“You thought it would be that easy?” a voice whispered in his ear. “You thought that you could steal pieces of me and just put them away when you were done? I’m not going anywhere.”

The barrage of disjointed memories continued to spool past him, but that was the least of Benjamin’s concerns now. Someone was in his head with him. No, not someone, the Prince, or at least a piece of him. Until this moment, Benjamin had been an observer of someone else's life; finding out that someone was observing him was more than shocking. It was disturbing.

He pulled up the sector mapping for his soul and saw at a glance that about a fifth of the dead sectors had been filled with the new data. Some scattered sectors were still black and likely too damaged to be repaired, even with replacement data. That wasn’t what concerned Benjamin, though.

Instead if the slowly spiraling search pattern he’d planned, the new brightly growing sectors were crawling toward the ragged edge of the good ones like a tendril. Or a cancer, he thought to himself as he realized what was happening.

Now that he was looking for it, it was impossible to miss. Something had corrupted his program as was carrying out his agenda. The visualization that made up his soul was a vast, and contained tens of thousands of sectors. Even now, it had only approached the ragged edge of the healthy portion, but given enough time, it might penetrate all the way to the core of who he was.

Or overwrite me entirely, he realized.

Benjamin cursed himself. The metaphor had blinded him. It might look like he was defragging a hard drive or backing up a database, but this was his soul he was messing with. He’d been much too cavalier about the whole thing.

In fact, he’d been so sure that what he was doing was safe that he hadn’t given thought to something like this, and he had no countermeasures in place. In fact, he’d been so sure that the Rhulvin hadn’t had something like a complex malware that he hadn’t even bothered to develop an antivirus protocol.

That would change right now, he decided as he brought up his codex and immediately tried to change the parameters, but it didn’t really seem to do anything. For a moment, the barrage of memories ground to a halt, and the progress of the questing tendrils ceased, but then it started right back up again.

“No, that won’t do at all,” the voice mused. “You won’t be leaving here, I’m afraid. Not until you are me, that is.”

“You can’t stop me!” Benjamin yelled out, but even as he did so, the world shifted. He was no longer a ghost.

Suddenly, the world was no longer spinning by him at its jerky, fast forwarded rate. A moment ago he’d been sitting on the grass while the images of someone elses life played by in his head. Now, he was sitting in the richly appointed bath wearing the Prince’s skin while his words echoed against the alabaster walls.

“Stop you, my Prince?” a dark-eyed woman’s voice said as he turned to face her. “I would never dream of such a thing. You can do whatever you like with me.”

“And me,” a second woman called out as he faced them. Azarina. Stephina. The names came to him instantly as he saw the two gorgeous women. They were his two favorite bath slaves at the moment. Ever since he’d had Sartorial whipped and sold for staining his favorite—

But I would never do that, Benjamin thought, recoiling in horror at the memory that had somehow become his own. He might never have done it, but he could remember the way the lead tipped flog had felt in his hand, and he could remember the joy he’d felt at using low level healing magic to make sure the scars would be a permanent reminder for…

Benjamin stood and got out of the tub, striding across the room to face the mirror. It was there he saw that he was no longer himself. Instead, he viewed a dripping-wet stranger standing before him. His reflection was more handsome and muscular than Benjamin had ever been in his life. More important than any of that, though, was the cruel face and the devious eyes that met his own. Even though he’d known it before now, seeing that he was in fact Prince Agardian hit him like a slap to the face.

“Is everything okay, sire?” Stephina asked. “If you’ve become overheated, we can send for ice…”

He wasn’t overheated, though. He was in shock and denial. Worse than that, though, was the fact that moment by moment, he could feel these facts slipping away. He had to keep reminding himself that this wasn’t real to avoid being swept away by it. It was hard, though, because this was a memory, and it wanted to play out a certain way.

He could feel the Prince’s mind already trying to decide which of the women he wanted to use next, and only Benjamin’s abject horror at the fact that those women were slaves with zero say in the matter like so many other women he’d freed in their… even as he thought about his campaign across the plains, it was fading.

Benjamin staggered against the mirror and then, leaning against the cool wall he slowly slid down it and struggled to keep himself from hyperventilating. When he reached the floor he whispered, “No, this isn’t right, none of it is right.”

“What isn’t right, my lord. Shall we fetch a healer for you?” Azarina asked.

He ignored them and opened up his system interface. He was surprised to find it was completely different than the one he was used to. Not only was the information different than his own but the layout and appearance were different.

NAME: Agardian Rhul

RACE: Rhulvin

CLASS: Heir

LVL: 11

EXP: 944,579/1,024,000

BPs: 22

Active Familiars: 2

Ongoing Effects: 0

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Bound Items: 3

Mind

INTELLECT

14

WILL

11

MANIPULATE

19

Body

AGILITY

12

STRENGTH

15

APPEARANCE

19

Soul

ANIMA

15

SPIRIT

12

CHARM

16

RESOLVE: 135/135

HEALTH: 177/177

MANA: 108/132

STATUS EFFECTS:

Royalty: +10 to all actions

Panoply: No penalty to summoning multiple familiars simultaneously.

Blessed: 10% increase to all social effects

SKILLS

Politics: 85

Seduction: 69

Subterfuge: 68

Magic (Runic):65

Knowledge (infernal): 59

Diplomacy: 51

Leadership: 39

Knowledge (history): 33

Athletics: 29

Resist (Social): 25

Dodge: 19

Awareness: 10

ABILITIES

Diabolic: Summoned demons are 25% stronger.

Privileged: Gain extraordinary access to lower system users and strates.

Benjamin’s system was a utilitarian green status screen that he had customized to some degree over the time he’d had it. This was entirely different, though. Not only was the appearance a skeuomorphic nightmare of gilded filigree and cursive calligraphy that he could barely read, but it was entirely different. He had whole menus right now that his system lacked. He couldn’t just pull up the Prince's spells; he could also pull up the spell list and see all the other spells that he could equip instead, along with various inventory functions that seemed to be filled with various texts and heliographs.

Until now, Benjamin had been operating at the most basic level, but Prince Agardian had been living in turbo luxury mode the whole time. Benjamin reached out with his mind to open his codex spell and found, to his horror, that it wasn’t there.

He could summon any one of a dozen different powerful demons and servitors to do whatever he wished, but he couldn’t select a spell that wasn’t on the list. He might have more options than any other system user, but it still wasn’t enough to look under the hood and fundamentally change or even examine hidden processes.

While his panic rose, one of his slaves ran off to get a healer while he flipped through menus and options. Eventually, he found a status readout for the Phylactery amulet that he was wearing, which said his backup was 2.2% complete, but that was the most insight he could gain.

With every moment, he could feel himself fading. It was like he was slipping away, and it was only when that stopped, and things began to sharpen again that the feeling waned. Whoever he'd been the moment before was gone now.

“Two percent?” he mumbled. “I’ve seen that number before, but where? Where have I… Agghhhhh…”

When he yelled out in frustration, his remaining bed slave recoiled in fear. She knew well what he was capable of in a fit of pique, but he wouldn’t hurt her just because he was having trouble remembering what it was he’d been thinking about only a moment before, would he?

Still, when he closed his system window to push away those dark thoughts, he decided that he didn’t like the way that his mirror was looking at him, and he spent the next few minutes beating his fists bloody against it as he destroyed it.

The healer that came was a soft eunuch that Agardian didn’t much care for, but he was competent enough. The man repaired all of that with a few muttered words, and then, after getting the far-away look in his eyes, he indicated he was studying the Prince’s aura to better diagnose him.

He sat there, ignoring the indignity, as he looked into the distance and tried to regain his bearing. He wasn’t going crazy. He wasn’t!

Afterward, he was proscribed a soothing potion and a day of rest free from stimulants and intoxicants. While Agardian did the former, once he woke from his nap, he spent the evening drinking so heavily that he forgot all about the strange outburst he had this afternoon. Not even the finest fruit of the vine or his bed slaves's wonderful breasts were enough to entirely distract him, though, and he spent half the night on his balcony staring at the city below and wondering what it was he’d forgotten that might vex him so much.

In the morning, once the Eunuch had removed his headache, he laid around for much of the day, engaged in similar activities. Eventually, he dictated a list of questions he had about the system and even summoned a scholar to address them, but fearing ridicule that he might have asked a dumb question, he threw the list away before the man arrived.

After a day or two, things returned to normal, and he even started to attend some of his classes at the academy. He rarely participated in the debates, as usual, but he also shied away from the gossip and the flirtations that were usually his sole reason for attending beyond the tests of magical prowess.

In the end, a single loose end was enough to frustrate him almost every time he looked at it, and that was his Soul Phylactery’s update status. It had said two percent a couple of days ago, which, of course, didn’t make any sense because it should always be at or near one hundred percent. And yet, for some reason, it was ticking up very slowly and was only now approaching five percent.

It was a mystery, and day after day, he noted that it was slowly climbing, though it never became important enough to rise above his other distractions. There were feasts to attend, women to dance with, and orgies to incite.

Still, something about that number made him anxious, and as it passed ten percent and continued to climb some part of him knew that something was wrong. Eventually, he decided to seek out an expert. Part of him said that he was only worried because he might not be reborn should an accident befall him. It was more than that, though.

The question of whom to ask was a more difficult one to answer. Some of the scribes and scribblers might have been able to investigate it, but he hated the idea of being probed by someone of such low birth. By contrast, a High Priest of the system would have doubly been able to answer his questions, but word might get back to his father, or worse, one of his siblings were he to go that route.

Prince Agardian shook his head. He had no interest in exposing any weakness to those jackals. No, he would have to find someone knowledgeable but unconnected, and that would take time.