Pov Botiod - patient zero

I was born with a birth defect that has left me incredibly sickly from childhood and stunted my growth. All my brothers are already 2 times my size, even when i am twice their age. Over the years, i have learnt to cope with my disabled body. But the struggles my family suffered to support me has left us devastated. We had to sell our possessions to make enough to eat and my mother had to sell her body. Or we would have all died in winter.

My father has gone into heavy drinking as a consequence and he beat me and my mother in fits of drunken rage. Everyday i cursed my parents for birthing me and hoped that i would just die and end this miserable existence. But there is nothing you can do to change what is already done. My body is disfigured with boil scars and inhuman proportions. My prospects are to work on thread weaving for the rest of my life, hiding behind closed doors as my family drags food to my doorstep in secret.

But I have started to recently hear whispers and visions in the middle of the night, the moments closest to my sleep. Just before fully submerging to unconsciousness. Speaking of a divine paradise named Ardone. A land of great harvest and wealth. Where fairies and children frolicked. A land of eternal and infinite beauty. I relished these moments of rapture. Anticipating the time before going to sleep. Everytime i listened, the visions became clearer and clearer. Until i heard the voice of god.

"Spread me" A commandment. Directly from the heavens. Who was i but its humble servant. The only path to Ardone is through spreading my illness.

Wait no. This is not an illness but a blessing. I was in fact chosen to carry out this divine mission to prove my worth. Otherwise, how can i be accepted to Ardone. How could this divine land accept anyone but the most deserving. This blessing must be given to others. They have no idea how precious this gift is. They will soon learn about the promised land.

"Mother! You must hear this"

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Pov Ardone

I look over Botiod. My first host. He is kneeling over the corpse of his dead mother and father as he eats their flesh. He is sobbing and asking for forgiveness, but i continue to pump hormones and electrical signals in his brain to communicate and push him to follow my orders.

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I have not realized this when i chose to pick the form of a virus. But a quirk of this dimension is that souls are held and limited to the capacity of their bodies. So by slightly placing my soul in this pathogen. My intellect fully dropped to nothing and was only able to have moments of extremely fuzzy consciousness when my virility was incredibly high in Botiod's body and the bodies of the surrounding villagers. But their adult bodies protected them and beat my infection almost the same day of infection and constant and repeated infections rendered them hyperimmune.

The only reason I was cognizant enough to order Botiod was that there was a recent birth and my infection passed into the baby directly after birth. I don't have much time before even they beat me off and i will fall back to unconsciousness. So under this extreme time limit of a few hours maximum. I had to brainstorm with my severely diminished mind. With my addled consciousness, i was lucky to recollect that a good method to hypercharge my soul energy is to use a soul magic ritual that requires the crumbling soul of a recently deceased mortal to empower what little soul energy that my hosts can carry.

Now that Botiod smashed his father's head in with a pot and his mother with a knife. The emanating soul power sobered me up to think of a proper way to survive this situation. If i kept at current course then Botiod would have died in this remote village and i would have died with him with no proper human host. To enact the first part of my plan, Botiod would need bio energy and a lot of it. So as the souls are being consumed by me. Botiod started feasting on their flesh raw.

I moved my viral components all over his body reconstructing it. Turning him into a superman like figure or atleast that is the goal. His height changed from pygmy to becoming a still somewhat tiny man. His atrophied limbs into somewhat acceptable thickness. His face and skin rapidly change from scarred and ugly to somewhat human levels. Of course such rapid changes are impossible to make in the time frame that the soul ritual gives me. So i turn my pathogen to do the work automatically and let him continue on with his life

"What's happening to me." The experience is less than pleasant, but he will be able to atleast leave this place and actually spread my viral agents across the world. With no fear of being ousted as the monster he is. With all that done, I am starting to feel drained from the efforts. Fully consuming all the meager energy that the ritual gave me. And the baby already seems to have started to feel better.

As my consciousness slips, I close my metaphoric eyes and hope that Botiod manages to not die.