crystal entered my mind I felt something tug on my mind. Flashes of memories that I didn’t recognize took over as I lost connection to everything.

I opened my eyes as light filled the cave. I bathed in its warmth, feeling my body wake up as it heated up. I stretched my limbs and stepped over my still-sleeping clan mates. I walked toward the entrance and lay down, bathing in the light, as I watched the trees move. Soon, some of my clan mates walked past me looking for food. Many stayed in the cave too cold to move but I could hear shifting behind me. Those who had left blended in the background and snapped at any movement they sensed but it was all too tiring. I had grown big enough that the odd bird drained too much energy for the chance to crush its bones in my mouth, so I watched for larger movement in the trees that promised a larger prey. The screams of younglings deeper in the cave force me to leave the cave entrance to find a rock to bathe in the sun's rays. They should be quiet soon once they feed off the roots in the cave.

My mind snapped back as I felt the worms that hadn’t moved in so long charged spiders that had walked over black sand. The worms had become fat and one could eat a dozen spiders as it breached the sand to the surface. My mind swirled as I went over to the pieces I had sent out to hunt these spiders. Some were eaten but others had more imp essence than before I had the vision. I pulled them all back to deal with the wave of spiders that was coming. The direction where the pillar of fire originally is now has an absolutely large number of spiders trying to attack me. The white sand was covered in constantly shifting walking shadows as far as I could see in that direction and those on the black sand were slowly being eaten by my worms or falling into the pools. They are slowly making progress as there are too many for my slow worms to eat at once but more and more worms are waking up. Small spiders simply disappear into the miasma being too weak to resist and the larger shadows the size of an imp are too slow so they either get eaten by a worm or stumble into a pool and get absorbed.

The parts of me that were sent in that direction were eaten so as the rest rushed the wave of spiders I had some circle around to find the source of all of these spiders. As the first pieces of me attacked the front of the wave that had reached halfway toward me the parts that had tried to encircle the wave found something I couldn’t believe was somehow the same as me. Far away my parts found a massive floating ball of blackness that had a ring of fire circling it. The ball had a flowing stream of darkness down into a massive hole in the sand creating a pool where all of these spiders were crawling out of. The thing felt so wrong as it radiated a pulse of heat that slowly burned the pieces that I sent and I was forced to pull them back as I felt that things essence enter those pieces. ‘I can’t make the infinitely, I can outlast it.’ I thought to myself as I used the pieces that I pulled back to attack the wave both from the side and from underneath. While some spiders did go in the sand they weren’t able to go deep in the sand without slowing down making it easy to tear them apart.

As my pieces joined the fight against the wave the numbers that were on the black sand lowered allowing me time to process everything. ‘My guess is while I had that vision some of my parts continued on their hunt and those in that direction were either corrupted or eaten by that ball of shadow and fire but how did my parts continue moving without me controlling them?’ My mind wondered as I tried to remember the vision. It felt so different compared to anybody I possessed as I didn’t feel any signals that were pulling my attention one way to another. Instead, I remember how the morning sun slowly woke me up my sleeping body and moved to bathe in its heat. A part of me rejected the notion that light could feel so good but it did let me understand more how bodies worked but with a wave of spiders trying to destroy everything I am isn’t the right time to experiment. Right now I’m less worried about the spiders but more about all of the imp essence surging through the network of tendrils and the miasma. Soon those pools and worms in the middle of the wave in the black sand will show signs of corruption of imp essence and may even turn on me.

My gaze goes to the crystals that are growing around me and the center pools but I fear they won’t last. I need to find a way to deal with that ball or it will twist everything that I have made.