The majority of my channels were gone. I still had more than I did before claiming my body. But I could already tell the substance within was diminishing faster. The animus.

I looked around the room. Insects and organs suspended in jars and unfamiliar apparatus of glass, metal and stranger materials met my gaze.

My inherited knowledge was too vague to know if any of this would help. I barely understood the problem.

Gæri The seemed certain I needed animus. They were also confused by my lack of a source. Context suggested that was where animus came from.

The idea felt right. And it would explain why I had to get the stuff from Gæri The before.

I watched my channels carefully. They were growing dim.

Could I make more animus? It was easy to create everything else in my body. But I did not understand animus in the same way.

It did not make the same intuitive sense. It was in me. But not part of me the way my physical body was.

I focused on studying it. What was it doing? And how?

The channels were made of animus. Just fixed into a stable form. And they were not permanent. Instead they consumed a small percentage of the animus passing through them to maintain themselves.

I started pacing the room. I reflexively stepped around the pool of ichor and scattered debris.

Everything in my body was trying to leave its current position. I could recognize that now. Entropy was inherent to the material.

Animus constantly countered that entropy. Particles were held within a set of parameters by the addition or negation of energy on a subatomic scale.

I stopped by a head sized jar. The fleshy mass inside had a greenish brown hue. Diagonally slit eyes blinked open across the side facing me.

That was the purpose of the twists. They somehow turned animus into physical effects. Bits of energy small and precise enough to trap matter in a state of perpetual order.

I absently stared at the dozen yellow eyes. They blinked periodically.

The channels linked to a group of cells in my right lung ran dry. The cells immediately collapsed. Enzyme chains unraveling as bonds stopped being enforced by animus.

The affected area spread as neighboring channels were drained. It was a real concern. My flesh was little more than raw elements held together by animus.

I restored the soup into flawless cells. They immediately began dying again.

This was a viable solution. I could will myself back together. It would just be distracting. And maybe perpetual.

I had it under control until a patch of muscle in my shoulder joined the spreading area of lung. Fixing both was doable every quarter second. But not with the section of my leg dissolving into goo.

The animus depletion sped up. I was soon remaking most of my body every half second.

I tried standing. My liquified knee joint twisted sideways. And I slid out of the slimy skin of my heel.

Hitting the floor was a momentary distraction. Yet it was long enough for all my soft tissue to begin sagging off my bones.

I was intact a few seconds later. Which meant I was on the floor and could not stay solid long enough to get up.

This was no longer a viable solution. Not unless I wanted to be permanently prone and glimpsing the arched ceiling whenever my eyes were not melting.

I sighed. Slime gurgled out. I needed animus.

There were only scraps of channels remaining. Most had dried up and broken apart. Nothing I could sense remained of them.

All I had really done was determine what it did. It was essentially doing the same thing I was.

The important part was that animus would keep me together constantly and without my focus on the task. How it did that remained unknown.

Could I even make animus? Restoring myself did nothing for my channels or the level of animus inside.

Working to keep myself together met close to no resistance. I had to hope making something that did that for me would work the same way.

It would not really be animus. I lacked the kind of understanding I needed for that. But it could share the required properties.

Minuscule and precise generation of energy. Complexity enough to maintain its task without ongoing oversight. And a sufficient supply.

The complexity part would be challenging. The way particles had to be altered was not fixed. It changed in response to outside factors and natural deviation.

Changing the instructions constantly would be a different form of the same problem I had now. It needed to adapt on its own.

Maybe I could make it slightly intelligent? Not sentient. But enough to process a goal and the current situation to complete its task.

Would I have to keep making it? I had no idea how much I would need. So it should grow on its own.

The concept came together in my mind. A substance like animus. One that acted based on my will. And able to adapt and increase when needed.

It might have been impossible. But I had no evidence for or against that. It was better to try and move on if I failed.

My skin liquified as I focused on the existence of my animus replica. Muscle melted and bones settled into the spreading sludge.

I ignored the dissolution of my flesh. A tiny speck of something winked into existence at my core.

It was a pinprick. Nothing compared to even the dregs of animus vanishing within me. Yet it was there.

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I restored my body. The speck responded to my will. It stretched and moved as I desired.

I sent it to a cell in one of my tendons and instructed it to maintain that cell. The speck spread across the cell. And it did not break apart.

A smile lit up my face. It melted off a moment later: But that was fine.

I commanded my creation to grow. Nothing happened.

My smile faded. And not just because my lips were sliding down again.

I pulled the speck away. The cell died as soon as it was gone.

Had I failed? No. There was more than I started with. But that increase did not happen when I willed it.

I moved it to some new cells. Then checked it again. It was bigger.

The reason dawned as I moved it back and forth. Motion. It was growing when I moved it.

Leaving it on a task did nothing. But any time I interacted with the stuff I ended up with more at the end.

That was not what I intended. But I could work with it.

I started moving it in different ways. Stretching it into a strand and connecting it back on itself worked quite well. As long as I kept that loop in motion.

It grew. And I twisted the path into more and more convoluted shapes. The longer and more complicated routes yielded the best results.

I eventually stopped remaking my body. The thing I created bled off of its cyclic journey. That bleed off held my body together.

It took barely any focus to maintain the cycle. I let it fade into the background.

I sat up. My skin was covered in the enzyme slurry that had been my body. Several iterations of my body. Scraping it off by hand added the sludge to what was already mounded around me.

The light outside dimmed while I was pulling myself together. I climbed to my feet and peered out the nearest hole.

Trees formed a thick canopy that blocked whatever was above. Their roots split near the water. As if they were standing on numerous limbs.

The occasional thicket of fronds and bushes marked patches of land. Or at least shallow water.

And a massive path of crushed and burnt trees still smoldered. It ran diagonally across the space I could see. I backed away.

The only other path outside was a doorway covered by a leathery leaf taller and wider than me. That was on the opposite wall. I decided to exit that way.

It was twilight beyond the leaf. I realized the walls inside the room glowed just enough to keep the space bright.

My eyes adjusted. There was a root wide and flat enough to walk on. It continued from the door to a massive tree nearby.

The tree’s root flowed into the building. As if the entire structure was grown from it.

I also noticed a towering figure seated with its back to the tree. It was at least twice the size of the room I stepped out of.

It had the same rough body plan as Gæri The and I. But it was covered in osseous plates and smaller scales between them. A large crystalline spike grew from the nest of horns on its head.

It was reminiscent of a qasko. Which made me wonder what qasko were and how I could be reminded of one.

It took a moment for me to put together its posture and the rhythmic motions of its arm. Gæri The knew its behavior well.

I retreated into the building. I could wait until it slept. I had no desire to sneak past now.

My back hit a section of undamaged wall. And I sank to the floor. Everything was calm for the first time I could remember.

Was Gæri The coming back? They said they would. But not when.

I should leave before then. There was something about them that made me reluctant to be subjected to their curiosity and methods of expressing it.

The were-laser-tarasque was supposed to sleep when it finished. I could escape then. Whenever that was.

The image of the immense creature came unbidden. And the immense thing it was focused on. It had been as wide as my waist and taller than me.

I knew what it was. And what it did.

The knowledge was still implicit. There were no episodic memories to go along with the concept. An intriguing concept.

The pressure in my lower abdomen returned. I was more aware of the passage there. The folds protecting its opening and delicate tissue between them hard to ignore.

I pulled my knees apart. A finger carefully touched the flushed area. The response showed what such an abundance of nerves entailed.

Part of me could tell exactly what was happening. I saw blood pressure changing. And the tissue that formed a structure hidden around the entrance and anchored to the pelvic bone swelled.

I ignored that part. The newer part of me had something that older part lacked. A way of experiencing this that was wholly different from the material process.

The finger trailed to the base and slid up between the folds. It was warm and slick. And came with an impulse to continue and amplify the feeling.

I tested the motion again. Then settled on the concentration of nerves that surfaced where the folds met.

Contact there had a deeper effect. Carrying sensation beyond the point itself.

The channel below ached. A sense of absence. Craving for something within. Something to clench around.

The heat and pressure built in my tail. My position left it curled under me to come up between my legs.

I bent it back on itself. The flexibility proven by how effortless the act was.

There was an impulse. I followed it.

The tip touched the warmth. I slid it up from the base and down again. It settled near the opening.

I felt it spread me open. And felt the inner walls around me. Mirrored needs were met together.

I pulled out a little. A part of me immediately regretted it. But the feeling of sliding in further dispelled that.

Time passed and my tail stroked in and out. Never fully separating. Absence followed by fullness as my finger worked above.

Eventually something began building in my tail. A shift that drove me to move faster.

The sensation from my channel was also growing. The ripples sparked from each point of internal contact carried further. Tingling out to my extremities.

Something inside finally tipped. A pulse traveled from somewhere behind the base of my tail down its length.

Warm pleasure moved through the center and rhythmically released something inside. That triggered a response.

My whole body twitched as inner muscles clenched and spasmed around my tail. A choked whimper escaped.

My tail slowed as I rode out the experience. I stilled it inside me. Comfortably held and filled for a few long moments.

The calm hung over me. Then it was broken by a pulse from somewhere deep inside.

The ripple passed down and over my tail. A powerful impulse led me to pull it out.

A second pulse rippled down. It was stronger than the first. And I felt it pass over something at my core.

The unknown obstruction was forced down. That tiny movement sent out a pleasant spasm similar to the earlier final release.

Another pulse carried it further. The feeling blocked out my other senses.

I became lost in the movement inside. It spread me open with each ripple from within.

It was different than being filled by my tail. A wholly separate experience. One more intense and all consuming.

The mass finally reached my entrance. It parted the sensitive flesh and stretched me as it crowned.

Everything else was gone. Only the feeling of it slipping free and an overwhelming sense of rightness remained.

I knew I had done something I was meant to do. Something completely satisfying. And I floated in that feeling.

There was no way to know how long it lasted. But the sense of fulfillment eventually faded.

My eyes drifted open. I was calm. My head clear.

I looked down to the glossy black ovoid resting between my thighs. A few strands of transudate still trailed from it back to me.

I cupped the fist sized orb in my hands. Feeling the lingering warmth. And inside a tiny spark of myself.