While Chimera’s foray into the mines was going on…

  “Harrier Bristlebrach! Multiple signatures detected coming from the… defense grid?”

  Bayleaf peered up from her scrying device, a slab of Chimera’s original form underneath the slide that she was examining.

  “Defense grid?”

  The male Elfari from the engineering bay scratched his head as she spoke, “it's what the boys and girls have been calling that weapon platform that the ship… made? We didn’t know what to call it because it just kept building itself after the Meras just spat it out. A signal’s coming through showing it all.”

  He pulled out a scrying tablet, giving it to her as he opened the image to show.

  Sure enough, Bay watched as the gravity cannons and EM guns that Chimera and Meras deployed began to… build more of themselves.

  A passing bit of debris from the wreckage of the self-exploding Sword happened to run into the platform, and the platform ate it for lack of a better word.

  Bayleaf was watching something that not even the most advanced druids back on Steros could accomplish in weeks, happening above her in realtime.

  “That’s nice, anything else?”

  “Erm… no, I guess not Miss Bristlebranch.” The Elfari was clearly worried, but Bay didn’t have much else to say.

  She wouldn’t be surprised if the whole damn thing turned into a ship and started eating asteroids, for all her face showed.

  “You’re dismissed Engineer Larsk, I’ll inform the High General later.”

  “Y-Yes Miss.”

  Bay watched him leave before turning back to her own scrying glass, magnifying it till the image showed the spot she was examining.

  I’m starting to become desensitized to this sort of thing, aren’t I?

  The squiggling piece of Chimera’s original form nodded back to her, which only made her sigh in response.

  How does it even know what I’m thinking? Is it a touch based response, mirrored neurons? Is it picking up my mood through chemical responses, magical? This, all of it, makes no sense to me. Yet…

  Bay held a bit of her magic up to the small specimen, who drank from it and slowly bloated, only to shrink back down to its small, rather cute, blobby form.

  The blob began moving in a small track, a maze that Bay came up with using a few dividers.

  Of course, the blob slide under the dividers, showing more intelligence than most specimens by simply going over and under the clear obstructions and even squeezing between places it had no business ignoring.

  Shrinking and growing as it pleased, shifting to whatever size was appropriate to beat her tiny gauntlet of tests.

  It’s learning as it goes, building itself to tackle more and more. Is it evolving, or has it already evolved to the point that it simply knows what to do? If this thing exists elsewhere, why hasn’t it just taken over all life? What could even stop it?

  Bay wanted to know, but she also wondered if the answer would be wise to find. Because if she did, that would mean that there would be a way to destroy it.

  That would mean a way to destroy Chimera.

  My curiosity isn’t worth it, but what if… that’s always the question when it comes to these things.

  What if she turns on us?

  What if there's more of her out there and they’re not friendly, or worse, they’re conquerors?

  What if I have to fight her?

  Bay sighed, causing her breath to fog up the screen. She didn’t want to think about these questions, but as one of her Empress’ Harriers, she needed to at least consider such thoughts at times, and make appropriate contingencies.

  She only wished she understood Chimera enough to know what she was, so she could protect her friend and her people.

  She peered down at her specimen, furrowing her brown as she noticed it looking up at her.

  The blob stopped its casual destruction of her tests, turning to face her as if sensing her mood. Without warning, Bay watched as it broke through the containment cell she made for the small blob, working its way up past her nose and pushed through her eye and into her brain all in a split second.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  She was about to cast a spell when something stopped all movement in her body.

  Holy shit, what is this?!

  Her world shifted, splitting, rearranging, and condensing all together until she… she…

  She stared into oblivion, stared into the exploding stars of life, light came, darkness pushed back.

  Life unrepentant and massive spreading like an infection and both creating and destroying at will.

  A civilization came and went, being of blobs and life and constant growth overtaking all and assimilating them into a form that took all forms.

  All forms, it was everything!

  All of life its tapestry, its place a devourer and progenitor both of all things that beat with hearts and grew and grew and built and died and…

  Bay was a part of it, all life was a part of it, and it was them, split and broken into millions of billions of trillions of quadrillions, cells stretched across all things and further!

  Birthed from the void of life and light! Progenitor of all life! Primordial… Ooze! It was and will and will always be!

  Bay found herself screaming, her body losing all cohesion and rebuilding itself and destroying itself, making room for all sorts of things and bobs and blobs and structures and oh Goddess make it stop!!!

  She was still alive, oh gods why wasn’t she dead?!!

  She was always alive and always dead and always alive and always dead and… AND!!!!!

  Split open and rebuilt over and over and over.

  Over and OVER and… OVer…..

  Bay gasped, huge lungs sucking all of the air in the room and causing the vents to bend inward from her desperate need for more!

  Hugging herself, she collapsed against the wall of her examination room, feeling the changes that she lived through starting to settle, no trace of the blob she worked anywhere.

  She knew it was gone, a part of her, all parts of her, remade and rebuilt and combined and sutured and built within her.

  She was crying, her mind trying its best to come to grips with everything she felt, everything she saw and witnessed.

  Everything she understood now.

  She stood, immediate with no wasted movements. She turned, energy coursing through her and so much more besides.

  A space, a void within her holding her clothes and things she wore before, releasing and returning to adorn her naked form.

  She placed her hands on the scrying device, her thoughts transferring knowledge directly into the mana channels that were built within the tool, converting her thoughts into images, messages, and all the knowledge she accumulated into a format.

  Bay understood, after all. The blob that she had inadvertently captured from Chimera only wanted to help people, and it sensed her worry. So it did what it always does, it helped.

  It gave Bay all she could know about what it,she,them,they, could be.

  Now Bay was it too, no longer Elfari, no longer just Elfari.

  Malleable, transformable, bound not by chains of structure, but DNA strands.

  What… am I now? How is it possible?

  The answer came unbidden, for she had all the answers about what she was now!

  The answer opened up more questions, but she had a name, and the name oh Goddess the name!

  Just what the hell was a Tarasi?!

  Bay felt the images return and tried to stop them from overtaking her senses again.

  Her body morphed, and shifted, causing her to turn smaller until she resembled her younger self, short haired and bucktoothed. Then she shifted to her teenaged years, her awkward lanky self with her hormones overcharged and out of control. Her adult form returned, but it was different, longer hair, and more strength then she ever felt she had.

  A template of her life was formed, and Bay instinctively knew that she could return to her different years at any time. Then her body settled at last, going to the form that she felt was most herself.

  It was her young adult years, just after she had finished her military training. She was confident, assured, powerful and ready for life as one of her Majesty’s most elite soldiers.

  This is me, This is what I am deep inside. I have always been this, but… now I’m something else too.

  Her friend came to mind, the child-like being suddenly no longer seeming so alien to her any longer.

  Chimera… she thought, her mind reeling with the truth of what her friend was, what she was now…

  One thing was certain though, she pitied their enemies, the Verdant Hood, for they couldn’t truly know what they faced now.

  Who could know, even I find it hard to comprehend.

  Bay reached out to touch the Meras, feeling the ship respond to her touch and recognizing a fellow being.

  “Hey Meras, so… we need to have a talk.”

  The ship she once only thought of as just a vessel turned to her with knowing eyes and a smile, having found another like itself.

  Another Tarasi.

  …

  Chimera jerked awake, having an odd dream about Bayleaf falling into a crazy kaleidoscope land with Chimera keeping her eyes open.

  It was way too surreal to even think about.

  Eh, weird dream.

  She tilted her head back and rested it, falling back into slumber.