As a toddler, the widow had asked her caretakers about the fate of her birthparents.

  At a similar age, Malwine decided that counted as genealogical research and crafted her response accordingly, while also sidestepping the actual question in its entirety.

  The truth was, she didn’t have any idea just what she was responding to. All she knew for certain was that it was clearly capable of written communication. Attempting to speak to it as she might a person was a risk, but Malwine assumed her Skills wouldn’t have found purchase on this, had they been unable to do anything about it.

  She felt [Unpacifiable] and [The Way of the Clave] catch alight within her before she’d even finished the thought, her Skills lending their aid. The former warned her to remain vigilant about her words, if vaguely, while the latter suggested a quick addition to the words she jammed into the panel with [Write Anywhere]. Its feedback bordered on encouragement, though the need to shift gears overcame her—she had to cover multiple possibilities, because it could always be that something else was involved.

  She’d been curious, for a while now, as to just what backed the trials, if anything at all. Now she finally had a chance to learn more about the mechanics themselves, if she played her cards right.

  That was, of course, if this wasn’t instead related to her uncle himself, rather than [Imitation Beyond Filiality]’s functionality.

  It was better, Malwine understood, to make her own perspective clear from the start. Regardless of whether any of her assessments were accurate, there would be no doubt that she sought to chastise the panels themselves, not whichever force had answered. After all, she was the aggrieved party here! Certainly so.

  And on the off chance it was something that could retaliate—though she doubted that, given [Unpacifiable]’s tame reaction to it—she would be strengthening her position from the start by building the groundwork for it to be deemed a misunderstanding.

  Malwine blinked, her train of thought jolting to a halt.

  This is the Forger incident, all over again, isn’t it? Johann’s panic was still fresh in her memory, how the guard had been tripping over himself to apologize because he thought he had pissed off a Forger. Her usage of panels with [Write Anywhere] had been enough for him to be convinced of that without it being her intention, somehow.

  She didn’t need a Skill to tell her a similar situation was now playing out before her eyes. For all she now doubted she’d been yelling at a truly inanimate force, she’d found her lifeline almost immediately. The same could not be said for her actual understanding of what was going on but… she was working on that.

  At this rate, Elflorescence’s group—for all the Curse labeled Beryl an usurper—were going to be the only people Malwine hadn’t actually impersonated. In her defense, it was always the assumptions of others that led to this point. Failing to correct them was one of those things that probably still counted as deception, yet not as outright lies.

  For that, Malwine chose not to address it directly, leaving room for plausible deniability, if it came to that. At the very least, this kind of misunderstanding gave her confidence that she wasn’t being seen or detected personally, easing any worries before they could truly manifest.

  She doubled down.

  Malwine grumbled genuinely. All of a sudden, something clicked, and she wasn’t even sure if an ability had anything to do with it. Of course her panels hadn’t spontaneously developed the ability to talk back to her. Even before, she’d been curious as to what had been messing with her results when she tried to use [Expressed Reversal] on him, and the oddities had only persisted since.

  She connected the dots quite easily now, as she awaited the next response. The text that etched itself into the panel she held aloft before herself matched the color of the Status Effect that had hidden some of her uncle’s details from her back then.

  If this was an individual rather than a force, they had some connection to Anselm… Actually, even just a force would be related.

  Malwine shook her head. Though she would have liked to praise herself on keeping her cool, she struggled to readjust her thinking on the fly. Her Affinities might have the potential to act on their own, but she hadn’t actually interacted with them at any point. Not enough to find herself debating whether she should be thinking differently about them.

  This was not the case now.

  Malwine considered this. How pushy did she wish to be? Had her attempts at manipulating Veit not backfired, she might have been bolder. But this was an unknown, and she’d learned to tread with at least a hint of carefulness by now.

  …Might be a bit too melodramatic, but I think it does the trick.

  She’d hesitated as she brought the words into existence, but none of her Skills objected to the message. A distant part of her recalled the widow’s sleepless nights, drafting countless versions of terse emails to be sent to people who obstructed the free access to historical information. Paywallers and gatekeepers, the lot of them. No one gets to own the past, or history.

  Malwine found she had no theories as to who—or what—she might be communicating with, but [The Way of the Clave] had her feeling as though she could get away with treating this as a long-distance conversation. It counted as ‘contact’ to the same extent a letter in the mail would have, and that did help take the edge of her nervousness.

  The question struck her as a bit blunt—then again, her melodrama had been utterly ignored so far. You’re no fun, Malwine huffed. In contrast to the guard’s panicked reactions, everything she’d gotten so far here felt neutral. It being simple text probably played a part in that.

  For once, the response was swift.

  Eh, so trying to be vexing is also a no-sell. Boring. Whoever or whatever was on the other side of that panel wasn’t letting her improvise as much as she wanted.

  Irrelevant as it was, Malwine caught herself making that or type of distinction repeatedly. Had she picked a habit up from Veit already? The man loved to emphasize his own ignorance about a subject’s current status—insisting on ‘is or was’—to the point of obnoxiousness, and here she was, copying him, if for a different context.

  Malwine grit her teeth. It was as though even when she got something right, it still wasn’t enough to assuage this asshole.

  …Falling back on the tactic of blaming her mother for everything was truly inevitable, wasn’t it?

  Absolutely not. The thought came to her immediately, and she felt no hesitation.

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  This response might as well have been an admission of guilt on her verbal opponent’s part—there was something at play here, interfering with her attempts at using abilities on her uncle. She’d known as much, but it was an entirely different matter get a glimpse of the cause, even if it was merely some unknown behind a panel.

  And as much as it pained her to acknowledge it, Veit had been right about one thing—Malwine would absolutely do things just because someone told her not to.

  Not to mention, she liked to think she could figure out what was up with her mother and family on her own. She had her moments of doubt, but so long as she breathed, it was matter of when, not if.

  Learning about the weird golden text on her uncle’s panels was ultimately low on the priority scale, but it really seemed like the type of thing she might not get another chance like this for, so she was at least willing to hear this out.

  Malwine shrugged despite the lack of an audience.

  And what I could get out of it.

  There was something intrinsically amusing about this to her. In this negotiation—if it could even be called that—she had a position of relative power, even if it didn’t feel one-sided.

  After how so many of her recent talks had gone, this worked wonders for her.

  The individual behind the messages clearly wanted her to steer clear of whatever they were doing. Her nosy nature would not allow that—even if she hadn’t cared about her uncle in the slightest, she would have started caring right about now—even if she knew she’d likely have to bid her time.

  Advantageous as this misunderstanding was for her, Malwine didn’t believe things would go well for her if it ever came down to a confrontation with this casual trial-breaker. Not for a second.

  Confusing as the trial for Anselm had been, something told her the light she saw in it, the force [Imitation Beyond Filiality] all but fled from, was really not something to be triffled with.

  Malwine felt her eye twitch. That had come back to bite her so quickly it barely even registered. But ultimately, it wasn’t as though she weren’t likely to gain something, if she pushed forward.

  She reread the message over and over, her eyes narrowing. I guess it was already surprising that no weird fey shit had turned up in so long. Aside from the seablooded and the concept of the fell’s existence by itself, if that counted.

  Instead of going for an immediate response, Malwine forced herself to slow down and think. Realistically, would any kind of agreement be worth it? She had to wait another year to retry this trial anyway—what would a few more really amount to?

  Not to mention, she would likely face interference again, were she to make another attempt after the cooldown passed.

  Did she have any other option?

  She hadn’t wondered, before, if a panel could radiate confusion—she certainly did now, because that was the impression that washed over her, abruptly. The letters brightened as well.

  Malwine found looking away made any discomfort fade immediately, but keeping the panel in place was no longer effortless. It started to feel as if she were carrying a particularly heavy grocery bag with an inadequate number of fingers, and she winced despite herself.

  For a moment, she wondered if reaching for [The Things We Do For Family] would make a difference. But… that wasn’t what the Skill was for, was it?

  There was a thin line between curiosity and care when it came to these things, and here, she could not separate the two. Malwine cared for her uncle in the sense that he was family—and as a concept, all family was precious—but she couldn’t bring herself to earnestly pull at her Skill.

  Every step of the way here, the curiosity that drove her had been her own, not some altruistic thing that could trigger it. What made her desire to learn about Katrina different from this, enough that it had been what granted her this Skill in the first place, she did not know.

  It was a harsh reminder of how fickle feelings could be—she struggled to grasp them herself, let alone gather her thoughts.

  Malwine inhaled slowly, and turned to the burning panel.

  She released the panel, dismissing the notification they had turned into the system equivalent of passing notes. It faded without fanfare, as did the golden eyesore.

  Fuck off.

  Malwine wasn’t about to deny she’d gotten herself into that predicament out of sheer impulsiveness, and something like this would undoubtedly happen again.

  She could recognize she did not always make the best of choices, especially when her temper got involved, but what the widow had learned during her lifetime certainly carried over to Malwine’s life—it was easier to be prepared in the event that she did something stupid, than to flush efforts down the drain in some misguided hope that she could change the very way she was.

  Shaking her head, she finally got to sorting her thoughts.

  A flat ‘what’ was the most she could manage for now. She understood what had happened well enough—this mysterious force or person had ruined her attempt at running a trial for Anselm. For once, how things went on her end and why it happened, at least mechanically.

  No, the problem was whatever was going on with her uncle. The text expressing some willingness to bargain with ‘a name’ tempted her to start blaming things on the fell, fey, or equivalent, but that did not line up with what she knew of them so far.

  The fell were just… elves who were way too into gatekeeping Affinities. Granted, she couldn’t truly see Elflorescence’s name despite her best efforts, but that felt like an intentional block, much as their Fell Court’s name had been hidden.

  Yet again, she was missing context. Malwine’s current knowledge wasn’t enough for her to connect any dots at all.

  She brought up her ever-growing panel of things she might never get to the bottom of, and made an addition.

  This list was getting out of hand, and it showed no signs of stopping. Malwine winced. What’s the least suspicious way to ask Veit about this?

  …It would seem Malwine now had a lot of workshopping to do as far as investigating that part went.