The Weight of Legacy

For Malwine, the most annoying part was how the argument over Alaric hiding Theo in his room ended without her being able to figure out the specifics of why Kristian and Bernie were pissed. If it was about some kind of security risk because of someone unknown to them being around, she might have cut them some slack, had they expressed as much.

Unfortunately for all involved, even Bernie—for all she liked to wear that mask of poise—seemed utterly incapable of just having a normal conversation that didn’t devolve into shouting when she didn’t get her way. At least this kind of behavior was expected when it came to Kristian.

Man, the bar is so low. The truth was, Malwine had sort of forgotten just how much growing up sucked, when it came to the adults around you. Even she wasn’t immune to that, despite having the widow’s memories. It had been easy, once, to think of Bernie as an eccentric, her obsession with appearances being nothing but a quirk.

By now, it was frustrating to watch. Her guardian might have been a young woman, with children and far more many responsibilities than she should have had at her age—hell, probably too many children too—but even if Malwine wanted to treat those as ameliorating factors, the issue remained that she’d come to notice Bernie was kind of an asshole too.

And that meant something, coming from the one who had once been the widow.

“Are you okay?” Adelheid asked.

Malwine remained leaning on her chair for a moment before straightening—she might have spent longer than intended dramatically rubbing her temples while she thought about all that. “I’m okay, yes.”

Her little sister didn’t appear convinced in the slightest, raising an eyebrow—who taught her that?!—but she didn’t push, instead turning back towards the archway that had been set up for the ceremony. It was similar enough to what Malwine remembered from the widow’s Earth that she found herself wondering just how deep the influence of otherworlders ran, and how the timeline even worked with them coming here.

Then again, if there’s theoretically an infinite number of Earth’s or at least Earth-like worlds… There’s really nothing stopping people from any point in time within their world, showing up at any point in time here. As far as she knew, actual otherworlder summons seemed to be random, and the books she skimmed had mentioned at least one example of someone from what seemed to have been a world in their equivalent of the Stone Age being summoned.

Malwine shook her head—this wasn’t the type of thing she could feasibly figure out on her own. Besides, even if the archway seemed familiar, not unlike a weirdly placed wedding arch, she still had no idea what the window behind it was for, or why it was pressed against that hastily built stone tower.

She brought a panel up to take notes on out of habit—she wasn’t even sure if she’d follow up on that, but if it came to it, [Multitasking] could probably keep up. This would be the first wedding she’d ever witnessed in this life, and she’d need to properly digest whatever happened before she started thinking about how anything she learned might be relevant to the lives of older generations of her family.

Similarities aside, the event had gone oddly silent by the time Lambrecht positioned himself in the center of the archway. His gaze wondered upwards and he even aligned his arm with it a few times, as if wanting to be certain he was really at the center. The strange man had donned a shimmering cape at some point, a deep yellow that was almost indistinguishable from the thin golden chains that crisscrossed over his chest, holding it in place.

“I welcome you, residents and visitors of this quaint settlement I have yet to be given a name for,” Lambrecht started without even looking at the guests, his attention still on the archway. “We are here today, to celebrate the union between two individuals who would seek to start a family together—and I will only warn you once, interruptions will not be tolerated.”

At that, the man finally looked forward, his lips parting into a borderline manic grin. Even Malwine couldn’t decide whether to be very intrigued or slightly concerned—the former reaction was winning out only by the thinnest of margins, really.

With all the earlier discussions, she had practically forgotten the officiant was, at the end of the day, a Tree Veins cultivator with a three digit level she couldn’t make out.

…She almost wished she could see Kristian from where she was seated, if only to find out how many random objects he could manage to break without standing up. No way he’ll actually take that peacefully…

Silence stretched on anyway—Malwine shook her head. It seemed like neither her grandfather nor her guardian would be helping Lambrecht make his dreams of kicking them out become a reality, for better or worse.

“Very well,” Lambrecht shook his head with a sigh—his unsubtle disappointment sure looked like it might mirror her own. Had Malwine been a better person, that might have struck her as concerning instead of just funny. “I commend your wisdom—there are few worse ideas than crossing one of us.”

Again with the veiled threats. That was something she thought she might never get used to, how people in positions of power here seemed to just expect others to understand what they meant when they went out of their way to be that ominous. Then again, something tells me I’m not the target audience of the divorcee cult.

Despite the emphasis, the officiant made no effort to elaborate on his words, taking in a few deep breaths as if he’d just caught a whiff of something that smelled nice. A split second later, he switched gears to appear out of breath with a few gasps. None sounded particularly convincing.

Malwine struggled not to react to his actions in one way or another—of all the reason she could come up with to explain why the theatrics struck her as a bit much, it’d probably be that people at his level weren’t the type to get winded. Devils, Veit had even told her at one point that his favorite thing to do when going places was just holding his breath for hours at a time, purely because he could.

I wonder how many Tree Veins I’d have to meet to have a statistically sound basis to say they’re all drama queens. And Abelard counts.

Certainly, in Veit’s case, he had gone on to say he could appreciate how doing it often worked wonders to prepare him for the case in which he truly needed that capability, but she’d stopped actively listening around the ‘for the lols’ part of his original reasoning. If she didn’t know any better, she might have suspected her mentor was actively afraid of something, and the possibility that came to the front of her mind as for what he feared simply didn’t make sense.

While Malwine once again allowed her thoughts to wander in every conceivable direction, Lambrecht resumed his speech, having presumably decided he’d let his second dramatic pause stretch on for too long.

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“It is one of the most serious decisions a person can make, you know—starting a family, be it alone or with somebody else. We unfortunately live in a time where that tiny detail is not as appreciated as it should be,” the officiant noted, waving his index finger around the air as his gaze went over the crowd. He made eye contact with many an uncomfortable guest as he continued speaking, a seemingly genuine smile overtaking the seriousness of his expression. “That’s not to say any one reason or another for doing so is more or less valid than any other—you can marry for convenience, you can marry for love. We’re all adults here and choose what to do with our lives. My people’s goal is not to end that—we believe in ensuring everyone knows what they are doing, and for how long they’re willing to do it. I cannot express enough, how glad I am to once again be invited into Grēdôcava for rites.”

…Are you implying no one was inviting you for a time? The way in which he said that concerned Malwine more than a little bit, even if she had by now grown to accept the fact that this envoy of the divorcee cult was beyond her understanding. The man was probably playing it up, as well.

It was around then that she started to figure she should probably shut up already, even if she hadn’t actually voiced any of her more judgmental thoughts. If she kept this up, she’d be likelier than not to miss something important because she was too busy getting sidetracked by a mental tangent.

That said, it was easier said than done—the way Lambrecht seemed to love talking around the point would probably have made the widow blush, from what Malwine remembered of her past self. Reconciling her wish for understanding this aspect of this place’s culture with how thoroughly disillusioned she was starting to feel was… complicated, to say the least. She wasn’t sure if she should have expected better from the divorcee cult—or if she should have expected precisely this.

Lambrecht really liked to talk, it seemed. The realization that she might not have actually been the problem for once had Malwine reeling—all she’d achieved by making an effort to keep herself from getting constantly sidetracked was clearing up the fact that the officiant was simply going on and on about just stuff. His words might have been related to marital topics, certainly, but none of them seemed to be the prelude to the actual wedding starting.

“Now, in case you’ve ever wondered, while it is true that marriage contracts can be defined in terms of decades, the preferred option tends to be fractions of a century. Why? I know not, for this is the type of trend that’s carried over from time immemorial. But I would guess it has something to do with how nice and round the concept of a century is. The entire lifetime of a mortal’s base [Integrity], actually. If there’s symbolism behind it, I would dare guess it’s related to that.”

What does that have to do with— actually, I take that back. Elaborate.

The officiant did no such thing, but the comment did remind her of how she had, admittedly, not put that much effort into researching just how the natural decay of [Integrity] worked. Her Acclimations were offsetting that to such an extent that she kind of forgot about it, but for all she knew, she could have been missing something that could prove critical in the long term.

“And so, fifty! It carries the gravitas of a century without actually being one. When you hear ‘half a century’, your mind is forced to consider the concept of a century first, before halving it, and even once you’ve made out the full meaning—even if it’s all within a split second—you instinctively appreciate how meaningful the commitment is. Half a century could amount to most of a mortal’s remaining lifespan by the time they are old enough to wed, and even we cultivators would not make a commitment that long lightly. …I’ll admit, ‘a quarter of a century’ is a popular option as well. It being ‘a quarter’ gravely diminishes the impact of saying that, though. Besides, I would argue this option is terrible for people who intend to have children—depending on how often you have them, your marriage would be up for renewal before you’ve even had the time to raise even just one or two into adulthood.”

Every guest Malwine managed to catch a glimpse of seemed to be growing increasingly confused.

“I emphasize, it’s incredibly rare for anyone to call upon us, with how you younglings forget the wisdom of yore, especially when it comes to having your marriages be successful.”

Didn’t you say that already?

As her trusty pebble informed her it had been well over fifteen minutes, Malwine started to wonder if Thekla and Abelard were just delayed for some reason. That sort of explanation would have been much, much more acceptable than Lambrecht just suddenly deciding to improvise before his audience.

This man couldn’t possibly mean to ramble about his thoughts on the institution of marriage just because he felt like it. Her first impression of him had been that he seemed reasonable.

…At least, mostly reasonable!

Before Malwine could spiral yet again, Lambrecht froze. He turned and straightened, dropping whatever he had been saying and bowing. “The bride shall soon be with us, so I shan’t take up any more of your time—we are here for one reason, after all.”

The officiant chuckled, his stance shifting yet again as he posed like a proper priest under the wedding arch, waiting for the moment in which he was to act again. It was almost jarring—the man didn’t even seem intent on acknowledging for how long he had been talking, or even finishing his speech.

Not that Malwine minded that much—she honestly hadn’t even caught the tail end of it.

If anyone asked Thekla how the day had been going for her, she would undoubtedly have to try her best to keep her lips sealed, lest the truth about her feelings spill out.

Wave take me, this is hilarious.

She could not have asked for a better wedding gift than that which her little sister had inadvertedly brought her, honestly—watching her father utterly lose his mind over the girl’s innocent comment had singlehandedly suppressed every shred of nervousness that had remained on the surface of her mind.

Granted, she had already probably wasted enough time for the sake of not missing this, and keeping both the foreign officiant and her lover waiting was likely rude in more than one way. She doubted this Lambrecht person would up and leave, but she also lost nothing by putting some effort into cooperating.

Well, minimally cooperating. She had still seen no reason to rush too much. As much as she had done what she could to make this event her own, a tiny part of her might still have resented Kristian for pushing this. Thekla still didn’t see marriage as something special—for all she would avoid saying that aloud in front of the officiant—and her father’s insistence on it almost made her hate it by default, at least at first.

Her acceptance stemmed mostly from how many opportunities to mess with people had been basically handed to her on a silver platter, and truly, she hadn’t had this much fun in what felt like forever. She hadn’t even realized she’d always been bogged down by this or that until this very day. And I finally pulled it off.

While she had mostly wanted to traumatize either Bernadette or Otto—and she genuinely wouldn’t have cared which—Thekla would have been lying if she denied being proud of herself. That stunt had been the closest she had ever gotten to doing something magical, and her internal child was cheering her on. Even if she’d done it through some… creative interpretation of how her Skills were supposed to work—not through actual magic—the details didn’t matter as much as the outcome did.

And things had just gotten better since then, really. Perfect, perfect day.

The only thing that really stopped her from walking up to whoever that boy was and asking for his intentions like an overprotective big sister was the fact that her father would probably think she was entirely serious. Eh, she would properly handle the boy later, especially if there was anything actually going on—she doubted little Adelheid had the faintest idea as to the implications of what she’d said. That was what made it so Devilsdamned funny.

Now, though, Thekla steeled herself. Seeing as her intentional delays hadn’t made the guests start complaining as she hoped, she figured the venture would remain fruitless. The time had come for her to walk down the aisle—if alone for her lack of a mother by her side—and claim the false home behind the arch alongside Abelard. Silly as it was, she found she was actually looking forward to it. At least making memories like this would be enjoyable, even if she still harbored some resentment here and there. Her love for Abelard was enough for her to mostly ignore all that.

Still, she wouldn’t mind if anyone took the initiative and poured a bit more fuel into the fire. Devils knew the day had yet to reach its full potential.