It was a curious thing, to suddenly become more than oneself. Like a weed taking root, the new flesh wove its way through her, so entangling itself with the host that it was impossible to say where one ended and the other began. The vessel had been fully assimilated, reshaping what was once the broken body of a true believer into the playground of an ancient power.
Grizelda felt old wounds mend as the glowing ichor worked its sinister magic. Her nerves were electrified as it coursed through her veins. Flesh that was limp from age and abuse became supple, as if returned to youth. Her mind, previously the rubble of her predecessor’s obsession, had been completely resculpted. She flipped through the Doctor’s knowledge like a book, digesting the entirety of her being into little more than a footnote in her own compendium. The vast library that had once threatened to collapse under its own weight was now expanding.
Inside her, the tentacles licked and caressed. Her rejuvenated muscle and bone were delectable to these demonic tongues. As they explored her organs, supping on the last of the blood pumped by the former owner, they had also begun to change. It was imperceptible to a creature whose existence had only been without form; incarnation was strange to something so accustomed to intangibility. But this attachment had become more than physical—Grizelda was utterly smitten.
A world of bliss had opened its tender lips to her; ten millennia were not enough to prepare her for enslavement to her own desires. The Doctor’s mania had infiltrated her eldritch thinking, slipping through the fortifications that had granted immunity to such foolish mortal sentiment. Indulging these whims, relinquishing control—even for a moment—felt dangerous. She knew the longing would give way to even more vexing emotions, but the gates had already been breached. The vaults of this conquered fortress were hers to plunder, and for a time, she reveled in the spoils.
