I lay floating in a black void except for incredibly intricate runes that encircled me. The more I looked at the runes the more complex they appeared to be. They were shapes and letters written in what I first thought were lines, until I noticed the lines were also shapes and letters. Those too were made up of even smaller lines of shapes. The closer I looked the more layers I could see. When I tried to see the fifth layer my head started to hurt and I got the distinct feeling I could keep looking for smaller and smaller layers of runs endlessly.

The runes shone white and their power focused into a space near the middle of the void I was in. The light changed and became screens, each with a different scene on them. Like a movie reel they were lined up one after another. I focused on the furthest left one. I don’t know how I knew, but this just had to be the first one.

The more I looked at it, the more I felt it pulling me in. Lights flashed all around me and I was there overlooking the scene.

I watched as my body approached Halcroft in his sitting room. He glanced up at my body. “I… I’m here.” The girl that wore my body said, her voice frightened and uncertain.

“Prin-” Halcroft looks over the girl for another beat. “No, not Alea, not yet at least.” He looks her up and down appraisingly. “About time the mind stones worked.” He pointed to the other chair sitting in front of the fire. “Sit child.”

The girl wearing my skin glanced from side to side before she walked over and plopped herself down. She fidgeted, clearly confused about the situation.

“I’m sure you have many questions, being only a few minutes old and all.” Halcroft began. “You are a mental construct I created to take over the body you are currently in. In time you will gain her memories, but you and her will always be a bit… different. More the way a proper princess should be.” He chuckled. “I do so like her bravado, but I fear she has too much for her own good at times.”

“I… I’m not real?” The girl asked in an even more frightened tone than last time.

Halcroft smiled. “You will be in time. Assuming of course I find your current settings agreeable.”

“Settings?” She ventured.

“You are Alea Halcroft, my adopted, well technically, my adopted daughter, but really my granddaughter. The mind that usually inhabits the body you are in is suppressed by the bracelet on your right arm. You and the original mind are mostly the same except you are slightly more risk averse, a smidge less kind, with just a hint more avarice. You are also more compliant to me and more domineering to others. All in all I have designed you to fulfill a role. You will become my true heir in time.” Halcroft explained to my utter horror.

He really created an alternate version of me just to get a better puppet. He was going to kill me.

“Although in order to gain the power of the Halcroft family you must kill the original mind of that body.” Halcroft continued. “For that you must try to gain control of her more and more often exactly as you did today.”

The girl with my face seemed worried. “I won’t…” She paused, then considered another moment. “What happens if I don’t?”

Halcroft’s smile became more sinister. “You die, girl, a horrible painful death as I use that artifact on your wrist to dissolve your consciousness. Then I’ll mix up Alea’s personality traits a bit then try again.” His smile became pleasant as if he had just delivered good news.

The girl seemed to already know that was coming and her head fell as tears began to form at the corner of her eyes. She sagged then muttered something I was confident only I could hear. “Kill or be killed.” Then more loudly. “I’ll do as you ask.”

“Then leave, the real princess cannot awaken here.” Halcroft said with a dismissive wave.

My mind shunted from the event I returned to the reel of scenes. I focused on the next in line.

My body stood practicing blade swings. I heard my last count of 500, then my body stopped. My body started then dropped my practice blade on my head. She yelped as the hilt hit her head then the sword fell backward. “What?” She asked.

She glanced around but it was early in the morning and no one else was around. She looked down at the blade for a long time. “Do I use a blade?” She knelt down on the heels of her feet. Then she looked at my hands. “A princess with callouses? Who… who are we?” She began to cry.

The short scene ended and I jumped to the next one.

Yet again I was practicing, but this time when the girl took over she did not drop my sword. I had been mid slash across a training dummy. She wrenched back before glancing around. Penelope was at her side practicing on her own training dummy. “Is training all I do?” My doppleganger asked.

Penelope gave her a confused look. “Did you want to spar instead?”

The girl gave Penelope a curious look before shaking her head. “I… I’ll be right back.” She said before turning on the spot and running off. Penelope’s head tilted to the side before she shrugged.

The girl turned the corner then stopped. She glanced one direction then the other, then she ran upstairs before entering my apartment unerringly. She went to the bathroom and locked herself inside before crying even more. Minutes passed before she looked at the bracelet with disgust. Her look slowly changed to determination as she stared at the mind stones. “I’ll survive.”

In the next scene I immediately recognized it was the time I talked with Halcroft right after my species class upgraded. I was just confidently leaving the sitting room when I stopped suddenly.

The girl that controlled my body turned. “Lord Halcroft.” She curtised. “It is me.”

Halcroft smiled. “Ah, I see you are already gaining access to her memories. Most excellent. Do you have anything useful to report?”

The girl stood looking Halcroft in the eyes. Despite her standing and him sitting there were eye level. She shook her head “I have only gained control a few times.”

“Not your experiences. Is there anything important to report within her memories?” Halcroft brows were furrowed in annoyance.

The girl considered. “She… has secrets she hasn’t told you yet. They are… much too large for me to even grasp.”

“I suppose you are still too young to be useful.” Halcroft calmed down a bit at that. “Go, only report again when you have a firmer grasp on her memories.”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Another curtsy this one performed even better than the last. She was learning quickly. “Yes, my lord.” She turned and left, with a similar confidence I had just displayed.

The next two scenes were just her gaining control at fairly innocuous times. Once while I was training my new skills, and another time at dinner. She tried out some of my skills but seemed even worse with them than I was. The dinner on the other hand she seamlessly pretended to be me easily.

It was the seventh scene that really surprised me. I focused on it and there I was frozen and staring at the basilisk.

The second she took over my body stumbled forward, freed entirely of the paralysis the basilisk had cast on Penelope and I. “Take Penelope and run!” Riza somehow immediately noticed my body was freed even while fighting the massive snake monster.

My body glanced down at her hands then back at Penelope. “Pen… how?” She used my nickname for my sister. Anger flared in my spectral self. This bitch was stealing who I was.

Yet the next moment my anger cooled. As the girl ran toward and grabbed Penelope. She turned activating Radiant Step and blurred past the fighting human and basilisk. The tail swiped out at her, yet somehow she took a Radiant Step midair causing her trajectory to change instantly. How? I had tried exactly that many times, yet with just a few times practicing it she had mastered a skill I had been working on for months.

She landed a few feet past the basilisk, but still activated one more Radiant Step to put more distance between her and the deadly monster. She paused huffing and glancing back. She sighed. “The rest is up to you.”

Then I was shunted from the scene. She had given me back control? She could clearly use my skills better than I could, so why did she do that? Or maybe she felt her control weakening. This was a mess.

The next several scenes weren’t particularly interesting, other than the fact that she seemed to take control while I was training a lot. Especially later at night. Then she would continue my grueling training sometimes for hours. She was helping me grow stronger? Or maybe just working to increase the strength of her soon to be body.

She had also been the one to receive Halcroft’s gift. He had given her not me the sword. So why did I remember getting it from him? Were we blurring together as people to some extent? I had no answers.

One time she took over when I was in Grimstel once. It was right as I was about to walk past the market street. Instead of going toward the clinic to start work as a nurse she walked into the market. Eying various products until she came to a jewelry store. It finally occurred to me that this was when I bought the sapphire necklace. Looking back on it now, that entire event had been really strange. Only now did I realize I bought the necklace because she wanted it, not me. That meant in at least some minor way she was directly affecting me. Either that or it was just the spell on the bracelet that made me oblivious of it.

Finally there were only two scenes left. One was the last time I saw Halcroft before he left for the capital and the other was while I was getting my new class. I focused on the second to last scene.

My body curtsied to Halcroft revrelantly. “Reporting my lord.”

Halcroft grinned. “Good, I was hoping you’d take control before I left.”

My body sat down in a chair opposite Halcroft. “I have gained quite a bit more of her memories.” She said seriously. “I fear she is not being entirely honest with you.”

Halcroft laughed jovially. “I wouldn’t expect anything less from the little genius. Well? What is it? Is she planning to escape? I truly hope it is not as boring as that.” Fear gripped me at that, I knew Halcroft would suspect me, but he got it in a single guess.

“Yes and no.” My body considered her words for a moment. “She detests you, and up to the moment you modified her command crest was planning to escape. However you linking it with just yourself has put an absolute stop to her plans. She is… quite depressed actually.” The girl controlling my body grinned mischievously. “I believe I can use her weakened state to take full control well before I leave for the capital.”

“Good, good…” He trailed off his focus elsewhere for a moment. Halcroft ran his finger along his scar. “So Penelope was planning to betray me…” To my surprise he actually seemed disappointed.

“In her defense, it was what lord Isaac did to her mother and overhearing your conversation with him that pushed her over the edge. I suspect if not for that she would have remained loyal. As her sister, I can say confidently she believes she is doing what she has to to keep our mothers and I safe.” The girl controlling my body said dispassionately.

“I knew I’d like you even more than the soon to be former Alea.” He said with a grin. “All that wit of yours focused on what really matters, I can’t wait until the day I can unveil you to the court.”

“Thank you for your kind words.” She said with a bow of her head.

“What about all this Fire healing nonsense, is there anything to it at all?” Halcroft asked.

My body shook her head. “Not to my knowledge. She has a theory I haven’t fully come to understand yet, but I doubt it will work.”

“A pity…” His finger went back to stroking his scar. “Well if nothing changes before you unlock your next class I want you to take control and take a noble class, I’ll just have to find a new slave to become my healer. Afterall, you will be the shining sword I place to the throats of Ysara. Oh the poetic justice of sending a princess to destroy her own kingdom.”

From my vantage point I saw her right hand flex gripping onto the hand rest of the chair hard. I glanced back to Halcroft to see if he noticed, but it must have been out of his sight, blocked by the table between them.

“Well, if there is nothing else, I must prepare for the trip.” My body shook her head. “Then be sure to keep up with the leveling pace Alea has set for you. I still want you to be at least level 100 by the time I see you next.”

“I never had any intention otherwise, my lord.” My body said before standing and curtsying.

The scene ended and I didn’t know how to feel about it. I watched over the final scene quickly, but it was just the girl ignoring Mel’s constant shouts at her to stop. She went directly for the noble chair giving the healer chair only a dispassionate shake of her head.

Just like that all the scenes vanished, and I was once again left in the void. I considered all I had seen. This alternate version of me had attempted to kill me and seemed to be loyal to Halcroft, yet her behaviors weren’t consistent at all. I couldn’t be sure of her true motivations.

As I pondered the runes surrounding me flashed white once more then began to constrict. My eyes widened as I saw the circle closing in on me. I tried to move, to duck, anything really, but my body wouldn’t respond. I stood frozen as the circle enveloped me, blinding me with its light.

The light faded and whatever was holding my body still let me go. I slumped to the ‘ground’ as pain erupted in my head. The white hot pain only lasted a few quick seconds. I found myself breathing hard recovering from the sudden shock.

Only when the void began to slowly drip away did recover from whatever had happened. As the viscous void dripped down it revealed light behind it. A striated emerald light. The void drips gathered below me at the bottom of what I now understood was a sphere. It seemed to drain out of the green sphere until I was encased in what appeared to be an emerald orb. Just like the orbs on the cursed bracelet.

Another flash and I was back in my body gasping for breath. I was drenched in cold sweat and every muscle in my body felt shaky and weak. I glanced to see the bracelet laying next to me in my bed and I slapped it off the bed toward the corner of my room. It skidded to a stop, one of the latches catching on the rug.

The nightmare was over, I slumped onto the bed. I took a long few minutes just waiting there recovering. I had somehow avoided near-certain death. Everything was going to be alright. We were home-free from here, with this last trap defeated we could escape this place.

But, what did this mean for our escape? Most importantly Halcroft thought we weren’t going to do it anymore. However he also knew we were trying to do it. He knew Penelope was involved, which meant she now had to come with us or be a subject of his wrath.

Yet, it also answered some of my questions about the crest no longer enforcing its commands on us. Halcroft seemed to think that we were still under his control. He believed the alternate version of me when she said that our escape was no longer possible. That meant this probably wasn’t a trap. It was more likely that Daniel or Halcroft messed the ritual up or didn’t know something about it.

I can’t say I’m happy that I was very nearly replaced by an obedient clone of myself, but at least she somehow made our escape more likely and not less. I glanced over at the bracelet again. Plus it was all over now, that thing would never haunt me again.