I laughed at myself as I ran down a forest road, the dirt and gravel crunching under my feet.

What else am I supposed to do other than laugh? I considered being mad at myself or throwing my arms up in resignation. Imagine that—me, resigning myself to being tossed and turned by life! Despite regaining my body, Ryder Corvo from two years ago would have turned me into lunchmeat. Of course, I’m not talking about physical confrontation.

Years of decline and sickness atrophied more than just my muscles. It was something I should have expected, but back then, I had much bigger, flashier problems to worry about.

Who knew my willpower and assertiveness would plummet so drastically? It’s as if my balls got left behind on Earth. From death to facing the Entity, and even dealing with the tiny Velisza—I’ve been keeping my butt cheeks clenched. All cautious, tentative, scared.

Pathetic! That’s what it is!

I was in my head, dealing with issues that might never materialise instead of what was directly in front of me.

I laughed even harder.

It’s sad when you see hard-won progress slide back. But this time, I am far from helpless.

I identified the problem—my personality has grown noodle-arms. Good. Now, what am I going to do about it?

Improve, that’s what!

Earn your pride and self-respect back, Ryder. The only way you know how—bend your back and spill the sweat. Work on it!

I reached the fork in the road and stopped running, breathing heavily, and enjoying the pleasant burn of my muscles. The slow breeze cooling my body.

“One step at a time, though,” I said to myself. For now, I needed to find the village I suspected was close by. The surrounding forest was beautiful, with countless shades of greens and browns. The flora was so diverse that it took actual effort to see more than one or two trees of the same species at a time.

However, beautiful or not, I didn’t want to wait around for nocturnal predators to come out and play. The idea of wrestling with the magical fauna, especially in the dark, didn’t appeal to me. I gave myself this big pep-talk about confidence, but that didn’t mean that I should be fist fighting magic bears for no reason.

There was one more thing I could focus on as I walked, though…

“Status!!” I said loudly, turning my thoughts inward.

Nothing. The chirping of birds and the loud swaying of tree canopies in the breeze were my only answers.

“Anetta, status!”

The persistent tickle I’d felt in the back of my head ever since that ‘void sludge’ was removed from my soul resolved into a presence in my mind. I could feel her there, as if she were leaning over my shoulder.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“I… Want to say ‘single’ but I have no idea what exactly we have going on here,” the feminine voice in my mind answered. “Is ‘soulmates’ a relationship status?”

“Ha! Very funny,” I said flatly, scanning for the chimney smoke I’d seen earlier. “If you’re able to joke, I’m guessing you aren’t completely devastated by what’s happening.”

“Still chewing on it,” she admitted, her voice complicated.

“Yeah, me too,” I said sombrely, knowing exactly how she felt. “We’ll talk about it when we both process it all.”

“How did you know it was me, living inside your head?” she asked, changing the subject.

“Just followed the breadcrumbs. While I was being kicked out of Earth, I felt our connection. From there, I just needed to deduce whose attitude towards me can be described as ‘truly devoted,’ but for me to feel nothing but vague gratitude and relief towards them? You were the only one who fit. Now, don’t be discouraged by the cool feelings. This is the first time we meet in person, after all.”

“It could have been any of the other ‘cultists.’ Some of the girls have some pretty crazy ideas about you,” she protested.

“Darling girl, I know more about you and your band of cheerleaders than you can imagine. Did you really think I haven’t kept my eye on a pack of young adults who endangered my career more than once with their antics? The first and second generations of the ‘Sisters of Dim Light’ were just girls looking to party with me and see if I lived up to the hype. The third… let’s not talk about the third. It wasn’t until you took over that the ‘cult’ started looking really… ‘cultish.’”

The chimney smoke I’d glimpsed earlier was now hidden by the thick tree canopy, but the road straight ahead seemed better-travelled than the other two. I walked ahead, following the thick tracks of booted feet and wagon carts.

“Tell me, are you to blame for me suddenly being able to speak the language I never heard in my life? It was so seamless, I didn’t realise I wasn’t speaking English until I was half-way through the conversation with the tiny wizard,” I said.

“She was so adorable. I wanted to pinch her pouty cheeks and never let go,” Anetta said, gushing. “And…yeah, I have access to a ton of knowledge about everything. But it’s a bit complicated.”

“Complicated how?” I raised an eyebrow.

As it turned out, the ‘knowledge repository’ I was promised by the Entity…it was there. Anetta described it as a library of sorts she could access, though she struggled to explain the details. Some knowledge, she said, was harder to access than other. Forcing the issue made her presence thinner and weak. Languages for example were almost effortless, but when she tried to access some advanced magical concepts, she paid for a handful of disjointed sentences with a stupor that kept her incapacitated for almost an hour.

She had an intuitive understanding of how she could channel the contents of the ‘library’ into my mind. However, from time to time, I’d get a stray emotion or thought packaged with the information, originating from her own mind. I wondered if some of what I had been feeling recently was this ‘emotional pollution’ from her attempts to help me with language. But I dismissed it; those emotions felt intrusive, almost imposed—I would have noticed the difference.

I could also feel her attempts to see through my eyes or experience sensations through my skin. The sensation was oddly intimate, but didn’t bother me at all. If this girl was going to live her life without her own body and with little agency, the least I could do was allow her to enjoy an occasional smell or touch.

This line of thought led me to wonder about her accommodations inside my head, so I asked her about it. She kept reaching for odd descriptors, calling the sensation “floaty” and “cushy.” It made me picture her hazy outline floating in some nebulous space, similar to what I experienced during my brief stint as a disembodied soul. She didn’t seem to be suffering or uncomfortable, though, which relieved me. Nonetheless, I decided to revisit the topic once both of us had fully processed the idea of sharing a body.

“You seem much more grounded than I expected,” I said, remembering my encounters with the ‘Sisters of Dim Light.’ All of them would go straight to gushing or performing some sort of ritual of obeisance that made the entire experience awkward at best.

“Uh…” she sounded embarrassed. “I am holding myself back, for the most part. I know that the Ryder Corvo that lives in my head and the actual person are two different people. I’m working hard not to make you uncomfortable since neither of us has the option of turning and leaving.”

Shit. That seal is going to blow, eventually, and I'm going to have a party inside my head. I took a moment to examine how I felt about that. 'At least I won’t get bored anytime soon', I concluded, chuckling to myself. Having a worshipful alter-ego in your head brings all kinds of interesting complications to my life. But I could see countless benefits of having Anetta around even disregarding her access to the 'library'. The value of a small island of something familiar, something to remind me of home, to remind me of who I was, who I ought to be can't be overstated.

As I rounded the bend, walking around some sort of giant fern, I spotted the first signs of civilization. It was a small wooden hut with a thatched, moss-covered roof. The walls were made from rough, greyish logs, and a stack of freshly chopped wood was neatly piled beside the entrance. This had to be a forester’s hut, I thought.

“Ryder, stop walking.”

I almost stumbled, looking around for any danger.

“What is it?” I whispered.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s just… I have been a busy bee, and grabbed handfuls of essential knowledge about the world and the people while you were teaching a tiny wizard diplomacy. You should really take it before we reach the village. It’s going to change your approach, I think.”

A series of images and sounds flooded my senses, taking me out of it for a moment. I was glad she asked me to stop walking because I’m sure I would have ended up face-down in the dirt by the time it stopped.

As the knowledge settled in my mind…

“Crap… This does change things,” I thought.