Thekla Rīsanin—self-professed only sane member of the alleged House Rīsan—was debating the viability of stealing a man’s tiles. They wouldn’t even prove difficult to remove from the audience room.
If the kind of things she’d heard about the mayor were true—and that, she found herself having no real reason to doubt—it might take the man ages to notice if a wall was missing a tile or two, should he ever noticed at all.
No, the issue would be prying them off without making it starkly clear to any onlookers that she was stealing tiles from the city hall. She’d already used [Save Reference] to commit those gorgeous patterns to memory, but the material threw her off. It was shinier than any tile she had ever seen—perhaps it was merely alchemically treated to look that way?—and Thekla had no way to learn the details without direct access to one.
The pattern might have worked on any tile, but this was the sort of thing one just needed to see firsthand before judging, and she was not fond of the idea of making a habit of visiting this place. Stealing some tiles would spare her the concern of ever needing to return, too—in more ways than one. The idea was tempting.
Still, her plan relied on the mayor seeing her—fair, tear-stained, and dressed in such a frilly dress—and abandoning all common sense. Thekla could not afford to court failure by acting as anything other than a desperate gentlewoman, even if her heart yearned for stealing those tiles.
Could she simply go through the proper channels to seek information on Beryl’s whereabouts? Perhaps.
But why bother, when everyone who’d ever so much as heard of the mayor of Beuzaheim knew him to all but melt into a puddle at the behest of those he found attractive?
“Johann! Why didn’t you tell me our guest was so fine?” the mayor’s ‘whispering’ voice carried further than he probably intended as he neared the half-open door that lead to his seat. He had quite an earsplitting voice—and Thekla’s Perception of 554 certainly didn’t help his chances at subtlety, either. Whatever the attendant said in response did not cross the distance.
She knew better than to use [Identify] within such a location, but her [Peripherals] Skill told her the mayor was hollow core, likely quite some steps into his path. He felt weaker than her own father, even if the comparison was unfair—Kristian Rīsan basically put pressure out by merely existing, and that had little to do with his rank.
Thekla’s eyes narrowed as the mayor approached. Why am I even surprised? Too many people have described him this way for it not to be.
And there was now no doubt in her mind—the man deserved to have some tiles stolen.
Baldur Maryen slithered his way into her field of view with a lazy smile, a single foot setting on the steps that lead to his thronelike seat. His shuffling to straighten his doublet made whatever impression he was trying to give increasingly unclear. “Hello, darling.”
You don’t even know me and you’re already calling me ‘darling’? Wave take me.
“Greetings, Your Honor,” Thekla gave him a nod, launching into her prepared speech of all the hardships she had to face. It was beyond ridiculous, but the man would never do his due diligence. She could afford to be as dramatic as she needed to be. “I have traversed many a perilous road to seek an audience with you, and—”
“By the waves!” the mayor looked aghast as he plopped atop his seat, raising a hand to cover his mouth. “Tell me, darling, what might I aid you with? To have taken such risks in coming here, you must be in dire straits.”
I’m almost impressed—he truly is like this.
“That is unfortunately the case, Your Honor,” Thekla suppressed a smile as the later steps of her plan became feasible sooner than she had foreseen. “My sister has gone missing, leaving my family distraught. Her daughter cries every day, unable to comprehend her mother’s gone.”
A child as young as she probably doesn’t remember its mother, Thekla understood, but this idiot doesn’t know anything about my niece, let alone her age.
Thekla took a step closer, clutching her chest, and none on the mayor’s retinue made any moves to push her back. “I know not, what shall I ever do! The guild had neither answers nor people to see a search through. My family’s in shambles, and I fear we may never recover. The loss of one so dear to us is too heavy a blow to us—to me.”
Baldur’s expression softened further, sparkling eyes filled to the brim with apparent pity. “That is such a tragedy, especially for one as young as yourself. Are you left with the burdens of caring for the child?”
“It is a collective effort, Your Honor. I have no Skills for the matter, but my step-mother has kept us afloat,” Thekla shook her head and ensured her words flew close to the truth. “My heart is far too broken for me to move on so long as my sister remains gone from my side.”
She’s only been gone for literal years, after all…
The mayor actually getting up to place a hand on her shoulder was unexpected, but she didn’t miss a beat as she leaned in, fluttering her eyelashes. Clearly, the rumors had indeed been correct. It really was this easy. “Please, Your Honor, could you lend your aid?”
“Naturally!” he squeezed her shoulder with a smile. “I’ll have my men looking into it immediately. Worry not, darling, we will do everything in our power to find your sister. Do you intend to linger in these halls while the search is underway?”
…Aren’t you going to ask for my sister’s name, at least? For mine?!
“You will have my infinite gratitude, Your Honor,” Thekla leaned back, closing her eyes and letting out a shuddering sigh. “But I fear I must retire for the night as soon as you are so kind as to dismiss me—I must return to my family’s estate with utmost haste, lest they grow concerned over a prolonged absence.”
“But it is so late! It is well within our purview to provide lodging to those in need, darling, especially to a gentlewoman such as yourself. Should you wish to await the results of our search, you would be welcome to. We have space aplenty here in the hall.”
“Unfortunately, Your Honor, my family is incredibly strict when it comes to these things, especially after my sister’s disappearance. They could not endure even more heartache should I give them reason to worry.”
“Oh, of course,” Baldur released his grip on her shoulder. “Abelard! Take this fine gentlewoman’s details! Consider seeking her sister a priority. Now, Miss…?”
“Rīsanin.”
“Yes, now, Miss Rīsanin, I will be sure to personally keep you up to date on the situation.”
“I thank you, Your Honor—my contact inbox shall accept any messages you send.”
Unless they’re unrelated to Beryl.
Thekla gave him a sad smile in reaction to the subsequent silence, and Baldur nodded after a few blinks. “Oh! Of course, darling. You are dismissed.”
“Thank you once again, Your Honor.”
It wasn’t lost to her that the man seriously hadn’t asked a single thing about Beryl—this assistant of his would likely be the one she truly had to speak with. Such was the way of things.
Your [Persuasion] Skill has improved! 13 → 16
You have reached Level 66!
This new Skill is already paying off…
Thekla looked over her shoulder. Can’t believe I almost forgot! “Your Honor…?”
Baldur all but perked up. “Yes, darling?”
“I was wondering if I could have something to remember you by in these daunting times…”
----------------------------------------
While his second-oldest daughter busied herself with the ridiculous task of attempting to sway bureaucrats into helping with any search efforts, Kristian was working on the sort of approach that truly worked when it came to obtaining results.
“Please!” the lanky tillman whined as his own foolish struggles pushed him closer and closer to falling to the waters. “I have no idea where she is!”
“Is that so?” Kristian gave the lad a look of pure boredom. He didn’t believe him for a second. “You, who once courted her, have no clue where my daughter could be?”
“We met like twice! When we were nineteen!”
“Precisely! Soon before she vanished! And if not you, then who would she entrust with the details of her destination!”
“I! Don’t! Know!”
And so it continued. Kristian was getting frustrated. None of Beryl’s ridiculously numerous contacts would grant him the answers he needed, yet someone had to be in possession of them. It irked him to no end, and his Presence clamped down on the unfortunate tillman, who broke into a sweat.
With a sigh, Kristian withdrew it after a couple more heartbeats. So many had known Beryl, yet none spilled her secrets. None outed whoever else might know, leaving him with no choice but to seek all of them. He knew the common masses tended to be—for lack of a politer term—stupid, but they couldn’t possibly be ignorant as to the fate of one who used to foolishly frolic among them. Often.
It was bothersome.
Almost as bothersome as letting the boy go would be, seeing as Kristian didn’t intend to slay the kid. It would not bode well for him.
Again, those who worked the land served their purpose. Unnecessarily culling their numbers would only hurt society—and him, by extension. Kristian had often been accused of many things, but needless self-sabotage did not figure among them.
Ever attempting to have a worthwhile conversation with this boy had been a complete waste of his time, as had all his previous attempts at discussing the matter with other peasants. The only thing he had learned after weeks of work was that the common folk were clearly far worse at communication than Kristian had anticipated.
Producing a hook, he sliced through all but one of the ropes binding the boy, leaving the one around his left ankle uncut. He gripped the long end of one, holding the tillman’s weight on one hand, and swung, sending the boy flying in the direction of the farmlands. Even a youngling with low Endurance should walk that off with little more than a bruise or two. There might be some panic were Kristian to go anywhere near the inhabited areas, so this was the easiest way to ensure the tillman was returned to his people with as few hassles as possible.
Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.
It did not take long for him to start hearing the shouts of who he guessed were the tillman’s fellow workers, even from this distance. Too many of them yelled at once for their words to be even remotely comprehensible.
You have murdered a Level 47 acquaintance! [N/A {} - N/A {} - N/A {} - N/A {}]
Oh, sky father.
Kristian groaned. He could almost already hear the complaints about this coming, even if he doubted anyone would be able to pin it on him. Just because he could dismiss them didn’t mean he liked getting them.
People could be incredibly whiny.
----------------------------------------
Shiny.
Since he walked in, Adelheid’s dad had been making a lot of loud noises, though Adelheid didn’t get them. He was so loud, stumbling into things with his hands. He was supposed to open his hand if he wanted to pick things up, but he just kept making them fall with his closed fists. So clumsy. Still, everything got quiet once Adelheid did a good job hiding.
And the things her dad had thrown at the table looked so shiny. Circles. Round but flat things that looked like but weren’t her mom’s set of cups. She wanted some. The system would tell her what they were if she checked but she just liked them by themselves.
That Presence thing her sister had asked about buzzed more and more. Adelheid had been sad she couldn’t answer about that one, but she didn’t know how. It had too many numbers, more than she knew to count.
With her prize going poof into her inventory, Adelheid left.
Her sister would love this.
----------------------------------------
“…What are you doing this time?”
“Why would I be doing something?” was Hanne’s retort as she slammed the tool further into the dirt. “Hm?”
Anselm did not break eye contact.
“Indeed, Hanne, the mortal asks a valid question,” the coachman chimed in, poking his head out from the wooden vehicle—as he often did when the opportunity arose to aggravate everyone involved. “What are you doing?”
That was Anselm’s cue to turn to the elusive man who’d commandeered Hanne’s carriage. “You have yet to tell me why you are here.”
“You have yet to grasp it isn’t your place to ask,” the coachman shot him a look before fading back into the floating carriage, his presumable quest to provoke both now complete.
“Ignore him,” Hanne finally got up from scrapping the dirt with a chisel. “Sea above. I got nothing.”
“Got nothing from…?” Anselm wouldn’t deny he was curious.
Hanne sighed, running a hand through her hair as she dismissed her tools. “It’s…an old technique, let us say. My Intuition told me there might be some roots with healing properties in this area, but they are too deep for me to truly sense them. Shuffling flowerless dirt should have confused the attribute, extending my range.”
Anselm figured that would be as close to an explanation as he would get. By now, if he learned the world functioned in an entirely different way to Hanne, he would not be surprised in the slightest.
Woeful truth that it was, he was mostly just feeling quite irritable on account of remaining unable to do things himself. And between the increasing frequency of Hanne ‘convincing’ him to try new healing infusions and the stranger that seemed eager to follow her whenever they were beyond his family’s estate, Anselm struggled to find anything out of the ordinary anymore.
That wasn’t as comforting a feeling as it should have been.
“Are you sure he is…meant to be here?”
“Unfortunately.”
Sighing was all Anselm could do. His feet dangled from the hovering carriage, his grip on the threshold firm. These breaths of fresh air were appreciated, but the constant worry that he might get shoved out kept him from truly enjoying the experience.
A part of him still couldn’t believe Hanne had one of these, even if he’d already known her standing among her people was supposedly enviable. It seemed too fantastic a contraption for her to be using it so wantonly, refusing to allow him to walk while they partook in The Harvest.
It all just made him feel more useless than he already had, though that was not to say Hanne’s behavior was a sudden thing.
Ever since his reaction to the tonics had left Anselm in need of weeks’ worth of bed rest, Hanne had been acting as though she had committed some grave sin by being involved in the event. His friend barely let him breathe at times without inquiring as to his status, and while he appreciated it, a bone-deep blend of resignation and lethargy retained its hold on him. Some days, he spent asleep in their entirety.
It felt like an eternity ago, when he’d told her about the dreamlike visions he’d experienced while under those tonics’ influence, about the broken notifications he’d witnessed but could never truly recall.
It felt like an eternity ago since he had come to the realization that he kept neglecting to tell her about the blessing. It slipped his mind every time, and enough time had passed that Anselm had grown warier of it. His thoughts simply wandered from it, not something he would recognize in the moment, but he could identify it in retrospect. The opportunities he got to try and speak to her of it, alone, had been few and far between this month, but…
“Are you unwell?”
Anselm shook himself awake. What had he been pondering just now? He blinked a few times before meeting her gaze. “It is as always. I feel a bit warm and lightheaded but otherwise fine.”
He found his grip on the wooden threshold was such that the lack of splinters on his fingers surprised him. Falling sleep like this was dangerous, yet a frequent issue. For all he wouldn’t voice it, a part of him found his situation humiliating, in its entirety. Anselm had been used to spending most of his days standing in the workshop, either brewing or experimenting to his heart’s content.
Constant muscle cramps and the ubiquitous dread of unpredictable bouts of weakness was something he refused to get used to, yet could no longer deny the reality of. He zoned out, or was overcome by dizziness, far too often to feel safe being alone when carrying errants out anymore.
The carriage was still likely overkill for these tasks, however.
“Again,” Hanne had gotten closer without making a sound—or perhaps Anselm had been too out of sorts still to notice. “My grandmother’s recipe.”
Through a squint, Anselm eyed the green liquid. “Are you lifting these phials from your grandmother, or have you been telling your grandmother about me?”
“The former,” Hanne said as she pressed the phial to his lips. “Were I to tell her I was involved in, uh, certain reckless experiments, my ear would likely double in size from her pulling it.”
Anselm couldn’t help but accept the phial of dubious origin. He worked to gather himself as quickly as he could, then drank. Had he attempted to delay her any further, she would have likely found away to tip it down his throat herself.
It was bitter and salty, enough to elicit a scowl from him. It did take the edge off his daze almost immediately, and was entirely devoid of any tastes he could identify even with his Skills.
He almost asked, but stopped himself. Growing up around Hanne kept him from taking on his father’s typical wariness of the ways of her people, but he still tried to avoid prying. Hanne sometimes acted like she might get put on trial for half the things they’d done in the workshop, and Anselm wasn’t convinced her attitude was as much of a joke as she claimed it was.
“Will you let me harvest?” Anselm looked back at Hanne. “If you keep insisting on me remaining up here, I might develop a complex.”
Hanne sighed, hovering back to the ground. Her gaze met his from down there, and after what felt like minutes, she leapt back up and extended a hand to him. “We don’t have much time left. If I so much as catch a glimpse of you looking like you’ll pass out, we’re returning to the estate immediately.”
“Fine.”
There was no point in arguing—Hanne wouldn’t let him get a word in edgewise if he tried.
In her grasp, Anselm felt almost lightweight as she lowered him to the path. Her
attributes were likely high enough that he wouldn’t be surprised if he was lightweight to Hanne. She remained standing behind him as he moved to crouch.Kneeling was unpleasant. Anselm worried his knees might buckle, nevermind that they were already touching the ground. Something lesser than pain, closer to physical unease, went up to his hips and down his calves. He would have gone as far as to swear he heard the bones of his toes make popping noises as he settled.
Hanne’s insistence that he might be overexerting himself fell on deaf ears—he had to try.
Leaning forward, he reached for the nearest dry flower, his fist closing around the petals. What remained of the flower turned to dust under his hand as a plain, ceramiclike disk formed on his palm.
Unknown Harvestable
Claimed by Anselm Rīsan
This disk represents an item attained during The Harvest. Accrue [Toll] to reveal its corresponding item. Results may be influenced by a variety of factors.
He managed to harvest more of these—nowhere near as many as he could have in the past—but had yet to reveal any of them. Hanne had offered some of hers before, but he did not intend to get to seeing it done unless he had no choice.
There was an uncanny feeling to it. Whether or not it was related to the blessing, Anselm didn’t know. But he had an inkling revealing any of these himself would carry consequences.
Sending that one to inventory, Anselm harvested another dead flower, then another. Each time, a faint tingling brushed against his skin, so faint it might not have been real.
Another consequence of that ill-fated day.
According to Hanne, if he’d had attribute increases unlocked, his experience might have netted him thousands of points to his attributes, if not tens of thousands. He was starting to suspect she knew more than she let on, but that was always the case with Hanne.
I just know it will turn out she stole what she used for that tonic from her grandmother or something equally unfortunate, Anselm tried to push those thoughts away. No use on dwelling upon the past.
Hanne clearly blamed herself—Anselm wasn’t oblivious enough to ignore that.
But he wasn’t blameless himself. At the end of the day, he had decided, willfully so, to drink those tonics. He had known he would be opening himself up to far more magic than he could handle, and he had known Hanne used something she should not have. The issue had been that the sea should never have meddled as it did—not that that changed the fact that it had.
Anselm had chosen to make that attempt at gaining an Affinity. No one had forced him to go through with it. The consequences were his to deal with. Yet as he harvested more, his thoughts lingered on the matter.
He nearly jumped out of his skin when Hanne put a hand on his shoulder. “We have to move. It is warming.”
Anselm need not be told twice. The Harvest was nearing its end. He almost stumbled back when he stood, knees tense, but Hanne moved to keep him from falling, until he regained some semblance of balance. He’d only managed to get a new dozen or so, but it would have to do.
Anything was better than nothing.
And it isn’t as though I’ll actually reveal these anytime soon…He kept telling himself.
He joined Hanne on the carriage’s edge as she helped him settle, looking out through the upper wicket once she’d closed the rest of the door. The coachman remained unseen, but they flew up.
The area they had just fled grew orange in hue, the warmth intensifying to be felt even all the way up here. Anselm grit his teeth, but bore it. The Fire was the type of season one didn’t travel during, and as the first hints of flame began to rise from the fields, he gasped.
He could have sworn he felt the warmth under his skin shift in tandem with the growing flames. The sound of a snort shook him from his thoughts, but Hanne was already craning her neck.
“Quiet, you.”
Hanne had probably used the coachman’s name. How that worked was another thing Anselm refused to pry on—superstition was enough as it was, and he’d witnessed it firsthand from how some people who didn’t know Hanne spoke.
Most of the estate’s staff had a shred or two of decency at minimum, so it sufficed to say most of the incidents had been in Beuzaheim.
Indeed, no one spoke a word as he and Hanne exited the carriage, crossing the wards without a word. The coachman and carriage remained behind, soon to disappear as they always did.
Hanne gripped his wrist, stopping his stride to the manor. “I…I am sorry.”
Anselm blinked. “For what, Hanne?”
“He is rude beyond words,” Hanne said, meeting his gaze. “You do not have to put up with it.”
“As much as I would love to, arguing with a mage would likely hinder my chances at recovery.”
“He serves me,” Hanne insisted. “When I next visit home, I will exchange some strong words with him and his father.”
Anselm frowned but said nothing as they continued to the manor. Hanne also helped him up to the workshop without a word. Beyond anything else, he was conflicted. His feelings about, well, everything were awfully muddled.
Hanne had grown angrier, more volatile, ever since what happened to him. Not once had any of that been directed at him, but it still caught him off guard. Had Hanne always been like this, merely hiding it well while they worked? Or had she become like this, and was consciously trying to suppress this new attitude while interacting with him?
For what felt like the thousandth time, Anselm reminded himself not to pry.
If his tonic-induced maladies had taught him anything, it was that sometimes, giving into curiosity could do far, far more ill than good.
----------------------------------------
Though warded, the glass shook—it might have been wise to deem this vantage point too unsteady to last him the full month. Taking another sip of his tea—rendered scalding from proximity to the manifestation of The Fire—Otto Rīsan smiled.