After Elysa’s last words, everything went blank for a fraction of a second before I seemingly woke up from my evolution. The grogginess, which was already quite bad last time, was at a new height. I couldn’t say what was going on around me or even what had happened to me. My senses were extremely dull. It was as if I had to be thawed; senses very slowly permeated from the outside towards my core.

My vision was just awful. It was so incredibly blurry that I couldn’t see anything but green and red. Those were likely the colors of the trees and the sky. The red sent panic into my brain. It meant it was already evening.

I tried moving a leg; it seemed to be the first part of my body where any kind of sense returned. I merely managed to twitch it, hoping to hear Cellestra’s voice call out to me, but no response came. Where was she? Would she be okay?

If anything, I hoped she’d be safe. I tried to reassure myself that she was. It was likely she was still with the other elves. There were probably a lot of talks to be had, and I could think of none more suited than her to do it, as she was the one with the most knowledge of what was going on — she and Tavion both.

If she was still with them, I’d just have to find out what direction they went. It wasn’t hard for me to follow tracks, and I knew that Cellestra knew that.

I would first have to get back to the road. I feared the dark of night might actually make things slightly harder. Would the elf be worried about me?

I sighed mentally as I was still waiting for my senses to return. My eyes were clearing up very slowly, as was the case last time. What was strange, however, was that instead of the red becoming black, it went to blue instead.

Wait.

Was it morning? Had my evolution taken that long?

I was still alive… as far as I knew. If I’d gone that long without anything trying to kill me, I figured I would be okay for the remainder of the time that this recuperation took.

Slowly but steadily, my senses returned. I could finally move my legs, albeit quite spastically. For some reason, they felt incredibly weak too. I didn’t recall that being the case before. I wouldn’t be able to walk for a little bit more, for certain, but this weakness in my legs was worrying. When the thawing process finally reached the core of my being, I could tell something was off.

Something was on top of me. I could feel it pushing down the hairs in which I’d recently regained feeling. What was that?

I couldn’t quite make out what it was; my vision was still too blurry to see a thing. Besides, it was more or less in my dead zone. I figured that since it wasn’t moving and I was still alive, it had to be some kind of sleeping animal?

I let out a chuckle in my mind. Some bird had probably found the best place to nest. I knew my hair was soft and fluffy, but this… I would have never guessed. At least it managed to cheer me up somewhat through all the anxiety that had befallen me.

That poor bird… or whatever it was. I doubted it would stay there once it found out I could move.

More minutes went by. The thawing process had now reached my head. Once it did, my vision started becoming less blurry at a faster rate, but what shocked me was that it didn’t stop once it had rippled over my entire head. Instead, it… continued?

It expanded above my head?

I felt senses flow where I knew I shouldn’t have any. Slowly but steadily, I came to the realization that something had changed… and changed drastically.

I could feel things that shouldn’t be there. I could feel the softness that was the hair on top of my head and back. Sensation kept expanding upward and then spread to the sides. I found out I could move things that I didn’t have before… but I also used to have…

It was weird, but familiar in a way.

What was going on?

I moved two of my legs so they were above my head and used them to touch what was laying on my back. I found out that I could… feel where I touched. I was… touching… myself…?

I ran a leg down the shape that was still unmoving and felt it glide across my skin. Skin…

I forced all my focus into what was above me with all my might. The senses filled up the figure quickly and I could feel… arms. Then, I could feel something of which I knew exactly what it was: a head, with eyes.

With great effort, I managed to open them.

A clear, blue sky was what I was looking at. The chirping of birds, the wind rustling the leaves on the trees, and the pecking of a woodpecker were some of the sounds that I could now hear all too clearly with my new set of ears.

I was laying on my back, in comforting fluffiness that a normal bed wouldn’t even come close to. Shock was coursing through this body, and the rest, as realization and disbelief were contending for the position of my primary emotion at this point.

I lay still for several more minutes as everything was starting to sink in.

I just couldn’t believe it…

I managed to move my arms and held them in front of my new set of eyes. I stared at them and kept staring...

How…?

I couldn’t explain it, but for some reason, I could see with both my “normal” eyes and my spider eyes at the same time. It was incredibly disorientating, but it seemed that, as time passed, I was starting to get more used to it, which reduced the pressure on my brain… brains?

I was certain I was still thinking with my spider brain at this point… but I was clearly seeing things and processing things in this other brain as well. Just thinking about how this was all possible made both of them hurt.

The process of regaining all senses seemed to be wrapping up, as the vision in my spider eyes was now more than crystal clear. I still felt weak in my legs which I found odd. It was as if a significant amount of strength had been drained from my body… Bodies?

This new thing that I was, it was one body: that I knew. That I could feel.

Was this what Elysa meant when she said this final evolution offered everything I needed? Apparently, she made sure that I had a more… humanoid body on top of my spider one.

Wait a second…

Humanoid…

In an instant, I used my new arms to help raise up the body that was now on top of my head. I completely disregarded my nudity, and bent over forward, staring into my spider eyes.

I was looking up at my elven face looking down into my red spider eyes. My hair was still the same as it was when I was an elf; long and white, but extremely messy, but most of all, it was my own. The thing that had worried me most were my ears, but fortunately, my elven ears were where I expected them. It was a relief to see that I’d retained those. It did explain the unbelievably sharp hearing that I’d experienced over the past minutes.

What was not the same about me, however, were my eyes.

I was staring at a huge spider head below me, but looking up, I could clearly see the shifting of colors behind my irises. It was as if I was looking at the swirling pattern of colors on my abdomen, except that it was happening in my eyes. They were mesmerizingly bright in color, and kept shifting from one eye to the other, slowly. It was like a wave of colors that continually washed from one side to the other behind my eyes. When one color appeared in an eye, it would move to the side and disappear, to, moments later, appear in the other eye and then be pushed out again.

It was captivating, even if I did say so myself…

I was not expecting this when I was promised the ability to speak, whatsoever. This literally changed everything. I’d finally be able to talk to Cellestra, and hopefully, this body wouldn’t scare people as much as my old one.

I could have stared at my new form for hours, but slowly, the shock of what this evolution had brought me was starting to ebb away. I was still going to have to find Cellestra.

We had a lot to talk about…