Kristian Rīsan would not have been conceited enough to state he had seen it all, but he had seen much. Zayden had enemies aplenty, from all walks of life, and their short years as a party had them traveling the country most of the time.
None of his experience prepared him to deal with the fact that his wife was undoubtedly having what the Champion Saint would have dubbed a ‘panic attack’, and everyone appeared to believe it was his responsibility to solve this.
“This is my fault,” Bernadette said between sobs. Her hands covered her eyes and most of her cheeks, where ruined makeup ran like waterfalls of tar. Any other day, the woman herself would have dubbed this disgraceful—today, she appeared unwilling to even rise from where she sat. “If I’d died with them, no one else would be in danger, no one else would have to deal with them. Why did I have to survive?”
Kristian watched in abject befuddlement.
His second daughter was glaring at him. “Do something!”
He stared back at her, gesturing over that which he could not say aloud with his wife right there. What do you expect me to do?
Thekla’s glaring did not desist, and Kristian could only huff back.
“Bernadette,” Kristian started, placing a gloved hand on his wife’s shoulder. Her disheveled hair was at risk of getting tangled around the rougher edges of his gauntlets, but he wasn’t going to take those off just because she was crying. “I doubt the Saint would have sent anyone after you after so long. Their quarrel was not with you.”
“But why else, tell me! Who else would call the sea upon us, if not for one who sought to finish the job after so long!”
“It was long enough ago that I doubt they remember you, dear,” Kristian assured her. “If there is indeed a sibyl around, it is more than likely to be for unrelated reasons.”
“Which unrelated reasons, Kristian? How often do we attract the ire of the sea in ways that aren’t my family’s past?”
Kristian couldn’t help but notice his eldest son staring off into the distance right then, and he almost scoffed at the boy—well, grown man. He’d gotten lazier and lazier over the past few years, complaining about feeling unwell. His wife believed him, but even his seafarer friend had disappeared, so Kristian was convinced he’d just given up on alchemy—his literal only talent—and just refused to address the fact that he might have to pick something else up as a hobby to fill his days.
“Her concerns are valid,” Thekla admitted, if a bit carefully. Kristian shot her a glare, which was promptly ignored. “But I find I agree with you—it was your family’s Affinities that had that Saint call the sea upon them, wasn’t it?”
“It was,” Bernadette confirmed. “But… no one else here lives with such a cloud over their head. If there is indeed a sibyl around, who else would they be here for?”
Thekla sighed. “I… I don’t know.”
The assistant to the mayor stood nearby. Well, the former assistant to the mayor. The man had gotten the axe for ‘fraternizing with a citizen who sought their office's aid’. It would have served him right, as far as Kristian was concerned, had the ‘citizen’ in question not been his daughter, and had the event not led to her all but officially moving him in.
As much as Kristian wanted to blame this on the staff or on his wife’s paranoia, it had been Thekla and her uninvited paramour who first brought this matter to his attention. The forester Bernadette had hired—who was currently displaying some concerning levels of confidence with how he moved and spoke around them—confirmed the presence of the same old man the other two reported.
An elderly man, hunched over, and so wrinkled he could be mistaken for a bleached tree, who would appear out of thin air and start asking questions about sibyls. Sibyls were no subject for polite conversation—for any conversation, really, beyond warning people of them.
Worse yet, the forester claimed the old man was some type of projection controlled by someone inside their very estate. Kristian would have dismissed the possibility—who in their right mind would invade his house?—but his wife seemed to truly believe this man knew what he was talking about. He wouldn’t argue—he couldn’t deny this alleged old man existed, or had at least been sighted within the estate borders.
That meant this was now a problem Kristian would need to fix, one way or another.
His time would be better spent hunting said old man down, yes! Not here! Why couldn’t Thekla handle Bernadette’s sensitivities? It had been years. One would never catch Kristian bemoaning the fate of the rest of his party after so long! Those were old wounds by now.
“Are they here yet?” he asked of a random employee nearby, a man with an admittedly well-groomed ponytail.
“No, sir,” the employee shook his head. “We sent word as requested, but it will still take your men some time to make it all the way from Beuzaheim.”
“It’s not that far,” Kristian countered.
“It’s over an hour—”
“None of that! I could run there in fifteen minutes!”
“Well, father,” Thekla said with an honest-to-the-Devils yawn. “Why didn’t you run to Beuzaheim and pick your men up, then?”
Kristian stared back at her. He knew his mouth must have flopped open and closed like that of a fish, but he momentarily lost all sense of control out of sheer shock that she’d actually dared speak to her own father like this.
“She’s got you there,” Alaric said, his head poking out of a corner.
This proved to be the exact segue Kristian needed to reset the status of his jaw, as he narrowed his eyes, meeting the rather unruly boy’s gaze. “You. Where have you been? This estate is in disarray.”
Alaric frowned. “What did you do this time?”
“What?” Kristian snapped back. “What do you mean, boy?”
The boy in question simply slunk back, hiding behind the wall his head had been poking out from.
“Come back here, boy!”
His son did not return. Kristian grit his teeth.
Just what was it with his children nowadays?
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
It was like nobody respected him anymore.
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The lady of the house was not the only one convinced this entire situation was somehow their fault. In Veit’s case, he thought his concerns were arguably likelier to be valid. He had encountered one such sibyl mere months ago, and he had done nothing. No, despite his suspicions that it was probably related to his own past actions—his near taunting of the sea after relinquishing Pola’s obit—he had kept quiet, doing nothing.
Was this merely the natural progression of that? He had erred, and so the sea was out to get its pound of flesh, regardless of who stood in its path.
Veit considered leaving, but thought better of it—if he was in fact responsible for this, he had to ensure no one else got caught in the crossfire, no matter the consequences. He had already broken more of his own rules than what he could bother count, even revealing one of his constructs to the curious children inside.
That had been nothing short of an embarrassing mistake—he had been so confident in his ability to track the strange man’s projection that he put little effort into subtlety, and he suspected he would be seeing the consequences of that if he survived.
In truth, even if the sibyl’s presence were not to be a result of his actions, it would still have been his responsibility to pursue the intruder—such matters technically fell under his purview as the mangal’s guard. Poachers in search of harvestables and stray outlaws were closer to the expectation of the type of target a forester might encounter, but this still fit.
Assuming there even is a connection between the man and the sibyl, Veit had to admit he had kept his knowledge of how there definitely was a sibyl around to himself. He had simply told the lady of the house that some strange man had been asking about sibyls, and that he feared this might point to the presence of one such fiend.
He had been considering coming up with an excuse to warn the family of the sibyl in the mangal for quite the while now, so this was incredibly convenient. Or it would be, if he could get past the tension of it all. Veit felt surprisingly out of his depth here.
Not only had the projected man been a surprise, but his own inability to track him openly was cause for concern. Could the sibyl somehow be affecting his senses?
Veit shook his head. There was also the matter of his promise to the eldest’s child. He had detected a passing similarity between the faint aura she gave off and the tether that held the false man in place. Chances were, whoever was responsible for the projection had noticed she had Affinities and done something to leech off her passive mana absorption to fuel and obfuscate their work.
He’d give her some tips on how to protect herself—the girl did seem quite smart, after all. Were it not for her age, he would have considered teaching her more. Though he knew not what exact Affinity she had—if it was only one—it must have been quite powerful for her to passively gather enough mana to reach the peak of the Early Esse so young.
The contrarian side of Veit wanted to ask the girl whether she knew. He’d approached her when he caught her trying to get harvestables—to what end, he knew not, considering how rare it was for children to be aware of their system before they were either older or in the Mortal Esse—but the girl had mostly ignored him, as if his mere presence were a terrible annoyance.
It reminded him of why he hadn’t had more kids in so long, after all. The little pests could be quite bothersome.
He had been completely truthful when he said he’d watched over her to ensure she encountered no monsters out there—mostly given his awareness of the sibyl—but curiosity had played a part.
As Veit continued his patrol of the area where the mangal met the more robust treeline, he could have sworn the leaf piles that collected under the shade were slowly shrinking. It took a few rounds for him to notice, but by the time he did, it was undeniable.
What in any Devil’s name?
Granted, this estate was strange. From whichever bizarre rules of household management the lady of the house followed, to the wide fields where harvestables collected, this place could oftentimes feel like a fever dream. Still, it was mostly a matter of setting and mannerism, not actually anything about the place itself.
Most of the time, anyway. But every now and then, something like this would happen, and Veit would find himself wondering whether this place was actually under the effect of some magic left behind by the fell who once dwelled upon it.
He checked on the offending spots a few more times, only to find the piles had not shrunken any further. Through narrowed eyes, he examined them as he stepped closer. They did not appear to have even been disturbed.
Sighing, he returned to his route, which had become second nature after nearly two hours. There was no way for him to be tired right now, but perhaps he was stretching his mind a bit too thin. Between his concern over whether the sibyl might cause collateral damage, his own responsibility for its presence, and the nonsensical appearance of the old man, he was sending off so many probes through the estate that he could barely process their results.
Revealing himself as someone in the Tree Veins was not something he truly intended to do, but he wasn’t the only Tree Veins here—he might stand out, but it wasn’t unthinkable. Besides, he had not claimed to be at any other stage. Veit had barely introduced himself at all.
The lady of the house had her suspicions, in any case.
Closing in on the third hour, Veit found himself growing frustrated at the lack of progress. Not finding the sibyl was good—for who would ever wish to come face to face with one?—but that did little to alleviate the fact that she was still out there and now everyone knew that.
Veit wondered if the girl would ask why he’d left. Her companion had seemed curious enough. Both were at a higher level than he would have expected of toddlers, but early talent could present itself in all walks of life. Still, Beryl Rīsanin’s daughter was the truest outlier. He was incredibly tempted to question her as to how she reached that level—if she even knew.
At that level, she must have had Skills—
Veit froze. It seemed like an obvious conclusion, and he’d suspected it, on some level. He had simply not actually followed up on the thought before.
Save some obscure methods to gain auxiliary levels before even walking, the only way for someone in the Early Esse to have dozens of levels would be for them to not only have at least a handful of Skills, but to have leveled them past quite a few thresholds.
And if the girl had Skills, that meant he had no guarantee someone had to be leeching off her mana. The girl could have been creating the projection herself.
It was at times like these when Veit slipped into the manner of speaking he had learned from all the Champions who kept crashing his father’s studio in his youth—because why the fuck would the girl be creating projections to impersonate some random old man?
Veit was at a loss. The simplest solution was often the right one. What was likelier—that he had indeed somehow ended up in the incorrect location when he tried to track the projection because someone not only found the girl’s aura but used it to tether a projection, or that the girl had indeed done it herself? It had been her signature that he detected on it, as far as he could tell.
The idea of a four-year-old doing it still seemed ridiculous. Why, exactly, would she have been talking about a sibyl? Why would she even know what a sibyl was?
Then again… the girl was observant enough to recognize he had said something of interest when he referenced the estate’s history of fell presence. He had been assuming it had been out of that curiosity that often drove children to ask questions about everything, that intrinsic need to receive an explanation for absolutely everything they heard yet didn’t understand.
But what if–if, if—the girl had known what fell presence was, and she had been asking about it with regards to her own family’s estate? It was a bit of a stretch, but the more he thought of it, the more Veit found himself wondering if he had been misreading her this entire time.
Not only that, but even their interaction a few hours ago would look quite differently through this lens. She could have been a child confused by his appearance, speaking of something else because she knew not how else to react… or! She could have been deflective!
It’s really gotten to the point where I’m honestly believing a child has been running circles around me. He must have really fallen off the wagon throughout the years, not keeping sharp, if he actually allowed himself to be fooled by someone so young. Her hypothetical motivations were the only thing he couldn’t make sense of—even if she did do this… why?
He shook his head and took a deep breath, despite not needing to. It seemed he would no longer be meeting up with the child to give a lesson on how to suppress the natural impressions of mana one gave off.
Veit was honest-to-the-Devils about to confront a four-year-old about whether or not she had been walking around pretending to be some inquisitive old man.