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Energy Eater - Chapter 89 - Not so sweet
🕑 Added 2025-03-13 19:02:06 +0000 UTC"Do you promise you're not going to scream?" the woman asked, and I just nodded in response. Not that she could actually stop me from doing anything, really. By the lack of strength she had, it would be easy to overpower her. But since I wanted information, it was better to play along for now.
"Okay," she removed her hands, but still held me against the tree, trying to stop me from escaping.
"What is going on?" I asked.
"It's hard to explain and honestly, I don't know if you're even going to believe me."
"Look, we already got this far. Just try me. I promise you, I have seen a lot of unbelievable things over the past few weeks."
Pamela stared at me for a moment before letting out a long sigh.
"Fine. Just let me finish before you ask any questions. Okay?"
I nodded. "But you could at least let me go. I'm not going to run. I do want to know what's going on in this village."
She stared at me for a moment before letting go. "I'm trusting you. Don't stab me in the back."
"Sure, but I don't even know why I would stab you in the back. I mean, I'm not from here and I don't know why you're acting like this. So there's no reason for me to do that."
She groaned again and shook her head, the strength behind her eyes quickly fading, "Okay. This is going to sound crazy. But I don't think that the people who married the lake are the same ones that come back from the swim," Pamela admitted.
I wasn't really sure what she meant by that, but there were a few possibilities that came to mind.
'Sys, is it possible to have a skill that brainwashes people? Or some sort of mind control.'
[Said skill is within the realm of possibility. However, the duration, distance and how effective the control is would depend on the skill itself. Additionally, skills that interact with a specific emotion or memory are theoretically possible. However, current Energy costs of a skill with that function is tremendous.]
'What do you mean by that? What is the current Energy cost for a skill that focuses on a memory or an emotion?'
[Current estimate indicates that there would be an Energy requirement of 782 Energy in order to activate the skill and another 632 Energy per second to maintain the skill active on target considering said target is no more than 1 meter away from user. This calculation used only information acquired through user Cassandra's skills. If a more optimized way of controlling someone's memory or emotion is discovered, the cost can be updated.]
'Oh, so you're not saying that everybody is going to take that much Energy just that if I wanted I would need that much correct?' I asked the System.
[Correct. Said estimate takes only into account user Cassandra's current and known skills and its effects.]
"Stop looking at me like that. I am not crazy," Pamela snapped, her voice increasing a bit. But the woman managed to pull herself together before she started yelling.
"Sorry, I didn't mean anything bad by the way I was looking at you. Honestly, I didn't even realize I was doing that. I was just thinking," I admitted. While traveling with Astrid, I got too accustomed to talking with the System without anyone questioning what I was doing. That was something I had to be careful about in the future. "Can you explain why you think they're not the same people?"
Pamela scoffed. "Why would I do that? So you can laugh at me? Or so you can go running and tell the matriarch that I doubt what she says about the festival?" She pressed my arm against the tree even harder. It still was far from hurting, but I was starting to get annoyed by her reactions.
I reached out with my own hand and grabbed her wrist. Pulling her aside with incredible ease. It felt like I was just pushing a kid to the side.
"What the hell?" she gasped.
I stared deep in her eyes, "look I'm not trying to laugh at you and I'm not saying I don't trust you. But you're not giving me anything to believe. You just say they are not the same people that go inside and I want to know why. I am not from this village and I think this whole ritual and marrying the lake story is weird, so how about you calm down and start telling me something so I can understand where you're coming from? Or we can just wash our hands of this and I walk away. Your call."
Pamela paused for a moment. She looked around, trying to see if there was someone else listening, and eventually came to a decision.
"Okay, okay. Fine. I'll trust you. For now," the woman tried to look intimidating, but her expression was clearly fake. It looked like she never tried to threaten someone before. Almost like a teenager trying to look tough. Even though she looked a couple of years older than me.
I rolled my eyes. "Great, thanks. Now how about you start talking? Why are the people who are getting married to the lake and going for a swim not the same people who are coming out of the water?"
"I'm not from this village. I had a sister, and we were traveling after some bandits attacked our own home. Eventually, we found this place and decided to stay for a while. People were nice, and all in seemed like a good place to settle. My sister didn't want to stay, but I convinced her to stick around. The thing is, I wasn't never the adventurous type. I never liked the idea of living on the road and never having a place to call home. So when we found this place, I figured it was a good place for us to stay."
I stared at her for a moment and shook my head, "I still don't understand why this part of the story is important to me."
"The thing is my sister was adventurous. She was the type of person who would love to go out and just spend their entire life traveling around. And she hated this place. I mean, hate is a strong word. And it wasn't about this place specifically. It was more the idea of stopping and settling down. She wanted to continue traveling, she wanted to see more things. She wanted to see the forest, the mountains, both oceans, everything."
Pamela stopped, her eyes darting back and forth. She looked around as if she was still expecting someone else to jump out from behind the trees. Any semblance of someone serious who was trying to uncover a mystery was now gone.
"Don't get me wrong. I understand you have a sister and that matters to you, but I don't get why this is important for this subject," I said, making her focus on me again.
"Because my sister married the lake!" Pamela gasped, "She didn't like the festival. She thought everything was really weird. But I convinced her to stay and eventually the matriarch chose her to marry the lake. Now I was super happy and super excited for her, but she wasn't really into the whole idea. Still, when they told her to swim in the lake at night, she got a bit interested and went for it. Not that she had much of a choice. Apparently, if you're chosen to marry the lake and you decide not to go, the entire village will suffer, so you have to."
I frowned, that was a piece of information that Carlota conveniently forgot to mention. But as Pamela asked, I let her continue before asking any more questions.
"The only way of not being chosen is not being in the festival and they wouldn't let anyone stay at home during it, anyway. She went, she swam, and I didn't see her for the rest of the night. In the morning, she wasn't even back in our place. She was staying with the matriarch. Which is weird because she only has one room with a single bed in her house. The matriarch I mean. But that's not the worst of it. Every time I tried to talk to my sister after the festival, she ran away. She said she had something to do and just walked off. And when I tried to hold her arm, she snapped at me and..."
Pamella looked down, trying to find words to continue, but the pause grew too long and I was starting to get annoyed, "And? What happened? Just stop trying to make things make sense and tell me. We can figure this out together." "
"Sorry. It was wet. My sister's arm was strangely solid and wet. I know it sounds crazy, but I don't mean she just had muscle. I mean, it was hard, like a rock or something. And I swear when I pulled my hand back, it was covered in water. And not just wet, I mean actual water. But anyway, after that I couldn't talk to her for a few days. I would see her moving around with the matriarch and talking with her, but anytime I tried to approach, my sister just shut me off. That… that never happened," Pamela's voice cracked before she sniffed. Lowering her arms to hold the edge of her shirt. It was clearly a sensitive topic, but still, she continued.
"We loved each other. We were best friends. She would never do that kind of thing, not to me. Then after about a week after the festival, she just vanished. The matriarch said she had decided to continue traveling and left the village, leaving me behind. But my sister would never do that. We would never leave each other like that. Not without at least saying goodbye. At least to me," Pamela wiped out a tear forming on the corner of her eye and looked at me again.
"I know it sounds like I'm just a clingy younger sister trying to find a reason why her older sister left without saying anything but I swear to you it's not. There's something else going on. It doesn't matter how much we fought, it doesn't matter how much we got on each other's nerves. We would never abandon each other like that. That's not who we were. We were best friends."
Pamela's last statement really did strike a chord. It wasn't unheard to hear about siblings who seemingly love each other, but one of them just couldn't handle the other anymore. And there was really no other explanation for why her sister would have this sudden change of heart. Unless there were feelings that festered for a long time. But that was only the case if I didn't know about the System. With its existence, things changed.
It was possible that someone was mind-controlling her sister, or maybe someone was pretending to be her. Either using a skill to disguise themselves or to just make an illusion that she was there. Both of them seem to be very difficult things to do, but after a quick check, the System confirmed both possibilities existed. Which also meant Pamela might not be that far from the truth. Maybe someone did take the place of her sister. The question was, if someone did take her place, what happened to the sister?
"Okay. That is something to consider, but do you have any other evidence, or is this it?"
She shook her head. "I don't have any physical evidence, but I have talked with other villagers and apparently there is a strange coincidence that happens every time someone marries the lake. They stick around for a few days, maybe even a few weeks, while talking to the matriarch and eventually they decide to leave the village. It doesn't matter if they are someone who was here for a long time and left family behind, or if they are someone who is just passing by. Without fail, everybody who marries the lake ends up leaving willingly. There's no one being shunned or anything. But they do leave."
"Okay, and when did that happen to your sister?" If the festival happened every couple of months, then it would be harder to hide whatever was going on. Maybe there was a trail of breadcrumbs leading to something that would help with all of this.
"It was at the last festival. A year ago."
"You think that the people in this village did something with your sister and you still stuck around for a year?" I completely forgot to measure the emotion in my voice. How could someone stay so long in a place if they believed the people who lived there did something with their sister?
Pamela looked down, her hands fidgeting with her shirt again, "I didn't have anywhere else to go. And without my sister, I don't think I can survive on my own."
I shook my head, "Well, fair enough. Since you are saying that, I'm going to assume you already have some sort of idea how to figure out what happened to your sister. After all, you spent an entire year here thinking about that, didn't you?"
Pamela stared at me and blinked slowly. "Was I supposed to? I mean, how could I figure that kind of thing out?"
All that aggressiveness that I had seen a moment prior was gone. Now in front of me, I could only see a scared little girl who probably never had to take the reins of her life. It was a bit sad but at the same time frustrating. This was about her sister. She was supposed to have looked into things instead of waiting for someone to come along and deal with the problem.
"Okay then. I'll see what I can figure out," I replied, not really knowing how I was going to do that.
"Can I help with something? Maybe I can ask people more about the things in the festival?"
"No. No, no. Just hang tight. We won't want you to start questioning people. After all, they might think you are having doubts about what happened to your sister." I hoped that line would be enough to stop her from trying anything. I had a feeling that if she tried to gather some information, Pamela would be as subtle as a brick. And it wouldn't take long for things to unravel quickly and not in a good way.
"So, what am I supposed to do?" she asked.
"Just lie low. We don't need to attract any more attention to you, especially not so close to the festival. The last thing we need is for people to realize what is going on and make our lives more difficult. Just stay quiet and I'll do my best to figure out what I can.As soon as I have some information, I'll let you know, okay?"
Pamela finally nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, sure."
Her entire demeanor had changed from the woman who pushed me against the trees. And my curiosity took the better of me. "If you don't mind me asking. Who are you? Are you the woman who was ready to attack me because I asked too many questions, or this shy version that seems unsure of what she's doing?"
"Oh…" she looked down yet again. That simple action was starting to piss me off, "this is me. Pushing you against the tree was something I imagined my sister would do."
"I see. And do you do a lot of things like that? Acting like what you think your sister would act?"
"Only when I think I might be in danger. And when I feel brave enough. But usually, no. I don't. Is that a problem?"
"No," I shook my head. "I was just curious because it's a bit of a jarring difference."
"Yeah. She was much better than me, wasn't she? Maybe that's why she left without saying anything."
I held back a groan. I really didn't like dealing with people like that. The self-deprecating type who thought they were at fault for the world being the way it is. And who found any chance they got to blame everything on themselves. I understood that she might really feel that way, but it was hard not to see it as trying to make others pity her.
Yet, right now I could only dance along her tune, "Hold your horses. We still don't know what happened. Let's try to figure things out first. We can come to conclusions later. Deal?"
She nodded. "Deal."
With that, we split off, and I headed back to Genevieve's house. I had to figure out a way to talk to Astrid, but it seemed like the festival was going to be much more interesting than I initially thought.
