John Lafferty was now feeling physically ill every day. Knowing that the Goose was aware of his betrayal proved too great a burden for him to bear. He didn't attend to any business at The Church of the Golden Goose and didn't communicate in any way with the Raven or any of its other disciples. He could think of only one thing: how much he wished he could go back in time and reject the Raven's offer and continue waiting for the Goose to make contact with him. It took several days for John's wife Laura to notice the state of distress that her husband was in, what with her being so busy with her shopping. She knew that the only thing that could make him feel this way was the Goose, and given how poorly their conversations about the Goose always went Laura was reluctant to ask John what was wrong and if there was anything she could do to help. But he was her husband, so they had to talk.

"John, what's bothering you?" She sat next to him on the back porch and asked him.

"The Goose knows about my betrayal, it's only a matter of time before I am the subject of its divine wrath."

"That's not going to happen, you've always maintained that the Goose is a benevolent being," Laura said to him. John had told her all about the raven and about how it was responsible for all the nice things that they'd been enjoying lately.

"For the most part, yes, but throughout my research I came across numerous cases of both individuals and entire civilizations being plunged into wrack and ruin that once enjoyed the favor of the Goose, so it is entirely possible that the same fate awaits me."

"Are we going to lose everything? The house? The car? The money?"

"Is that all you care about? Material things? I am forsaken, I am staring into the abyss of utter spiritual desolation!"

"What about repentance? If you repent your sins and request forgiveness surely the Goose will forgive you given how much you have devoted yourself to it."

"It's not that simple, we're not dealing with invisible others who we can make of whatever we want; the Goose has very clear expectations of people and if you fail to live up to those expectations then the Goose is finished with you."

"Personally I don't see why this is getting to you so much. We're finally living a comfortable life; we've got a nice house, nice cars, we go on vacation all over the world, it wasn't the Goose that provided all of this for us, so forget about feeling guilty about betraying it and instead focus on being thankful for what we have."

"You really can't see past your materialism, can you? Don't you see that our embrace of this materialism is the greatest failing that we could have committed? I've sacrificed my loyalty to the Goose and its benevolent purpose for what? Cars and a house and vacations?! I feel sick, I'm disgusted with myself, I can barely look at myself in the mirror I'm so disgusted with myself!"

Laura was seeing for the first time just how wracked with fear and anxiety her husband was over the possibility of facing divine retribution from the Goose and she felt deep compassion for him.

"John, you should just do whatever it is you feel you need to do; if there's something that you believe will absolve you of sin in the Goose's eyes then you should just go ahead and do it."

"I don't think I can be absolved, but I can stop myself from descending further into spiritual turpitude."

The decision that John reached was that he would inform the Raven the next time he saw it that he wished to play no further part in its machinations and that going forward he would be rededicating himself to the Goose. He waited for the Raven to visit him with undiminished resolve and when the Raven arrived at his house two days later John was fully prepared for it to be their final conversation.

"John, it's been a while, how have you been?" The Raven asked mellifluously.

"Actually, I've not been well," John said shakily. Though he had decided to separate from it, the Raven was still an intimidating figure.

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that, what was the problem?"

"It's you, you're the problem."

"You haven't had a problem with me until now, what's changed?"

"The Goose knows about my betrayal, I was visited by somebody associated with the Goose and now, knowing that the Goose knows about me, I can't go on with this in good conscience."

"Well, that's certainly interesting, but tell me something John, if the Goose knew about you and all that you've done for it then why didn't it pick you? I'll tell you why, because it saw in you the same thing that I saw, that you valued your own pursuit of the truth above all else which is indicative of a deep selfishness within you."

"Yes, I recognize that, and I accept it, which is why I plan on rededicating myself to the Goose without holding out any hope of it inviting me into its orbit, for me that is enough now."

"Unfortunately, John, I can't allow our relationship to come to an end like this; I came here to inform you that you and I need to take a trip to Ukraine and pay a visit to Fyodor Milichenko, you see the time has come to bring him into the fold and I'm not prepared to delay my schedule for anything."

"I just told you that I don't wish to play any part in this anymore!"

"And I just told you that that's not an option!"

"You can't make me do your bidding."

"See, that's where you're wrong."

The Raven's eyes suddenly started shining a brilliant yellow. John was transfixed by the glow of the Raven's eyes and before he knew it his entire body was paralyzed. Having paralyzed John, the Raven flew to him and sunk its talons into his abdomen. This was extremely painful for John, but because he was paralyzed he couldn't scream. The Raven then proceeded to peck away at the centre of his breastplate with its beak. The Raven pecked and pecked, splashing blood everywhere, until it had made an opening big enough for it to enter. It then pushed its way inside the chest cavity that it had opened and once inside it was a simple matter of commandeering John's neural pathways. The wounds that the Raven had inflicted upon him were immediately healed and as soon as they were the Raven granted John his consciousness back.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"What have you done to me?"

"I've taken up residence within your being so that I may have you continue doing my bidding."

"I'll fight against you."

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, you won't like the resulting consequences."

John ignored the Raven's warning and attempted to wrest back control of his mind and body. What happened next could only be described as utterly grotesque. John was unable to expel the Raven and in attempting to do so had undergone a physical transformation that had turned him into a half human, half Raven abomination.

"Look in the mirror John and see what your efforts have produced."

John turned around and looked in the mirror, and what he saw caused him to break down in despairing sobs.

"Do you see now the futility in resisting me? Do yourself a favor and submit."

John had no choice. He relinquished his resistance and resigned himself to sharing his mind and body with the Raven for however long the Raven deemed the arrangement necessary. Laura had warned him when she first saw the black egg that a demonic presence had entered their lives but John's desire to acquire the truth for which he had searched his whole life had been too strong. Now he had lost his soul, and given the lengths to which the Raven was prepared to go to accomplish its goals John could only imagine what he was going to be complicit in.

Once he had submitted to the Raven John's body returned to normal, the only change he could feel was a slight neurological sensation from the Raven occupying space in his mind.

"Now John, there's no reason for anybody to know that anything is different. If you simply go about your days like nothing's happened then nobody will know that you've been the victim of a possession, which, if they did know about it, would cause you to become an extreme pariah, so it's in your best interests for us to make the best of this."

Unable to continue with the work that he'd been doing up until the Raven had appeared at his window, John left his study and went to the bedroom to lie down. Laura was sitting up in bed with her glasses on reading a book, one of her spiritual self help books that John couldn't stand. John had concerns about being alone with Laura now that he was possessed by the Raven but, like the Raven said, he couldn't afford to start behaving in a manner that was out of the ordinary. No sooner had he climbed under the covers next to his wife than he felt his consciousness slip to rear of his mind and he found himself in the third person, watching powerlessly as the Raven controlled his body. John's fears, it turned out, were entirely founded. The Raven, now in control of his body, turned towards Laura and started kissing her sensuously on her arm.

"John," Laura said coquettishly in response to John's attention. John had never initiated sex before; sex was something that had always been a nuisance to him and Laura was enjoying being the object of his desire.

John looked on from the recesses of his consciousness as his wife put down her book and took off her glasses and welcomed his body on top of her. He couldn't understand why Laura wasn't disconcerted by this uncharacteristic behavior on his part. He watched as the Raven made love to his wife and provoked spasms and moans that John had never been able to produce during their moments of lovemaking. Watching Laura writhing in pleasure under the attentions of the Raven, she looked utterly alien to John, and worse than the feeling of being betrayed by the Raven and unwittingly by his wife was the feeling that he didn't know his wife, that she was a stranger to him because she had never been important to him and that he had failed her as a husband.

Forty minutes later, when their copulation was over, Laura thanked John and rolled onto her side and fell asleep, and the Raven, having made its point, allowed John to return to full consciousness and regain control of his body. Still shocked by what he had witnessed, John didn't move. He lay in bed staring up at the ceiling trying to make sense of what he was now a part of with the Raven having the power to do as it pleased with his body.

"Why did you do that?" John asked the Raven in his head.

"Because I haven't done it for a long time and I remembered how good it felt."

"I had already accepted that I was powerless against you, you didn't need to demonstrate it to me so painfully."

"You seem to have missed what I said, I did that entirely for my own benefit, it had nothing to do with you."

"You've been lying to me from the beginning, how can I trust anything that you say?"

"Actually I've never lied to you, you've been lying to yourself to justify the compromises that you've been making in pursuit of your goal of obtaining the truth."

John couldn't argue with this, he'd known it about himself from the beginning.

"You said when we first spoke that your goal was to save the human race, I don't see how that can be true given everything that I've seen of how you operate."

"I do want to save humanity; if I had had my way long ago humanity wouldn't be in the dire situation that it is in now, and because it is in this dire state drastic measures need to be taken and that is what I'm doing. I understand that some people find some of my methods extreme but there is no reason for you to doubt my sincerity."

"What are we going to Ukraine for?"

"We're going to meet with Fyodor Milichenko and explain to him what we're doing and the role that we would like for him to play going forward, starting with attending the Growth and Opportunities Conference that is being hosted in Moscow next week."

"Why does he need to go there?"

"The Growth and Opportunities Conference is a meeting place for movers and shakers from the worlds of business and politics, mostly it's attended by influential people from developing countries but there are always business and government representatives from western nations looking for investment opportunities in those countries."

"That doesn't answer my question."

"There is a woman named Sonya Kruschenko who is going to be at the conference who I would like Fyodor to have a word with."

"Why is she important?"

"She's been chosen by the lion in recognition of her strength, and we want that strength on our side."

"To do what with?"

"I'm afraid I can't share that with you just yet, for now all that you need to know is that it is imperative that we bring the lion over to our side."

John knew that he wasn't going to be able to extract any more information from the Raven about what its intentions were in Ukraine so he didn't ask it anymore questions about it.

"When are we going?"

"In a couple of hours."

"How are we going? I haven't made any flight arrangements."

"Are you forgetting that I'm a bird?"

When the time came for them to leave, John walked outside into the backyard and surrendered his body to the Raven. Now in control, the Raven used its power to make enormous black wings protrude from John's back. The Raven flapped its wings to carry them into the air and once they were sufficiently high above the ground, too high to be seen, the Raven began flying in a north-westerly direction. John looked down from behind his eyes and could see nothing but a blur. They weren't flying like a regular bird like he thought they'd be; the Raven was traveling at what he could only imagine was hypersonic speed. In almost no time they had reached the west coast and were flying over the Pacific ocean. For John, the awesome experience of traveling as only a divine being could travel was almost worth the cost of being possessed, and there was a part of him that, despite his apprehensions about the Raven, was excited about the prospect of having the opportunity to experience firsthand the Raven's full range of abilities and discover whether it was in fact infinitely powerful. It took them only slightly longer to cross the Pacific as it had for them to leave the continent, leaving only the Siberian tundra as the last great expanse for them to cross before reaching their destination. Because they had traveled across multiple time zones in a matter of minutes, the sun had already risen in Ukraine when the Raven descended from the sky into a forest in the east of the country. The rest of the journey would be made on foot.