The Weight of Legacy

This… this cannot possibly be my fault. That was an admittedly absurd point to be pondering, given the magnitude of whatever was unfolding in front of her, but, for Malwine, it was either this or going down the train of thought of whether she had ever previously heard of butterflies being a thing in this world.

Mostly because what stood suspended in place near the middle of the arch looked suspiciously like a butterfly that had its wings on backwards. Insects existed here—obviously—but it was as if this first confirmation of the likely existence of alien butterflies just had to come right on time for it to showcase a much bigger problem.

The entire area around the tower where Thekla and Abelard were seemed to have frozen, and—as funny as making a joke about The Cold would have been under different circumstances—the mere implication of time being something that could freeze was making Malwine very uncomfortable.

Stasis is a thing. That had arguably been one of her first discoveries in this life, even if it had felt nearly… irrelevant, at the time. Beyond the doubt it cast upon her own actual date of birth, she hadn’t thought much of it at all, yet coming face to face with the very concept she previously disregarded was triggering some primal fear she couldn’t even name. It would have been frustrating had it not been so utterly concerning.

The first time she’d snuck a double out to check on the area, she had noticed her grandfather and guardian seemed to be freaking out a little, but… No, it hadn’t been until she looked more closely—really looked—that she noticed this, and suddenly, the distant freakouts she had noticed earlier made a lot more sense.

Okay, Lambrecht, I’m sorry, but I think you’re pretty low on the totem pole of immediate concerns right now.

To be fair, Malwine had found the matter of the dead officiant far less stressful since accepting that just getting Veit to immediately bring the guy back would be impossible. It was already a lost cause, so she might as well get right to procrastinating solutions for it. If nothing else, she had already done a great job, having gotten Adelheid to save the obit in the first place—and she probably wouldn’t even have thought of that had it not been for how bizarrely fond people in this world seemed to be of using the sea to destroy obits.

And speaking of Veit—where the fuck was he? The next time she saw him, Malwine would be sure to disorganize his kitchen again, because he sure had chosen a convenient time to disappear.

Dismissing her double, she returned to the privacy of her room. She didn’t even recall for how long she’d been sitting on the ground, just… elsewhere. If it weren’t for the constant concern that Adelheid might see her, she would have started pulling at her hair sooner—by now, she had already caught herself doing so, so who even cared anymore?

The formless frustration gnawed at her. Malwine knew, at some level, that a great deal of the widow’s ability to take control of situations stemmed from how none would actually question her. Even within the context of that relatively mundane world, she’d been decent at pretending to have all the cards. Thinking of that only worsened her annoyance. Stupid {Foresight} and it’s stupid flavor text. She couldn’t deny a part of her desperately wished she could actually plan ahead as effectively as she felt she needed to.

In fact, saving Lambrecht’s obit was probably more of a stroke of luck than anything else, much like how she’d pulled off the destruction of OHeidi’s remains. She’d managed the part about looking like she knew what had to be done… regardless of whether she actually did.

Now, she kept drawing blanks. She had no idea how to begin dealing with time magic, and, while reveals had come to mind, they were too far from The Harvest to rely on the hope that something useful might pop up.

I hate this, I hate this, I hate this… She kept her mumbles to herself, gritting her teeth. The problem was that she had allowed herself to care. Why had she? That never went well! It was an illogical train of thought, but not one she could manage to suppress. The truth was, Malwine had enjoyed her interactions with her aunt during the past day. Even Abelard seemed like a nice guy to hang out with, when she wasn’t terrifying him by wandering about looking like Rupert.

She understood there was no actual relation between her decision to try and open up to Thekla, and what happened, yet logic did nothing to help. This wasn’t a frustration of the rational kind.

Rocking back and forth, she felt so small. This all came off as far less of an overt problem than the literal sea zombie ever had, yet she hadn’t been this adrift then. As she struggled to get a grip on herself, Malwine gritted her teeth.

I don’t know what to do. But, I also don’t know if there’s anything I can do. For all I know, there isn’t. And that was what it came down to. The stress looming over her probably stemmed from a sense of responsibility, the kind that came from how this was her family and how she had to act. To do something. Anything!

Yet Malwine had, very much so, already convinced herself that this couldn’t be her fault. None of the stunts she pulled should have led to this, especially when she hadn’t even done anything recently. The abyss between her and the sweet peace of knowing this shouldn’t actually be her problem to fix remained too wide anyway.

What if this stasis thing is somehow related to Beryl? It was far-fetched, but she had no other experiences to draw from.

Malwine let out a groan, consciously letting go of her hair. That wasn’t healthy for her—besides, if Adelheid saw that, it would do no good for her to think it was something to emulate.

I think we might need to get an actual adult to handle this. The thought seemed almost foreign to her. Strictly speaking, she was almost certainly the oldest living member of her family, seeing as even the system counted the widow’s lifetime. She was not an actual child needing to hide behind her older family members.

But could she? Her personal reasons aside, she was young in this lifetime. And, quite honestly, it pained her to admit it, but… This was beyond her skillset and knowledge alike. In a way, that realization made her internal conflict crumble into irrelevance, because there wasn’t much for her to do about something she felt bizarrely responsible for, if there was literally nothing she could do.

On her own, at least.

“Adelheid,” Malwine inhaled slowly, then continued without bothering to check if her little sister had arrived—of course she would have. “What have you been up to?”

“[Toll].” Adelheid was crouching by her side, as if she had always been there.

“…[Toll]?”

The girl beamed. “Yes!” In a moment, she straightened. “I kept the box very secret. But I asked our brothers about their [Toll]. They all have different numbers… But I think, if we put them all together, maybe we can fix the box?”

That was… adorable, actually, yet it still took Malwine considerable effort to not flop over and cry. If it weren’t for how unlikely people probably were to expect children to have done anything about the obit, Adelheid might have singlehandedly brought a great deal of suspicion to them. They’d need to have a long, long talk about subtlety at some point, though Malwine would probably have to make somebody else explain it, seeing as it was also something even she only understood conceptually. Adelheid was just somehow far more shameless about it.

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“…Thanks for the idea, I’ll think about it,” was all Malwine could say. She was more than a bit hesitant about just being blunt right now—with how frustrated she’d grown, she wasn’t even sure if her immediate thoughts were just a kneejerk reaction, in that considering any work towards Lambrecht’s obit sounded like a waste of time with how high the requirements were. She wasn’t in the right headspace to know if calling it impossible would be accurate, and her little sister did look quite proud of herself. She couldn’t ruin that.

“Mhm,” Adelheid let out a peculiar hum as she settled in her bed. Sometimes, how quickly the girl could shift gears came off as incredibly weird—then again, Malwine probably wasn’t one to talk. A very distant part of her feared—and even then, only a little bit—that leaving her little sister to her own devices might lead to the officiant showing up alive again. Procrastinating the matter might indeed actually be for the best.

Licking her lips, Malwine began to pace the room, only occasionally shooting the girl a glance. How can you nap at a time like this…? If only she could do the same, honestly. Unfortunately, that sense of obligation kept returning. She could do something about this—or at least, she should have been able to—and therefore, she had to. It was an irrational yet unshakeable loop worming its way into her thoughts. Maybe the issue was that loss of control, the mere idea that she couldn’t personally fix this—the widow had tried therapists out a few times, and even if she did always end up running away from them, they might have pointed out a thing or two that Malwine conveniently couldn’t recall in full.

You dumbass. She could feel it almost as if it were a physical force—instability, all bubbling over. Being aware of it didn’t exactly help. Neither version of her excelled at processing emotions, and she was currently too far into the freakout to bother mentally excusing that away. It was far too difficult to feel truly relieved at not being at fault—this time!—when all that achieved was make her worry about the tiny issue of just how Thekla and Abelard would be freed from stasis, if she didn’t personally handle it.

Even just finding and shaking down Veit for a solution would at least have felt like some form of contribution. Fuck’s sake. She wanted to punch something—she also wanted to do nothing at all.

Malwine stopped abruptly, nearly slamming her way down to the ground as she made an effort to mimic the lotus position and fall into meditation—[Riffle In Excelsis] seemed to shake as she all but dropped into her visualized pier. By now, she was starting to suspect leaving it unattended for so long might have had something to do with its faltering setting. Wooden planks floated by, and the fiber optics along the upper parts were a jumbled mess by now. She’d have loved to blame the Status Effect for it, with the block on her core’s progress and all, but she was feeling particularly self-aware just now.

Might as well help it along then! Within the privacy of her core, she could at least throw the tantrum she needed to without anyone judging her for it—aside from {Legacy}, maybe. That stupid thing was making her feel watched again. With a thought, she unwove what little of her Affinities remained braided and took the time to kick a few planks away. Water splashed around her, the silence all too eerie each time she stopped moving. She’d have to rebuild this again at some point, but it wasn’t as if she’d ever felt this setup was permanent in the first place. If she’d thought to ask, Veit could probably have gotten her an actual technique for this… though if it was anything like his explanation on Affinities, she might need to take detailed notes to retain anything.

As she opened her eyes, Malwine suppressed the impulse to bring her pebble up and check just how long she had spent ‘meditating’. The Skill had—quite rudely—not even bothered to level up, so it probably hadn’t been that long.

Adelheid seemed to be genuinely asleep, at least as far as she could tell—the girl probably couldn’t go around faking that type of thing.

Yet.

Still, being careful never hurt anyone. Tiptoeing her way to her own bed, Malwine cringed as the bedframe creaked when she sat down. Oh, come on, it doesn’t even do that normally! The lack of a reaction soothed her, to an extent.

As much as she would likely have to avoid mentioning the fact that she had just torn a good part of her core’s remaining structures apart, for the sake of no one asking her if she was doing alright, it had calmed Malwine down somewhat. The day still felt like a disaster, and she wasn’t about to successfully push most of it out of her mind, but the odds of her screaming at the nonexistent sky had gone down by quite the bit.

Her anger at having the one relative she felt like being slightly honest to being suddenly out of reach remained, but it also steeled her resolve. In a sense, Adelheid was inspiring her—if the actual child could get away with flaunting her abilities, why couldn’t she flaunt some of her own? She would have to be mindful of how she presented herself, of course, but Malwine was less than thirty levels above her little sister, as bad as that sounded when she actually thought of it. She could probably showcase a handful of abilities without it seeming too weird, and Veit had confirmed he didn’t think anyone else around here could push through [Reveal Nothing]. That should be more than enough.

Odd as it was, her second choice after Thekla would have been Alaric, especially now that she knew he had secrets of his own—nevermind that those apparently included hiding some random guy in his chambers. Of her uncles, the likeliest to actually be capable of doing something was Anselm, but she could probably fill out a whole panel’s worth of reasons why trusting him would be risky…

…and speaking of filling out panels.

Malwine brought one up, erasing her wishlist of potential harvestable reveals in favor of reviewing her cover story for this. She’d have to keep it in line with what she’d told Veit, but it wasn’t as though she’d actually explained much to him—he had accepted things made no sense from her perspective and run with it, so there had been no need.