Malwine visualized her core as if she were in it, shooting the representation of {Legacy}—specifically—a pointed glare.
You up for some ‘interceding’, buddy? I could use some backup on the bullshit here.
It was an Affinity, and as such, unfortunately incapable of replying to her. But it could clearly exert some influence on the way the usage of her abilities went, and she would really need that now, seeing as what she wanted to do felt about as mechanically possible as breaking a trial to get an obit had been.
She almost pulled back, but turned to {Foresight}. And you? Are you worth all the trouble you bring?
Malwine wasn't even sure at which point she'd decided bullying her inanimate Affinities was the way to go, but she'd roll with it now.
It was surprisingly cathartic.
Besides, she had entirely valid reasons to stare judgmentally at either Affinity—at {Legacy} for the precedent and at {Foresight} for existing.
Still, she'd take any help she could get, even if it came from things she wasn't even sure could react to what she wanted.
Retreating from her core, she pulled the panel for [Earthless Glory] up.
[Earthless Glory]
As the stars dance in the sky to show us that which we never will be, so must we appreciate that which we are not, for only then may we truly know ourselves. Create a form of customizable appearance to act in your stead. You must actively control this double, while your real self remains at rest.
Distance between your real self and your manifested self must be traversed by it unless you are familiar with the target location. Your double may only access one Skill at a time, if any, and must be dismissed and recreated should you wish to change your selections for it. [Toll] will be accrued to create and sustain your double.
Trait: None Aspect: None
[The Things We Do For Family] soon joined it—the Skill still had {Legacy}’s color shrouding it.
[The Things We Do For Family]
May your fondness for dragging the past back from the brink be as timeless as the legacy that fuels it. When done with the intent to restore, sustain, or directly learn from an antecedent, bypass restrictions to system-controlled actions. Said actions must be feasible for you, individually, to begin with, before restrictions were applied. Eligibility is subjective. You gain an instinctive grasp of how to best apply the Skill to an eligible situation, the effectiveness of which is determined by Perception.
Trait: None Aspect: None
Her idea was relatively simple, really—the only real roadblock was that it was technically impossible, because of [Earthless Glory]’s restrictions. That was where the other Skill came in, her literal bullshitting Skill.
Malwine spent minutes in silence, focusing on little else but her desire to get that location restriction to momentarily forget itself so she could try out something dumb.
Whether this counted as self-motivation or just psyching herself up, she wasn't sure. It might have even been self-delusion, but as the phrase went: if it works, it works.
The old Adelheid, now a sibyl—however that works—is a threat to me. A threat to my family.
It was almost ridiculous to her—she was so caught up on the whole ‘might be out to get us’ aspect of the sibyl that was presumably in a basement somewhere, that she hadn't had the time to properly consider the revelation that the sea casually had zombies as agents.
Malwine was infinitely curious as to how that worked, and how dear OHeidi ended up becoming such a thing. Unfortunately, knowing the how wasn't something she could afford to prioritize right now.
Even getting confirmation that her doubles could be traced hadn't fazed her as much as it should have.
The double she imagined shaping would be a stylized version of the widow—who she might have been if she had exercised for once in her life. A simple dress with sandals and a mask covering the whole of her face, long straight black hair to her hips. She would be young, not that it might be noticeable beneath the mask. And to this double, she would attach [Shieldwork].
Malwine wasn't sure why she felt the need to make a good impression here. OHeidi over there probably wouldn't care.
I nicknamed her because Adelheid already has dibs on the name, but I wonder. Sibyls are of the sea. Do they also have a thing about nicknames like seafarers do?
Before she went on another overthinking tangent, Malwine called on [Multitasking], commanding a part of herself to incessantly poke at [The Things We Do For Family], even if the Skill remained inert.
Then she sent it off—her new double.
As it formed, all around her was pitch black. There was a cold humidity to the air, palpable even to her false body. Malwine grit her teeth, summoning a shield around the fingernail of her left index finger. Before it could settle, she expanded it, moving it to cover her fingertip, then the finger's second bone, ending at the final one before the knuckle.
She shrunk it in a reverse of that pattern.
The sensation was bizarre, as if she were fiddling with a sphere that rolled up and down her finger, but it ultimately achieved what Malwine hoped it would.
She had no Skills to illuminate her surroundings, nor could she send a light with her double, but she could draw out the shield's phase of obnoxious glowing. It was something she'd noticed while practicing with Adelheid. It helped that, given the size, the [Toll] cost of repurposing her shield activation into a blue-purple flashlight was negligible.
It did make actually examining her location into an admittedly trippy experience, but it was good enough to work with.
The first thing she noticed were the puddles, and she kept her distance. The place just smelled vaguely damp, with walls that looked intentionally carved given their flatness, despite bearing a sheen that belonged in a cave. The ceiling did not look that much better, with various leaks and cracks. Trying to make out the coloration of anything would have been a hopeless endeavor.
The room wasn't particularly large, and it had no doors—where one might have once stood, a wall of metal rose, conspicuously covering a corner.
Malwine sighed. Why am I getting Katrina vibes off this?
She could have been wrong—this could have been the work of an entirely different metal-wielding mage. Maybe!
As it turned out, the only reason she hadn't seen you-know-who yet was because it was on the floor. Her first thought was that Adelheid must have either not been seeing anything because of the poor lighting or entirely too innocent to make sense of the full picture.
Because this was just a corpse.
Malwine moved around carefully, avoiding the puddles despite this only being a double. She examined OHeidi from different angles, her brow furrowed.
The sibyl's right arm was broken and pinned slightly behind her back, bone visible where it must have snapped. She was indeed missing a leg, with the other bent just as awkwardly as the arm. The left one was pinned to the wall.
Coin-sized spots seemed to poke out from her skin, uneven reflective surfaces in all of them. Three were on her pinned palm while half a dozen dotted the rest of that arm. Too many to count poked out from her torso, some seemingly going right through the other arm.
The vast majority of them seemed focused on the head, however. From the forehead to the jaw, an innumerable amount of them had pierced her skull. One had gone through an eye, leaving the sibyl with only one—it appeared milky even in this lighting, as if a film had grown over it.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Her hair had been light in life, and clumps of it were scattered around her, as if her mane had been shredded at points by the storm of spikes that stuck her to this wall. Even then, it was still long enough to reach her knees with its longest remaining strands.
There was no way around the fact that she had been nailed to the wall, no other way to phrase it. Malwine winced despite herself. Perhaps if she had her full faculties as this double, she might have felt ill at ease. But as it stood, she felt rather numb.
It was just a shell. This was what constituted a threat to them. Not once had it moved or reacted to her presence.
Still, Katrina—because who else would it have been?—must have kicked its ass for a reason.
Wasn't Katrina at Core Integration? Malwine had seen her grandmother kill several of the seablooded during the trial, all of which had been on that higher silver rank. She could only guess this sibyl must have been at a higher one.
It was really starting to look like Katrina had made a habit of fighting opponents one or two ranks above her.
No wonder she died, Malwine concluded, only to immediately feel guilty about thinking it. But it's true!
She examined the sibyl from afar for a time. It looked bony enough to be mistaken for a mummy. She'd someday need to have a good, long talk with Adelheid about what living people looked like, because this wasn't it.
Malwine was regretting her lack of truly offensive Skills now more than ever before. Katrina seemed to have succeeded at immobilizing the thing, but she suspected nothing short of obliteration would make her feel safe.
She checked the room for any sharp rocks lying around—anything she could use to separate the sibyl's head from its body permanently, as fiction in the widow's Earth often did for the handling of the undead.
There were none. That might have been a small mercy, given how hard explaining that to Adelheid would have probably been.
The ‘just set the bitch on fire’ approach was also a no-go, for similar reasons—Malwine couldn't find a single thing around she knew how to start a fire with, and that was without getting into how humid the place was.
She sighed just as she detected movement in the corner of her eye. It was instinct that drove her to expand the shield to its full size, and it settled just as she landed on her feet, having jumped back.
A veritable wave slammed against the shield, far stronger than anything Adelheid had ever thrown at her.
[Toll] 26 → 49 Your [Shieldwork] Skill has improved! 27 → 28
“That's it, I'm setting your golden ass on fire. Just you wait.”
The sibyl did not react in any audible way, and the wave faltered soon after its initial assault, its dim glow fading to darkness. With her shield now serving as, well, a shield instead of a flashlight, Malwine found she could no longer make anything out.
With little else to gain from the endeavor, she dismissed the double. Her real self somehow felt so warm compared to where her double had gone that she was momentarily disoriented, despite how little sense that made.
Notifications greeted her.
Your [Earthless Glory] Skill has improved! 4 → 5 Your [The Things We Do For Family] Skill has improved! 2 → 3
If she’d known taking this type of risk would be all it took to level her most confusing
Begrudgingly, she looked within her core again, and gave her Affinities an appreciative nod. Thanks for backing up my bullshit.
As always, they did nothing but silently exist as she addressed them. Malwine huffed at them.
Reopening her eyes, she glanced at Adelheid. The girl had somehow found ribbons to attach to her new braid. You’re so underappreciated, my friend.
After some brief consideration, Malwine concluded it might in fact be a good idea to not inform Adelheid of her great-grandmother’s status as a corpse nailed to some wall in a basement. If her little sister had misinterpreted that as literally anything else, perhaps it should stay that way.
Shaking her head, Malwine thought back to everything she had just seen. The dead sibyl had been a jarring sight—but nothing more. The fact that she could act in some ways, however minor, was more cause for concern. Seeing Veit could trace her doubles somehow, Malwine was glad she’d managed to get [Shieldwork] to protect her in time. Double or not, she’d rather not let suspiciously glowing water get anywhere near her.
Somehow, Katrina had known about this sibyl—not only that, but she was the reason why it was stuck somewhere under the estate. Sometimes it starts to feel like Katrina was living a life completely unrelated to that of the rest of the family.
She allowed [Remote Reading] to move out, then. The fact that it successfully bridged the distance between her and the library in Beuzaheim—which she’d yet to even physically visit—was nothing short of impressive. Then again, this was one of her bullshit otherworlder Aspects.
First landing upon a cookbook, Malwine started the slow process of all but canvassing the area. She hoped—prayed—that unlike the family’s library, this place had some semblance of organization to their collections.
That did seem to be the case, to her eternal gratitude. She went from cookbooks to plant-identification books, even stumbling upon a book about the different beliefs on the best strategies to prepare yourself to reveal harvestables. Far too many of the books were things she would have absolutely loved to read on a slow day, and she had to keep herself from going any deeper than a passing glance—she felt like she could lose herself reading these books for hours.
Her next stop were artifact books, and what appeared to be some surprisingly detailed archaeology guides, followed by something about… jewelcrafting? This library was a strange place.
Malwine wasn’t even entirely sure as to where she would find information about sea creatures. She wasn’t looking for a specific category so much as hoping to stumble upon something that gave her a ‘oh, yes, it could be here’ type of impression.
And nothing so far had.
She moved on to find books about jewel identification, rock identification—Katrina would have loved that—and metal identification—actually, Katrina would have loved that too. Next up were metalworking and blacksmithing guides, labeled as basic, and some stuff about choosing and appraising crafted gear.
From crafted gear, it went to crafted items and harvested items, which in turn led her to books about The Harvest, including everything from guides on how to find and attain access to places with harvestables, and again, strategies on revealing them. A parade of books about the different months followed, in no apparent order. The last of them, as far as books went, was The Rain, and that led to even more hyperspecific books about how to protect yourself during The Rain, because regular umbrellas—which existed—would not cut it.
Malwine felt like screaming at points, but by then, she’d searched for too long to give up by now. I should have just gone in person instead of visiting the archive first…
She wished she could grab the shelves to shake them until something useful fell out.
Just then, after the third guide she skimmed on which materials could withstand being outside during The Rain, she hit the jackpot! Or more specifically, she felt she was getting close, as a book on how to keep objects safe from seawater showed up. If the progression of these themes had taught her anything, it was that whoever organized them had a thing for sorting them by vague relations in their topics.
Some quasi-medical tomes followed, touching topics such as how to protect yourself from seawater in general, how to treat what they dubbed seasickness, and even how to avoid pissing off the sea. Buddy, that ship has sailed.
And all of a sudden, there it was.
> A Compendium on Sea Maladies and That Which Dwells Within.
Malwine narrowed her eyes as she started perusing its contents, as if squinting her eyes would somehow help with her comprehension of the words that were being projected directly into her mind.
It was borderline encyclopedic, listing various creatures thought to be related to the sea as well as various afflictions believed to come from exposure to seawater. It rated seasickness on a scale, detailing the treatability of some conditions and outright marking others as doomed. It also offered what was formatted like an overly vague code of conduct for avoiding the sea’s ire, where half the rules read like gibberish to Malwine. ‘Speak not of the tide when the moon below faces the East’. Excuse me, what?
A somewhat strange section—which bordered on mythology—was where Malwine finally found some mentions of sybils, with regards to how they could be dispatched when someone either pleased or infuriated the sea. The main body of the text was what caught her eye the most, though, for it did offer answers to some of her lingering doubts.
> Formed from the lifeless bodies of individuals taken by the waves, sibyls represent a horrendous fate for those who become them. As their bodies do not collapse into obits, it can only be assumed their souls are destroyed in the process. Their hollowed-out bodies show no signs of life and do not appear capable of much independent thought. They, however, do not decay like animal corpses might. Limited reports claim that if injured, they do not recover from said injuries, but few are willing to explore the subject further, as using violence on sibyls has been known to cause individuals to incur the sea’s wrath.
>
> Sibyls are not always female, but a disproportionate amount of them are. They are also rarely made out of anyone whose core was any less developed than the Formation of Tree Veins stage, implying the sea might have some preference for stronger vessels. Immortal sibyls are rarer in comparison to Tree Veins ones, but they surpass the number of Core Integration ones by a decent margin, according to limited statistics procured by the Dehydrator Champion.
Procured by the what?
> No guaranteed method for repelling any sibyl on a mission is known, though history proves they can be immobilized, and—by extension—cut off from the sea after a time. Sibyls kept from the waves for too long lose mobility and become inanimate. It is unknown whether returning a sibyl reduced to such a state to the sea would restore them to a functional state.
>
> Fully destroying the body of a sibyl has been employed as a last-resort method to remove them as a problem, but this is naturally difficult—sibyls are already made from the bodies of individuals who were incredibly durable in life, and while damage they receive remains, actually harming them in the first place can be an uphill battle. The recommended course of action should immobilization prove impossible is the reduction of their body to ashes through whichever method is possible, as quickly as possible. Preventing it from returning to the sea is of utmost importance.
>
> Getting an Immortal with a {Fire} or similar Affinity involved to destroy the body is highly advised.
I knew it, Adelheid. We should set her on fire… as soon as we can figure out how to DIY that.