I felt sick. It was hard to sense anything else. Was I sitting or lying? Perhaps, hanging? Oy maybe I was standing on my hands? That moment I couldn't tell. As if I was dreaming and my consciousness was separated from the world around me.

Another things I could feel were heat and thirst. It seemed like I was flowing through a harsh and slow river of sand, my skin was dry and sore.

Slap!

What? Who slapped me? Where was I?

"What's wrong with him?" a familiar voice said. It gave me bad vibes, but I couldn't remember whose it was.

Slap!

"Zane! Are you alright?" two people shouted, their voices worried.

New noises and feelings pushed away my drowsiness, which made thinking easier.

Zane? Who is Zane?

Answering my question, a flash of pain exploded in my head. I groaned.

Somehow, I had two different opinions on the name "Zane". They were formed by two different experiences, maybe even two separate personalities.

Zane was a new name of mine, of the reincarnated sorceress Alice.

But Zane was also my only name. So, which one of these two opinions was true?

I opened my eyes. Immidiately another blast of pain bursted in my mind. It seemed to be too exhausted to use vision. I wanted to close me eyes, but also... I didn't. My desires were opposite; once again, I had two viewpoints. I felt bad, I also understood that to sort the mess my mind turned into, I needed to gather more information about the world around me.

Right in front of me I could see the face of Harper Gauss.

Again, I could feel two mental flows. Harper Gauss was a scary man, who kidnapped my whole family and tormented my father. But he was also a demigod, a strong opponent I defeated recently and a disgusting madman.

I could see him grinning threateningly, but I also felt that he was nervous.

Wait, did I really defeat him recently? Didn't it happen five years ago, before my birth? Why does it feel that it happened a few days ago then? Did I mess up my perception of time? Packing your whole mind up into a memory archive is a bad idea in any situation other than mine.

Perhaps, I had this weird feeling because all these years one of my identities was sleeping in a memory archive. Having memories from two separated lives, from two different time periods, feeling two personalities with their life experiences huddling in one brain felt confusing, as if I was listening to two melodies at the same time.

One of them was radiating shock, caused by the fact that all my life another personality was hiding somewhere deep in my mind. The amazement was so powerful that it blew away the fear.

The other of my... What would be the most appropriate word for my identities? The other of my selves, Alice, was emanating joy and curiosity. My idea worked: I managed to save at least a part of my memories and now I wanted explore the situation I was in.

Could I use the word 'I' anymore? What did it mean? Was 'I' Alice the Mindweaver or Zane Nocturne? Maybe, both?

"Son?" my father asked nervously. I looked at him and saw that he was... naked! I panicked, as I have never seen a nude man. But I was a boy myself and I bathed pretty often, so, clearly, before that I had seen one at least. Ugh... This was so confusing.

Then I remembered that I was naked too! But it wasn't my body, so technically, there was no reason for me to be embarrassed. At the same time, I understood crystal clear that this body of a five year old boy was mine.

These contradictions felt stupid as if everybody around me only had one face, but I had two! Both of my selves were right and were wrong.

It didn't feel the way one would imagine having two identities. I neither heard voices telling me what to do nor switched between my selves letting only one of them at a time make decisions.

It more felt like having two different sets of habits, experiences and personality traits, each having its own strengths and weaknesses. When I saw something, I got two different impressions about it, when I wanted to make a decision, both my identities interwined, looking at the problem from different angles.

This silly condition reminded me of something important for one of my selves, for Alice. It was the word I liked using in such strange situations. But I couldn't give it a clear definition.

"What," because of this single word my mind got teared up with pain, but I continued anyway, "What does," I paused again, remembering how to spell it properly, "the word 'kerfuffle' mean"?

Harper's face fell. Now he didn't look threatening, the man seemed threatened instead. Was it the word 'kerfuffle' that had such an impact on him? Now I liked it even more!

The torturer was staying in shock, while I was looking around the room. Everything around me was both familiar and unknown. One of my identities, Alice, was questioning everything around her and immediately the answers were popping out in my brain thanks to Zane. To know and not to know something at the same time felt abnormal.

How did I get here? I was kidnapped together with my family. Huh, Alice the Sorceress prefered using the word 'abduct', and Zane Nocturne usually used its synonym, 'kidnap'. By the way, always going into lengthy reflections was Alice's bad habit, not Zane's.

Who is that young boy, whose eyes are closed by a woman standing behind him? Oh, it's Harper's son! Yeah, I remember that his mother was already walking with a big round belly short before the battle in which I died. Poor woman, she married such an asshole.

Then I looked back at my father, who had a paradoxal mixture of worry and relief on his face, and noticed that his hands were embedded into the wall. I knew about this Harper's trick; this way he ensured that his prey won't use magic and tortured it at the same time. Hanging on your hands and legs like that for hours is agonizing.

"Son, what are you talking about? How do you feel?" Xavier asked quickly from the left. I didn't answer, looking around the room. My head still felt heavy and foggy, but I was slowly recovering.

"Zane! Say something! Why where you screaming? Are you alright?" my mother said from the corner of the room. She tried to stand up, but doing it with her hands tied up behind her back wasn't an easy task.

Was I screaming? I don't remember that. Could it be the reason why everybody around me was looking at me in shock? I thought that the terribly funny 'kerfuffle' word was the cause.

It was only then that I noticed that Harper recessed my hands into the wall too, even though, unlike my father, I was staying on my feet. Harper did it not to let me use magic too?

The Alice part of me questioned if my parents already learned me to cast spells.

Almost at the same time Zane's memories answered, that I can already use magic to some extent.

This didn't feel like a dialogue, it was just that one of my sets of memories didn't have some information, and every time a gap was found, the other set filled it.

I was going to start shooting fireballs everywhere soon, and the fact that I had already learned magic would help me explain how was that even possible to my parents. Still, this seemed to be a hard task, as only demigods can use magic without gestures or mantras. My hands were recessed into a wall, so I couldn't conjure spells in a normal way using formulas. I had no other choice but to show one of my demigod abilities, hands-free to my parents.

"How do you know this word, boy?" Harper calmly asked, frowning. He almost got over the shock caused by my words. Really, is the word 'kerfuffle' so terrible it can scare a psychopath-demigod? I remembered that I wanted to use it because I felt that it would fit the situation, but I didn't remember exactly what it means.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Though I liked the impression it made. Everybody around me was confused and tense because of me screaming, using some strange word and then staying quiet, answering neither my parents nor my abductor. A little more weirdness and Harper would reach the peak of confusion, whick would be the perfect time to strike.

I needed to create the best moment to attack by saying nonsense.

"Harper, did you hope that never in your life you will get your ass kicked? Is that the reason why you became such a disgusting ugly psycho? I'm here to break your illusions," I said as fast as I could. The noble serial killer raised an eyebrow.

"You are a failure of a human, depressed and lonely deep inside, you can only have a long conversation with somebody if you tie them up and don't let them leave you. Your worst torture is making people talk to you," I continued without taking a breath. My parents' faces changed. They were adraid for me now.

"Your family is the cesspool of degradation where ugliness and malice are inherited like a curse, so you being the useless pile of shit you are shoundn't be surprising. And yet you are a such an abomination that I'm amazed anyway." I was surprised myself by how intricate I was in humiliating this disgusting man. Have I already done it before? Harper was furious, but he was still trying to keep his face mocking and calm.

Lady Gauss opened her son's eyes and closed his ears instead. She smiled a little. Did she enjoy this as much as I did?

Finally, Harper spoke, smiling, "Offending my great family is enough for me to rip your ton..."

"I didn't finish my speech, so shut up," I said, wiping Harper's smile off his face.

"You think you belong to a great family? What other achievements do you have? Besides constantly cluttering up the space with your meaningless chatter," I said and looked to the left at my father, deciding what was the best way of using my small mana reserves would be. "Is your fragile ego shattering because of the words of a five years old boy?"

My hands were embedded in the same concrete wall as my father's limbs. I guess it's because immersing something into one of the other three walls, which were made of brick, was harder.

I jerked my whole body to the right, making Harper look away from my father. "Madman, you are like a pimple on your ass, you both are equally insignificant and unpleasant," I said and got a stomach punch. Ignoring the pain, I concentrated on my father's walled in limbs.

The concrete around my father's arms and legs turned into dust. Not to let Harper hear my father falling on the floor, I shouted the most confusing thing I could think of, "Harper, I will turn you into a kerfuffle!"

My father stood up. He acted quickly. "Lord Gauss!" the executioner cried out, but Harper didn't turn around. He stared at me, the look in his eyes was furious.

Lady Gauss and her son were standing quiet. Why didn't they warn Harper? Could they want us to break out?

The noble madman furiously grabbed my head and pressed his fingers on my eyes hardly. Now that wasn't funny.

I heard a dull loud punch, the executioner's nasal scream and then a body dropped.

Harper released my head and looked back, "What's wrong, you bas..." His face changed from furious to shocked, as he saw the executioner lying on the floor, his face bleeding.

"How?" Harper froze.

Looks like I achieved the goal. The serial killer was staring at my father with blank, uncomprehending eyes. He reached the peak of disbelief.

It was time to act.

A brick ripped from the wall behind Harper and crashed into his head. Sadly, demigods have very solid bodies, so it didn't do much damage.

Harper raised his head and looked back at me. "Die," he said, his gaze intense and... frightened? Was he afraid of me?

A bright spark flew out of his hand and rushed towards me.

I turned the concrete around my tied hands into sand and sat down abruptly. The spark reached the wall and I covered my head with my hands. The little fireball exploded, but not very powerful, because Harper conjured it quickly.

My hands and legs were still tied up, so I cut the ropes. They fell to the floor.

Did I have enough power to defeat Harper right now? No. Could I hurt him so that he wouldn't catch up to us when we will run away? Quite likely.

I decided not to use mantras or gestures, because then I wouldn't stand a chance against Harper. I needed to use the fast hands-free demigod way of conjuring spells that didn't require using formulas. I could only hope that my parents wouldn't notice.

Using magic, I ripped nine more bricks from the wall behind. Orbiting around me, they formed somewhat a sphere.

Harper sent another spark at me, this time it was brighter and faster then the previous one. Eight of my bricks quickly formed a double-layer shield in front of me and the ninth hid behind it. The new spark did almost no damage to my small flying wall.

Harper decided to discard the magic. He tried to grab my hair, but the wall shifted and stopped his hand. He growled and formed a fist-sized fireball.

At the same time I turned the ninth brick into sand, reformed it into a cone with a big recess in it and made the stone solid again. Then I started spinning the cone in the air with an increasing speed.

Harper threw his new big fireball at me, I reformed my brick wall, its damaged parts now shifted to the edge of the shield.

The wall exploded anyway, showering debris in all directions. I covered my face with my hands, but the splinters didn't even scratch me, they just bounced off.

I put a fireball into the recess inside of the spinning cone and then I fired my unexpected missile at a crazy speed. Harper flinched and almost dodged it, but the cone lodged in his hip and almost ripped his leg off. Then the fireball inside the cone burst.

Harper screamed and fell on the floor. Standing on one leg in the middle of a fight is not easy.

"Pathetic. You got my father to feel much more pain, but he didn't cry," I said.

At the same time Xavier finished the executioner and started casting a spell. I could see surprise and disbelief in his eyes when he looked at me, but he didn't say anything. Battlefield is not a good place for conversations. As I understood from his mantras, my father was conjuring a fireball. Maybe, together we would be able to get rid of Harper. I started forming another stone cone using what was left from my exploded stone shield.

Harper conjured a glowing spherical shield made of force around him.

"Zane! Xavier! We shouldn't try to kill him! He is a demigod! We need to run." Faye was shocked by our sudden success.

"I know," we replied in unison.

Harper's wife and son were standing still, not knowing what to do.

I wasn't used to fighting or winning. It turned out to be very pleasant. Though, in my previous life I had fought a lot, so these feelings actually were not something new to me. Ugh! Such confusing contradictions between my selves still occurred in my mind.

Xavier finished his spell and the fireball darted towards... Harper's son?! Why? Harper reacted almost immediately and tried to conjure another force shield in its path, but he was clearly too late.

Harper's wife threw herself on the ground together with her son. She covered him with herself.

I fired my cone missile again. It flied past Harper, crashed into the fireball and made it collapse before reaching the boy and his mother.

At that moment Xavier finished his next spell and a force shield appeared around the fireball and the two people.

He must have done this to concentrate the damage in a small zone instead of blowing the whole room up. Also, this didn't allow the fire to leave this dungeon without fresh air, which would have caused us all to suffocate.

The fireball exploded. The space inside the shield turned into a slaughterhouse for a moment.

"Bruno!" Harper cried.

"Father! Why?" I shouted. The force shield disappeared.

Lady Gauss was lying on top of her son without moving. Most of her clothes were torn and burned, her back was bleeding. I couldn't say if her son was alive, I could only see his small hand sticking out from under the mother. It was covered in burns.

"Son," my father looked at me and closed his mouth.

Battlefield is a bad place for discussions, but that moment I really wanted to have one.

The glowing shield around Harper disappeared. His leg was not bleeding anymore, I knew that soon it would start growing back.

Sitting on the ground, he conjured ten spells: a small fireball spark at each of his fingertips.

Using magic, I lifted seven pebbles from the floor. Every spell caused a new burst of pain in my head. It indicated that I had almost no mana left. Xavier rushed towards Faye, casting a force shield in front of her on the run. Five sparks darted towards them, Xavier hid behind the shield he created for Faye.

The other small fireballs levitated, forming an arc around me. Then Harper fired them at me from different directions.

My levitating pebbles shifted, catching the sparks and making them blow up a few meters away from me. Though I missed one of them, so I jumped out if its way. Such a sharp movement felt awkward, but also common.

Both of my parents were seasoned soldiers, so they made sure that besides training my mind and my magic I was also training my body.

But something seemed unfamiliar. This body of a five year old boy didn't feel the way my previous body did, so a part of me felt clumsily in it.

The spark blew up somewhere behind me and I quickly got up. Xavier had already cut my mother's ropes with some sharp torture instrument he had found on the nearest table.

Breathing was hard, today too many fireballs were conjured in this poorly ventilated dungeon.

"Zane, Run!" Xavier shouted, together with my mother, they rushed towards the entrance of the room. My head hurt, I had almost no mana left, so I wasn't going to continue the fight.

I rounded Harper as fast as I could. I knew that behind my back he was casting a spell, but I could also see my father conjuring another force shield. I believed in Xavier.

I dashed past him and he finished the spell. The three of us ran out of the torture chamber. Then a fast moving sphere of compressed cooled air flew out of the room. I recognized it, it was one of Harper's favorite spells, Freezing Burst. It destroyed Xavier's shield easily.

I didn't have enough mana to protect myself from it properly, so I threw myself on the ground and created a small hemispherical force shield near my legs. My father simply grabbed Faye and dropped to the floor, lying on top of her.

The sphere exploded with frosty air mixed with ice pieces. A volcano of ice erupted in the dungeon.

Ugh! My skin covered with rime, the ice pierced some parts of my skin. I raised my head and looked around. A big part of the passage was now covered with ice. My parents were alive, though they got frozen to the floor and my father's back was covered with cuts and slashes. I had time to conjure a shield for my parents too, but I had no mana for it, so Xavier suffered much more damage than me.

He growled and broke out of the thin layer of ice. Now I saw that his and Faye's hair were white because of the hoar. Mine were probably silver too.

My mother's long hair were frozen in a bizarre shape.

"You idiots!" I heard from the torture chamber. "You won't be able to hide forever, not from me!" Harper shouted.

Together the three of us got up shaking off the snow and wincing. We walked towards the stairs leading from the dungeon.