The Weight of Legacy

There was something inherently disturbing about trying to dream of his own home. His visions normally involved locations unknown to him, holding no particular emotional weight. That made their emptiness—save for the disjointed events replaying on the back of his mind—bearable in a way this very much was not.

Anselm felt weightless, adrift, even as he wandered the halls through a path he knew by heart yet could not rationalize if he tried. At every turn, he caught glimpses, snippets of movement and voices, all cut off too swiftly to make a coherent whole. People appeared and disappeared mid-walk—presumably members of the estate's staff—and the lighting returned for brief moments at a time before dimming into the ubiquitous neutrality of the dream.

It was part of the estate, but devoid of anything that would have made it feel real—not cold so much as hollow.

Shaking his head, Anselm resolved to actually proceed with his search, as opposed to continuing to spiral at the eeriness of it all. He was already starting to regret having agreed to investigate this on his niece's behalf, for he already felt their relationship bordered on strained. Requesting the locket back had been a mistake and he had little desire to jeopardize whichever chance he still had at getting along with Beryl's kid.

Regardless of the discomfort this brought to him, most of his fears were gone, in general, thanks to the pseudo-immortality he seemed to have attained. Dislike it as he might, he knew the bizarre realm that unfolded before him, whatever it was, would not actually bring him harm, and if putting up with it was what it took to not cut off the last connection he had with his older sister, so be it. The mystery of where his sister had gone—and of just who and what Agneta was, in any case—would likely be something he could not solve without that.

He was not particularly tall, but the halls grew oppressive anyway as he descended through a path he instinctively knew few were aware of. Hushed whispers and concerned tones flew past him, the distant voices of people who weren't actually there. A staircase led him further and further down, the space feeling even more cramped now. How someone like his father or Bernadette could manage to get down here was beyond him, though perhaps that was the point—if his suspicions were right and the missing Benedikt was somewhere around here, they would likely take any excuse to spend as little time with him as possible.

Walking past shelves stocked full of unlabeled liquids, Anselm frowned. Objects were not affected by how transient people and events became when he dove into the strange world that had come with either the sea's blood or the blessing, but this was still naught but a copy of reality. He could not identify the contents of those bottles, and for once, he found the standard practice of making such creations system-compatible instead of bothering to label them an annoyance, despite the hypocrisy of it all.

This was likely Bernadette's work—it just made him want to scoff even more. He was being petty, but Kristian's comment lingered in the back of his mind. How dare he imply Anselm was incompetent when Bernadette not only received the exact same training, but had cut it short? Yet she was trying things.

Are they actually feeding this stuff to the child? Running through the math in his head, he guessed Benedikt had to be about four years old now. If he'd needed to know of exactitudes there, he could probably just ask Beryl's daughter—a thought that felt absurd as soon as he had it—but in truth, he did not. It wasn't exactly impactful. A child was a child.

Anselm wouldn't have dared to let Matilda be around when he and Hanne experimented, and he certainly wouldn't give untested creations to a child, even if it was for the purpose of trying to fix something that was wrong with them. It wasn't even only a matter of age—children in the Early Esse lacked the level of development necessary to process many magical products at all. There was a reason why one was supposed to slowly increase a child's exposure to the outside world.

They wouldn't be negatively impacted by it, but structures were simply built to filter ambient mana in a way that made it safer for the newly born—Anselm was not anywhere near familiar enough with the topic to know exactly how it worked, but—as he guessed everyone else had—he had simply ascribed Benedikt's absence to his parents choosing to play it safe before letting him wander.

Now, he knew there was something else going on—he simply had no idea what. Opposite to where the shelves and a few chairs were scattered about, he caught sight of translucent curtains. The light beyond them was bright, not even just in comparison to the room, but in a way that made it noticeable despite the unreality of the dream.

Anselm squinted, the brilliance of it all actually straining him in a way he'd never encountered. He stepped forward still, pushing the curtain open with his left hand as he held the other one before him, as if it would help were he to encounter something within. With the control he held over the ability, he put some effort into making the light within dim so he could get a better look.

A crib, seemingly sealed, lay within. In the dream, it was empty, but it was easy enough to guess just who might be kept there. More shelves and chairs were inside, but Anselm hardly cared—most of his focus went to the sudden burning in his chest, as if a white-hot stone were suddenly lodged in his sternum. Breathing felt impossible, and it took him a moment to remember he wasn't awake. By all accounts, this was not real, yet the burning spread, leaving him as fatigued as if he had ran to Beuzaheim and back.

Simply existing in this room—in a false, copied version of this room—hurt. As much as he wished he could look further into this, he had to step back.

Anselm told himself he'd found out as much as he could from the location itself—and perhaps that was true—as he curled up into a ball in his bed. Where it had been straining before, he found his body hurt in a way it hadn't in years, as if nerves dulled by years of seasickness were suddenly set on fire. The warmth of the blessing and the lull of the sea left him numb a moment after, but as he gathered his bearings, he couldn't exactly deny that had been disturbing.

Wave take me, that felt… As if his very energy had been slowly ceasing to exist the longer he lingered in the representation of that room. What would going there in the real world do? Anselm crushed that shred of curiosity immediately—now that he found something that might actually present a risk to his unlife, he would do everything in his power to avoid it.

That left him with an entirely different problem as he straightened, feeling his heartbeat normalize until it returned to its usual near-halt, the sea's power in his blood once again thickening it as the warmth faded. That had actually hurt him, even if recovering took but a few minutes. How was he supposed to continue down this path?

At least he knew the broad strokes of it now, and it was a start. Benedikt was in a strange crib, isolated from the world and his family alike. Though the setting didn't match any setups he could recall, the room did distantly remind him of the kind of sterile environments Old Martin had said certain procedures required. That had been related to creation, certainly, but the matter had come up—certain treatments did require the patient be kept in isolation.

Still, Anselm couldn't recall anything specific that would have warranted this. While alchemists like them could provide people some relief, they weren't actually doctors. I wonder what Jericho would think of this.

That intrusive thought did get him wondering one thing—why would Bernadette not be relying on the doctor right now? She clearly had the necessary contacts for it, as she had sicced the old man on him much earlier into his convalescence and seasickness.

Suddenly, the pieces fit. Had that boy not said he'd been told, when he sought aid for Matilda's injury, that Beuzaheim's resident doctor was gone at the time? Was Bernadette somehow responsible for this?

Anselm had to acknowledge this tendency to blame everything on his former friends probably bordered on paranoia, but being lied to and hounded by someone's underlings tended to do that, as far as he was concerned. He liked to think he wouldn't have been so quick to think negatively of her mere years ago—wave take him, he'd still been close enough to her to ask for reading recommendations until recently.

His eyes narrowed. I suppose that would be a start.

At the risk of having to explain himself to the curious children currently sitting in the library next to the estate's butler, Anselm wandered into the library as discreetly as he could. The mortal child of a different employee was staring into a book with an empty gaze, as if baffled by its contents. His teleporting sister wasn't even pretending to read as she held her book facing outwards, all the while the butler rubbed her temples. She was telling Adelheid something, but Anselm didn't bother trying to make out the words.

His niece's gaze had him preoccupied. "Didn't know you hung out here."

Anselm very much did not 'hang out' anywhere in the family estate—he already knew even his recent outings to the gardens had gotten the maids talking. Something told him that was not the kind of answer he should give to a child, though. "I've been looking into something, and I felt the need to grab some reading material."

"Put anything you take back where you found it," said the antiquarian that was in the corner of the room. Anselm almost jumped at the sudden interruption, but the man didn't even look up from his boxes, which he was presumably using to sort books.

"I will," Anselm told the man, all the while trying to give the girl a knowing look.

"I see," the girl told him. She had a book resting on her lap, but she didn't look at the pages as she flipped them. "Good luck with your search, I guess."

Is any child in this family doing okay right now? He had to admit he did not think, not even for a second, that his own childhood had been normal. Anselm was not particularly fond either of his parents, with his siblings being the only tolerable part of those early years. Even now, the only reason he stayed here was that he was under no illusions about his capacity to blend in with society, and that wasn't something he could entirely blame on his upbringing.

His dubious decisions had left their mark.

As cold as it was, even if he was aware that something had to be done, Anselm knew he wasn't in a position to change anything. There was despondency to it, in knowing his family was a terrible environment yet being unable to do much about it—Devils, anything he tried would probably just make things worse. The past few years had certainly proven he had a penchant for ruining lives.

Under what would this be under…? Gingerly, Anselm examined the books in the library, reading the titles on the spines. He felt like a visitor to a foreign land. It wasn't that he never read—no, he quite literally relied on asking others to bring books to him. That had slowed ever since that fateful day, but even before, he rarely came here personally. The last time he'd been here had to have been under similar circumstances to those of the girls sitting there right now, as his own governess used to take him down here before Katrina had him go apprentice under Old Martin full time.

Some shelves appeared to be organized by color, while others had the books sorted in what appeared to be alphabetical order… based on the second word of each title. As he grew more confused, he started to wonder if the antiquarian just used this place to level his Skills—that certainly would make more sense than anyone thinking any part of this was a valid organization system. What in any Devil's name am I looking at?

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

If Anselm hadn't already known a large percentage of their employees had to just be there to take Kristian's money without actually doing much, he would have been surprised—instead, he was just annoyed by finding himself personally affected by something he otherwise considered pretty funny.

In the end, he resigned himself to reading all the titles, one by one. It was mind-numbing work, even for one used to idleness, but thinking of the alternatives helped him convince himself it had to be done.

A Compendium on Mortal Illnesses

A Parent's Guide to Childhood Woes

Common Causes of Childhood Sniffles

Those and more caught his eye as he remained within the estate's library long after the makeshift classroom and the antiquarian were all gone, with the state of his body being such that he wasn't truly capable of feeling genuine tiredness anymore. Effort of the magical variety could affect him, certainly, but continuing to walk and skim titles for hours on end was effortless.

In a way, he was glad to have taken the time to do this. If he'd had to explain his choices in books, were anyone to ask, Anselm wasn't sure what kind of excuse he would have come up with on the spot. But being alone, he could simply inventory the items without a second thought, his only concern being how or when he would return them—not that he had to. This would only be a problem if the antiquarian could somehow report the absence of specific books to Bernadette, and in truth, Anselm doubted the man's competence enough to consider that a non-issue.

Without much else to dwell upon, he inventoried the books he needed—roughly a dozen by the time he was done—and sped back to his room. He suspected he'd have to dedicate quite the long while to this.

If someone had told him, years ago, that he would be glad to spend sleepless nights reading books about developmental stages, Anselm would have considered the mere concept of it ridiculous.

Now, though? At some point, he had almost entirely lost track of his initial goal of finding potential conditions that might explain Benedikt's isolation. He was too busy taking advantage of his state to not move an inch, comparing theories on human development and how children adapted to mana. Half the month must have passed like this, with him too engrossed by half-formed ideas to even bother taking concrete notes.

As someone who truly had no intention of getting a partner or having children—something he now firmly believed would be impossible even if he'd wanted to—Anselm had honestly never bothered to learn about this type of thing. He could feed his younger siblings and cook for them if the staff somehow deserted them, but that was the extent of his preparation for keeping little beings alive.

The knowledge that people put this much thought into how children reacted to their environment was news to him. Things like 'be mindful of not letting your newborn near feylights lest they develop an aversion to the color green' sounded like jokes in borderline poor taste, but with five different mentions of it, Anselm wondered if there was some logic behind the advice—or if they were all copying each other or an unknown bizarre source.

Of all the strange suggestions he encountered, though, his mind kept going back to the implications of one in particularly. Namely, the seemingly widely-accepted fact that people didn't actually come into this world capable of processing mana and accruing [Toll] without harm. It was believed to be a gradual process—that value did increase with age, being the sum of someone's age and their Circulation, but not once had Anselm considered it starting at zero genuinely meant people were born with no protection at all.

As far as he could tell, the consensus was that it all fell back to hidden Acclimations—an otherwise fringe theory. It was ridiculous to think people might, at all times, be slowly building up a tolerance to something that could not be sensed.

…But people could train themselves in ways that didn't always translate to visible numbers. Exercise could improve the values of Stamina and Endurance, yet it would condition people beyond that. Physical effects were not entirely dependent on what everyone could see on their attributes panel, and vice versa.

If I've learned one thing, it's that we barely know anything about how our bodies work, Anselm mused. More than once, he'd considered taking a blade to himself to see if he could find any physical evidence of his channels' formation—being unable to feel much pain and able to heal even from deep wounds had a way of making one reckless.

Not that he'd actually gone through with it yet. It was an idea.

The crux of the theories lay in the thought that children were born defenseless to magic, but rapidly developed resistance to it via those hidden Acclimations. Ambient mana was an amalgam of countless forms of power that might have appealed to many an Affinity had they not being entangled beyond recognition, but they theoretically retained enough of their nature to be a problem to genuinely magicless mortals. Gradual exposure to mana had been a practice since the ancient times, with justifications for it varying by culture, but more than one book about newborns emphasized the importance of it.

So what did this tell him about Benedikt? …In truth, not much. If nothing else, it made Anselm realize just how uninformed he was about how childrearing worked. The reasoning behind that kind of tradition wasn't something he'd ever considered.

The speed at which these hidden Acclimations increase may vary from child to child, meaning what is safe for one may not be safe for others of the same age and background.

By the time he was done, the closest thing to a conclusion Anselm could reach sounded outright stupid—could Benedikt somehow have a problem developing hidden Acclimations? That made no sense, though.

He was mortal. Even if hidden Acclimations truly existed—something Anselm was still not entirely sold on as the explanation for why exposure to mana had to be gradual—Benedikt had no particular reason to have a problem with those. Having potential was not a requirement for existing—if it was, ambient mana would be killing mortals left and right.

And Benedikt was Bernadette's son—this wasn't something he could somehow blame on Katrina. Probably.

That left him staring at his empty desk after he was done analyzing everything, countless ideas swarming him as he continuously failed to find a satisfactory answer. He felt undoubtedly close, yet… not.

Anselm closed his eyes. It was a stretch, but the dream had let him get a general idea of Benedikt's situation—it could be directed to this extent. So he did just that, focusing on the idea of learning more, and dizziness overwhelmed him, a sensation of swimming matched by the tang of the sea upon this nostrils. He fell into a half dream just then.

Without truly thinking, he summoned a harvestable from his inventory and allowed his borrowed power to flow into it, feeling the very world flutter as he did so. Unlike when he revealed that locket for his niece, this took much out of him, leaving him feeling ill by the time a small piece of parchment formed before his eyes. He let it plop down to the desk—he hadn't felt this terrible since he'd been at Gertraud's inn, and he was fairly certain he had died at least once that day.

Resting his head upon the desk as if weeks of exhaustion were catching up to him, Anselm wasn't sure how long it took him to return to awareness. He blinked, his vision blurry, and slowly steadied himself between gasps. Even knowing he wouldn't like what he saw, once he could, he reached for his panels, if only to know just how much this had cost him.