"Tell me, have you recovered any of your memory?"

"I'm sorry, I haven't. I don't remember who in this world I am. My last memory is that of darkness and some pain. But that is it."

Hopefully, he won't be paying too much attention to my wording.

"Curious." The Prince's eyes lit up as he stared at me, obviously intrigued by my situation. "As I mentioned earlier, we found you by a river when we stopped to water the Muusk."

"Muusk?"

The interest in his eyes grew when he heard the confusion in my voice.

"You don't even remember what Muusk are? Huh, your case of amnesia must be really bad. Muusk are the beasts of burden that pull our carriages. Six legs? Large antlers? No? Hmm, seems like you might need to take a while to relearn even basic things. Oh, thank you, Tia."

The princess carried a tray into the carriage, handing it to her maid who rushed to take it from her. Once it had been set on a small table, she poured out cups, starting with her brother. Handing the second cup to me, she gave me an encouraging smile that caused my mind to go completely blank. After half a second of stunned staring, I felt a small blush rise to my cheeks and I took a big gulp of the tea I was holding.

Ah! Hot, hot, hot! Wow, her smile is dangerous.

After choking on the tea and embarrassing myself completely I finally managed to calm my heart rate down. Taking another sip of tea I put the cup down on the table.

"I'm very sorry to be such a bother to you, I wish there was more I could tell you but every time I try to think about who I am, my head starts hurting. I wanted to ask when you found me, did I have anything on me?"

When I was looking at myself from the small library earlier I realized that the clothes that I was currently wearing were different from the clothes that I had been wearing when I was tossed out of the castle earlier which meant that they had probably changed my clothes at some point. Maybe there was a clue on my body when they found me.

"Oh! You are no trouble at all." Princess Tia was quick to reassure me, gracefully pouring more tea into my cup. Across the table from me, Prince Patel was looking at his empty cup and then at his sister, but her eyes were fixed on me, ignoring him completely.

Coughing, I picked up my cup and took another sip to be polite, nodding my thanks to her as I put it down again. Hardly had my hand left it when she filled it up to the brim again, replacing the tiny taste I had taken, her eyes never leaving my face.

"Ahem." The prince cleared his throat purposefully but his sister was too absorbed and continued to ignore him. With a sigh of defeat, he looked at me and shrugged. "We found a few things on your body, some writing tools, a small strip of cloth with some writing on it, and a short knife. Everything we found on you is in that chest over there. Maybe one of your things will trigger a memory?"

Walking to the side of the room, the captain opened up the chest that the prince had pointed to and brought over its contents, pushing aside the tea tray to make room. I leaned forward, examining the few items that belonged to the previous owner of my body. The first thing that caught my attention was the knife. Shaped like a teardrop, it had one sharp side and one side that was thick and dull. Three different sized holes were punched through the body of the knife and as soon as I saw it, I knew countless ways to control it.

Resisting my body's instinctive desire to pick it up, I moved my attention to the other items. There was a waterproof case that held an assortment of pens and pencils along with an inkstone and a cleaning cloth. The last item was the cloth that the prince spoke of and under everyone's expectant gaze I spread it out on the table, smoothing it down with my hand.

The cloth itself was a thin golden gauze, completely covered in dense black writing. The text was in an unknown script, dense squiggles and dots that swam under my vision. I honestly had no idea what the cloth said, but one set of symbols at the beginning jumped out at me. Unbidden, a word rose in my head, repeating itself over and over until it spilled from my lips.

"Gen."

"Gen?" The prince said, the hard 'g' sounding strange with his accent as he straightened up, putting down his cup that he was trying in vain to get his sister to fill with subtle looks.

"That is my name." I was sure of it, though how I knew that my body had been called Gen I had no idea. Regardless, just like my sudden instinctive knowledge about how to kill everyone in the room in three different ways with the teardrop knife that lay on the table, I knew that my name was now Gen.

"That's an interesting name. Just Gen? Do you have a surname?"

"I... I don't think so." I furrowed my brow, trying hard to dredge up some sort of memory. The fact that I recognized even a single word of the strange script meant that the knowledge I was seeking was in my head somewhere, but I could not, for the life of me, pull it up.

"Gen sounds like a name from the Kingdom of the Crescent Moon." The captain rubbed his chin, intrigued. "I've met some mercenaries from Crescent, and one of them was named Gen. Not sure if that was his first or last name though."

"The Kingdom of the Crescent Moon is pretty far to the north of Leria, isn't it? You can't have floated all the way down from there, could you?" Princess Tia's wide-eyed stare was tough to handle, but I was slowly learning to manage it.

One of the benefits of inhabiting the body of a stone-cold killer I guess.

"I'm sorry, that is all I know. Seeing this cloth brought my name to my mind, but I don't know the meaning of these other symbols."

"Something is better than nothing, Gen." The prince, tired of waiting for his sister to notice his empty cup, finally picked up the pot of tea and filled his cup himself. Setting the pot back down, his normally smiling face turned serious. "Tell me, Gen. Do you have any thoughts about your immediate future? I recognize that this is a bit of an unfair question to ask someone who just woke up with memory loss, but we are about to enter a potentially dangerous situation and I don't want to draw you into our problems."

The prince's question left me at a loss. Truthfully, I had been taking every moment as it came and ignoring everything else as much as possible. This sort of selective attention had allowed me to weather all of the craziness that had happened over the last however long it had actually been. At this point, my sense of time was all sorts of screwed up. Seeing me at a loss, the princess took pity on me and spoke up.

"You can stay with us." Peeking at her brother's face, she braved his furrowed brow and plowed ahead. "Brother, I am still lacking a study aid, why don't we let Gen take that position?"

"Your highness, is that a wise idea?" The captain was still wary of me, and rightly so. I had only just met them and he could probably detect the scent of danger from the way my body moved.

Instead of answering, Prince Patel gave me a long look. Seeing that he was not rejecting her idea outright, Princess Tia carefully filled up his teacup, making puppy eyes at him. With a grimace he looked away, unable to handle his younger sister earnest gaze.

"Sister, we need to find someone who can protect you. With their life if necessary."

"I can do it!"

The words tumbled from my lips before I could stop them. Four pairs of eyes turned to stare at me, shocked by my outburst as I poured all of my concentration into keeping my face as calm as possible.

"Please understand, I currently have nothing else, no other anchor to this world. I know no one else and seem to have forgotten what should be basic knowledge. You saved my life, so the least I can do is try to repay you by keeping you safe. It would be my honor to assist the princess in her studies and do my part in protecting her from harm."

Oh man, that sounds so cheesy. *shudder* Is that appreciation on the captain's face or does he think I'm full of it?

"Please?" Princess Tia added her weight to my request.

"Captain? What are your thoughts? Can you test Gen sufficiently in the next few days?"

The prince's question gave me a new appreciation for his leadership ability. With a simple set of questions, he showed his appreciation for the captain's input while subtly indicating that he had already made a decision on the matter and guiding the conversation to a specific outcome. It was obvious that he was looking for an excuse to reject his sister's request without a fight, and was going to use the captain's evaluation to do it.

"Of course your highness. I'll whip him into shape before we arrive or he'll die trying." The captain's face carried a grim smile as he saluted with his fist over his heart.

"Excellent." Prince Patel looked at Princess Tia with a doting smile and sipped his tea. Placing it down, he looked at me with clear eyes. "Gen, if you can last through Captain Seben's training over the next three days than I'd be more than happy to have you serve as my sister's study aid. We can talk about what that position entails when we get to that point. If you can't last, we'll drop you off in one of the towns near the academy. We are currently headed to Leria Kingdom's Warrior school, Silver Tower Academy. I am currently in my fourth and last year, while Tia is just starting this year. Does this arrangement suit you?"

"Yes, your highness. I look forward to learning from Captain Seben." Placing my closed fist over my heart in the salute I saw the captain perform, I bow my head toward Prince Patel and Princess Tia, determined to stick with them no matter what.

Waking up early had never been my strong suit, but I learned quite quickly that part of entering a different body includes accepting that body's biological clock. Yesterday I learned that muscle memory can be a powerful thing when pushed to the extreme, a lesson I will not forget in a hurry as it almost caused me to kill Princess Tia. This morning, I learned what the sunrise looks like in this new world.

Exactly the same as on earth. How wonderful.

In case you missed the sarcasm there, I was not excited to pop out of bed at four in the morning. How do I know it was four? Again, I was not quite sure. This body seems to be able to tell time precisely, even without a clock. A strange superpower to be sure, but not entirely pointless. The problem came when my mind did not register that I was awake yet, so when I finally did realize I was no longer in my bed, I had already started doing push-ups.

I wanted to stop but the very idea made my body tremble in fear and speed up. Three hundred pushups later, I had switched into doing burpees. And then Turkish get-ups, using a chair in the place of a kettlebell. At some point, I simply stopped trying to control my body and let it go through its morning exercise. All two hours of it. At 5:45 I began to stretch and my body finally relaxed, allowing me to regain some semblance of control.

I walked to the shower area and found a small basin of freshwater. Dipping a towel into it I rubbed the sweat from my body. There was a full-length mirror on the wall and I caught sight of my flawless body as I dried myself off with another towel.

There was a time in my life on earth that I had aspired to muscles, but a few days of trying to exercise had crushed that dream in its infancy. Now, after two exhausting hours, I understood why this body's muscles were perfect. Though I was tall, I was not overly large. Instead, every inch of my body was perfectly sculpted for an optimal blend of strength, speed, and flexibility. Combined with an ice-cold reaction to danger and intensive training, whoever owned this body before I got it must have been an excellent assassin.

Flicking my fingers, the teardrop blade suddenly appeared in my hand. As soon as I had seen it I was certain about the former occupation of this body. The teardrop blade's only purpose was for stealth attacks, and my new natural instinct was to kill with every attack. The sound of a footstep alerted me that someone was at the door and as I turned to look, the blade vanished from my hand.

"Come in." Hearing a soft knock, I unconsciously invited them to come in, turning to the door as it opened.

Princess Tia stepped into the carriage and froze, her face going completely white and then flushing the color of a ripe tomato as her eyes traced every tightly etched muscle on my bare torso. I had completely forgotten that I had been exercising in just my pants and my bare chest was glistening as I toweled off.

"You should put a shirt on. It's not polite for young ladies to see you naked." Despite her shy sounding words, Princess Tia's eyes did not once stop raking over my chest.

Having grown up on earth with an older brother in the military, it honestly had slipped my mind that it might not be appropriate for me to be shirtless. I mean, it was not like I was actually naked. Still, the intensity of Princess Tia's gaze made me suddenly self-conscious so I turned to put on my shirt. As I turned my body I heard a little gasp, but I did not dare to look back.

Once my shirt was on the princess' face slowly returned to its normal color, though the look in her amber eyes never lost its intensity.

"Captain Seben is waiting for you. I wanted to ask what you wanted to eat for breakfast."

---------------------------------------------------------------

**Author's Note**

Hi friends! Have you ever wondered how to set writing goals? In my newest video I talk about the three things that help me set awesome and achievable goals. If you are interested in learning about writing, self-publishing, and traditional publishing, please consider subscribing to my channel, I'm going to be share lots of really helpful information. Check it out! ->