Chapter 4: Chapter 4: Self Discovery

Drats! I piggybacked off of others' hard work too long, and now I'm stuck with the consequences.

I was in a bit of a pickle. There's no way of escaping the flytrap as I am now. Even if I consumed and gained the forms of the other trapped bugs, which would be hard to do before being digested myself, none of their forms would assist in escaping either. The only way to survive would be to find a way to become immune to the acid, or to get the plant to spit me out. Either way, there was only one form even potentially available to me that could help.

I looked inwards and prayed I was able to return to my previous form. In my mind's eye, I pictured my six tiny legs turning into many long roots. I pictured all of my organs and my entire body collapsing into itself. I pictured my mouth growing to hundreds of times my current size. I tried to remember what it felt like to be a flytrap again. Slowly my form changed, and I blanked out.

When I awoke, most of my senses were gone again. Trying to envision my surroundings with touch alone was difficult, but I needed any information I could get to plan my next move. I moved my roots around. They weren't embedded in dirt, but I hadn't been touching any dirt before transforming. I opened my mouth wide and felt no resistance. If I were still inside the other flytrap, the space would be too tight to do so.

I must have been unconscious too long to feel myself actually get spit out, but I'm sure I was free. I immediately tried to return to cockroach form, but instead immediately felt a headache, and an intense cold and tiredness washed over me. I'd never felt this feeling before, but I knew from textbooks that this feeling was mana-deficiency, a consequence of trying to exert more mana than one had left. I tried to dig my roots into the ground, to get some mana from the earth, but didn’t have the strength to dig into it. Without access to mana crystals or food, I would have to wait for the sun to rise to photosynthesize the mana back.

Night passed uneventfully, and so did most of the following day. I wanted to go back to being a roach as soon as possible, but decided that topping off my mana was the wiser move. Not having enough mana to shift back at a moment's notice could be the difference between life and death, as it just was.

Shifting back to my roach form, I decided not to follow the ignorant masses to my doom again. I was too slow to keep up with them on my own, and trying to catch a ride put me in a dangerous situation.

Instead, I would head back home. As a nature-druid, mother had some ability to detect certain aspects of spirits, animals, and plants. As a half-dryad in cockroach form, I could be considered all three. Hopefully, she’d figure out that I'm not a normal cockroach, and find some way of communicating. If that fails, I could try communicating via writing. But if my father saw me first, I'd have to transform in front of him before he got the chance to squish me. That might be a risk, as I don’t know how long transforming takes, and whether or not I’d have time to do so.

A half hour later, I arrived in front of the house. The door was air-tight, so I had to find another way in. One of the windows was open a crack, but even my tiny cockroach body couldn't squeeze through it. I eventually found a hole in the roof wide enough to pass through.

I checked every room, but the house was empty. It made sense that my parents weren't home at the moment. If they came back, they would have found me missing, and eventually started searching for me. The emptiness wasn't worrying, but it seemed the house hadn't been touched since the morning he had been there last. There were still mugs and dishes out from breakfast last week.

It had been a whole week. Why hadn't they come back yet? They only went to Almer forest, and even if they were tracking a monster, they wouldn't have gone too deep into it. Has something happened to them?

It was too early to panic. They said they might visit Tycoed while they were in the area. They probably just decided to stay a little while. Even if something had happened, I wasn't currently in any position to assist them.

With nothing left to do in the house, I turned to leave, but a realization struck me. If nobody but me was in the fields, where did my stuff go? I hadn't noticed any bags or clothes in the area I transformed into a roach.

Were they just gone like my original body? Did some kid come by and steal them? Most of the things I lost were of no consequence, but I was immensely saddened by the loss of my encyclopedia. It had years worth of work put into it, and would be rather helpful now that it's relevant to my powers.

Suddenly, I felt a draining sensation, and saw a giant, rectangular object appear above me. I leapt out of the way just before it crushed me.

My eyes darted around, but I couldn't see anyone or anything that would have made it fall. Besides that, I think the draining sensation suggests it came from my mana.

Turning my attention back to the object, its identity immediately became apparent. It was a book, and not just any book, but the very encyclopedia I was just thinking about. But where did it come from, and why did it suddenly appear?

I was still new to my powers, so not every answer about how it works was intrinsically available to me. But this certainly did not line up with what I thought I knew. I had transformed into both plants and insects, so I assumed I was nature aligned like my mother. But a nature-aligned powered wouldn't be able to summon man-made objects from thin air, and I'd never heard of a specialization being so far removed from a class or alignment. So if I wasn't nature-aligned, what was I?

My brain shifted back to thoughts of itself. It wasn't small enough to fit inside a cockroach, and a plant didn't have a brain to begin with. I considered before if it were in its own extra-dimensional space, but I had only thought of it as a benefit of the transformational aspect of my specialization. Now, though, I think it might be part of my alignment.

So I must be space-aligned. I'm not sure yet how it ties into my specialization, though. This requires some testing.

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Space-aligned are well known for a few things: accessing and creating dimensional spaces, teleporting, and distance manipulation.

Distance manipulation is entirely specialization dependent, and since I already know my specialization is transformation related, I doubt I have access to that kind of magic.

Teleportation is a spell technically doable by anyone with the space alignment, as well as a few other alignments like shadow, lightning, or time that have a relevant specialization, or know a relevant spell. But it takes immense amounts of mana. Short range teleportation is only doable by relatively powerful space-aligned — at least C rank — unless they have a specialization that makes it easier. Long range teleportation is such a massive mana drain that it sometimes takes thousands of space-aligned several hours to perform the task. Only one person in history — Vorota — was able to teleport to distant planets with their own power.

Creation and accessing of dimensional spaces, however, was a spell available to all space-aligned. Ease of use and size did vary, however.

Knowing this, I want to see if I can detect whatever sub-dimension I have.

Druids can detect and affect mana only of their alignment, and can do so at a range. They also need an aligned source to start casting with. For example, a fire Druid cannot produce flames without an initial spark, and water druids need a water source to manipulate. Though a space druid is technically always within a space.

Warriors can detect everything within or touching their bodies, regardless of alignment. However, they can only affect themselves or any aligned source they are touching.

Mages can only detect mana they personally manifested, but can affect mana of any type at a distance. Of course, they can affect the mana of their alignment to a much greater degree. Their limited mana detection and wide range of affect means they tend to require a great deal of schooling to be safe and effective. Unlike druids, they can manifest their alignment from nothing.

Unlike the other three classes, blue mages don’t have hard and fast rules for aligned mana detection and manipulation. Some have no mana detection capabilities at all. Some gain mana detection based on what powers they absorb. Some start with the ability to detect mana of their alignment. As for mana manipulation, that generally depended on what powers they were capable of absorbing.

I turned my attention inwards. I didn't have access to an instructor, so I'd have to wing this process. There was too much light to focus, and I had no eyelids to close, so I folded my antennae over my eyes to block out the light. The darkness gradually took over, and instead of looking inwards, I fell to sleep.

I hadn't really slept in a week, likely since I spent most of my time as a plant, so this was no surprise. What was a surprise, though, was my dream.

My consciousness delved into what looked to me like a giant half-marble. The bottom was flat and the inside was hollow, like a dome. Both the floor and walls were made of some glass-like material.

I tried to look around, and it took me a moment to understand the perspective. I was not inside of the marble, I was the marble. Looking outside of the marble I saw, as far as the eye could see, an endless void of nothingness. Unlike the sensory deprivation I had experienced earlier, this void didn't appear black to me, but white, like a canvas ready to be painted over.

On the bottom of the marble were the objects I had with me when I transformed — my clothes and bag — as well as a small swarm of various insects. I didn’t see my body, nor a brain, though.

I tried to pick a bug up and inspect it, but I had no hands. And yet, an invisible force lifted it towards the center, and my vision sharpened to focus on it. It was a locust, and best I could tell, it was one of the insects that I had devoured when I was a flytrap. Though, there was one important difference. This wasn't insect slurry, as it should have become after being digested. It was fully intact. It was moving.

It was alive.

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