The Weight of Legacy

Of all events she had attended—which was to say, very few—Munnehilde would rate this wedding near the very bottom. Her understanding of how mortal humans judged outings was already limited to begin with, but she was quite certain this type of event was not supposed to end with angry people getting into physical altercations. Granted, as far as she could tell, the bride and groom of this event were not responsible for what had happened.

From the glimpses she’d caught off the man who thought of himself as Baldur, he was delusional. He was certainly a devious individual and underestimating his strength could prove dangerous, but he was still delusional.

Munnehilde almost wished she had gone and knocked him unconscious while she had the chance—her odds against him in a confrontation were not high enough for her to feel comfortable with the idea of facing him. That said, this had been the first event she had attended not to further her own purposes or because it was fitting of whichever role she meant to play, but because someone had invited her—invited Otto, certainly, but that was basically the same thing, both inside and outside the Peregrine Wheels.

Her thoughts wandered to what she had been doing just before the event fell apart—she had been talking to a fellow guest about her attire, and unlike most others, she could tell the curiosity there had been earnest. Had there been some judgment to the woman’s thoughts? Certainly, but not enough for it to be a strike against her… especially after she had started thinking about how Munnehilde must have been confused. Not foolish, not wrong, just confused.

Between that simple kindness and the fact that Thekla Rīsanin had politely invited her to this wedding, Munnehilde found herself wishing for nothing more than to settle the score with this mayor Baldur, just as the man himself had claimed he had wanted to settle a score with her political sister’s groom. It was a nice phrase and she would be stealing it for her own vernacular.

She had gone as far as to retrieve the object this Baldur had filled with seawater. At first, she had been baffled at the sight of him just dumping the contents on the ground after clearly having gone through so much effort to gather this in the first place, but further analyzing the situation led her to suspect he simply had not noticed how that small child snuck by under his line of sight and picked the fallen mortal’s obit up before he could act.

The sight of an obit left her conflicted—it was blatantly unfair, that death could be so cheap. Despite that, she had long since come to terms with the way the world worked, and from her understanding of mortal society, what this Baldur had tried to do probably constituted some sort of crime. She would have to revise her sources on the matter later, but she was confident in that tentative conclusion.

Crouching by the cave wall, Munnehilde positioned the ornate container, shifting its handle to the side to ensure water would enter it smoothly. It was tricky business, coaxing even a trickle out of the waves, but if that man could do it, surely, she would have a much easier time with it.

As a matter of principle, she announced herself. “Deity that is not, I would have some of your waters,” Munnehilde intoned one of the traditional requests she had read of but never actually seen anyone use. It was most likely a perfectly functional chant. “I would thank you for your kindness in providing that which you may give.”

Seeing as the material she read had not specified whether there was to be a waiting period between the words and proceeding, Munnehilde only waited for half a minute before reaching out to the world itself.

When one could never tap into Circulation’s values to increase their [Toll] capacity, it was inevitable that alternate methods would be devised. As far as she knew, her preferred method of using magic was not popular even among those who had to work around the same limitation, but a supposed lack of fine control mattered little when you could simply hold all mana in place.

Slowly, she wrapped her own finite power around a drop of water that rested on the ground, coaxing it as one might coax blood from a stone, with gentle rubs and the occasional breaking of a law of reality. A trickle of seawater broke free from the waves directly above it, splashing down into the container.

With that out of the way, there was only one more thing left for Munnehilde to do—find that man and pour this over his head.

That was the only appropriate counter for what he had done, after all. Humans were all about proselytizing on and on about measured responses, so they might even approve of just how she meant to make him pay for his actions… if they ever found out, anyway.

She might not yet have met Otto’s sister beyond acquaintanceship, and she doubted the intricacies of political relations—in-laws, as Otto had tried and failed to correct her about—could be ironed out in a single evening, but she had found her political sister pleasant enough.

The short of it was that this mayor Baldur had interfered with family, and regardless of what he did or where he went, Munnehilde would ensure he learned forgiveness was a concept limited to the realms of fantasy when it came to one such as her.

Niemat Khödan had not felt this justified in choosing the path of cowardice since his childhood. Were he not capable of holding himself aloft, the mangrove he was using as cover might have bent under the weight of him already. Still, he dared not move any further, even if the hiding spot he had chosen almost reflexively was far, far from optimal.

It had happened shortly after he finished escorting a batch of guests to the property—he could only hope those had been the final set, for if any came after them, they would undoubtedly be lost in the mangal by now. Perhaps, even the lost would be better off than actually having interacted with him, though, as Veit doubted he could have gotten them out of the area swiftly enough.

The sibyl that lurked the area, seemingly emerging and leaving by nothing but whims, had not taken the appearance of hundreds of people lightly. How a being that technically lacked a mind of its own managed to so accurately portray annoyance was beyond him, though it did serve as a reminder of just how wrong these creatures were. The sea did not need reasons to lash out, and each sibyl was but an extension of that. Something devoid of feeling and logic alike.

“Too many,” the hissing sibyl at against the bark of a mangrove, tearing through it as if it were thinner than paper. “Too many!”

Veit had only ever encountered it alone, for a fact. He had not so much as given thought to what may have happened had that not been the case, but the sibyl, by itself, seemed to intentionally avoid being seen by others. Only his own confusion at what the Rīsanin girl had done had led to its existence being exposed—which might, admittedly, have been a failure on his part. People knew to be careful and avoidant now, but he still ended up being the one having to shepherd people to and from the property over the safety concerns this brought.

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Having someone at the peak of this stage serve as guard to mortals was a wise decision, even if he was far from a combatant—or at least it would have been, had they not gone with the one person who was the sibyl’s actual target.

Nonetheless, that was water over the bridge, now—there were slightly more pressing matters for Veit to attend to, such as how that very sibyl he was glad had stayed away from the mortal guests remained very much focused on him. A part of him suspected the being already knew where he was—even beyond its vessel being the corpse of an Immortal, it had shown a level of strength he could not hope to match. The idea that just hiding and remaining very still could actually throw it off seemed ridiculous.

He refrained from detaching from the world for a simple reason—the truth was, it didn’t actually feel like it had helped that much last time around. It would leave him drained and achieve nothing. The more he revisited his memories of their latest encounter, the more he grew to suspect the sibyl just enjoyed the chase. It did not actually appear to be in any rush to catch him, simply basking in its game of showing just how easy it would be for it to capture him, even if it refused to simply do so.

Yet that might have changed now that its peace was disturbed.

For an unfeeling creature, the undead Immortal wielded an impressive range of rage-fueled moves, damaging a non-insignificant patch of the mangal. Nature often healed on its own, but Veit couldn’t help but wonder if the source of the charred trunks would keep even a preternatural mangal from regenerating as it should.

He had only considered just surrendering for less than a second. Its words were but echoes of what a mindless thing tried to translate into something that could be understood, and he was under no illusions that it would actually leave him unharmed—even if it insisted it would. Their first meeting had been a blur, but the sibyl had tried to keep him calm, with its claims that it meant no harm.

The worst part was that Veit could see it meaning that.

Malice simply couldn’t be attributed to things that were just natural, and if the sea was not to be called a force of nature, he could hardly imagine what could be. When earthquakes buried people alive, the earth itself could not be said to be out to get them—sinkholes didn’t go out of their way to make people fall in them, either. They were things that just happened.

The sea was unfathomable, but he had long since grown to accept the fact that it probably wasn’t malicious—Pola had believed that much, too. And look where that got me. Veit suppressed the thought before it could take hold in truth. If she had known her request would get him its attention like this, she never would have made it.

Things were coming to a head regardless. The sibyl continued to move, combing through the area and mowing through the landscape as if it were but an afterthought. Resignation had long since taken root, for all he refused to just give in and let it do whatever it meant to. It had let him run before, and perhaps it would let him run now.

Veit shuddered involuntarily. He was the child of a Devilsdamned demon, and one of {Vanagloria}’s, at that. His ego would not allow for a surrender, yet the more rational parts of his mind couldn’t help but acknowledge the helplessness of it all. The sibyl could have caught him that very first day if it had actually felt like it—that he ever thought he stood a chance was laughable.

With what had to be some of the worst timing known to humankind, a stranger chose that specific moment to cross through a corner of the mangal. Their presence blinked in and out from his senses briefly, with their burning aura being likely the only reason why he never noticed them in the first place, but Veit still tensed. He wasn’t exactly in an optimal position to defend someone if the sibyl noticed them—odds were they were hostile, though, and it might have fallen under his job description to do something about them, under different circumstances.

At the moment, the only thing that mattered was staying put—it was delaying the inevitable, but every minute he spent not in the sibyl’s grasp was one more minute in which he could keep suppressing his inevitable panic. Focusing on the timekeeping stone he held—just one of the many tiny artifacts adorning the rings around his fingers—Veit counted the seconds, watching the sibyl with perhaps more focus than was safe.

At no point did it react to the stranger. Good. Even if it reacting negatively to yet another person invading what it had clearly grown to see as its space would theoretically serve as a great distraction, for his own sake, he still couldn’t bring himself to justify unleashing this thing upon somebody else. Terrified as he was—not that he would voice such a thing—he was oddly confident in the promise that it wouldn’t go as far as to kill him.

That was actually not as comforting a thought as it had initially sounded.

Gritting his teeth, Veit continued to watch the sibyl through the vegetation, its limbs seeming longer than they actually were by mere virtue of how odd its movements were. Like a puppet on strings, the sibyl continued walking. Its rage appeared to abate for a whole minute before something else washed over them both, making Veit stumble while the sibyl stared upwards and screeched.

A wave of energy had flared for the swiftest of moments, like a ray of light matching the hues of the kind of rare painting noblemen kept of what a sunset was supposed to look like—warm and cold, fulminant yet nurturing. It left his hairs standing on end, troubling the part of him that was human, if only because his nature as a Cambion left him with no choice but to feel the power that had just been unleashed.

That had been a Devil. A Devil had just done something nearby—or more accurately, an Executor with enough power to do so had drawn upon the power of a Devil to complete a task, and a violent one, at that. He doubted anyone else had noticed—only being what he was enabled him to feel it in the first place. At best, some of the more magically inclined guests might have sensed or seen the magic at play. But to feel it and understand it for exactly what it was? Never.

Now Veit felt the urge to just drop and make a run fror it. The fact that it had come from the direction of the estate within this property was enough to nearly override his concerns for his own wellbeing. Regardless of whether there was currently a sibyl looking for him, there was what had to be a rogue Executor nearby, and letting that be could not possibly end well.

Except the moment he did, the sibyl was upon him between one blink and the next. Its rotten teeth became visible as it smiled, that eerie hair parting to showcase its features while still remaining wrapped around its body.

It spoke a single word that echoed through the mangal.

“Finally.”

The tall man stumbled, each step about as precarious as the last. He looked the part of someone about to keel over and die, breathing heavily and clinging to just about anything in his path for support.

Though the land beneath the waves did not truly keep a day-night schedule, the ebbs of its more active hours still had a period that resembled an evening well enough—the time when people were just about wrapping their days up, not quite done yet but fairly ready to settle in for the not-night.

Malwine kept her double hunched over, Lambrecht’s shiny outfit looking quite out of place as ‘he’ stumbled deeper into Beuzaheim. She’d yet to find a place she was confident most people could hear her from, but she was starting to think that had been wishful thinking. A spot with just enough stragglers going about their day, conveniently close to where announcements were attached to a wooden board—that was what she settled for. Its function was probably close enough to that of a town square that it could serve her purposes.

“Help,” her double rasped. She hadn’t spent enough time around Lambrecht to learn the intricacies of his voice, so this suited her as well—any inaccuracies could be blamed on his grievous yet conveniently unseen injuries. “You people… of Beuzaheim… what did I ever do to you?!”

Ducking behind some stacked boxes on an alley, Malwine dismissed her double. She’d gotten enough of a lay of the land to pick out some spots where she was pretty sure no one would notice her popping in and out of existence, but using random stuff to cover the spawning of her double served as an extra layer of safety.

The performance she had in mind would probably be more than a little over the top, but despite the circumstances, Malwine was starting to look forward to the rest of it.