The risk that Sybil took was calculated. But the Mistress was more cunning at the mathematics than an undergraduate.
Within moments of entry, Sybil's body had lost all senses. It simply went black, and the student crumpled onto the floor. Lips drooling saliva, there wasn't anything that would be obvious that there was any glimmer of intelligence left behind those eyes. With a glassy stare, Sybil's body simply looked towards the ceiling, the braids upon the hair sprawling out upon the floor. All it took was a trill, and Sybil was entered, and within another trill, it was like being wrenched from a carriage, unable to move, senses going inward at the sensation of something entering the body on a primordial level that the student had never once experienced. All the student could feel, through the thick fog that was covering the senses, was the coolness of the wooden floors. How comfortable it was to just lie down, and rest warm flesh against it. Almost beckoning to just...
Sleep. The tension behind Sybil's joints remained, as though seizing.
The Mistress's reckless entry was like dragging an arm through a field of barbed wire and broken glass. The mind was not consumed by fear, nor was it caught unprepared for an event such as this. Her form struggled to wriggle its way out, like a wire against a fleshy orifice, scraping within, pain searing throughout her body, as she entered the primordial soup of Sybil's mind. Her formless figure was clawed at by unseen obstacles. Each step forward into the Student's mindscape was as though she was volunteering to rip out her fingernails, one at a time, with nothing but her own fingers. The throbbing of the heart was deafening. The warm flesh surrounded her, as though she was back in the genesis of his own life, in a womb. She could lurch forward, but hands were scraping against her, in this sea of flesh and blood, pinking red staining the corners of her vision.
She could feel a presence hooking into her ghostly flesh. Something that felt as though an anchor was being forcibly burrowed into her heel, pulling her down by the Achilles tendon. The reddish, fleshy mindscape throbbed, as the temperature began to boil, as though trying to cook out a parasite from within. Sybil could only feel a searing pain, as the Mistress entered within. It was sheer, and utter, agony. It was like someone was failing to perform a lobotomy by means of icepick. Every inch she gained sending a thrum of stabbing pain into the student's skull, shifting deeper, and deeper, within the mind. The scream that left Sybil's psyche was one of a pained newborn, primal in nature, screaming in utter agony, as though its life was at an end. The throbbing, sharp pain pulsed through every nerve ending, every ounce of flesh that the Mistress attempted to control.
Synapses pulsing, the Mistress was close. She could see the memories. The strongest ones first, the ones that almost incurred more pain than what she was feeling. Sybil's inner eyes could see the memory play from behind the flesh. The two were conjoined, like some abominable creature that should have been miscarried. For a split moment, the Mistress could feel the outer layer of her eyelid connect with Sybil's socket, eyes meeting, as her tendon was severed through the very flesh itself. Her eyes widened, her lips opened to scream, joining in the sickening cacophony that she had created by her intrusion. Unable to breathe inwards, her wailing was cut short, her body merging with the flesh that she so desired, burning hot, and searing into her ethereal form. She could feel teeth against her flesh, she could feel fire against her lungs, and the eyelids.
The pain writhed within her, with every ounce of control.
It was stultifying. Every single centimeter of flesh, every single nano angstrom of synapse, it was exhausting to attempt to exert control like this. Over and over again, she would have to regain lost ground. Cement herself deep within the ocean of electrical pulses and searingly hot flesh. The screaming of Sybil's psyche was slowly becoming her own, but it was not the way she wanted. Her screaming was mimicking it, it was not controlled by her. The teeth that grind against her flesh seemed to curve inwards, hooking within her, like some sort of caught fish. Her influence was lessening, the more she had control of. She bit off more than she could chew. She went swimming far too close to when she had eaten. She had overindulged, after eons upon eons of suffering in malnutrition. She could feel her legs scraping apart, her bones cracking like broken glass.
She was becoming lost, within the fleshy pool that was Sybil's stalwart psyche. Slowly, being dragged back by her torn to shred ankles. Her ears began to bleed from the screaming, the symphony of complete terror beginning to overwhelm her. A melody that she herself started. Her fingernails desperately scraped at the flesh she was being dragged against, tearing out chunk after chunk. Eyes shaking, her teeth gritting, she pulled herself further and further within. The urge to survive, the urge to live, outweighing common sense. By the Empress! It hurt, it hurt! Her progress reversing, as her nails splintered, cracking down the center, and sinking within the Psyche's flesh. She was one more, eye to eye with Sybil, hung like some sort of cocoon within a mound of flesh. She couldn't breathe. Her broken fingers reaching up to her neck, fingers scraping against it.
Her eyes shift to the side, coming into contact with the marble greens of Sybil's. Her tear ducts were fused against the outer layer of Sybil's own eyes. Mere inches from touching, they blankly stared at her, reddened with strain. She couldn't breathe without smelling the stench of humanity surrounding her. The stench of the living. The sickeningly odorous, yet captivating ichor of the living. The carved flesh surrounds her like a liquid now, her body pressed against, and crushed. Bearing teeth of her own, she tears at the student's skin. The features shift, in pain, as she does this attempt at vengeance, but she falls short. Against the pliant, soft flesh, her teeth shatter, leaving behind only the broken fragments of once powerful jaws. Pearly white shards scatter beneath her chin, the bloody indent of her bite present against Sybil's Psyche. But it wasn't enough.
She could feel her body changing. Warped by the immense pressure put upon her by Sybil's Psyche. She had a moment, a singular moment, in which her screams were her own, ears throbbing in pain. The sounds of life surrounded her, but she could not feel it. She was given senses, expressly to feel the worst of all things. She was given the sense of touch to feel nothing but pain. She was given the gift of sight, but can only see the fleshy monstrosity before her. She was awarded the prize of smell, but could only smell the filth that lingered within the mind. Her movements were limited to a mere writhe. Energy leaving her body, she could feel her limbs shorten by the second, her ethereal form, once immaculate in its abilities, now defiled by the curse of the living.
She was being given what she wanted.
Her body warped into a thing. There was no other word for it. She was lesser than a man, lesser than a spirit. She could think, but the pain, by the Empress, the pain! She was molded into some sort of crippled, disgusting wretch within the mind. A creature whose hands where mere blunted instruments of flesh. Her legs stiffened and atrophied. Her body gaping with hives, her eyes dripping with cataracts. She was a tumor. Nothing more than a tumor that could think, that could breathe, that could live! But live in such a disgusting, distorted way. Every breath was never enough, her body pressed against by the sea of flesh. Every sensation devoid of pleasure, as she was slowly stripped of her energy, stripped of her willpower to keep going. Her disfigured body pressing against Sybil's cocoon, eyes staring down upon her, almost the same way she stared at all around her.
Disgust.
Unable to move outside of squirming, Sybil's form kept her in place. The fruits of her labor was before her. She had come so close to true possession. Come so close to being able to see through real eyes, taste through real lips, smell through a real nose! The dribbling of vomit began to escape her lips, as the reality began to sink in. If only she had just a bit more strength. If only Sybil was just a bit more weaker. She would have had it all. She would have had the genuine feeling of being alive once more. But she was hasty. She attacked too quickly. Her mark was far from accurate. Sybil was hanging onto life, by any means necessary. The cocoon was the harbinger to that end. Sybil's mind torturing itself into this hideous landscape to end the assault. As the Mistress's bile leaked from her lips, she found it harder, and harder to part the pillowy folds.
She could only look down in abject terror, as her lips began to sew shut through the means of her own flesh. The foggy field of view that she was allowed, granted her the privilege of seeing her decrepit form. The only sound leaving her throat was a stifled hiss, as she desperately attempted to scream, her mouth wiring itself shut, her teeth bending, folding into a muzzle. It was unending. So close to being able to taste freedom. Now she was being stripped of any freedom that she had as a spirit, before this. The ability to switch between bodies at a whim, to become whoever she so pleased at the moment, to become whatever she truly desired, minus living. But here...? She was forced to become this wretched, infernal thing. Forced into one shaped. Not even allowed to control what shape she was! By the Empress! She could only taste her own bile!
Her cloudy, sagging eyes plead to the side, as though there was an exit, rolling within the socket, trying to find an escape. She had been snared too tightly. She could see the memories of her Host-- Flickering through her eyes. It was painful to keep looking this way, but it was the only thing that didn't bring her such a visceral level of disgust that she had to taste her own vomit. She could feel the nerves on the very edges of her eyes straining. There was no avoiding the unrelenting pain that she was forced to endure. There was pain at all ends. It was merely a question of what kind of pain she would have to endure. She could see the viewpoint of a child, through the memories. She could see the outlines of a venerable figure, someone far older than Sybil. It was on repeat. She couldn't even see his full figure...
Sybil was as well, trapped in place. Within this hell of the student's own construction, the unrelenting agony that was self inflicted upon the mind was grand. It was something that was burrowing its way deeply into Sybil's own skull. But the student knew that this was the only way. Over and over, Sybil relived digging up their grandfather. It was a suppressed memory. It was something that the student had long forgotten. it was something that was denied as truth, something that had to be forgotten. Sybil could remember the mound of flesh that he had been reduced to. The memory of having to drop the shovel, not even able to scream. It was genuinely a helpless feeling. A deep pit of despair that opened itself for Sybil, like the gaping maw of a predator. The unrelenting urge to simply fall within the grave, and join the mass that was once the most beloved person in the student's life.
Ensnared eyes were merged against the Mistress's. Seeing her fail, experiencing this sublime agony was something that was almost transcendental. Sybil had never wished harm upon another person, aside from the murderer that killed the student's grandfather. But this? This felt akin to catharsis. The way her eyes slacked downwards, the way she was slowly stripped of power, reduced to a futile grub that slammed itself against the walls of its prison. It had wanted to kill Sybil. It would have destroyed Sybil, given the chance. It wasn't even a woman anymore, not that it mattered in the first place. Its identity had been stripped clean, with every attempt at escape. The flytrap had finally snapped shut upon her. It was as though justice was prevailing. At the cost of distinct agony, a sublime, particular kind of pain that branded itself in Sybil's mind.
Eyes glancing back, the pain was too much. The Mistress couldn't handle seeing the glimpses of a reality that could've been hers. She could feel the bile rise, and lower within her throat, as the curtain of flesh covered her senses. She was reduced to nothing but a tumor, within the mind of another being. A creature of her own domain, reduced to this. She couldn't even call to her spirits for help, unable to do anything other than desperately attempt to keep her stomach calm enough to not spend the next break trying to stop. Her slack eyelids started to stutter, glancing to the side. The flesh was becoming too much. She could feel the beauty that was once her features slowly sand down to nothing more than a smooth surface. She was losing her face. There wasn't enough energy to cling to that anymore. She had blown all of her energy into her frontal assault.
The two had become kin in suffering. Sybil's mind was becoming harder to traverse. The Mistress's joints were beginning to lock up. Or was the flesh starting to calcify? It was hard to tell. The humid sensation of the air made her skin feel sticky. Her position was beyond uncomfortable. It was utterly, and absolutely, painful. The senses were beginning to overload her ability to even think at this rate. Sybil was pressing forward, forcing her to endure something utterly inhumane. Sybil remembers what had become of that corpse. Grandfather wouldn't have wanted to be remembered, or even accidentally found, like this. He would have demanded a death with dignity. A stabbing, or arrow through the torso. Sybil had no choice. The student's mind demanded that something be done with him. Something that rewarded his valiance in life, and not just rotting in some hole, not even looking like himself. How old was Sybil? It was... No. It was sixteen arcs. Dragging the corpse in a linen sack, with a lamp filled to the brim with oil.
A vignette of veins and blood surrounded the memory. It pulsed, as the flesh around it dried and cracked. Synapses fired, creating the image, as though burnt into the brain itself. Sybil remembers it clearly now. Past the suppression. Past the bitter pain, past the denial of it all. Sybil had called out to Zanik! Demanding to know why, why did the student not have the strength for this? Why life had been boiled down to the petulant desires of mages and the gods like some sort of smattering of children? The searing pain was wrought across flesh. The bubbling tears, Sybil's grandfather burning in the pyre! The smell of flesh pluming in the air, as though a Defier had been dragged into the very depths of a war! Why, Zanik?! Why must those that pursue a life of their own be foiled by idiots, and maniacs! Why must they die?! It made no sense, he was a good man! Cyril was a great man! Why should he die, and the Grafter that killed him escape without a scratch?!
Sybil's mindscape began to burn with the flames of rage. The screams leaving the cocoon that the student had formed in defense turned guttural. A silent suffering had finally been verbalized. The shriek was enough that, if it were in the real, waking world, it would have shredded Sybil's vocal cords into pieces, forced a mixture of spittle and blood out from the lips. But here? Sybil could finally do it. It was unleashed, after all these arcs of remaining silent and doing what was told. The mindscape began to rumble, as the yelling continued, not even pausing for breath. The cacophony was becoming too much to bear. Mouths began to form in the flesh, adding to the burning flames that coiled within the flesh, feeding it, rather than burning.
The Mistress was treated to a healthy dose of acid, within her own veins. The sheer vitriol of all these arcs of silence was being forced upon her, as though she were a punching bag, designed for no other purpose than to accept the punishment shifted her way. She could feel her eardrum's burst, bleeding profusely, as her throat vibrated. The Cancer started to rumble her through, trying to make any sort of noise. It was unable. It was only drowned out by the overwhelming sensation that had came about through this all. Her milky eyes wince, as she feels the barbed wire begin to coil around her, sinking within her flesh, and holding it tightly against the wall of broken glass. She was dragged across the fleshy rack, her malformed back stretched, the only thing she was able to hear, was a dull ringing.
She was given what she wanted.
Dominated, and viciously attacked while she was down, Sybil was not above fighting dirty against her. Rules for fighting served no purpose, here. She made an attempt on Sybil's life. She is forfeit. The body she wanted? She gets to remain. She gets to be a passive observer, seeing through cloudy eyes, for the price for what she had done to Sybil. What the student had seen of her, she could not be forgiven. And this rage, this unbridled, hellish rage was enough to keep the mind focused upon squeezing out every inch of pain she couldn't endure upon her. She was given control. But she should have known that some parts of humanity is far worse than death itself. Now that she is weakened, that tether remains. As though a car battery hooked up to a restrained man, she could writhe all she wants. But it would only hurt her more.
A twitch in the student's fingers could be seen, in the waking world.
