The Weight of Legacy

He need not detach from the world to feel how it narrowed, warping irrevocably, as if all that existed in that moment were himself and the sibyl reaching out?

So what if losing was inevitable? Veit could not, in good conscience, let go without a fight. Not when there might be people in danger—people he knew all too well he would never get to.

“That mind of yours, if it exists,” he tried anyway. “I know for a fact you felt that, a Devil’s reservoir being drawn upon.”

“True,” the sibyl conceded without hesitation. “Little baby Devil. Lost. Curious that it is. Here.”

“I need to check on my charges,” Veit insisted. He might have been stretching the definition of both what the people at the estate meant for him and just what his responsibilities even were, but appealing to that was the only thing he could think of. “Surely, we can resume… whatever this is, once I have confirmed their wellbeing.”

What had the world come to, that he was trying to reason with a sibyl? He doubted it would take things well if he tried to use such a window as an attempt to escape—as much as he prioritized his own safety at times, he couldn’t justify risking this creature’s ire in a more populated area.

But he need not even lie about this—people could be in danger, and the situation might be worsening further, the longer he remained too far to act.

“No.” The sibyl was dismissive, going so far as to mimic the waving of a hand, as if this were insignificant. Its jerky movements were even more discomfiting up close, an eerie reminder of how wrong this thing’s false life came off as. “Little Devil gone. Already.”

…What?

In her not-so-long life, Luitgarde Maryem had found herself learning about many things she had no interest in. Well, ‘learning’ might have been an inaccurate term for that, but many tidbits of knowledge had made their way into her head entirely against her will, and without her even always knowing how or why she’d even found that information.

She was not a scholarly woman. Scholarly people were so Devilsdamned pretentious. They made her want to avoid anything that could be even misconstrued as studious by default.

One of those things she had learned against her will were phrases that otherworlders had popularized, some translated, some not. It wasn’t as astounding as people oftentimes treated it as, usually when first finding out even strangers off the street probably had a general idea of how to curse. She thought most came from some otherworlder language called ‘angrish’ or whatever, but she wasn’t really sure.

Luitgarde wasn’t about to deny their other phrases had their uses—because otherworlders could show up almost anywhere, at least in theory, those cultural fragments they brought along were probably closer to being universally understandable beneath the waves than some other things their different countries had in common.

As for why Luitgarde, self-professed hater of self-reflection, was currently hiding under her bed and thinking about this all?

Well, it really came down to, one knew, those phrases. To ‘mess’ up was an interesting way of putting things, especially since she was pretty sure messes were things, not actions. One simply couldn’t walk around messing— actually, couldn’t they? She probably had not chosen the best analogy for that. Besides, there was no one around, and, again, these things were acceptable. Her father was neither around nor alive to complain about their precious language being tainted by external influence. She was allowed to muse about the origins of the word ‘fuck’ as much as she wanted. Still, a particular phrase kept coming to mind.

{Sunset} had no eyes, or thoughts, but she could have sworn it was staring judgmentally at her.

Luitgarde gulped, still hugging her knees as she rested.

Today, she had fucked up.

For once in his life, Anselm Rīsan felt like he might have lucked out, after all. He knew for a fact that all who’d lingered after what had been a perfectly great event might as well have been thrown headfirst up to the waves—and time was of the essence if they were to get anything done about the officiant’s final death before his sister and her husband returned to see how everything had fallen apart.

He might still have had it in him to feel bad about himself were the reveals not coming so easily still—yet always off the mark.