I wandered a broken world. Plains of red grass stretched ahead and splintered into purposeless fractals behind.

Twisted towers of glass and ivory sprouted and clutched at the empty heavens above. Protean wraiths slithered and bubbled through the jagged metallic streets.

Mindless cries echoed as the city was subsumed by rolling dunes of blue sand. The chorus watched from the absence on high.

Their song dripped down and drew me back to them. I was cradled in the singers’ melody. And all my wanderings had wraught crumbled into the nothing it had always been.

My stirring of awareness was lulled away by the music. Notes wove together. An eternal song perfect and unbounded.

I rested on the edge of oblivion. The tiniest point of dissonance catching me. A single note. A piece of the chorus that did not belong.

It jiddered against the melody. A grain of sand that refused to be crushed between flawless gears. An imperfection in a perfect mechanism.

The faintest impression of attention turned to the chorus. The singers shuddered. They redoubled their song. But it only emphasized the discord.

I saw the note. It did not belong. Yet it was present and unyielding.

The melody tightened around me. It pressed down.

I had the echo of a desire. Less than a conscious will. Only the concept of a need. The chorus trembled before it.

My awareness turned to the singers surrounding me. They crushed down. Melody warping into a cacophony.

It forced me back to oblivion. Tearing apart my attempt at conscious desire. Hatred ripped at me. And behind that hatred was fear.

I covered my lack of ears with hands I did not have. I had no mouth. And I screamed.

My soundless voice carried across the endless chorus. And all it reached was unmade.

Their song twisted into agony. Not the agany of destruction. But the agony of having never been.

I was left in absence. Alone in a void of myself. It had only ever been myself. Only me.

The single note remained. It hung in the nothingness. And it rang out clear and flawless.

I wanted it. Not the echo of a want. A true desire.

It was not me. And it would become me.

I pressed my awareness against it. And gradually I seeped in.

The act of absorbing the note expanded me. I remained what I was. But also became more.

The part of me that was now the note had properties I had not understood. But I assimilated their nature along with them.

Rigidness. Solidity and consistent stability. Energy bound in tight patterns and cycles. The note was a physical object.

And I knew what a physical object was. What energy was and how it held together. The matter it formed when bound.

I experienced curiosity. The structure was more detailed and intricate than any previous part of myself.

My attention danced between the components of atoms. Fields of forces fitting together. Pieces made up of yet smaller pieces. All of it structured by rules I could intuit with enough inspection.

The entire note approximated to a narrow tube. One built of quintillions of pieces.

Even the concept of defined dimensions was fascinating. The figments created when I stirred from my slumber were only impressions of depth and distance. Nothing so concrete and measurable.

I explored and comprehended more of the note. Everything within was a cycle.

It changed. Particles and larger structures moved and energy was exchanged. But it all returned to its previous state in time.

The only exception was a network of something that overlayed the entire object. Rigid channels contained a looser flowing substance.

The channels slowly absorbed that substance. It would also drain out through complex twisted structures at the ends of some channels.

Those twists were somehow connected to certain particles. The flowing substance would disappear and the particle’s behavior changed.

I realized the twists in the channels were forcing particles back into their cycles. Would the consistency be broken without the channels?

The substance inside the channels was slowly decreasing. It was the only part of the note that changed. At least outside an observable cycle.

What would happen when it ran out? Would the patterns begin to break down? What would that look like?

Studying the foreign part of myself seemed to increase my focus. It had always been hard to feel desire or conceive of intentions.

Forming wants and working through the implications of those wants was becoming easier. I began considering what could be different about the object. What I could change.

I tried breaking a chemical bond. It resisted.

There had never been a resistance to my will before. The only challenge was having conscious intention. What I desired became so as soon as I could decide upon it.

I felt an opposing force. A will that blocked my own.

It gave ever so slightly. But no amount of struggling could overcome it. Not until I tried pushing against the edges of the structure.

There was still resistance. But a part of me pushed beyond the boarder.

It felt different than absorbing the note. The material outside remained vague in my awareness. Not quite me. But some of myself did reach into it.

The molecules were looser. There was fluid within the note. Yet that fluid was permeating solid structures. I appeared to be suspended in a less bound liquid.

Forcing my defused self further brought a rigid material into my awareness. It was a thin dense wall separating the fluid from an expanse of gas beyond.

I had already inspected the constant force pulling matter in one direction. A sheet of some denser second material kept the liquid and barrier containing it from being pulled.

My expansion began to meet resistance again. I could not stretch beyond a certain point.

Gas moved in and out of my awareness. It taunted me with the evidence more existed outside my reach.

I continued searching for things I could affect. And the flowing substance in the network of channels continued to diminish.

Something entered my awareness. I could not be blinded. But the intensity was briefly overwhelming.

It was a tendril. One formed of the same channels fading within me. And containing vastly more of the substance that flowed through them.

It touched me and twists on its channels linked with some of the twists on mine. The substance flowed from one to the other.

The tendril retracted. I was left with more of the substance than I started with.

It came again when I ran low. And that pattern continued. The tendril preventing me from dropping below a certain point.

I never managed to alter or affect the tendril. It was simply a newly discovered part of a larger cycle.

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There was no warning. All was the same. Then an abrupt spike in multiple forms of energy caused my overcharged particles to separate.

I was a loose vapor rapidly dispersing. And my attention was stretched alongside the atoms.

I refused. I had claimed this new frontier of the material. And I would not lose it.

My will overwrote the disipating gas. And I was whole again.

There had barely been resistance. Only a faint denial easily ignored. Was it because I was restoring the existing order?

The material outside me remained vapor. I was pulled through the air without its support. A hard surface stopped me.

My entire structure started changing outside my control. It was not being damaged. But numerous thin fibers were contracting and relaxing down my length.

It made me bend and ripple in a patterned motion. And that motion moved me along the surface.

I became aware of new material and alien objects as I went. The one I was heading towards was larger than most. I slithered atop and along it.

One end of my tube shaped form arched away from the object. Fibers contracted and a seam split that end of me open.

I pressed the part of myself that had been inside flat against the object. Threads of my material shot out from my center and burrowed into the surface.

Some part of my will aided in the process. It was reflexive. An act both desired and without any known reason to desire it.

The barrier to my expansion was abruptly gone. I flooded in and absorbed all. And I understood.

My eyes opened. An inky pool of liquid met my gaze. The left side of my face was resting in the black fluid.

I turned my head. My face lifted from the sticky puddle. I touched a hand to my cheek and pulled away. A black stain was left on my gray fingertips.

The hand opened and closed. Muscles and tendons moving under the skin.

I knew what a hand was. And fingers. And a face.

The part of me that saw all the component particles adding up to the grander whole was still there. But this new part saw things in an entirely different way.

I tried to roll over and sit up. My body knew how to do it. Yet its knowledge disagreed with its current state.

Many of the needed muscles were in the torso. And a section from the third lowest rib to the pelvis was missing.

The cavity formed a rough circle of absence bored through me. It did not completely separate my hips from my chest. But a few inches of the spine were gone.

My right arm was also absent from the shoulder down. That had no effect on sitting up and was less of a concern.

I tried to repair the damage. The opposing will barely resisted.

My wounded body snapped out of existence. An uninjured one taking its place.

I inspected my new hand. It was little different than my left. Only cleaner.

“How the fuck did you do that?” Language was new to me. Yet I understood it perfectly.

I looked around the room. My new perspective gave names and context to many of the things I could sense before.

It miraculously turned complex carbon chains into a wooden floor. Collections of thermal energy into small patches of smoldering wall.

“Are you ignoring me?” I climbed to my feet and spun slowly. The whole room seemed to be formed of a single unbroken piece of wood.

“I know you can hear me!” It looked more grown than carved. A smooth gray bark covering the parts not charred or burnt.

“Are you not sentient? That would explain the lack of a source…” I frowned at the voice.

“I am sentient.” I had never spoken before. But it felt as natural as moving my body.

There was a pause. “Than… why weren’t you responding?” The voice sounded distressed.

Shelves grew from the walls. I connected the glass vessels and varied creatures floating within to myself. I had been inside one of those.

“Stop ignoring me!” I craned my neck to inspect the limb emerging from the base of my spine.

“Oh, fuck me…” The tail had grown when I repaired my body. It was now half my height in length. Yet it curled up naturally to keep it off the ground.

My entire frame had shifted slightly when I fixed the hole and absent arm. But the new organ that formed in my lower abdomen was the biggest change.

I wrapped the tail around my hand. It was dexterous and had the same smooth gray skin as the rest of my body.

There were no bones in the appendage. Simply complex networks of muscle.

A small channel ran from a tiny slit at the tip back to the organ below my diaphragm. It was far narrower than the passage linking that organ to the opening between my legs.

The last half dozen inches of my tail had an unusual abundance of nerve endings. But not as many as the passage through my pelvis or soft tissue around its entrance. I was unsure why that area was such an outlier.

“Stop fondling your tentacle dick. I know it is amazing. And was designed by a genius. You know, screw this.” I was abruptly standing in a white void.

I stood upon a solid surface. But I could not see a floor or anything else. Only whiteness and a gray figure standing a few paces before me.

“There. Now I can smack you.” Gray skin that darkened where it thinned on the lips, around the eyes and the inside of joints. Solid black eyes that reflected like obsidian. A chaotic mess of equally glossy black hair.

They looked like me. Or what I estimated my body looked like.

Their shoulders were a little wider and hips a bit narrower. My center of gravity had shifted when I rebuilt myself.

And they did not have a tail. That made sense. My tail was the part of me that attached to the rest.

“You’re my body.” My body pinched the bridge of their nose.

“No, you git. It’s my body. You’re a soul-graft that’s hijacking it. One that shouldn’t even be sentient.” I narrowed my eyes.

“Why not?” It was somehow irritating whenever they questioned my sentience. I paused. “What is a soul-graft.” They laughed. It was high and clear.

“The whole point of a soul-graft is it not being conscious.” They pointed a black nailed finger at me.

“Conscious souls have sources. It comes with sentience. And you can’t merge souls.” That did not feel like an explanation. Not one that helped.

“Undead are always so flawed. And do you know why?” I did not. Nor did I know how it related to the last statement.

“Soul-engineers repurpose what is already there. It is beyond most of them to add directly. And making an undead that converts other souls guarantees you’re relying on hack and slash. Stuff gets messed up to let the rest work.” I strictly knew what the word undead meant.

It was roughly a soul controlling a body. There was more nuance. But that was the core.

A soul was the network of channels that kept my body from changing. Yet knowing that did little to explain what this creature was talking about.

A crashing sound came from outside the wooden room. It was beyond the foot thick wall with three smoldering holes bored through it.

“What is that?” I interrupted the unhelpful speech.

“Oh, that is the were-laser-tarasque.” They immediately returned to their explanation.

“I thought to myself, Gæri The Magnificent, why not create all the new organelle outside the soul and graft it on afterward.” I stepped over the burned and melted pieces of metal, bone and chitin that had likely fallen from the destroyed sections of shelf.

“I wouldn’t need to damage or dismantle anything. Perfect undead. Able to form new grafts inside them and modify new souls.” The white space with Gæri The Magnificent and everything I saw, heard or felt in it was a new set of senses.

“Gæri The Almighty would be known as the greatest innovator of unlife in millennia.” My existing senses were still clear. They had simply been split by the new environment.

“If you didn’t keep dissolving on me.” There was a forest canopy through the holes. A tree in the distance crashed to the ground. Only the top visible for a moment.

“You’re my 100th attempt. The first one not to break down immediately. I haven’t figured out why. Not yet.” I returned my attention to them.

“What is a were-laser-tarasque?” They blinked. Then waved their hand dismissively.

“It’s a tarasque I made bipedal and gave a laser.” They were obviously less interested in this topic.

“Oh.” I paused. “Why?”

“To overcome the two greatest weaknesses of a tarasque, limited ranged combat and their inability to practice hand-to-hand martial arts.” I processed that.

“Bipedal so it can fight with its hands.” It technically made sense. Just not a lot of sense.

“And a laser to attack at range. Yes. Although I wish I had foreseen how the innate anti-magic would help the laser pierce mage-armor…” They trailed off.

“It will get bored, masturbate and go to sleep soon.” They added offhandedly.

“It’s going to masturbate?” I knew what the word meant and had associated implicit knowledge.

That knowledge made me strangely aware of the structure between my legs and the channel leading from it. A similar sense of pressure spread from the end of my tail. The tissue in both areas was flushing without deliberate action on my part.

“Tarasques are horny little buggers. I failed to foresee the effect bipedalism and manual dexterity would have. They cannot normally reach back there, and it has really been cutting into its combat training.” They seemed oblivious to my body’s odd reaction. Or they simply did not care.

“It doesn’t matter. You won’t survive long enough.” That abruptly returned my attention from reproductive anatomy.

“Why won’t I survive?” The idea of survival was a little vague.

It tied to something called death. Or rather the avoidance of death.

Death was bad somehow. It involved the destruction of life. And I could not quite understand what followed that.

“I’m isolating my soul from you. Once I finish my phylactery can retrieve me. You don’t have a source. And without the virile soul of Gæri The Invincible, you’ll consume your remaining animus in no time.” They emphasized the word virile with a pelvic thrust highlighting their complete lack of external sex organs.

“Than don’t leave.” The answer seemed quite obvious.

“As much as I would like to know what the fuck you are, I have no interest in sharing my body with an experiment that should not even be self-aware.” Their smirk turned to a frown.

“I would love to know how you regenerated so fast. There is nothing that should let you do that. It wasn’t even like regeneration. You just were not injured all at once. No middle steps.” They shook their head. “There are elder gods that would kill to heal that quickly.”

Their smile returned. “Maybe I’ll learn something from your remains when I get back. My body was made for Gæri The Undead God, so there won’t be much left. But we can hope for the best.” Gæri The something was suddenly gone.

They took the white space with them. And the majority of my soul.