It is terribly hard to pull all of this water towards myself, but I manage. Somehow, because I am the liquid, I can move it. A very useful talent if I do say so myself, though very disturbing. It feels as if the noble liquid is a eager pet, responding to my commands with enthusiasm. Such would be an apt metaphor, if the water didn't want to settle on the ground, and therefore required effort.

  It swirls around me in mimicry of currents, and I can see it without any eyes. There are vibrations in the area beyond my water, but I can't go out there. Terrible things have happened to greater people than I who have gone into the Shine.

  I have water surrounding me. What now? Where even am I? First, I need to calm down. I need to be composed.

  I am surrounded by the Shine, what should be only on the roof of the water. Am I surrounded by the Beyond? It would seem so. I don't have a body, somehow, but I still exist inside of this water.

  Hmm, I suppose I could take the water as my body, and interact with the Beyond. I am most likely dead anyways.

  I begin to shape and mold the water into the shape of a crustacean body, without the torso on top, of course, because it is absolutely useless. I need no tiny second body unless I can use it to scout ahead of me. It being attached to me just makes it a weakness in combat.

  Of course, it takes a few tries to get it right. I'm positive that I know cephalopod biology better than my own species', if only for the purpose of killing them. Better to leave the understanding of our biology to the physicians. What I do know, however, is how my body moves.

  There are two beings outside of my body, in the Beyond. I can feel their vibrations on the water that makes up my form now. They are speaking about something, I don't know what.

  I form my body in a basic shape, a saucer with six protrusions, then begin shaping it as I do a combat drill. Even I trained in combat, even if I never had the chance to use it. My "body" moves instinctively, forming itself into a crustacean form, befitting of myself. I, of course, remove the default fleshy protrusion at the top.

  Now, with my new eye stalks, I can see outside of the water... somehow. I am still unsure how this works in any real manner.

  What I do see is quite interesting. There are a pair of fleshy beings speaking to each other by a wall of strangely colored vertical sts. They seem to be a new type of intelligent being, if I work on the assumption that the common point between all of the intelligent races, the upper body, is an indicator of intelligence.

  I finish my martial form, and barely manage to keep hold of the form I created during it. I am now what many would call a crab. A rge one, but a crab still. The superior species.

  As my perception fills the new body I have fashioned for myself, I stumble a bit, feeling the effects of a greater downward pull. I do not think that I will be able to swim in the Beyond

  As I spin myself around with a more familiar body, I hear one of the beings start to speak, in a far less bassy way than I am used to, but despite the discrepancy I turn to face them.

  "Are you able to understand me?" The white-haired one with dark skin and some type of cloth on her asked. The white, nude one with the color-changing hair faced her companion, "No, it can't. Obviously." She gesticuted in circles with her hands, "It's a fuckin' crab!"

  I speak back. I need not the fleshy mouth when I can control my entire body so easily. "And can crustaceans not speak, just the same as yourself?"

  "I don't believe crabs should speak, therefore, they can't." The nude one crossed her arms and faced away, towards a raised surface in the back of the room. She ran over and jumped on to it, over the banisters. There were steps to the left for their feet. Why did she not use that?

  "I do not believe that that is how logic works, Chaos." The dark-skinned one said, looking back and forth between the pale one and myself. I stopped moving, and faced towards her, she seemed the more reasonable of the two.

  She froze in pce staring right back at me, and began to stutter some words. "C-can you un-nderstand us?"

  "Yes, I can." I vibrated the outer yer of my body to create a voice. It was strange-sounding and inconsistent, but functioned just fine. The woman rexed a bit, then gred up at this Chaos person, then back to me.

  "Could I ask what you are? I have never heard of a... water-crab before."

  That question is a tad difficult to answer, so I sway my middle legs back and forth idly while I think of a response. "I am not exactly sure myself. I was fighting a honorable battle when a vortex drew me away. Then I became the water I once breathed. May I ask you, what happened to bring me here?" Now that I think of it, I feel somehow more real now than my old body ever did. I would attribute this to my removal of the fleshy torso.

  "Oh, Chaos and I performed a ritual to summon a new member to this pce. You seem to have been chosen." She seems nervous.

  "What might this membership entail?" I would rather know what I am getting in to before making any hasty decisions. Speaking of which, how dare they! They kidnapped me, and are simply going to brush it off? Nonsense!

  "Well, we are not exactly sure, but-"

  "Congratutions!" A mature, feminine voice resounded from above, at which I look up to see Chaos holding something that looked like a cone with the tip cut off to her mouth. It is translucent and tinted bluish. "You're a god now!"

  Oh.

  "Anyways, Eth, ya might wanna see this!"

  Aethernal