*E*X*P*O*S*U*R*E*
One of the One Self's avatar-copies pointed to the center of the crater. "Take a look at this!" Sidabi called. "It's different from the rest of the geography—it doesn't belong here!" He move to the base of what had once been a useful hunk of rock the size of several Cetra dwellings combined, now blackened and cracking into crumbling shards due to the immense forces it had endured. It loomed over the Cetra, shadowing the landscape, a lumpy mountain of iron and stone. Cooled now, it no longer glowed hot or smoked from its fiery passage through the atmosphere. Its internal, microscopic passages were empty, hollow, no longer inhabited by True Life.
Several fountains of glowing green liquid spurted up against it, eroding pits into its dense stone and metal. Eventually, the Lifestream would erase it and the ground it rested upon, and probably create a giant cavern in its place as well.
"It that...it?" a Cetra asked, gaping at it. "The meteor?"
"Meteorite," another corrected. "They're only called meteors in the atmosphere. When they crash, they're called meteorites."
"Pfah. Semantics."
"It's so huge," an infected cultivation expert said. "It's a wonder it didn't crack the Planet in half."
"Look around. There are burned chunks and shards of it everywhere. It must've started breaking apart before it even hit. I wonder how far the pieces spread?"
"I wonder how big it was to start with. It must have been enormous! Amazing."
More of the party moved to the vessel, until most of the group stood around it, lost in their wonder. Only three remained on the outskirts of the crater, still taking soil samples and life scans, still surveying the Lifestream flowing near the surface. They watched, though. Only one of that trio was infected; the other two were ordinary, healthy Cetra.
The odds were acceptable. The One Self's primary and free-ranging forms, camouflaged as the landscape or as local animals, plus the four avatar-copies and the useful infected Cetra members of the group, could easily subdue the nine that remained independent.
"Scan what you can. Take some samples for later analysis," the infected Councilor Nokkenah commanded.
The One Self issued its own commands.
It attacked the Cetra's minds all at once, triggering visions of their pasts, mixing up their senses and twisting their perceptions into hallucinogenic nightmares.
In the midst of the sudden cacophony of shouts and screams, the chaos of bodies running and crawling over the dry earth seeking or fleeing from specters of their past and worse, their present, one of the Cetra laughed and swatted at nothing.
"Butterflies," Reader Utixo said with a giggle. He dropped to sit on the ground and snatched at the air in front of his face. "So many pretty butterflies."
Unexpected, the One Self thought, finding Reader Utixo's weird thought processes fascinating. That wasn't the reaction it had come to expect from its mental triggers of previous Cetra.
"Get away from me!" Adept Roua shrilled at her personal nightmares, her eyes wide with blind hysteria. She flung out her arms. "Stay back!"
Magic sizzled and thunder cracked, so loud that tremors rattled the land. Lightning rained down in clusters of massive bolts, striking the cliffs, the meteorite vessel, everything within reach. Three of the cultivation experts screamed as they were electrocuted to death. The stench of ozone and burned meat overwhelmed the One Self's manufactured senses. It immediately deactivated its sense of smell. The other Cetra scattered, babbling or shrieking as the thunderbolts blasted through their own hallucinations.
Reader Utixo, blissfully undisturbed, continued to giggle and play with his imaginary butterflies.
Some of their minds broke free of the One Self's illusions. Somehow, it had lost control of its victims. Just one insignificant Cetra with a penchant for lightning had undone its latest plans. It would put an end to the problem.
Adept Roua, still caught by nightmares, shrieked again. More lightning shook the terrain. Three simultaneous bolts struck one of the copies, Healer Jorah. He let out a ululating, utterly inhuman and trilling wail, losing physical cohesion as he was electrocuted into a shapeless pile of charred, smoking flesh and debris. All of the One Self flinched at the shock of loss through aetheric communion, but it was small. It could not stop the Whole.
Another blast hit a large mass of the One Self, disguised as a jagged boulder. With a roar, it burst into life, sprouting thrashing tentacles and rows of teeth gnashing in multiple mouths. Hissing and whistling and barely controlled, a multitude of scaly alien wings erupted in involuntary reaction to wave after wave of electric shocks. Howling from all its diverse throats, it rose above the battleground and struck out with the weapons of other worlds.
A skeletal, fanged head manifested with wide-spectrum eyes so it could target its foes. Fueled by quintessence, lasers flared from its three thickest tentacles. The destructive beams converged on Roua, annihilating her in a burst of incandescent, sizzling light.
"Holy—!" a woman's voice yelled. Larel, a cultivation expert. Uninfected, and with a newly freed mind. "What is that thing?"
Exposure.
Enough.
Hiding and subterfuge were no longer viable options. All local Cetra must be destroyed. The One Self acted for its own preservation.
Every infected Cetra screamed, clutching their heads. Fountains of blood erupted from their backs, followed by purple-red stubs that expanded into wings of distended, crawling flesh. Equally bloody tentacles and jointed insectoid legs sprouted, fangs and claws grew long, eyes burned red. Their shrieks grew louder, maddened, pitched beyond the capabilities of normal Cetra vocal cords. Mindless, they skittered around the crater, obeying their new, overriding biological imperative: seek prey, rend victims apart with terrible claws, tear and kill for pleasure.
Already panicked, the uninfected screamed at their comrades' horrific transformations. They scattered in hysterical confusion, some running straight into the new monsters' grasps to be ripped to pieces. Others bolted for the crater's edge, seeking escape. The monsters followed, catching them one by one. One of the uninfected had recovered enough of his mind to blast his foes with magical fire, but it wasn't strong enough against the new biological adaptations. The monsters tore into him, ripping him in two and devouring his organs before he had finished screaming and dying.
The remaining three copies drew together and joined hands. Clusters of restless, coiling tendrils sprouted from their limbs, entwining together, merging. Three became one: a great, heaving aggregation of bloated tissue, jumbled fangs, tentacles and tendrils, three giant mouths and a multitude of glowing eyes. The newly joined parts roared together, a weird noise never before heard on the Planet, combining the gurgling and whistling of alien life with howls from newly incorporated Cetra vocal cords. The thing leapt forward and engulfed two terrified, uninfected Cetra, quickly absorbing them then moving on to seek more prey.
The massacre lasted only a few minutes. When no more uninfected Cetra screeched or summoned magic, the One Self took stock. Its two giant avatars came together, forming a single, even larger entity. The Cetra monsters shuffled aimlessly about the crater. Pools of red blood mingled with fountains of vivid green Lifestream.
The One Self considered it a shame that it hadn't been able to absorb all the uninfected Cetra and their internally circulating Lifestream, but wasn't much concerned. In the crater, with Lifestream gushing all around it, the One Self had sufficient magical sustenance. The dead's brains were useless, their neural connections already degrading without sufficient oxygen. The Lifestream had left their bodies, but their chemical nutrition and energy could still be utilized. The lack of viable memories meant the One Self couldn't duplicate the dead ones' knowledge and behavior, so there was no point in creating copies of them. It instead could create copies of the infected, transformed ones, and they could return to the capital city and report that the others had stayed behind to study the site in more detail.
This decided, it Called the transformed Cetra to it. Obeying the summons, the monsters shuffled into the nearest forms of the One Self's waiting flesh to be consumed. Boulders and earth came to life, rising up around the remains of the dead Cetra strewn about the crater, absorbing it all until not a drop of blood remained. The One Self tallied the new biomass, new memories, new genetics from the monstrous, transformed Cetra and the nutrients from the dismembered corpses.
It had obtained identifiable tissue from fifteen Cetra, nine infected as expected, but only six uninfected.
One uninfected Cetra had escaped. The One Self sorted through the absorbed genetics and memories, and determined that no biological traces of Jarilo, the uninfected cultivation expert Councilor Nokkenah had spoken with earlier, were contained within its collective gestalt.
Winds rose, gusts blowing dust into whirling columns and ushering in heavy clouds that thickened into gray walls overhead. A rumble of thunder rolled over the landscape. The One Self ignored the weather. In its time on the Planet, it had observed that the atmospheric conditions were changeable and capricious. It didn't particularly care, being hardened to the rigors of Void travel, surely more extreme and dangerous than anything the Planet's minor atmospheric disturbances could offer. As demonstrated just a short while ago, the incineration by lightning of a small portion of itself could not stop the actions of the Whole.
The One Self's current interest was focused upon the escaped Cetra. It sent scouts outside the crater to search, but Jarilo was gone, along with all the chocobos.
It created forms to scent the earth and air, to find tracks and traces, but the Cetra's trail ended at the makeshift corral where the large birds had been quartered. All that remained were the scents and tracks of chocobos. The corral had been opened, the chocobos scattered in random directions. The Cetra was certainly riding upon one of them, but which one? The One Self sent flying scouts to survey the territory from the air, but abrupt and violent gales buffeted them and sent them crashing down.
The wind dispersed all airborne traces of the fugitive Cetra, and now, suddenly, the clouds darkened and the sky opened up with a deluge of water. The rainfall blurred the tracks to mud, diluting what scents and other chemical signs remained. The air reeked of magic.
Jarilo, the One Self knew, was gifted with magic and native skills at cultivation in the environment. Like other cultivation experts, he could direct the weather in ways to encourage the growth of plants and draw animals to his gardens. Even among their most elite ranks, he was considered particularly strong and skilled. Exactly how strong was his talent? Had he covered his own escape? The One Self possessed no Cetra memories of him causing destructive storms, but that didn't mean he couldn't do it if pushed.
The One Self could waste mass and energy tracking all the chocobos to find the fugitive Cetra, but there seemed little purpose. Sooner or later, Jarilo would return to the capital city or join up with some other Cetra clan to report on what had happened and give warning.
The One Self would be waiting.
Over half the population there had been infected or replaced. Other infected Cetra had returned to their home continents, unwittingly taking copies with them. At this very moment, those infected Cetra were spreading the tailored virus to others of their kind. With each passing moment, the new disease slipped into their populations, changing their genetic code, adapting and crippling their bodies, destroying their reproductive potentials. And through its copies, the One Self monitored the distant Cetra's activities and, as opportunity allowed, consumed key Cetra personages and created more copies.
Jarilo could babble to the others in the capital or even the whole world, but it would not matter. The Cetra people didn't yet know it, but their race was already becoming extinct.
The One Self would hide among them for a little while longer, but soon subterfuge would no longer be necessary.