As the end of his task drew nearer, the warlock found increasingly questionable places to hide the alchemists’ incubators.
He set one adrift atop a big, waxy lily.
He hung another from a tree branch like a brutalist holiday ornament.

It was nearly noon by the time the last box was safely stashed beneath a blanket of moist forest litter.
“Finally.” He groaned and turned back around.

On his way out of the forest, the warlock spotted the alchemist waiting for him.
The older man’s face lit up as soon as he spotted his lackey.

“Good, you’re back!”
“Were you able to get all of them?” he asked in a conspiratorial hiss.

As Daniel nodded, he couldn’t help but notice the blowgun from before. It was now securely holstered at Victor’s hip.

“Good, good…!” the alchemist let out a staggered breath, a mix between excitement and anxiety.

The warlock’s hand instinctively went to reach for the crumpled parchment in his pocket.
“Right, then, are you ready to sign my form…?”

“We’ll get back to town first, then I’ll finalise any necessary paperwork.”

The warlock swallowed a remark about how you first have to initialise a process to finalise it.
“Fine…” he relented exhaustedly.

“Good,” said the alchemist before turning around and starting his march towards civilisation.
“Keep an eye out for any druids.”

On a wilted leaf sailing some secluded pond in the hills, a single alga lazed about alongside its peers, engaging in idle gossip to pass the time.

“Hey, man…” The cell to Basil’s left drawled sluggishly. “Have you heard about the apple mites yet, man?”

 For a while Basil stewed in the sunlit broth dumbly before replying to his colleague.
“No…” he said lazily.

“It’s messed up, man…!” stressed his neighbour. “I heard some humans are leaving these bugs all over the place, man…”
“Isn’t that weird, man…?”

“That is weird…” Basil concurred through a sun-drunk haze.
“What would they do that for…?”

“How should I know, man…?”
“But if I had to guess, I’d say it’s all those neurones, man!”
“It’s just not right for a cell to just get fed for existing, man…!”

“That’s corrupt, and it’s like literally utilitarianism, man…!” he rippled passionately.

After a long pause, Basil managed to dig up some hazy memories.
“You know, I used to have a brain…”

“Bullshit,” the other alga fired back without delay.
“You’ve been here my whole life, man!”
It hesitated for a moment. “Are you getting enough light over there, man…?”

As his concerned neighbour began to flagellate over, Basil nudged him back firmly.
“I’m serious, man. I had a whole bunch of cells…”

“Yeah, right, man. Where’d you put them all?”

Before Basil could formulate a response, a different cell floated up to them.
It was a gorgeous, green diatom with an iridescent radial shield.
“I heard they were a fishman before~!” it said scandalously.

“I heard they were a proper druid too, guys…!” announced an altogether different cell.

Basil’s neighbour did a cellular frown. “How can algae be a druid, man…?”
“How would you wear the hat…?”

“Besides, man, lest you forget, we exist, and qualitative excitation, informed by your everyday causal outcomes – mere coordination in this configuration space of dreams…!”

While the other algae discussed the bold assertion, Basil was using his borrowed brainpower to churn through the facts like a paper fact through treacle.

“I think I have to go back up there…” he said with a note of reluctance.
“I have to warn them… about the mites…”

“Come on, man, don’t talk like that. I’m seriously starting to worry about you…!” whinged his neighbour.

Basil tuned his kin out as he focused on his form.
As far as depth of experience went, he could only go up from where he was.

He couldn’t quite picture a complex limb, so instead he focused on moving up in steps.

Movement – any extra appendage had to inform his size – had to be a step in the right direction.
When Basil opened his eyes – not literally, of course – he found himself a giant in a nebulous blizzard of swirling green algae and shiny diatoms.

He felt a hum of confusion from the place that he was at mere seconds prior.
“It worked…!” he realised.
“I can do this…”

Judging from the obscenely fast cilia lining the corona where his mouth would be, Basil figured that he was a rotifer.
Looking into the storm, he attempted to spot his colleague.
“I have to go now… Thank you guys for everything…!” he called out into the green storm before swimming towards the sun.

Basil knew that he had to grow bigger.
“A mouth…” The fishman said to himself. He remembered what it should feel like, the complex network of muscular ropes and pulleys.
That – combined with his frantic wriggling – led the fishman’s form to land on a tiny yet macroscopic fish.

With each step the world was looking more vivid and brighter.

As suddenly as he disappeared, Basil suddenly erupted from the still surface of the pond, fully formed and already dressed in druid robes.

His presence reverberated through the tightly woven fabric of nature’s bustling infrastructure.
As he went to take his first step out of the muck, the silt hardened beneath his feet into serendipitous steps.

The fishman scrambled out of the shallows and bolted straight for the henge without delay.
“Got to warn the others… Got to warn the others…!” he wheezed the mantra every other step of the way.

When he came up to the mound of thorny briars, Basil was momentarily taken aback by the spacious passage already forming for him.
Without thinking twice, he charged inside.

The briars took him to a clearing from where a trail of yawning orange blossoms marked the right trail.

As he sped towards the meadow – for just a brief moment – his eye met those of the warlock.

He wasn’t ten steps further when he heard the warlock raise the alarm.
“That was the druid we killed!” he exclaimed distantly.

“Evidently not,” Victor growled tersely and reached for his blowgun.
“Give me that precious paper of yours,” the alchemist suddenly demanded.

“What, why?” he hesitated immediately.

“What do you think?! To sign!” He erupted, “Now, hurry before he gets away!”  

He snatched the surprisingly durable paper from Daniel’s tentative grasp and filled it out against the bumpy bark of a tree.
“There, that’s us sorted, correct?” he asked impatiently.

The warlock gave a fast but overwhelmed nod.

“Good. Get out of the forest!” With that final command – one Daniel was happy to follow for once – the alchemist bolted in pursuit of Basil.

The druid thought he was far enough ahead to consider himself safe when he heard the small dart whistle past him.

When he looked over his shoulder, he saw the alchemist already taking aim once more.

As he shot the dart, Basil felt an unearthed root yank his foot and send him tumbling down a steep hill and into more briars.

“Dick!” he shouted after him before downing an alchemical concoction and running after him into the sea of thorns.

As Basil spilt into a denser portion of the woods, he felt the tickle of a fletching’s kiss on his cheek.
“Shit…! What do I do!? Should I change shape?! what if I-!?” As the druid’s thought became occupied by doubt, his feet stumbled on an extinguished firepit.

Seizing his opportunity, Victor took aim only to find a faceful of corvid claws swooping down from above.
“Get off me, you soot-covered pigeon!” flailed the alchemist as he caught glimpses of the retreating druid between the beats of his attacker’s wings.

Victor emerged from the thorns thoroughly scored.
He wiped his own blood from his face and spat out the feathers as he took aim with his blowgun one final time.

Basil felt an immediate chill as the needle slipped between his shingled scales and breached his bloodstream.

“Dimethylmercury and potassium cyanide, arsehole!” the alchemist cheered viciously before feeling the ground shake beneath him.
His grin faded to a nervous grimace.
“What? You came up with the ingredients!” he mockingly announced to the kingdom of nature before turning and running for the nearest town.

Basil staggered to his feet and hurried to finish the final stretch of his desperate journey – now racing against the alchemists’ poisons.