"Remind me again. Why are we going there?" Vesp asked with the same annoyed tone he had adopted since we left Crimson City and the Crimson Hollow Sector behind.
"You know why," the designated leader of our company, Evija, replied to him with the same annoyed tone, though hers was much lighter and more reciprocal than truly irritated at being here carrying out our mission.
I had known her for more than a decade by now, on and off various tasks that saw my unit and her's become part of the same company as we were sent to places few dared to imagine were so close beneath their feet.
It meant that, by this point, unlike the newcomer from the exploration unit, I knew not to question when a surprising decision was made by the leadership unit.
Though with the Faith Of The Aspects being as influential as it was in this Nexus-forsaken city, could it really be considered a surprising decision that we opted to visit them first before we started enlisting people?
"Well, sure, I do, but why am I going?" he emphasized, "Ethna and Quirina already went ahead, so all I'm good for is to be a tour guide. Or do you expect to be caught in Red Sand's internal conflict? In the middle of the city? When we are bearing the colors of the Nexus Order?"
As if to further punctuate his point, he spread his arms to highlight the combat weave he was so proud of wearing, with layered ballistic fabric, reinforced kinetic mesh, and segmented composite inserts woven seamlessly into its form-fitting structure.
What a showoff.
Worse, it was impractical too, as with it supposedly being custom-designed by the Grand Frame, a faction conspicuously absent from the Red Sand Sector, he would only be able to receive surface repairs in case of damage.
And damages were to be expected on such a mission, whether through natural wear and tear or... whatever we found in the hypothetical atmospheric station hidden in the upper reaches of the Red Sand Realm.
"You should know better," Evija answered succinctly, not letting her frustration transpire this time.
Vesp must have said something bad...
Whatever.
Not my concern.
I was here to be a musclehead.
I was comfortable with that.
Having been politely called off by Evija, Vesp quieted down for the rest of the way until we caught sight of the Prime Temple.
It... looked exactly the same as the one we had in Crimson City.
Utilitarian.
Functional.
If I didn’t know this immense structure—assembled from cheap-looking metal plating, with exposed reinforced support beams and heavy angular geometry devoid of any unnecessary ornamentation—was the Prime Temple, I would have mistaken it for an elaborate warehouse.
Despite being, most likely, one of the wealthiest factions in Red Sand Rift City, the Faith of the Aspects acted the same as ever and seemed to regard aesthetics as little more than structural inefficiency.
"They're here," Vesp said, then waved his arm towards two petite figures zooming through the air.
Combining his words with the fact that we were expecting Ethna and Quirina to have arrived a few hours ahead of us, it wasn't hard for me to make out their overall shapes and recognize them as the two ultra-lightweight scouts of the five-member exploration unit Vesp was part of.
"Wait! No! I just cleaned-"
"How dare you look clean!"
"Glory to grim!"
In a fantastic display of camaraderie, the two returning fairies dove straight for the freshly cleaned outer fabric of Vesp's combat weave and started patting and stretching it like a towel.
Everyone had their nemeses, as it turned out, even sullen second-generation rich heirs.
By the time they finished their harmless—to everyone but Vesp, who now looked personally violated to his core, his combat weave stretched into absurd tension lines and dusted with strange, undignified residue—prank, Evija was already waiting with her arms crossed for the two fairies to begin their report.
"Report!"
"Report!"
Straightening their posture, squaring their shoulders, and folding their arms behind their back, the two sisters showed they were ready to give their report, which Evija barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes at.
"Quirina, you start," she declared.
"The intelligence we gathered from our branch did not present significant alterations from the actual situation. One Magister, eleven Lorekeepers, four Knights, all locals."
"When it comes to enlisting candidates with flying capabilities, it's a haphazard mix of Essence and Aspect-earned, with most of them being like Vesp, with an avianoid morphology."
"We also heard about one fairy with an astounding reputation for being successful at everything she does, but it turns out she's only two years old, so we can forget about her."
"As they recently returned from an expedition into the Red Sand Realm, they have plenty of equipment they are willing to part with before they decay, with the quality being not that bad from what I was shown."
"To my knowledge, this branch doesn't offer the possibility of outsiders posting Sentinel assignments, but who knows what you can accomplish with some sweet words?"
"The Magister is known as a chill guy who's on the verge of retiring into [Longevity], so he should be amenable to assisting us so long as the Faith comes out better from our cooperation..."
To me, Quirina's report sounded like a bunch of unrelated nonsense.
Not to Evija's, though, who nodded here and there and spoke up whenever she wanted more details, till Quirina stopped talking and Ethna took over.
"Just as you asked, I explicitly sought those with social leverage that we could potentially use, but I think we had better forget about it."
"The Faith's branch here is not like the one from the Crimson Hollow Sector. All individuals who display two bits of [Talent]s, [Drive]s, or [Ambiton]s are transferred away, leaving behind only those content with remaining in a Sector where nothing much happens, and they can languidly develop their Path."
"If you still feel up to it, then you can try talking to Knight Thalor, who aspires to become an Aura Knight, Lorekeeper Avenorium, who may be the sole Lorekeeper with the ability to keep his rank if he ever migrated to a better Sector, though his Path is weird, so..."
Name after name was thrown, entering through one of my ears then leaving through the other, yet leaving behind something akin to a fragment that slowly but surely generated a social map of the Red Sand Rift City's Faith Of The Aspects branch.
It was a map filled with individuals who could have amounted to so much more if they had dared to venture outside their comfort zone...
If they had joined the Order instead of the Faith...
"...if you want an atypical opportunity, then there's also that two-year-old fairy my sister just told you about. She has deep ties with the Fairy House and, supposedly, Stavros, as she's expected to leave with them when they depart towards the Everwell Sector and has received some form of personalized teaching or recognition from its leader."
"To wrap this up, nonetheless, I do have to mention that most Warriors and Guardians I directly questioned had a very neutral view on our arrival. So... yeah. It's not like back home, where the Faith is candidly disdainful of our efforts."
With the two sisters' reports done, Evija entered her usual period of reflection, where I couldn't possibly know what went on inside her head.
"Alright," five minutes of apparent contemplation later, she raised her head and spoke up.
"Ethna and Vesp, you're with me to go negotiate with Knight Thalor first."
"Quirina and Heimir, track down that fairy kid and see if she's willing to accompany us to the Fairy House."
"We meet up again in four hours, here."
Without asking if anyone had questions, Evija promptly departed, leaving me and everyone else presumably just as befuddled as I was.
"Well, you heard her," Vesp was the one to break the awkwardness, and shortly after, Evija disappeared into the [Darkness] of the Prime Temple with him and Ethna in tow.
I turned to look at Quirina, and we stared at each other for a good ten seconds before I ultimately shrugged off, resigning myself to my fate. "Where to?"
"No idea," she said as she took the lead.
Well, that was not a good start.
How were we even meant to entertain a child into accompanying us all the way to the Fairy House?
What about the return trip?
Were we authorized to use coins?
Did she have a legal guardian in the Faith that we should first demand permission from?
How smart could a two-year-old be, anyway?
My mind filled with complications I much preferred to delegate to the leadership unit, and it only became worse when Quirina started blindly asking around and we started receiving conflicting intelligence.
That we were proudly displaying the black and gold colors of the Nexus Order on our gear, which contrasted absurdly with the standard grayish metallic white all members of the Faith bore, only further complicated our impromptu investigation.
Who wouldn't be suspicious of us asking around about a child, after all?
After two hours of running from place to place and explaining for the hundredth time why we were seeking "Solaena", this time to people I increasingly suspected to be Veiled and not just curious Seekers and inquisitive Sentinels who supposedly knew her well, we were finally given a direction.
And lo and behold, after venturing into the bowels of whatever dusty and narrow archive we were steered towards, nothing.
"Another dead end?" Quirina whispered to herself, but I heard her clearly, and that meant she was about to ask me to execute her exploration unit's "custom-designed" last-resort solution before officially pronouncing this lead defunct.
"Solaena!" I preemptively carried out the last-resort solution, which consisted of the most brutishly loud call I could make. "Are you here‽"
The stale air, dusty shelves, and millions of pages of documents swallowed my shout like a drop of crimson water fed to someone who succumbed to the crimson madness, denying a single echo from bouncing back to us.
I waited.
I waited.
We waited.
Noth-
My [Perception] caught onto a flicker of movement through the oppressive [Darkness] of the silent archive.
Then, as if having perceived this flicker had pierced some manner of [Stealth], my [Insight] honed in on a fairy leisurely drifting in our direction from the end of a row.
Wearing what I believed to be a manually-refitted Scribe robe over what could be either a bodysuit or a skinweave, my Tier 3 [Insight] Aspect swiftly worked to study everything this fairy displayed about her.
First, the chances of this fairy not being Solaena were near zero, as she presented both the iridescent wings and pale opalescent hair we were told she had.
Second, Fairies not being an unfamiliar sight to me like they seemed to be in the Red Sand Sector, I effortlessly made out the signs of her excessive youth, though they returned a bit scrambled.
Third...
"Yes?" she inquired with a soft, controlled, high-pitched voice that instantly contradicted some of my [Insight]s on who she was.
"Hello, we're part of a Nexus Order company assembled from three units, one leadership unit, one exploration unit, and one escort unit. I'm Quirina, from the exploration unit, and this is Heimir from the Escort unit," Quirina introduced us smoothly.
"We're visiting the Prime Temple to handle politics, diplomacy, leadership, whatever. We heard you were acquainted with the Fairy House, mind accompanying us there?"
The fairy child blinked in answer, half-confused... half-pensive?
"We'll take you there and back, and my sister and I will also share with you what we learned about living as fairies in this inhospitable world filled with titans. You can also ask the rest of the company about the Nexus Order if you're curious. It's gonna be a long journey to the fourteenth floor, after all."
And just like that, all our leverage was gone, given away for free to a child whose bewilderment was swiftly fading in favor of her face lighting up with a small, cunning smile.
"I'm not against it..."
◇ ◈ ◈ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◈ ◈ ◇
If there was one thing I learned since joining the Nexus Order, it was that the Nexus Realm overflowed with oddities only waiting to be discovered,
Generally, those oddities were remnants of the past.
Abandoned structures suspended across abyssal chasms.
Derelict transit networks still humming with power centuries after their creators vanished.
Biomechanical growths consuming entire segments of a Strata.
Forgotten sanctuaries buried beneath kilometers of rusted metal.
Sealed vaults filled with incomprehensible technology.
Artificial ecologies gone feral.
Hollowed-out arcologies repurposed into vertical slums.
Endless undercity tunnels inhabited by scavenger tribes.
Even corrupted Sectors where reality itself no longer behaved correctly were part of the deal.
For all of them, the Nexus Order's purpose was the same.
Either assume control and reinstate [Order] or purge it of all that could pose a threat.
And then there were people oddities.
"So what's your personal take on the Nexus Order's purpose?"
"Is it more self-interested than one might think?"
"Do you see yourself as the same harbinger of change that all books describe the agents of the Order as?"
"How many places have you truly seen being restored to their past [Glory] since you joined?"
"What's the average death toll?"
"How far up the Unity Framework have you been a part of? It goes unit, company, brigade, division, and legion, right?"
Two hours of travel hadn't dried her endless questioning, instead, it only made it become more and more unerring as she targeted topics that forced even me to start contemplating them.
Also, my [Insight] had been going a bit wild since she donned her Sentinel Initiate set, informing me something was... wrong about her.
I couldn't explain what it was, but after years spent slowly approaching the synthesis of the high order [Intuition] Aspect, the sensation of things escaping my [Perception] yet warranting further investigation was far from unknown to me.
It was just... a bit of everything.
Danger.
Interest.
Value.
Talent.
The way she moved.
The questions she asked.
How she conveyed her intentions.
How she conversed with the others.
The words she employed.
My proto-[Intuition] was telling me...
This fairy definitely didn't just have her prematurity going for her.
"And you, what do you think of the Nexus Order?"
Eventually, unavoidably, Solaena turned her attention to me once more by landing confidently on my left shoulder, and what else could I do but continue to satisfy her curiosity?
"Depends," I answered, "What do I think of its purpose? Of the Unity Framework? Of my experiences so far? Of the opportunities it offered me?"
"Let's say I want to join the Nexus Order to... access tutors and develop my Essence, something like that. I just want to exploit the Order for what it can offer me before ditching it," she instantly reframed her curiosity in a much more practical, and logical, manner.
"I believe the Order would be the wrong place for you in that case," I told her, and after thinking for a while, I pursued, "I can think of dozens of reasons why it's a bad idea, but if I had to pick the top four..."
"It would be first, the Order's transparency, as all your missions, accomplishments, and demerits are clearly written in your file. That would quickly expose your hidden goals and conflicting [Ideal]s."
"Second, the Unity Framework that would force you to be part of a unit, so you would need to establish an entire chain of corruption to exploit the Order's opportunities without paying the price for them."
"Third, the mission requirements imposed on its members. If you join the Order, you're in for at least one mission monthly, and opportunities are often gated by an increase of that requirement or adherence to a higher framework."
"And fourth, a bit more difficult to grasp, the uninterrupted renewal of the Order's members, as there's an endless stream of people joining the Order every day, and the Order does somewhat stay true to its purpose of reinstating [Order] throughout the Nexus Realm."
"I believe you can guess what happens to deadweights and freeloaders when there are always people available to replace you," I finished-
-and noticed a little too late that I may have exposed a bit more of my true thoughts than I needed when I looked around, and my [Perception] allowed me to clearly make out the astonishment coloring everyone's countenance.
Oh well, at least I had just given little Solaena exactly the answer she sought by the brightening look on her face.
"I see you're a fellow realist. That's perfect, I have loads of questions about sensitive topics your companions clumsily evaded answering for reasons that I refuse to state outright for fear of bruising their ego."
There it was again.
Her choice of words, abrasive yet civil and honest to a fault.
Her [Awareness] of what she was talking about, what she was about to ask about.
The intense glint in her iridescent eyes, shimmering with unrestrained [Ambition]s only equalled by her conspicuous thirst for [Knowledge].
"How has the supposed meritocracy of the Order treated your Path to becoming a powerhouse?" she innocuously asked.
"Because if you're not a big reader of books, let me share with you the Civilization-wide acknowledged fact that the Order's failure to give birth to widely-acclaimed powerhouses is one of the big no-nos when it comes to considering joining them as a full member."
"More than that, whenever I asked others about what to do if I wanted to become a [Hero] and restore the Nexus to its past glory, no one advised me to actually start by joining the Nexus Order. It's an Essence development-stunting place, they said."
Her words... somewhat hurt.
The honesty with which they were enunciated hurt.
Their deeper implication hurt.
That it was a two-year-old who my [Insight] was pretty certain was some manner of prodigy was saying them, hurt even more.
"Do you believe it's the [Truth]?" I countered with the Era-renowned sophistication that always worked on distractible kids.
"Do I believe in statistics? I sure do! Are statistics the [Truth]? That, I don't know."
It worked in a very weird way.
"I'm asking just to be sure, though. Have you given up on becoming a powerhouse? Statistically speaking, at your current Essence development state, with you being a Pristine Essence Entity and still being just a regular member of the Order, you should still be in your emergence phase."
"That means you have yet to really become anything. You're just another Essence Entity muddling through existence. Unless you have secretly formed a second Order Aspect? Or maybe you're a secret infiltrator from another faction recruited from youth? You're not an agent of sentient corruption, are you?"
She chuckled at her own overblown imagination.
"Not that any of that really matters. The [Truth], I believe, is that most who join the Order simply haven't set themselves on Paths that lead anywhere."
"Just take [Inspiration] from my current self. My present mindset is simple, I'm developing my Essence to the edge of overdevelopment, all so that one day, I can lift a finger and all those I once considered friends can be brought back from [Death]."
"So, really, from my perspective, the [Truth] is easy to get to."
"Do you have a similar [Ambition] of your own?"
"Does any of your friends or companions do, to your knowledge?"
"Anyone who wants to lead a legion?"
"Anyone who's already working on a [Faith]-handling Aspect?"
"Anyone planning to set out to create their own faction?"
Every one of her questions only drove deeper the fact that treating her as the two-year-old she looked like had been an astoundingly wrong assumption.
So I stopped doing that.
Wrong assumptions only served to be discarded when they stopped serving their purpose.
And then I really turned my head to stare at the fairy-shaped Essence Entity who had comfortably settled on my left shoulder as she exposed her peculiar perspective on the world.
I wanted to call her innocent.
I wanted to call her yet unjaded by the harsh reality that awaited her once she grew up and explored beyond the comfort of the Faith's Prime Temple.
Above all, I wanted to call her an [Ideal]ist who hadn't suffered crippling failure yet.
I wanted to...
I couldn't.
My proto-[Intuition] was sealing my tongue.
As if...
"Sorry for the discomfort my questions may be causing. I'm simply working on forming the [Inspiration] Aspect to get my [Faith]-handling Aspect line going, so I'm manifesting a bit of [Will] to give more weight to my words."
"I'm only saying that because my [Awareness] is telling me your inner [Harmony] is disturbed. What are you thinking about right now? Are you rethinking your life choices?"
I blinked, a veil of fog as if lifting from my mind once she said that.
[Will]?
But that's not how it works...
"No." I frowned. "How did you do that? [Will] infusion doesn't work like that. You must have something to base your [Will] on for it to impact reality, and while I'm not doubting you, I fail to see how you could have lived through anything that could cause your words to pull me so deeply."
It was her turn to first blink, then frown, as she took in my words and fell silent for a good four minutes as I continued to journey through the endless streets of near-identical metallic buildings, their facades worn and utilitarian, all of it cast under the distant, faint red afterglow bleeding from the wall of harvesting towers hiding the Red Sand Realm Rift.
"Can I try something?" Eventually, she reopened her mouth to ask for permission.
"Do your worst," I assented.
The faint glow of manifested [Will] shone through her Sentinel set made entirely out of low-quality metal-thread fabric, only fully visible at the level of her head as she had removed her helmet.
Then she spoke.
"Have you ever trudged through an ocean of tens of thousands of rotting, dismembered cadavers, each one towering over you like fallen giants, your wings useless burden, your body shattered into a thousand pieces as you were forcibly dragged into an unknown reality, your existence feeling as if abandoned by everything that was ever meant to protect it, the world having forsaken you and told you in no uncertain terms..."
"Only [Death] would be your escape?"
It was the same soft, high-pitched voice—innocent in tone, uniquely clear in its diction.
This time, however, it was laced with a quiet [Will] that pressed against reality itself, each of her words carrying the echo of something endured rather than imagined, as if the experience had been lived through broken bone, shallow, pained breath, and faltering flesh...
And for a second there, I glimpsed something.
A flash of a memory that did not belong.
A lone fairy dragging herself through endless metallic corridors drowned in absolute [Darkness], her absurdly young and underdeveloped body barely pulled back from utter ruin, the air thick with the stench of rot and blood, while countless glazed, lifeless eyes from the colossal cadavers surrounding her stared emptily into her own, the floor drowned beneath layers of festering crimson.
It was a vision of a [Nightmare] as I had never beheld, topping even my worst ordeals, manifested into reality through the living memories of a being not even a tenth my age.
As her voice hadn't stopped at just my ears and went on to propagate to everyone else like some sort of [Spirit]ual attack, they all arrayed a peculiar look on their face that was hard to explain.
Pity.
Anger.
Incomprehension.
I myself felt something like that last one.
"It was real, wasn't it? You [Will]ed your memories through your words?" I asked before anyone else, being the first to pull myself together.
I wasn't part of an escort unit for nothing.
"Oh, yeah, it was," she replied indifferently, "I've written all the details of my first year of existence down so that infantile amnesia can't erase my memories of it. I'm also keeping it fresh so that when my [Faith] starts to spread, my believers know exactly what it took for me to get to where I am."
That explained... an unexpected lot.
Why my proto-[Intuition] sealed my tongue.
Why she grew up to become who she became.
Why she dared to have such exalted [Ambiton]s.
"Oh?" she suddenly exclaimed, closing her eyes to do something, shortly followed by her sharing a most delightful news. "My [Awareness] Aspect just started advancing to Tier 1."
"Congrats."
"Congratulations."
Evija and I tersely congratulated her first, with the others swiftly following suit in their own way.
"I’ll dedicate my next snack to your achievement!"
"And I'll celebrate by eating slightly better than usual!"
The two fairy sisters playfully commended her.
"You seriously already synthesized the [Awareness] Aspect? Damn. Enjoy life a little."
And Vesp curse-praised her in his own unique way.
"Thanks. I have to thank big Heimir here most, though," she said and stood up on my shoulder, straightening her posture and folding her arms behind her back-
Wait.
I knew that posture.
"Thank you for your guidance, sir!" She saluted amateurishly in the tradition of the Order. "The sanctuary is so lacking in [Will] Aspect books that I hadn't even known I could leverage my history in such a way. That's going to make forming the [Inspiration] Aspect much easier."
Breaking her salute, she sat back down, swiftly crossing her legs in a way I couldn't imagine proper armor should allow.
"While we're on the topic of guidance, though, do any of you possess a solution for Essence overdevelopment that doesn't involve slowing down Essence development?"
"Cause, you know, that advancement is going to cost me hundreds of hours' worth of idle time. It's not that I don't want to explore the hidden potential and possibilities of idleness or further advance my [Inspiration] and [Exemplar]-synthesis [Cultivation], but you know, if..."
As she started droning on and on about the consequences of owning a Path that, if it was ever concretized, I was certain to hear about it as the rise of another notable Essence Entity [Worthy] of making it to the top, I slowly stopped my stride to start looking around.
"What are you doing?" Evija asked.
"There's no way the Faith just let this little one go with a bunch of strangers without dispatching a Veiled to shepherd her. And those weird-ass Acolytes and Initiates definitely weren't Acolytes and Initiates," I answered.
Elevating my [Perception] to its limits, I scrutinized every shadowed corner of the street we were walking through, although I was pretty confident I would find nothing.
Then Vesp spoke up in a whisper, "So that's who they were..."
"We were being followed?" Evija raised her eyebrows and questioned, her hand darting towards her firearm.
"Yeah, but I thought that whoever it was quickly gave up. Now, though, maybe they simply discovered the limits of my [Sense] and stirred clear of it. Who knows? And if they're Veiled, isn't that more of an escort for us? Win-win." He indifferently shrugged.
I felt Solaena mirror his shrug, showing her approval of his rationale, followed by a nearly inaudible murmur, "So they're called Veiled..."
I was going to remember this day for months to come...