Chapter 107

Esme Academy became part of my routine remarkably quickly.

Not my [Cultivation] routine.

Compared to everything else I did, my [Cultivation] routine might as well have been a completely independent existence.

Whenever my Essence permitted it, I returned to my [Cultivation] routine and forgot everything else.

Whenever it couldn't...

I developed everything else.

Esme Academy.

Lylily Tower.

Commercial arrangements.

Gatherings.

Archives.

Relationships.

Credits.

[Knowledge].

The separation between both portions of my life was simple enough.

Essence development while my Essence permitted it.

Everything else while it recovered.

And Esme proved unusually efficient at the latter.

While my honorary guest status didn't allow me to wander through every repository and request whatever I wanted, it granted me access to substantially more than I had possessed before.

And Esme Academy's library was...

Extensive.

Not in the same manner as the public archives I had spent months consuming.

Those possessed "breadth".

Decades of newspapers.

Public financial records.

Court notices.

Trade publications.

Reports written for readers possessing wildly different levels of expertise.

Esme Academy's library, on the other hand, possessed "depth".

Books written by Entities who had spent decades specializing in one kind of institutional financing.

Case studies whose introductory sections casually assumed [Knowledge] that had taken me weeks to acquire.

Entire volumes devoted to how long-term procurement agreements altered an organization's apparent financial position depending on which portion of its obligations ordinary reporting made visible.

Historical comparisons between companies making superficially identical decisions under circumstances different enough to produce opposite outcomes.

Collections of failed predictions.

Collections of successful predictions whose authors later explained why their reasoning had still been incomplete.

Professors disagreeing with one another across decades.

Rebuttals.

Counter-rebuttals.

Later editions concluding that everyone involved had missed a third possibility.

Wonderful.

Unfortunately...

The books were sometimes too good.

The first time I genuinely lost track of how deeply I had been reading, my [Clarity] warned me before my overdevelopment disorder did.

I stopped halfway down a page.

Reconsidered the argument I had just read.

Connected it to a procurement restructuring from several months earlier.

Then to a historical dispute I had previously considered unrelated.

My [Comprehension] shifted.

Only slightly.

Ordinarily, that would have been desirable.

Except my Essence was supposed to be recovering.

So I closed the book.

And ten minutes later, after taking a small exploratory break, I opened it again.

Read two paragraphs.

Closed it.

And the problem became obvious.

These weren't always books I could read passively.

Definitions were safe enough.

Historical facts.

Raw records.

Simple additions to my [Knowledge].

But the best material did more than add information.

It connected what I already knew.

Corrected distinctions.

Reorganized explanations.

Forced my [Clarity] to separate assumptions I had previously bundled together.

Deepened my [Comprehension].

Exactly what I wanted...

Or would have wanted, had I not been suffering from an Essence overdevelopment disorder.

Aggravating.

So I optimized.

Read until the material started pushing too deeply into [Comprehension] territory.

Stopped.

Did something else.

Then returned later.

Fortunately, Esme Academy contained plenty of useful things to do when I wasn't reading.

Mostly people.

The first few times I stepped away from the library to let my thoughts settle, I simply wandered through nearby private-public spaces.

That didn't last.

My guest lecture had apparently traveled farther through the Academy's population than I expected.

Not the whole thing.

Fragments.

The seven-year conception accounting joke.

The early analysis I publicly dismantled.

My statement that success alone made a terrible teacher.

My Origin Aspect.

My age.

The fact that I remained awake for eight days.

And, for reasons I considered deeply unfortunate...

My admission that I used to visibly calculate when another conversation became more useful.

That one spread exceptionally well for reasons I still hadn't completely grasped.

"Are you doing it now?"

I looked up from the notes I had been reviewing.

The student beside my table was very obviously trying not to smile.

"Doing what?"

"Calculating whether talking to me is more useful than reading."

"You wouldn't like the answer."

He laughed.

"I appreciate the honesty."

"I was also calculating whether answering honestly would be socially detrimental."

"And?"

"Apparently not. Though that is more a case-by-case interrogation."

That became a conversation.

Then another student joined.

Then another.

By the time my [Comprehension] had settled enough for me to safely return to the fascinating book I had been reading, I possessed three new names, one recommendation for an unpublished case study, and an invitation to attend a student discussion concerning a failed acquisition from several decades ago.

Efficient.

And that became a [Cycle].

Read.

Stop.

Talk.

Listen.

Return.

Sometimes the interruptions came to me.

Sometimes I placed myself where they were likely to happen.

All "coincidentally".

My relationships with the Academy's professors developed more slowly.

Appropriately so.

They were busy.

I wasn't enrolled.

Honorary guest status made speaking with them acceptable, not mandatory.

So I didn't force anything.

I attended one of Professor Hirad's lectures because its topic intersected with a problem I was studying.

Asked one question afterward.

Returned three days later with an example that complicated his answer.

He gave me another paper.

Professor Velthea corrected one of my assumptions during an unrelated conversation.

I later found a historical case demonstrating why she had been right.

Professor Saelin introduced me to someone involved in evaluating distressed commercial organizations.

Professor Melisandre...

Was a fairy.

Which increasingly mattered.

Not because she openly favored me.

She didn't.

But among all the social opportunities Esme opened...

Fairies moved first.

That was probably deserved.

I had finally placed one foot inside what Everwell Prime considered high society, if only its most remote domain.

And for established Fairy Court families, Esme Academy was one of the places their children learned to stand before entering it properly.

So their children noticed me.

Then, slowly, their families did too.

Not dramatically.

No ancient lineage offered to adopt me.

No Court elder announced Solaena's arrival into society.

Nothing so convenient.

Instead...

Aelira—the golden-brown-winged fairy I had spoken with before my lecture—sent me a message asking whether I intended to attend a small discussion hosted by Professor Melisandre.

[Guided] had known her family before I knew her.

That remained mildly amusing.

Her lineage had spent generations involved in institutional capital management and Court-supervised inheritances.

She had grown up around conversations I had spent months learning how to access.

Lysenne invited me to join several students examining an old family-office restructuring case.

Vaeris invited me to dinner with several fairy students after discovering that I didn't need to eat.

"I can still taste things."

"That's not the same as eating."

"I have attended enough social meals to disagree."

"You sit there and interrogate people."

"I occasionally consume food."

"When someone tells you to."

"That still qualifies."

She invited me anyway.

I went.

Not every fairy I met belonged to an influential lineage.

Enough did that the pattern quickly became impossible to ignore, though.

Family names other fairies recognized.

Inherited introductions.

Old acquaintances.

Relatives occupying Court offices.

Parents controlling capital they would likely one day help manage.

Grandparents with private collections.

Older siblings already embedded within organizations Esme students aspired to join.

They weren't inherently more capable because of those things.

Some were.

Some weren't.

That wasn't the important part.

They possessed [Foundation].

Social [Foundation].

Economic [Foundation].

Generational [Foundation].

Structures built before their conception and deliberately maintained so that, when they became old enough to participate, they would not need to begin from nothing.

I had begun from nearly nothing.

Naturally...

I found the comparison fascinating.

They found me similarly strange.

"You're saying you didn't know what the Fairy Court actually was until after joining the Faith?"

"Approximately."

Aelira stared at me.

We occupied one of Esme's elevated garden terraces during another enforced reading interruption.

"How?"

"I was busy surviving."

"That's not an explanation."

"It explains quite a lot."

Lysenne laughed.

Aelira didn't.

"So nobody taught you Court history?"

"Eventually."

"Your family?"

"No known family."

"I know. I mean before that."

"Before what?"

She stopped.

Then visibly realized she was trying to locate a period in my life where some hypothetical family could have educated me before I had ever possessed one.

I waited helpfully.

"...Fine."

"Good."

It wasn't the first time one of them encountered that particular difficulty.

They possessed reference points I didn't.

I possessed others they didn't.

Aelira understood Court inheritance mechanisms because she had heard them discussed since early childhood.

I knew what starvation felt like.

Lysenne knew which Academies three generations of her family considered suitable for particular professions.

I knew how long one could keep moving with several broken bones before pain ceased being meaningfully distinguishable because everything hurt.

Vaeris knew which families should never be seated beside one another at the same formal gathering.

I knew where to stab several common morphologies and physiologies if killing them quickly became necessary.

Our conversations were educational.

For everyone.

Naturally, the more they learned...

The stranger their questions became.

"So you actually carried four swords through the Red Sand Realm?"

"Needle swords."

"That's still four swords."

"They're very small."

"They're swords to you."

"Yes."

Vaeris looked at the other two.

"See? She always does that."

"Does what?"

"Makes something sound less concerning by describing it accurately."

"I fail to see how accuracy does that."

If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"Exactly."

I stored the observation.

Then returned to the book in front of me.

Twenty minutes later, my [Clarity] began doing enough work that I closed it again.

Wonderful.

More social development.

◇ ◈ ◈ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◈ ◈ ◇

Weeks passed, my time settling into an intricate weave of [Cultivation] and recovery, both arranged around the same ever-present priority.

When my Essence could bear it...

My [Awareness] [Flow]ed.

Air.

Heat.

Blood.

[Ether]-assisted systems whose behavior I could observe without forcing too much development.

Then, cautiously, the natural [Flow]s already traversing my Essence.

I defined, refined, and expanded my [Foundation].

My body.

My habits.

Existing Aspect relationships.

Structures I had built so thoroughly into my Path that removing them would now require dismantling something larger.

My social and economic [Foundation] increasingly entered that contemplation too.

Not because either had become [Foundation]al to my Essence.

They hadn't.

But they increasingly determined the circumstances under which my future [Cultivation] would occur.

Access to better [Knowledge].

Better environments.

More credits.

More experts.

More opportunities.

Then came my enduring and unremitting contemplations on [Purpose].

Why preserve this?

Why improve that?

What made one future state preferable to another?

What did "better" mean when several outcomes were all improvements?

Thanks to those contemplations, my [Purpose] Aspect increasingly answered those questions without requiring prolonged contemplation.

Not perfectly.

But faster.

Cleaner.

Eventually, my overdevelopment safety margin narrowed.

I stopped.

And returned to everything else.

Esme Academy.

Books.

Students.

Fairies.

Professors.

Commercial arrangements elsewhere.

Lylily Tower whenever old relationships required attention.

One week became another.

Then a month became several.

My finances kept growing in the background.

Not spectacularly.

Steadily.

Several older positions matured.

One failed.

Two arrangements produced returns exceeding my predictions for reasons I hadn't predicted.

My external record continued accumulating enough mistakes to remain satisfyingly imperfect.

My name traveled farther too.

Again...

Not dramatically.

That would have been suspiciously convenient.

But more people knew who I was before introductions.

More Esme students mentioned me elsewhere.

More fairies from established Court lineages greeted me with some variation of...

"You're Solaena?"

Instead of...

"Who are you?"

Progress.

My relationships with the younger fairies changed similarly.

At first, I was interesting because I was strange.

Then because of the lecture.

Then because I kept appearing.

After several months...

I simply belonged in enough of their conversations that my presence no longer required explanation.

Aelira introduced me to a cousin.

Lysenne's grandmother eventually allowed me into her archive after I coincidentally mentioned the topic again and again.

Vaeris invited me to a gathering where I recognized enough family names beforehand that I spent more time deciding who not to approach than determining who I wanted to meet.

Another fairy asked me for help interpreting procurement records.

I helped.

She later corrected my understanding of a Court-managed investment structure.

Reciprocity.

Exactly what I wanted.

And throughout all of it...

Esme Academy's library remained my favorite part as I read my way deeper into it.

Introductory expert texts became specialized ones.

Specialized works became narrow enough that their titles sometimes required [Guided] to retrieve the context necessary to understand what they were even about.

I learned which authors disagreed.

Which schools of analysis treated long-term relationships as quantifiable assets.

Which considered doing so a category error.

Which professors had changed their positions over decades.

Which supposedly universal rules stopped being universal once lifespan differences became extreme enough.

A decision irrational across five years could be conservative across fifty.

A terrible short-term [Contract] could become strategically excellent if it preserved access to a resource whose availability fluctuated over decades.

A family office could accept returns a commercial fund would reject because the family expected descendants to inherit the consequence.

Time horizon.

Institutional [Purpose].

Capital structure.

Relationships.

Information.

Everything connected.

The books were magnificent.

And therefore extremely annoying.

Close book.

Talk to student.

Open book.

Read.

Stop before the next [Comprehension] settled too deeply.

Find something socially productive to do.

Repeat.

Eventually, [Guided] became good enough at recognizing the early signs that my [Clarity] no longer needed to consciously warn me every time.

Progress.

Not Essence development progress.

Mostly.

Good enough.

◇ ◈ ◈ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◈ ◈ ◇

One of the conversations responsible for changing everything began with Vaeris asking whether I had ever seen someone's organs outside their body.

I looked up from the drink someone had convinced me to try.

"Whose?"

She stared.

Aelira started laughing before Vaeris answered.

"That isn't what normal people ask."

"You underspecified the question."

"I meant someone else's."

"Yes."

Vaeris hesitated.

"While they were alive?"

"Also yes."

She turned toward the other fairies around the table.

"Told you."

There were six of us.

All fairies.

All Esme students except me.

We occupied a relatively private elevated alcove attached to one of the Academy's larger social spaces, far enough from ordinary traffic that nobody needed to moderate every sentence for nearby strangers.

Which was presumably why the conversation had deteriorated from Court investment structures...

To combat.

Then injuries.

Then me.

One of the fairies I knew less well leaned closer.

"How many people have you actually killed?"

"I don't know."

That surprised them more than any number would have.

"You don't count?"

"Why would I?"

No immediate answer.

So I continued.

"I remember the relevant ones."

"Relevant how?"

"Unusual circumstances. Useful lessons. Important consequences. People I knew."

Vaeris looked increasingly fascinated.

"What's the worst thing you've done to someone?"

"Hmm."

That required clarification.

Worst morally?

Physically?

Most damaging?

Most unpleasant to observe?

They meant physically.

Much easier.

So I told them.

Not everything.

There was no [Purpose] in reconstructing years of violence merely to satisfy curiosity.

Fragments sufficed.

A needle sword entering somewhere it should not.

The sensation of forcing it deeper because the first angle had failed to reach what I intended.

The aftermath of manifesting my [Will] into a surge of force at the tip of my needle sword, thrust deep inside another Essence Entity's physical vessel.

Bodies damaged beyond convenient recognition.

The numerous ways Entities remained alive after receiving injuries that would have killed something less developed.

My work with the Pulse had expanded that particular [Knowledge] considerably.

But that didn't deter me from mentioning the practice-[Focus]ed [Foundation] I first forged in the Red Sand Sector.

The expressions around the table became increasingly entertaining.

"You say all of that like you're explaining procurement."

"It already happened."

"That's not the disturbing part."

"What is?"

Aelira answered.

"That you were and still are tiny enough to fit inside some of the wounds you're describing."

I considered.

"A twenty-centimeter gash isn't that unusual when broaching the topic of giants' corpses."

Vaeris made a sound suggesting I had failed to redirect their [Focus].

Then someone asked how I had tolerated seeing that much blood while so young.

That shifted the conversation.

"I didn't have much reason not to."

"None?"

"I was born somewhere people dying wasn't especially unusual."

Their attention sharpened.

So I explained a little more about Volow.

Not everything.

Just enough.

The refuge.

Hunger.

Rust.

The tower.

The collapse.

The moment my body had become so damaged that moving no longer felt like something reality expected me to accomplish.

The pain.

The inability to simply remain where I was because remaining solved nothing.

Then...

Moving anyway.

Not elegantly.

Not heroically.

Because I could.

Because the alternative was accepting that the state reality had imposed upon me was final.

"And that's when you formed [Will]?" Aelira asked.

"Not instantly."

I traced one finger along the edge of my cup.

"The concept existed before the Aspect. The Aspect formed because refusing eventually became essential."

"Refusing what?"

"Whatever made continuing impossible."

The answer felt wrong as soon as I gave it.

Too broad.

I corrected myself.

"No."

They waited.

"Accepting that my current limit deserved to remain my limit."

Silence.

Not awkward.

Different.

Aelira's wings had gone still.

Vaeris was no longer smiling.

One of the others looked down at her hands.

I noticed all of it.

Naturally.

Then [Guided] did something strange.

Not a memory.

Not an answer.

An orientation.

My [Awareness] shifted.

Toward them.

Toward myself.

Toward the conversation.

Toward something I had encountered thousands of times without possessing the exact [Comprehension] necessary to recognize it.

Their reactions.

Not agreement.

Not persuasion.

Something else.

Aelira knew my life wasn't hers.

Vaeris wasn't about to abandon Esme Academy and cross three Sectors alone.

None of them had acquired my Path.

Yet something in what I described had done more than add to their [Knowledge].

It had changed what they considered possible.

If only slightly.

An existence could do that.

A journey could do that.

A Path could do that.

Mine could do that.

[Inspiration].

The concept brushed idly against my thoughts.

And as if I hadn't been chasing it for more than three years, my Essence answered.

With absolutely no hurry.

Apparently, it had finally decided to stop remaining ethereal.

I placed my drink down.

"I need to leave."

Vaeris blinked.

"Did we ask something wrong?"

"No. You did something right."

That didn't help.

"I'll explain later."

Like that, I left toward the nearest suitable isolated location I knew of, which turned out to be inside Esme Academy's library.

I flew past two occupied study spaces, descended into a quieter repository level, and entered a fairy-sized reading alcove whose privacy rules I had already verified weeks earlier.

My [Awareness] told me it was empty before I even started decelerating from my idle flight speed.

Good.

I settled.

Closed my eyes.

And entered true communion.

[Inspiration].

The concept was already there.

Not something the conversation had created.

Not something Aelira or Vaeris had given me.

They had merely made it obvious enough for me to finally recognize.

Years ago, when the future problem of [Faith] first became serious enough to plan around, I had decided I wasn't going to wait until people actually placed significant [Faith] in me before determining how my Path would handle it.

So I had planned backward from the Fourth Order [Paragon] Aspect, passing by the Third Order [Icon], the Second Order [Ideal], and the First Order [Exemplar], to arrive at the fundamental [Inspiration] Aspect.

[Persuasion] had once competed for the same place.

[Inspiration] won because it aligned better with what I wanted.

Not merely convincing others.

Letting the extraordinariness of [Guided], my Path, my [Will], my [Ambition], and whatever I eventually became show other Entities that more was possible.

According to my current design, [Inspiration] was my chosen [Foundation] to eventually synthesize an Aspect capable of handling [Faith] rather than merely accumulating it blindly.

The plan was older than my arrival in the Everwell Sector.

Since making it...

I had crossed Sectors alone.

Joined the Pulse.

Formed my [Vitality] Aspect.

Formed my [Flow] Aspect.

Formed my [Foundation] Aspect.

Defined my [Purpose].

Reached Everwell Prime.

Accumulated credits.

Relationships.

Experience.

Taught an Esme Academy amphitheater how I had failed my way toward competence quickly enough that they applauded me for it.

And somehow...

I had continued thinking of [Inspiration] as something still ahead.

The absurdity became obvious in hindsight.

People had already read "The Nascence Of Solaena" and found something in it.

People had already reacted to my Path.

My [Will].

My refusal to remain where I began.

My Origin Aspect.

My methods.

My successes.

Even my failures.

Students had listened.

Fairies born into circumstances utterly unlike mine had just sat around a table hearing about starvation, broken bodies, violence, and refusing limitations...

And found something applicable to themselves.

Not because I told them what to do.

I hadn't.

Not because I persuaded them.

I hadn't even tried.

My existence had simply provided an example.

A possibility.

Something another Entity could look at and take from according to their own Path.

[Inspiration].

The concept stopped being something I was trying to approach.

My Essence shifted.

Compared to most of my Aspects...

It felt strange.

Less [Focus]ed inward.

Every Aspect I possessed belonged to me.

But most gave me obvious benefits within my own existence.

[Will].

[Clarity].

[Awareness].

[Vitality].

[Flow].

Even [Secrecy], despite dealing partly with other people's access to me, directly altered how my existence interacted with reality.

[Inspiration] pointed...

Elsewhere.

Toward others.

Toward what they saw in me.

Toward what my words, actions, and Path could awaken in them.

The concept accumulated.

My earliest struggles.

The Faith.

My autobiography.

Guardian Elric.

Those who had encountered my story.

My social ascent.

My lecture.

The fairies I had just left.

Every moment when someone looked at what I considered a straightforward continuation of my Path...

And found something relevant to theirs.

The structure stabilized.

Then manifested.

Aspect Formed: [Inspiration] (Tier 0)

My sixteenth Aspect.

Finally.

No dramatic transformation followed.

No sudden answer to the many questions surrounding my future [Faith].

Still...

The [Foundation] now existed.

More than three, approaching four, years after I first planned it.

How much of its formation came from actual [Inspiration] I had already induced...

How much came from my early long-term [Faith] planning...

Whether those two causes were even meaningfully separable...

I couldn't be bothered deciding.

What mattered was the next step.

The [Exemplar] Aspect.

That one was as much a long time coming as my [Inspiration] Aspect formation.

Except that, compared to the concept [Inspiration]...

I was substantially more confident about my relationship with the concept of [Exemplar].

Because that was a concept I nearly embodied by simply existing.

An [Exemplar] of pushing beyond one's limits.

Of refusing to remain bound by ignorance.

Of treating each accomplishment as the [Foundation] of the next.

Of allowing [Ambition] to expand instead of settling whenever reality gave me more.

I already lived that way.

I had for years.

If [Inspiration] had somehow refused to form, I was reasonably confident that continuing as I had been would eventually have brought me close enough to [Exemplar] to form the First Order Aspect directly.

A few more years, perhaps.

Now I wouldn't need to find out.

The first step had manifested.

The next could follow when it followed.

I widened my communion.

My Essence spread before me.

[Guided] (Origin)

[Cultivation] (Tier 2)

[Comprehension] (Tier 1)

[Awareness] (Tier 3)

[Secrecy] (Tier 1)

[Will] (Tier 4)

[Clarity] (Tier 2)

[Harmony] (Tier 2)

[Ambition] (Tier 1)

[Purity] (Tier 1)

[Mastery] (Tier 1)

[Vitality] (Tier 0)

[Flow] (Tier 1)

[Foundation] (Tier 0)

[Purpose] (Tier 1)

[Inspiration] (Tier 0)

Sixteen Aspects.

One Origin Aspect.

Fifteen Path Aspects accumulated one attempt, failure, synthesis, advancement, and increasingly inconvenient quantity of Essence development at a time.

I observed the whole.

The relationships.

The inequalities.

The obviously underdeveloped portions.

The Aspects that had advanced quickly.

The ones still lagging behind.

And the newest presence among them.

[Inspiration].

Then I ended my communion.

Needless to say, my overdevelopment safety margin had worsened.

I would deal with that later.

For now...

There was still a table of fairies waiting for an explanation.

So I flew back and soon sighted them, still idling their time away with seemingly no [Purpose].

Vaeris noticed me first and waved until I landed, then immediately asked,

"What happened?"

"Formed my [Inspiration] Aspect," I succinctly answered.

The table fell silent.

Briefly.

Then several people started speaking at once.

I raised one hand.

The questions rearranged themselves into something resembling an order.

Mostly.

I explained only what I knew.

Fundamental Aspect.

Long planned.

Part of a future [Faith]-related progression.

No, I didn't yet know precisely what it could do.

No, they hadn't somehow collectively forced it into existence.

Yes, their reactions had helped me finally acquire the [Comprehension] necessary to recognize it.

Vaeris looked far too pleased.

"So we inspired your [Inspiration]."

"No."

Her smile widened.

"You just said—"

"You caused me to recognize my already-existing ability to inspire you."

"Which inspired your [Inspiration]."

"That isn't what happened."

Aelira laughed.

"You aren't winning this."

"I am objectively correct."

"That wasn't her claim."

I looked between them.

Hmm.

That looked like the physical manifestation of an [Insight] about how some relationships could be worth maintaining even without quantifiable returns.

Eventually, the conversation resumed, and while my [Inspiration] Aspect formation remained an interesting topic, in due course they all moved on from it.

So did my life.

That was approximately the extent of the disruption caused by acquiring my sixteenth Aspect.

One moment, I possessed fifteen.

Then sixteen.

Afterward...

Books still needed reading.

My Essence still needed recovering.

My [Flow], [Foundation], and [Purpose] Aspects remained my primary [Cultivation] targets.

Credits still moved.

Relationships still required maintenance.

Esme Academy still contained an unreasonable quantity of [Knowledge] I had yet to grasp.

Nothing stopped.

I simply acquired one more Aspect to observe.

[Inspiration].

And observing it proved strange.

At first, I wasn't even certain when it did anything.

It wasn't [Persuasion].

People didn't simply become more likely to agree with me.

Students could still think my analysis was wrong.

Professors could still correct me.

Aelira remained perfectly capable of telling me when I was behaving strangely.

Unfortunately.

What seemed to change was narrower.

Whenever I spoke about something I genuinely embodied...

My [Will].

My [Cultivation].

My Path.

My refusal to accept limitations.

The way I turned failures into the [Foundation] of another attempt...

People occasionally reacted more deeply than before.

Not necessarily emotionally.

Some became more attentive.

Others started asking what portions of what I said could apply to them.

One student who had been complaining about repeatedly failing an analytical exercise stopped halfway through our conversation and began asking what, precisely, each failure revealed.

Another fairy wondered aloud whether she had never seriously questioned the role her family expected her to occupy because it was genuinely suitable...

Or merely because it had always been available.

It was fascinating to uncover all those subtle differences.

I hadn't asked her that.

I had only described one of my own decisions.

My [Inspiration] Aspect had apparently supplied the rest.

Which produced considerably more questions than answers.

Could I control how much [Inspiration] I induced?

Could I suppress it?

Did it require speech?

Action?

Would someone reading my autobiography be affected differently now?

What about someone already possessing [Faith] in me?

Could I accidentally inspire someone toward something I considered idiotic?

Probably.

Could a bad idea become more appealing merely because I embodied one of the principles beneath it convincingly enough?

Potentially.

Did the result depend upon the listener's Path?

Their [Ambition]?

Their [Will]?

How much they already respected me?

Whether what I represented aligned with something they already wanted?

Almost certainly.

Could it induce [Faith]?

Unknown.

So...

Experiments.

Eventually.

Careful ones.

For now, my Essence needed to recover.

Again.

Wonderful.

The next day, I returned to Esme Academy's library.

Read until my [Comprehension] started making forays into engrossing subjects.

Closed the book.

Went outside.

Spoke with people.

Watched the subtle cues indicative of my [Inspiration] Aspect acting up.

Learned.

Returned.

And formed another [Cycle] based on that.

Only now...

Whenever someone looked at me differently after I spoke, I had one more thing to notice.

One more relationship between myself and Civilization.

One more concept that had stopped existing somewhere ahead of me...

And become part of what I already was.

Another step.

Nothing more.

Behind me stretched every step I had already taken.

Ahead...

Enough that counting them would have been meaningless.

Possibly infinitely many.

Good.

A Path with a final step would have been terribly disappointing.