Two sets of memories vied for dominance in her mind. One of them found the simple room with its old-fashioned bed and nightstand to be alien and frightening; the other thought it normal, if quaint. Her head felt like it was being squeezed in a vise, and the pressure was making it hard to think. Adding to the confusion was a stream of messages that flowed across her vision before disappearing into a little flashing scroll icon.
She groaned and rolled to the side, threw her legs off the side of the bed, and sat up. “What the hell?” she mumbled, and then realized that she’d said it in Kyma’s language. “What the hell?” she said again, slower, in English. She put her hands to her face and rubbed it, trying to make things make sense.
Every moment of Kyma’s life felt real and immediate. They were her memories, every bit as much as her life in the Minneapolis Foster System. For all that Kyma’s life had been a short one—she’d only been thirteen or fourteen years old when she’d died—it had been a full life. She’d learned to fight and cast spells along with all of the daily work of living and surviving.
And she’d had a family. A real, loving, supportive family. A huge, extended family full of siblings and aunts and uncles, and cousins. That was something Lanie had never had. At the thought of them, her heart ached. They were dead, gone for thousands of years, and part of her mourned for them. She pictured each of their faces in turn, Olan’s bushy beard and wide smile, Akayma’s stern frown that tried to hide the smile in her eyes, Olfan’s mischievous grin, and her unnamed little brother’s giggles. She wondered what they named him, if he lived to his naming, if they all survived the invading warlord… The whirlwind of emotion and uncertainty threatened to pull her down into grief, so she bundled up those questions and feelings and imagined them as a stack of photographs tied with a ribbon. She placed them in a mental shoe-box and set them aside to look at later.
She swallowed down the lump in her throat and blinked away the tears that threatened to fall, reminding herself firmly that she was Lanie Manovich of Minneapolis, not Kyma of the Steppes. Kyma’s life was long over. Lanie’s life was here and now.
The flashing scroll icon offered a more productive distraction. She mentally clicked on the scroll and read the messages as they appeared:
You have re-experienced a past life.
You have unsealed a portion of your soul: +10% progress to next tier, +1% bonus to Willpower and Wisdom, +4 sakti
Wisdom: +3
Willpower: +3
Endurance: +1
——————
You have learned the language: Proto-Indo-European (Fluent) +3 Intelligence
You have gained the skill: Herbalism (Central Asia)(Novice) +1 Perception
You have gained the skill: Leather-working (Apprentice) +2 Wisdom
You have gained the skill: Endurance Running (Novice) +1 Endurance
You have gained the skill: Wilderness Survival (Apprentice) +2 Wisdom
You have gained the skill: Spear (Novice) +1 Dexterity
You have gained the skill: Solar Timekeeping (Novice) +1 Intelligence
You have learned the ritual: Appease Spirits (Novice)
You have learned the spell: Steps of Akayma (Novice)
Unsealed a portion of her soul? What the hell did that mean? The list of new skills scrolling past was impressive. She’d gained a lot, and after the roller coaster of emotions she’d just been through, she felt like she’d earned them. Her head was full of memories of learning to clean and stretch hides, of the acrid herbs and stale urine used to treat them, and how sore and rough her hands had been. She remembered picking herbs with her mother… with Akayma, and of learning to judge the time of day and the passage of the seasons by the sun. These weren’t freebies that had been given to her. It was an acknowledgment of what she had worked hard to learn, even if it had been a different version of her.
Realizing that made her feel better. She didn’t like the idea of some magical computer program shoving things into her head. Knowing that she’d earned everything she’d gotten the hard way made each skill all the more valuable to her. She wasn’t Kyma, but Kyma was part of her. Lanie could feel the rightness of it. Kyma wasn’t some stranger grafted onto her; those memories were part of her soul that had been locked away and were now open to her. The effort that Kyma had put into learning these things would live on in her.
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It had only been a few minutes since she’d woken, but the memories and heartache were starting to soften around the edges. They no longer had the immediacy of recent events, but with each passing moment, they started to take on the haze of long-ago events and healed over wounds. Lanie was glad for that. Her status page said that she had over a hundred and fifty past lives. If she had to live with all of those memories fresh and vivid, she would probably go insane after reliving only a few of them.
Lanie had never been religious and had never thought much about what happened after death. Having proof that reincarnation was a real thing was kind of comforting. Knowing that some part of her would continue and have a chance to experience new things made her feel more real. Her past and her life had sometimes made her feel like her existence was pointless. She’d never do great things or make a huge impact on the world. She wasn’t an artist, or scientist, or entrepreneur to create a lasting legacy. She was the product of two broken people, raised as just another mouth to feed in a broken system. There had been no place for her to take root, no permanence in her life. Now, knowing that even if she died, someday, some future version of her might look back at this life and see her pain and choices, she wanted to accomplish something. She wanted to live a life that a future her could learn from and be proud of.
It was a shift in thinking for her. Instead of living from day to day, taking whatever jobs would let her survive and satisfy her need for a challenge, she started thinking about the future. What kind of person did she want to be? What sort of life did she want to live? They were huge questions, and she didn’t have answers for them.
This wasn’t the time to get philosophical, anyway. She was in a strange room, in a strange town, in a strange other realm, and… And her shoes were missing. She was still in her clothes, but her shoes and bag were gone. Nips! Where was Nips?
The room was small, its only contents were the bed, a simple wooden nightstand with a candle holder, and a rough wooden chair. And her. The glass in the window was very old, thick, and so full of imperfections that it may as well have been frosted. It distorted the view so badly that all she could see through it were rough blobs of color that sort of resembled a village street, and some smaller moving blobs that were probably people. It looked like she was on the second floor of a building near the center of the village.
What had she been doing before the vision, or memory, or whatever that had been? She’d lived through over a decade of memories, and the events of her own life felt distant. Crossing. The village had been called Crossing. They’d been at the market on the edge of town. Nips had been speaking to one of the stall owners… The language. That’s what had triggered the memory. They’d been speaking a mix of Kyma’s language and something else. Why did the creatures of Fairy speak Kyma’s lang… Oh! Kyma taught Tolus. Her interface had said it was a karmic link. That must mean it was something important, right? Some ripple of impact a past her had that echoed through the ages. Maybe. She couldn’t have been the only human to talk to one of the Fae Folk.
Was this going to happen every time she encountered something familiar to one of her past selves? That would be annoying. It could get dangerous if she tumbled into a memory and passed out at the wrong moment. What if she’d triggered a past life while Cole was chasing her? She shuddered at the thought. She would have to do something to prevent that, but what? She didn’t have a clue what was happening to her. She needed to talk to Nips.
Worries chased themselves in circles in her mind, and her head still felt like it was overstuffed. She let out a long breath and shook her head hard to clear out the cobwebs. “OK, prioritize. Where am I? Whose house is this, and where are my shoes? I need to find out how long I was out, where Nips is, and if he learned anything that might let us get back to the real world. I hope he’s OK. He’d better be OK.” Those last words came out nearly in a growl. She surprised herself with how worried she was about him.
Standing, she took stock of herself. Her feet were bare, but she was still dressed. The skirt and blouse had been bought on the spur of the moment, and there hadn’t been any time to alter them to hide her usual backups. She felt around the waistband of her leggings, under the skirt. Her fingers found the hidden paperclip that she’d clipped there when she changed on the train, and the corner of her mouth twitched up. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. It was the equivalent of having a deuce up her sleeve rather than an ace, but even a low pair could win a pot if played right.
A hidden paperclip wasn’t all she had. She realized that she hadn’t looked at her new mystery interface in a while, and she’d gained some sakti since then. No one had come to check on her, and she wasn’t in immediate danger. She wasn’t sure she was in danger at all. For all she knew, this was the home of some kind soul who had helped them out, and Nips was downstairs enjoying a cup of tea and pleasant conversation. But she had a nagging feeling in her gut that things weren’t that simple. That just wasn’t the way her life went. For the moment, though, she had time to think.
She opened her interface and looked through it, noting the increases to her wisdom and willpower, but not paying much attention to her numbers. She had seven sakti points available, and too many options for using them. Several abilities looked promising, but she couldn’t decide where to put the points. There was no way for her to know what would be the most useful. None of the options had any descriptions. All she had to go by were vague names.
She groaned with frustration and closed the interface. Fingers moving in little circles on her temples, she tried to massage away her building headache.
It was hard to concentrate. Her head still felt like it was being squeezed. The pressure wasn’t like the pressure she sometimes got when she had a sinus headache. It was more like… Her thoughts trailed off as she realized why her gut had been telling her she was in danger. The pressure was like what Nips had shown her with his glamour, only much, much bigger.
“I’m such an idiot,” she ground the heel of her hand into her forehead, “Nips warned me about the illusions.”
Thankful for the boost to her willpower, Lanie pushed against the pressure, willing the illusion to shatter. Hands balled into fists, she strained, flexing a mental muscle that she’d only just learned about the day before. Something pushed back. It wasn’t like fighting against a thinking opponent, but the power she shoved against had weight. It felt like trying to push a car up a hill. There was some give, but it just kept rolling back in to erase whatever ground she made.
Glimpses of reality showed through the glamour. For brief instants, the stone walls of the room were replaced by darkness and iron bars, the warm comfort of the room was replaced by a dank cold, and the bed by a ramshackle cot. But, try as she might, the illusion returned to blot out the reality.