The spine held the nerves that routed the signals to and from the brain. Right behind the throat was the brain stem, the part of the brain, on a human or near-human, that did the routing and control for the signals and controlled the animal hind-brain and fight or flight response. Pain was a signal both to and from the brain, so while the spine and brain themselves didn't have pain receptors, they had access to all of them.
Alyssa was good with pain, in a lot of ways she craved it to let her know she was alive. It was her thing, pain, she enjoyed it and got off on it far more than was honestly ok for a normal person. She'd lived a hard life.
Alyssa swallowed the vong seed without any hesitation, passed it over her tongue and down her throat. It was a bit on the big side to just swallow, but the pain of swallowing it was very closely followed and drowned out by new sensations as her saliva activated the seed. It burrowed through the back of her throat and into the joint where her brain stem and spinal cord met. Her eyes went blind with flashes of color and migraine level pain. All of the nerves on her body felt as though they were simultaneously on fire and bathed in ice water, all while being carved into with dull rusty spoons and paper cuts.
Without consciously deciding to or being aware of it, Alyssa fell to her knees. Her eyes were rolled up into the back of her head in a strange combination of pain and perverse pleasure. Her body spasmed as the vong seed settled into where it wanted to stay and blanked her essence from being sensed by the force. New sensations continued to food her, as if lemon juice and salt were being rubbed into each of the wounds she was not actually covered with. Her muscles all tried to contract at once, causing her to fall over onto her side and into the water. Her body continued to spasm, her gills opened and closed spasmodically, getting only the barest amount of oxygen into her.
After a few moments, she fell to the floor of the pool and lay there. The pain receded slowly, but enough so that she could move. Her gills began to work correctly and she took deep breaths past them to regain oxygen. When the pain reached a low enough level that she could move, she kicked her way to the surface and lay over the side of the pool, unable to quite pull herself all the way out quite yet. In her eyes could still be seen the residuals of pain and pleasure as she panted. Her eyes were unfocused and her mouth slightly open, but otherwise she didn't move.
[member="Darth Raven"]
