The rasping laugh died in my throat. I was in a room, in a body that was not mine. As if its some sort of divine joke.
"My lady! My lady, you mustn't!" Elodie scrambled forward, her face a mask of panic. "You're weak! The fever... you've only just woken!".
I swung my legs over the side of the ridiculously soft bed. The polished wood floor was cold against my bare feet. My body was light, unsteady, and the throbbing behind my right temple was a persistent, like a dull spike. But it was functional.
I stood.
The dizziness hit me like a physical blow. The lavish room tilted. I braced my small hands against a one of the pillars of the bedpost.
"Gods, be merciful! You'll fall again!" Elodie wailed, rushing forward with a heavy velvet dress. "You're... you're not well! You must get back in bed. I'll fetch Sister Halen! I'll..."
I pushed past her. I had one priority, Information. I was an operative in an unknown, hostile territory. This bed was a liability.
"My lady! Seraphina!"
I ignored her, pulling open the heavy door to my chambers. A long hallway, rich in red carpet. Too much antique looking paintings on the walls. It seemed like it was designed to project wealth, not taste.
Elodie was scurrying behind me, a frantic, clucking hen. "Please, my lady, at least... at least your robe! Your shoes! If the Duke sees you...!" .
She was babbling about attire. I'd had run an operation in a torn briefs with barely anything on for three weeks. A silk nightgown was practically formal wear.
I walked, forcing this new body to obey. The language... That was the first anomaly. The Duke, the Duchess, this hysterical maid... I understood every word. It wasn't a language I'd ever cataloged. It wasn't Russian, Mandarin, or any of the two dozen dialects I knew. The words just... translated. They slotted directly into my brain, a pre installed software package.
Is this an IDIO experiment? No. The tech wasn't there. This place... it smelled of greasy foul smoke and old wood , not the sterile, recycled air of the black site. The light was weak from the afternoon sun, not regulated fluorescence. This was concerningly real.
This was... her. The girl. Seraphina. Her shallow memories were acting as a base level operating system. I had her language. What else?
I pushed open a heavy side door, ignoring Elodie's gasp "Not the grounds, my lady!" and stepped into a garden.
It was... wrong. The air was clean, but the flora was alien. I saw roses, but they were a blue so deep they were almost black. Star shaped flowers pulsed with a faint, oily luminescence. I touched one. The petal was thick, waxy. It felt real. This wasn't the Earth I knew.
"My lady, the pollen! You're going to catch something at this rate!"
I moved on. Past the chaotic garden, I heard it. Steel on steel. Men grunting. A barracks. I stopped behind a stone archway, watching. A dozen men in leather jerkins were training in a muddy courtyard. Their movements were crude, They'd be dead in seconds against a Division Epsilon soldier if they fought.
"Oh, gods, the soldiers!" Elodie yelped, her face crimson. She tried to physically block my view. "It's not... it's not proper! Please, my lady, turn away!"
Peaking through her hands there I saw it. The instructor, a man with a scarred face, barked an order. He held up a gauntleted hand. A small, bright ball of fire, formed in his palm. He hurled it. The ball of fire crossed the yard and struck a straw training dummy. The dummy didn't just catch fire. It incinerated. One second it was there, the next it was a pile of drifting ash.
My heart gave a hard, painful thump. Magic. This wasn't a hallucination. I really was sent to another world. This was a variable I could not account for. A variable that changed every rule of engagement. For the first time since I'd woken up, I felt a sliver of... interest. This had just become significantly more complex.
I ducked under Elodie's outstretched arm and headed for the kitchens. She was close to tears. "Not the kitchens! It's... it's filthy! The staff! My lady, please!"
The smell hit me first. Woodsmoke, yeast, roasting meat. It was rich, uncomplicated. I walked in. The room went silent. A dozen servants cooks, scullery maids, a butcher froze. They stared at me. The Duke's daughter. The girl who fell. The girl who woke up wrong. walked to a preparation table.
There i saw a bowl of salt, familiar. A head of cabbage, familiar. Then I saw a rack of unknown looking fruit, pulsing with a faint purple light. A fish with six glassy eyes was splayed on a cutting board. Knowns and unknowns, I establish a baseline. I ignored the staff. I ignored Elodie's frantic whispering. I had seen enough. I had saved the most important for last.
The girl's memories, shallow as they were, supplied the layout of the manor. I knew where I was going. I turned, my bare feet silent on the stone, and headed for the library.
"The... the library?" Elodie's voice cracked. This, apparently, was the most shocking thing I had done all day. "But my lady... you despise the library. Master Valerius... he said you'd rather be flogged than read..." She clapped a hand over her mouth. Flogged huh well this seems like a charming family. This Duke Corvin... definitely an abusive father.
This was the first true deviation from the "Seraphina" cover. The pampered, loud girl hated books. But I for one need information. I am blind, deaf, and mute in a hostile land. I needed this.
My "unnatural stillness" would have to cover the shift. The trauma made her different. I pushed open the massive twin doors. The smell hit me. Old leather and paper. The scent of knowledge. It was... comforting.
I walked past the shelves of poetry and drama. I needed maps. Politics. History. And I found it. A section marked Olaspin. I pulled out a heavy, leather bound volume: A Concise History of the Olaspin Kingdoms. I didn't sit. I stood by the tall window, opened the book, and began to read.
"My lady...?" Elodie whispered, wringing her hands by the door. "What... what are you doing?"
I ignored her. I scanned the first page. Flip. The second. Flip. The third. Flip. I could feel her staring. I could hear the panicked thoughts in her head. She's not reading. She's just turning the pages. It's the fall. Oh, the poor thing, she's truly gone mad.
She was wrong. I was reading. In my old life, I was Division Epsilon's finest. Enhanced. Experimented on. I could absorb and process hundreds of pages briefing in minutes. But... I was slow. My eyes were tracking, the words were registering, but the processing speed... it was sluggish. This 12 year old brain wasn't the optimized weapon I was used to. It was... normal. Un-enhanced. It was struggling to keep up. Dammit. This was a serious downgrade.
Still, it was faster than she could comprehend. The information flooded in. The Kingdom of Olaspin. Not a kingdom, an "elective monarchy." I paused. What? Seems like a system designed for instability. Kings were chosen by a council of Dukes. My new "father" was one of those electors. This explained his "damaged asset" assessment. I wasn't just his daughter. I was a political tool probably used to be bargained with other dukes.
This continent was called Romtallia. The year was 1468, by their calendar. This region, Olaspin, had broken away from the "Holy Empire of Aeridor" only ninety years ago, after the Empire weakened from "poor ruling." This wasn't an established country. It was a 90-year-old rebellion. A frontier. And it was in trouble. Olaspin was bordered on the north by the Umbral Wastes, territory of the... "Dark Elves." The book called them "savage," "godless," "violent." But with the experience I had in my pas life I know its much more complex than that. Humans weren't native here. They were the colonizers. The Elves were just... defending their land. This entire "kingdom" was a damn warzone.
After digging more on some books, I found my new family name. D'Arden. The book was... clear. "Duke Corvin D'Arden, the 'Iron Duke.'... tasked with 'pacifying' the border... a history of 'ruthless' efficiency... the 'D'Arden Curse'..." Oh. Oh. So that's it. We weren't just nobles. We were the bad ones. The state sanctioned monsters.
The ones who did the Empire's, and now the new kingdom's, grunt work. The family's past was... horrid. A dry, harsh laugh bubbled in my chest. The absurdity of it all. I, Viper, a man who had dismantled governments, had been reincarnated into the body of a 12-year-old girl from a literal family of "evil" aristocrats.
If I hadn't woken up... if Viper's consciousness hadn't surfaced... the original, loud, emotional Seraphina would have probably grown up to be a monster. "villainess." as to what my wife-
The laugh died. I was still processing the intel the magic, the elves, the unstable politics, my "cruel" family when Elodie's voice cut through. It was shaking. "My... my lady?" I focused on her. She was staring at my face, her own eyes wide with a new, fresh terror. "My lady," she whispered, "you're... you're crying."
I stopped. I hadn't noticed. I raised one of these small, hands to my cheek. It was wet. Tears. ...What? I don't cry. Not since...
I looked at the terrified maid. I looked at the tears on my own fingers. "Eh?"