Book One – Chapter 14

Why was this not working? Barbarthara struggled to scale the toll her influence was exacting on his fragile body. His bones trembled, his veins pulsed erratically beneath her roots, a chaotic rhythm warning of his limits. He was weak, far weaker than she had anticipated. Already worn down by the cold and the battle, his body was incapable of sustaining both himself and her. And yet, though his body was so susceptible to her influence, his mind was not. It resisted. It rebelled. It refused to yield to the body, to its own failing vessel. He fought to the brink of total collapse.

Still, Barbarthara pressed deeper, ever more damaging and draining him. She had simultaneously overestimated and underestimated him. His mind was surprisingly strong, far more formidable than his body. She was forced to apply her influence to its utmost intensity, stretching herself to the edge of her control. Later, adjustments would need to be made – she would have to temper her grip, to conserve his strength while maintaining her control – but for now, she had no choice. If his mind would not bow to his body, she would have to reach into his unconscious.

It was strange. In most of her past hosts, the impulses of the body and the unconscious were nearly indistinguishable, intertwined as one. For some beasts, they had been one and the same; with the body serving as the unconscious. However advanced a people, Barbarthara had found the body to be a crude but reliable gateway to the mind. But here, with this ork, the boundary was stark. His conscious mind stood as an indomitable barrier, severing the ties between her manipulations of his body and the desires that comprised his sense of self. He had readily accepted all the pleasures, all the warmth she had given him, but such influence rendered him passive, useless. To subdue him into becoming her guide, Barbarthara needed more than simple control over his flesh. If the unconscious rebelled against all reactions of the body that she provoked with her secretions, she needed to align his mind with her will instead. If she could not control the runt through his body, then he himself had to become the architect of his own submission, consciously believing that her will was his own.