I felt sick. It was hard to sense anything else. Was I sitting or lying? Perhaps, hanging? Oy maybe I was standing on my hands? That moment I couldn't tell. As if I was dreaming and my consciousness was separated from the world around me.

Another things I could feel were heat and thirst. It seemed like I was flowing through a harsh and slow river of sand, my skin was dry and sore.

Slap!

What? Who slapped me? Where was I?

"What's wrong with him?" a familiar voice said. It gave me bad vibes, but I couldn't remember whose it was.

Slap!

"Zane! Are you alright?" two people shouted, their voices worried.

New noises and feelings pushed away my drowsiness, which made thinking easier.

Zane? Who is Zane?  

Answering my question, a flash of pain exploded in my head. I groaned.

Somehow, I had two different opinions on the name "Zane". They were formed by two different experiences, maybe even two separate personalities.

Zane was a new name of mine, of the reincarnated sorceress Alice.

But Zane was also my only name. So, which one of these two opinions was true? 

I opened my eyes. Immidiately another blast of pain bursted in my mind. It seemed to be too exhausted to use vision. I wanted to close me eyes, but also... I didn't. My desires were opposite; once again, I had two viewpoints. I felt bad, I also understood that to sort the mess my mind turned into, I needed to gather more information about the world around me.

Right in front of me I could see the face of Harper Gauss. 

Again, I could feel two mental flows. Harper Gauss was a scary man, who kidnapped my whole family and tormented my father. But he was also a demigod, a strong opponent I defeated recently and a disgusting madman. 

I could see him grinning threateningly, but I also felt that he was nervous.

Wait, did I really defeat him recently? Didn't it happen five years ago, before my birth? Why does it feel that it happened a few days ago then? Did I mess up my perception of time? Packing your whole mind up into a memory archive is a bad idea in any situation other than mine.

Perhaps, I had this weird feeling because all these years one of my identities was sleeping in a memory archive. Having memories from two separated lives, from two different time periods, feeling two personalities with their life experiences huddling in one brain felt confusing, as if I was listening to two melodies at the same time. 

One of them was radiating shock, caused by the fact that all my life another personality was hiding somewhere deep in my mind. The amazement was so powerful that it blew away the fear.

The other of my... What would be the most appropriate word for my identites? The other of my selves, Alice, was emaniting joy and curiosity. My idea worked: I managed to save at least a part of my memories and now I wanted explore the situation I was in.

Could I use the word 'I' anymore? What did it mean? Was 'I' Alice the Mindweaver or Zane Nocturne? Maybe, both?

"Son?" my father asked nervously. I looked at him and saw that he was... naked! I panicked, as I have never seen a nude man. But I was a boy myself and I bathed pretty often, so, clearly, before that I had seen one at least. Ugh... This was so confusing.

Then I remembered that I was naked too! But it wasn't my body, so technically, there was no reason for me to be embarassed. At the same time, I understood crystal clear that this body of a five year old boy was mine.

These contradictions felt stupid as if everybody around me only had one face, but I had two! Both of my selves were right and were wrong.

It didn't feel the way one would imagine having two identities. I neither heard voices telling me what to do nor switched between my selves letting only one of them at a time make decisions.

It more felt like having two different sets of habits, experiences and personality traits, each having its own strengths and weaknesses. When I saw something, I got two different impresions about it, when I wanted to make a decision, both my identities interwined, looking at the problem from different angles.

This silly condition reminded me of something important for one of my selves, for Alice. It was the word I liked using in such strange situations. But I couldn't give it a clear definition.

"What," because of this single word my mind got teared up with pain, but I continued anyway, "What does," I paused again, remembering how to spell it properly, "the word 'kerfuffle' mean"?

Harper's face fell. Now he didn't look threatening, the man seemed threatened instead. Was it the word 'kerfuffle' that had such an impact on him? Now I liked it even more!

The torturer was staying in shock, while I was looking around the room. Everything around me was both familiar and unkown. One of my identities, Alice, was questioning everything around her and immediately the answers were popping out in my brain thanks to Zane. To know and not to know something at the same time felt abnormal.

How did I get here? I was kidnapped together with my family. Huh, Alice the Sorceress prefered using the word 'abduct', and Zane Nocturne usually used its synonym, 'kidnap'. By the way, always going into lengthy reflections was Alice's bad habit, not Zane's.

Who is that young boy, whose eyes are closed by a woman standing behind him? Oh, it's Harper's son! Yeah, I remember that his mother was already walking with a big round belly short before the battle in which I died. Poor woman, she married such an asshole.

Then I looked back at my father, who had a paradoxal mixture of worry and relief on his face, and noticed that his hands were embedded into the wall. I knew about this Harper's trick; this way he ensured that his prey won't use magic and tortured it at the same time. Hanging on your hands and legs like that for hours is agonising.

"Son, what are you talking about? How do you feel?" Xavier asked fastly from the left. I didn't answer, looking around the room. My head still felt heavy and foggy, but I was slowly recovering.

"Zane! Say something! Why where you screaming? Are you alright?" my mother said from the corner of the room. She tried to stand up, but doing it with her hands tied up behind her back wasn't an easy task.

Was I screaming? I don't remember that. Could it be the reason why everybody around me was looking at me in shock? I thought that the terribly funny 'kerfuffle' word was the cause.

It was only then that I noticed that Harper recessed my hands into the wall too, even though, unlike my father, I was staying on my feet. Harper did it not to let me use magic too? 

The Alice part of me questioned if my parents already learned me to cast spells.

Almost at the same time Zane's memories answered, that I can already use magic to some extent.

This didn't feel like a dialogue, it was just that one of my sets of memories didn't have some information, and every time a gap was found, the other set filled it.

I was going to start shooting fireballs everywhere soon, and the fact that I had already learned magic would help me explain how was that even possible to my parents. Still, this seemed to be a hard task, as only demigods can use magic without gestures or mantras. My hands were recessed into a wall, so I couldn't conjure spells in a normal way using formulas. I had no other choice but to show one of my demigod abilities, hands-free to my parents.

"How do you know this word, boy?" Harper calmly asked, frowning. He almost got over the shock caused by my words. Really, is the word 'kerfuffle' so terrible it can scare a psychopath-demigod? I remembered that I wanted to use it because I felt that it would fit the situation, but I didn't remember exactly what it means.

Though I liked the impression it made. Everybody around me was confused and tense because of me screaming, using some strange word and then staying quiet, answering neither my parents nor my abductor. A little more weirdness and Harper would reach the peak of confusion, whick would be the perfect time to strike.

I needed to create the best moment to attack by saying nonsense.

"Harper, did you hope that never in your life you will get your ass kicked? Is that the reason why you became such a disgusting ugly psycho? I'm here to break your illusions," I said as fast as I could. The noble serial killer raised an eyebrow. 

"You are a failure of a human, depressed and lonely deep inside, you can only have a long conversation with somebody if you tie them up and don't let them leave you. Your worst torture is making people talk to you," I continued without taking a breath. My parents' faces changed. They were adraid for me now. 

"Your family is the cesspool of degradation where ugliness and malice are inherited like a curse, so you being the useless pile of shit you are shoundn't be surprising. And yet you are a such an abomination that I'm amazed anyway." I was surprised myself by how intricate I was in humiliating this disgusting man. Have I already done it before? Harper was furious, but he was still trying to keep his face mocking and calm.

Lady Gauss opened her son's eyes and closed his ears instead. She smiled a little. Did she enjoy this as much as I did?

Finally, Harper spoke, smiling, "Offending my great family is enough for me to rip your ton..." 

"I didn't finish my speech, so shut up," I said, wiping Harper's smile off his face.

"You think you belong to a great family? What other achievements do you have? Besides constantly cluttering up the space with your meaningless chatter," I said and looked to the left at my father, deciding what was the best way of using my small mana reserves would be. "Is your fragile ego shattering because of the words of a five years old boy?"

My hands were embedded in the same concrete wall as my father's limbs. I guess it's because immersing something into one of the other three walls, which were made of brick, was harder.

I jerked my whole body to the right, making Harper look away from my father. "Madman, you are like a pimple on your ass, you both are equally insignificant and unpleasant," I said and got a stomach punch. Ignoring the pain, I concentrated on my father's walled in limbs.

The concrete around my father's arms and legs turned into dust. Not to let Harper hear my father falling on the floor, I shouted the most confusing thing I could think of, "Harper, I will turn you into a kerfuffle!"

My father stood up. He acted quickly. "Lord Gauss!" the executioner cried out, but Harper didn't turn around. He stared at me, the look in his eyes was furious.

Lady Gauss and her son were standing quiet. Why didn't they warn Harper? Could they want us to break out?

The noble madman furiously grabbed my head and pressed his fingers on my eyes hardly. Now that wasn't funny.

I heard a dull loud punch, the executioner's nasal scream and then a body dropped. 

Harper released my head and looked back, "What's wrong, you bas..." His face changed from furious to shocked, as he saw the executioner lying on the floor, his face bleeding.

"How?" Harper froze.

Looks like I achieved the goal. The serial killer was staring at my father with blank, uncomprehending eyes. He reached the peak of disbelief.

It was time to act.