Free Web Novel"Listen to your plan?" Matt repeated.
"Yes, hear me out."
"No, seriously." Matt raised his gaze, smiling without humor. "Since when does a parasite give me orders?"
The voice sighed.
"Please, Matt. Don't call me a parasite."
Matt blinked. Then his expression went flat.
"Alright."
"Really?" the voice asked, surprised.
"Yes." Matt raised a finger. "I'll stop when you get out of my head and stop saying stupid things."
The voice was quiet for two seconds. Then it spoke with a much more irritated tone.
"I give up…"
Matt raised an eyebrow.
"Already?"
"You are driving me absolutely insane…"
Matt smiled just slightly.
"Well. I didn't expect the parasite to not be able to stand being called a parasite."
"I told you not to call me that!"
The voice sounded so annoyed that Matt could almost picture it clenching its fists, and that made him smile a little more.
"Then stop acting like one."
"Just listen to my idea and stop being sarcastic for five minutes!"
The voice took a slow breath.
"I'm tired too, you know."
Matt frowned.
"Tired?"
"Yes."
"Of what?"
"Of watching you trapped in the same four walls fighting every single day without stopping!"
Matt looked around.
The cold forges.
The bed.
The neatly arranged tools.
The fountain.
The rest room felt calm.
Too calm.
But outside that room was everything else he hated.
Matt clicked his tongue.
"But you said earlier it was entertaining."
"The first 500 times it was. When you see it every day it's not the same."
"You complimented me on it before."
"Because the way you fight is still incredible, but I want to do other things…"
"You're being dramatic."
"Matt."
"What?"
The voice paused. Then it spoke with a clarity that made Matt go completely still.
"I want to see the outside world too."
Matt didn't respond.
The voice continued:
"But not through your eyes."
The air seemed to grow heavier.
Matt felt something tighten in his chest.
The voice kept speaking, more firmly.
"I want to see it while being separated from you."
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Matt slowly raised his gaze.
"What?"
"I want you to use the same kind of spell you used with Iris."
Matt didn't move.
Didn't breathe.
For a moment, his mind went blank.
Then the sentence repeated itself inside his head.
The same spell you used with Iris.
Separation.
A body of her own.
An existence of her own.
Matt gripped the bow-spear harder.
"You… want to separate?"
"Yes."
Matt stayed quiet.
The voice spoke carefully.
"Does that surprise you that much?"
Matt let out a low laugh.
But this time it didn't sound mocking.
It sounded confused.
"Yes."
The voice didn't respond.
Matt looked down at the red core of the weapon and his memories began to stir.
He didn't want to remember.
But he did.
Iris.
Not the current Iris, walking around with the face of a lazy princess, kicking off her shoes in a car and sleeping like the world existed just to carry her.
No.
The other Iris.
The one who had lived inside his head.
The one who spoke in that sharp tone.
The one who complained when he thought too much.
The one who said things like:
"Handle it yourself."
"Think of something."
"That sounds annoying."
"Wake me when it's over."
Matt gritted his teeth.
Iris had been unbearable.
Biting.
Lazy.
Selfish.
Self-absorbed.
And, in some horrible way, similar to him at certain moments.
That had been the worst part.
But when Matt found a way to separate them…
Iris hadn't accepted it.
Not even slightly.
Matt remembered sitting for hours in front of old books in a castle library, reading spells, soul theory, separation rituals, and structures for artificial bodies.
And then…
Darkness.
A tug in his mind.
Iris taking control of the body, closing the book and throwing it away.
Or worse.
Burning pages.
"This isn't necessary," Iris had said.
Matt remembered having fought against her inside his own head many times over that — wrestling back control of the body, since Iris interrupted every research attempt like a spoiled child hiding the keys to a door she didn't want anyone to open.
And now…
Now this voice, with an origin similar to Iris's, was telling him it wanted exactly that.
To separate.
To have its own body.
To see the outside world on its own.
Matt stayed silent.
"Damn it."
"What's wrong?"
Matt slowly raised his gaze.
"Iris."
The voice went quiet and Matt let out a dry laugh.
"Of course."
"What?"
"It's starting to make more and more sense why she came looking for me so calmly."
The voice didn't respond and Matt gritted his teeth.
"That lazy idiot wasn't that relaxed just because of the queen."
Matt began to walk slowly around the room.
"She genuinely wanted to fuse with me again."
The silence grew heavier.
Matt remembered Iris inside his head.
Her sharp tone.
Her laziness.
Her habit of telling him to think or solve the castle's problems.
He trained.
He fought.
He read reports.
He found solutions to the castle's problems.
And she…
She showed up and took control when she wanted to eat, sleep, attend social events, or play the role of princess.
Even though Matt could fight to take back control, there were many times he simply couldn't win against her.
That was why it took him so long to find a spell capable of separating them.
Matt let out a humorless laugh.
"Damn parasite."
The voice spoke carefully.
"Matt…"
"No."
Matt cut her off.
"The queen wanted to put me back in that routine, didn't she?"
His voice grew colder.
"Fuse me with Iris so she could use my head as an office and my body as a vehicle to do the heavy lifting while she went off to live the good life."
The voice said nothing.
"But now you show up saying you want to separate."
Matt stopped.
His expression hardened.
"How convenient."
"Convenient?"
"Yes."
Matt raised the bow-spear slightly.
"Iris was too obvious. She refused the separation and made me distrust her even more."
The voice stayed quiet.
Matt narrowed his eyes.
"But you're saying the exact opposite."
"Because it's true."
"Or because you learned from her mistakes."
The voice didn't respond right away.
Matt smiled just barely.
"You want me to think you're different. To trust you. To believe you don't want to leech off me."
There was a brief silence.
Then the voice started laughing.
Matt frowned.
It wasn't a cruel laugh.
Not mocking either.
It sounded more surprised.
And a little amused.
"What's so funny?"
"You're being overdramatic."
Matt gritted his teeth.
"Thank you."
"But I'll admit it's good to see your rational side hasn't disappeared entirely."
Matt looked up at the ceiling with exhaustion.
"Stop digging through my thoughts. It's unpleasant."
"I can't help it."
"Of course you can."
"No, I really can't."
"Try."
"I'm inside your mind, Matt."
"That's the main problem."
The voice sighed.
"I hear and see a lot of what you do. Not always clearly, but it's unavoidable."
Matt frowned.
"Iris said that when she was asleep she couldn't hear anything."
"That's a half-truth."
Matt went still.
"Explain."
"When you sleep with background noise, you still hear it."
Matt didn't answer.
"Voices in another room. Rain against a window. Low music. Footsteps. It's all still there, but your mind doesn't pay conscious attention to it."
Matt pressed his lips together.
"With Iris it was probably similar. She didn't disappear entirely. She just stopped focusing. Her consciousness sank into a different layer."
Matt remembered too many things.
Far too many.
Iris waking up just as he was trying to research something important.
Iris commenting on things she supposedly hadn't heard.
Iris mocking thoughts he didn't remember saying out loud.
Matt felt his eyebrow twitch.
"That little—"
"See?"
"Don't say it like you're being helpful."
"I am being helpful."
"You're being annoying."
"That hurts."
Matt let out a long sigh and walked to the bed. freёwebnovel.com
He sat on the edge and the wood creaked slightly under his weight. The bow-spear rested across his legs.
Matt looked at it for a few seconds.
Then closed his eyes.
He was hungry.
He was tired.
He was worn out.
His body had recovered thanks to the fountain, but that didn't fix everything.
It didn't fix his head.
It didn't fix the castle.
It didn't fix the queen.
It didn't fix Iris.
And above all, it didn't fix the possibility of that lazy idiot trying to crawl back into his body and use it like a comfortable chair.
Matt tightened his fingers around the weapon.
"Fine."
The voice went quiet.
Matt opened his eyes.
"I'll listen to you." freёweɓnovel.com
"Really?"
"But be quick about it."
