[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 on an individual basis. 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, once upon a time, and speaking to Teach must have been meaningful to OBeryl, enough for it to be the setting of this trial even now that OBeryl herself was permanently gone.
And whatever happened that day in the orphanage, with Zayden, the barnacle, and the Magister, must have affected Kristian in some way. She wasn’t sure if she could go as far as to guess it had been a formative experience for him, but it had to be important.
Just what she was supposed to ‘prove her worth’ to was an unknown, but it couldn’t be to her relatives themselves. Maybe to her Trait or her Affinities, capable of some limited actions as they were? Or was there another force at play here, judging her trials? Either was an option, really. And if it is the latter, I will find a way to yell at it soon enough.
All in all, it meant the trials couldn’t possibly be as restrictive as she had once feared. So long as she didn’t unknowingly break any rules again, she could be free to do as she wished.
That meant the only thing left for her to do was try.
Indeed, 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 at learning more about Bernie and her family had gone.
And her ego desperately needed a win right now.
Besides. Even if I fail, I can always try again. A year didn’t hold as much weight as she’d have thought—not anymore. And [Unpacifiable]’s warnings remained muted, distant, solidifying her belief that there was no need to risk burning herself out out of urgency. It wasn’t as though she could slack—she would not allow herself to—but she did not to get everything done immediately.
Malwine would need to wait years to be grown in the first place, and the life extension that cultivation brought forth certainly took the edge off it, at least. She could probably get away with repeated attempts at every single trial and still have finished them all by the time she was an adult.
It didn’t hurt that they likely contained information she could only get through them—after all, what better way to learn about her family members than from scenarios likely constructed from their very memories? She wouldn’t complain if she succeeded at getting some extra attributes—even if they’d be a drop in the ocean once the curse took effect—but she’d try and squeeze some extra information out of them if she could.
That was what it took for the last of her indecision to tip over. She rushed through it, barely giving the flipping index cards a second glance as she locked in on the one she wanted. That sketched portrait of Kristian looked different to her, on the glimpse she caught of it—it depicted him with loose and slightly longer hair, now.
To Malwine’s 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. Walls rose from nothing and steadily gained form, the scene coming into focus. Again, she got the bizarre impression of it rendering in.
Before it was done, Malwine was preparing to move. Kristian’s body in this memory was young, entirely lacking the musculature she’d caught glimpses of, but he was considerably spryer than both the widow and Malwine’s current true self.
Avoiding the main 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. Kristian hadn’t been expecting Zayden to show up with whatever the barnacle was, let alone chased by Hanß.
That meant running off was fair game—with no obligation for her to remain where she was, the trial was unlikely to unravel just because she moved.
Malwine had two options, as far as destinations went, if her goal was to learn more about the place itself. Even the name of the city would have been a great clue. The trial location clearly had boundaries to it—so she doubted she could actually leave the orphanage—but she’d noticed the sump had some vague forested area behind it.
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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 jalousie window.
What tripped her up the most, however, was the matter of how accurate anything she saw within the building was. She assumed the setting was memory-accurate, sure, but… would they actually have useful documents in here, with information Kristian himself hadn’t known?
The trial must have been filling in the gaps given the age of the memory anyway, but that sounded like a stretch. Kristian was unlikely to have had any knowledge of what documentation they even had there, and while finding something like that would have matched Malwine’s own preferences, she got the impression the trial was trying to keep her focused on either the Magister or the place itself. The building nearly looked like an empty shell, save for the single area she’d crossed the first time around.
I never thought I’d ‘say’ this but holy shit, trying to leap over the hungry sea sump might be the best route… Malwine squinted. Wait a minute. Why the hell is the sea down here in this scenario?
Aside from OHeidi’s puddles, she couldn’t recall ever hearing of seawater actually being where water should be—namely, not floating above in lieu of a sky. It struck her that, for all she knew, this might be more common than she’d thought, and she hadn’t considered because she hadn’t encountered it before.
That matter would have to wait, however. She could hear the frantic footsteps by now, and was spurred into action. Even her own timeline for the trial had warned her that she’d only have one or two moments of free time between events—they’d likely be her only chances to act.
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, if he had any to begin with.
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. Kristian had at least apparently worn boots when he went out to the courtyard, and she was grateful for that—her limited exposure to the types of things people wore in this world told her she might as well have gotten lucky his footwear was of the practical sort.
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 she’d 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. She’d even managed to avoid falling on her face!
The shifting lights above did not illuminate this section as well as the courtyard, and all she could make out within the cave were the silhouettes of leafless trees. For all she’d decided this was her best shot at situating herself, she hesitated—the visibility sucked enough that she feared her footing might be even less guaranteed than it had been while she crossed the sump.
Partly out of curiosity, partly to give herself time to gather the courage to move forward, Malwine leaned against the cave wall, inching closer to the sump until she could see the door, now ajar. Shouts had been audible before then, but it wasn’t until she made an effort to watch that the words became somewhat intelligible.
“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. His blonde hair had a coat of dirt to it now, as if his head had been pressed against the ground. “You cretin, you!”
Damn. Malwine hissed out a breath, gripping a rock that jutted out of the wall to steady herself. The headmaster was out here, hitting someone he had presumably been tasked with protecting. Why’d you have to go and make me feel bad about ducking out?
Not that Malwine would return or intervene, no matter how uneasy it made her. Maybe that made her a coward. For all she’d joked about wanting to hit Hanß again, she wasn’t particularly inclined to go out of her way to try that now. 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, and had this been real, she would have been even less eager to risk herself.
Sorry, Kristian’s friend, Malwine 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.
But only once she knew, with absolute certainty, that she’d come out on top.
It wasn’t cowardice—it was a matter of safety.
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?”