The new arrival moved so quickly as to be a blur to my borrowed body’s eyes, though I could sense him efficiently striking people’s vitals as he moved before the force of his blows and passing caught up with the rest of the world.

The armored figure came to a stop at the entrance to the ruined room, leaving objects, body parts, and various fluids flying in his wake. The deep shadows dominating the passage, broken up only by the faint illumination from the lamps the intruders had brought, lent more weight to the stranger's presence and made the sound of things splattering against the trunks and branches of supernaturally tough trees seem all the eerier.

I felt the urge to applaud the spectacle of the carnage and couldn’t help but wonder when I’d gotten so desensitized to violence. Had it been in my original life or long after I’d died?

As I took in the new arrival’s appearance, I tried to figure out if this was another hostile (albeit from a different party) or an ally. The colors and style of his armor and the clothes visible under it were somewhat similar to the guards, as were some of the symbols decorating it, so maybe this was one of their higher-ups.

There was a beat of still silence as those present stared, then the maids gagged and retched when the wave of stench blew over us. The twins began wailing again. Even the guards and the medics flinched back, going pale as they beheld the gory scene.

The armored figure flicked the blade of the dagger he was holding clean before tucking it away as he confidently strode into the room. He didn’t give the piles of bodies a second glance as he stepped around them and swept his gaze over the survivors before stopping on me.

“Helen,” he said, voice distorted by the helmet, before continuing into a question that I didn’t understand.

I pointed at the body’s throat, made the talking hand gesture, and shook my head, trying to convey my inability to talk to him.

That seemed to give the armored stranger a bit of pause. He pulled his helmet off, revealing a slightly disheveled human face. There were deep circles under his slanted eyes and a dark five-o-clock shadow on his lower face. Underneath that, his features were rather symmetrical and sharp in a way that had been considered handsome in my original life.

He looked relieved to see me, or rather the body I was borrowing, and asked another question as he spotted the wailing infants. His weary expression turned hopeful at the sight of them.

When he turned back to me, clearly looking for an answer, I shook my head again and pointed at the orange-skinned medic. It was a little mean to put the exhausted doctor on the spot, but he was the one who’d first noticed what was up with me.

The armored man looked over to the medic and directed his next question at him, a sharper tone to his words.

The harried-looking orange-skinned man hurried to answer, occasionally stumbling over his words but hopefully explaining that this body’s original occupant was dead.

The armored man’s expression went momentarily blank, though the flow of energy within him swirled much more agitatedly. Then he asked another question, likely about the twins given the worried look he’d directed their way.

Whatever the orange-skinned medic told him about their condition must have been positive, because the man let out a relieved breath.

It was surprising that the armored man didn’t try to exorcise me or restrain my borrowed body after exchanging a few more words with the medic, given the whole possession thing. Instead, he took a few moments to talk to the other survivors, perhaps to get their impression of me, or maybe for a general report of recent events. The words ‘Lee’ and ‘Alexander’ came up several times.

I considered vacating this borrowed body now that a person capable of crushing everything I’d seen of this place so far had arrived. I’d examined enough of this world’s ambient energies to be reasonably confident that I would be able to persist here in my non-corporeal form without being harmed by it. Unfortunately, that didn’t mean that I wouldn’t have a detrimental effect on my surroundings.

If I wanted to be a benign spiritual being, then I’d needed a bit more time to finish adding a new outermost layer to myself that would keep my unconverted energy from having weird effects on the surroundings. That would let me stick around the twins and ensure they were properly delivered to safety.

Choices, choices. Well, I supposed I could decide once this group finished up their chat.

*****

Perhaps I had made a positive enough impression on the survivors to convince the armored man to not open things with a violent confrontation. Or maybe he’d decided that it was above his pay grade and he was going to kick it up the ladder. It wasn’t like I knew how high their organization went.

In any case, the armored man had swiftly taken command of the little group of survivors and been made aware of my communication issues.

He cleared his throat when he turned back to face me, then said, “Alexander,” as he tapped his armor’s chest plate.

Given that verbal communication hadn’t worked when I’d attempted it earlier, I went with a different approach this time. Since making light with local magical energy was easy, I spelled out the names of all the languages I knew well enough to converse in, in said language’s native script.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Back in my original life, I’d have scoffed at the idea that near-identical languages could exist in different universes, especially not when there was such a wide variety of them on my planet alone. But if what I’d learned since my death was anything to go by, whatever kind of multiverse existed out there was wild.

Maybe even wilder than the things authors of fictional works from my original life had dreamed of, since there were things human minds weren’t made to process. In short, all sorts of improbable and impossible things were real, and one was no less likely to encounter a familiar tongue as one that would rend their mind asunder.

Case in point, Alexander (and I wasn’t yet sure if it was a name or a title) clearly recognized several sections of the words I’d projected. He hummed thoughtfully as he scanned the section with Earth-type languages.

“Can you understand me?” he then asked in what I’d called ‘modern’ English in my original life.

He’d spoken with a notable accent, but not one that severely impeded understanding. After the recent struggles with the language barrier and the long time without being able to have any meaningful conversation at all before that, my bet paying off nearly made me shout in glee.

I dismissed the list of words, nodded and wrote, “Yes! You can call me Sophia.” Then I made the thumbs-up gesture with my borrowed body’s good hand for emphasis on the off chance that it carried a similar meaning here as in my original life.

The other people present in the room gave me odd looks, but Alexander’s lips twitched up a little.

“Good,” he said before his momentary amusement quickly evaporated, “Now explain why you are possessing my wife’s body.”

Wife, huh? That probably meant the twins were his kids as well.

I changed the projection to display, “She asked me to save her children as she died.” I choose to be diplomatic and not call it begging. “I think your world has a mechanism for bringing people over when they make this kind of deal because it put me in her body.”

Alexander made another thoughtful hum, then asked, “What exactly did you agree to do?”

“To save her children from the attack and get them to safety,” I wrote in answer, “I’ll be able to leave this body soon, so you can give her proper funeral.”

I redoubled my efforts to finish up the construction of the new outer layer I needed to safely interact with the local reality so that I would be able to quickly eject myself from this corporeal shell if things went pear-shaped.

“You’re not going to keep it?” he asked, eyebrows shooting up. “Why not?”

I huffed and wrote back, “Because it would be rude and I’m not that desperate for a corporeal form. If I find myself in need of one, I can put something artificial together.”

“Forgive me if that sounds too good to be true,” the man said after reading my response, “Though you have my thanks for protecting my children.”

That was a fair attitude to have when dealing with body-hopping spirits but didn’t stop the skepticism from being annoying.

I furrowed the borrowed body’s brows and wrote out a suggestion, “Do you have truth-telling abilities or artifacts in this world? Or maybe evil-detecting ones?”

“We do have something that can work like that,” Alexander answered after giving it some thought, “And are you willing to be subjected to such an examination?”

I nodded firmly and changed the projection to say, “It's worth a try.”

As annoying as being questioned might be, I could put up with a lot to continue having a real (and sane) conversation.

*****

The situation outside seemed to have settled down enough for Alexander to feel comfortable taking the time to take me to this truth or evil-detecting artifact right away.

He’d pulled a large cloak with a deep hood from a spatial storage item and insisted that I wear it. It was too long for Helen’s frame, but I didn’t complain since being seen running around in someone else’s body was generally considered a faux pas among the living. Besides, the cloak did an excellent job of concealing the blood-stained clothes and swathes of bandages.

I pulled the hood down to conceal the borrowed body’s face and hung back when more people arrived. As I watched Alexander entrust the group to escort the twins and the two doctors elsewhere, I mused that it was probably safe to leave them with the people their father trusted, but also possible that something bad would happen regardless. So I kept tabs on their life signs and kept a thread of energy connected to the basket they were being carried, in just in case.

I’d completed my part of the bargain, but it wouldn’t sit right with me if those children got hurt as soon as I looked away.

Making it out of the twisted maze of trees I’d created was a chore even with the ability to clear a path. Helen’s body wasn’t in the best of conditions and my coordination in it was still rough. On top of that, the structure we were navigating through was unusually large for human-scale construction.

From the way that everyone we came across automatically deferred to Alexander, he must be pretty high in the local power structure. That might be part of why he’d switched to leading me through deserted hallways.

“Is this the fastest you can travel on foot?” he finally asked as we stopped near a tall window. From the looks of it, we were a few floors off the ground and the sun was either rising or setting.

I sighed and wrote out, “Yes. This body is damaged and rather unfamiliar. Pushing it too much will make it worse.”

“Then let's take a shortcut,” Alexander said and pulled the heavy window panes open.

I hummed and nodded, reaching out to grab a hand-hold to climb up to the windowsill. Jumping from here and using a movement technique would be much faster and easier to control than walking. I was just about to ask where we were heading when the man picked me up.

“Weren’t you just worried about damaging Helen’s body?” he asked pointedly.

I gave him my best flat look and adjusted my projection to say, “I can control techniques much more easily than a physical form. Carrying it with one would have been safer.”

“Interesting,” was his only response before he leaped out the window, launching us high into the air. He controlled the direction in which we headed by creating little platforms to jump off of.

I didn’t get to analyze the building we’d just departed from, nor note much about the landscape of greenery and smaller structures that we sped past, nor examine the weave of energy in them because my attention was captured by something much more interesting.

There was what felt like a… scar in reality nearby and, if I was right, we were heading toward it. That wasn’t an entirely unfamiliar phenomenon, but those kinds of things typically had a detrimental effect on their surroundings. Whatever we were heading for was the opposite.

A few heartbeats later we landed on a stone path that led into a patch of carefully cultivated and vibrant woodland.

Alexander practically marched down the stones, somehow without completely ruining the odd sense of peace that had managed to persist here despite the nearby settlement having been attacked. Soon enough, we reached its center, emerging from the last bend in the path into a small clearing with what looked like a large glowing white tree to my borrowed body’s eyes.

To my other senses, however, it was…

A feeling of longing and loss seized me as my attention fell on it, along with the conflicting desire to turn around and get away as far as possible.

I almost didn’t notice being set down on the ground and missed whatever Alexander said.

Instead, I reached out toward the twisting white trunk, forgetting that I’d come here to prove that I wasn’t something completely malicious and ignoring that this thing might be some sort of trap for wayward souls.

The borrowed body’s hand made contact with the bark and the world… fell away.