"Keep calm and focus."

Geddu's voice in my head felt hypnotizing. I was obliged to follow her instructions, even though they freaked me out more than once.

"That's all right, Princess, you are doing great so far." She hummed directly into my brain, but I struggled to understand what happened around me. For brief moments I panicked, other times I was perfectly calm and confident, going ahead of the team to deal with scary-looking monsters like it was nothing.

I started to lose control over my body, let alone my sanity.

"You are overreacting, I'm here to help you," Gadurien claimed to comfort me, but I had my doubts. Why would she suddenly show up and venture into the abyss with me when other gods avoided this place? And this immense power, all for free? It sounded too good to be true. "What kind of paranoia is that? You prayed for days, and I came to help you. Why would I try to take over your body?"

I couldn't answer these questions, nor think about them for too long, because the rest of the strike force caught up to me, and Cath patted my back, her face mirroring my worries.

"That was some amazing show of force, but are you all right?" She asked, her blue eyes reflecting my confused expression right back at me.

"I don't know... In one second I feel scared, and the next it seems nothing could even hurt me." I confessed some thoughts that got mixed up in the whirlwind inside my head. "I am amazing, aren't I? Got rid of that pit fiend with a single punch, didn't even use my sword."

"Yes, you act like a real warrior princess... Like Gadurien from the old legends." The paladin confirmed and pulled me along with the formation. I heard some whispers but if they talked about me, they didn’t want me to notice. Or maybe I became paranoid... "It's not like your original behavior wasn't similar already, but now you have the strength for it too, so I can see why you'd be confused."

"See, I didn't do anything bad to you, just granting your wishes." The voice of the goddess argued. I glanced at the mangled corpse of the humanoid monster and almost threw up as I realized what I had done. I dealt with it alone. "Well, not exactly, but I can give you the strength and the knowledge to use it properly."

"Was Gadurien part of the royal family too?" I asked the paladin once her words echoed amidst the storm in my brain. "I thought she was just an everyday knight, but now I learned she was a girl and even a princess?"

"Haha, I thought you were the expert on her, your Highness." Cath reacted with a giggle, patting my back again. She used those official names again, instead of calling me Elizabeth. I wanted to catch up to her and close the gap between us, but from how she behaved, it only widened.

We ventured deeper inside the cave system, but the Saipole princess advanced slowly and took her time to pick between the branches, even if we hadn't met other foes after that. I caught her glances a few times, and similarly from the others.

The Gadurien from the old legends was always sympathetic to me, but since she nested inside my brain, I realized how little I knew about her background or gender. The soldiers must have been confused, even the paladin I traveled with for a long time learned a brand new side of me, one I wasn't aware of either.

"I only know as much as they taught me via Remmol's legends, and yes, as far as I know, she was a member of your family." The paladin noted after a few moments of silence. "She was too far down the line of inheritance, so she became an adventurer not much after the first great Continental War, then joined the knights during the second one and met Remmol, both becoming saints after a fierce battle..."

"Yes, I knew about this, just not the being a royalty part." I shook my head and remembered our conversation more than a month ago. "They both got important commands and became separated. Gadurien took over the south, while Remmol fought in the west, but right before the battle started, Remmol ascended into godhood."

"But your patron deity did the same just a few days earlier," Cath said as if her god needed excuses. Yes, I recalled saying it was cowardly, that he practically escaped the battle straight to heaven.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"From a certain point of view, it might look like that." Geddu agreed inside my head. "But ascendance isn't as simple as the regular people might think. It's not like we pick the exact moment, more like once we reach a threshold, we receive a call to abide by the pact or bear the consequences. I did not want to become a god but to aid my people as a saint. Thanks to my rapid victories, I have outgrown this world."

Her words got me thinking, but the quest at hand did not wait for that. A man from the penal squad suddenly collapsed, and their formation quickly fell into disarray. Before I realized what happened, the wizards chanted spells, and Cath violently pushed me against the side of the cave. The next strike missed but at least I saw it.

"It must be a beholder, take cover!" The blue-robed princess yelled, manipulating the cave around herself to build some barrier for the pinned-down soldiers. The one that first fell had a hole in his chest with his clothes burned around it, and even though he wasn't bleeding, it seemed unlikely that he'd recover from that.

"What the hell?" That was all I could ask, but Cath raised her finger to my mouth to silence me. Panic overtook me for a second, but the goddess took control in the next and pushed away my bodyguard. "If it's just a beholder, I can take care of it."

My legs started moving, and I ran before I knew it. There was a stark difference between hearing Gadurien's voice in my head, and her thoughts becoming mine. This was the latter, she simply took over my body, and I only complained to no avail.

"Give me my body back!" I tried to yell but no actual sound came out of my mouth. She trapped me and forced me to watch the events unfold without having any control over them. "This is not helpful at all."

"Oh, you could never defeat this monster without my help, and this is much faster than giving you instructions." She argued, her thoughts much louder than ever before. "I'll end this quickly, and you can have your body back, Princess, don’t panic. But I can't have every little beast hold up the entire strike force every time..."

I saw the beholder looking straight at us. I mean me and my body, currently under Gadurien's control. The monster was one big floating eye with tentacles hanging down, sparks flying whenever it touched the ground. I only ever heard about these from children's stories, and never for a moment believed, that they were real. Nobody ever saw them out in the continent, but now I was locked into a staring contest with one.

I couldn't hope to win that, considering it was just one giant eye and no eyelids, but since the goddess locked her gaze onto it, I couldn't look away either. The eyeball glowed in a red haze and a moment later a crimson beam aimed right at me. The body moved so fast, it only burned a hole into the walls behind me.

Geddu was right, I could not hope to fight this thing alone, though I had no idea how she wanted to defeat it. A second beam was already on its way, and since its tentacles emitted electric charges, I assumed the lightning would be ineffective against it too. This body certainly couldn't get near enough for a punch.

"See, this is your problem, you think about why it shouldn't work, instead of just listening to your gut instincts to slay the beast." Her thoughts echoed in my mind, while the body never stopped moving.

She picked up the shield of the fallen soldier and deflected another beam without missing a beat. My body rolled on the ground, but I barely even felt it. The Saipole wizard's spells zoomed an inch above my head, finally scoring a hit on the beholder, but the monster was far from beaten. It got distracted at least, and my body sprung into action.

I didn't move as fast as the paladin when she used Remmol's miracles, and I wasn't protected by a fancy illusion either. But the confidence of the goddess rubbed off on me, and she easily avoided another deadly beam when the beholder finally realized we were the biggest threat to it.

By that time we reached it with the sword though and my arm struck without hesitation. The tip pierced the eye of the monster, then cut it from the middle to the bottom and back. The tentacles menacingly approached my arm, sparks flying in every direction, but before they reached me, the beholder burst. Once I regained control over my body I nearly collapsed.

It suddenly dawned on me how much effort it took to sprint through the cave and attack that thing without miracles. Although being controlled by a deity probably also counted as one. I stared at the pool of goey and bloody mass in front of me, out of breath, a threatening abyssal creature a moment ago.

"See? It's done. Easy, wasn't it? Could you do the same, even with my guidance and pointing out its weak spots?" Gadurien asked as I tried to calm down. I glanced at the others, the wizards treating the fallen soldier, but he was instantly killed by the same beam that missed me with a hair's breadth multiple times.

The princess in blue approached me and the monster instead, her eyebrows furrowed and her lips moving. Cath reached me first though, as if she tried to protect me from her. Geddu laughed in my head.

"What was it this time?" The paladin asked, but all I could do was to support my weight on her shoulders. "Not even miracles, you just rush ahead and kill everything? Or was it the goddess again?"

"She was possessed," Aoi claimed, her voice resonating with confidence and fear. How did she even know? I felt strange, but was it that obvious for the others too? The laughter in my brain didn't help thinking straight. "The dungeon might not be the only threat here..."

"Your Highness, should we turn back?" One of the wizards asked, and for a moment, I thought they talked to me. The princess in blue shook her head and waved the man off.

"Not until we eliminated all threats in this cave. All of them..."