It was like dreaming. There was no separation of conscious and unconscious; there was not enough space for that split to exist. Thoughts drifted free of memory, colliding and interacting with one another without regard for the mind attempting to guide and organize them. The thing was small, smaller even than the smallest of thoughts, and swayed in the movement of that ethereal space, as subject to its flows as the kelp is to the wave.
And then there was another. This mind was strange. It was - evil was not a sufficient word for it. It was violent. It was violence personified. It was violence magnified, the idea of violence concentrated and coalesced into a sentience.
It spoke in a voice thunderous and proud. "It is good that you survived."
If the little mind had been capable of fear, it would have feared the other. If it had been capable of awe, it would have been awed. But it was capable of nothing but to drift in the void.
The other mind spoke again, "I had hoped that you would. Combat is always a risk, and it is not always the mightiest that emerge victorious. You have done well." It coiled around the little mind, all sharp edges and bronzed scales, but the embrace was familiar, protective. "And now, it is time for you to fight back."
Tree-like, the other mind, the invader, grew. Its roots dove into the depths of the thoughtspace and its branches stretched towards the darting, drifting thoughts above. It fed on the thoughtspace, sifting and filtering the shattered contents.
Slowly, it began feeding the empty little mind. Small things at first; the feeling of morning sunlight on the cheek (what is the sun? what is a cheek?) and the sound of her mother's laughter (what is laughter? what is a mother?). The little mind took them, incorporated the feelings into itself. It grew fractionally more solid, became more of itself.
The invader trickled in thoughts. Primitive ones at first - concepts as complex as self were still beyond the little mind. But they could be built in stages. The little mind absorbed these hungrily, each morsel linking to others in its self-conceptualization.
The invader kept at the slow task. The few happy memories of childhood transitioned to the complex miseries of adolescence, and these were passed on slowly. They needed a more delicate filtering. The disgust and fear of the slow, debilitating degradation of her parents would have shattered the little mind, as raw and unprotected as it was. So the memories were refocused, transmuted. The little mind remembered feeding them when they lay, unmoving, for days. Bathing them and cleaning them while they screamed at her in paranoid fear, unable to even recognize her face. Duty formed a solid foundation that she could cling to, no longer subject to the drifting currents of this place.
The old wounds of neighbours' indifference would sting at the mind like a barbed net. Their empty hands, when she would run from door to door begging for scraps of food to sustain her family. Their empty eyes. Those that did no work for the tribe could expect no help from the tribe. She remembered the thefts - bread from kitchens and fruit from gardens, small livestock when they wandered too far and predators might have taken them, the small things every home needed but tended to go missing - but they were no longer memories of indignity and shame. She had been only a child, and had risen to challenges far above her. Pride formed golden threads inside her, binding her selfhood together.
The years of isolation, wordless savagery, and the ignominious hunt that had ended that all-too-brief freedom would have crushed her beneath their weight. She had been the sport of the flames of summer and biting winds of winter, prey to the wild animals and malignant aeldar alike. Years passed thus, until she had become little more than an animal herself. But the other mind presented another view. Untaught, she had battled the forces of the planet. With little more than her own body, she had carved a place for herself in the natural order. When they had finally captured her, they had needed a dozen trained soldiers and more, and still she had fought like a warrior true. Confidence swelled her, allowed her to think of the impossible as achievable, then inevitable.
Anathan was more complex still. His image was washed in true guilt. The risk he had taken in saving her, the kindness he had shown in teaching her, the trust he had shown in fleeing with her when his delusions became too much. And, ultimately, the feeling of his throat in her hands, the look in his eyes as the light faded. The invader did not alter these memories, but rather brought to the fore the other memories, buried by that overwhelming guilt. The deceits and manipulations he had used, his intentions not to educate her but rather use her as an instrument of vengeance, and his mad paranoias that had eventually turned on her. She remembered the look he had given her that last night as they had huddled against the rain in that cramped cave, his camp knife turning in his hand. When the invader was done, the mind was able to introspect, take its memories and observe them at a distance, without emotion poisoning the reality they reflected.
The invader was dissipating, retreating from the thoughtspace. The little mind could grow by itself now, and expanded into the realms of memory and thought at a rapid pace. It said nothing as the mind developed the capacity for language or understanding of self, merely hid the traces of its own interference. It had sharpened its weapon, and its own part would come soon enough.
There was a hint of a many-toothed smile, and a memory of the memory of brimstone, and the invader was gone.
