Knowing when something had gone wrong wasn’t always enough to understand why it had gone wrong.
Adelheid was still off doing whatever it was she did these days—presumably, she was up to the usual toddler misadventures with some teleportation thrown in. Malwine was alone in their room, for now, and she couldn’t be gladder.
After all, this gave her the freedom to pace around the room for nearly an hour without being forced to answer any questions.
As much as she wanted to believe [The Way of the Clave] had come in clutch for her, the fact remained that, during the trial, she’d been riffing hard. Malwine didn’t often find herself having respond to a situation she knew nothing about—for fuck’s sake, the most prominent example in her recent memory was how the widow had made Margaret Smith talk around in circles on the day of her death.
She puts me to shame, Malwine sighed before flinching. My past self puts me to shame.
While she saw no issue in referring to the widow as, well, the widow—for her past life’s name remained lost to her—there was simply something wrong about the idea of treating the widow as a person different than herself in truth.
Even if she’d been having her doubts as of late.
Bernie trial, Bernie trial…
Malwine pushed her thoughts back into place, focusing on the matter at hand. Certainly, the trial hadn’t been going well, but none of the reactions she’d gotten out of the stranger seemed the type to evoke disaster. Her portrayal of Bernadette wouldn’t have held up to scrutiny, but she’d managed to avoid setting off any alarms, as far as she could tell.
No, the trial had ended when she moved away from that room. Had it been meant for a specific setting? Was that it?
That was among the first possibilities that came to mind, and the one Malwine found the likeliest, for it simply made sense.
Her mistake had been asking to be led to her chambers. In changing the setting, she must have somehow made it impossible for the trial to continue, therefore earning herself yet another ’fail’.
Unless it was because I didn’t drink the tea? The intrusive thought hit her like a truck. Malwine had all but forgotten about the tray once the old woman had started basically dropping bombshells on her. If it was the tea, I swear…
Bernie having been engaged to one of her uncles was something she hadn’t quite expected—Kristian marrying a random 22 year old made perfect sense, but him marrying one of his kids’ betrothed?
There was no going around it. Who the fuck does something like that?
Still, the pieces clicked within her mind. Bernie and Anselm were around the same age, and they’d clearly been close at one point.
Malwine couldn’t decide whether she didn’t want to know how Bernie’s marriage affected the father-son relationship there, or if she would very much want to find out, preferably while procuring a nice bag of popcorn.
Can harvestables reveal into items from other worlds? Malwine found herself hoping they did—she certainly wouldn’t pass on the chance to get herself a non-perishable bag of popped corn that she could keep around, waiting for a fitting moment. She eyed her Luck as well as her Affinities, still unsure was to which was the most responsible for her harvestable reveals so far. Wink, wink.
With that near-daily ritual of attempting to influence her panels through pointed glances done, she got the rest of her questions sorted.
Who was that woman? Was she close to Bernie? It would have been awfully convenient timing for it to be Hildegard—and on brand for the system, to boot—but this wasn’t the type of thing she could guess without actually seeing the woman in the real world. As for Lord Bernard and Old Martin…
Yeah, no clue.
Then there was the matter of Katrina. From her trial for the woman herself, Malwine knew this Metalbreaker title must have come from her grandmother’s
Class, and despite how she had most people convinced she was mortal, even retainers of Bernie’s house called her that.Sometimes I feel like Katrina was trying to play 4D chess with the world itself… Malwne exhaled slowly—while she could guess why her grandmother tried to maintain secrecy, given how she hadn’t even planted a {Foresight} Root, it was still quite annoying to be on the receiving end of it. Hell, I don’t think even Mom’s siblings know about her.
However she managed to get found out by the definitely-elves, it must have been quite the tale, and Malwine fully intended to ask about it when she resurrected Katrina.
Assuming she managed that at all.
Failing the trial for Bernie—probably directly because of her choices as opposed to any of the reactions she garnered within it—had left a bitter taste in her mouth.
Despite herself, Malwine found herself wanting to start another trial. It wasn’t as though anything was stopping her, and {Legacy} hadn’t acted up this time. That willful prick of an Affinity probably saved its aid for special occasions.
And with that out of the way, Malwine had no true excuse to continue refusing to use the Trait.
But if she did this, which trial was she supposed to go for? A new one, or a repeat of any of the old ones?
An older one sounded easier—she’d know what to expect. And considering her foul mood after practicing with [The Way of the Clave] and failing the Bernie trial, she had no desire to listen to Teach go on about seafarers and how she should never plant {Foresight}.
Malwine brought up the panel containing her notes from her trial for Kristian, the one which—most of all—felt like it had happened a lifetime ago.
Timeline:
Scene (school courtyard?) 'loads'
--Might have some spare time here--
Kid shows up with the stolen barnacle
Kid tries to distract(?) the headmaster and gives me the barnacle thing
--Might have some spare time here--
Headmaster drags me back inside
The Magister is waiting for us inside
Need to find out:
What's up with the barnacle?
Who's the kid?
Sea likes to eat things?
Why does Hanß exist? Just why?
Is violence the solution?
Indeed, since then, she’d even managed to find herself some answers, yet she hadn’t taken the time to note them down.
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The boy almost definitely been Zayden, and the sea did indeed like to eat things.
I wonder if violence could truly be a solution for this one… Malwine recognized she was a bit too eager to try.
But there was an easier option, one that both allowed her to avoid unwanted conversations and didn’t require her to try and see if her new Strength would somehow make a different inside the trial when it came to Hanß’s facial bone structure.
Namely, she could avoid Zayden and his whole thing with the barnacle. She could avoid Hanß.
No, the trial failed when the Magister noticed something was off—that meant the man had to be important.
The trial for Katrina had involved her death, but only after {Legacy} took the reigns. The central moment must have been meant to take place in the orphanage.
[Once and Forever]
Aspect: [Mana Reclaimer]. If you can prove within reason that someone you could inherit an Affinity for a Mana Source from possessed a specific Mana Source, you may make the Affinity your own. Affinities from famous ancestors of a rarity higher than
The Trait demanded that she prove her worth—Malwine hadn’t put much thought into it before, but the events within the trials must have been important. Maybe they were pivotal moments in each person’s life, or simply relevant to who they were.
The conversation with maybe-Hildegard must have mattered to Bernie. Speaking to Teach must have been meaningful to OBeryl.
And whatever happened that day in the orphanage, with Zayden, the barnacle, and the Magister, must have affected Kristian in some way.
Malwine felt more and more confident about trying again, the more she thought of it. She wasn’t about to get her own hopes up about actually succeeding at the trial, but it seemed like the perfect setting in which she could search for more answers about Kristian, given how badly her attempts for Bernie and her family had.
And her ego desperately needed a win right now.
So she rushed through it, barely giving the flipping index cards a second glance as she locked in on the one she wanted.
To her perception, no more than a couple seconds could have passed between her dropping into the scene [Imitation Beyond Filiality] used as its staging area, and the courtyard where the barnacle incident would soon unfold.
Avoiding the confrontation seemed like a natural choice, as the guy who was probably Zayden would drag her into his troubles if she waited for him to show up. Malwine suspected that, on whichever memory this was based on, Kristian hadn’t known what his future party member had been up to—Zayden hadn’t reacted as if Malwine’s confusion had been out of character for Kristian, after all.
That left her to conclude there was no real prior arrangement for them to meet up, at least not in any way related directly enough for it to trip the trial up if she moved away.
That meant running off was fair game.
Malwine had two options, as far as destinations went. The trial location clearly had boundaries to it, so she couldn’t actually leave the orphanage, but she’d noticed the sump had some vague forested area behind it.
The other option was to, well… try and get into the building before Zayden showed up with the barnacle. That would unfortunately require her to either use the sole door—risking encountering him along the way—or somehow figure out the swiftest way to break through a jalouise window.
I never thought I’d ‘say’ this but holy shit, trying to leap over the hungry sea sump might be the easiest route… Malwine squinted. Wait a minute. Why the hell is the sea down here in this scenario?
She could hear the frantic footsteps by now, and was spurred into action. The rocks around the sump had quite the convenient placement, enough that someone as reasonably athletic as the young Kristian had been could step over them…
…not that Malwine had access to her grandfather’s coordination.
She grit her teeth, taking another uneasy step. The rocks weren’t overwhelmingly slippery, but they had a sheen to them that had her shoes skidding against them.
It might have been her desperation that got the better of her, but she came dangerously close to plunging into the sump each time she caught a glimpse of the waters. They bubbled—had they always done that?—not unlike how they had when shed tossed the shattered barnacle in the first time around.
When she finally reached the other side of the cave, Malwine rolled through the grass in a landing that would have probably impressed a real kid her age. She’d take pride in that, if nothing else.
The shifting lights above did not illuminate this section as well as the courtyard, and all he could make out within the cave were the silhouettes of leafless trees.
Out of curiosity, she leaned against the cave wall, inching closer to the sump until she could see the door, now ajar. Shouts were audible.
“How dare you! After everything we do for you, keeping you off the streets!”
Zayden was on the ground, sobbing, while Hanß stood over him. “You cretin, you!”
Damn. Malwine hissed out a breath. Why’d you have to go and make me feel bad about ducking out?
Not that she’d return or intervene. Maybe that made her a coward. In a sense, she wanted to remind herself that this was a trial, and none of this was actually happening.
The only reason she didn’t was that she honestly wasn’t sure if she wouldn’t have done the same in the real world. For all she enjoyed barging into situations, this wasn’t the type of confrontation she could actually do anything about. She’d gain nothing and likely be harmed along the way.
Sorry, Kristian’s friend, she thought anyway, before averting her eyes. Someday, if and when she grew strong enough to, she’d kick Hanß’s ass should she get the chance to.
A loud noise—as if something had snapped—had her attention returning to the courtyard so swiftly that she could feel the whiplash on her neck.
One of the walls appeared to have been smashed in, a twitching foot visible as it poked out from the rubble. Hanß stood up a second later, almost stumbling. His glasses were gone, his hands balled into fists as he looked to the cowering Zayden—who was now caked in dust—then to he who stood between them. “What is the meaning of this?”
“I should be asking you that,” the Magister replied, seemingly uninterested in meeting the other man’s gaze. He twirled a burgundy curl around one finger, rocking himself back and forth—his feet shifted between tip-toes and flatness. “An institution of care, tasked with rearing destitute children, calls upon me when their only natural treasure goes missing. Never in a million years would I have expected that would require me to educate the staff instead of solving the mystery.”
“Magister, this boy is who we have been searching for,” Hanß hissed out. As he clutched his back, it became clear he was not as unscathed as he previously appeared. He doubled over, hitting the ground again, but that did little to stop his tirade. “The thief responsible for stealing the barnacle!”
Not for the first time, Malwine found herself wishing she knew just what in any Devil’s name the barnacle did. It was apparently some type of treasure—from context, she would have guessed it had something to do with cultivation—but that clarified nothing.
“And?” the Magister raised an eyebrow. “A boy of what, eleven or twelve, proved such a challenge to retrieve the natural treasure from that you had to resort to violence?”
“I have the barnacle. But he needed to be taught a lesson!”
“I see,” the Magister grew still, his mannerisms shifting to pure neutrality. He turned to Zayden, and the boy flinched. “Go to your dormitory and seek your nurse, boy—class is dismissed, for your teacher needs a refresher on how lessons are taught.”
The future Champion Saint, to his credit, wasted no time getting the fuck out of there, and she couldn’t really blame him.
Malwine, for her part, was burning with curiosity—and maybe more than a little bit of glee at Hanß getting what he deserved.
“Get up,” the Magister ordered. Malwine flinched—if she had been so much as sitting, she felt she might have found herself standing up, as if the command had permeated reality itself. She desperately wished she could have used her [Identify] in here.
This guy had to be on OHeidi’s level. Not that it helped her in the end, I guess.
Hanß barely managed to keep himself on his feet. He had obeyed, certainly, but he swayed, looking closer to a puppet held by poorly placed strings than a functional man right now.
When the Magister had started grinning was beyond her—he seemed to have switched from deadly serious to something worse between one blink and the next.
Overjoyed as she was by Hanß’s fate, her heart still skipped a beat the next time the likely Immortal spoke.
“Now, for myself and our audience, tell me, headmaster: how dare you?”