As I neared the completion of my fourth Aspect synthesis, despite being utterly [Focus]ed on not missing a single moment of it through a deep communion that had already lasted what I was fairly confident was well over sixteen hours—a whole day—my mind unavoidably began to drift.
Was synthesizing First Order Aspects actually difficult?
Why did others struggle for years to accomplish what I had now repeated four times in less than three years of life?
Or perhaps, to make for a fair comparison, I ought to include my gestation period as part of my life...?
In that case, I could start considering myself three years old.
Not that it changed much, did it?
Exhaustion was causing my mind to digress.
I had barely gotten an hour of sleep after igniting my [Ambition], and from then on, remained submerged in a deep communion that demanded I continuously parse through my ever-shifting Essence, and more specifically my [Focus] Aspect and the unfolding [Clarity] synthesis disorder surrounding it.
My cognitive depletion had long since reached the point where I stopped trying to retain anything I was perceiving, relegating all my efforts to ensuring I missed no major change.
Which there were many of.
Or at least I believed there were.
Not that I trusted my addled mind to produce objective observations.
I wouldn't even trust it to take flight and resume my aimless journey in my current state.
At long last, however, accompanied by one final surge of conceptual meanings that I would most assuredly dissect from every conceivable angle later, my ordeal reached its natural conclusion.
Aspect Lost: [Focus] (Tier 2)Aspect Formed: [Clarity] (Tier 0)
For [Guided]'s sake, I endured for another few minutes, observing both the subtle and non-subtle final changes taking place throughout my Essence as my new Aspect settled into my existence.
[Guided] (Origin)[Cultivation] (Tier 1)[Insight] (Tier 3)[Awareness] (Tier 1)[Secrecy] (Tier 0)[Will] (Tier 3)[Clarity] (Tier 0)[Harmony] (Tier 0)[Ambition] (Tier 0)
When peace returned, however, finally, [Guided] no longer had any reason to keep me in my current addled state and allowed me to drift into the serene embrace of slumber.
I did so in seconds.
◇ ◈ ◈ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◈ ◈ ◇
What could only have been several hours later, I awoke beneath a sky veiled by red sand that heralded the approach of another sandstorm, my existence filled with an inordinate [Clarity] I struggled to comprehend.
Everything was simply...
Clearer.
My mind.
My [Awareness].
My next pursuit.
Everything was so clear that the thorough absence of any sort of waking grogginess went entirely unnoticed for minutes, until I effortlessly slipped into my familiar state of [Focus] by instinct to carry out my waking communion.
Not only was my morning cognitive haziness conspicuously absent, [Focus]ing as before remained just as attainable as before, if not better, as I swiftly noticed yet more differences.
I was [Focus]ing, but I wasn't.
My Essence came into [Focus] as I began communing with it, but instead of feeling like I was scouring through an evershifting weave of threads to which all Aspects of my existence had been attached...
It felt like bringing an already clear picture into even sharper definition.
Meanings that once demanded seconds unraveled within moments.
Momentary confusions no longer branched into endless chains of increasingly irrelevant tangents.
Connections emerged almost the instant they were sought.
Without investing the slightest of effort, all that was unnecessary quietly faded into the background, leaving only what truly warranted my attention.
Beyond that, my [Harmony] and [Clarity] Aspects even seemed to complement one another naturally.
One preserved the coherence of my Path.
The other made that coherence readily apparent.
As a result, my normally shallow waking communion transformed within mere seconds into one that carried me deeper and deeper.
Deeper than ever before.
Until...
The very concept of depth in the context of communing with my Essence lost its meaning.
For I was communing with my entire Essence at once.
All of my Aspects.
All of their developments.
All of their expressions.
Their concepts.
Their meanings.
My entire existence, laid bare before my mind.
I knew what this was.
I read about it.
True communion.
I had achieved true communion.
Just like that.
Without even trying, I had lifted all the barriers that separated my Essence and me, the Entity born from it and that, in turn, animated it.
It was...
Words momentarily failed me.
It was... gorgeously intricate.
A wondrous complexity that could belong to nothing but the expression of what made up the very foundation of reality.
Having merely lifted the veil that separated me from the endless intricacies contained within my Essence, new [Insight]s into its very nature burst out, and all of them were directly reflected in the form of ripples manifesting in ways that obeyed none of reality's laws I was familiar with.
And amidst it all, like a Realm Rift glimpsed from the darkest reaches of the rust wastes, my Origin Aspect pulsed.
It radiated with the same iridescence that streaked and colored parts of my physical vessel, binding everything together while displaying more activity than every other Aspect combined... twice over?
Four times over?
Eight?
Sixteen?
Was there even any basis for such a comparison when [Guided] existed on an entirely different scale on every level from everything else within my Essence?
That I had never noticed such a defining trait of my Origin Aspect before struck me as an astounding revelation in itself, one that I would keenly look back on for the sheer impression of [Secrecy] it inspired.
And speaking of astounding revelations...
Despite the cognitive load produced by this communion, I wasn't struggling to keep pace with the ever-shifting nature of my Essence.
Seconds passed.
Then minutes.
Yet I remained able to commune with my Essence with perfect [Clarity], no change escaping my [Awareness].
And with [Guided] in no hurry for me to resume my aimless journey after I had stumbled upon something so momentous to my future Path, I earnestly took my time to explore everything this pinnacle of Essence communion had to offer.
Because, as far as Essence communion was concerned, this was it.
From the glorious total of five books I had read explicitly dedicated to the subject, I had understood that to venture into one's Essence beyond the state of "true communion", one would have to form a dedicated Aspect.
As in, if one wasn't a powerhouse capable of forcing such a development to occur through advancing one of their somewhat related Aspects, the [Communion] Aspect.
Which, honestly, sounded like a pointless waste of an Aspect if one was on a Path bound to eventually naturally delve beyond regular Essence communion through sheer Essence development.
Still, I had yet to dismiss any Aspect before making every reasonable effort to understand it, and [Communion] would not become my first exception.
It was just that, given its potential compatibility with my Path, I would do so only once it became an optimal use of my time, and not before.
Contemplating such matters, my thoughts naturally drifted toward the concerns I had harbored before this wholly unexpected [Clarity] synthesis.
And unexpected was the word I was even now employing to describe it.
Though, even more unexpectedly, the [Awareness] I had of my present novel state of [Focus] circumstantially dissolved much of my lingering uncertainties and reservations regarding how this fourth synthesis of mine ended up transpiring in the first place.
Because from my present perspective, it seemed entirely reasonable to conclude that, had I persisted in cultivating [Clarity] without abandoning my ingrained reliance on entering a state of [Focus], I probably could have attained genuine [Clarity] eventually.
Nonetheless, did that mean I had taken a shortcut?
Judging by the depth and immensity of the [Clarity] Aspect now laid bare within my Essence, I suspected there was merit to that conclusion.
Yet, that [Truth] held only insofar as I had clearly not undergone anything worthy of being called an [Enlightenment].
Even calling it a pseudo-enlightenment would be stretching the [Truth].
Looking back upon it, it had genuinely been nothing more than a fortuitous [Insight], coupled with the timely convergence of thousands of accumulated [Insight]s.
And that... had turned out to be enough.
Possibly, barely.
Perhaps, I would have failed if a breeze had blown differently while I was assimilating all my [Insight]s.
Or maybe, the last few [Insight]s I attained had simply and purely reached some form of critical accumulation threshold, and it had sufficed for my Essence to brush against the concept of [Clarity].
It was all that was needed, after all.
A single brush with a concept.
A single [Enlightenment], imitated through months upon months of accumulated [Insight]s into the very nature of the concept one sought to manifest as an Aspect.
In the end, however, the conclusion remained straightforward.
I had successfully synthesized the [Clarity] Aspect.
I had also yet to realize even half of the potential it held, considering I had only just synthesized it.
And yet, it was already elevating my Essence by allowing me to attain true Essence communion.
Regardless of how lacking my [Comprehension] of Essence still was, nothing could diminish that sort of progress.
Satisfied with that conclusion, I let the matter rest.
There would be years to unravel everything my latest Aspect had brought me.
Today was not for that.
And for all that true Essence communion was certain to yield fascinating [Insight]s and further developments, there came a time, when the sandstorm began veiling the sky radiance, to similarly relegate it to later.
Arising from my communion, the unfathomable complexity of my Essence faded into nothing to be replaced by a swiftly darkening world.
My [Awareness] coming into [Focus] when the time was right, I relaxed my wings and surrendered myself to the wind.
A passing gust caught me, and I offered no resistance, allowing it to carry me back high above the dunes without the slightest effort on my part.
My aimless journey had served its purpose.
It was now time for me to head back and ready myself for the real thing.
◇ ◈ ◈ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◈ ◈ ◇
For weeks, every horizon I crossed had been uninterrupted.
Endless dunes beneath an endless crimson radiance, broken only by rusted ruins swallowed by time, wandering travelers, and the occasional sandstorm intent on reshaping the Red Sand Realm one grain of red sand at a time.
Now, however, something interrupted that boundlessness.
A distant crimson brilliance, brighter than the sky radiance.
The Nexus Realm Rift.
The distinctive perpetual storm surrounding it, born from the incessant exchange of air between two fundamentally different Realms, churned relentlessly, drawing streams of red sand high into the atmosphere before casting them back down in an eternal [Cycle].
I slowed my flight, allowing myself to properly appreciate the impressive sight one last time.
Then, manifesting my [Will] to bolster my body and my flight, I dove straight in.
Powerful currents, all born from the Rift's endless breathing, buffeted me from every direction, though after enduring an entire month journeying through the Red Sand Realm on my lonesome, they barely warranted my attention.
Leaving the matter of navigating towards where I wanted to [Guided], I quickly stumbled upon the Rift bridge leading to the fourteenth floor and followed it, soaring above those already employing it to swiftly cross back into the Nexus Realm.
The instant I sighted the wall of harvesting towers, however, the insidious phenomenon known as Realm dissonance struck me.
One moment, I was soaring through an endless desert.
The next, I was suddenly back amidst the dark, familiar environment ruled by an architecture of metal and rust hinting at nothing but cramped streets, [Darkness], and hopelessness.
Unwilling to waste any time on those pointless feelings, I rode the wind out of the enclosure of harvesting towers and made my way straight toward the Fairy House.
Unsurprisingly, by the time I reached the castle, Stavros appeared from nowhere and whistled to grab my attention.
There he was, casually seated atop one of the highest balconies overlooking the empty streets surrounding the Fairy House.
I landed before him without saying a word.
He silently examined me.
My helmet.
My armor.
My weapons.
My backpack.
The inspection lasted several long seconds.
Then he slowly nodded.
"You're ready."
Simple.
Direct.
Final.
I said nothing.
"Give me a month to prepare your travel equipment, supplies, and everything else you'll require," he eventually continued as he rose to his feet.
"Just leave everything to me and return once you've concluded your remaining affairs. And don't feel obligated to come back in exactly one month. Take however long you need to tie up all your loose ends. It's not like you'll be coming back anytime, after all."
With that being apparently everything he wanted to say, he took off and, right before my eyes, still firmly within the range of my [Awareness], disappeared as if he had never been there.
A shame for him that I was already so used to him doing this sort of thing that I efficiently cycled through all my means to try to track him down, then once I failed, moved on like it never happened.
That... concluded the matter, I presumed.
No grand speech.
No dramatic revelation.
Just one final task to accomplish.
Handling everything I still had to do within the Red Sand Sector.
A task that suited me perfectly after the introspective journey I had just completed.
Thus, unconcerned with whether anything of consequence had transpired during my months-long stay in the Red Sand Realm, I wasted no further time and took off once more, this time toward the fifty-eighth floor and the Prime Temple.
I had much to do, after all.
Relationships to bring to a close.
An autobiography to finish writing and to publish in proper form.
Questions to attempt seeking answers to one last time.
Overall, the following month was bound to be... remarkably frantic in exactly the way I liked it.
◇ ◈ ◈ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◈ ◈ ◇
"As demanded, here is one of the copies that has already been transcribed. I must say, it was a fascinating read."
Velia, the sole local Veiled Hand, completely avoiding my [Perception], silently manifested inside my office wearing her Sentinel Warrior disguise.
For her to so nonchalantly do that, she must truly be thrilled by all the recent developments surrounding the Order and the city.
Perhaps because, at long last, the Veiled had truly stepped into their intended role as the shadows of the Faith and were no longer relegated to "boring" surveillance and review assignments?
"Was it?" I entertained her abrupt arrival with the same casualness it deserved. "And didn't I ask you to bring me a copy to read, rather than read one yourself?"
"I expected a much heavier emphasis on self-aggrandizing [Faith], but guess what? It's actually the exact opposite. She wrote nothing but the dark, raw, gory, horror, and depressing [Truth] of her life and Path."
She ignored my remark and continued her impromptu review.
"Altogether, while it's probably a little too heavy for a fragile, weak-hearted Seeker like you, I think you might find some unexpected [Inspiration] in it. Mainly in how she wove her Aspects into her Path and Origin Aspect."
She paused for just a heartbeat.
"And what a fascinating Origin Aspect [Guided] turns out to be once employed in the way she does."
"Anyway, there you go." Finished with her review, she carefully placed the hefty volume onto one of the few empty spots on my desk, producing not the slightest sound as she let go.
At last, after more than a week of having personally assisted in its review and in the rewriting of some parts, I finally got my hands on the finalized version of "The Nascence of Solaena".
True to what little Solaena had told me, she had chosen neither an elaborate nor a minimalist cover.
Instead, she settled on a tastefully designed one depicting a stylized silhouette of herself, from feet to wings, traced in gray metallic filigree, with powdered red sand from the Red Sand Realm subtly inlaid around the title.
"Thanks. You can leave now. I'll call for you soon enough," I eventually told Velia after softly caressing one of the few joys life as a Magister in the red Sand Sector had to offer.
New books.
"Have fun reading."
Disregarding her departure, I reached for the thick volume and turned the cover, Solaena's peculiar utilitarian mindset immediately becoming apparent through the absence of either a preface or a table of contents.
The very first word and sentence one got to behold upon turning the cover plunged one straight into the heart of the content held within.
As of my present knowledge, I was conceived due to a fairy Essence environment manifestation of the Serafae variety, which rendered my mother pregnant with me, whether she was willing or not...
With no important reports requiring my attention and no pressing matters demanding my time, I leaned back into my chair and began reading.
Though, admittedly, what constituted leisurely reading for someone on an erudite Seeker Path like mine likely bore little resemblance to what anyone else without Aspects dedicated to the task of absorbing [Knowledge] would consider leisurely.
Just as Velia had said, it took only a handful of pages describing the hypothetical circumstances surrounding her conception before the "narrative" descended into the raw, gory [Truth] of what had given birth to someone like little Solaena.
The first chapter reconstructed her gestation from the fragmented memories she painstakingly [Will]ed back together.
The formation of her Origin Aspect, [Guided].
The endless [Cycle]s of [Warmth] and [Cold].
The formation of both her [Exertion] and [Cycle] Aspects before she had even entered the world.
The second chapter chronicled her birth, the point from which one was normally considered to have begun their life.
Not in this case.
For her, who supposedly had to fight for her life from the instant she was conceived, she already regarded herself as being between four to six months old, depending on how prematurely she was born.
What followed was her being abandoned by her mother, then being taken in by a refuge whose practices made evident the fact that they weren't simply gathering children for compassion's sake.
Then came the formation of her [Insight] Aspect amidst the gradual realization of what she called the fundamental truth of [Exertion].
Playing with rust powder.
Growing just strong enough to move on her own, only to be assigned the task of cleaning rust powder from narrow, rusted pipes.
The formation of her [Perception] Aspect to combat the ubiquitous darkness.
The paste crisis brought about by one of the heat currents weakening, quietly condemning Volow in the long term, despite the leadership having been warned and compensated appropriately beforehand.
Then came the third chapter.
Her first true display of brilliance strictly beyond what one could remotely expect from a child her age.
Rejecting the prospect of becoming another street rat, and instead descended into the dark, claustrophobic maintenance pipes of the local tower.
And as if that wasn't enough, what followed...
Her horrifying battle against exhaustion, hunger, and pain.
The formation of her [Tempering] Aspect.
The birth of her [Darkness] Aspect, born simply from recognizing darkness as the closest thing she had ever known to home.
The collapse of the Strata ceiling, likely caused by a neglected nest of rust abominations.
Her body being broken into a thousand pieces, such that it couldn't even move anymore, and taking but a shallow breath hurt.
The formation of her [Will] Aspect, forged because her entire existence had been defined by refusing to accept the fate reality insisted she warranted.
The sea of corpses she trudged through.
Her slow, methodical growth amidst the ruins of Volow, scavenging and learning everything she possibly could.
If those were the formative months that truly shaped her, then it truly wasn't a surprise that she ended up growing to be who she became.
The fourth chapter detailed her journey from Volow, through the rust wastes, her constant avoidance of rust abominations, her arrival in the Red Desert, her encounter with a harvesting expedition, and finally her entry into Red Sand Rift City.
The fifth recounted her arrival at the Lower Temple of the Fourth Floor, her meeting with Guardian Elric, and eventually, her settlement within the Prime Temple following my approval.
And on and on it went.
Chapter after chapter.
Learning to read.
Learning to count.
Learning to write.
Her study of Aspects and Essence.
Her first bonds and relationships.
Her relentless [Exertion] routine.
The entire sequence of events leading up to her discovery of Essence overdevelopment.
Everything was described in remarkable detail while somehow remaining concise, allowing me to witness, almost firsthand, every thought and every insight that slowly laid the foundation of her Path.
It was... intimate, to say the least.
Had anyone else written about their Path with such candor, that intimacy alone would have been noteworthy.
Yet, in the case of an Essence Entity like Solaena, who so completely embraced her own uniqueness...
It became something else entirely.
It became a source of [Inspiration].
How someone could rise from the darkest depths.
How within her worldview, laziness and idleness were not merely nonexistent, they were treated on the same conceptual level as Essence corruption.
How the scope of her planning only continued to expand, step by step, culminating in the formation of an Aspect like [Ambition], before extending even beyond that.
The sheer honesty permeating every sentence written by an Essence Entity barely three years of age, according to her own rounded-up count, was so absolute that, for more than one moment, I genuinely questioned whether my [Truth] Aspect was somehow being deceived.
It manifestly and obviously wasn't.
From her first killing of a sapient whose Essence had been corrupted during one of her earliest Sentinel assignments, toward which she remained utterly apathetic...
To her first venture into the Red Sand Realm and her innocent discovery of what it meant to fly beneath a truly boundless sky...
To the explosion she witnessed during the raid attempted by the Rustfang on the fourth floor's Lower Temple—an incident that remained unresolved to this day...
Which she somehow transformed into another piece supporting her peculiar sort of utmost rationality, wherein her bond with Guardian Elric was leveraged as the basis for an irrational decision which she had absolutely no remorse about...
Closing the book after reading its final pages devoted to her obscure reflections on the very purpose of writing this autobiography, the potential rewards awaiting those who entrusted their [Faith] to her, and her fourth successful synthesis of the [Clarity] Aspect...
I found myself uncertain what to think.
"The Nascence of Solaena" had not been what I expected.
Just as Velia had said, the sections dedicated to [Faith] barely attempted to convince the reader to believe in her.
Those sections seemingly existed only insofar as they were necessary to explain her ongoing attempts at forming the [Inspiration] Aspect and her long-term design surrounding the [Paragon] Aspect.
Nobody would finish this book thinking they had just read a [Faith] text, not even those who had been warned about it having clearly been intended as one.
Most would simply see it for what it was.
The honest record of an extraordinary being born within the Red Sand Sector, who had altruistically decided to leave behind a piece of herself for those who came after.
Whether that was a stroke of genius or, as Solaena herself subtly hinted without ever fully explaining, merely a last-resort solution born from the uncertainty surrounding her long-term [Faith] design...
I would reserve judgment and assume it was both until proven otherwise.
Nevertheless, as I sat there, comfortably reflecting on everything this autobiography had taught me about little Solaena beyond what I had already observed over the nearly two years of her stay here...
I found myself having a few peculiar thoughts.
Hence, I decided to call Velia back.
"What do you think about sending a Veiled to escort young Solaena?" I asked her when she unveiled herself.
"Can’t," she answered without missing a beat. "Have you seen how quickly she flies and how fast she recovers? I, personally, would take two years to make the journey to the Everwell Sector. Her? I’d give her a year to a year and a half."
"And that’s not even accounting for the fact that her itinerary will be planned by Stavros, so it’ll probably include places only fairy-sized individuals can pass through."
"And sorry to tell you this, but the Faith currently has only one fifteen-centimeter-tall entity in its ranks, and she’s coincidentally leaving at the same time as Solaena."
"Let’s forget it, then," I said quickly, not insisting. "I’ll simply write her a letter of recommendation for the Faith of the Aspect branch in the Everwell Sector. Unless you have any suggestions?"
"You’re the Magister here. It’s your job to handle that kind of thing."
"Evidently. Blame the Magister for everything that can go wrong. Classic Veiled mentality," I joked. "That was all I needed. You can leave."
Without a word, she vanished again.
That was that, then.
Ultimately, however extraordinary she might appear, with her Path already counting four Aspect syntheses, with the foundation for another very shortly and so much more in the medium-term, Solaena’s future remained uncertain.
Talent and dedication were never a rare combination in better-developed Sectors, and even less so in Sectors centered around Prime Realms, where opportunities abounded.
Whether she would accomplish anything was ultimately up to her.
I would do what I could to assist her, just like I've always done since she first landed in my office through Guardian Elric's spontaneous appeal, but there existed such a thing as a hard limit to what a local Magister from such a poorly developed Sector like the Red Sand Sector could achieve.
Oh well.
Dismissing the matter, I placed the book onto the pile of documents to be returned to where they ought to belong and picked up one of the unread reports.
Time to get back to work.