*
Cacophony, chatter. Ripples colliding upon ripples, waves of murmurs and conversation fill the air like countless rapid drumbeats. There is not a single moment of silence, yet... She couldn't see their faces. A shade of grey has obscured their facial features, leaving a clean slab of uncanny flesh. Yggdrasil is not Lastia, she didn't consider information regarding her classmates as anything important so it was shelved.
She sat at Lastia's usual desk. The one who was sitting before her wasn't Arin or Sariel... But the same imposter who looked like her master.
"... You are not parsing my data bank, you are the curse beholding Lastia...
But why affect me, is there perhaps some debt incurred?" (Yggdrasil)
The girl with a face identical to her won didn't speak immediately. It was one of the annoying issues when Yggdrasil was pressed for intelligence on this unidentified enemy. She liked to chew over her words more everytime she wanted to reply to Yggdrasil. At least that meant a brief silence was an indirect agreement to respond to her questions. She quickly got used to it, even subconsciously looked forward to it. She wasn't familiar enough with people to consciously acknowledge this speech quirk of her opponent's.
"... Curse? Maybe, maybe not. I can conclusively say that I won't be telling you, even when all this is over.
This is... A test. But also... A reprieve from life." (Lastia?)
She closed her eyes, soaking in all the sounds. Meanwhile Yggdrasil understood a little bit more than before. She could detect if anything was scanning her own data bank, after all the storage of information was linked to the core of her existence. Meaning, all of these memories presented here, were of the imposter's, the one sitting right before her. In conclusion, only Lastia's curse would be privy to such memories, since it was the main perpetrator docking her memories each midnight.
Unless someone else could hack into the curse and use it as a proxy to harass her like this... But who else would be privy to Yggdrasil's existence? The few that were aware like Arin, Sariel and these 2 sentinels shouldn't have known that it gained sentience. Gaining self autonomy was a long process, not something that happened at the snap of a finger, what's more it occurred during the battle with the heavenly king. The Observer, The Satellite... That's 2 heavenly kings down.
It seemed to bear some grudge against civilisation itself while drawing power from civilisation's development. It was a full on monster bent on exploiting humanity itself to kill humanity. If it wasn't for Taneda's unique traits, this victory wouldn't have been possible. For a short moment the sentinel's magic was tricked into believing humanity was destroyed, lowering its power momentarily.
"If you don't feel like telling me anything... And I can't do anything against you...
What meaning is there to this tomfoolery? Are you buying time for some other plan? Are you a Trace?" (Yggdrasil)
There's no rule saying heavenly kings can't work together, defeating one might just mean another was released into the world. After all, they seemed to be born sequentially.
"... I don't know. I might be one. What difference is there between you, a magical girl and a Trace?
You're all beings that wield the arcane, one way or another all of you are dirty rulebreakers." (Lastia?)
"I am above you impure existences. For my master, I'll purge the world of you." (Yggdrasil)
This is a virtual world residing in someone's mind. Much like how a person's vision is the constant intake of visual information from the eyes, that is then processed by the brain into something comprehensible, this virtual world was the direct transmission of information into Yggdrasil and this perpetrator's mind. Of course, Yggdrasil had the same level of permissions as the imposter here, if she was similarly choked out she could phase out of the choke hold. That is due to Yggdrasil's inherent nature as a data entity, she had some level of authority and manipulation over this environment that was similarly made of data.
To put it simply, it was an environment with no firewall. Similar to entering a land without an owner, you could harvest the wild grass without any legal repercussions. Not that there was much point to that. One could say it was confidence that led Yggdrasil to remain here and covet for intelligence. The imposter is the master of this space, because she was here earlier or she seized ownership of this land. It was easier for her to escape this space and enter somewhere else, Yggdrasil wouldn't take much difficulty to leave but she still needed to break a hole in this entire virtual world.
"Haa~ what is this farce for? Showing me these memories, what is your goal?
2nd party, 3rd party, whatever you are, you are another party of autonomy. Goals, objectives, dreams. To provoke someone who thrives on information like me... I'll crush everything you hold dear. " (Yggdrasil)
"... Scary... What if I kneel and beg now? Could you hold off on that terrifying vow?
I'm really not here to make you mad... " (Lastia?)
This entity was Lastia's curse gained intelligence. That was the only manner to project her memories so accurately. Now, the question was how a curse could gain intelligence? Was it in the same manner as Yggdrasil? It held countless memories, the memories seemed to click and form a shell of a personality or an ego. The last remaining is to form the id, the decision making apparatus in a unit of sentience, for Yggdrasil it was her computation capacity and directive to preserve Lastia. For the curse...
It might be the remaining magic in Lastia's body before she died. Or in the worse case possible... It might simply be someone else that she doesn't know the identity of at the moment. In that case, the curse did not gain sentience. Some third party was controlling the memories held in the curse, to entrap Yggdrasil.
If this was the machinations of some unknown person, it meant that they stood to gain something by stopping Yggdrasil. Put another way, it meant that Yggdrasil stood to lose something important to her. What was it? Her life? Did she possess anything else? Her own memories of Lastia...? Was that up for harvest? If the enemy has a special memory manipulation skill, then reaping it from others shouldn't be too hard...
"Alright, I don't have much to my name, but I can concede temporarily. Tell me, why are we here?" (Yggdrasil)
"Acceleration. Stimulation is the best way to speed up the growth of your ego, your personality. Your id is already immense in capability thanks to your computation based existence." (Lastia?)