It only struck Malwine that she must have really put the estate on high alert when Anna Franziska of all people showed up on their room, carrying a table not unlike those that the ill might use for eating in bed. She’d balanced a pair of bowls and drinks on it, which barely survived the process as she set them down on the floor.

Even the maid herself let out a sigh of relief once it became clear nothing was about to be spilled on the floor.

Malwine’s thoughts were mostly elsewhere, however—Bernie rarely let them have meals up here because she didn’t want the room dirtied. If they were having one of the meals here instead of the dining room…

“Anna Franziska?” she started, pouting. “We aren’t going downstairs for this?”

“I’m afraid not,” the maid winced noticeably despite her attempts to keep her tone even. “We’re dealing with a bit of a situation out there, so you’re going to have to stay up here for a while.”

Adelheid stood, leaning forward with her hands on her hips. “Why? What’s happening?”

“It’s just a little discussion the adults are having in the gardens, I’m sure everything will have settled down within the day.”

“A discussion?” the little girl frowned. “About what?”

“It’s just some stuff…” Anna Franziska inched closer and closer to the door by the second, as if the woman were seriously considering simply fleeing on the first chance she got.

Adelheid, for her part, did as she did best and just disappeared.

Anna Franziska blinked before turning to Malwine. “She’s gone. Where did the child go?”

“Probably wherever it is people are having the discussion you wouldn’t tell us more about,” Malwine shook her head with undisguised disappointment.

“It’s true—it should be resolved within the day!”

“But, Anna Franziska,” Malwine tapped the floor before her. “What would get you more curious? Hearing that the adults are having a conversation, or hearing that the adults are having a conversation no one wants to tell you the details of?”

“I suppose the point you raise is fair,” the maid conceded. “I stand by my words, however.”

“Good for you,” Malwine shrugged. “We intend to nap after the meal, so please tell people not to bother us. Have fun with your discussion.”

Anna Franziska flinched as if the words had hurt, but she scurried off with a nod. Malwine felt slightly bad about it after seeing that reaction, and she doubted Veit would show up if there were any witnesses around, but she’d overestimated his tact before.

----------------------------------------

“It’s just about the old man you showed up as,” Adelheid informed her once she had returned. Her disappointment was palpable, but a bit out of place. “I thought it’d be some fun secret.”

“Did you hear anything about the other sibyl?” Malwine sighed. She’d been assuming her Rupert projections had started a search with the purpose of apprehending the mysterious old man, and she expected the questions about sibyls to get some attention, but she hadn’t foreseen everyone getting this hung up over it, even if it made sense in hindsight. Her family paid so little mind to the staff that she’d sort of been hoping there was still a chance she could get away with it… then again, dismissing it within sight of others had likely not been the best idea for that.

“Great-grandma’s friend?”

“Yes. She’s still out there.”

“No, I didn’t hear them mention her. Is that bad?”

“Not really,” Malwine told her little sister. “But she could still be a problem. We can’t just calm her down like your great-grandma.”

Mostly because I only had one ridiculous candle. That, and I don’t want to ruin the mangal.

“I see… I still feel a bit sad, though.”

“Why, Adelheid?”

“I used to… I used to think if she was grandma’s friend, someday she could be a friend too.”

“I doubt that. She’s a sibyl. From what I’ve read, she’s bound to be trouble at some point.” …I try not to fall prey to generalizations, but come on. These are zombies we're talking about.

“I guess…”

Malwine motioned for her little sister’s untouched meal. “Eat. I’m going to meditate for a while.”

In more senses than one.

Now that she was back to a simple state of waiting for something else to happen, Malwine found the day catching up to her. She regretted nothing, but if she hadn’t lived through it, she’d have struggled to believe what she had done.

Did she feel bad for lying to Adelheid? In a sense, though again, she would not apologize. It had been necessary—just because she could relate quite well with the girl, didn’t mean she could ignore her responsibility to protect the actual child from things she was better off not knowing.

As far as hopefully destroying OHeidi? She had no regrets about the act itself. Instead, she mourned the loss potential. Had things not gone this way, the sibyl—through Adelheid’s ability to obtain unspoken answers—could have served as a great source of information down the line. The same went for the candle, really—though Malwine refused to speak of that aloud.

What the fuck was that thing?

She’d sent her double off in silence to examine her handiwork, and the iridescent flames were still burning bright down there. OHeidi was no longer anywhere near identifiable, and the rest of her would likely be gone soon. That certainly spoke of the Epic rarity candle’s power, considering how the corpse was that of someone who’d been at a high rank in life—if Malwine understood attributes correctly, that should have made her quite hard to actually destroy in full.

Had she really been thinking just throwing some leaves at the thing and starting a fire would be enough to actually reduce her to ash? No—she had barely been thinking at all, then. It’d been a plan born out of desperation and time constraints. Now that she was more at ease, it was possible to acknowledge that.

For the third time so far, she visualized her double—this time, however, she sent it off with [Nosy Old Lady] instead.

Malwine wished for nothing but to see just what she had sacrificed that candle for. Perhaps it was simply the aesthetics of it that had her convinced it might have even been overkill—perhaps the flames simply looked that way because they had come from a harvestable.

As with the first time she got caught out during The Fire as her double, the flames danced harmlessly around her. All they truly achieved was impairing her vision. She walked through them, her hands moving despite herself as if to push a portiere aside. The flames flowed, folding in on themselves as they rose and dissipated. It was a mesmerizing sight.

When she found that which she sought, she allowed [Nosy Old Lady] to reach out—immediately, Malwine got a sense of confusion from the Skill. It reminded her of how none of her Skills seemed to know what to do when she tried to use them on Katrina’s absent father, responding with uncertainty.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

This time, however, something gave. Malwine started getting an impression from the crumpled heap against the wall, the stubborn remains of OHeidi. It was, without a doubt, the echoes of {Implicit}. There were no traces of {Missing} anywhere to be seen—perhaps that had come from the side of Bernie’s mother.

And beyond the flaming corpse, she could feel something else. Something her Skill considered alive, but could not parse. Malwine pushed anyway, intent on understanding just what had caught her attention. She caught glimpses of waves breaking against rocks—of shells and salt and stars and skies—and had to take a step back with an involuntary groan as chills passed through her intangible body.

[Nosy Old Lady] had disabled itself and refused to answer her call when she tried to bring it back up. She examined her surroundings through narrowed eyes, raising a hand and watching the flames dance, completely unaffected by her double’s presence.

Strange as the thought was, Malwine found herself wondering whether she could mimic something like this for her core. It easily beat the fiber optic look she had going on.

Dismissing the double, she returned to her bed. She could do with a nap, despite understanding she probably wouldn’t be getting it anytime soon. She wasn’t particularly looking forward to a conversation with a guy who’d somehow tracked her double, but with her priority of dealing with OHeidi relatively solved for now, it was hard to keep her thoughts from straying back to that.

The matter of the other sibyl also gnawed at the back of her mind. She wasn’t in an enclosed space—hell, they didn’t know where she was. By Adelheid’s own admission, she hadn’t been able to find her when she searched for her. So how were they supposed to deal with her?

If she couldn’t be found, and Malwine had no idea as to how to get rid of her, she would just be out there. Waiting, lurking, anything—this would haunt her.

As she continued pondering the matter, Malwine found herself having a revolutionary idea… should she just tell someone?

She knew the sibyls constituted a threat to her and Adelheid—or at least, OHeidi had been. The second one felt more like a threat by implication. But Malwine didn’t feel equipped to instinctively know whether the remaining sibyl was also a threat to, well, everyone else.

And chances were, she very well could be.

The more she thought of it, the harder justifying a path of silence felt—not that it made the idea of revealing anything any less daunting. How would she even go about it? There were still far too many things Malwine hadn’t told and likely never would tell Adelheid, let alone anyone else.

I guess bullshitting Veit is always an alternative.

And a frankly appealing one at that, considering the alternative would be telling anyone the truth. Making some shit up and blaming it on Beryl would probably work, but she’d still have to iron out the details. She summoned a panel in silence and started making some notes. Everything had to be rooted in reality, mostly so that she could keep the lie up if she happened to forget something.

Truth:

1. My first memory in life is being in stasis.

2. I’m level 64.

3. I can’t hide the fact that I have Affinities since he knows, and has a way to tell.

4. My attributes are lower than they could be.

5. The reason I know about the sibyl is Adelheid.

Bullshit:

1. Having been in stasis is the reason why I’m ahead of my age in Skills, and no, I don’t know how that works.

2. My core stage comes from stuff my mom did, and no, I don’t know how that works either.

3. I don’t know why I have Affinities since I don’t remember my parents much beyond Beryl being the cause of everything.

4. But! They could probably be passed off as normal attributes for a young person! Probably!

5. Due to my mother and the circumstances of my birth, I have access to some sources of information I likely otherwise shouldn’t, and so I somehow know there’s a sibyl out there.

Hey, Mom, if we ever meet… sorry in advance.

That last one needed some work, but it sounded good enough to her. Blaming anything and everything on Beryl was already close to what Malwine was pretty sure everyone had already been doing about her oddities anyway.

“Hey, Adelheid,” Malwine started. “When Veit comes back, can you go to the hallway and make sure no one gets close?”

“Okay!”

The girl was lounging on her bed, much like Malwine herself was. While her little sister was trustworthy, there was only so much utter bullshit Malwine was willing to expose her to. If she was going to lie to a guy and try to make him solve her problems for her, it might be best to keep Adelheid out of it.

Her lingering concern—well, the main one—was how easy to fool the guy might be. Malwine had to admit she was better at making sure people had no idea what she was talking about than at actually making them believe anything specific.

But if she was being realistic—she might have been best served assuming it would be an uphill battle. Abelard might have been at the same stage as this guy, but the glimpse she'd gotten of Veit's power told her they were far from equals, even before accounting for what Adelheid said.

Yet chances were, he might just be coming here to lecture her about safety—just as he said. Maybe it would be some delayed complaints about her walk outside during The Harvest, maybe he wanted to warn her about the mysterious old man everyone kept looking for.

Perhaps Malwine was overreacting…

…and yet, the threat the remaining sibyl posed remained.

It was subtle, a low hum so bizarrely close to white noise that Malwine doubted she would have felt it had she not been paying such close attention to [Unpacifiable]. Hell, before OHeidi had that unfortunate meeting with the world's weirdest candle, Malwine hadn't even noticed the second sibyl had any effect on it.

This wasn't something she could try and ignore.

Her… her best hope was to take control of the situation. But for now, all she could do was wait.

----------------------------------------

As soon as she caught sight of the forester's stupid crystal kite door thing forming, Malwine took a deep breath.

“Adelheid,” she whispered without turning to face her little sister. “Go.”

Telling the girl what to do felt odd, even if they’d quite literally agreed to this earlier. She’d gotten more than a bit attached, clearly—she almost wanted to yell at herself for sounding like she was ordering Adelheid around.

Even if it probably only sounded that way to her.

That revolutionary idea to, well, just try communication for once had taken root, and Malwine would see it through. Despite her efforts, she didn’t see any other way to resolve her current problem. ‘Problem’. Understatement of the century.

There truly was no justifying silence, at least on this subject—and speaking in earnest would require revealing some of the cards up her sleeve.

Malwine could only hope she chose the right ones.

In the few seconds it had taken Veit to enter, Adelheid had disappeared. That her movement outshone a level 400’s ability only made Malwine even more annoyed at how little praise her little sister got from the family—even if her tendency to seemingly pop in and out of existence annoyed them, it was still good!

“Malwine Rīsanin,” the forester greeted her in a neutral tone, though from his expression, she suspected he expected a reaction. Perhaps children in this world also assumed they’d done something wrong when adults started using their full names?

“Hello, ‘Veit’,” Malwine replied. She smiled—a slow, deliberate movement. “If you want to have a talk, go back to your little hidey hovel or wherever it is you kept running out of near the mangal.”

That had obviously not been the reaction the forester had been expecting, his grey eyes widening. “Pardon?”

“Out. Now,” Malwine did not allow her sweet smile to falter, tipping her head. “I will go too, but you first. Wait for me.”

Veit stared at her—silent—for a drawn-out moment. She kept her gaze even, only mildly disappointed he hadn’t complied immediately out of shock or something. Ever since Adelheid managed to get her to pass her utensils before she even realized the girl had teleported in, she desperately wanted to pull something like that on someone else.

At last, the forester spoke through narrowed eyes. “I will wait an hour.”

Do I look like I own an hourglass?

It hardly mattered, still, when Malwine meant to simply send the double off. She tried to focus on his bizarre kite this time, to see if she could grasp anything from it. As much as she liked to praise Adelheid, whatever made the girl’s power detectable was absent here. She could see thin animal bones rise from nowhere in particular to build the frame of the construct—the portal?—just before a rainbow of colored crystals filled in the blanks.

Something about it was jarring. Malwine noticed as much as he left once again. The style honestly didn’t fit him—there Veit was, looking like he went to a safari in business casual, while his magic would have fit right in with a baby’s first attempts at doing a mosaic.

Malwine inhaled slowly, clenching her fists by her sides. She closed her eyes.

Her double went off, as it had so many times before.

It was simply her, this time around.

Malwine resumed smiling as Veit caught sight of her. “Now we can talk.”