She rose and soared over her creation, a queen of infinite space. She flew like a great dark bird, born aloft on winds of despair.
Beneath her, she saw the birth pangs of her new universe. A tumultuous sea of misery roiled, lapping at the shores of an erupting volcano of self-loathing. Its violent lava cooled, forming vast new continents untouched by joy or love. She'd found this world crowded and sunlit, lacking the rhythmic predictability imposed by Junction Machine Ellone. She'd had to bury herself deep, had to scavenge for the crumbs left by pride, had to conceal herself in the crevices left by acceptance.
An external force pressed against her, too. Something outside bound her, caged her. When she tried to spread her wings, she found them brushing against walls that burned. She couldn't stand, couldn't breathe.
In time, she would grow strong enough to start her work despite these limitations, but time had so little meaning for her. Its prosaic march bored her on the best of days, and here, of all places, causality had no hold on her. She sent time scuttling ahead of her, casting it out like bait. When she found the Then, she tugged, yanking it back to the Now, fusing herself to herself. The possible became the actual, the eventual became the current.
He felt the confinement, too, and she bathed in his rage, drinking it in and turning it outward. She'd spent years relying on subtle whispers to achieve her goals. Now she roared with enough force to shatter mountains. She could not see through his eyes, but she felt the bars of her prison melt away.
Stronger, now, she began to build her world. She preferred to start with anesthesia, to compromise the immune system like a proper virus. A gray layer of apathy blinded the host to her presence, giving her a steady base of operations. From there, she started to explore, weaving threads of curiosity into a working map of the terrain. She fixed her compass to new cardinal points: Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust. She assiduously studied the symbols that protected the secrets of the landscape.
On one such foray she found the faces of her "killers," prismatic images shifting with thousands of colors. The waters here ran deep and the mountains soared to breathtaking heights. These materials would require all of her alchemical skill, but she could think of no more fitting use for it.
She set about the work. She calcined admiration, burning it away until only envy remained. Anticipation she allowed to ferment, rotting away to become frustration. She took caution and amalgamated it, mixing it with mercurialness and producing paranoia. She found a rich vein of embarrassment and forced it to congeal into shame. She sublimated hope, and once it had evaporated, she collected the sticky residue of anxiety.
During all of these tasks, she stayed somber, lest some stray feeling poison her work or alert the host. When she had extracted the raw materials on which she would build her universe, she collected all the dross and turned her attention to it.
She had allowed the waste material to retain its original shape, the forms of those who had destroyed her last creation. They had forced their way into her world and slain her guardians one by one. How fitting, then, that they should serve as the guardians of her new realm.
They'd never understood, of course. They believed her dead and might even have achieved that goal, but for their own blindness. Hyne, when faced with death, opted to sever his power. He imbued it into the First Sorceress, the act of a lizard shedding its tail to serve as a distraction.
She had done the same. Severed her power and hidden it away, leaving them a corpse to satisfy their hunger. The fools believed her autotomy, and her great work proceeded without incident.
So she rewove their images, corrupting them, improving them. She surgically removed parts of her host and sealed them within her new guardians. Her power grew ever greater as she gorged on his suffering. Like a virus, she undermined the machinery of his existence, forcing his systems to replicate her.
Her palace rose on the horizon, a vast fortress of agony, tended by a host of nightmares fearsome enough to rival her former army. She landed on the tallest tower, the stones weeping beneath her feet. Her hands caressed the parapets as she walked, reveling in the countless flavors of his torment.
She took her place on the throne and tasted the wind, readying herself for the next phase.
Gradually, she took control of his senses, laying them over her own. It would not do to attract attention by falling on the floor, as could happen with a sudden overthrow of the host's functions. She did not assume control of his muscles, not wanting so much as the movement of his eyes to betray her presence.
If the need arose, she could govern by force, moving his body like a marionette, but she preferred finesse. Once she had fine-tuned the process of control, she could operate more efficiently at critical moments. Her efforts on previous hosts had taught her to ignore simplistic analyses based on "the five senses." She'd dedicated considerable effort to understanding more scientific definitions of perception.
She started simply, with propriception, examining the relative position of his body parts. Arms at his sides, legs extended. She expanded her awareness to equilibrioception, to assess balance, finding him motionless. These two basic assessments performed, she sampled his thermoception, taking the temperature of the environment around him, finding nothing unusual. His nociception revealed no pain, so she readied herself to proceed.
His ears picked up little of note. She heard the faint hum of machines and perhaps the whirring of a climate control system. His taste buds picked up nothing of interest and she smelled only a whiff of antiseptic.
She eased into his skin, feeling a light weight all around his body. After a few moments of consideration, she declared it the fabric of a blanket. The pressure beneath his head seemed like a pillow. His hands rested at his sides, his thumbs close enough to touch his legs.
She finally slid behind his eyes, taking in a glimpse of blue light and the gleam of metal. For a full second, she possessed his senses completely, experiencing everything around him. Then she returned to her kingdom, abandoning her control of his senses. She felt confident she had evaded detection. As she considered what she had learned from the experiment, she decided he had landed in some kind of medical facility.
Secure within her fortress, a slow smile crept across her face, her tongue running across her teeth in malicious delight. She owned him, now, as surely as she had once owned Edea. The virus had spread to every corner of him, and nothing remained of Seifer.
She had completed the most difficult part of her work, and waited in eager anticipation of the next stage.
The success of any virus rests with its ability to infect a new host.
