LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 20 - Ill at Ease Behind These Masks
An old habit was rearing its ugly head, an echo from her past life that Malwine wanted to insist she had managed to fight off before now—it had taken her quite the long while to get around to it, but she was finally back to procrastinating her decisions!
There wasn’t much to think about—though she’d have killed even for something as simple as an hourglass, she wasn’t sure how long her trial’s run for Kristian had taken. Her only track of time so far had been her own brand of guesstimation.
It’s honestly confusing, Malwine mused. These people clearly know what days are, for one. But why don’t they track it proper? So far, Malwine had encountered the topic only in passing, and it had caught her eye to notice her age always changed on the first of the month. She’d tried asking Bernadette as well, only for her guardian to have the audacity to say 'ladies don’t answer questions like that'.
This is how you get researchers centuries down the line to be angry at not being able to use your age to calculate any of your parents' details, you fool…!
That was the start of another past emotion rearing its ugly head—frustrations that transcended life and death alike. [Cool Head on Your Shoulders] barely took the edge off it—after all, Skills probably weren’t meant to outright suppress anything that ran that deep through someone’s personhood.
Not that Bernadette’s refusal stopped Malwine from figuring out the answer when the opportunity arose. Thekla and Anselm had visited again, though Malwine got the impression they’d been meaning to speak with Bernadette about something they didn’t want the children to overhear, given their attempt at a rapid retreat.
Still, she managed to catch her limping uncle—Malwine had yet to figure out a polite way to ask for details, even if a toddler could probably get away with a blunt question—and got to showcase just how little confidentiality she thought should be afforded to vital dates among family.
“Which month were you born in?” Malwine blinked at her uncle—she hoped the expression was as cute as it should be, coming from an inquisitive three-year-old.
Anselm blanked at her for a moment, as if taken off-guard by the question, but he nodded to himself and answered. “The Fog.”
“The last month?”
“Of the year, yes.”
“Of which year?”
At that, her uncle’s eyebrows went up, if briefly. He wasn’t as stoic as Bernadette, but from what little Malwine had seen of him, he was awfully quick to return to that ineffectual mask—trying to keep a neutral expression hardly mattered when you reacted anyway, no matter how briefly.
“I was born during The Fog of 5769,” he smiled at her. “I might be somewhat older than you.”
He’s… 26?, she had to focus on not returning the gesture as she calculated—somehow, she’d expected him to be older. 31 in this world, I guess. But still—I wasn’t expecting him to be that young. He looks tired.
“When was Bernie born? She is mean and does not tell me.”
Anselm laughed. “Why do you ask, dear?”
“Hm,” Malwine tapped her chin innocently. “I like knowing.”
“Of everyone’s birthmonths?”
“Yes!” she smiled, for once not intending to deceive. She liked knowing, sure, but this was a matter of preservation as well as curiosity. Any detail could be important down the line—anything no one bothered to record about a person’s life could and absolutely would slip through the annals of history.
The time of one’s birth wasn’t anywhere near as relevant as some assumed—especially for older generations—but Malwine had a prime opportunity here, to start recording everything as soon as she could. Grim thought, but you never know for how long people will be around.
Faint memories, images of neglected archives and needless secrecy, started to pour into her mind, blurring further as soon as they appeared. A sense of bone-deep frustration accompanied them—not quite anger, closer to belligerent helplessness.
Malwine had to take a step back before an internal monologue—no, rant—took shape. She wanted to complain, perhaps on account of said leftover frustrations from her past life, but she didn’t actually have a target for that anger in this new world.
The sort of people she’d once despised might not even be a thing here, after all.
It was a very strange feeling.
What was she going to do, fight random archivists here? I mean, I can literally read their books from afar now, even if they do get testy.
She humphed. Every single one of her Skills likely had at least a hint of such a root—they were somehow based on her past life, after all, even if the meaning of that wasn’t always immediately obvious to Malwine.
It had taken her uncle a moment to reply—maybe he’d debated whether answering would be rude—but Malwine broke herself out of her mental spiral in time to hear his response. “She is three months my senior, but I implore you to not tell her I let you know that.”
Malwine made a shush noise, her index finger over her twisting lips.
Again, her uncle laughed. He hadn’t stayed much longer after that.
At least she’d finally gotten some fresh material to update her tree with—this work was awfully slow when you had neither archives nor databases to turn to.
Unknown (Rīsan?) + Unknown - - - Unknown ('Ineligible') + Beryl Skrībanin
\ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . /
Kristian Rīsan + Katrina Skrībanin
|
Beryl Rīsanin
---
Children born to Kristian Rīsan + Katrina Skrībanin †
1. Beryl
2. Thekla
3. Anselm (The Fog of 5769—)
4. Kristoffer
5. Alaric
Children born to Kristian Rīsan + Bernadette ‡ (The Forgetting of 5769—)
1. Adelheid (The Forgetting of 5798—)
Mother and daughter, born on the same month. Malwine chuckled faintly. Adelheid hadn’t even hesitated to answer, though Malwine did have to ask for her age rather than the month.
It’s The Forgetting right now as well—should I be telling them ‘happy birthmonth’ or something? I actually hadn’t thought of that.
A moment later, she wrinkled her nose. Dammit, Kristian… Bernie’s nearly your son’s age. Bah! For all she lacked knowledge on her new home’s culture, Malwine suspected nothing would change her view on this—even if both were adults, having a spouse around your children’s age was fucking weird. Granted, she’d already suspected something, on account of possessing a pair of eyes, and having seen Kristian and Bernadette through them, but actually having confirmation had her grumbling.
After what she could only guess had been dinner, she returned to her bed—by now, she was getting very close to debating the viability of sneaking out.
But all in due time.
Rather than start a new trial—which would have to be for Older-Beryl, as Malwine hadn’t found literally anyone else to be truly useful so far—Malwine had been furiously scribbling with her imaginary hands on a [Blank Panel].
How can I beat Kristian’s trial next time? Or get more out of it?
It would be a while, but Malwine would get to try again.
You may not use [Imitation Beyond Filiality] on Kristian Rīsan for: 298 days.
Oh. That works, I guess. She supposed this fixed her timekeeping issue to an extent, though it did nothing for her retroactive confusion. Even then, her satisfaction at this partial solution helped her ignore the implication that she’d wasted 2 days already.
Ideally, doing all the trials back-to-back should help her keep a schedule, but Malwine had no clue as to how many attempts each would take for her to conquer them, if she ever did at all. If she even wanted to. She was… tempted to simply squeeze them for as much information as she could get.
It would be perfect if she could just set these out to line up on a set of days each year, to dedicate that time exclusively to them, but it was her current youth that afforded her this much freedom—she had no idea what sort of responsibilities she’d have as she grew, or what would be expected of her.
That line of thought only served to make her want to redouble her efforts on continuing to improve her abilities, to have the power to do anything she wanted to.
Or to tell anyone to fuck off, if they demanded anything she didn’t want.
Oh, the wonders of childhood pettiness.
Malwine’s memory was far from perfect—and she suspected her own actions had influenced things past a certain point—but she wrote down the earlier parts of the trial well enough.
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?
She frankly had no idea where to go from there, but she hoped waiting it out would give her the perspective she needed. Malwine would have to return to it with fresh eyes later on, to see if a strategy could be formed.
A part of her was unhappy with her performance in general—she’d lost control.
It had been a long time since she’d lost control that badly, technically a lifetime ago.
Malwine shook her head. It was as good a time as any, so she might as well just jump off the deep end before she convinced herself to keep questioning her decisions during the first trial.
The world dissolved, and she stood before the table again—only, this time, the image she found on the index card was blurry. It bore a feminine silhouette, or at least Malwine thought it did, but it shifted like morning fog, never truly taking shape.
Malwine didn’t know what Older-Beryl looked in life, and the Trait did not seem eager to inform her. That’s fair, I guess.
Perhaps her own knowledge limited this to an extent—then again, she was pretty sure the Trait literally accessed Kristian’s memories somehow, so how was she to know?
It was anticlimactic in a way, her own lingering aggravation keeping her from enjoying anything—the trial with Kristian’s strange childhood scene had been messy enough, and while Malwine’s wonder at even the faintest chance to learn something about Older-Beryl kept her going, there was a degree of dullness to it.
For the first time since being reborn, Malwine couldn’t keep herself truly centered, and she wasn’t sure as to how to feel about that. Be it by Skill or resolve, she shunted the formless melancholy away, gazing at the silhouette.
What did she expect? Was… was Older-Beryl going to be disappointing? You don’t usually get to be the ancestors you research, I guess…
Shaking her head, Malwine sent {Legacy} down [Imitation Beyond Filiality]’s endless tunnel, and the world shifted again. She found herself standing in a room she could only describe as vaguely coastal—something about the wood panels and ambiance just felt like the foyer to a beachside property.
The table and two chairs that sat on one end of the small room were both entirely rattan, and quite artful at that. Both bore a resemblance to petals in their design. Above them, on the wooden wall, sat a mirror framed in the same pattern.
Her own form wore what appeared to be a wimple over her hair, and though distinctly female, it was covered fully. Gloves and a long dress stuck close to her, while what appeared to be two interconnected masks covered her face from nose to hairline, and from philtrum to chin, a faint glimpse of pale skin around the cheeks being the only hint as to what she might look like.
All items were blue, albeit in different hues—it made the entire getup even more uncanny.
And here Malwine had been worried about being disappointed.
I take that back, Older-Beryl. Malwine’s eyes widened exaggerately behind her mask. Just what the hell were you up to?
The door behind her shimmered like fog. To call it ominous would be an understatement, but beyond its appearance, the impression she got was that it must have been the end of this ‘generated’ world, as had been the case with the missing distance within her trial for Kristian.
I’m supposed to go this way, then.
She pressed on the louver door before her—it only struck her now that, frankly, the practically wooden room had been as monochromatic as her own outfit—and found herself on an atrium about thrice the size of the closet-like foyer she’d just exited.
The foyer immediately disappeared, taking its door with it.
Malwine frowned. You and I are going to have a nice, long talk about immersiveness, [Imitation Beyond Filiality].
Before she could resume her threats to the inanimate Trait, a woman materialized in the grass before her—she wore clothes of the same type she did, but her theme appeared to be floral nightmares. It was, if nothing else, a far more efficient disguise than Malwine’s own, because those patters were… peculiar.
“Greetings, dear,” the newcomer’s voice somehow managed to convey both eagerness and a somewhat matronly attitude. “We shall conduct this affair in the matter of the seafarers, for obvious reasons.”
Uhm. The what now? Malwine almost missed the Kristian trial—at least then, she felt she could get away with not responding. But now?
“Are you familiar?”
Malwine almost muttered a ‘phew’ as the woman herself put a halt to her crisis.
“I unfortunately am not,” Malwine shook her covered head. This environment seemed far more conducive to long conversations—being just the two of them—and a part of Malwine hoped she hadn’t gotten that rusty at proper social interactions. At the very least, this should be good practice.
So long as the other woman wasn’t unwilling to overexplain herself, at least.
“Very well, dear. There’s a reason seafarers have managed to coexist with us against all odds—they have workarounds for the vile hexes around their names, you see,” the woman spoke as if Malwine was already supposed to know what seafarers were—given this world’s fear of waves and the like, something told her it probably wasn’t anything related to sailors. “Many an adventurer has braved the wilds and spent a day or two around them in their natural homes, enough to learn a bit about their ways. They even have proper guesthouses! There are books on the subject, and I find it quite an interesting matter to learn from, you see. Such crafty people!”
Uh-oh. Malwine had flashbacks to some tourism ads she vaguely recalled watching in her past life, the type that condescendingly assured travelers their destination would indeed have access to power and running water while sending some very mixed signals as to just what the scriptwriter had even been thinking. Please don’t take a turn, please don’t take a turn… Well, a worse turn…
“Anyhow!” the woman’s tone shifted to glee. “Unwilling as they are to share their names with us, or give us the dignity of being called by name in turn, they would often start their dealings with an exchange—a nickname or a title, to let each other know what to address the other as.”
“I see,” Malwine nodded. “This is good to know. I’ll be sure to put it to use if I ever meet any seafarers.”
The woman visibly flinched, her entire frame jolting. Her next words devolved into a shout.
“What?! By all the light touches, no! Seafarers are wily folk—you never know what they could have up their sleeve, waiting for any chance to pull the wool over your eyes and leave you crippled in a ditch. Listen to me, girl—any wisely seafearing people out there know to, you see them, you walk in the opposite direction as fast as you can.”
Malwine actually felt her eye twitch under her mask. Was that supposed to be a pun or the worst-timed word choice in history?
And wait, weren’t you just suggesting we use, what, seafarer nickname customs…?
“I see…” Malwine repeated. After the last trial, she was fairly certain she was only keeping her composure now on account of how confused she was. If she had a single clue as to what the woman was even referring to—who or what seafarers even actually were—she might be well on her way to trying to flee as she had from the bothersome Margaret Smith. “So I take it you wish for us to exchange nicknames?”
In case I end up having to put you on the DNI list with Margaret and all the people I just know I can't remember.
She wasn’t even sure if this exchange was appropriate—Malwine would likely need to do some reading on this, somehow, because she sure wasn’t trusting this woman’s word for it. Especially not with that tone.
Maybe it said something about Malwine as a person, that her first reaction was to assume the speaker had to be the one in the wrong, but clearly, her first life had left a strong impression on her for these things.
“Indeed,” the woman had apparently recovered from her blunder. “In the matter of seafarers, given our requisite secrecy, you may call me Teach—and if it is fine by you, I shall call you Learn.”
Creative.
“That is fine by me, Teach.”
Now can we get to whatever this trial is about? Secrecy would almost sound interesting if you weren’t such a freak. Please tell me Older-Beryl wasn’t in a cult…?
“As you no doubt know, Learn, our Affinity makes us intrinsic enemies to the seablooded,” Teach started, dropping yet another clearly-relevant term that went right over Malwine’s head. “Our mere existence gives them justification to seek us out, to punish us for daring to intrude on their chosen field.”
Could you be any more vague?
“But I suppose I needn’t delve into that—if you’re here, you know all about it.”
I was being sarcastic.
“Pardon, Teach,” Malwine licked her lips, trying to get a grip on how to phrase her question. It has to be {Foresight}, right? My {Legacy} didn’t come from any of them. “I’m woefully uneducated on the matter, actually. Just why do the seablooded hate our Affinity? I’ve always thought {Foresight} useless, never even planted the Root. It’s so wishy-washy, I guess?”
Teach barked a laugh. “I hope you have not been carelessly uttering its name beyond these walls—even then, please refrain from doing so again. You never know who has ears where, after all. But I will indulge your… ignorance. I mean no offense, but truly, you must be sheltered beyond belief for your parents to not have told you this before sending you here.”
A panel materialized before Teach—an empty one.
Malwine froze. Is this… Older-Beryl’s teacher or something? It was stunning enough that she found she couldn’t even bring herself to be annoyed at others clearly having a working system when she didn’t.
“The seablooded are fey things, beings without a capacity for growth in the
Though she guessed she was seeing it backwards, Malwine didn’t think those were letters. Is that the sort of thing [Write Anything] would achieve? It was a bizarre sight. Teach’s scribbles glowed, visibly moving across the pattern to coalesce into what appeared to be the drawing of a stick. “You are right to assume our Affinity is not powerful—it is neither oracular nor divination. Instead, it is limited to enhancing instinctive preparation, to grant glimpses as to what might be necessary later, and what little prophecy might be wrangled out of it serves, at best, as a riddle for one’s own amusement.”
Teach’s fingers touched the panel—went through it—and yanked a thin string the same ethereal white of basic system text. It remained connected to what she had created upon the panel, even as she further pulled.
“That is not to say our Affinity is useless—I merely state its power is limited. What I am doing here is, technically, no different from the predictions of ancient sybils,” Teach said. Her unraveling of her creation remained steady, the string disappearing as the glow transferred to her hand. “I could tell you to expect fair weather, for one, yet neither of us would know what it meant, exactly, or say, for how long your fortune may last.”
Malwine just stared, entranced by the lightshow—Teach’s words were, frankly, secondary.
The panel disappeared with a resonant pop, the remaining strings spinning around Teach’s gloved fingers before all that remained was a luminous sheen over her hand. She snapped her fingers, and when she spoke, there was an uncanny edge to her words.
«Seek the one who changes shape. Always say a different phrase. Watch her carve the twisted blade. Beware the sun for all it craves. Rush to cross the architrave. Find the one to which he prayed. Tell him he is not to blame. Learn to hide within the shade. Let her know there is no shame.»
“You see, Learn?” Teach asked, the bizarre echo gone from her voice. “I generated that key fully intent on granting you something helpful—so how much did you get out of it?”
“Absolutely nothing.” Would that I could take notes to write that suspicious thing down, though…
“Exactly!” Teach laughed. “But make no mistake—that is failure on our part. The Affinity itself is potent—it is Legendary for a reason—but we are simply unequipped to take true advantage of it, not without aid. And should we try to get aid, well. They will find out, and they will be coming.”
“Ominous.”
“That is one way to put it,” Teach’s head shook, the tassels of her mask swinging. “I will speak with honesty, Learn—my intent here was to work with whatever you were willing to share, to give you as much advice as I could for hiding your Class. But you’ve told me you haven’t even planted the Root… At that point, all I can tell you is to continue as you are. Never plant it. That should keep you safe, so long as you never let it be known. Tell your children the same—let the Affinity fade.”
Malwine narrowed her eyes. She did say Court earlier. This might be the closest I’ve gotten to answers, nevermind I’ve never actively searched. It might be an opportunity.
A part of her worried she might break the trial, as she had for Kristian’s. The limits to this remained poorly understood to her—she had a part to play, and the trial would collapse if she broke it. That said, she was going in blind here—she did not know a single thing about Older-Beryl, least of all how to pretend to be her.
Yet I’m pretty sure I’ve done better here than with my best Kristian impression…
“Teach,” Malwine started, choosing her words. She didn’t even have to fake the hesitation. “My mother wouldn’t tell me—it is as you said. I have been… sheltered. Tell me, Teach… What does happen if they find us? If they come for us?”
Though subtle, she didn’t miss Teach’s flinching motion, the step she nearly took back. For a moment, she expected the trial to fall apart then and there. Instead, Teach answered, almost whispering. “They kill you, at best. Those they take, nobody knows what becomes of them. Others, they curse, though. Not the worst of it—I’d take it any day over my life being over. Ideally, we avoid all options—we hide it, permanently.”
“I see,” Malwine nodded. She chose to push it. “I suspected it, really.”
Teach’s head tilted to one side. “How so?”
“Mother tells me nothing…” In fact, I haven’t spoken to her once in my life! “But I am aware she is cursed. I have wanted, badly, to see what I could do for her, if anything at all.”
“Ah. My condolences,” Teach said. “It is a horrid fate indeed.”
The woman seemed to be pondering something—the room itself stilled.
“Look, Learn,” Teach let out a drawn-out sigh. “Your circumstances sadden me—I have not known you long, but I can tell from your demeanor that you are alone in this world. I make no promises, but I will try to ask Her on your behalf. Nothing can break the curse of a Court, but it could be managed, perhaps.”
Again, the world seemed to fall into a pause. Malwine looked around. Nothing had been happening—the atrium was almost static in the first place—but something kept shifting in the trial itself, as if the false reality were freezing for moments at a time.
“I…”
Teach took a step back, her back arcing as she gripped her knees. “What is this?”
Before Malwine could so much as react, the woman tore at her headpiece, dark mahogany hair spilling. The air shimmered, and what little Malwine could see of her eyes through the mask became an unnatural, backlit russet.
“She isn’t answering. No. It isn’t Her. I’m not here.”
The trial cracked like glass, sending Malwine reeling. Her self slammed back into her true body with a violence that left her gasping.
You have failed a trial to copy attribute points from Beryl Skrībanin!
You may not use [Imitation Beyond Filiality] on Beryl Skrībanin for: 300 days.
Seriously? Malwine blinked, trying to revisit the last moments of the trial. What had she been trying to do, pray? There had been something about the way Teach had spoken of ‘Her’ that got a sense of reverence across, even if most of it was lost to Malwine. This language had some nuance to enunciation that certainly implied this. Did I fail the trial because this lady prayed?
Or tried to, I guess?
Malwine groaned. That hadn’t even been her fault… technically!
If Teach had been trying to contact some sort of deity on her behalf, well—first of all, aw? That’s sweet? I think—then it was perhaps possible to get some literal divine intervention for cursebreaking. Not that Malwine could count on it, given how that went.
That’ll have to go under ‘technically possible but actually implausible solutions’.
The idea was strange to her, but seeing as souls and reincarnation existed, she wouldn’t actively bat an eye at it. I could also be misinterpreting it, and this ‘Her’ is just someone with quite the ego, maybe. Malwine was going off Teach’s tone, after all.
But the trial happened in my head—I’m fairly certain she did mean it that way.
Malwine shook her head. Another failed trial! She wasn’t as angry as she expected herself to be immediately after waking up. If she thought of it, she could tentatively find a common thread—she had made ‘people’ inside the trial doubt the situation they were in.
Perhaps it hadn’t been about breaking character at all—Teach had basically confirmed she barely knew her, so she should have been able to get away with a lot.
With a jolt, Malwine summoned a blank panel of her own, remembering Teach’s weird attempt at fortunetelling. Even if the woman seemed to somehow think it both useful and useless, it might be good to have.
Unfortunately, Malwine absolutely lacked a memory pristine enough to recall every part of it, so the panel she filled for it turned out atrocious in its contents.
WEIRD {FORESIGHT} THING
Everything had a rhythm to it, but it was weird.
I think it was: seek something. Something about phrase. The twisted blade? Beware the sun for all it craves, whatever that means. I blank here, at some point it got to something about blame? Hide in the shade, there's no shame?
Malwine grumbled. She didn’t have to actively recall the thing to know she’d missed a lot of it in this sad excuse of a transcription attempt. I’m going to have to replicate that starting conversation somehow… Could I get her to repeat that next time, just to make sure I got it right? Dumb, but…
She was getting superstitious about the worst Affinity she knew of, clearly. In her defense, however, she would insist that if a random stranger shouted ominous stuff at you down the street, you’d probably want to take note of it, too.
Her notes about the trial itself weren’t much better—Malwine was pretty sure she had derailed the entire thing by asking so many questions for things that Teach had clearly expected her to know already.
Timeline:
Leaving the foyer, enter an atrium
Meet Teach
???
Need to find out:
Who is Teach?
Who was she to Older-Beryl? Why was she even here?
More details about this seafarer and seablooded terms
Cursebreaking?
That trial had been promising, really. Malwine couldn’t help but feel as though she’d squandered it. As the figurative dust settled, however, she leaned back and dismissed her panels.
She had learned something invaluable—the cause of Beryl’s curse was likely the {Foresight} Affinity, and now she knew who probably cursed her. Whatever the seablooded from whichever Court were.
Teach called them ‘fey things’. I was joking back then, eh. Malwine winced—bad jokes tended to linger in her memory. It wasn’t supposed to actually turn out to be some sort of fae court. Seablooded. What are they gonna be, fairy mermaids?
Malwine wished to take that back immediately—she clearly did not have the best track record with these things, and with this sea-hating world, the last thing she wanted was to have to figure out if she somehow managed to inherit beef with mermaids.
Funny. I technically got answers, yet they explain so little…