The Weight of Legacy

There were far too many potential approaches for an ambush for them to truly have the time to discuss all possibilities, even had their conversation transpired under different circumstances. Munnehilde hovered, hidden by leaves, only the tips of her feet touching the branches. Without having stacked these many glamours, it would have likely been impossible for her to remain hidden for this long—it was only a matter of diligence, not luck, that enabled this. She never went in public without them, after all, even if had been a habit developed out of necessity.

Ximena Pérez, as her full name appeared to be from a cursory look into her, was a far more multifaceted person than Munnehilde had initially given her credit for. Even having known from the start that she had enough Affinities to reach Immortality unimpeded—a true rarity among the mortals of Grēdôcava, from what she had seen so far—she had not expected this much. In the end, this woman made dresses for a living. She supposed anyone would be forgiven for being unable to tell, at a first glance, just how utterly devious this woman could be when given the chance.

Their trap was a simple one, mostly in that they cared more about ensuring Baldur Maryem could not reach his destination, regardless of whether or not they had to get involved and reveal their identities. Of course, if that happened, Munnehilde would just erase all evidence of their passage from the mayor’s mind—but the seamstress did not need to know that. Still, the idea was that they need not hold back too much, not for the man’s sake. Even if he died, Ximena seemed confident she could convince the man the officiant answered to as to what had happened—they were close in some way, and Munnehilde chose not to pry into her relationship with this unknown third party. She was still working on comprehending the concept of ‘moderation’, especially when it came to toeing the line between staying informed and invading people’s privacy, not that she ever did the latter without perfectly valid reasons.

The strangest part was probably how confident Ximena had been on whether she could have beaten the mayor had it come down to a fight, between the two of them alone. Munnehilde had not asked, but she knew the woman’s Affinities were of the type that could indeed be manifested physically with ease. {Air}, maybe {Wind}—again, she did not prod too far, so she was unsure. However, the general impression was there. They were broad Affinities with little specialization yet great versatility, or at least the most prominent of them was. Munnehilde would have been a liar if she claimed she was not curious as to how this confrontation would go, even if hypocrisy could likely be ascribed to her choice to even be here—before she had even known she could find herself an ally for this, her odds of having run away the moment things did not go her way had been incredibly high.

Not that there was anything wrong with that—it was better to be caught abandoning a losing battle than to be dead. One of those things could be ignored, the other one couldn’t.

As her thoughts wandered, Munnehilde remained on alert with another part of her mind. This place was uncomfortably quiet, even for the likes of her. A mangal was an environment just like any other, not that unlike a forest in a different setting, but proximity to the sea, especially this blatantly, could put even the seablooded on edge. More than once, she caught herself sniffing at the air, trying and failing to confirm whether or not those fleeting whiffs of brine had been her imagination. A cursory scan of her mind confirmed she seemed unaffected by anything, though—it as ever so slightly uncomfortable, for her senses to be hinting at the presence of something she could not actually detect.

It was suboptimal. Munnehilde did not like uncontrolled variables when it came to doing things that were already risky. Two against one, they should have been perfectly capable of ensuring Baldur Maryem ended up incapable of defending himself before the time of reckoning came. But anything she couldn’t account for could become a threat with no warning.

She did not like this in the slightest.

Still, she remained in position, yearning for the breeze to caress her loose hair—as much as that would draw unneeded attention to her. Not all wishes needed to be rational. Time took its toll on her body, her limbs stiffening, but she knew all too well that this would be much, much harder to accomplish if they couldn’t intercept the mayor. Having the element of surprise was key.

That, of course, all failed to account for that one thing Munnehilde could always just choose to do, even if it was at a risk for herself… she liked Ximena. That much was true. But would she trust the woman to know that? Certainly not. Isolation loosened her inhibitions nonetheless, for if it was just the two of them and this Baldur anyway, then nothing stopped her from simply ensuring the woman did not think about this at all. Easy.

Munnehilde failed to explain to herself why she still felt nervous about it.

Strictly speaking, her task was a simple one. Being hidden as she was, she could release the contents of the ‘cauldron’ directly above Baldur, dumping them so that he would hopefully come into contact with them. If that was not an immediate success, she would have to take matters into her own hands, and ensure she properly dunked the man into whichever puddles formed before the waters went inert.

And if it did come to that, she was admittedly uncertain as to just how much time she would have to work with. The sea worked in mysterious ways, and none who claimed to understand it actually did. The best one could hope for was to catch a glimpse as to its inner workings, and wasting brainpower thinking otherwise would leave nowhere.

That was to say, as much as everyone knew dangerous puddles could form near areas where the sea had full view of the lands below, it was not a sure thing. Sometimes, it could be harmless. Other times, it could seep into otherwise safe bodies of waters and temporarily taint them, rendering them dangerous for people who might have otherwise depended on them—but only temporarily. The same went for newly formed puddles. Everything eventually lost its power, as if being removed from the sea itself shattered it in ways too fundamental for it to ever recover from.

She spared the seawater she had gathered a glance—it was faint, but she could still feel it. That edge, that silent warning to be careful and to, no matter what, avoid attracting the anger of that which could never be understood. As an individual of seablood, diluted as it was, she could tell this… dispassion, wasn’t personal. The sea did not dislike her individually, nor did it even care that she was near its collected waters—this was just what it was like for everyone. Her experience with examining other people’s experiences with the waters served as confirmation for her working theory that it was simply some kind of natural reaction, like a dying animal lashing out—or in this case, a liquid suddenly deprived of its source of energy, exuding hostility as it slowly descended into inertness, for its reserves would never be restored again.

It was still to be avoided, mostly, because it could still present a risk for seasickness even if inert, but Munnehilde had not looked into that, as she very much did not care—it would not affect her. Still, her anger at Baldur Maryem redoubled when she considered this, seeing as the man had gone out of his way to gather perfectly active seawater the first time around. She hissed involuntarily, then bit her tongue—she felt no one nearby, not yet, but it would not do to risk drawing any unnecessary attention when they were oh-so-close.

Between one blink and the next, the man himself entered the range of her lesser senses, and at that, Munnehilde did smile quite viciously, her fingers curling into a somehow graceful fist. She could see him much more clearly now, as Baldur Maryem was moving quite slowly, his expression free from those exaggerated expressions he seemed fond of while fighting. He could not be older than a century as far as she could tell.

Had they underestimated his injuries? Munnehilde scowled. For some reason, the man seemed to be stumbling, or at least, dragging his feet as if each step cost him. He walked slowly, encumbered by something unseen. She got the faintest impression that it might have been some sort of negative effect, as she grew more and more confident none of his injuries were that serious, and only a few scratches could be seen around his legs anyway. Interesting. Yet she would not complain. Odds were, he might have used some sort of boosting ability that came with a drawback, of the type that made the user have to pay back for its use with a negative effect after deactivation.

Either way, she would know soon enough.

This was, after all, where her plan and the plan she had agreed upon with Ximena differed. She had no intention of just ‘bluffing’ as the seamstress had suggested. Certainly, she would cooperate to ensure his capture and help the seamstress have her friend avenged, but she had enough practice with social conflicts that she understood the only way to ensure desired outcomes was to stack the deck decisively.

And, for that, she needed to hold all the cards.

Without further ado, she let her {Psyche} run loose—targeted—and delved into the mortal’s mind, not to cause harm but to learn… though she would not apologize for any accidental harm that came out of this. Such was simply the way of the world.

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The first thing she saw was a curtain, sheer and pink. It swayed in tandem with the beating of something, tock, tock, tock. An unclear memory. The light the curtains were utterly failing to keep out was bright, too bright, and almost yellow in hue, warm but in a way that felt anything but inviting. It was harsher than candlelight, and while she could have held the memory longer, if only to indulge her curiosity as to what had been beyond that window, she had things to do.

Munnehilde grit her teeth as she perused the mess that was that man’s head. His life so far had not been particularly long, except perhaps by mortal standards. Eighty-six years, the kind of man that would have been closing in on death’s door had it not been for a frankly wild assortment of Traits that boosted his [Integrity]. Each barely did anything on its own, but combined, it left the man with roughly some fifty more years of potential active life. The hollow core had staved off the depletion of his [Integrity] well enough, perhaps due to a childhood fear he had.

She saw it in him, and suspected it might not have been exactly rare. Children misunderstood things all the time. When you taught a child about how letting their [Integrity] empty out would knock them unconscious, and taught them of how every month they lived was one less point on that value for them, children were bound to develop a healthy dose of paranoia. Munnehilde had never been too fond of discussing that openly for that reason, because—frankly—seeing mortal children be forced to come to terms with how temporal they would forever be was a bit cruel. Without Affinities, mortals were born only to spiral irrevocably towards their inevitable demise.

It was no wonder that the mercenary whose mind she was tapped into had stacked so many Traits for that, then. It was next to nothing in the grand scheme of things, but she had to give credit where credit was due, for the sake of fairness, if nothing else. She always had to be fair, when judging people for that which she was intruding upon.

People did not think lineally, and even the most consistent of thinkers might have struggled to keep sequences chronological to an absolute degree. Slow, slow, slow. Yet she needed this man unharmed—relatively—for when Ximena’s contact came. She could not afford to be as merciless as she had been that day, by Otto’s side, no. Carefully.

And so, Munnehilde suffered through what felt like a lifetime of Baldur Maryem flirting with women and inviting them to his bed. He did not succeed often, and she had a sneaking suspicion that a noninsignificant part of his flings had been women who’d gotten into it because messing with the mayor was funny. It startled her, in a way. Her own misunderstandings had run deeper than expected—this man was very much not respected in that city of Beuzaheim he called his.

Undermining him would be easier than she had expected—or better yet, his absence was unlikely to present a problem, even if she suspected the man headed their way would make a show out of this.

The jumbled mess of a life explored without excessive force droned on and on, a cacophony echoing throughout Munnehilde’s mind for what felt like an eternity, all within the span of one second. The next details of interest she noticed were those related to Johann Maryem—secondhand, it was hard to tell what that man had been up to. It became clear swiftly enough that it was a dead man, too. An ally of Baldur, who had once been naught but muscle to him—no wonder. She would have to ask Otto to research Grēdôcavan law for her, in search of confirmation, because something told her backdating marriage credentials for the sake of him inheriting from his former employer was dubious in its legality at best. The fact that it had seemingly worked and been accepted meant little.

A maddened political sister was the last connection Baldur maintained to that which had once been the actual Maryem family, which he had all but adopted himself into. If Munnehilde could say, she would have argued the woman was in the right. Her flaws did not justify giving this man as much leeway as he had been give, especially not when he’d had a reputation to begin with. Baldur’s perspective was as biased as anyone’s would be, true, but this struck her as the type of situation where opponents simply loathed each other and were willing to go so far to hurt each other that they turned out worse for it.

Munnehilde scowled as she considered this, tuning out the man’s thoughts on several local women, including her own newlywed political sister—some of that stuff was just vile. She went as far as to wipe the details off her recent memory because that had been the closest she had ever gotten to retching in reaction to information.

But seriously—could the daughter of Johann Maryem had been involved? Beyond the assistance she had promised to Ximena and the incidental connection, of how much easier it would be to punish this man by falling back on how he had killed an officiant, Munnehilde truly did not care as to just who had tried to kill him, or that they had missed. She would still be remiss to ignore the dots connecting before her. That woman would likely have quite the strong motive to try and kill this mayor, and if that was the case, Munnehilde found it quite saddening that she had not succeded.

It was sad for the man who had died as well, she supposed, or at least it would have been, had he been capable of sadness. He was just dead now. Tact, Munnehilde, she reminded herself.

Retreating from his mind, Munnehilde dropped from her hiding spot. In practice, the whole exercise had only required seconds from her, but that had been enough to get the stumbling man within view, closer than ever.

Squelching noises echoed out from where she hit the ground, her boots sinking slightly, now soiled by plant matter. She cared not—all her focus was on her glamour, for she now bore the guise of the very employer Baldur had sought to supplant, if mostly with permission.

To his credit, the mayor did not react too overtly—his eyes widened, his posture stiffened. It was a reaction far more in line with what she had seen from his actual years on the field, as opposed to more recent times where he had grown complacent and spoiled. Perhaps the exercise in loss had reawakened something inside the man. Sharpened.

“How are you here?” Even now, Baldur’s words were measured. Seeing him act like this would likely have troubled most of the people under him. “How?”

Munnehilde smiled, careful to tailor those wrinkles just right, for this false skin to bend at the right angles to make that grin as irksome as it had been when plastered upon the face of the real man she now used as template. “I told you I would see you in the next life.”

“You are dead.” That stiffness betrayed him, truly, so much that Munnehilde didn’t even have to take a peek to tell he was disturbed. That hypocrisy ran deep, it seemed, cowardice mixed in with ruthlessness into the kind of end result that could actually allow cretins such as this one to stay alive for quite the while.

“Am I?” Munnehilde hummed. “Maybe.”

The man in question most definitely was—Baldur had made sure to destroy that obit, even if Johann Maryem had truly died of natural causes. There had been some grief to the act, but mostly resolve. That had been odd, but understandable, though. It wasn’t until much later that he started resorting to removing pieces off the board himself, so to speak. Only rarely had he attacked people without killing them, preferring threats to anything that could build any more easily justifiable resentment. It was easy to catch someone doing something wrong, but for having simply alluded to the fact that they could maybe hurt someone? He was frustratingly careful in that regard.

As for those he had assaulted, the mayor did indeed have a bizarre habit of relying on seawater for that—Munnehilde thought he must be glad the sea lacked awareness of its own, because it undoubtedly would have offed him for such acts alone. Seasickness was his goal, it seemed—something ultimately uncurable even if it wasn’t fatal.

Baldur preferred to kill people with backers—this path was something he chose for those he believed to be without connections, the poor and foreigners. He was so used to getting away with that that he seemed completely blindsided by the idea that the family that Lizanąn man was marrying into might, indeed, have a problem with him attacking one of their own.

“What are you?”

Munnehilde tipped her head. “Your conscience, maybe. Is that something people still develop in their old age? Not that I would know, for I never did. Ha! But you, Baldur. Son of mine, are you not? I wonder if you have been a filial son. Wondered, anyway.” She mimicked walking steps with her fingertips, letting them ‘trek’ all over her other arm. “So I went and checked, real well. Where’s my trust, Baldur?”

The flinch she got as response told her she had struck a cord as intended, going for something his memories implied he had only ever discussed with the man himself. “I have been busy.”

Her smile could not widen further, so she toned it down, intent on slowly reaching a more impassive expression, or perhaps one of disapproval. She recalled, in her mind’s eye, several instances of Johann Maryem’s features contorting in ways that had potential.

The mayor had taken the bait, it seemed. He was spiraling, because who else would know this? And that kept him from considering the other possibilities, though he would likely recover sooner or later. If she couldn’t keep the surprises coming, the moment he regained his mental balance, he would notice something was off. Subtlety had always been something she liked theorizing about instead of something she was actually good at—tearing people apart was much faster and efficient. “Busy? I heard of your conquests, fool. You need not deny it. I do not even blame you, Baldur, but really? All I ever wanted was for those things to be in good hands, and I did always believe I could trust you, right up until the end, right up until I shouldn’t have.”

“I never harmed you.”

“Did you not?” She meant that one rhetorically, aside from facetiously, because she meant to grab this up here—Munnehilde slipped off to the side just in time for an oversized piece of fabric to slam against the man before he could react, wrapping around his limbs and body until all that was left exposed was his head.

Baldur Maryem may have forced his way out, yet, had the seamstress not followed right after, nearly landing on top of him as she pressed her hands against the fabric, her words lost in the howling of the wind as it shook everything violently. She leapt back once she was done, meeting Munnehilde—her glamour gone—and panting, a hand against her heart. “It had been so long… I feared I might no longer have had it in me.”

“Well, it surely would have been inconvenient if you had not,” Munnehilde offered amicably, not sure where this was going.

“You!” the restrained mayor seethed, trying—not for the first time—to get Ximena’s attention as he rolled around the ground helplessly. It was quite the amusing sight, truly.

“You,” Ximena rolled her eyes as she mimicked him in a mocking tone. Munnehilde got the impression that they must have at least been aware of each other, though they did not seem to really know either.

Else, Baldur might have been more concerned about how happy the woman looked at the moment.