The Weight of Legacy

At some point after their staring contest got started, Malwine had started to wonder if it was possible to get something out of this. Not out of the fact that she was kind of getting chewed out, but out of the experience itself. Were there social Skills out there for avoiding judgment?

She was feeling pretty judged, at the moment.

"Why are you like this?" Veit seemingly settled for just asking his favorite question after coming to terms with how she had next to no intentions of addressing his concerns.

"I stand by my choice to ignore them," Malwine scoffed. She could simultaneously acknowledge she'd messed up and insist she'd do the same again. It was called conviction or something. "They were being whiny—at least Mystery-Beryl, at any rate."

"They were being people," Veit corrected her, eliciting a pout. "Is there any particular reason why you treat people expressing how they feel as some grave offense?"

What are you, my therapist? Malwine had to resist the urge to let two lifetimes' worth of immaturity tinge her actual response. "I have nothing against people expressing their emotions. What in any Devils' name are you on about?"

Veit simply glared at her.

"In this case, I was getting nothing of value from overhearing that argument," Malwine continued. "My options were to either listen to even more of that, or to try and find some other clue within the setting itself."

"Which you did not find," Veit reminded her. "So you got nothing out of it, on top of missing a crucial point of the discussion."

Malwine wanted to tell herself he was only saying that because he didn't know just how seriously she was taking her bribe-an-elf plan, but he wasn't wrong. At minimum, she'd wasted an opportunity—permanently—to go looking for something that wasn't there. Her trial for Kristian had probably skewed her expectations. "If I had learned something useful by wandering, would you still be saying that?"

"Honestly? No. That would have been dumb luck," he exhaled slowly. "I trust you'll make an effort to suppress any urges to dismiss what those in the scenes you watch express, next time you use that Trait."

Getting chewed out for her decisions was something she'd trained herself to sit through then promptly ignore—some differences in opinions simply couldn't be helped, and she hadn't been in the mood to argue. Unfortunately for her, Veit had a point. Malwine didn't like it when people—especially strangers—got loud. Certainly not in the sense Mystery-Beryl had. It made her feel like she was somehow obligated to make sense of things that had nothing to do with her. She didn't want to have to read into the reasoning or emotional state of people just for the sake of eavesdropping. All she wanted was information.

It sucked—but again, he wasn't wrong.

Unable to really deny it, Malwine just groaned, throwing her head back. "Ugh. Whatever! Aren't you glad I finally got Forgery to work?"

The forester did not immediately comment on that. "I am glad—I am simply also aware it's just a start, and have tempered my expectations accordingly."

"I still have no idea how to affect the panels of others," Malwine admitted, deflating a bit. She went over the basics of her new Skill, explaining how it let her stockpile elements with which to Forge. "On an unrelated note, would you happen to have anything sitting around that I can break?"

"You can tear my father's imprints to shreds for all I care, if you're done using them," Veit shrugged. "They may yet qualify for it, if Tokens work."

Malwine huffed. "They don't—believe me, I tried. Which is some fine bullshit, if you ask me. They're basically the same thing as Tokens!"

Like a man defeated, Veit slumped back on his seat. "I can see how that might slow things down."

Why are you in such a rush to change your own Skills? Malwine pondered asking that outright. It wasn't something he'd said, but it was certainly the impression she got. The forester had been willing to put aside what had to be some long-term resentment just for the chance that she would help him in exchange. "Is that going to be a problem?"

"No," Veit swiftly shook his head. "At the very least, I'm more patient than you."

"That was uncalled for."

"Was it?" the forester raised an eyebrow before straightening and clasping his hands. "I still have some time before I do the rounds again, in any case—do you want to work on anything else?"

Not even bothering to hide her suspicion at the offer, Malwine narrowed her eyes. Things that aren't [Shieldwork]. "What do you have in mind? You're the teacher here, after all."

"Hm," Veit paused for a long moment. "You can train your Forgery Skills on your own time—practice is likelier to be fruitful then, too. What's your lowest Skill at this point, outside of those?"

Malwine winced. That would have been [The Things We Do For Family], but that wasn't something he could help her with. "That'd be either [Enforced Longevity] or [Earthless Glory]. Why?"

From his expression, she had a feeling she would not like the answer.

And she was right.

Veit was looking a bit too cheery, and that was always cause for concern.

"I have many questions," Malwine scowled as she took another hesitant step forward. The terrain—if it could even be called that—was beyond uneven within the cave. She felt like a kid going on the worst school field trip ever, moisture clinging to her skin.

"For which you are unlikely to get any answers," Veit walked before her, his stride smooth as if no rock or gap could make him slip. He clearly knew his way around the place.

"For one, why in any Devils' name is the visibility so good in here?" Malwine asked anyway. The tunnels were odd. Darkness shrouded them, no light sources in sight, yet she could see their surroundings with stark clarity. A soft aquamarine glow that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere ensured that.

"It's because of what this stone is," Veit ran a hand by the wall, seeming lost in thought for a moment. "I confess I actually don't know what you would call it in your language. Crushed ékkalen? …No. It would be something closer to smoothed. Turned into something measured, given form."

While the forester was busy shaking his head and struggling to translate the concept of smooth cave walls into Grēdôcavan, Malwine considered whether she should take the chance to ask. He was basically handing it to her on a silver platter. "You aren't from around here, right? I've gotten the hint enough times—you never talk much about it, so I never ask. But I'm still curious."

Veit actually laughed—there was a glint to his gaze as he turned to face her. "Oh, my mother was from Grēdôcava, but I am from here. You wouldn't have wonders such as these in {Avaritia}'s land, as my father did or does call it. This is were Pola and I grew up."

That explained close to nothing about their current location, but Malwine chose not to push—he seemed surprisingly calm here, examining their surroundings with an odd serene air to him. "What's it called?"

"It was or is Èssenhaüsar," Veit spoke softly, then. He stared at the cave ceiling above them. "Above us, though all of this used to be part of it. None of the nations to have formed since the Empire have ever managed to lay claim to it for long, nor can they be bothered to. Too many people with non-human ancestry for them to deem it worthwhile."

"Are there part fell people?" Malwine couldn't help her curiosity. If they also had {Psyche}…

But Veit shook his head. "You won't find those anywhere, save perhaps on some seafarer settlements. The seablooded are far too isolationist for that."

She debated asking just what the exact relationship between seafarers and seablooded was supposed to be, especially in this context—the forester held up a hand before she could ask anything. "This should be far enough."

"Eh?" Malwine honestly still had no clue what the purpose of this little outing had been. At least she'd learned Veit was from… Èssenhaüser, in no particular country? I need to find an excuse to start keeping track of my teachers so I can put this new information to use somehow.

Unaware of how her thought process had wandered to her true priorities by now, Veit explained himself. "Your [Earthless Glory] lets you send your double anywhere you have been to, no?"

I mean, that's technically how it's supposed to work. He probably wasn't asking for exceptions, in any case. "Pretty much."

"Excellent," he waved a hand, and a portal appeared before her. "We are done here."

"Huh?"

His smile was more than a bit concerning. "You can send your double back here once you are back in your room—away from prying eyes, I recommend. Chances are you might snap back a few times before you can actually get your projection further into the ruins."

"That is neither pacifying nor explanatory," Malwine nodded before stepping through the glass kite anyway. She wasn't about to decline a chance to send her double over instead of having to visit the place herself, but his reassurances that going there would be the perfect way to train both [Earthless Glory] and [Enforced Longevity] had so far only served to make her even more suspicious.

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Still, Malwine found she trusted Veit to an extent. He was worse than her in many ways—and annoyingly difficult to trick—but he'd never led her astray. His initial reaction to finding out about her potential for Forgery had been the only one of his actions that truly made her doubt him, and even then, she thought he'd made up for it enough.

She was probably biased—the forester was the only person around whom she could freely be an ass to, and she appreciated his existence for it.

The short of it was that if he said projecting into those tunnels and exploring further into them would help her level not one but two Skills, he must have suggested this for a reason.

That was precisely the problem.

It wasn't until after the last meal of the day that Malwine chose to send her double off. She took Veit's advice seriously enough to not spend her idle time in class doing it, no matter how boring it could get. She was so close to maxing [Riffle In Excelsis] out that she was both thrilled and nervous about the prospect.

It would be her first Skill to actually reach level 50. Fucking [Meditation] was going to become the first she'd maxed out through her own efforts, and she was feeling far more conflicted about that than she thought she should be.

Malwine couldn't even chart it off to it being one of her oldest Skills, seeing as even [Timeless Shieldwork] had all but caught up to [The Plurilingual Psyche] as the Skill inevitably lagged behind. If I ever need to sacrifice a full Skill for the sake of trying out Forgery on that… She hadn't used the Skill much since she'd learned Grēdôcavan and looked over that seafarer script.

Admittedly, she didn't know where life might take her, or if she'd turn out to have ancestors in other countries. Even this Èssenhaüser that Veit had taken her under had a different language than what she spoke—[The Plurilingual Psyche] may still be of use, regardless of how she currently felt about its plateau at 40.

Prone to distraction as ever, it had taken her a few minutes to get herself sorted. She hid under her blankets just to play it safe, so that, if Bernie or Hildegarde saw her, they'd assume she was asleep, and sent her double off to the same place where Veit had summoned his kite portal.

The tunnel looked far more ethereal when viewed through her double. The widow's intangible nature took the edge off the air, in a sense, but that only made how it looked all the more eerie. It was like staring down a painting instead of a real cave, the lighting unnaturally even in a way she hadn't quite processed when she'd been distracted by the discomfort of walking through it. Everything was illuminated, and nothing cast shadows.

From what Veit had said, she had to assume there would be some ruins up ahead, though she saw no signs of them so far. If Èssenhaüser was above her, what were the ruins from? Maybe a previous version of the settlement, or something unrelated? She was no stranger to the idea of new buildings being made atop old ones, but she'd never considered whether that type of thing would happen when they already lived under the waves. How did that affect how people treated the limited space available to them?

The narrow tunnel continued to be empty, and Malwine almost regretted using this form. She was still terrible at estimating the size of spaces when she'd only really been in them as her child self. Her double could probably go through the rock, seeing as she wasn't accruing any [Toll] to make it capable of interacting with her surroundings in full, but she wasn't particularly eager to try that out. There had to be a baseline there, considering she didn't have to put any effort into not slipping under the floor.

As far as signs of there actually being anything down here went, the first thing Malwine caught sight of was something that looked vaguely like a piece of a fountain or ornate pot, shattered at the point where the tunnel widened.

Malwine gasped as she entered the cave, the similarity to what the widow knew of Nightsky was undeniable—but that was where it ended. Where the name of that tourist trap had been self-explanatory enough, it didn't hold a candle to the shifting space that seemed to slither through the rocks above. Darkness and stars danced to a janky tune that seemed to have no rhyme or reason to it, with a reddish nebula at the center of it all, distant yet not.

It wasn't until she noticed the notifications flying by that she managed to stop blinking in shock.

Great, spam. Now she was annoyed—those could have really all formed part of the same panel. Still, it checks out.

Veit claimed he was from around here, and {Vanagloria} was his Proclivity. Whatever this place was about, he was undoubtedly familiar with it.

The ubiquitous lighting from the tunnel did not follow her here, forcing Malwine to actually watch her step, waiting for the shifting lights above to illuminate the area in front of her. As far as she could tell, she'd entered some kind of courtyard. Stone benches were even worse for wear than the potential garden pot had been, and cracks ran through the ground beneath her. She was pretty sure that if she tried to force her double to take in a deep breath, she'd smell nothing but dust and the staleness of an abandoned place.

Indeed, dust rose with each step she took, as if the place were somehow aware of her presence despite her status as a double. That gave her pause. This was supposed to be safe, no? She almost wished she'd asked Veit directly.

Malwine didn't have much time to dwell upon that as she got the distinct impression of movement to her right, making her spin on her double's heels as she all but stumbled back. Whatever she was sure she'd seen off the corner of her eye was nowhere to be seen, and she was more than a bit glad that her current form dulled the side effects of getting startled like that.

Goddammit, Veit, I actually like abandoned places. Why did you have to ruin this for m—

Something akin to a puff of smoke or vapor practically jumped her and Malwine fell back with a scream, feeling herself hit her bed as if she hadn't already been on it. She looked around—she hadn't actually screamed here, right? As the minutes ticked on without anyone barging in to check on her, she allowed herself to relax marginally, turning to face the panels that awaited. The first two notifications resonated with the memorial's presence, distinctly not hers, while the last one was a Status Effect of her own.

Between seeing she'd gotten a debuff and noticing how little time was left on it, Malwine felt she might have gone through all stages of grief within a second. The Status Effect hardly mattered compared to the curse she'd been born with.

Her thoughts lingered on the brief timer anyway—what the hell was the point of that? As it cleared, Malwine sent her double back to where she'd been struck, carefully watching her surroundings. While Veit had warned her she might snap back a few times, she was more than mildly peeved at how unspecific that warning had been—she wanted nothing more than to prove him wrong out of spite.

That lasted until the first step she took, whereupon something rose from beneath her feet and sent her double flying, once again forcibly dismissing it. The notification 'explaining' what had happened was identical, but the debuff she got this time had a different effect.

Malwine gritted her teeth. She didn't even stop to consider just why Veit had suggested this, but the contrarian in her grew more empowered by the second, wishing for nothing more than to figure this 'memorial' out just to convince herself that she could.

The debuff durations were almost insultingly low—not that she was about to complain aloud about that—but predictable. By the third time she got to experience what felt suspiciously like being sent flying all the way back to her real self, she was certain they always lasted 5 minutes.

Her fourth 'failure' had her staring at her notifications for an entirely different reason. She could no longer recall when the last time that Skill had improved had even been, yet it was moving now.

…Goddammit. As much as she wanted to be mad at Veit, this was surprisingly effective. Worse yet, Malwine didn't even find the exercise as bothersome as their practice when she wanted to evolve [Shieldwork] had been—even her practices with Adelheid had been more stressful at times. It was frustrating, but stimulating in the way finding a particularly difficult dungeon to clear had been for the widow.

It was a feeling Malwine hadn't noticed she missed. Damn. If trials had been this fun, I might have put up with them.

She couldn't help the grin that reached her lips as she sent her double off again—she still had plenty of [Toll] space to spare for the day.