The Weight of Legacy

Knowing when something had gone wrong wasn’t always enough to understand why it had gone wrong.

Adelheid was still off doing whatever it was she did these days—presumably, she was up to the usual toddler misadventures with some teleportation thrown in. Malwine was alone in their room, for now, and she couldn’t be gladder.

After all, this gave her the freedom to pace around the room for nearly an hour without being forced to answer any questions.

As much as she wanted to believe [The Way of the Clave] had come in clutch for her, the fact remained that, during the trial, she’d been riffing hard. Malwine didn’t often find herself having to respond to a situation she knew nothing about—for fuck’s sake, the most prominent example in her recent memory was how the widow had made Margaret Smith talk around in circles on the day of her death.

She puts me to shame, Malwine sighed before flinching. My past self puts me to shame.

While she saw no issue in referring to the widow as, well, the widow—for her past life’s name remained lost to her—there was simply something wrong about the idea of treating the widow as a person different than herself in truth.

Even if she had been having her doubts as of late.

Bernie trial, Bernie trial…

Malwine pushed her thoughts back into the right track, focusing on the matter at hand. Certainly, the trial hadn’t been going well, but none of the reactions she’d gotten out of the stranger seemed the type to evoke disaster. Her portrayal of Bernadette wouldn’t have held up to scrutiny, yet she’d managed to avoid setting off any alarms, as far as she could tell.

While she was quite familiar with her guardian, impersonating her well was a different matter entirely. Bernie had this practiced, almost exaggerated poise that she wouldn’t have trusted her acting capabilities to mimic, and probably a lot of noble social training Malwine wouldn’t even know the start of.

On one hand, this helped to ease her concerns about whether her act was good enough—it didn’t need to be perfect. Malwine could have guessed that from how poorly she must have played the role of a young Kristian the first time she attempted a trial, but it hadn’t felt this clear until now.

No, the trial for Bernie had ended when she moved away from that room. Had it been meant for a specific setting? Was that it?

That was among the first possibilities that came to mind, and the one Malwine found the likeliest, for it simply made sense.

[Imitation Beyond Filiality]’s very description had warned her that the trials required would vary by target, and she’d been interpreting that as a reference to how they would, naturally, follow a different series of events from her target’s life.

But that hadn’t been what happened with her trial for Katrina, had it been? No, for all she’d spent the aftermath of that trial complaining about {Legacy} clearly acting on its own, that trial had not been in line with her expectations in the first place. It hadn’t even been confined to a single scene.

Malwine felt she could go on blaming such inconsistencies on her Affinity, yet it stood to reason that the easiest solution could also be the correct one—[Imitation Beyond Filiality] claimed its trials could vary, and so they did.

While {Legacy}’s influence was undeniable, she suspected expecting trials to follow a formula would just be a hindrance. They clearly each had their own requirements, be it for how they played out or for their success, and she was going to have to keep that in mind.

In her most recent trial, her mistake had been asking to be led to her chambers. In changing the setting, she must have somehow made it impossible for the trial to continue, therefore earning herself yet another ‘fail’.

Unless it was because I didn’t drink the tea? The intrusive thought hit her like a truck. Malwine had all but forgotten about the tray once the old woman had started basically dropping bombshells on her. If it was the tea, I swear…

Bernie having been engaged to one of her uncles was something she hadn’t quite expected—Kristian marrying a random 22-year-old made perfect sense, but him marrying one of his kids’ betrothed?

There was no going around it. Who the fuck does something like that?

Still, the pieces clicked within her mind. Bernie and Anselm were around the same age, and they’d clearly been close at one point.

Malwine couldn’t decide whether she didn’t want to know how Bernie’s marriage affected the father-son relationship there, or if she would very much want to find out, preferably while procuring a nice bag of popcorn.

Can harvestables be revealed into items from other worlds? Malwine found herself hoping they did—she certainly wouldn’t pass on the chance to get herself a non-perishable bag of popped corn that she could keep around, waiting for a fitting moment. She eyed her Luck as well as her Affinities, still unsure as to which was the most responsible for her harvestable reveals so far. Wink, wink.

With that near-daily ritual of attempting to influence her panels through pointed glances done, she got the rest of her questions sorted.

Who was that woman? Was she close to Bernie? It would have been awfully convenient timing for it to be Hildegard—and on brand for the system, to boot—but this wasn’t the type of thing she could guess without actually seeing the woman in the real world. As for Lord Bernard and Old Martin…

Yeah, no clue.

Then there was the matter of Katrina. From her trial for the woman herself, Malwine knew this Metalbreaker title must have come from her grandmother’s Class, and despite how she had most people convinced she was mortal, even retainers of Bernie’s house called her that.

Sometimes I feel like Katrina was trying to play 4D chess with the world itself… Malwine exhaled slowly—while she could guess why her grandmother tried to maintain secrecy, given how she hadn’t even planted a {Foresight} Root, it was still quite annoying to be on the receiving end of it. Hell, I don’t think even Mom’s siblings know about her.

However she managed to get found out by the definitely-elves, it must have been quite the tale, and Malwine fully intended to ask about it when she resurrected Katrina.

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Assuming she managed that at all.

Failing the trial for Bernie—probably directly because of her choices as opposed to any of the reactions she garnered within it—had left a bitter taste in her mouth.

Despite herself, Malwine found herself wanting to start another trial. It wasn’t as though anything was stopping her, and {Legacy} hadn’t acted up this time. That willful prick of an Affinity probably saved its aid for special occasions.

And with that out of the way, Malwine had no true excuse to continue refusing to use the Trait.

But if she did this, which trial was she supposed to go for? A new one, or a repeat of any of the old ones?

An older one sounded easier—she’d know what to expect, and could spend more time trying to grasp what it might want of her instead of taking in the setting for the first time. Considering her foul mood after practicing with [The Way of the Clave] and failing the Bernie trial, she had no desire to listen to Teach go on about seafarers and how she should never plant {Foresight}.

Malwine brought up the panel containing her notes from her trial for Kristian, the one which—most of all—felt like it had happened a lifetime ago.