Sera's head was pounding and in severe pain. Her eyes slowly opened and focused on the bright blue sky. It was already started become purple which meant the Sun was about to set.
With a large groan of pain she sat up and tried to look around. Her vision swam and it couldn't focus on a single thing. It was very disorienting and it caused a lot of nausea to build up.
After a minute she couldn't hold it in any longer and she vomited on the ground to her right.
She spent the next few minutes on the ground puking up her guts, which were really empty.
It took her another few minutes after that for her vision to clear enough. Her eyes instantly focused on her team of three. They were staring at Sera.
Percy seemed to be a bit concerned, but mostly unbothered. Hector pretended to not be satisfied by the sight of Sera suffering. Kathy was the only one who seemed to actually care about Sera's wellbeing.
She walked to Sera and knelt down in front of her. Her mouth moved, but strangely enough no sound came out... or at least Sera heard nothing.
After a few seconds she realized that her hearing was gone, same with her smell and taste. She could only see, feel and talk.
With a lot of effort she read Kathy's lips. 'Are you okay?' She asked.
Sera just slowly nodded, which she instantly regretted since in that moment the migraine doubled in pain. She closed her eyes and slowly laid back on the grassy ground.
The headache and pain slowly decreased and she had eventually fallen asleep.
...
Kathy watched her leader groan in pain, then after being awake for only a few minutes, pass out yet again.
Her expression turned a bit grim. Behind her a boisterous laughter shook her bones.
She didn't even know what was happening, in one moment she was kneeling next to the passed out Sera, in the next she had already changed into a giant ghost leopard.
Without thinking she jumped on Hector's chest and held one of her front paws, with its gigantic claws, to his throat. The sound emanating from it got silenced instantly.
Kathy's maw full of multiple rows of razor sharp teeth came awfully close to his face. While growling angrily saliva dripped down right onto his face and into his eyes.
Hector's eyes got consumed in pure dread, but soon his idiocy came out victorious. His vision got absorbed in pure rage and with one swift move he threw Kathy right into a tree.
'I'm glad you brought this up. How is she like? Does she conspire or anything?' Her voice sounded strangely gleeful, like it was experiencing deep satisfaction.
Kathy didn't quite understand why the voice always asked her if Sera was conspiring or not. On one hand Kathy had no idea, on the other she didn't really want to tell anything important to this outsider.
'I have no clue. Can't you go and bother someone else?' She made her voice sound annoyed, and her emotions starting to reflect that as well.
The voice, her own voice, laughed inside her head. It was an uncanny feeling. The laughter was sadistic and evil.
'Oh, little Kathy. This connection takes so little to keep up and it is always nice to converse with you... Now I ask you again and you probably shouldn't dodge the question this time... What is she doing!'
The voice sounded friendly at first, but it soon became cruel and mad. Her body shuddered a bit from what was about to happen next.
Slowly pain started to appear all over her body. It wasn't from any injury or anything like that. It was a mental attack made by the voice inside her head. Chapter Experience:
Every time the voice asked her something it wanted to know badly and she didn't want to answer, the pain would come over her. It kept increasing until she eventually couldn't bear it any longer. In that moment she would tell everything to the voice.
Kathy tried to fight it every time, not because of her loyalty towards Sera. In reality she didn't care much about her. The resistance was more of a principle in her mind, she didn't want to bow down in front of this parasite in her mind.
Somehow she knew that on the day she stopped fighting it would be her last day as herself.
The pain gradually increased, her body trembled from it. Slowly her breathing pattern became erratic and quick, same as her heartbeat.
She seemed to hold out longer than usual, but after five minutes of pure excruciating pain, Kathy finally gave in.
'Nothing... She doesn't plan anything... She just wants to use the siege at New Constantinople to fully saturate her soul... It's because of that bastard Harold... She needs to do it by the end of the month...' She said a few more mundane things, but nothing new.
The pain had already stopped when she started speaking, but her body still shivered.
The voice laughed again, this time less cruelly and more in satisfaction.
'Bastard eh? He is quite an asshole if I do say so myself, I should probably take him out at some point...' The voice laughed even more hysterically, which made Kathy feel really uncomfortable since she was hearing her own voice.
'Anyway, it is good that she takes her task seriously. I hope the little angel will grow up fast!' After saying the last sentence the voice disappeared.
Kathy felt it leave, it always made her feel liberating. It was like when your boss watches you work, it always feels great when they just leave you to it!
She took a deep breath of the nice cool air and eventually fallen into a slumber of her own.