The Miscast Spell

Kyle slowly roused from his slumber, feeling far less aches than he’d grown accustomed to. He saw the familiar glow of a staff over his bare chest…

“…Kari?”

The familiar smile of the elvish princess beamed from above him. “Sir Kyle. It is not merely an honor to see you again, but a privilege.”

“What’re you doing here?I thought you and the Prince…” He started getting up, but Kari to put her staff on his chest to keep him down.

“Prince Demerius broke his word with you, so as far as I am concerned, I am no longer required to offer him my hand in marriage,” explained Kari.

Kyle grunted. “He confessed that to you?”

“It was not a confession, Sir Kyle. He was boasting.”

He looked around, confused. “I see my shirt’s gone missing again. Hold on, where are my pants?” All that preserved his modesty was a pair of anachronistic boxers with hearts on them.

To Kyle’s right, a pair of trousers were thrown into the air by a woman he’d never seen before. From the rainbow hair peeking out from the traditional witch’s hat to the medieval plague doctor’s mask, Kyle was certain he’d have remembered meeting this woman before.

“Who’s that?”

The rainbow-haired woman doffed off her hat and curtseyed. “Hi there! I’m Meredith Stormsborough. One of the witches of all time.”

Kyle blinked. “Don't you mean ‘one of the greatest of all time’?”

Meredith sniggered. “He said it, so it must be true! Anyway, you’ve already met some of my handwork.”

Kyle was about to ask what she meant by that before Abagail and Fiona got to the cottage door, struggling to get past each other. The kerfuffle continued until they both realized that Kari and Meredith had gotten there some time earlier.

“When did his pants come off?” asked Abagail. She tilted her head trying to get a better look, unintentionally shaking Blooby loose from its perch on her head.

Kyle snapped his fingers. “Thank you! That’s what I was asking.”

Fiona was too busy drooling to say anything intelligible.

“Right.” Meredith jumped onto the bed, planting herself on Kyle’s chest. Thankfully, the fight hadn’t broken any of his ribs. “Lemme see here,” she murmured, breaking out her wand.

Kyle was making an effort not to look down Meredith’s robe, since she didn’t appear to be wearing anything beneath it.

Meredith picked up the amulet hanging from his neck, tapping it with the wand. “Hm-hm…. Interesting. The problem with amulets of wisdom is you can’t learn about something you don’t understand, but if you understand it you’re not always well-positioned to take advantage of its power.” She moved some of Kyle’s hair out of the way to get a better look at his eyes. “I see…. I see…”

Abagail knew where this was going and she didn’t like it. “Just break it down without doing anything else.”

“Don’t push me!” Meredith chided. “Now, you're Kyle Wheatsman, right? I want to ask you some questions, if it’s alright with you.”

“I don’t think I’m in a position to refuse,” he strained, feeling her full weight on his chest.

“Perfect~” A notepad, quill, and pot of ink appeared from thin air, with the quill inking itself and starting to write. “I’m going to ask you a series of questions. I need you to answer honestly or I bring out the shocks.”

“Shocks?”

Meredith poked him in the chest with her wand, electrocuting him. “Shocks.”

“Ok. Ok. Don’t do that again.”

“….Mmmmm. Maybe. No promises.” Meredith smiled. “Are you aware that on your eighteenth birthday, Abagail accidentally cast the Isekai Ritual on you?”

Kyle shot up, though still pinned to the bed by Meredith’s body. “You named a magic spell after the entire genre?!”

“Taking that as a yes.” The magic quill scribbled on the notepad.

The other women in the room were stunned. Yes, Kyle had said some strange things. Extremely strange things. But Abagail had internalized it as potential madness from being touched by the divine, and Kari had assumed peasants were… built differently – and that Kyle was done incorrectly.

But Fiona had been fearing this ever since learning about the ritual.

“What was the last thing that went through your mind when the ritual finished?

Kyle shrugged. “A crystal ball.”

“Did you see anything unusual?” asked Meredith.

“The last moments of my previous life,” Kyle said. “And then I was in a white void.”

The quill continued to write on the notepad. “Normal behavior so far. Did you meet anyone claiming to be a deity, and if you did, which one?”

“Metis,” Kyle recalled, while Meredith checked what the notepad was taking. “She said I was to get my old memories back on my eighteenth birthday.”

More scribbling. “Metis makes sense if you have the amulet of wisdom. She’s one of the older gods. Someone favored by her needs the cleverness, cunning, and wisdom to unlock new potential…” The quill tapped the notepad. “Your eighteenth birthday, your past life. What happened?”

Office Kyle popped up, and when he spoke both his lips and Real Kyle’s spoke the same words with one voice. “I went to school and played laser tag with my friends. We had some cheap pizza, played laser tag…. I bought a twenty-dollar scratcher, won forty dollars, and spent the next twenty minutes breaking even with more scratchers until I lost it all.”

Meredith turned to the other women. “Can any of you verify his memories from this life?”

Kari and Abagail both looked to Fiona, who looked at the ground. Taking a step forward, she then kneeled so she could be at head-level to Kyle. “Your ninth birthday.”

Peasant Kyle popped up, and much like what happened with Office Kyle, both Peasant Kyle and Real Kyle spoke as one. “The adults gave me a toy sword. I played outside with the other kids. I pretended I was a knight and rode on someone’s shoulders.”

Peasant Kyle’s eyes went wide as he spoke alone. “I grabbed someone’s horn to pretend they were a horse’s reins.”

Real Kyle’s head whipped around to where Peasant Kyle was, and what looked to everyone else like he was talking to someone imaginary. “Really? THAT was when we grabbed Fiona’s horn?!”

Everyone heard that outburst, including Fiona who was beaming and nearly to the point of tears. “It is him. He’s in there!”

“That’s new.” Meredith let the quill refill on ink before continuing. “Suddenly, what happened to Demerius makes a whole lot more sense.”

“…Go on,” said Real Kyle.

“Normally, the ritual brings in a soul from somewhere else to anchor a dead or dying person's soul back into place. The two souls work in tandem, with the new soul in command. Shared memories, maybe a personality change, but other than that no change,” she elaborated.

“But neither you nor Demerius were dead or dying. Demerius took a hoof to the head; he’d have been dying eventually and then I could have done it without side effects. But his family insisted I do it on the spot, within an hour of getting hit. Because he wasn’t out long enough, the ritual couldn’t establish the anchor for the original Demerius’s soul. The new soul picked up the slack and took over completely. No wonder he never remembered anything! There were no memories for him to call on!”

Kari blinked. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“The original Prince Demerius,” Meredith continued, “is gone. The new one is all that remains. But Kyle! Abagail’s ritual should never have worked, but it did! Because he was totally fine, there was never a need to anchor a soul to his body, but Metis still shoved the second soul in there. Which means instead of the souls working in tandem with the new one in charge, the two are forced to share and interact. And that interaction synthesizes into… well, a combination.”

Real Kyle looked to Office Kyle and Peasant Kyle, bewildered. “You guys getting any of this?”

“Not a clue.” “That’s a lot of big words she’s saying.”

“They’re both in control,” Meredith stressed. “It’ll be fascinating to test him out, see if there are any additional physical or mental long -term effects.” She started trying to take off her robes, revealing some toned legs.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Real Kyle threw up his hands. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“A full physical. In-depth.” She handed Kyle a large glass jar. “I’m going to need you to fill this.”

The jar was about the size of Kyle’s head. “WITH WHAT?!”

The next moments were filled with Meredith being tackled off the bed by three grown women, none of whom were willing to sign anything close to a consent form for this.