Being within Isabella’s bedroom was an interesting experience, or as her memories within me insisted it be called, her bed chambers. So many of her memories within my head yelled at me that this was where she had slept for nearly her entire life after she had outgrown her wet nurses, that it was where I had slept. And if I wasn’t constantly vigilant in reminding myself that it wasn’t the case, I might actually have begun to believe them.
But I knew better, and despite the way her memories had been shoved into my head so that they all came after that last memory I had before all this began, of being in an office chair in front of a computer, I managed to still keep them separate from my own life. After all, it just didn’t make sense for me to have lived a life in the future, then a second life in the past, right?
A traitorous thought flitted through my head that nobody actually knew everything about how time worked despite all our discoveries and certainly didn’t understand how a soul worked or if it even existed. That maybe it did make sense for a future life to come before a past one. Or that somehow Isabella had glimpsed the future which somehow brought me about. Or that maybe-
I slapped myself to stop those spiraling thoughts before they got too out of hand. I would be sticking to the idea that I’d inexplicably woke up as Isabella this morning and that was that.
Of course, those thoughts wouldn’t exactly go away just because I wanted them to. They still lingered, but that was why I let my gaze drift across all the contents of Isabella’s chambers that were now mine to keep said thoughts from finding any purchase within my consciousness.
I was sitting on her bed which I quite literally sank into a little. It was almost certainly a featherbed and an ostentatious display of unabashed luxury and high-quality craftsmanship. It had an elaborately carved canopy and the sheets, pillows, and blankets were soft things I could see myself lying down on and swiftly drifting off without even intending to.
Compared to the futon I used before this, it was a night and day difference.
The room itself was filled with decorations that spoke of the same opulent luxury that the bed had. From a whole suite of different tapestries lining the walls, to said walls being painted a soft shade of yellow, to its own personal fireplace. Really, the only thing that marred it was the obvious struggle there was to actually maintain the room, with the paint chipping in places and how some tapestries had begun to fall into disrepair.
That and how other than her toys which were neatly set aside together on the floor and the clothes in her wardrobe, nothing in here had ever really felt like Isabella’s. And now, that I was in her place, nothing in it really felt like it was mine.
I could get used to the bed though. If through some miracle I ended up back home in the modern era, the first thing I would do after celebrating the fact that things had somehow returned back to normal would be to buy a featherbed to replace my futon with.
Of course, I doubted that would ever be the case, but I could dream. Just like all dreams though, it was a fleeting one and I eventually brought myself back to reality by summoning forth an ethereal parchment containing Isabella’s character sheet to unfurl in the air in front of me. It was what I had originally planned to do once I had some privacy after all, even if I had delayed opening it for a bit.
Because somehow that wasn’t a sign that I was dreaming but an actual part of my reality now.
The parchment was the same as before with not a single change to it. Including the glowing text of Isabella’s Learning Attribute that I had been moments away from looking into before I had to attend my sewing lessons with skills that weren’t my own but Isabella’s.
Learning: 5 (Base 4+1)
As I’d learned to be the case from my past foray with the parchment, I began to focus on the Learning Attribute in particular to try and gleam why it was glowing. I didn’t know exactly what to expect to get from it when I did so. Maybe it’d just give me a personalized blurb like it had with Isabella’s traits before and it’d turn out it was glowing just because it was my highest Attribute. Or maybe nothing at all would happen.
The ethereal parchment in front of rolling up before unfurling again and being entirely filled with entirely new details that I was certain hadn’t been in the games wasn’t exactly what I had been expecting when I focused on the Attribute.
At the top of it was the same text that displayed my Learning Attribute, only much bigger now, and right underneath it was the personalized message I thought I might’ve gotten alone initially.
Learning is the measure of both your knowledge and your ability to take in new information and remember it. Like the inquisitive young queen that you are, you’ve shown a prodigious ability to learn swiftly, though your total breadth of knowledge is not grand. For your age, your Learning is much higher than average. You’ve reached your first milestone and may select a Learning Boon based on what you’ve accomplished so far!
A Learning Boon? That was definitely not something I recognized from the games. I didn’t have to search far to figure out what it meant by that either as with a quick glance downwards I saw what it was the text had been referring to.
Everything else underneath it was a sea of different icons, all organized together like one would a particularly abstract family tree. Frankly it all was a little reminiscent of the Lifestyle Perks within the game’s sequel, just arranged very differently and with an entirely different unlock condition that I think was multiple of five’s in an attribute given what info I had to work with. Probably.
I didn’t exactly have enough to judge it off of other than circumstantial evidence at the moment.
The very top of the family tree of Boons was colored in with three different icons representing different Boons contained within it. Everything else was grayed out and hard to focus on, my attention slipping right off of it when I tried to. Not having the option to look ahead and plan for this was frankly a blessing for my sanity.
I knew I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself from doing so had it been an option even if it would be to my detriment to plan things out that thoroughly as I tended to do with games. Life did tend to disintegrate plans with far too many details within them after all, especially ones that weren't even close to being able to account for everything.
My eyes focused on the first of three options I had to choose from for this, the icon representing it seeming to be an open window leading to somewhere nondescript.
Learning Boon of Foreign Memories: Unlocked by being in possession of memories that are not your own.
The young queen is blessed by memories of another life entirely. With this Boon you will fortify those memories and be capable of pulling even the smallest of once forgotten details from them, greatly expanding your purview of knowledge. However, to do this is to fully immerse yourself in the life of another and your capability to learn will be severely hampered, as will your ability to form key memories within this life.
I found myself staring at the text for a moment when it popped forward. This was far beyond what the games had ever included, as were its consequences. My focus on it seemed to prompt something and new text popped further forward.
Really select the Learning Boon of Foreign Memories? This choice cannot be undone and must be confirmed aloud in order to take effect. Y/N?
It was so tempting to just say yes right then and there and ensure that I would always be myself, that I would remember everything from my life as Derrick if the text was true. Because considering it always referenced Isabella as the young queen, it only stood to reason it considered my memories the foreign memories.
I wasn’t any sort of inventor or engineer that knew the method behind the functions of everything within modern life, yet I’m sure there would be things I could recreate here if I could actually remember everything. That to the people of twelve-hundred twenty, I could create things that would easily let me subvert what would be Isabella’s fate.
I’d like to say it was my own will and reasoning that prevented me from just saying yes without a second thought. But I could feel that newfound curiosity within me that came from Isabella asking two very simple questions. How debilitating would it be to struggle to learn? And what would the consequences of being unable to form key memories be when I didn’t even know what it meant by key memories?
The answer was simple. I didn’t know because it didn’t explain in exacting detail what those consequences entailed, but I could make the assumption it would be bad enough to warrant them in the first place.
“No.” My throat was dry when I said those words. However this strange facet of my life worked didn’t seem to mind at all as the text promptly disappeared, leaving me alone with the family tree of Boons once more.
I forced myself to tear my eyes away from the first Boon and onto the second. Maybe I’d still pick it in the end, consequences be damned, but I should at least figure out what my other options were before doing so.
The second Boon was represented by an open chat box with a design inside of it that initially looked to me like a slitted eye with lines crossed through it. Then I realized I recognized that symbol as the language icon that was supposed to represent the globe.
Learning Boon of Many Languages: Unlocked by being multilingual.
The young queen is knowledgeable indeed to be capable of speaking multiple languages. With this Boon, you will find it much easier to retain knowledge in relation to learning how to both read and write with any language and become capable of learning them at prodigious speeds.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Unlike the last Boon, this one had no downsides. Not to mention it would also make it far easier for me to not only learn how to write in the French of this era, but in learning languages, period. Because unlike the modern era, I didn’t think there was a proper common language other than maybe Latin.
It was an incredible Boon that would pay dividends in the long term in ways that were both just plainly helpful and simple. There was one problem though.
Being capable of speaking multiple different languages would be an exceptional thing for the me of the future. Right now? I had no idea how helpful it’d be outside of learning how to write in French swiftly. Considering the fate I was trying to avoid came in around five years which should be enough time to learn without it, I needed short term benefits quite a bit more. And compared to the first boon, it just didn’t have the same world changing scope.
I felt my gaze begin to drift off towards it again before I forced it towards the third and final boon I could select. This one was represented by a mirror that reminded me of the one I had been looking at during my etiquette lessons earlier today.
Learning Boon of the Integrated Self: Unlocked by being in possession of memories not your own that are causing an internal dissonance.
The young queen is cursed with memories of another life that has caused much strife within. While the knowledge within this other life is tantalizingly filled with wonders of an advanced age, they tear at the very foundations of who you are. With this boon, those memories, while still accessible to you with all the wonders contained within, will no longer eclipse who you are and you will be able to reclaim yourself. However, to do this is to renounce all claim to the personal insights within those memories and you will be wont to find any semblance of the influence their personage might’ve had on you anymore whether it was positive or negative.
This Boon was essentially the opposite of the first and instead of retaining who I was, I’d be giving the reigns completely over to Isabella and erasing myself. For obvious reasons, that was a hard no.
Though it did make me wonder about what exactly had happened to Isabella’s mind when I took her place. Did I just… subsume her? It was uncomfortable to think about and I could feel a bit of guilt well up within me now that I was doing so. I guess for someone who couldn’t take having essentially killed someone through no fault of their own, this was the perfect Boon for them.
I was not that type of person. I hated the idea that had sprouted in my head that I had taken her place and basically killed her, but I wasn't about to end myself to bring back someone who I only knew of from a game I played and for what her fate would end up being.
I wasn’t that selfless of a person.
All in all, I had three distinct options for my Boons. I could choose to ensure my own sense of self and memories at the cost of being unable to learn as well or form key memories with no idea on how bad either of those detriments really were. I could choose to just be exceptional at learning new languages which would be great in the long term and not so much in the short term. Or I I could kill myself and let Isabella take the lead.
Really, I had only two options since I had already ruled out the third Boon.
For a long while my eyes flitted between the two different options. The idea of enshrining my sense of self and enhancing my memories of the past so it’d never be lost was like a siren’s call drawing me to the ocean. But every time I began to lean further towards the first Boon and into that ocean, it felt like a jolt within me reminded me that the consequences of it could be catastrophic. That I would struggle to learn and ask questions. That even if I didn’t know exactly what it meant when it said key memories, no longer being able to form them would probably dampen my experiences in this life considering what I could assume those to be.
I belatedly realized that Isabella wasn’t entirely gone like I had originally thought. In a way she was still here through her Traits and her memories. Those were the remnants of herself still within me. That they were the main parts of me arguing against taking that first Boon.
And they were right. To take that first boon would be to become stagnant and unable to change in a time of my life where I needed to be the most adaptable I could possibly manage. There was only one option that fit that criteria.
With a heavy heart I focused on the second Boon, the Learning Boon of Many Languages.
Really select the Learning Boon of Many Languages? This choice cannot be undone and must be confirmed aloud in order to take effect. Y/N?
As much as the first Boon would soothe my mind from the constant struggles to retain my identity, the consequences were simply too much to contend with.
I closed my eyes for a moment. When they opened they had the most determined gleam within them that I could possibly manage at the moment as I uttered my next words. “Yes.”
The Boon in the family tree of them began to glow…. And that was it. I didn’t feel particularly different or suddenly knew all the languages of the world. I was just… me. How anticlimactic.
I took a minute to think after that on if I had really made the right decision. Then I shook my head. Those thoughts would lead nowhere. I had made my choice to take a Boon that didn’t bring about any detriments with its benefits and that was final. The only direction to go was forward, and that’s where I would go.
I focused back on the ethereal parchment right in front of me only to find it gone. Why exactly it did that when I wasn’t purposefully closing it I didn’t know, but it didn’t matter that much in the end to me. After all, I was just going to be closing it as I began the next aspect of interacting with the parts of the game that came with me somehow.
It was time to see just how much of the omniscient systems that made it up came with me here and how I could abuse them.
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I stared at the two parchments in front of me. One was obscenely large and depicted a stylized map of the lands. The other a near mimic of my own character sheet, but instead displayed Bishop Érrard’s information.
A full hour, or at least I thought it had taken an hour since I couldn’t exactly check my phone or a clock anymore, had passed since I had begun and that was all I could pull up from my efforts of saying words I thought might trigger them.
No council sheet telling me who the kingdom’s councilors were, what position they were in, and what they were doing. No lifestyle sheet or system that would give me an easy path forward and free bonuses that would probably only come into play when I turned sixteen. No technology sheet from either the game or its sequel that told me everything and nothing at the same time.
And certainly no easy to access military sheet that let me know the exact state of my armed forces, their costs, my vassals' forces, and everything in between.
I didn't even have the luxury of having a convenient decision menu, or more importantly any information about all the different resources within the game that corresponded to life now. Prestige and Piety I could probably live without since when you really boiled it down, those were just how many people knew of you and how pious people thought you were. But Wealth? The absence of that meant that any hope of kingdom management being simplified for me was nil.
It meant that I was running nearly completely blind in how the Kingdom of Jerusalem was doing and its current situations.
What kept that from being completely blind was the map in front of me.
When I first managed to open that up, I had been absolutely ecstatic. An omniscient map of lands even with everything else that had decided they didn’t need to come with the ethereal character sheets I could pull up? It would be world shatteringly useful.
Then I noticed two things. One, that it wasn’t interactive in the slightest. And two, that it was essentially a screenshot of the map I had seen before on a computer screen and only a close resemblance to the current lay of the land.
There was a small icon of a sword in the bottom right corner of it representing the ongoing fifth crusade that the Kingdom of Jerusalem was a part of. But other than that it provided no current information. I couldn’t see the armies of either friend or foe. I couldn’t tell how the war was going. I couldn’t even see the extent of how far the fifth crusade had pushed because the map was a still image that didn’t dynamically update except when I focused it closer and it changed to county names instead of the countries name.
It was still incredibly useful for knowing the different countries and counties names and for being a geologically accurate map. Those facts didn’t completely dampen my disappointment even though I knew I should be thankful for this much.
The other parchment I had managed to open up was hilariously the character sheets of other people. Which if it displayed all of their information would’ve been exceptionally useful. Except just like the map, it didn’t.
It was first of all limited to me only being able to open up character sheets of people I knew of. And then from there, the information it displayed to me was limited to what I knew about them.
In the case of just about everyone else, that was very little and resulted in the character sheet being a question mark bonanza. Like someone had taken the question mark after the DOB on my own sheet and placed it absolutely everywhere but their name and portrait if I had seen them. For Bishop Érrard in particular? It meant I could see he had the Wroth Trait since I had apparently had an insight about it and that was it.
It was useful since if I ever had insights about a person I could presumably begin to plan around them with supernatural capability. It was far less useful in regards to being helpful before that.
Why the world had decided it simultaneously didn’t want to make sense with allowing me to summon forth the systems from a game with but a spoken word, but thought those very systems should be changed greatly to be realistic and limited to what I knew was beyond me. Either do or don’t, not this weird amalgamation of do and don’t.
Then again, I shouldn’t complain still. This was more than I could even imagine would be possible when I inexplicably found myself here. Between this and the language Boon, subverting Isabella’s fate would be easier than ever. Maybe. Making impossible easier didn’t exactly stop it from being impossible.
It’d certainly make the attempt a better one though. And that’s all I could really hope for in this estranged new life.
With that thought in mind, I stood up and walked towards the window within the room. Which was really more of a slit in the wall than anything else. The opening was only a little bigger than my frankly tiny hand. It was still enough though for light to pour through it and for me to look beyond it and into a training ground where it seemed there were more than a few armored guards practicing. Either with each other or against wooden dummies and targets that they mock fought with or shot at with bows.
An ironic sight to have outside Isabella’s chamber really, considering the last thing anybody would expect from her would be to take an interest in soldiery or warfare.
She probably wouldn’t have. But I wasn’t her. And looking at the soldiers practicing, it gave me an idea on another way I could spend my time that wouldn’t involve playing pretend feast with dolls and utensils.
Fighting and warfare weren’t exactly my area of expertise, which frankly didn’t matter much since the first computer wouldn’t be coming about for another six-hundred years or so, and modern computers only two centuries afterwards. There was no chance I’d ever get to make use of my old area of expertise. And really, this was the perfect time to branch out to figure out what I would be doing with my life now that computers were a fever dream of the future to the people here.
I wasn’t entirely sure how or when I’d be able to manage it considering the prejudice against female soldiers I’m certain existed, something I still didn’t particularly want to think about that in-depth. But I could think of worse things to do right now than learning how to defend myself and keeping myself fit.
Plus, considering how impactful the Boons I’d discovered could be, getting any of Isabella’s Attributes up to that threshold I was semi-confident was five was a lot more important now. I didn’t know what a Martial Boon would look like yet or how much work it would be to raise an Attribute in the first place, but Learning’s more extreme Boons could’ve changed the entire way my life was going if those Boons hadn’t come with downsides I couldn’t stomach.
And if things went particularly well? Maybe I could somehow make use of that in my plans to subvert the fate of both me and Isabella.