Chapter 104

My seventh conception birthday occurred sometime during the current week.

Probably.

That was as close to an exact date as I had managed to obtain.

While I possessed [Guided] records of practically every meaningful event since my birth, my conception, unfortunately, had taken place before I formed either [Guided] or the ability to understand what the concept of [Time] was.

My earliest memories narrowed the possibilities.

My physical development at birth narrowed them further.

Neither gave me a date, though.

So, several months ago, I had started asking questions of the retired elder fairy whose Path revolved around [Fate].

That was how I acquired one of the strangest relationships I had established within Lylily Tower.

Initially, he answered my questions freely.

Then I asked too many.

His retaliation was simple.

For every question I asked him, he acquired the right to ask one of me.

As that remained an excellent outcome thanks to his in-depth [Knowledge] about [fate] applications, I accepted.

"How precisely can you determine when I was conceived?"

"Precisely enough to make you regret asking. Why do you own three different sets of clothing specifically for [Cultivation]?"

"Different applications."

"That's barely an answer."

"It satisfies the literal wording of your question."

He stared at me for several seconds before sighing and answering mine.

Another time, I asked whether two people making the exact same decision for completely different reasons produced recognizably different expressions of [Fate].

He wanted to know when I had last done something solely because I enjoyed it.

"[Cultivation]."

"That doesn't count."

"Why?"

He smiled.

"That's another question."

Before long, most of our exchanges turned into that politico-diplomatic sort of exchange where every single word included in our respective questions mattered.

Still, it remained an excellent exchange-turned-challenge that mostly allowed me to ask and answer questions I wasn't quite able to with my more sociable persona.

Like the time I asked whether his [Fate] could distinguish between an unlikely event and one made likely only because someone foresaw it.

In return, he asked why I kept writing down everything he said when I had [Guided]—whose use he had parsed through dozens of previous questions.

"So I can reorganize it later."

"Why?"

"You already used your question."

For the hundredth time, he accused me of abusing the terms of our arrangement.

For the hundredth time, I accused him of designing them poorly.

And somewhere amid all of that, he agreed to help narrow down the period of my conception.

Several conversations followed.

He questioned me about my earliest memories, the order in which sensations emerged, my physical state at birth, and enough other details that I briefly wondered whether I was being interviewed rather than helped.

Then came a limited [Fate] reading I deliberately allowed him to perform without contesting it with my [Secrecy].

Eventually, he produced an answer that placed my conception within a single week's range.

Plenty good enough for me.

After learning that, I decided that if I was going to exploit the occasion socially, the absence of a precise day merely meant I could choose whichever one was most convenient.

So I did.

And approximately seven years after my existence first began inside the womb of my nameless and surely long-dead mother...

I celebrated my seventh conception birthday.

Modestly.

Very modestly.

I rented one of Lylily Tower's smaller private gathering spaces.

Ordered refreshments for everyone other than myself.

Arranged enough decoration to make the occasion obvious without turning the room into the sort of glittering visual assault some fairies apparently considered tasteful.

And invited only fairies with whom I had already established some manner of relationship.

No strangers.

No crowd assembled merely because an unusual child happened to be celebrating something.

No attempt to transform the event into some grand social declaration.

That wasn't its [Purpose].

Even so...

Organizing it proved more educational than expected.

Invitations came first.

Who received one.

How early.

In what form.

Whether I sent it personally, formally, casually, or through someone both of us knew.

Then came the much more troublesome issue of who else had been invited.

Two fairies could each be perfectly pleasant acquaintances of mine while possessing absolutely no desire to spend several hours in the same room.

Another pair might know each other professionally but resent being placed together.

A sufficiently senior Court-affiliated guest could make an otherwise casual gathering feel formal merely by appearing.

Someone else might interpret being invited after them as meaningful even if I hadn't intended it to be.

So I spent considerably more time mapping the relationships between my guests than deciding what the room looked like.

[Guided] helped.

Extensively.

So did every gathering I had attended over the previous months.

Who preferred whom.

Who avoided whom.

Which previous interaction had ended well.

Which had merely ended politely.

Which disagreement had technically been resolved but would be idiotic to deliberately resurrect over cake.

By the time my first guest arrived, I had already acquired more practical [Mastery] over organizing a social event than thirty-two books put together could have given me.

Then the actual gathering corrected some of that [Mastery].

One guest arrived early.

Two arrived together despite my expecting them separately.

Someone brought an additional guest after correctly assuming I wouldn't object.

A retired fairy who had warned me she would only stay briefly remained for nearly the entire gathering after encountering someone she hadn't spoken with in years.

The twins discovered the cake before I did.

Their mother intercepted them.

Barely.

My retired [Fate] acquaintance arrived late and informed me that he had done so intentionally as a gift because I needed experience dealing with someone disrupting my schedule.

"I accounted for late arrivals."

He looked offended.

"Then consider my gift ruined."

"Thank you anyway."

That seemed to restore some of his satisfaction.

All things considered...

The celebration proceeded well.

Which was helpful, because commemorating the passage of seven years was hardly its only [Purpose].

Immediately, the event strengthened several existing relationships simply by giving them another shared experience with me.

Some fairies who normally encountered me only when I wanted information now interacted with me when I seemingly wanted nothing specific from them.

Two acquaintances who had separately granted me access to different records discovered that their interests overlapped.

They exchanged contact information.

I became the relationship through which that connection had formed.

One Court-affiliated guest mentioned an elderly relative whose private collection might contain records relevant to one of my economic interests.

Another offered to introduce me to a fairy involved in administering several specialist educational institutions.

Someone else invited me to a considerably more selective gathering than the ones I had been attending lately.

Immediate returns.

Small.

Tangible.

The longer-term ones mattered more.

Fairy Court officials knew other Fairy Court officials.

Older families possessed relationships accumulated over generations.

Teachers knew Academies.

Merchants knew fund managers.

Fund managers knew administrators.

Administrators knew the people who decided who gained access to places I might someday want to enter.

One relationship did not need to be useful now to become valuable later.

I had already learned that lesson enough times.

So yes.

The celebration fulfilled its [Purpose].

It also gave me something else.

A wholly new experience.

For once, I wasn't attending someone else's gathering.

The gathering existed because of me.

People congratulated me.

Brought gifts.

Asked what I intended to accomplish during my next year of existence.

Made comments about how much I had grown despite most of them having known me for nowhere near long enough to meaningfully compare.

Several wanted stories about my earliest years.

I provided the "socially appropriate" versions that didn't involve crawling through seas of corpses and [Will]ing a broken body together.

I smiled.

Laughed when appropriate.

Thanked people.

Expressed delight toward gifts whose actual usefulness varied considerably.

Let the twins drag me toward something they had decided I absolutely needed to see.

Accepted praise.

Accepted congratulations.

Accepted another round of congratulations from someone who had apparently forgotten already giving me one.

And throughout all of it...

I paid attention to myself.

Curiosity demanded it.

This was supposedly my celebration.

The entire event possessed significance because Civilization had decided that another year of continued existence, according to a calendar whose passage of time was based on nothing corporeal, deserved recognition.

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Perhaps standing at the center of such an event would reveal why people cared so much.

And it...

Somewhat did.

Just...

Not much.

I was entertained occasionally.

Interested often.

Socially stimulated.

Satisfied whenever the event proceeded according to my expectations.

More satisfied when something unexpected happened and I handled it properly.

Pleased by several gifts.

Very pleased by one book.

But the fact that another year had passed since my conception?

Nothing particularly noteworthy emerged from this peculiar [Awareness] of time passing.

Then came the cake.

Apparently, that part was just as important as the "celebrating with friends" part itself.

So I ate a portion.

Sweet.

Soft.

Somewhat fruity.

Visually impressive.

The twins considered it magnificent.

I considered it inferior to at least seven things I had to socially taste over the previous few months while attending other gatherings.

Still...

The fairy responsible for choosing it was watching.

"This is good," I complimented with a bright smile.

She brightened.

No reason to ruin that.

My lack of enthusiasm wasn't the cake's fault.

Nor was it the celebration's.

The event had accomplished exactly what I created it to accomplish.

That was enough.

Hours later, the gathering wound down.

I thanked everyone as they left.

Exchanged the final words expected of a host.

Accepted one more invitation.

Promised to send someone the title of a book we had discussed.

Watched the twins get carried away after discovering yet another reason their mother supposedly couldn't leave yet.

Then the doors closed.

Silence returned.

And the smile on my face disappeared as though it had never existed.

It had served its [Purpose].

Now it didn't.

I spent another moment looking around the remains of my seventh-year conception birthday.

Half-cleared tables.

Decorations.

Unwrapped gifts.

Food remains.

All signs supposedly meant to be attached to the symbolic passage of another year.

Seven years.

What would my past selves, from my first all the way to my sixth conception birthday, think upon seeing this?

Surely...

Nothing.

Just like I presently was.

None of them had cared that another year passed.

They had cared about what they managed to accomplish during it.

What they learned.

What they improved.

What new [Foundation] they laid for the next year to build upon.

In that regard, I hadn't changed much.

Only what I was capable of doing with that time had.

And today had been useful.

That was enough.

I gathered the gifts worth bringing with me, left the remaining food and decorations to the people whose services had come with renting the room, then departed.

There was still time before I intended to sleep.

More importantly, my Essence had recovered enough that there was no reason to spend the remainder of my conception birthday contemplating the passage of time when I could instead use it to better myself.

So I headed toward one of the places within Lylily Tower where thinking about my [Purpose] came particularly easily.

One of the secluded exterior platforms I had discovered months ago projected from Lylily Tower high enough that the districts below ceased looking like individual streets.

From there...

I could directly observe Civilization moving.

Millions of people.

Probably many more beyond what my unenhanced [Perception] could meaningfully resolve.

Transit streams.

Flying Entities.

Ground traffic.

Freight.

Lights changing.

Commercial towers and streets brightening while others dimmed.

People arriving.

Leaving.

Working.

Meeting.

Buying.

Selling.

Arguing.

Resting.

All of them spending time according to whatever [Purpose] they considered sufficient to justify doing so.

I settled near the platform's edge.

The contrast with my celebration was mildly amusing.

Millions of existences progressing beneath me.

And somewhere within the current week existed an arbitrary point marking seven years since mine began.

The passage of time itself meant little.

What I did with it did not.

The celebration had only deepened—if very marginally—my [Clarity] regarding that distinction.

I didn't care about celebrating another year of survival.

Survival had ceased being the [Purpose] around which my Path solely revolved a long time ago.

Nor did I particularly care that Civilization considered the completion of another year meaningful.

But if Civilization offered me a socially accepted excuse to gather useful people into one room...

I would use it.

If becoming another year older made someone more willing to introduce me to a relative...

I would use it.

If a birthday allowed acquaintances to become stronger relationships, and stronger relationships to become a deeper social [Foundation]...

I would use that too.

Time passed regardless.

There was no reason not to wield that passage as another social tool.

That thought brought my attention naturally toward my [Purpose] Aspect.

So I began my [Cultivation].

There was no need to immediately force complexity into it.

My [Purpose] Aspect remained at Tier 0.

Its fundamentals mattered more.

[Purpose] didn't tell me what action to take.

It determined what made one possible outcome preferable to another relative to the end I wished to achieve.

The millions of Entities below made that obvious.

Two people could perform the same [Exertion] for entirely different [Purpose]s.

To earn credits.

To survive.

To become wealthy.

To support children.

To stroke one's ego.

To retire.

To accumulate influence.

Same action.

Different desired result.

The same held true for relationships.

One could exist for companionship.

Another for privilege.

Another because two people had known each other for fifty years and no longer needed to consider why they continued speaking.

Another because both participants benefited so thoroughly that ending it would simply be irrational.

Externally similar.

Internally directed toward different ends.

That distinction had already become part of the [Foundation] of my [Comprehension] of [Purpose].

My [Cultivation] offered methods of improvement.

My [Comprehension] determined what I understood.

My [Mastery] allowed me to apply what I understood.

My [Flow] connected one state to another.

My [Foundation] supported what deserved to remain.

All of them could serve countless possible outcomes.

[Purpose] gave those possibilities direction.

Not by deciding every step.

By deciding why one direction deserved to be taken over another.

Mine remained as simple as when I formed the Aspect.

I wanted to see how far my Path could go when growth itself became the [Foundation] from which every next step began.

That answer had already survived months of use.

So I turned it toward the rest of my Path.

If that was my [Purpose]...

Then what did I want from the Aspects composing it?

My [Awareness] moved through them one by one as my [Will] imposed the answer.

My [Flow] Aspect.

I wanted greater control over how development [Flow]ed from one state into the next.

My [Foundation] Aspect.

I wanted everything I constructed tomorrow to stand more firmly upon everything I achieved today.

My [Clarity] Aspect.

I wanted to distinguish ever more cleanly what genuinely served my Path from whatever merely occupied my attention.

My [Harmony] Aspect.

I wanted every development to strengthen the whole rather than improve one part at the expense of another.

My [Comprehension] Aspect.

I wanted to understand more deeply.

My [Mastery] Aspect.

To turn more of that understanding into something I could reliably reproduce and apply.

My [Vitality] Aspect.

To gain greater command over the body and living processes upon which so much of my [Cultivation] depended.

My [Secrecy] Aspect.

To make my existence, actions, and eventual influence increasingly difficult for others to grasp beyond what I chose to reveal.

And on and on...

Every Aspect within my Path possessed something it could become more capable of doing.

Something it could contribute more effectively.

Something that could be improved.

Not indiscriminately.

Not merely because advancing an Aspect would produce another satisfying notification.

I wanted them to become better because making them better expanded what my Path itself could become.

Because every improvement expanded what my Path could become.

My [Will] hardened around that [Purpose].

Then I turned deliberately toward my [Ambition].

There was no reason for subtlety.

Whenever I had demanded the absolute most I could wring from my [Ambition] Aspect in service of advancing my Path...

It had yet to disappoint me.

So I gave it exactly that [Purpose].

Advance.

My [Ambition] ignited.

The response was immediate.

Energy surged through a mind already immersed in [Cultivation], sharpening every demand I placed upon myself.

More.

Not aimlessly.

Not toward everything at once.

Toward my Path.

The millions below remained within my [Awareness]—cognizance.

So did the celebration I had just left behind.

The months of social development preceding it.

My economic [Foundation].

The relationships I had cultivated.

The [Knowledge] I accumulated.

My [Flow].

My [Foundation].

My [Purpose].

They were not the same things.

They didn't need to be.

They only needed to serve the same direction.

And that...

That was something my Tier 0 [Purpose] Aspect had only begun to express.

Knowing what I wanted was one thing.

Having that answer increasingly determine how every other portion of my Path was directed...

Was another.

A decision shouldn't require me to reconstruct my deepest motives every time several valid choices appeared.

A [Purpose] sufficiently integrated into my Path should already provide the criterion.

What deserved my [Focus].

What didn't.

Which opportunities warranted time.

Which improvements were actually improvements.

Which sacrifices remained acceptable.

Which were antithetical to why I was developing in the first place.

My Essence stirred.

I noticed immediately.

No surprise followed.

No confused attempt to determine which isolated [Insight] had triggered the advancement.

There wasn't one.

My [Purpose] Aspect had accumulated months of exactly this.

Every [Cultivation] session where I chose between several valid developments.

Every social opportunity accepted or discarded according to what it could become.

Every investment of time.

Every relationship I maintained.

Every interesting subject I deliberately left unexplored because something else mattered more.

My celebration had simply offered another clean demonstration.

The advancement unfolded while I remained seated above Everwell Prime, overlooking this little corner of a reality I still had no idea how enormous it truly was.

My [Purpose] Aspect expanded.

Not by telling me more things to want.

By reaching more naturally into everything I already did.

My [Will] could push.

My [Ambition] could demand.

My [Cultivation] could improve.

But [Purpose] increasingly gave all three a shared answer to the question of what they were pushing, demanding, and improving toward.

Simple.

Extremely useful.

Mine.

The conceptual pressure surrounding the Aspect crested.

Then settled.

Aspect Advanced: [Purpose] (Tier 0) ➞ [Purpose] (Tier 1)

I remained seated for a while longer.

Tier 1.

Before my [Foundation] Aspect.

That...

Somehow didn't surprise me.

By now, both personal experience and everything I had read concerning the [Foundation] Aspect had made one point irritatingly clear.

The [Foundation] Aspect was difficult to advance.

Extremely so.

Which was only reasonable considering the breadth of what it could offer in return.

A stronger [Foundation] did not merely improve one technique.

Everything resting upon it could benefit.

Practices could settle more deeply.

Existing developments could support later ones more reliably.

Relationships between established portions of a Path could become increasingly [Foundation]al rather than merely convenient.

Things once requiring deliberate maintenance could gradually become so deeply integrated that maintaining them ceased to feel like an independent action at all.

Few Aspects I possessed could offer benefits that broad yet so extensive.

Expecting [Foundation] to advance cheaply would have been ridiculous.

Unfortunately, my [Purpose] advancement had also accomplished something much less interesting.

I checked my overdevelopment safety margin.

Then checked it again in case reality had reconsidered during the intervening second.

It hadn't.

Another week.

I looked down at Everwell Prime.

Wonderful.

Still, there was no [Purpose] in resenting a restriction I already knew how to exploit.

A week without meaningful Essence development merely meant a week where every other portion of my external [Foundation] could receive my full attention.

And by now, I had become rather practiced at making those weeks productive.

It was time for Solaena, the proto-socialite, to return.

What else was I supposed to do?

My Essence needed to recover.

My credits didn't.

Neither did my relationships.

Neither did the enormous quantity of [Knowledge] I could accumulate without subjecting my Essence to meaningful development.

What changed was my selectivity.

Months earlier, I had attended gatherings because they were new.

Then because they contained people relevant to what I was learning.

Then because someone I knew thought attending might benefit me.

All reasonable standards.

All increasingly inadequate now that invitations arrived faster than I considered them worth accepting.

So I started refusing more of them.

A gathering centered around people I already knew and offering little opportunity to deepen or expand those relationships?

No.

An event whose most influential attendees existed entirely outside fields likely to matter to me?

Probably no.

A private gathering hosted by someone possessing direct Fairy Court connections, attended by two Entities whose organizations intersected my economic interests, and introduced through someone already within my network?

Yes.

A smaller dinner containing one elderly fairy whose family maintained relationships with three Academies and several Court towers?

Also yes.

"Lesser" did not necessarily mean poorer, less prestigious, or less pleasant.

It meant less useful to my [Purpose].

My new Tier 1 [Purpose] Aspect made that distinction increasingly easy to maintain.

And so, throughout another week where my Essence frustratingly refused to participate...

My name traveled a little farther.

The gatherings I attended became more selective.

The relationships I pursued became more influential.

My economic and social [Foundation] continued growing increasingly difficult to separate cleanly.

Exactly as intended.

Near the end of that week, one invitation resurfaced among the rest.

Not another gathering.

Esme Academy.

The one Orris had arranged for me to visit.

An institution dedicated almost entirely to commercial finance, economic analysis, accounting, capital management, and the many disciplines feeding into them.

Professors.

Students who would eventually enter major organizations throughout Everwell Prime.

Recruiters.

Alumni.

Private [Knowledge].

An Academy library specialized around fields I had deliberately spent months developing.

And, just as importantly...

A dense social network connecting all of them.

Economic advancement.

Social advancement.

Each strengthening the other almost offensively well.

My Essence still needed several days before I intended to resume serious [Cultivation].

Convenient.

I reread the invitation one final time.

Guest evaluation.

Potential honorary association.

No long-term commitment.

Exactly the sort of opportunity I had begun filtering lesser gatherings out to make room for.

Thus, I sent my acceptance.

If an entire Academy wanted me to showcase what I could do...

I firmly intended to make the most of their curiosity.