Busy didn't begin to cover it.
The first thing I learned after deciding to plan my existence was that planning required… practice. And practice required experimentation. And experimentation—
—well, it got messy.
Very messy.
My current form was proof of that.
Scales layered across my body like an alligator's armor, thick and ridged. Antlered horns branched from my skull, stolen from a deer's elegance and twisted into something sharper. A wolf's head gave me teeth that fit too well with everything else. My tail coiled like a snake's, flexible, precise. Bat wings folded against my back, stretched and ready. Goat-like legs carried me with unsettling stability. And my hands—no, claws—still bore the brutal structure of the hydra.
It worked.
It was also… horrifying.
Which, as it turned out, was useful.
Because I wasn't just evolving.
I was staging.
The forest now held evidence.
Artificial corpses lay scattered across multiple regions—bodies that had never lived in the traditional sense. I created them by splitting off parts of myself, shaping them into forms that shouldn't exist, then severing my connection.
Instant death.
Perfect remains.
Each one was different.
Some looked like failed experiments—mismatched limbs, organs that didn't quite belong. Others were deliberate nightmares: too many eyes, too many joints, tentacles layered over bone structures that had no right to support them.
One of them… I wasn't even sure what I'd made.
Too many moving parts. Too many redundancies. If something like that had moved, I wasn't entirely sure I would've been comfortable with it—even knowing it was me.
Good.
That was the point.
Around them, I left signs.
Claw marks—deep, violent, inconsistent.
Acid burns.
Blood trails that suggested struggle, conflict, battle.
Not a clean kill.
A fight.
Multiple fights.
The kind of scene that made observers ask the right questions:
What kind of creature does this?
And what kind of creature survives fighting it?
If they were smart, they'd reach the conclusion I wanted:
That there were two unknown entities.
And that one of them—
—might be the thing that turned the sky into a second sun.
I leaned back against a tree, folding my wings slightly.
"Yeah," I muttered internally. "That should keep them busy."
Misdirection wasn't about lying.
It was about giving people something believable to focus on.
Later, I took to the sky.
I shifted forms mid-motion—bones hollowing, muscles tightening, wings restructuring into something more efficient. Feathers replaced membrane. My body streamlined.
An eagle.
Simple. Clean. Effective.
The wind caught beneath my wings, and for a moment—
It was just… nice.
Speed without panic.
Height without urgency.
Freedom, in a way I hadn't felt since… ever, actually.
I circled lazily, scanning the land below, my mind quieter now that it had something steady to anchor to.
Which was probably why the thought came up.
"My name…"
It felt… off.
Not wrong.
Just… outdated.
That name belonged to someone who worked a job, complained about bosses, and died on a street under a truck.
That wasn't me anymore.
I didn't have parents here.
No history.
No one to remember me by anything.
So—
I could choose.
I tilted slightly, riding a thermal upward as I thought.
Darwin.
The word came easily.
Appropriate.
Obvious.
A little on the nose, maybe—but I'd earned it.
What I was doing wasn't random mutation.
It was directed.
Selection, pressure, elimination, optimization.
Darwinism.
Just… accelerated.
And very, very intentional.
"Arthur Darwin," I decided.
It felt right.
A name with weight, but not too much. Familiar enough to sound normal. Strange enough to matter.
And the irony?
Not lost on me at all.
A sentient colony of single-celled organisms, connected by one consciousness, manually guiding evolution at a scale no natural system could ever reach—
Yeah.
Darwin would probably have questions.
I smiled slightly as I banked.
That was when I saw them.
Figures moving below, partially hidden beneath the forest canopy. Dark robes. Controlled movement. No wasted motion.
Not hunters.
Not soldiers.
Not adventurers.
"…Oh, that's not suspicious at all."
They moved in a line, quiet, deliberate. Carrying something. Not supplies—too careful for that.
Purpose.
I adjusted my angle, circling higher, observing.
Past life knowledge clicked into place immediately.
Robes.
Secrecy.
Coordinated movement in a forest that most people were avoiding.
"…Cultists."
I didn't even hesitate.
Interest replaced idle calm instantly.
If I was right, then this wasn't just random activity.
This was intentional.
Summoning, maybe.
Ritual work.
Something tied to the exact kind of things I didn't understand yet.
Which made it—
Valuable.
I angled downward, silently shifting form mid-descent into something smaller, less noticeable, slipping between branches as I followed.
Carefully.
Quietly.
Because whatever they were about to do—
I wanted to see it up close.