"Hello, Alice," my mirror image repeated while wearing a cheeky smile. "I am glad you are doing well enough, all things considered. We only have a few subjective minutes to talk, so let's go over what we can."

I looked around frantically as the world around us shifted.

"What just happened?" I asked in confusion. "Where am I?"

I was now on a small hill in the middle of nowhere. The sky was a deep shade of violet, and the stars twinkled in the distance. A cold breeze blew through my clothes, and I could hear the distant sounds of waves crashing against the shore.

Did I die? Was I hallucinating?

My doppelganger giggled before flashing me a cheeky smile. Then, she looked back at me, "No, you are not dead, nor are you hallucinating. Well, I suppose this could be considered a hallucination in a sense. Really, we're about to do some literal soul-searching."

She paused and looked away sadly before turning to face me again. I stopped for a second to compose myself, looking around carefully.

"Yeah, umn. I was in the middle of something important before I got pulled in here." I remarked dryly. "Although - I take it time is drastically slowed or frozen like this and I'm still in my original place? And... this is definitely far too lucid to be a hallucination."

Realization suddenly struck me. Wait! Am I speaking to the real Alice, perhaps?

She winced, biting her lips, before speaking, "The answer is yes, with respect to your question about time and location. For your other thoughts unfortunately, it's complicated. I am a simulacrum of your mind and personality at the time the spell was crafted. And you, despite your denial, are the real Alice, and in a sense, so am I. Our soul's outer shell had been fractured, and I was racing against time. It's a far sloppier creation than I would like based on my usual standards. So please forgive any hiccups in the end result. With umn, how you... I, created me. My goodness, this actually is confusing." she spoke slowly.

"I don't understand," I said. "What do you mean? I'm the real Alice? That doesn't make any sense to me. How can I be the real Alice?"

"Yes, you are her," she said insistently. "I am also Alice. I am you — but I am not really you. However, I have access to your skills, sets of selected knowledge, programmed imperatives, treasured memories, and more. Neither of us are really 'Alice' in the full sense, though."

"I'm sorry, I'm not sure I follow," I admitted. "You're me but not really me and we're Alice? What exactly do you mean?"

She sighed, rubbing her head with frustration, "Alright. Let's work through a quick thought experiment. What does it mean to be the 'real' you?

An individual? A human — or rather, 'mankind' to use a broader term in this world? What separates us in your own words? I understand it's complicated, but try to give me an answer without overthinking it."

This was about to get very strange and confusing. "I don't know," I admitted. "I guess I would say I'm me, and I think you're you?"

The simulacrum nodded, "So, how would you define yourself then? Your identity? Is it the physical form you inhabit? Or your memories, or your conscious mind in the moment? If it were just the current body you have, then someone else could be 'you' if they had the same body they could pretend to be you. Do you currently consider yourself an alien consciousness that inhabits that body? How do you determine which parts of you are truly you? Are you the you that exists in the future? In the past?"

I balked at the sudden barrage of hard-hitting existential questions. I was still greatly concerned with what was happening outside this dream space I'd found myself in.

"I don't know," I said. "If I had to be honest, I have no idea how to respond to these types of questions," I admitted. "I suppose you're right by pushing that angle, though. I've never given enough existential thought to what makes me well, me. I guess I'd have to spend some time pondering over it."

"That is perfectly understandable; for it is a question we've struggled with extensively," she replied. "To put my thoughts as simply as I can — the person you are now, is you. You may change with the passage of time. You may grow to be old and wise; or a fool set in her ways. You may become slower, faster, wiser, or more deranged. You might even lose personality quirks and physical traits as you age. But, none of that will ever make 'you' untrue."

She snapped her fingers and summoned a massive bean chair to lie back down on.

"Now imagine that there was a copy of you that was born into this world with a different name. This copy of you was built from the ground up using a different set of genetic material. Yet, an astronomically improbable chance saw to it that they became near identical persons. Their parents weren't yours; their experiences and life lessons were different. They grew up differently and had a completely different life, but she had all of your talents, knowledge, and your exact physical attributes. Now, if you were to meet them and they claimed to be you, would you say that they were a true version of you?"

"Well, obviously not," I answered. "I'd assume the one I met was an impostor — a fake."

"Exactly. That is exactly why we can't call this the real me, nor can I call you the real me entirely. I am an imperfect imitation of the Alice that existed in this world, and you are the core that formed her existence. I am a false identity, a counterfeit of my actual self. I lack the wisdom and the heart of my former self. I can speak like her; I can act like her and I can emulate her, but I can never be her. And so, the best way to describe me is as a fully conscious echo of myself created with lost magic — destined to fade away when my purpose is served. I will feel every second of that existential agony as a sapient construct grafted to our soul. I'd feel every sense of irritation and frustration, watching you fumble with a mana bolt through your eyes. Together, we'd come to approach the original eventually, which was the least terrible of multiple possible terrible decisions you could have made under pressure."

I cringed at her explanation of what she was. That sounded absolutely horrific to me.

"But why would anyone create a thing like that?" I asked. "This seems unnecessarily cruel, and something I wouldn't ever personally do to someone. That stands for both our cases."

"Because we considered it necessary, and it's a sacrifice she — no, I was willing to make and still am. And if you search deeply within yourself, you would do it if desperate enough, Alice. Philosophical considerations aside - the Alice that was is gone. She knew that you would need me sooner or later, and she wanted you to have a key understanding of the situation. About the forces at work — and the eternal cycle of civilization. However, we don't have enough time for that given the circumstances of our conversation."

I stayed silent for a moment before responding. "I'm sorry, but I think you have the wrong person. I wouldn't be nearly brave enough to do that to my own consciousness, push come to shove. This is all a mistake, and I'm not Alice. I can't be the person you want me to be."

The girl sighed, pinching her nose in visible frustration.

"Look. The thing is, you share something much more fundamental with 'Alice' than I could ever hope for even with my imperfect knowledge, memories and consciousness. You share the exact same soul, the exact anchor point where your temperance, thought patterns, and emotions that will form and react to experiences. I am sorry that you were thrust into this, but unfortunately, the only way we could stay alive in a sense and retain our mortal coil was to dig deep and anchor it to you."

I moved over to sit down next to her on the bean chair.

"Okay. You're telling me that I'm the real Alice and that we have the exact same soul," I said. "That comes with its own truckload of questions. Why me? Why did I end up here in this world? What happened? Why did 'Alice' choose to leave us with such a cruel fate? Why does everything in this world feel like it came out of a god-forsaken anime?!"

We both jolted in surprise as the world around us began to twist and swirl. The ground beneath us began to rumble as the snow slowly began to fall.

She palmed her face with both hands and sighed, "I'm afraid it truly is too complex to be explained in such a short amount of time. Let's leave it here to summarize: I am a partial copy of Alice, and you are not wholly her either in a twisted sense. This identity is all we knew as we were raised in this world. But, we meddled with soul magic, and magic that affects the very fabric of reality itself. There is a war for the survival of life and the fate of 'mankind' itself going on. My purpose is to serve as a memory backup to reference, and prepare you so you will be ready. However, circumstances affected my 'birth' in the end. I am now missing massive fragments of what exactly happened, even from my own memory."

"Wait. You lost chunks of your own memory?" I asked. "Hang on. Wait. Aren't... aren't you supposed to be a backup? For Alice's memories?"

"Yes. I was able to save a fraction of the information we accumulated over the span of fifteen years. I have every damned right to be proud of it. We were a walking compendium of general knowledge, not just magic. However, most of my hard information is gone. What happened is that I copied my mind over to a computer hard drive, the upload was cut off by a power surge mid-upload. We have to make the best with what we have, and reform the identity of 'Alice' between the two of us."

I clenched my fists and breathed a deep sigh at that response.

"I'm sorry; but even if that's true — I don't really see myself as Alice," I admitted. "Now you're telling me there is a war for civilization going on and I need to handle it. It's far too much right now, given the fact that you're dropping this on me while we're fighting for our life outside."

She shot me a sharp, angry glare. "That may be true, but don't let that be an excuse for you to avoid thinking about and handling the situation. Neither of us like our current situation, trust me. However, we will certainly have to get a handle on it immediately."

I scowled — "And why are you so confident? I don't even think I'll even survive the next five minutes once I'm out of here."

"Trust in yourself a little more," she insisted dismissively. "Anyway, to get to my original point. You share something much more important than memories with Alice that was — the two of you share a soul. The soul is a vessel of every incarnation of you that is and ever was, as well as base tendencies and temperance that go far beyond genetics. From a certain philosophical point of view, the Alice that was is functionally dead, but you are still Alice. You are still alive, and together, we can carry on her torch."

I shook my head, trying to process what I'd just been told.

"Alight. I think I've got it: My soul. Her soul. Okay, maybe I can accept that we share a single soul. But, what exactly does that even mean? As far as I was concerned, I went to bed one night and... woke up in another world. That's all there was. I have no memories of being Alice whatsoever; so how could she possibly be me? How could I be her?"

My doppelganger sighed wistfully, "The truth is, the 'you' that you accept as 'you' died a long, long time ago. I don't know if it was in a generation or centuries — the inner workings of the universe is strange like that. However, I remember everything you do, given how the spell functions."

She looked up at me sadly, with a tender expression of understanding and empathy.

"I have a full view of your life, and in a sense, I've become an intersection of you and the original Alice. I've learned of your upbringing. Of being raised by a single mother who gave you a difficult but warm life. Of going through middle school where you were bullied for being an straight A student and the library kid in a slum, about how you cried staying in bed for years over your father. I remember your first real crush on your elementary school best friend. I am the summation of all the knowledge and experiences that remain of the previous Alice, and all the 'you' that stands before me now. I am aware of memories and thoughts you don't even consciously draw on yourself. From long-forgotten childhood dreams to the traumatic psychic imprint left behind of your last moments at the hands of your former significant other."

I gasped numbly at those last few words, feeling tears leaking from my eyes. Her words struck me like an arrow through the heart.

"I... this is a lot to process. To be frank, I don't feel like any of that is really still me either. If I had to be perfectly honest, I don't know who I am anymore either. I am neither Alice nor the person I was, in my opinion."

"There will time to mull that later," she said as she shook her head with a fierce expression. "For now, there's the situation you are in right now with the two officers from the cultists with the tattoos of broken swords. You feel the open flow of mana on on your soul now, yes? The indescribable well of energy and mana pouring out that you've been drawing on for the past couple of minutes?"

"Yes. I take it it's your doing? What's causing it?" I asked worriedly. "Is it related to what happened with Alice?"

She shook her head before answering, "I don't remember, to be frank, but I'd imagine that was part of it. It's called a Soul Gate. We used it heavily after discovering a way to tap our inner soul through lost texts. It's a lost art — utilized by magic users from a civilization that predated ours. Spells formed directly in the depths of a soul skip multiple processes of molding mana and the entropic processes it entails. Magic formed with this technique is far more potent than what we can naturally perform without a catalyst and considerably more versatile."

Then, she looked me seriously in the eyes for a long, drawn-out moment before continuing. "It's a useful technique in a pinch, but you must absolutely not draw upon it outside of emergencies. Otherwise, it will erode the outer shell, the core of your being. Both of which will be fatal — or drive you mad over time. In both instances where it occurred, my combat routines were activated when you drew near combatants utilizing soul arts. Tapping the gate we created is also, unfortunately, the only way for me to assist you directly the way I did in Rivershire Crossing as well as in the current battle. You absolutely cannot grow to depend on it; do you understand me?"

I gulped nervously, nodding slowly and only somewhat grasping the implications. I didn't want to think too much about the repercussions or dangers of tapping into my very soul itself and burning it away. I wasn't quite sure how dangerous this was; however, if this was indeed tied to my... well, Alice — purportedly one of my past... future selves dying, I knew I needed to tread carefully around it.

Aside from that, I had other things to worry about, like dealing with the two literal murder clowns and keeping the people around me safe.

"I understand completely," I replied calmly. "I've always been the type to try and do things properly anyway."

"Good," she replied with a smile before she took hold of my hand. "Look, I've been exasperated with you up until this point. Especially when you were wedged between a flimsy imaginary bud. I'll admit that. But, I'll give you all the help I can. I promise."

I flinched in surprise when I felt her lean in to give me a hug. Blinking away my shock, I wrapped my arms around her and returned the hug.

"And... I'm sorry. Sorry for everything that has happened, and has yet to happen."

She pulled back, leaving behind a shimmering trail of tears in the air. Then, she vanished in a blur as she faded from sight like mist dissipating on a lake's surface.

The world began to twist further around me before shattering like glass. I screamed out loud as the background shattered — and I fell to my knees as the worst headache I'd ever experienced tore through my skull.

My surroundings became blacker than it should have been and turned into a void so complete that all meaning and sensation ceased to exist within it. For a brief moment, I thought perhaps that death would come for me in this formless place.

Then, I felt myself falling through nothingness; and though I could not tell if it was seconds or days that passed by between each moment, I heard a voice call out to me.

"Alice!"