To my fluctuating [Awareness], the isolated room I was in wasn't so much a barrier to my [Perception] as it was a representation of where my physical vessel existed.
In hindsight, it was evident that I had given much more emphasis on my [Awareness] Aspect's physical [Perception] facet instead of on what made up for a major part of the concept associated with it.
Self [Awareness].
The [Awareness] of my mental state.
The [Awareness] of my emotions.
Whenever I communed with my Essence.
Whenever I underwent [Guided] [Cultivation] involving the [Cultivation] of my mind and spirit.
Whenever I formed [Insight]s or achieved [Comprehension].
It was unavoidably involved to some degree every time.
It was such an integral part of my [Awareness] Aspect, yet...
Despite the reminder I received at the very beginning, through its synthesis having been initiated by a deep introspection into my [Truth]ful, honest self as a being so singlemindedly [Focus]ed on her Path that I summarily disregarded forming the likes of meaningful relationships and avoided anything that induced long-term losses of potential...
I made the same sort of mistake as I did at the beginning.
The trigger to my [Awareness] Aspect advancement to Tier 1 hadn't been something like achieving perfect [Awareness] of everything that went on inside my body as it underwent intense [Cultivation].
The trigger had been an unsophisticated delve back into my memories.
I endeavored to remember what it felt like, then, when I knew nothing but what served my continued survival and what I hadn't even known was my Path.
What my emotional state was.
What [Ambition]s drove me.
How integral [Guided] already was.
What those memories represented.
Which words could better express everything to other entities that had no idea about my history, and even held biases due to my age, demeanor, reputation, or whichever apparent proclivities of mine could cause others to not see me for who I truly was...
Then, it simply happened.
My [Awareness] Aspect really liked it when I got to know myself better and contemplated the course of my life.
Aspect Advanced: [Awareness] (Tier 0) ➞ [Awareness] (Tier 1)
Like any other Aspect advancement, I felt when it ended, and [Focus]ed to the utmost on catching all the unfolding changes to what the last couple of days had sternly reminded me was something akin to my most used senses, and that losing it felt like losing an arm.
It wasn't crippling, like losing a wing would cause, but it significantly diminished my ability to carry out my most demanding [Exertion]s.
Accordingly, over the following quarter of an hour, I dedicated myself entirely to feeling out my [Awareness] settling into its new state.
It did not expand.
It did not grow clearer.
It did not enable me to wholly ignore the walls of the rooms I was in.
It simply... embodied more of the concept it already was about.
My [Awareness] was now, simply and purely, more.
Not that this improvement could not, in turn, through [Mastery], be wielded to push the boundaries of my [Awareness] further, be it outward or inward, make my [Awareness] of things surrounding me clearer, or spread my [Awareness] to territories my [Perception] had never before been allowed into.
In conclusion, this advancement had resulted in exactly what I expected out of it, and was similarly anticipating for all my future [Awareness] Aspect advancements.
A straightforward growth that nonetheless left plenty to master and perfect through [Guided] [Cultivation].
Once I got a handle of the ripples caused by the advancement, I stood up and started packing, immediately followed by putting on my armor back, the process still painfully slow as ever, with every piece being its own fitting battle to wage.
I was used to it by now.
Stavros' [Secrecy]-synthesis instructions having only taken four short and intense hours the day prior, with the rest of the day having been spent in a nightmarish idle chatting session with those I would be making the journey towards the Everwell Sector with, I was ready to leave and return to the Prime Temple.
Passing by the dining hall and all the other interesting places of the castle at the center of the Fairy House, I bid goodbye to all the fairies I saw, even sparing any who wanted some minutes to talk about everything and nothing.
My Essence development balance was fucked for the next week or so, in any case, so I really didn't have any reason not to waste as much of my time on increasing my relationship with those I was bound to spend multiple years travelling alongside.
When I left the castle, I nearly thought Stavros had gone somewhere, and that was the reason I hadn't found him, only for the obvious to transpire.
"Where's my bow?" From literally nowhere, he appeared inside my [Awareness] in his usual loose garb.
"Yes, yes, there you go."
Landing on the closest ledge, I half-heartedly completed a full-on two-knees, two-hands, lowered-head-and-wings bow reserved for those who occupied higher everything—seniority, standing, authority, capability, whatever.
"That's better," he said as he helped me up by placing two arms on my shoulders.
Then, without removing them, staring me in the eyes, he continued, "Don't [Focus] too much on the [Secrecy] Aspect. Simply continue what you've been doing, keep to your Path."
"With how things are going, we'll depart Red Sand Rift City within the year. Hopefully before things go to shit within Red Sand. By then, I'll be there to guide you in a more personal manner."
"Also, developing your Essence while journeying through the Nexus Realm will be a highly uncertain activity. We're not planning to make many stops, and we'll fly for long hours, so prepare yourself accordingly."
"Other than that, don't forget to find some hobbies, preferably, hobbies with long-term potential. You said you were interested in mathematics, right? Why don't you..."
Observing how vigorously he was speaking in his habitual, weathered, endlessly patient, and profusely knowledgeable tone that old people seemed incapable of abandoning once they entered lecturing mode, I internally braced myself.
In any event, it wasn't like I had anywhere else to be or anything else to do.
Apart from rifling through thousands of pages of decades-old logistics documents, that was...
Still, I wasn't above being reminded of every conceivable danger the Nexus Realm had ever produced and the best practices for years-long journeys.
Hence, I listened.
And when Stavros said something that felt illogical, I asked why that was.
Two hours later, I flew out of the Fairy House a dozen [Insight]s richer and another sixteen hours' worth of idleness to schedule for.
It was getting... increasingly frustrating.
◇ ◈ ◈ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◈ ◈ ◇
Two months.
That was how long it took for the Nexus Order, a previously obscure and mostly benign neutral presence in Red Sand Rift City, to reveal its edge.
To me, who had not neglected reading about the Order's history, purpose, and how it systematically reacted to information like the discovery of hypothetical coordinates leading to an atmospheric research station hailing from before the Resurgence Era, I was prepared for the upheaval that ensued.
For many others in the city, entire factions included, however, it seemed they hadn't adequately grasped what it meant for a faction solely dedicated to reinstating the [Glory] of old to manifest its interest in something.
To say the misguided quickly learned the errors of withholding supplies or preventing in any way individuals from becoming temporary enlistees was an understatement.
No one was killed—as of my knowledge, though the rumor mill certainly advocated for the opposite—but through mysterious, supposedly political means, everyone who endorsed anti-Order support opinions swiftly revised their judgment and expeditiously delivered goodwill contributions to the once overlooked local headquarters of the Order.
Thus it was that, unsurprisingly, the Order's expedition rapidly took form with every faction being politically in its favor.
That I felt inspired by it truly impressed upon me the importance of developing my political and diplomatic acumen for the day I needed to further my Path through something I could not achieve alone—yet.
Although that day was certainly still far away, as I entirely failed to conceptualize anything my Path may oblige that would actually require me to employ political or diplomatic means to realize my ends.
When the departure date for the Order's expedition was given, my Essence had returned to what I considered its normal state.
A week of perfect idleness away from erasing all the signs associated with an Essence overdevelopment state.
A... month or so of a hypothetical hyper-[Focus]ed [Cultivation] routine away from causing it to attain a critical Essence overdevelopment threshold that would threaten to induce Essence volatility, and subsequently, a potentially lethal Essence mutation.
I was living on the edge.
And I was expected to continue to do so for years to come.
Until I found an answer to my Essence attempting to kill itself whenever I developed it a bit too vigorously.
Until then, my existence would continue to be defined by Essence development priorities, daily Essence development quota, and whatever future solutions I stumbled upon as I maintained my [Guided] [Cultivation] routine and explored all I could within the bounds my Essence allowed.
That meant idle time.
A lot of it.
The day I attained nine-tenths of my daily Essence development quota in seven hours, I gained even more of it.
I [Focus]ed all of it on exploring the more and more elusive possibilities presented by wandering thoughts, drifting through memories, and spiralling through thoughts, both rational and nonsensical...
All while my body, mostly my hands and eyes, were [Guided] to unearth and unravel all they could from the document repository.
Most of what surfaced amounted to little more than passive incompetence.
Misfiled requisitions.
Delayed approvals.
Arithmetic inconsistencies born from exhaustion rather than intent.
Quiet redirections of insignificant surplus to compensate for shortages elsewhere without authorization.
The smoothing over of procedural discrepancies simply to keep strained logistical chains functional.
The sort of low-level irregularities that technically qualified as corruption, yet were so minor, widespread, and seemingly systemically tolerated that pursuing formal punishment over them would likely consume more resources than the losses themselves ever had.
And that was without bearing in mind the ethical implications of some of those irregularities, going up to the level that merited punishment, had sometimes been carried out with the best intentions, irrespective of whether they ultimately led to a good or bad ending.
When I gathered enough of those—those that could not be leveraged in any way towards elevating my reputation and the [Inspiration] I could cause—I simply decided to make it its own thing and handed the information over to fellow Seekers who were interested in investigating this type of thing.
That eventually led to the creation of a list of hidden merits and demerits that allowed for ten or so people to be recognized for sort-of heroic actions that history had proven as the right course of action.
Ascanio, who quietly falsified transportation manifests to reroute evacuation supplies toward a collapsing residential area he knew official command had already written off as too dangerous, but actually held on for an additional week.
Niclas, who deliberately delayed the dispatch of Sentinel reinforcements toward a supposedly "contained" industrial district after learning from local relatives that the area’s structural integrity was on the verge of catastrophic rupture.
Heulwen, a present-day Archivist who manipulated casualty classifications to prevent severely injured Initiates from being reassigned back into active salvage duty before they had properly recovered, only for multiple faction wars to be ignited shortly after.
As it wasn't about me, my name was hardly mentioned, and few ended up knowing I was the one to have brought all this intelligence to light.
I didn't care.
Compared to how much my name was mentioned by means of the mounting number of logistics document issues I uncovered, it was reaching a point where, in a couple of months, all the [Inspiration] I could induce in people susceptible to this type of thing would have been realized.
All that remained was to keep excelling at being myself, forging my legend—the legend of Solaena—in preparation for the day I left, for my existence to still be mentioned as a form of [Inspiration] to others.
[Ideal]ly, of course.
Realistically, forming the [Inspiration] Aspect was all I wanted.
As for its advancement and subsequent synthesis into the [Exemplar] Aspect, it was a matter I fully expected to only pursue once I was in close proximity to the Prime Realm known as the Everwell Realm.
Who knew? Maybe I would even acquire my first followers there, and one of them could have formed the [Faith] Aspect, drastically accelerating the advancement and lowering the synthesis difficulty of my [Faith]-handling Aspect line.
In the meantime, I would set my expectations for simply getting the Aspect line started.
When the day of the Order's expedition departure came, I did not just travel to spectate the affluent passages through the rift of thousands of individuals from various floors; I actually plunged into the rift and travelled back into the Red Sand Realm, where the real staging ground for the expedition was.
There, I met the thirty-two fairies affiliated with the Fairy House, many acquaintances from the Faith, and others originating from the Nexus Order, including those part of Evija's company's three units, and came ridiculously close to taking them up on their collective scheme to make me keep them company.
My logic won.
That, and [Guided] was completely against it in view of the fact that I had nothing to gain from accompanying them.
So, from high up in the endless clear sky of the Red Sand Realm, I beheld a procession of thousands of sandstriders departing into the endless expanse of dunes.
Whether they ended up finding what they sought—an elusive atmospheric research station older than the Faith Of The Aspects was—was of no relevance for me.
It never was.
For the six or so hours that followed their departure, I enjoyed myself by flying around without destination or purpose beyond the simple release of my love of flying.
I dove through the open skies of the Red Sand Realm again and again just to feel the violent rush of wind tearing past my body.
Every beat of my wings cut cleanly through the atmosphere, every turn shifting invisible currents across my wings, every dive ending in that intoxicating moment where falling became flight once more as I caught onto the air itself.
For a little while, beneath the vast crimson-lit sky unobstructed by ceilings or endless metallic corridors, I was freed from everything, my Path, my [Ambition]s, until only [Guided] and I remained.
Then the time came to return when the first sliver of exhaustion crept into my mind and body, and I pierced through the localized storm of wind and sand surrounding the rift with a thrilling infusion of my [Will] into my physical vessel.
My [Awareness] kept me informed of where the rift bridge was, so all I had to do was follow it with all my might until the familiar wall of harvesting towers entered my insight again.
From there, an hour was all it took me to return to the Prime Temple, where I decided to spend my remaining time awake in the sanctuary researching obscure Aspects that I may or may not one day become interested in making part of my Path.
Even an Aspect like [Thread] had its niche use, after all.
What more, when it was put at the absolute core of one's Path, leading to bizarre Paths such as...
A [Thread] that could be anchored directly onto a target’s existence, binding itself to their metaphysical "position." Invisible and intangible to most senses.
Such a [Thread] could be followed like a taut line stretched through reality itself, allowing a tracker to simply walk along it and arrive exactly where the target stood, regardless of distance, barriers, or concealment.
Alternatively, a [Thread] could be wound and rewound like something called a "fishing line", compressing vast travel or extended actions into retraced motion.
By reversing its tension, one could "reel back" something, someone, or even oneself along a path already taken, effectively undoing traversal or collapsing distance into rapid return along the same metaphysical trajectory.
It was crazy how any Aspect developed to higher Tiers could potentially allow someone at my current power level to render an actual powerhouse who didn't have an answer to my specialized skillset absolutely miserable.
Not that one who ended up being acknowledged as a powerhouse did not generally have an answer to anything that could be thrown at it...
Two hours of reading the wonders of high Tier Aspects ultimately brought me to the limits of casual idleness.
If I kept myself awake from thereon, it would not be time spent nonchalantly seeking [Insight]s, it would be an odd form of passive [Cultivation] where I [Will]ingly challenged my natural needs, thus resulting in the natural development of my Essence from...
Simply being awake.
Thinking back to the time when I could brazenly carry out all sorts of [Tempering] without dwelling on their consequences, I really wanted today to be an exception.
How far could I defy my natural need for sleep?
Then reality caught up to me—or [Guided] did, really—and I was accurately reminded that I already attempted to go through a week-long anti-sleep [Cultivation] period, and that the result had been disastrous.
Lowered daily Essence development quota.
Lower amount of [Insight]s yielded.
Negligible overall benefits that ultimately vaguely translated into a couple of minutes of optimal awake time.
In the end, to gain the likes of an hour of actual time without the mind haze caused by mental exhaustion per "day", I would have to pursue such a [Cultivation] for seven to eight months.
That meant seven to eight months of significantly reduced daily Essence development quota.
And that was without accounting for my total lack of information about whether sleeping was actually the reason behind my average yield of [Insight]s, or if sleeping contributed to anything else I simply hadn't noticed.
Still, as it held such long-term potential and was so time-consuming, I fully intended to make anti-sleep [Cultivation] part of my travel [Cultivation] routine once I began to journey towards the Everwall Sector.
For my present circumstances, however, it was a sort of [Cultivation] that simply held too many drawbacks.
Hence, I obliged my mind and, after bringing the book I was reading to a nice point to leave it at, headed for my quarters.
My first bed, the one located in one of the rooms of the Seeker Path's children's lodgings, was one I moved out of months ago by then, having grown comfortable enough in the Prime Temple to migrate to places I felt much more comfortable in, even if others looked with pity at me whenever I mentioned them.
What could I say? I liked my [Darkness] comfy, silent, and as far from other people as possible.
And it wasn't like I isolated myself in the darkest, most forgotten, and inaccessible corners of the Prime Temple.
I simply opted for forgotten recesses where, if others really wanted to find me, they could.
It would just take them a couple of hours.
If they were determined...
How common was a case of Essence volatility that paralyzed the body, anyway?
Nearly unheard of was how common it was.
For that reason, I flew towards my latest favorite spot, an unused narrow room at the top of one of the blocky pseudo-spires ubiquitous scattered through the Prime Temple structure.
I had to clean it myself, carve open aeration slits myself, and haul in every piece of bedding and furnishing required to make it [Ideal] myself, but since then...
I never slept anywhere else.
For when it came to my sleeping environment, it felt like [Perfection] incarnate.
And that [Perfection] truly shone brightest the moment my head touched my pillow and my [Awareness] gradually dissolved into something much more hazier.
The faint circulation of cool air through the aeration slits.
The muted metallic creaking of the distant Prime Temple structure.
The isolation from unnecessary noise and movement.
The firmness and softness of the bedding.
I was aware of everything, every detail aligned precisely the way I wanted it to.
Present, yet distant.
It was quiet.
Controlled.
Safe.
Mine.