Two weeks.
I ended up spending two weeks in the Fairy House.
The two best weeks I had had in a long, long, long time.
Not because my [Exertion]s defied all my expectations and finally brought one of my Aspects to advance.
Not even because I learned some Essence development-defining knowledge that would see me form an Aspect of similar potential to [Guided].
No, those two weeks were the best two weeks because they successfully allowed me to gain something I never knew was missing until I shared my story during one of those huge gatherings in the dining hall.
I hesitated to call it childhood innocence, as I knew what those words strung together meant and referred to, and it only fit so well before the comparison fell apart.
But other than that, there were really no words I knew that could relate to a period of time during one's powerless, flightless years, when a fairy isn't supposed to bear the weight of survival on their shoulders at all times.
For evident reasons, I never knew what it felt like, and had grown unable to as my [Cycle] and [Exertion]s never truly ceased.
Those two weeks were as long as [Guided] and I could be convinced to spend in relative idleness while learning about my fairy heritage.
So for the first few days of my stay, I forgot all about any sort of intense [Exertion].
No [Cycle] pulling in a continuous dune's worth of noxious elements for my [Tempering], simply a small continuous intake I could easily forget about.
No [Will] manifestations that sent me to the edge of reason, only sporadic ones when it felt too uncomfortable to have so much unused energy.
As for the rest of my Aspect-related [Exertion]s, I felt sorry to have to tell them, but from my permanently elevated [Perception] to my following of the rules of [Darkness], those had become instinctual at some point, a matter which Stavros really liked to remind the other fairies of with a warm yet contemptuous smile.
Then it was only a question of immersing and losing myself in either chatting with any fairy available or reading books.
That, at least, I was very familiar with and knew how to do.
Days of doing nothing but chatting and learning new things about fairies without having to prepare for anything that could be considered a major [Exertion].
It felt so strange not to live with the exhaustion and readiness that followed something such as an all-out [Will] manifestation and the subsequent visceral certainty of having given my everything to develop my Essence just a step further.
I... didn't really like it.
Not on the first day, not on the last.
For all the benefits that came with living a life empty of endless [Exertion]s that ought to wear away at my limitations until they broke or I did—and I never broke—it didn't come with the inherent satisfaction of doing nothing that the other fairies kept telling me to wait for.
Stavros called it a fundamental difference of perspective, reiterating his [Worthy] spiel that no one but him manifestly understood.
Still, if before these two weeks I knew to stay true to my own name for what it represented, as I readied myself to leave the Fairy House to resume a routine that had never called for me so strongly, I knew to stay true to it because it was truly the calling I chose for myself.
In the end, Stavros's claim that no one was born [Worthy], that all had to earn that recognition through their own actions, held a measure of truth I only began to appreciate after two weeks of increasingly frustrating idleness.
"I thank the Fairy House for its hospitality," I courteously uttered while doing a mock bow, purposefully lowering my wings at the same time so that they didn't spring upwards. "I will endeavor to remember its lessons and carry them with me through gales and storms."
"Not bad for a couple of days of intensive manner lessons, heh?"
"She said nothing about actually using them, just remembering and carrying them."
"Who dared to teach her this trick? Selen?"
"Who else?"
Witnessing the chaos brought by too much idleness rise again, I turned to Stavros and did a slightly different bow, one I was told was to be directed at those of clearly higher standing, and it was a much more involved one as it brought my knees and hands to the ground.
"I thank elder Stavros for the light he shone on my Path. May his wings carry him through endless flights."
A hand placed on my shoulder to signal me to rise without relying on my wings was the next rule of fairy manners I followed, still without making any mistake.
"That is good enough for someone your age," Stavros said. "For now, assume our definite departure deadline for the Everwell Sector to be in three to four years. We'll personally come to warn you if our departure date changes. I hope you will accompany us then."
"Come visit whenever, Solaena."
"If you want to learn about business, we have loads of flying delivery work for you. Pays good coins."
"Remember to take some time for yourself every so often."
"I'm off for higher skies, then." I eventually had enough of their continuous idle talk and spoke up, delivering a line I had long prepared with some help of the [Worthy] kind. "Enjoy rotting where you stand, wings heavy and useless, drowning in the stagnant mire of your own idleness until even the wind forgets you ever tried to rise."
And with that, I took off, doing my best to send air blasting backwards, but not forgetting to add my own twist to this goodbye. "And thanks for the free backpack, suckers!"
When I heard the echo of a finger bone ominously cracking in answer, I flapped my wings faster than I ever had before without [Will] manifestation.
◇ ◈ ◈ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◈ ◈ ◇
Not in any hurry to complete my return journey to the Prime Temple despite being excited about resuming my endless [Guided] [Exertion]s, I opted to take an itinerary through the floors of Red Sand Rift City that brought me much closer to the Red Sand Realm Rift than I had ever had the opportunity to go.
That way, as early as the twentieth floor, I got close enough for my [Perception] to start picking up on what supplied this city with the energy it needed to sustain its hundreds of thousands of inhabitants.
It started with something akin to what I went through during my first, naive crossing of the Red Desert, a continuous hot breeze blowing against me as I headed in the direction of the rift, except there was no sand this time.
By the time I reached the twenty-seventh floor, however, it became a whole other story.
Gone were the traditional metal buildings, as all that remained by then were massive, strangely shaped towers filled with huge gaps in their structure.
Harvesting towers.
Through those gaps, I could easily make out a throng of thousands of giants operating immense machines designed to harvest everything they could from the hotter, stronger, and richer winds expelled directly by the rift.
Witnessing the massive blades used to harvest the strength of the wind, the way it was filtered by massive nets to remove all the grains of sand from it, the massive resulting streams of red sand that flowed like liquid as they were sent downwards...
But most eye-catching of all were, of course, the various furnaces towards which all this processed and refined air was redirected, fueling flames of such intensity that they caused the metal imprisoning them to glow an ominous orange-yellow.
There were hundreds, thousands of such harvesting towers, all simultaneously operating their own furnaces, creating a sight that I knew I would remember for a very long time.
This was the perfect embodiment of Civilization as I had once imagined it.
Knowledge gathered over generations, leveraged to bend nature's wonders in one's favor, transforming uselessly powerful burning wind into paste anyone could eat.
Lost in the wondrous scenery, I kept flying leisurely through the chaotic airstreams discharged by those perfectly aligned harvesting towers that only left insignificant gaps between them, making the best of the slightest wisp of wind ejected by the Red Sand Realm Rift...
Until I sighted an inactive harvesting tower.
Right away, from the heavily red-tinted wind I was seeing flow through it, I understood what was going on.
The wind was left to flow unimpeded, probably with the intent of preserving the structural integrity of the harvesting tower while it underwent a series of maintenance operations or was in the process of changing hands.
Maybe it even belonged to the Fairy House, who knew?
Not that I cared.
For what mattered was that right there and then, before me, was an opportunity to test myself against an airstream filled with winds meant to feed thousands if properly harvested.
I couldn't allow such an opportunity to pass me by.
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I let myself be [Guided] to ascend higher, heightening my safety by giving me a greater fall distance to react if things came down to it, then...
Then nothing else needed to be said or done, and I plunged downwards.
It hit instantly when I penetrated the red-tinted airstream.
It was so scorchingly hot and dense with grains of sand that my helmet wholly failed at protecting me, and I had to manifest my [Will] to keep my eyes open.
Then my [Will] manifestation naturally spread to encompass my entire body when the wind hurtled against my wings with such undirected strength that if I didn't do anything, I didn't doubt for a second that they would bend rather than hold.
What a nightmare.
Even when I exited the airstream from what was certainly not the exact opposite side from where I had entered, I still couldn't believe how powerless I was against mere wind.
Wind that had been somewhat focused and directed into an abomination of a mass of moving heated air and sand, sure, but still just wind.
Stavros's stories about the existence of cataclysmic sandstorms capable of swallowing the entire city if they somehow made it to the Nexus Realm while wandering the Red Sand Realm became so much more plausible and less exaggerated after this single dive...
I had thought there couldn't be that much of a difference between the Red Desert and the Red Sand Realm purely in terms of environment, but now I found myself severely revising my judgment.
If encountering something like that was genuinely a possibility, then there was absolutely no way I was joining Red Sand's upcoming expedition, which I had already never planned on joining to begin with.
No reward or knowledge was worth endangering my life...
Or maybe...
For the rest of my journey back to the Prime Temple, I contemplated how increasingly important a piece of knowledge had to be for me to be willing to match that importance with actual risk to my life...
◇ ◈ ◈ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◈ ◈ ◇
As if Stavros's unequivocal advice to embark on the Path of synthesizing my [Darkness] Aspect into the [Secrecy] Aspect as early as possible wasn't stumped enough by all the vague associations of mindset and exercise he inanely told me to practice...
I found another Aspect both [Guided] and I were pretty certain could qualify as worth risking my life to acquire knowledge of if the context were different.
And I found it in the most unlikely place.
In the healing section of the Seeker sanctuary.
Bookshelf after bookshelf holding knowledge infamously known to induce despair in all who dared to approach with the intent of earning the healer qualification without the [Will] to dedicate themselves wholly to this immensely vast and complex field of knowledge.
Save for the few Seekers daring enough to step onto this Path and take books' worth of notes in the vain hope of it all sticking in their minds, the utter silence that veiled this section of the sanctuary was the only proof anyone needed to grasp the quandary that was studying the texts held here.
Without [Guided] to guarantee my success so long as I was able to exactly follow its commands, I would have never touched the books of this section without my full Sentinel set on to protect me from the insanity I had only just commenced reading.
Then reality proved me wrong in the most damning way when I caught sight of a book entitled "The [Cultivation] Guide".
It was neither the first book seemingly entirely dedicated to the discourse of one Aspect that I found, nor was it the first I took back with me to read...
But upon grasping the content contained within, for the first time since I began my visit to the healing section of the sanctuary, I found myself rereading a book and, what's more, significantly slowing down my reading speed to better grasp the knowledge I was beholding.
What was the [Cultivation] Aspect?
It was a knowledge- and practice-based synthesis of three Aspect synthesis lines, primarily referred to as the [Refinement] synthesis line, the [Breathing] synthesis line, and the [Exertion] synthesis line.
[Exertion], I already had.
[Breathing] and [Refinement], they could respectively correspond to my [Cycle] and [Tempering] Aspects.
I theoretically already had all the pieces required to synthesize the [Cultivation] Aspect.
But if it were only that, there were hundreds of similar Aspects I could hypothetically synthesize with those three Aspects, not to mention how many I could synthesize from my seven Path Aspects as a whole.
That would probably enter the mathematical territory of infinity.
Nevertheless, I knew from my first pass through "The [Cultivation] Guide" that the [Cultivation] Aspect was something completely different.
And that was because of how I understood the relationship between it and [Exertion].
The [Exertion] Aspect was the Aspect that most embodied my [Guided] routine, a routine which I had only come to appreciate more than ever following my stay at the Fairy House.
I had it for so long that what others perceived as effort, training, practice, or whatever, I only saw as variable applications of [Exertion].
Persevering through exhaustion, enduring hunger, staring into the [Darkness] until my [Perception] lit it up, reading books to form [Insight] on their content...
Everything was a form of [Exertion].
But if everything was a form of [Exertion], what was the point of synthesizing it?
If [Exertion] truly encompassed my definition of the life I currently desired to live, why would I be stupid enough to lose it in favor of something that may or may not truly suit me?
The [Cultivation] Aspect offered me an answer I didn't know I needed.
For the [Cultivation] Aspect took [Exertion] beyond mere effort.
[Cultivation] supposedly refined [Exertion] into something deliberate and self-sustaining, where everything that defined it was no longer spent but grown, deepened, and returned stronger with each use.
If those words stood true, then they corresponded to something else that governed my life.
Something that stood above even the [Exertion] Aspect itself.
The fundamental truth of [Exertion].
A truth which stated that the longer I dedicated myself to the [Exertion] of a particular task, the better I would unavoidably get at it.
And the [Cultivation] Aspect dared to take it one step further.
For with the [Cultivation] Aspect, the concept of diminishing returns didn't exist as it did with [Exertion].
Diminishing returns being a concept inextricably associated with all Aspects in which the concept of repetition was involved.
Also a concept I had already begun to unquestionably experience through my [Tempering]s, my [Exertion] limits taking exponentially more time to increase the higher I already pushed them.
Diminishing returns was not a concept wholly absent from the [Cultivation] Aspect according to its description, but the convergence of [Cycle] and [Tempering] with [Exertion] transformed it so thoroughly that calling it the same theoretically didn't do it justice.
It would essentially allow me to push any of my [Exertion] limits much higher without having to worry about encountering a "development barrier".
Or that's what I figured out from practical examples like [Refining] one's [Breathing] becoming the [Cultivation] of one's [Breathing], with the former only elevating what the [Breathing] Aspect represented, whereas the latter did that while also integrating it with one's "[Cultivation]", making it an integral part of one's existence.
[Cultivation] here referring to one of the core concepts embodied by the [Cultivation] Aspect...
Or something.
I wasn't exactly clear on why "The [Cultivation] Guide" separated [Cultivation] and the [Cultivation] Aspect.
I conjectured that was just another reason why the [Cultivation] Aspect wasn't a fundamental Aspect one could form by accident.
It clearly belonged in the category of high-order Aspects that could only be formed through Aspect synthesis.
And nothing made that more evident than the detailed knowledge- and practice-based synthesis required to form it.
First, for the [Breathing] Aspect, or [Cycle] for me, the minimal synthesis threshold was symbolized by a perfect mastery of how air was transformed into energy by the body, and the ability to induce embryonic [Breathing].
Or the ability to breathe without having to actually take a breath, the air somehow passing through the skin to "oxygenate" the blood underneath.
Fascinatingly, it had never occurred to me that I was employing my [Cycle] to perform something like that.
And the reason it had never occurred to me was absurdly straightforward.
I lacked the ability to control what I was pulling into my body beyond specifying an area I was touching, and the more I pulled, the more uncontrollable the expansion of this area became, until it spread into a misshapen sphere around me, like I was presently doing.
I also solely developed my [Cycle] by instinct.
I never came to understand what it was I was pulling into my body, beyond it existing physically in the air around me and either being beneficial by giving me energy or not.
It was the same for every other step of what I did to maintain my [Cycle], from how I made the best of everything by pushing it through my body, to in what way and how, before expelling everything and repeating the process, slowly applying the fundamental truth of [Exertion] to the whole thing until it worked for the best.
In conclusion, that meant I would need to revise the way I established and maintained my [Cycle] from the ground up.
Next, for the [Refinement] Aspect, which was [Tempering] in my case, I would have to grasp... pretty much all the ways through which my body could be permanently enhanced if I were to dedicate myself to its "[Refinement]".
That included...
All my muscles, more precisely the fibers that made them up, responsible for force and movement, which could be refined through strain and recovery to increase their strength, density, and control.
All my bones, the structural framework of my body, which could be tempered through stress and micro-damage to grow denser and more resilient once given time to heal.
My joints, the connections enabling motion, which could be improved through controlled pressure to enhance stability and range.
My tendons and ligaments, which I had only begun to grasp the stabilizing importance of, which could be strengthened to better transfer force and resist strain.
My cartilage and fascia, my body's cushioning and connective web, which could be reinforced to absorb impact and maintain structural cohesion.
Even my skin and nerves fell within reach, the former of which could be hardened and sensitized, and the latter refined to sharpen my responsiveness, alongside my reflexes, my balance, my coordination, my proprioception...
All the organs and structures that formed the basis of my senses, upon which my [Perception] relied.
All the systems that gave rise to what could be understood as endurance and stamina—my heart, lungs, and blood circulation—each capable of being refined to sustain greater effort and efficiency.
On and on the exhaustive list went, barely spending time on every item yet throwing words I didn't know existed or had only seen once before, as if it was expected one could understand them for their simplicity, truly making me understand why it was a knowledge- and practice-based synthesis.
And yet, achieving that was still only part of the minimal synthesis threshold.
Because afterwards came the incomprehensible process of actually synthesizing everything together.
A process which involved exercises such as asphyxiating or overoxygenating precise parts of one's body on command.
It was utterly insane to contemplate how I would one day become capable of achieving that.
Would advancing all my relevant Aspects to Tier 3 even be enough?
Could I possibly synthesize it with only Tier 2 Aspects if I let [Guided] take over the absurdly complex task of getting my [Cycle] to replace my [Breathing]?
But then I would still have to go through the [Tempering] of my entire body down to the most insignificant bit of cartilage to provide [Guided] with practical experience...
"Damn..." I breathed out, a surge of anticipatory excitement causing my body to tense and my wings to quiver.
I would do it.
If for no other reason than to advance my [Cycle] and [Tempering] Aspects to the point they could allow me to perform such feats, I would do it.
And if my research on the [Cultivation] Aspect hadn't disappointed or been supplanted by another Aspect by the time my Aspects reached its minimal synthesis threshold, I would form it.
As the first Aspect with the potential to supplant my fundamental truth of [Exertion] with something better, I really hoped it would hold up to [Guided]'s and my grand scrutiny.
In the meantime...
From the healing knowledge it would have otherwise forced me to learn.
To the mandatory transition from establishing and maintaining an instinct-based [Cycle] to a knowledge-based one.
To the body-wide [Tempering] it required me to undergo and fully comprehend the depths of...
None of them would be wasted [Exertion]s.
Because one way or another, one day or another, I would have to go through all these [Exertion]s anyway.
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