The Weight of Legacy

Deciding just how to go about making at least one of her uncles look into the matter of Benedikt was a whole different beast than even gathering up the courage to do so. She’d never been great at pretending to be a real child, with the widow’s early memories having been foggy even prior to the spaceship incident. Arguably, she had to give Adelheid some credit—dragging Franziska around had paid off to an extent. Whenever she found herself doubting how to react to something, she could just stare at the actual child with them and copy her.

I wonder if that’s why she did it. Malwine loved her little sister to bits, but there was no denying Adelheid operated exclusively off vibes, with little to no actual planning involved. She was starting to suspect that might have been due to change anytime now, with how much more assertive the girl was becoming, but only time would tell.

Speaking of Adelheid… It was she who made Malwine rule out the uncle who might have otherwise been the first she’d go to.

“Alaric is busy,” Adelheid told her with the level of confidence she usually reserved for speaking of how much sense ‘hiding’ and ‘unhiding’ actually made. “Very busy.”

Through narrowed eyes, Malwine prodded. “Like, really busy, or do you mean ‘doing something sneaky so I’m telling everyone he’s busy’?”

Her little sister’s pout had her pride swelling up. “Fine, yes. We’re hiding Matilda. Don’t tell anyone. But he is busy making sure no one notices.”

“I won’t. And I understand,” Malwine nodded. Though the concern had been pretty low on the list, it was somewhat of a relief to finally get an idea of just why Matilda might be missing. Considering how much Adelheid talked about the girl looking miserable while studying with Bernie, it’d probably only been a matter of time—good for her.

After her little sister left, though, Malwine couldn’t help but spend a moment groaning to air out her frustration as she ran a hand through her hair. Alaric was unavailable, at least for the time being. That left her with two grown uncles in the estate, and she wasn’t overtly fond of either. She’d barely talked to Kristoffer in the years since her arrival—not to mention, he’d yet to return from whatever he was up to in Beuzaheim.

Probably covering up the rumors he started, she joked to herself.

That unfortunately meant one thing—she’d either have to try and convince Anselm to look into whatever was up with Benedikt, or get Veit involved in yet another aspect of her life. Honestly, she hoped she could avoid the latter. She feared for what might happen to the girl if Adelheid tried to teleport to Benedikt’s location—there was something abnormal about it. Perhaps something that interfered with mana in general.

Malwine didn’t know—that wasn’t a topic she’d looked into, though she wouldn’t be surprised if anti-magic existed to some extent. In Veit’s case, she was worried about what might happen to Benedikt’s location if he visited it. Something told her getting him to conduct this search for her would be the equivalent of trying to solve a needle-in-a-haystack problem by bringing in a lit match.

No, this would likely require… subtlety.

If the young god Veit detected was unable to detect her beyond panel interaction, Anselm shouldn’t notice anything amiss either. The problem might have been that she was still mad at her uncle—he’d given her a gift, then tried to take it away.

Actually, wait a minute.