There were plans to be put into motion, but the Enclosing One would need to wait. Its power was growing but divided. Meanwhile, other species were making progress. Impressive progress. [i]This planet shall be diverse, and populous. Yet so much life drifts freely- No matter. It shall all be covered. All in time.[/i] There were threads expanding in the water now, and the Entity recognised them as the same as the deceptively restful creatures that had speared the predatory cells and fed upon them. Now, joined together, they formed an even better trap. [i]A trap for something which might choose to drift among them,[/i] it thought with some degree of an emotion approaching smugness. The fractals rested still on the shallows. Not so for their divided progeny, for many of the spores they created, the Enclosing One knew, were being trapped in the spindly web of cells, unable to be freed by the current before the spikes pierced their covering and could feed on the living interior. Some still made their way to safer locations, and that was enough for this One.

Some of the predators, in turn, seemed to have changed, become joined bodies in their own way. They appeared to be doing an excellent job of feasting on any type of cell they found, lesser or greater. This was what the Enclosing One had anticipated would be an eventual hazard for its thin layers. With regards to its colonies, however, the layer of death and regeneration seemed to keep their and the fractal population in a kind of balance on the shallow seabed... Producer and consumer, the growth and the grazer. Interesting enough. Unsettling, when they made gaps in the fractals from time to time, but interesting.

The once-rogue species- or some of them- had returned to the Enclosing One's grasp, but did not earn all of its power. Some of that energy, that wonderful [i]space[/i] filled with potential, the Entity kept to itself, and it did so with reason. It liked some of what it saw developing in this world, and imitation was a slow process. Occasionally, in passing, the Entity observed neutral life that had broken away from the wild masses which were beyond its control, like the life which it had cast away from its ordered sphere of power. If a neutral species it liked, wanted to copy, ever broke away, the Enclosing One would be there, providing purpose to the aimless life of the world.

As for now, there was work to be done. With the tangle of bladed threads posing a danger to drifting organisms but the regained species too deep to efficiently develop any form of photosynthesis, the Enclosing One instead altered the individual cells to produce for themselves an internal armour, a wall which each one carried to give it some protection, and a little structure along the joins between cells. It was similar to an adaptation it had seen another species produce for itself in its earlier flight. 

The Entity felt that the established fractals were proving, so far, to be successful in all aspects except variety. There were slight differences in species, between the colonies with ridges and with short fronds and with shallow wrinkles, yet within each species all cells performed the exact same tasks in the exact same way. If it wished for them to become adaptable, to become truly complex, there would need to be variation within the colony. [i]How, without changing their inherited code? Symbiosis with the lesser cells on which they feed? There's an answer to this somewhere.[/i] The code could be very, very intricate indeed. Certainly room there for diversity. Perhaps the Entity could construct the colony to have different cells, specialised for reading different parts of one code... An idea worth experimenting with. The genus had the ability to produce spores as part of its natural behavious, and as more of it grew, the Enclosing One tried to see if it could create sections of the pattern in which the cells would do nothing else... To some success. The spores were produced, but the spores themselves were simply a continuation of the same type of cell, separated from the main body. Specialised cells could be the answer to the complexity problem, if the code could be adjusted to produce them. It was time to tinker.

[hider=Enclosing One]15% - Fractal Colonies
8% - Regained Species (as yet unnamed)
2% - Unused
75% - Undeveloped

The Enclosing One has caused the regained species to begin producing thin cell walls that fit into its growth pattern. The Fractal Colonies now produce surfaces which break off spores continuously.[/hider]