Chương 94: Check-up

"Where's my tiny little chaos gremlin?" Vera called as she stepped out of the Hollow Reach and Stillwake vanished into her Vaultright. Her eyes swept the room in Last Hearth that Mark of the Stillbound Veil had led her to, and they landed on the short-haired girl bent over a table with a cushion under her, right in the middle of working on a drawing with her tongue caught between her lips and an expression of fierce concentration. Vera stopped for a moment at the sheer irresistibility of the sight.

Serel's head popped up, and the intensity vanished under a bright grin.

"Mommy!"

"Come here, you pint-sized weapon of mass adorableness." With a single Breakstep —kicking up a rush of air through the room as a sharp crack snapped behind her—Vera appeared beside Serel and scooped her up into her arms, lifting her and spinning her once while taking a very serious moment to appreciate this small being she somehow got to call her own. Serel let out a sound somewhere between delight and panic as Vera then tucked the girl against her chest, squeezing her tight and nuzzling into her hair.

"Serel, I've made a decision. You're not allowed to grow up. We have a family history of losing all our cuteness as we age, and I need you to stay this tiny and huggable forever."

"Mommy, you're being weird!" Serel cried, trying to shove at her with both hands, though she didn't seem that committed to escaping.

"Mm," Vera hummed without a trace of shame.

"I've decided I'm allowed to be weird now. I'm your weird parent. I'm going to embarrass you so much you never even think about growing up."

"Mommmyyy!"

"That's me." Vera closed her eyes and held her for a few seconds longer, sinking into the now-familiar warmth spreading through her chest and the rest of her body, softening something in her and loosening a tension that had built up. She had just… wanted to hold Serel. To pull her close and hear her voice and feel that she was here. Giving in to it filled her with a kind of happiness that was hard to put into words.

Half a minute passed with Vera unabashedly basking in it, and Serel seemed to have fully given up on resisting.

"Are you done being disgustingly sappy?" a voice asked from the side. Vera opened her eyes and let some surprise show as she looked over at the freckled, emerald-haired woman sitting at the table next to where Serel had been, watching with a look of what might have been disdain.

"Oh, hi, Syl," Vera said.

"You're here too?"

"Don't pretend you didn't see me."

"Sorry. I only have eyes for my daughters. She's way cuter than you." The corner of Syl's eye twitched as she gave Vera a dangerously friendly smile.

"That's fine. I don't expect you to have sensible taste, and I'm not interested in dyeing my hair red just to make you blush."

"Huh? No, that's not—""It's not what?" Syl asked, meeting her gaze. Vera stared at her for a few seconds, then rubbed at her nose while muttering under her breath, "It's vermilion, not red…" She turned back to Serel, who was blinking up at her far too innocently, and immediately felt herself soften again. She pinched the girl lightly before finally setting her down.

"Ow!" Serel complained, rubbing her cheek and shooting Vera a tiny glare, but Vera only grinned as she jumped up to sit on the table and reached for the drawing Serel had been working on.

"So, how'd the babysitting go?" she asked idly, turning the page in her hands and trying to figure out what she was looking at. Even with years of experience in the arts herself—and staring at all kinds of weirdly stylized game illustrations—she had no idea what she was looking at. Her best guess was that it was supposed to be a dragon of some kind. A very abstract, washy dragon that bled into the sky and had a couple of cities on its back.

"The 'babysitting' went fine," Syl replied, watching her with folded arms.

"I'm not a baby," Serel protested as she climbed back into her seat and reached for the drawing Vera was holding hostage. Vera laughed and kept it just out of reach.

"Yeah? You sure about that?" Serel planted both hands on the table, stood on her chair, and made another determined grab for the page.

"A baby is smaller than four. I'm six." Vera relented, laughing again as she let Serel snatch the drawing back.

"Is that so? Guess you learn something new every day." Serel stuck her tongue out at her, then plopped back into her seat and returned to her drawing. Vera leaned back, propped an elbow on the table, and rested her cheek on her palm as she watched her daughter focus.

"So," Syl said, "how did it go?" Vera glanced at her, then back at Serel.

"…Not sure. Maybe half decent? Maybe not. You'd have to ask Elaria. I might've lost my temper a little and threatened a few people."

"You? Lose your temper? Nooo."

"Is that sass I hear?"

"Obviously. I knew it'd be a disaster the second you said you were going to the Conclave Spire." Syl shook her head.

"Those people hate us. Probably you most of all."

"Hate has to be an exaggeration, right?"

"Maybe a little. But you know Last Hearth has always rubbed them the wrong way. At least the people in the Conclave. With the Cinder Council, it's a coin toss whether they owe us their lives or whether you or Mira destroyed their ancestral estate at some point."

"…I'm not that bad, am I?" Syl gave her a look. Vera scratched at her cheek. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. Syl sighed.

"What did they say to set you off?"

"Just stupid stuff." Vera shrugged.

"Stupid stuff that, okay, maybe made them deserve getting punched in the face, but it still probably would've been better if I'd kept my cool and left it to Elaria. I was planning to, too. She seemed like she had things pretty under control."

"Then why didn't you?"

"Well…" Vera went quiet for a moment, observing Serel as the girl's tongue slipped out again in concentration while she reached for a reddish stick of chalk and started filling in something that looked suspiciously like a sea of fire.

"They hit a bit of a sore spot, that's all," Vera finally said.

"You have sore spots?" Syl asked. Vera looked at her flatly.

"You know, I'm starting to wonder if you actually know me at all. I can be a delicate young maiden too, you know."

"You definitely can't."

"Wow. Mean."

"Sure." Syl pushed her chair back and stood, sweeping her hair over one shoulder before giving Serel a light pat on the shoulder.

"You're lucky your daughter is as cute as she is. Normally you'd have to pay a castella's ransom to get a Cycle-forged to babysit, but I'll let this one go. She was too agreeable, and now I'd feel bad."

"Thanks, Syl."

"Don't mention it."

"No, I mean it," Vera said, meeting her eyes.

"Thanks for watching her." Syl paused and looked at her properly. A faint furrow touched her brow, and some of her freckles glimmered softly before she smoothed her expression over again and gave a small nod. Her gaze dropped to Serel, and Vera caught a flicker of Resonance behind her eyes before Syl motioned subtly toward the door. Vera nodded back, then reached over to pat Serel on the head before pushing herself off the table and dropping lightly to the floor.

"Serel, I'm gonna step out with Auntie Syl for just a minute. You good drawing on your own?"

"Mmm," the girl replied, not even looking up.

"Great." Vera turned and followed Syl out of the room. Once they were out in the hall beneath a long wall-painting of ember-lit riders crossing a dark plain, Syl lifted a hand. A thread of House Veilborn Resonance curled into the air and wove itself into a small sigil, and Vera felt the space around them hush as outside sound fell away.

"Do you really have to call me 'Auntie Syl'?" Syl asked as she watched Vera lean back against the wall.

"I do," Vera replied.

"If it helps, I've got her calling basically everyone that. Vanded Blazegrip is Stupid Uncle Vanded." Syl stared at her.

"Seriously?"

"Yep. Or, well, I'm pushing for that, at least. Regardless, she's eventually gonna have enough aunts and uncles to start a minor clan." Syl was quiet for a few seconds before sighing.

"I better not be the youngest aunt."

"It's fine. You probably won't be." Not that Vera had the faintest idea how old Syl actually was. She didn't even know how old she herself was supposed to be in this world, since there apparently weren't any real records of Veralyth Mournvale's early life lying around. Based on the game timeline and what Caldrin had told her, her best guess was that 'Veralyth Mournvale' was anywhere from five to maybe twenty years older than Vera Morgans.

She was leaning toward the lower end of that, if Veralyth had been young when she started out on her adventures. A brief silence settled between them, and the easy mood slowly thinned. Finally, Vera broke the silence.

"Could you tell anything?"

"In part," Syl said, and Resonance flickered behind her eyes again as her expression turned more serious.

"Vera, your daughter... she's really not normal."

"You don't need to tell me that." The reason Vera had asked Syl specifically to watch Serel while she and Elaria were gone wasn't just because Syl was one of the people she trusted most in Caer Virell. It was also because of the woman's Pathfinder title, and what that seemed to mean here.

The whole Pathfinder thing in Ashen Legacy had never really meant much beyond being a flavor title attached to a few unique questlines, so outside of Syl's combat abilities, Vera hadn't actually known much about what this version of her could do. But based on the tidbits she did remember from the game, plus the general context clues she'd picked up while talking to Syl the day before, she had already guessed that the woman's sensitivity to Resonance probably went beyond anyone else Vera knew.

She had been able to tell Serel was Vera's and Elaria's kid from a single glance, after all. So Vera had asked if she could maybe take a closer look while babysitting. Just in case there was something unusual going on that Vera herself had missed.

"So what's the verdict?" Vera asked. Syl brought a finger to her lips, tapping a nail lightly against them for a few seconds while she seemed to sort through how she wanted to answer.

"First," she said, "I want to confirm something. Are you sure she's six years old?"

"One hundred percent? No. But I'm also not the best at math." Syl gave her a look.

"She should be six, physically and mentally, but all I can really vouch for is the last two years," Vera added. She had already given Syl the rough outline of how Serel had come to exist, Forgotten Throne involvement included, and aside from calling Vera an insane piece of work, Syl hadn't had much else to say about it so far.

"She feels around six too, judging from her Resonance," Syl said.

"But…?"

"But the Resonance is far, far too refined for a six-year-old. Even ignoring the fact that she's somehow already at the Eighth Binding, there isn't a single Resonance flaw or point of resistance anywhere in her body. She's practically perfect." Vera frowned slightly.

"Okay…? And is that bad?" Syl just stared at her, then pressed three fingers to her temple and rubbed slowly at the skin around one of her horn stubs.

"Bleed and burn, Vera. Only you could hear that and not immediately think it's strange. She's not even Cycle-forged yet, you smokesick dunce. The fact that there isn't a single flaw should've been impossible in anyone else." Vera stared back at her for a second, confused, then it clicked.

"Oh. I didn't really connect those dots."

"Of course you didn't." Vera scratched awkwardly at the back of her head. On the one hand, from Syl's point of view, that had probably been a pretty stupid thing to miss, which was embarrassing. On the other hand, she'd also just realized one of the things that probably defined Cycle-forged in this world, and made them so much stronger than people stuck at the Tenth Binding. It hadn't occurred to her before, mostly because she'd only ever had this body here.

This ridiculous body that felt like it had been ready-made specifically to fight and move exactly as she wanted it to. Using Resonance came as naturally to her as breathing, and she'd never really stopped to think about why. But maybe part of becoming Cycle-forged was exactly that.

Going by the name, and by what Syl had just said, the process probably had to do with smoothing out or burning away whatever flaws normal Kindled had in their bodies, the little weak points or inefficiencies that made Resonance harder to channel cleanly. And the reason using it felt so effortless to her was because she'd already gone through that whole process a long time ago. Basically, a form of body cultivation. Or purification.

She wondered if that was directly connected to the Legacy Cycle system in Ashen Legacy that let you push past the normal level cap. Perhaps that was its direct equivalent here? That said, she seriously doubted that was the whole story behind what made her so strong. She could tell that her strength wasn't just because of her cleaner Resonance.

There was also the fact that Cycle-forged were called Truebound here, and from what she had learned during her fight with the Silent Lord, they apparently only grew stronger as the Slow Reckoning drew nearer.

"Do you think Serel is Cycle-forged too?" Syl shook her head.

"No. She isn't. Even if she were like you and had started Cycle-forging at the Fifth Binding, it still wouldn't be possible to end up like this." She paused.

"I think she was literally made perfect. A literal vessel for pure Resonance." The mention of Veralyth apparently starting Cycle-forging at the Fifth Binding caught Vera's attention—it lined up with around when the Legacy Cycle system had originally been introduced in the game—but her focus was on another word.

"Vessel?" she asked.

"You think she's a vessel?" Syl hesitated, looking back at her with a flicker of uncertainty before her expression settled again.

"No. Or at least, I have no immediate evidence to claim that." Vera pushed off the wall and stepped toward her.

"But that's the word you used." Syl exhaled lightly.

"It was just what came to mind."

"Still, you said it." Vera studied her for a few seconds.

"Do you think the Graven Daughter might have shaped Serel as a vessel for herself?"

"I don't know. You would understand that possibility better than I would, Vera."

"I don't know either. The one time I met the Graven Daughter, I couldn't exactly communicate with her normally. I'm not even sure she understands communication the same way we do."

"Then get more answers before you start drawing conclusions." Vera fell quiet, her eyes drifting back toward the room where Serel was.

"…I was considering talking to Moni about the Graven Daughter. See if she knows anything. You think she might?"

"Unlikely," Syl said.

"Moni's connection to the Graven Daughter is so faint that she might not even realize it exists yet. It's surprising that even you noticed it." Vera looked back at her.

"Then what do I do?" Syl held her gaze.

"Don't you already know? You have to go and find Mira."