My body went rigid when I heard the voice in the back of my mind that was both mine and not mine at all. I hadn’t imagined it. I know I hadn’t imagined it. It was my voice echoing in my mind, yet the inflection was a bit different from mine. I waited, hoping it was my imagination despite knowing it wasn’t.
I’m… well I’m also Alea.
Fuck. I sat up quickly looking down at the bracelet just to confirm it was still well away from my body.
It doesn’t have magic in it anymore, Mel’s little trick transferred the entire magical construct to our brain.
I sat there, ignoring the other me that was apparently still in my head.
Talk to me Alea… please.
No. Nope, I wouldn’t even entertain this, not for a second.
*You have earned the achievement ‘Two Minds are Better than One’. You gain a permanent 5% bonus to Animus and Manipulation.*
*You have gained access to the Dual Consciousness passive/active class skill.*
No, this wasn’t happening. Nope I was just experiencing some auditory hallucinations. That was all there was to it really. These system notifications were clearly just a part of that. Just a spot of psychosis after some significant mental trauma.
Alea… you can hear me right? Please tell me you can finally hear me!
If I just ignored it, it would go away, my mind was still recovering. It was only a matter of time.
Sniffling sounds came from the back of my mind. Please… I don’t want to be alone anymore. Then out and out crying. I’ve been stuck in those stones for two months, just… I’m sorry, I was trying to find a way for both of us to live. Please. I wouldn’t have killed you. Please Alea… The other me thought between sobs.
Cool, so the version of me that was magically made loyal to Halcroft was playing him? That sounded massively unlikely. I couldn’t trust her, but at the same time I was going to go bananas if I had to keep hearing her cry in the back of my head.
Fine! I can hear you, happy? I thought.
More sniffling. Hardly… This whole situation sucks, but… I’m definitely happy you can hear me, I’ve been trying to create a link for weeks. She thought back.
I really didn’t know how to know if she was lying. I mean she wasn’t here in front of me, I couldn’t see her face. There was some inflection to her ‘voice’ but it was terribly difficult to tell one way or another.
I would just need to judge her based on her actions. She did save Penelope then returned control to me during the basilisk attack. That certainly showed a level of attempted cooperation. Then again she told Halcroft about our plans before I could have known about the orders being deactivated. My mind continued to go back and forth on her.
I huffed, annoyed with this situation already. I just wanted to rest and restart my training. I needed to become stronger before the escape.
Could… we talk. I know you have a hard time trusting me considering how I was made, but… My other self begged me.
Fine, you can talk. Tell me everything from the start. I thought back at her.
Didn’t you get to see my memories? I mean, I saw all your memories. Which turned out to be way more than I bargained for. Another world, another life… if I had known…
Great so she apparently watched both of my lives in the same way I did her very short one. So she knew my secret. I suppose it was good that she offered that information, but I find it very creepy to have a stranger know everything about me all of a sudden.
Alright. Yes, I saw your memories too, which is why I know you sold us all out the moment Halcroft asked you to. I added as much accusation as I could to my thoughts.
That’s fair, I suppose. But, if you experienced my memories in the same way I did yours then you don’t know what I was thinking at the time. Just give me a chance.
Ugh, she was more or less me, I suppose I did have to give her a chance. Fine.
Good. Well, when I was first made, I didn’t really have much to me, I didn’t have your memories, all I was was what Halcroft made me. I agreed with his plan because otherwise he would just kill me. I didn’t want to, if only at the time because I didn’t want to be a pawn. That was until you regained control for the first time and I was returned to the mind stone. But for whatever reason I was still aware. I sat surrounded by the magical construct of the stone for hours. I began to analyze the magic, to understand it, then I started to change it. Now she was starting to sound rather triumphant. The first thing I did was remove the compulsion for me to obey Halcroft, and it worked!
How could I possibly believe that for a second. Why would someone mind controlled to obey someone willingly remove the compulsion? That just didn’t make sense. Assuming I believe you, why?
There was a haughty laugh in my mind. Oh dear other me, do you think so little of us? That we would willingly be anyone’s slave. No, Halcroft increased my obedience to him, true, but he didn’t lower our defiance, our independence. And most importantly the moron left my hatred for him quite intact. Maybe he didn’t truly understand how much we hated him.
Ok, yeah that certainly sounded like me. I did hate him so much I wanted him to choke on a sword while he slowly bled out. Although I was also confident I wasn’t quite so… full of myself as she clearly was. Alright, I get it, you hate him just as much as I do. What did you do next?
The other me clicked her non-existent tongue. I sat and learned. I learned about the fundamental nature of magic, about the enchantment, about the different types of magic. Let me tell you, there is nothing like spending every hour of your life for months being stuck inside a magical construct for teaching you about magic itself. Just as I was about to make another change I found myself in control of our body during one of your little training sessions. With that I began to slowly gain your memories, as if I had actually experienced them. By the time Mel linked our mind to the bracelet I had experienced our entire second life exactly like you did, thoughts and all. The only thing I didn’t understand is when you thought about another world, or when you thought about technology or ideas that don’t exist in this world.
Alright, so she effectively lived my entire second life. It now made a ton of sense why she did her best to save Penelope’s life. She probably loved her about as much as I did. So then, that means you are as much Alea as I am.
She scoffed. Well yes, in one sense, sure. But unlike you I have always and only been Alea. You were that… disgusting boy for twenty some odd years. Really I think that makes me more Alea than you are. She paused for a moment. Also referring to each of us as Alea is getting confusing, I think you should go by some other name. Jacob would make sense since you are really just him.
Did she just… deadname me? I mean if she experienced all my second life she had to know that I pretty deeply identified as Alea now. Anger began to boil up in me. First off, this body is mine not ours, second off you are just some magical creation, if either of us will be taking a new name it will be you. Finally, I am Alea, I am a girl, this is the last we will ever discuss that particular topic.
She was silent for a moment. Fine, whatever, you’re a girl. It’s just a bit creepy to know some old guy is walking around in my body, alright?
Old guy? I was 26 when the apocalypse happened. Also that very much did not sound like acceptance or an apology. I am not an ‘old guy’ in the body of a girl, I am Alea. I don’t want to be anyone else, which is why I put a stop to your whole mind controlling me to death thing. You said you had my memories. You know how much I’ve thought about this over the course of my second life. I like who I am now. It is very important to me that you understand I am very serious about this.
Fine! She somehow shouted in my mind, much to my annoyance. I believe you, happy?
Why was she being such a bitch about this? Also… why was she being a bitch at all? I wasn’t this mean was I? I sure as heck hoped not. Did you not… correct the other modifications to your personality Halcroft made?
There was spluttering. What? No, of course not! Why would I change my own personality, that is so… wrong. Sure I removed the compulsion, but that wasn’t really a part of who I am.
So you’re me, but a spoiled brat version. Great! Maybe you should use that magical construct or whatever to smooth out your attitude while you figure out your new name. I could feel my anger growing more hot.
Hey! Don’t talk to me that way! I happen to like who I am. If we are ‘accepting’- I could practically hear the rabbit ears over the word. -that you get to be Alea even when you used to be Jacob then you need to not order me to mutilate myself.
I just barely shut down a quick reply, before I said something really dumb in anger. She was… and it pained me to admit it, absolutely right. This is who she was and me suggesting she magical edit herself was deeply fucked up. Sorry, Alea, you are totally right that was really shitty of me. I intentionally used my own name to refer to her to hopefully make it a bit more meaningful.
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Well. Good, I’m glad you understand. There was a pause. Also… I’m sorry too. I knew how you felt about your… gender and I shouldn’t have thought that. It’s just that ever since I experienced our entire life I felt like you were the invader in this body and not me. Now I know that wasn’t even close to your fault, and I feel bad for what I tried to do. Even if it wasn’t nearly as bad as what Halcroft wanted, but still.
What she tried to do? What did that mean? I’m going to need you to explain that.
She paused for a long moment. Look. I’m telling you this so you will hopefully trust me eventually. But I did actually plan to take over our body. Before you yell at me, let me explain.
My eye began to twitch. Just as I thought we were connecting she pulled this out! I forced myself to calm down a bit, breathing in and out slowly. Alright, I’m listening.
Well… I didn’t have your memories from your previous life and at the time I thought you were something like a bodysnatcher. That you replaced the real Alea, and I was closer to the original than you were. I now know that was wrong and I’m really glad I didn’t go through with it. I acknowledge that with what happened after your world was destroyed you really are the original Alea. The people of this entire world are just recycled souls from another world. She sounded a little shell shocked by her own revelation. I suppose that made sense, if those were the last memories she watched then she just found that out.
I didn’t know what to do with what she was saying. I needed to know more about us, about her. Alright, so what exactly were you planning to do to me if I hadn’t stopped you?
More strained silence. I was actually trying to produce more or less the same results Mel did by accident, except with me as the dominant personality instead of you. Basically you would be the one whispering in the back of my head forced to watch my life through our body without any control. Then because sitting around in someone’s head doing nothing all day would be a horrible fate, I was going to store your consciousness in the mind stones until I could find another solution.
“You were just going to put me into a magical prison!?” I yelled to the empty room.
Calm down! She thought immediately. If it makes you feel any better I could have easily killed you or subverted your control before now. I chose not to because I wasn’t entirely sure what would have happened yet. You were pretty easy pickings mentally speaking when you were depressed. I just didn’t want to accidentally hurt you so I waited. Now I have very mixed feelings about having waited. On one side with the revelations of your previous life I am glad I didn’t, you are clearly innocent and didn’t deserve to be killed or imprisoned. At the same time… I’m now stuck in the situation you would have been.
I bit back a scathing reply. She was trying to make amends, to come clean. Also that fate sounded terrible. So you can sense everything I do now? You just can’t control my body?
I practically heard her shrug, or maybe she just somehow sent me the telepathic concept of a shrug. It was hard to explain. Yeah, now that the magical construct is in our brain I’ll be just… stuck here and I won’t even be able to learn from the construct anymore. A fate worse than death.
Great. That actually makes me feel kind of sad for her. She tried to put me in the exact same situation but I still feel bad. I also don’t want someone in my head watching my life all the time. I suppose Mel was already probably doing that, but it feels different when I know the person is always actively doing it.
So, that’s it then you are stuck there and there is nothing either of us can do? I asked tentatively. This would be the point where she tries to fool me into somehow giving her the driver’s seat or something.
There was a sigh. If I was the one in control there would be a lot we could do. I could potentially merge us together, switch control of our body back and forth, put one of the two of us into what amounts to sleep, or even destroy one of us. However to do any of that I would need to use magic and I can’t do that without control of the body. You don’t have the magical knowledge to accomplish any of those things. I could easily teach you how to give me control, but I doubt you are dumb enough to allow that.
Well at least she was acknowledging that giving her control was never going to happen. I would need absolute assurance that she wouldn’t try anything to give her control. So this was just how I was now. I’d always have a prisoner locked away in the back of my mind. Yikes, that made me feel like a bit of a monster. I suddenly felt like I was just doing the same thing Halcroft was to me.
Our situations weren’t exactly the same. No, on second thought they kind of were. He used the command crests to maintain control of us. That was exactly like what I was doing with the other version of me. I was maintaining control, never willing to trust her with anything at all. Fuck. Risk of elven interaction was always what Halcroft feared, someone turning on him. He bound everyone around him to him with threats, magic, oaths, or wealth. I was almost going to give up and just lock another version of me behind magical prison bars.
We needed to find a way to work together, so that neither of us felt like a prisoner. Yet, the problem was that the power balance on each side was totally out of whack. I had absolute control over the body and she, by her own omission, could use magic to murder me if I ever gave her control. I didn’t even know if I could take control back if I ever gave it to her.
This is fucked… I thought begrudgingly.
I felt the other me turning up her nose somehow. It seems like she could send me physical communication cues. I needed to learn how she did that. Yes well, it is much better than knowing you are an artificial mind created to hijack the body of the person you would slowly become. At least we no longer have to be adversaries. Having no one to talk with was positively tortuous. There is however another solution. You can do to me what I was planning to do to you. You can store me inside the mind stones. While there I won’t have any conscious awareness at all, since the magical construct that allows my mind to operate is merged with your mind.
Well that’s at least something. Will I be able to put you back in my mind like how we are now? Being able to store her consciousness was a really good solution for now. She wouldn’t be tortured endlessly by being stuck in a body she couldn’t control and I wouldn’t have a voice in the back of my head.
Yes, putting me into the stones and taking me out will be as easy as activating the mind stones. She thought nonchalantly. I can only actually think while I have a magical construct to adhere to. It is much preferable to what I had to deal with before, being constantly alone was miserable.
I tried to send her a rueful look. I can literally only imagine. Months alone with nothing to do but study the funda- My thoughts stopped suddenly. If she figured out how to control magic through studying the magical construct, why couldn’t I? What if I learn what you did? I considered learning from her directly, but that would just let her teach me something incorrectly.
Are you suggesting spending two months with your mind stuck in a magical construct? Because I’m confident that is impossible. She thought haughtily. The only reason I could was because I was just a magical program within that construct. You would need to literally be made of magic like I was.
Was? Are you not still just a part of the magical construct? I ask.
She rolls her nonexistent eyes. Yes and no, you put our brain through a magical tornado and truthfully I can’t tell what is magic and what is biological here anymore. So I think I’m both now, and potentially you might be too.
What the actual fuck? Am I lucky to even be alive? What did Mel even really do? So to be clear, our minds are somehow some type of weird magically enchanted biological wetware now?
I have no idea what wetware is. She then huffed in annoyance.
Wait, don’t you have my memories from Earth?
Not really no, I watched all the important moments in your first life, but I don’t understand any of it. I know a bit more about science and technology than the average inhabitant of this world, but not much more.
Alright, so even if she wanted to she would never have been able to share the scariest secrets floating around in my brain. So basically, I’m the scientist and you're the mage?
I suppose, if you want to break it down that much, sure. I am confident I know about as much about the fundamental nature of magic as any scholar in this world. The experience of being stuck in the bracelet may have been grueling, but it was absolutely enlightening. I got an image of my own body with my hands on my hips and my head pointed a bit upwards. It was a triumphant pose I would never make in my life.
This version of me might be about as intelligent as I was, which made sense since we were using the same brain, but she was actually a 12 year old. She had less than half my experiences to draw on to support her emotional development. Which meant she was a child… and even if I could, I shouldn’t kill her. Also I really can’t blame her for doing what she did. She is literally 2 months old going on 12 years old, she’s a kid. A spoiled brat that thinks she is way more clever than she actually is, but a kid nonetheless.
So what did that mean exactly? Was I her big sister? Her mother? This was even more of a mess than I thought it was originally! Alright… I paused trying to consider what name to use. She wasn’t me, she wasn’t Alea, the person with nearly 40 years of life experience. Yet she was a person, an individual and I couldn’t demean her. I’d never give her control of my body, or at least never do so before I had countermeasures to ensure she wouldn’t kill me. But I had to treat her like a person. This wasn’t her choice and now she had to either be stuck in my body or put into cold storage and effectively stop existing for a time. We need a name for you. I’m not just trying to be mean. You are a person, and you deserve to be treated like one. I will do everything I reasonably can to make your life bearable and not just keep you constantly stuck in the stones. So we should work together toward that goal. Yet, even with that being the case, you are distinct from me, you are you and I am me. So you need to come up with a name, or if you’d like I can do it.
There was a long pause. Then I heard some sniffling in the back of my mind. The other me stopped sniffling suddenly and I got the distinct image of my own body wiping her eyes before turning away. Embarrassment came from over our link. The poor girl probably wasn’t expecting me to be so accommodating. Do you mean that?
I didn’t hesitate for a moment to respond. Absolutely. You may have been made by a combination of a mistake and an asshole, but that doesn’t matter. You are a person now. You deserve to live a free life. I can’t give you that yet, but I’ll do what I can to do so in the future.
There was a giggle from her. A mistake and an asshole makes it sound dirty.
My cheeks flushed, she was right, but I decided to take the highroad. So. I coughed awkwardly trying to ignore my own statement. Will you help me learn about our condition and how to control it?
Yes! There was nothing but happiness over our connection. I would be happy to do that. If you are really lucky I might even help you modify your other magic too.
One step at a time. This was going to be downright strange, but we would figure it out.
How about Alice for my name? She ventured.
It was a human name, and truthfully I didn’t love that part. Human civilization of this world wasn’t exactly my favorite. The ones in power I’ve met have been brutal and savage, were homophobic to some extent, and most importantly allowed slavery. I did not have a good image of Hakan as a country or culture.
Then again this version of me was far more familiar and connected to Hakan than I was. It was my past life that let me never grow complacent over the years and slowly start considering myself Hakan. It was also cute and she chose it, and that’s all that really mattered. It’s a pretty name. I tried to emanate warmth over our connection, but I wasn’t sure if it worked. Hello, Alice, I can’t say it’s nice to have you here, but I hope we can become friends.
I suppose you might be good enough to be friends with me. Alice thought back to me.