Many hours flew by in a mad rush as I darted from hiding spot to hiding spot in my ever upward journey towards the Void. I should have been deathly afraid of dying but after I started my run I kind of entered a Zen-like state about my existence.

I was so dead, and I had only myself to blame.

When you put it in that frame of mind, after all, that I had been through recently, you just didn’t have time for fear, and you had to get over it and move.

Sure, I knew that I had options, mainly contacting those Tela who were already here and the hopes that my friends were coming to rescue me. I just had to get to the point where I could take advantage of those options without getting stepped on or eaten.

I will admit that the fact that I was smaller in size than the end of a hair follicle did bother me a bit. More than quite a bit actually. Being small did have its positive sides though. For one, I was invisible to all of the creatures that I ran past. Not only that but due to my small size, I was able to store as I ran, keeping my energy reserves topped off at all times and allowing me some insane bursts of action to get out of trouble.

The area that I had arrived in was mainly populated by creatures that were around the size of a house cat. They all were so similar in size that it made me begin to wonder just how far the spider-like creature had to chase the Queen that originally infected me. That monster had been huge in comparison to all of the creatures around this shallow depth. Sure, there were larger native denizens here and there, but they seemed to have grown and set up shop because they had found a niche to exist in.

One such creature that was about the size of a mini-fridge had managed to embed itself into the side of a monolith tree. It existed by using a disguised set of limbs that mimicked branches to impale any unlucky creature who happened to blindly walk or crawl past. It didn’t notice me but it did get lucky while I was nearby. It managed to impale a slow-moving armored slug that just happened to get too close to its home. I left that area as quickly as I could just to get away from the gross crunching sounds that ensued.

Some monsters just never learned how to chew with their mouths closed.

The further I moved upwards towards the Void the smaller and more numerous the creatures around me became. It was almost like I was going back in time, being able to observe how the creatures had developed the further they progressed downwards, just in reverse. I was beginning to see patterns in their development as well. I just needed to find the source and reason for the patterns.

In addition to being hard to see, my new body seemed nearly indestructible with its crazy regeneration and durable exoskeleton. I had several mishaps during my first hour while I was just learning how to navigate the world I found myself in. The landscape was chaotic yet seemed to have patterns to it, almost as though I was looking at nature through a shattered mirror. Patterns existed in the strangest places and drew your eye as you tried to understand what you were looking at. There were times when I would get sidetracked when I saw something that drew my attention, some side path that led into an impossible biome of plant life or another that was filled with just straight-up weirdness.

This, for the most part, was my existence as I moved as quickly as I could through valleys and craters left by creatures walking into deeper territory. Since I was so tiny and impervious to fall damage my method of locomotion ended up resembling a common flea as I would launch myself through the air to maximize my speed and distance traveled.

How did I learn that I was immune to fall damage? Well, simply put, I tripped over my middle set of legs when I was making my way down the side of a tall cliff and fell headfirst over the edge.

During the fall I used up half of my stored energy in a mental frenzied state while I tried to think of a way to grab something or soften my landing.

It ended up being a waste of time, I knew that I was doomed.

I fell about the length of a can of soda before hitting the ground and tumbling to a stop.

I got up, thoroughly feeling like I pissed my pants and completely unscathed. No, I didn’t have pants, and yes, I was thankful that this body didn’t have those kinds of functions.

So, yeah, that was how I learned that I was able to be the human flea. Let us never talk about it again.

I learned quickly that not all hiding spots were alike and that some happened to contain creatures who were either busy storing or in the middle of modifying their bodies. I also learned that the intelligence of monsters had nothing to do with their size. Most that I saw just seemed to work off of instinct, probably because they were so young concerning their experiences after being created by the Void.

I realized this after I ran into the den of a creature that seemed to be made entirely from jagged rock shards sticking out of its body. The body, from what I could still see, was a rough oval shape that resembled an M&M with numerous pudgy legs holding it up. You just had to squint to see past its spiky armaments. I didn’t know if the growths were intentional or if it was caused by some other factor. What I did know was that even though it was barely larger than an M&M in real life, it dwarfed my size like a donut to a tiny ant. I was just about to have a look around, having lost most of my fear of the creatures who all seemed to be incapable of seeing me, when I felt that something was different in this case. Mr. Stoned M&M had noticed me, for whatever reason, and immediately started tracking me by wiggling appendages that resembled Q-tips around in my direction.

“Is it using Q-Tips to try to see me?” I wondered as I studied it closer.

Immediately the size of this creature seemed wrong to me. It had made its burrow under a jagged rock outcropping inside a hollowed-out mound and seemed to have already outgrown its ability to exit via the smaller opening that I had just come through. Perhaps it had found that simply waiting would bring meals to itself and had inevitably outgrown its original size? If so it had trapped itself unless it could develop a means to dig through the thick rock making up its den.

For a second we both just looked at each other. It didn’t do anything other than continue to wave its Q-tip eyes at me for a couple of moments before finally going still. I had an uneasy feeling so I started to back out of its den slowly. This action seemed to set it off because it immediately tried to pin me with a long tongue that spat out like a chameleon’s tongue.

Naturally, I jumped out of the way as quickly as my body could move, choosing to the side rather than straight up so that I wouldn’t land back on the approaching tongue.

There was a resounding splat and I landed a little bit further within the den. Thankfully the body of the drone was very durable and the splat sound only came from the tongue impacting the ground and not from me bouncing off the stone wall. My landing was not perfect but I had long since gotten over the fact that I had an extra set of legs to aid me in everything movement-related. I watched the creature intently while getting ready to jump again but it seemed to have missed the fact that I had gotten out of the way. The tongue quickly pulled itself back towards the mouth, carrying with it small bits of dirt and stone before it disappeared, being devoured without care.

“So... you literally have rocks for brains huh?” I asked, once again wishing that I could communicate in this form. I had been missing Nurse and Invicta a lot and the continual silence inside my head was getting to me. I had no one to guide me and I was constantly having to balance the threat of my existence by maintaining as small of a profile as possible while searching the drone’s memory for anything that would help me survive.

Besides, this thing dwarfed me in size and threat so all I had was my quips and whit to throw at it at the moment.

The monster just sat there oblivious to my presence in its den. It was almost as if it couldn’t see me at all.

“Huh. That was anticlimactic.” I thought after a few moments went by without the thing moving from its vigil of the entrance to its den. It was simply content to sit and chew without any other response. “So, sitting in a hole is your entire existence, huh? No other aspirations or dreams of grandeur? You don’t have any family to get back to or an oven left on at home?”

A fine mist began blowing out of its mouth once it was finished eating. “What is going on here?” I wondered as I watched the vapor settle over the entrance and lightly coat the surface. It only took a moment and I would have missed it had I not been paying attention. “I think you just showed all your cards buster.” I thought as I looked back in the drone’s memory for why a creature would do this.

It was so that it could see.

Those Q-tips were sensors that looked for any variations to the dispersed vapor and worked as a trigger system for the creature to feed. It resembled pheromones and anything that wasn’t already coated in it would let the monster see it when it broke up the outline of its spray. Like a gas or smoke detector in your house.

“Pheromones? How interesting... now where have I seen that used before?” I muttered to myself as I kept an eye on the creature and worked through my combined memories. As it turns out, the Hive Mother had added pheromones to her hive’s toolkit so that they could path without getting lost. All I needed to do was to tap my butt or abdomen on the ground as I walked and I would mark where I had been as I moved.

Experimentally I tapped my butt to the ground before twisting my head around to check out the mark that I had made. I couldn’t see anything and had to go back into the drone’s memories again to figure out why.

“Oh, you are just full of surprises, aren’t you?” I said as I learned that the ridge between the drone’s eyes was, in fact, a sensory organ similar to the Mr. Stoned M&M’s Q-tips. I just needed to focus on sensing it. Sure enough, there was a softly glowing purple dot on the ground. I moved my leg to brush at the spot and found that when disturbed it didn’t cling to my limb, it just vaporized the tiny area that I disturbed. There was a puff of red, almost as though the spot where I had touched had exploded. I got down on all six limbs and stuck my eyes as close as I could get them to the dried vapor.

What I saw shocked me. I was looking at an even tinier creature than myself. They looked like flat barnacles and they were all clinging to the ground with their tiny limbs. When I experimentally touched an area with undisturbed barnacles, they exploded in a tiny red puff of vapor. Not only that, but I could almost see pits forming in the tip of my claw where it had come in contact with the popped vapor before my body healed the damage.

“So, it works like a thin coat of paint that slightly harms you if you disturb it. In the case of this giant M&M monster, it works as an alarm system for anyone who walks across it.” I thought as I remembered back to the dream I had of the Queen that infected me. A light bulb moment happened as I remembered that the Queen had left a trail as she raced to infect me. Could I find traces of her path again? Not to find the Hive Mother but to know which path to stay away from.

My next thought and a bigger concern was: what the heck was I doing with a tiny exploding acidic colony inside my abdomen? Was it feeding off of my energy and going to eventually take over my body? The drone’s memories were not very helpful in explaining this question. All I came away from delving through its memories was that it was the natural order of things.

You become what you eat and it becomes you.

I stood there frozen, staring at my repaired claw as my thoughts worked through what I had just discovered. Everything, all of this, was designed to further the life of something else. This dimension may seem to be all based on death and savagery from my perspective, but when nothing could die, it put everything in a different light. It was all about creating and designing the ablest of lifeforms.

Well, the statement about everything being immortal here was incorrect. Something had killed those male swarm and had turned them into stone figurines.

A tickle of thought crept into the back of my mind as I remembered the swarm figurines that I had collected.

They were all clutching an invisible solid space... about the size of a golf ball. Two thoughts merged and fit together, showing me the relic that I had seen hours before. It had holes that were golf ball-sized as well. Could it be holding some of those invisible objects that the stone figurines were clutching? It was something to check out.

“So... I could eat anything and it would change how my body was made?” I asked as I looked up at the giant rock eater. Surely, some discernment was in order though or there was a chance that you would end up stuck in a trap of your own making. This creature had only so much more space to grow before it would become a part of the landscape.

Just like that monster living inside the tree.

There was, at least from the limited information the drone’s mind had on the subject, a way to force the mutation to happen to a specific place and part of the body. In the swarm it was the Nurse’s job and function to graft and force mutations where they were wanted.

Without Nurse’s or oversight, like removing the mutations from the part of the body that you didn’t want them on, the mutations would cause problems. The Hive Mother genetically limited her Monarch Queens to be the only ones, besides herself, to have the ability to alter their swarms as they saw fit. This prevented, for the most part, debilitating mutations in the colonies.

The Hive Mother would test various upgrades over long periods in different swarm offshoots, eradicating the unsuitable ones, and picking only the ones that allowed her to achieve more depth and power. It was ingenious and cruelly efficient.

It was a good thing that I wasn’t under the Hive Mother’s control.

As I sat there, undisturbed and in relative safety for the first time since I arrived in this dimension, I realized that this den was a perfect hideout for me. I knew, based on the size of all of the creatures outside, that I only had a short distance left to go until I arrived at the edge of the void. This den was perfect for me because it was defended by a monster with zero intellect who would stay put and keep intruders out. The rock above us kept us safe from anything that had learned how to dig and the space was large enough for me to grow as well.

A perfect starter base.

“So, Wilson, you don’t mind me calling you Wilson do you?” I mentally asked my large stony roommate after I had enjoyed the feeling of safety for a while. The quiet was getting to me and I needed to work some things out in my head. Sure I couldn’t talk, but having a conversation in my head was the best thing that I could achieve at the moment. “You wouldn’t believe the story of what I have been through in the last few months. First, I was just a normal guy just living his life. I had friends, family, and a world to explore and enjoy. Then I got sucked up into life as an immortal virtual being, a Guest of a race of aliens known as the Tela. I lost everything from my previous life. I no longer had a body because it got destroyed when I was taken. My family and friends all probably think that I am dead by now.” I thought sadly as I worked through my feelings and experiences.

“I lost my life, but I gained another one that so many only dreamed about back on earth. I obtained time... something coveted by everyone who lived in my world. I no longer had to fear getting older or its consequences.”

“I obtained a vast collection of knowledge as well. Knowledge that I left on the shelf because I thought that I would always have time ahead of me to learn it.”

As I worked out my inner turmoil, I found that the mind of the drone was well suited for breaking things down into their key parts and to let me see how things linked together. It was as if I could see connections to things that I had only vaguely felt were related to before.

“I am not saying that everything that I have done so far has been a mistake. I did get to live and travel a lot while I was a human. I just feel that I could have done more, learned more, and become more capable. The same thing can be said about my time with the Tela. I had fun, made friends, and got to see and do some amazing things. I just feel like I have fallen down another rabbit hole, one deeper than the last.” I thought, continuing to muse.

“And the Tela rabbit hole was plenty deep itself.”

Wilson’s tongue launched out of its mouth and slammed into something with a wet squelch, startling me out of my thoughts and setting me on edge. I hadn’t seen anything enter the tunnel, but something had disturbed the pheromone trap and set off my guardian. I crept forward a little to try to see what Wilson had caught. He was pulling his tongue in towards his mouth, and it was vibrating and jerking as though its captor was trying to escape. At first, I couldn’t make out what the creature was. It appeared to be made of sticks and leaves that faded in and out of view.

Reactive camouflage? Interesting.

I wondered if I could snag a piece so that I could add it to my kit. It sounded like something that the Nurse swarm had integrated into their bodies.

I just would need to wait and see if any crumbs might fall out of Wilson’s mouth for me to sample.

I didn’t have long to wait because the invader did something unexpected. It fought back by stabbing a fang or needle into Wilson’s tongue. This caused Wilson a considerable amount of pain because he started to flail about, violently smashing his tongue and the creature onto the stone floor and ceiling. The violence of his response was impressive coming from something so big and sedentary. This went on for quite a few moments until Wilson’s intensity changed.

At first, I thought that Wilson had won when he finally started to settle down. He had bludgeoned the captive creature with the walls of his den, and it was missing most of its innards around the entrance of the cave.

Something was wrong though. Wilson wasn’t drawing his tongue in to begin his feast. His tongue just slowly lay on the floor and occasionally twitched. After a couple of moments without change, I rushed over to see what was going on.

The newcomer had originally been about a tenth of Wilson’s considerable size so the outcome of the battle should have been readily determined. It was surprising to me that this didn’t seem to have been the case.

When I got up close and climbed onto the entangled pair, I saw that the stabbing needle was pulsing ever so often even though the creature had lost most of its insides in the struggle. Fluids were being slowly sucked out of Wilson’s tongue and were leaking through holes in the leaf bug’s body to the floor. It seemed that the needle part was a separate entity just like my pheromone markers were. They served a purpose and they didn’t need the rest of the entity to be whole and in working order for it to continue to function.

Up close I could see that the needle had little barbs that were also pulsing, just in the other direction. The tiny stingers were pumping something into Wilson while the main needle was continually trying to suck the life out. Was it liquifying Wilson with poison?

The poison was acting like a tranquilizer to keep Wilson locked in place, letting the needle feast on it without its healing function to stop it.

Without too much thought I went to work biting the barbs in half with my sharp mandibles. When they came off easily I went to work sawing through the main needle without further effort to focus on the smaller barbs. Wilson’s life was more important than his discomfort at this moment.

Biting through the needle was easy as well, making me wonder just how much jaw force this little drone had. All I needed to do was to work my way around the thick needle, cutting through it like I was using a can opener. Gooey fluid sprayed me in the face a couple of times, only making me work faster. I felt the energy around me increase in the air. These creatures were losing their stored energy, probably because it was concentrated in the fluids inside them.

When it was cut cleanly through I braced and pulled it out of Wilson’s tongue with all of my might. Again, the ease at which it happened caused my imaginary eyebrows to raise. The drone’s strength seemed to be no joke. The needle was the size of a tree trunk to me. Sure, I had to alternate sides that I pulled from due to its length, but it came out quite easily.

Once the needle was out I noticed Wilson’s tongue quickly sealed itself off. The badly damaged leaf monster’s body was trying to repair itself as well, it just seemed… broken in its process. The drone’s memory knew that its healing ability would quickly return the creature to health.

Health, yes, but missing its mind unless someone put it all back in place. From what I could see, most of what might have been its mind was splattered here and there.

Without its mind, it would, in essence, become a zombie until something devoured it and made use of its biological matter. If any creature wanted to, they could eat the mind-matter splattered all over the rock of the den to gain moments from its memories. This action did not interest me in the slightest.

Yes, the swarm would eat its own as well if they became too badly damaged. It all depended on if the Nurses were unable to fix them first.

I noticed some slow-moving creep happening with the mollusks that made up Wilson’s pheromone barrier. It had noticed the scattered food and was slowly expanding towards the liquid remains. Everything here worked to gain more energy by any means possible.

For a second, I thought Wilson might have been permanently damaged by the poison as well. I just failed to take into account how long it would take for the last of it to reach his brain and then clear out of his system. He came to with a start and nearly crushed me to death before I could get out of the way. It seemed that his spiky armor was not just for show. He systematically rolled and crushed every inch of the floor of his den, mashing the remains of the intruder into a paste.

I watched all of this from a safe perch on the ceiling of his den, making me wonder if, like jumping, it was something that he was just unaware of.

His movements allowed me to spot something that I hadn’t seen up until this point. He had been sitting on a lump of gold this whole time. The gold wasn’t much, nothing more than a grain of sand, but it did explain why Wilson was content to make this den his home. He had a higher-density energy source to feed his larger self with.

It seemed that Wilson was wiser than I had given him credit for.