"What's wrong?" said Ghorza. "Come on. Eat."
"Not hungry." Lev stared at his dinner. It stared back with six eyes partially hidden behind dull brown fuzz.
Fuzzy cave worms were one of the most abundant species in the magical cavern. Each had two long whiskers stretching from the sides of its head and a long, thin, slippery tongue; the specimen before him, freshly butchered, had its tongue lolling out of its mouth. The worm was half his size, so it was cut into three pieces. Ghorza had served herself the middle part and set aside the bottom for a light breakfast tomorrow. Most pressingly, she had served Lev the head, Gherm's favourite.
"You know, it's pretty expensive to get one of these right now, and you haven't eaten a thing since you woke up. You really don't wanna eat that?"
"Really Ghorza, I'm not—"
Grrrrrrr. His grumbling stomach was loud enough to wake the dead.
"Not hungry, huh?"
Lev was speechless, betrayed by his own body.
"Gherm," Ghorza resumed, holding out a piece of head meat, "eat."
"Maybe it would be—"
"Eat."
"Shouldn't we—"
"Eat."
"It honestly would be better to—"
"I said eat."
"Fine!" Truthfully speaking, Lev needed to eat. No matter how disgusted he was at the idea of eating… bugs, his survival depended on it, and he had to adapt. Besides, it was not the first time he had been made to eat something questionable.
He grabbed the mud-colored flesh from Ghorza's hand and stuffed it into his mouth without a second thought.
"Gherm? Why are you making that face?" Fuzzy cave worms had been, for as long as she could remember, Gherm's favourite. She had never imagined that she would see him disgusted to eat them.
"N-Nothing to worry about. There was some lazlick mould inside it," he lied, the corners of his lips tensed upwards.
"Oh. Lucky you!" Though Gherm hated the idea of even getting near the mould, Ghorza adored its extremely sweet flavour.
How on earth did Gherm enjoy eating these damned things?" Lev thought. The meat tasted overwhelmingly bitter and sour, and the texture reminded him of vehicle tyres sloshing through a swamp.
Trying his best to maintain a joyful expression, Lev focused entirely on moving his jaws up and down. He finally managed to swallow the worm chunk, hoping the meal was over.
"Now, time to finish the rest," Ghorza sang, relieved her brother was eating again.
His stomach dropped. "Sure," he said, forcing another smile so that he would not gag or cry.
Lev continued feigning joy between bites while making small talk every now and then—Gherm was never the silent type. Every time he talked, he also expressed himself with his hands, and every time Ghorza asked him an embarrassing question, he twitched his ears and nervously tapped on the table with his left index finger. Though their flavor preferences could not be more disparate, Lev was confident that he had replicated all of Gherm's gestures, quirks, and nuances. And to him, at least, it seemed convincing.
Finally, Lev thought as the last bite went down his throat. He stood up, stretched his body, and proceeded to grab a drinking bowl. He then gulped down enough water to wash down the last of the worm meat before handing the bowl to Ghorza.
"Thanks." She took a sip and handed the bowl back to her brother to put away.
"You're welcome."
"Thank the gods you're alright. We're the only family we have left."
"Don't worry, I don't die easily."
"You're saying that as though danger is normal to you. Next you're gonna tell me you're a war hero." Ghorza giggled nervously.
"War hero, huh," he muttered. The room fell silent except for his finger tapping the table as he lost himself in his thoughts.
Ghorza waited, expecting her brother to admit he was joking, but the tapping went on longer than it ever had before. "Gherm. Are you okay?"
Gherm said nothing.
"Gherm?"
Once more, Gherm did not respond.
"Gherm!"
Lev nearly dropped the bowl. "So it happened again… Sorry. I was thinking about something."
"I've never seen you like that. Were you really 'thinking about something,' or was it just your injury? Do we need to go back to Rogg?"
"Trust me, it's nothing."
"You do know that you rarely lie to me, right? Ever since you woke up, I feel like you've been lying a lot more. Even during dinner, I felt like something was off. Like instead of just being yourself, you're trying to act like yourself." Ghorza pulled her chair closer to Lev. "Please, Gherm, tell me why, and be honest this time."
Lev was stunned. He was so sure that he could fool her, but something in his mind was urging—no, forcing—him to come clean. The moment his focus lapsed, the influence suddenly took partial control.
"I have memories from another life," Gherm blurted out with wide eyes.
"You're joking."
Lev tried to say yes, but something interfered. "Nope."
"Come on, Gherm, I'm serious."
"So am I."
Ghorza backed away slowly before grabbing a stone knife from the table.
Lev detected that the influence had exhausted itself and was ceding control back to him. He relaxed his eyelids, but it was too late. "Ghorza—"
"So do you only have memories or is it something else?" she demanded. "Are you really Gherm?"
The weakened influence tried to take over again, but through sheer force of will, Lev choked out an answer. "Yes. Who else could I be?" he insisted, softly taking a step towards a window.
"Then why are you backing away from me?"
"Because you were always superstitious, and I'm sure you think I'm a demon, even though I'm not."
"Sure you aren't, and I'm the chief's daughter!" She gripped the knife hard enough to turn her knuckles white.
Lev desperately searched Gherm's memories for a way to prove himself to her and found two words that fit. "Meron powder.���
"What?" Ghorza gasped.
"Meron powder. I'll mix that meron powder we received in the holy ceremony a year ago with water and drink it. If I start burning..." Lev gulped, "then it'll be obvious I'm possessed and you can do whatever you want with me, but if nothing happens, you'll have to believe that I am Gherm, except with memories from another life."
"You're… crazy…"
"I am exactly who I say I am. Just give me a chance to prove myself—you have nothing to lose. In fact, if I am a demon, you'll get your beloved, albeit slightly scorched, brother back. Deal?"
Ghorza hesitated for a second and stepped back far enough to allow Lev to grab the meron powder jar from across the room to the left. She did not lower her knife.
Thank goodness she agreed, thought Lev before hesitantly prying the jar open. Hopefully the thing about this powder expelling demons and spirits is just superstition, and if it's not, I hope the powder either sends me back to where I belong or at least doesn't hurt.
He grabbed a pinch of the powder and sighed in relief as nothing happened. He had learned from his earlier rush of knowledge that certain powerful demons could resist the effects from dry powder, but not from powder mixed with water. He stirred the powder into some water, drank the concoction, and braced for impact.
Yet again, nothing happened. Lev's imperceptibly tensed shoulders relaxed completely. "Do you believe me now?"
Ghorza was stunned. "S-So you're really Gherm?"
"No. I'm Tanach, the dreamer of worlds," Lev said sarcastically.
"Pfft! Tanach! Out of all your options, you chose the lazy one?"
"What can I say? I love being lazy."
"You sure do, Gherm. You sure do." She paused. "So, care to explain to me how you have other memories?"
With the strange influence from earlier weakened to a suppressible level, Lev was confident that he could lie his way through this, but the method by which he had been reincarnated vaguely resembled something that Gherm's deceased father had mentioned once. Ghorza might be able to shed some light, he thought.
"I honestly don't know how it all happened. I felt that I was in a void, and then my body was swept away as if by a river, and then I found myself heading towards a ball of light." While Lev talked, Ghorza's face cycled through a multitude of expressions, among them confusion, shock, excitement, and fear. "After colliding with it—or, rather sinking into it—I woke up with an aching head and an additional set of memories."
Ghorza pulled up a chair and sat at Lev's side. "By the gods, Gherm. Do you realize what this means?"
"No, not at all."
"You're a chosen one. A chosen one! It's been a long time since a chosen one appeared, and even longer since a greyborn became one."
"Uh oh." As far as bogeys were concerned, chosen ones were reincarnations of the gods and their godly champions. Chosen ones wielded powers beyond natural potential, ranging from simple augments like superhuman strength to complex capabilities that could alter the very fabric of reality.
"If anyone finds out, you could be killed. Gherm, if you gain any special abilities, never show them to anyone, and never, ever use them unless you absolutely have to. Oh, gods, if you needed to use them and someone saw… I don't know what we'd do."
Lev was ready to rattle off a myriad of ways to dispatch whoever saw him, but Ghorza suddenly stood back up. "Maybe you could be lucky and turn out to be a lost soul."
Lost souls were people who had inherited the memories of other mortals. They had new memories, but no new powers whatsoever. Even the new memories were frequently commoners' memories whose antiquity rendered them and their holders entirely unremarkable. Only a few lost souls had ever managed to gain prominence, and even then, they had been fortunate enough to inherit memories from great leaders and legendary craftsmen.
"What do you think? Check your recent memories. Do they contain any divine figures?"
Lev shrugged. "Looks like I'm a lost soul and not a chosen one."
"Thank the gods. I couldn't bear to lose you—"
"Yes, yes, thankfully it's just a commoner's memory," dismissed Lev self-assuredly. "But not the kind of commoner that you're thinking of. Not even one from this world." Lev knew bogeys told folk tales involving both transmigration and latent memories. As far as Gherm's memories served him, though, no one, not even in folklore, had ever inherited memories from another world, and no one had ever lost control of their body to the foreign consciousness instead of integrating.
Lev postulated that in his case, either there had been a problem in the reincarnation process, or his resistance to his own world's reincarnation process had triggered a failsafe that had sent him into this world. There was also the possibility that supernatural entities were meddling with current events.
"Great!" Ghorza restarted. "But you should still keep quiet. Who knows what secrets lie in your new memories?" Ghorza rubbed her forehead, trying to relax her long-furrowed brow.
"That's why I didn't want to tell you. I know my status isn't something I can disclose easily. I know that if others find out, I could be hunted down, tortured, and killed. I know lost souls are still rare, so if I do get caught, I could be cut open and experimented on by mages and researchers hoping to discover my hidden gifts, or maybe just to amuse themselves while they flaunt their superiority over me as they probe me both physically and mentally and laugh as they twist me and break me while stripping me of—"
"Stop!" Ghorza shrieked with a fury she had never shown even when she had thought Lev was a demon. "Never say anything like that again! Never… please…" Her voice faltered as she embraced her brother.
Lev felt tears wet his shoulder and realized that he had taken it too far. His chest tightened; he knew he was frequently guilty of verbalizing the worst-case scenario without considering how it would affect others.
And due to what could only be Gherm's influence, he felt particularly guilty. Lev hugged her back and let Ghorza cry on his shoulder, and when she had calmed down, he smiled at her. "Let's go to sleep now and leave the thinking for tomorrow."
"Yeah, sleep, let's go to sleep." Ghorza lingered in her brother's embrace for a moment before they both released each other. "We've got a lot of work to do tomorrow to earn back those merits."
After cleaning the dining room and storing the remaining worm meat, "Gherm" and Ghorza retired to their sleeping quarters and lay on their separate mats, which were made from old rags bought with hard-earned merits.
"Good night, Gherm," said Ghorza before she closed her eyes and entered the land of dreams.
"Good night," Lev replied before closing his eyes. He waited a few minutes until the rhythm of Ghorza's breathing slowed before breaking his façade and losing himself once again in his thoughts.
So I died, huh, Lev deduced. He recalled what had happened at the moment of his death. He had been shot during his victory speech, and Brutus and Maria had come to his aid.
Heh... I'm pretty sure the big lug cried like a baby. Despite his large, intimidating physique, he was always a big softie. Maria, on the other hand, now she was a tigress," Lev thought as he remembered how she'd always gotten into street fights no matter the odds.
He reminisced about their childhood as a tear fell from his eye. Will I ever see them again? My life loses a bit of its meaning without them. Lev felt Gherm sympathising with him; he scowled at the subhuman beast whose body he had been made to share.
Sorry, Gherm, but from what I've seen and from what I've known from your memories, you'll be trouble in the future. I'm not the type to kill innocents, but I'll try putting you to sleep for now. He did not know how to influence souls, and before today he had doubted their existence, but in his experience, he had managed to regain control over his body purely due to his greater willpower.
Lev tried focusing his will to silence Gherm. Earlier, he had overpowered Gherm's soul enough to control his body, but despite his efforts now, he couldn't even dampen Gherm's influence on his emotions.
Well, that's that. I'll deal with you once I figure out how to. And trust me, I always figure things out. He felt Gherm brush his warning off.
Fine. Yes. We're stuck in the same body, and by this I mean your life sucks, Lev acquiesced. But who said I'll settle for the same life you did? Do you think I'm content with that? he quizzed while scrutinizing his hands. Gherm's life had been anything but easy. The abuse of greyborn was the norm, and though some non-greyborn bogeys tried to act civilized and merciful by selling items to them, greyborns still paid more for goods that were all too often of the worst quality. Even small-time criminals, as long as they did not have grey skin, were treated better.
I need to find a way to improve my life, and I need to take care of her, Lev thought as he looked at the sleeping Ghorza. Even though he was not exactly Gherm, he had still inherited Gherm's memories, so he knew how much Gherm cared about his sister. He realized that considering how easily he had come to accept his change in environment, he might be merging with Gherm, a prospect that, he perceived, horrified Gherm. Thankfully, because of Lev's superior strength of will, their fusion would be more of Gherm assimilating into Lev rather than Lev taking on any of Gherm's negative traits.
Many questions swirled in Lev's head, but he knew he would not be able to answer them all in a single night. Closing his eyes, he allowed himself to drift off to sleep.