Jake woke in Jonas's bed, the familiar wrongness of inhabiting a corpse settling over him like a wet blanket. The body functioned. Breathed. Heart beat steady and regular. But it was empty underneath. A shell he wore. Temporary. Always temporary.
If he let his mind go, and stopped thinking about it all the time, he was starting to feel like this was His body. He had become so used to seeing through Jonas’s eyes that it was second nature. There was Jake, the real Jake, inside. The worm. That was still a weird state of being. But then there was Jake that was ‘almost’ human again.
If it weren’t for the seepage of what still remained of Jonas that seemed to run rampant through his mind at the most random times. It was easy to distinguish himself from that part of the body though.
He sat up. Stretched. Jonas's muscles responded smoothly despite the troll regeneration constantly rebuilding tissue that wanted to decay. The Life magic maintenance was getting easier too. Less conscious effort required. The body was becoming more like a well-oiled machine and less like a mindless vegetable that he had to manually operate.
That should probably concern him more than it did.
Downstairs, Kandis was already moving around. Forge's deeper voice. The soft chittering of the Glimmerglider in its elaborate cage.
Today he'd prove the technique worked on something fresh. Something that hadn't been traumatized into cooperation like the pig.
Something delicate.
Jake got up. Made his way downstairs. Kandis had prepared breakfast. Simple. Bread and preserved fruit. She looked at him when he entered.
"Ready?"
"As I'll ever be."
The Glimmerglider was awake in its cage. Those enormous eyes tracking movement around the laboratory. Bioluminescent stripes pulsing gently along its sides. Curious. Alert.
Intelligent.
More intelligent than Jake had expected, actually.
"Give me a few minutes," he said. "I want to observe it first. Understand its baseline behavior."
He approached the cage slowly. The creature watched him. Not afraid. Just assessing. Its head tilted. The bioluminescent patterns shifted. Faster pulse. Different rhythm.
Communication? Possible. Jake had seen stranger things.
The Glimmerglider chirped. Soft. Questioning.
Jake chirped back. Mimicking the sound as closely as Jonas's vocal cords could manage.
The creature responded immediately. Different pitch. Different duration. Deliberate variation.
Kandis was watching from across the room. "Can you understand it?"
"Not yet. But it's definitely language. The sounds have patterns. Meaning." Jake studied the bioluminescence carefully. "And I think the light is part of it. Not just display. Actual communication."
"That's... surprising."
"Very."
Jake spent another ten minutes just watching. The Glimmerglider moved around its habitat. Testing branches. Preening fur. Occasionally chirping or pulsing its lights in response to movements in the room. Complex behavior. Sophisticated cognitive processing.
This was going to be interesting.
And difficult.
The creature wasn't just an animal. It was a thinking being. One he was about to violate.
Just like the gremlins, a small voice in his head whispered. Just like every other host.
He pushed the thought away. This was different. He wasn't consuming. Wasn't destroying. Just copying. Learning without killing.
That had to count for something.
- - -
"I need you both to step back," Jake said. "This might be disturbing to watch."
Kandis moved closer to Forge. Not quite touching but close. Ready to grab onto something if this went wrong. The instinctive need for human contact during stress.
Jake noticed. So did Forge. Neither commented.
He positioned Jonas's body in a chair. Began the familiar process. Life magic flooding the system. Reinforcing autonomic functions. Heart rate stabilized. Breathing regulated. Every system checked and rechecked.
Preparing for departure.
Then he exited.
The shift was always disorienting. From human-sized to macroscopic. From Jonas peeking through every thought to the pure silence of Jake’s own rational mind. The world changing scale and meaning in the space between heartbeats.
Jake crawled down Jonas's body. Across the laboratory floor. The Glimmerglider watched his approach.
Even with the visual distortion that made him hard to focus on, that light-bending effect that usually let him approach unnoticed, the creature saw him. Those huge eyes tracked every movement with perfect clarity.
It knew something was wrong. It knew death approached.
Jake reached the cage. Slipped through the bars. Three centimeters of segmented horror entering the creature's safe space.
The Glimmerglider's bioluminescent stripes flashed bright. Warning pattern. Fear pattern. The universal language of PREDATOR.
Jake moved slowly. Carefully. Trying the stealth approach he'd used on previous hosts. The technique that made him difficult to perceive. Hard to focus on.
Didn't work.
The Glimmerglider SCREECHED.
High-pitched. Terrified. Its body went rigid. The bioluminescent stripes blazed in rapid pulses. Alarm. Panic. DANGER DANGER DANGER.
From across the room, Kandis made a sound of distress. Jake saw her grab Forge's arm. Clinging to him. Watching in horror as the small creature she'd built a home for screamed in terror at the approaching monster.
Forge's hand covered hers. Steady. Grounding.
The intimacy of that gesture registered even through Jake's focus. Two people finding comfort in each other during something awful. Something necessary but terrible.
Jake kept moving. Had to do this. Had to learn.
The Glimmerglider tried to flee. Scrambling up branches. Into the corner of its cage. Membrane wings spreading. Trying to glide away from something that couldn't be escaped.
Nowhere to go. Trapped.
Jake threw out a hair thin web and streaked across the cage. The creature thrashed. Screaming. Terror absolute and primal.
Then he entered its ear.
- - -
The brain was INCREDIBLE.
Soft. Neuroplastic. Malleable in ways the pig's wasn't. The neural structures flexible. Adaptive. Still forming and reforming with each new experience.
And the intelligence. Gods, the intelligence.
This wasn't a simple animal. This was a thinking being. Language. Communication. Social structures. Problem-solving. Memory. Anticipation. All packed into a brain the size of a walnut.
And it smelled DELICIOUS.
The hunger hit like the sound of an impending train. Overwhelming. Irresistible. All-consuming. This was PRIME brain matter. Sophisticated. Complex. Rich with neural pathways and firing synapses and perfectly structured cortex.
The pig had been animal instinct with basic concepts. Eat. Rut. Water. Shit. Basic drives cycling endlessly.
This was THOUGHT. Actual thought. Language! Concepts! Understanding!
Jake wanted it. Needed it. Every fiber of his parasitic nature screamed to just CONSUME. To take it all. Feast. Gorge. Make this incredible intelligence MINE.
Just one bite. Just a taste. You deserve it. You've been so good. So restrained. Just a little won't hurt. The creature won't even miss it. You'd get so much knowledge. So much capability. Just one small bite.
NO.
Jake forced himself still. Trembling with denied hunger. Fighting his nature with everything he had.
He was here to COPY. Not consume. To learn without destroying.
The Glimmerglider's consciousness was panicking around him. Terror. Confusion. PREDATOR IN MY HEAD. GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT.
Had to calm it. Had to work. Had to resist long enough to accomplish something.
Jake sent out his tendrils. Microscopic extensions of himself. Thinner than neurons. Invisible to the creature's awareness. Touching the neural pathways. Feeling the electrical impulses racing through synapses at incredible speed.
Then he did something he'd never tried before.
He slowed them down.
The firing neurons. The electrical signals jumping from cell to cell. Jake touched them with his tendrils and DAMPENED them. Not stopping them. Not blocking them. Just... slowing. Making the impulses travel through the brain at reduced speed.
The Glimmerglider's panic began to ease. Not because it was calm. Because time itself was slowing for it. Neural processing dropping from frantic to manageable. Thoughts stretching out. Fear becoming less immediate.
Was this related to the concept of Time? Jake had never seen the Time affinity. He wouldn't know what it looked like if he did. But if perception of time was causally connected to neural firing rates, then maybe manipulating one affected the other.
Questions for later. If there is a future Jake. Have to focus.
With the creature's thoughts slowed, Jake turned his attention to its physiology. Heart rate. Blood pressure. Chemical balance. The autonomic systems that fear had thrown into chaos.
Calmness. Nothing is wrong. Everything is right. Have some serotonin, my friend.
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Jake triggered the release. Flooded the Glimmerglider's system with calming neurotransmitters. Artificial peace washing through neural pathways. Chemical sedation without actual drugs.
The bioluminescent stripes shifted. Panic pattern fading. Confused pattern emerging. Then... tentative calm. Uncertainty but not terror.
Good enough.
Now. What to copy first?
The bioluminescence was fascinating. Jake had never seen anything like it. The way it integrated with the creature's communication. The cellular structures that generated light through chemical reactions. The neural pathways that controlled patterns and timing.
But that could wait.
The Air affinity. THAT was something.
Jake could feel it in the creature's very structure. Not magic use. The Glimmerglider didn't understand the concept well enough to actually manipulate Air as a force. But the AFFINITY was there. Strong. Powerful. Built into its genetics through countless generations.
Flight speed. Control. Maneuverability. Natural selection favoring creatures with stronger connection to the concept of Air itself. Unwittingly breeding magic potential into the species over thousands of years.
With this kind of disposition, this creature could create a TORNADO if it understood what a tornado was. If it had the conceptual framework to channel its innate affinity into deliberate magic.
And if Jake could copy that affinity into himself...
The work began.
Jake extended his tendrils deep into the Glimmerglider's brain. Not to consume. To CONNECT. To link with its memories and experiences without destroying them.
More complex. More time-consuming. Required maintaining connection while simultaneously building a mirror inside himself.
He found a memory. Flight. The creature gliding through night air. Wind rushing past membrane wings. The feel of thermal currents rising from the swamp below.
Jake connected to it. Let his tendrils sink into the neural pattern. Felt the memory come alive.
Breeze in his face. Not the Glimmerglider's face. His. The sensation transferring through the connection. The understanding copying across the bridge his tendrils had built.
Jake pulled. Carefully. Gently. Drawing the memory into himself without ripping it from the source.
It WORKED.
The memory was his now. And still the Glimmerglider's. Copied. Duplicated. Shared without loss. The creature's experience of flight, its understanding of air currents, its instinctive grasp of aerodynamics, all flowing into Jake's consciousness while remaining intact in the original. And most importantly, not overwriting his own.
He had the creature's experience of flight. Its knowledge of flight. Its skill of flight. All as a completely isolated memory that he resolved with perfect clarity yet distinctly separated from his own.
And underneath that. Deeper. The Air affinity itself. The genetic disposition toward the concept. The potential for magic use embedded in the very structure of the Glimmerglider's being.
Jake copied that too. Slowly. Painstakingly. Building a mirror of the affinity inside his own biology. Replicating the neural patterns that connected this creature to Air on a fundamental level.
Hours passed. The sun moved across the sky outside. Jake barely noticed.
Just work. Just copying. Just fighting the overwhelming hunger to consume instead of duplicate. The tissue was RIGHT THERE. Available. Easy. His nature screamed for it constantly.
One bite. One tiny bite. You've earned it. You've worked so hard. Just one small taste.
NO.
When Jake finally pulled back, exhausted beyond measure, the Glimmerglider was sleeping. Calm. Unharmed. Its bioluminescent stripes pulsing in a gentle, relaxed rhythm.
He'd done it.
Fully encompassing memory extraction. Complete with thoughts, feelings, concepts, and genetic affinities. All copied without destroying the source.
Jake exited the creature's ear. Crawled across its sleeping form. Through the cage bars. Across the laboratory floor.
Back to Jonas's body.
The return was harder than usual. He was EXHAUSTED. Drained. The effort of copying instead of consuming for hours had depleted something fundamental. Something that went deeper than physical energy.
But Jonas's eyes opened. He was back.
Kandis was there immediately. "Are you alright? You were in there all day. The sun's going down."
All day? It had felt like hours at most. Time perception inside a host was strange. Unreliable.
"Fine," Jake managed. His voice was rough. "Just tired. That was... intense."
"Is it okay? The Glimmerglider?"
"Sleeping. Unharmed. I copied what I needed without consuming."
Relief flooded her face. Genuine. Deep. "Good. That's... that's good."
Jake looked at Jonas's body. The blank slate he inhabited. Kandis had asked earlier if he was concerned about this body deteriorating. Worth addressing.
"You asked if I was worried about Jonas's body," he said. "I'm not. I'm using less and less Life magic to keep it operational. The mind behind it is completely gone except for fragments in the gut. The brain has been stripped of everything except basic functions."
"So he's just... empty."
"Completely. A blank biological machine. Without me, this body would last until it starved to death." Jake met her eyes. “Don’t say it! I know you want to bring it up."
Kandis looked disturbed at the idea of Jonas, but smiled at the man anyway, "Yes, you would know exactly what that is like, wouldn’t you?"
"Yes, I do." Jake sighed.
Forge handed Jake water. Food. He ate mechanically. Refueling Jonas's body. Maintaining the machine. The hunger from denied consumption making normal food almost unbearable by comparison.
Brain matter would taste so much better. So much richer. So much more satisfying.
He pushed the thought away. Ate bread and dried fruit and hated every bite.
"Did it work?" Forge asked. "The technique?"
"Perfectly. I can extract complete memories now. With all the context. All the understanding. Without destroying the source." Jake drank more water. "The Glimmerglider is smarter than I expected. It has actual language. Communication through sound and bioluminescence. On par with the gremlins in terms of cognitive capability."
"You just performed brain surgery on a thinking creature," Kandis said quietly.
"I did. And it was the hardest thing I've ever done." Jake looked at his hands. Still trembling slightly. "Every second I was in there, I wanted to consume. To feast. The hunger was overwhelming. But I didn't. I copied instead. Learned without killing."
"That's progress."
"That's torture masquerading as progress. But yes." Jake stood on shaking legs. "I'm ready. For the representative. I can extract information without consumption. The technique works."
"Then we wait," Forge said.
"Almost." Jake looked at the pig in its pen. "I need to try something else first. Tomorrow."
The next morning, Kandis found Jake preparing to enter the pig again.
"Why?" she asked. "You've already practiced on it for days."
"I have to try something I've been considering. An experiment."
Forge looked skeptical. "Should we really spend time on experiments when there's so much to prepare?"
Jake shrugged. "It might be important. I have to try it. And if it works, you'll be amazed."
They exchanged glances. Clearly didn't believe him. But they couldn't really stop him either.
The pig grunted when Jake approached. Calm. Accepting. Used to this routine by now.
Jake exited Jonas. Crawled across the floor. Entered the pig's ear.
The familiar landscape of pig consciousness opened before him. Simpler than the Glimmerglider. More basic. Less sophisticated. But there was something there he hadn't noticed before.
A faint thought. Not quite language. Just... recognition.
Oh. You again.
Pig thoughts. Not easy to process without consuming the neural tissue that generated them. If he ate some of this brain he could definitely understand it better. Read the pig's simple consciousness like a book.
But no. He was a vegetarian now. Only ate tofu-brain. That was vegetarian, right? Probably not. But it was the coping mechanism he'd chosen and he'd stick with it.
Dark humor. The only way to deal with crawling inside brains day after day without losing his mind completely.
Jake extended his tendrils. Deeper than before. Into the cortex. Down the spine. Touching bone marrow in the vertebrae.
He knew that generally this would be incredibly painful. But his tendrils were microscopic. Sliding into places without triggering pain receptors. Moving through tissue like a ghost.
He connected with his understanding of Life. The concept. The force. The fundamental nature of biological function and cellular structure.
Jake knew the pig's structure now. Inside and out. Every system. Every organ. Every cell type and how they interacted. The complete biological blueprint stored in his perfect memory.
And he had the dormant genetic pattern for bioluminescence. Copied from the Glimmerglider yesterday. Stored in his consciousness like a blueprint waiting to be used.
Could he... combine them?
The FDA would have a conniption if they found out an unlicensed mad scientist was doing cellular research on an unauthorized subject.
And Jake was enjoying it thoroughly.
He began to work. Using Life magic combined with the genetic blueprint. Adding bioluminescent cells to the pig's structure. Not randomly. Deliberately. Specific patterns calculated for maximum visibility.
Subcutaneous placement. Just below the skin. Following major muscle groups and blood vessels. A lightning bolt pattern from shoulder to rear flank.
The pig couldn't speak with bioluminescence. It had no understanding of how to use it as communication. Jake needed a trigger. Something that would work on a subconscious level.
A signal he could use as a light switch.
It didn't take long to find one.
Perfect.
Jake spent another hour ensuring the cellular modifications would take. That the new structures would integrate properly with existing tissue. That the pig's immune system wouldn't reject them as foreign invaders.
Genetic modification. Permanent alteration. Creating new biological capabilities in a living creature.
The implications were staggering if anyone thought about them too hard.
Then he exited. Returned to Jonas. Opened his eyes.
He was smiling.
Forge noticed immediately. "That's the not-Jonas smile. It looks wrong on his face. What did you do?"
Jake pointed at the pig. "Give it a few hours. The cells have to restructure and multiply. If this works, it could change a lot."
"Change what?"
"You'll see."
- - -
They waited. Small talk over dinner. The sun going down outside. Kandis got up to light a candelabra.
"No," Jake said. "We need the dark for this."
She paused. Looked at him suspiciously. "Why?"
"You'll see. Just wait."
Another hour passed. They sat in darkness. Kandis and Forge on one side of the laboratory. Jake on the other. The pig snoring softly in its pen.
Then.
A faint bluish glow.
Starting at the pig's front shoulder. The glow quickly spread. Following the muscle groups Jake had mapped. Down the side. Around the back. A lightning bolt pattern of bioluminescent light cutting through the darkness.
"What did you do?" Kandis breathed. "That's amazing! You gave the pig the lights of the Glimmerglider!"
"I did."
"But how? And how would it know to use it?" She moved closer, fascinated despite herself. "The Glimmerglider uses bioluminescence for communication. Is the pig trying to speak to us?"
Jake started laughing. Couldn't help it. The absurdity was too perfect. "Yeah. It's about to say something alright."
The pig let out an enormous fart.
The kind that echoed. That had presence. That announced itself to the world with authority.
Both Kandis and Forge stared. Then understanding dawned on their faces in perfect synchronization.
"You used flatulence as the trigger?!" Kandis's voice was half outrage, half disbelief.
Forge started laughing. Deep. Genuine. The kind of laughter that came from pure surprise. "So now every time the pig is about to fart, it will glow?"
"Yup!" Jake was grinning like an idiot. Like a child who'd just pulled off the perfect prank. "It's our warning signal! This thing has been eating and silent-farting for days now and I'm constantly walking right through that cloud! Never again!"
He stood. Raised his fist in triumph like he'd just solved one of life's greatest problems. "I have conquered the invisible fart!"
Kandis was laughing too now. Trying not to but failing. The absurdity overwhelming any attempt at dignity. "This is what you spent a whole day working on?"
"This," Jake said seriously, "is what scientific progress looks like. Small victories. Incremental improvements. Making life slightly better one bioluminescent fart at a time."
The pig contributed another glowing emission.
"I hate that I'm impressed by this," Kandis managed between laughs.
"You should be impressed! Do you know how complex this was? Integrating foreign genetic material? Creating functional bioluminescent cells in a completely different species? Linking them to a specific autonomic trigger?" Jake was gesturing enthusiastically now. Fully committed to defending his ridiculous achievement. "This is ADVANCED biology!"
"It's a pig that glows when it farts."
"It's a PIG THAT GLOWS WHEN IT FARTS!" Jake agreed with equal enthusiasm. "And it's beautiful."
Forge was still laughing. "You're insane."
"Maybe. But I'm productive insane. An insane that solves problems."
Another fart. Another glow. The pig seemed completely unbothered by its new ability. Just kept eating and sleeping and occasionally illuminating the laboratory with its digestive processes.
They sat there in the dark. Watching the pig's occasional luminescent announcements. Laughing like idiots.
For a moment, the weight of everything lifted. The coming representative. The impossible plan. The two hundred lives depending on them getting this right.
Just three people laughing at a glowing pig's digestive system in a dead necromancer's tower.
It was perfect.
It was necessary.
It was the only way to stay sane while preparing for probable disaster.
- - -
Later, after the laughter faded and Kandis went to check on the Glimmerglider, Forge looked at Jake seriously.
"You really can do it. Modify living creatures. Improve them. Give them new abilities."
"I can." Jake looked at his hands. Jonas's hands. "The Whisperer's Blessing. What I should have been doing all along instead of just consuming hosts and leaving corpses behind."
"Instead of consuming."
"Instead of consuming." The weight of that settled over Jake like a shroud. "I can make things better. Help hosts instead of destroy them. If I survive this, if we get past the representative, I could actually do some good. Real good. Not just fart lights but actual improvements. Healing. Enhancement. Making people better than they were."
"You're doing good now."
"Am I? Or am I just delaying inevitable disaster while making pigs glow for my own amusement?"
"Both can be true." Forge stood. Stretched. "Get some rest. We have work tomorrow. Real work. Not fart lights."
"Fart lights are real work!"
"Good night, Jake."
Forge left. Heading upstairs to whatever room he'd claimed. Leaving Jake alone with the glowing pig and thoughts of what he'd learned.
The Air affinity copied from the Glimmerglider. The memory extraction technique working perfectly. The ability to modify living tissue at the genetic level. All tools he could use. All evidence he was becoming something more than just a parasite.
Something that could help. That could bless instead of curse. That could improve hosts instead of destroying them.
If he didn't lose himself to Jonas first. If the representative didn't kill him. If everything didn't fall apart in five weeks when ancient serpent lords arrived expecting a human collaborator and found a brain-eating impostor instead.
The pig farted. Glowed. Oblivious to cosmic stakes and impossible odds.
Jake envied it.
Simple existence. Eat. Sleep. Glow. Fart. No weight of two hundred lives. No perfect memory of every wrong committed. No constant battle against consuming nature.
Just pig things.
Must be nice.
Jake stood. Headed upstairs to Jonas's bedroom. To the borrowed body and the borrowed life and the constant fear of becoming someone else entirely.
Tomorrow they'd continue preparing. Practicing the Pantathian greeting. Reviewing the cover story. Making sure every detail was perfect.
But tonight, they'd achieved something important.
They'd laughed. Together. At something stupid and beautiful and completely unnecessary.
That was worth something.
That had to be worth something.
Even if everything else went wrong.
- - -
End of Chapter 45
