Solaena's [Guided] Journey (Fantasy LitRPG)

Finding myself stuck in the delirium of paradoxical unconsciousness due to my [Tenacity] wasn't anything new.

Finding myself there with full [Awareness] of where I was... was.

What's more, when I had no [Awareness] of anything going on around me, which was a state of being I had forgotten about.

There were no emotions, no sensations, just endless...

Nothing.

Except for my Essence, that was.

That, nothing could keep me from it.

[Physicality] (Tier 4)

[Discipline] (Tier 4)

[Breathing] (Tier 3)

[Balance] (Tier 3)

[Recovery] (Tier 3)

[Instinct] (Tier 5)

[Refinement] (Tier 4)

[Tenacity] (Tier 4)

[Awareness] (Tier 3)

[Precision] (Tier 3)

[Adaptation] (Tier 2)

[Truth] (Tier 1)

[Comprehension] (Tier 2)

Sixty years of [Discipline], minus the first four and a couple here and there, during which I faced my own mortality and insignificance prior to rising again and resuming on my grand Path.

That's when fragments started flashing by.

The fourth floor Lower Temple, my home.

The city-wide onslaught of faction wars.

The [Chaos] of thousands upon thousands of people taking refuge under my Temple.

Guardian Cipactli arriving with reinforcement.

The battle with Rustfang.

And then...

Nothing.

I went back over everything once more, but my [Comprehension] failed me, nor did my [Instinct] assist me in getting any closer to the [Truth].

Which wasn't possible.

I honed my [Instinct] longer than anything else, and that was proved by it being my sole Tier 5 Aspect.

I relied on it more than even the likes of my [Physicality] and my [Discipline].

It never failed me before, even against stupidly overwhelming odds.

That I intended to one day synthesize it into the [Foresight] Aspect alongside [Truth] and [Awareness] was all the reminder I needed to know I wasn't hallucinating.

And yet, my [Instinct] was silent.

Utterly silent.

Or actually, it was worse than that.

There was nothing.

I couldn't feel my body, I couldn't feel my [Instinct], I couldn't feel anything.

And I continued to not feel anything for...

A very long time.

Until I did.

Like rust powder carried by a faint breeze, brushing the tip of my fingers.

Inconsequential, although tangible.

Whatever it was I was living through, I was nothing if not [Discipline]d when an opportunity arose to elevate my [Comprehension] of what was occurring to me, so I leveraged all the [Precision] and restraint I could muster to slowly connect with this unique sensation.

My first attempt failed.

It was to be expected.

My following hundred tries similarly failed.

It was similarly to be expected.

The sensation occasionally shifted, I shifted along with it.

This endless chase lasted until my [Tenacity] won out and I reunited with my [Awareness].

The first thing to assault me was the familiar call of unconsciousness I had just left, as if I wasn't meant to have exited that void.

Then came what I could only call splintered shreds of memories.

Something bright.

Unimaginable danger.

My [Instinct] informing me to do everything to endure.

Inconceivable pain.

And then...

Nothing.

I determinedly pushed through my disjointed memories that were making more and more sense as I contemplated them.

I was no fool.

My [Awareness] had simply been informing me of something I hadn't dared to believe until I relived the chain of events that led to it.

I died.

Or I was about to, considering the state of my body.

All my limbs were gone, vaporized by an explosion my oh-so potent [Insight] had failed to warn me about.

My Essence was vacillating, on the verge of being snuffed out, my [Awareness] reduced to barely a shadow of its former self.

There was only one discrepancy.

I wasn't dead.

I was breathing.

My heart was still beating.

Mulling over this incongruity between accepting my [Fate] and living up to my [Tenacity], something new flashed in my mind.

Endless [Darkness], but in the middle of it, a familiar, hypnotizing iridescence.

A pair of wings.

As if this discovery echoed an unsung [Truth], a pulse of warmth spread through my ruined body, allowing my [Awareness] to spread, and it eventually encompassed the hazy form of a being bearing those exact same wings.

Wings attached to a little fairy I personally welcomed into my Lower Temple over a year ago.

A little fairy who named herself Solaena, after some children's tale.

Because, for all her strangeness, she was still a child.

If a child who really didn't belong in the stagnant flats of rust powder that was the Red Sand Sector.

My [Comprehension] may be hampered by the state of my body and that of my brain, but the [Truth] wasn't something that could be refuted or warped.

Eventually, the call of unconsciousness grew too strong, and I answered it, now aware of my circumstances and ready to struggle my way out of it through sheer [Discipline] and [Tenacity].

If it took synthesizing the [Regeneration] Aspect from my [Recovery] and [Precision] Aspects, or forming the [Will] Aspect, I would do it.

In the end, so long as I wasn't dead, it was simply another [Refinement] opportunity for my Path.

And my Path was built exactly for that.

Hence, I waited.

I manifested all the [Discipline] I cultivated since I started relentlessly running through the fourth floor's crumbling streets to exercise my [Physicality] at the tender age of four...

And waited.

Observed.

Planned.

Trained.

The quintessence of [Adaptation].

Whenever Solaena visited the husk that was my body and infused me with her [Will] for me to remain alive, I surged on the offensive, expanding my [Awareness] to its limit and [Will]ing for my [Recovery] to do what it ought to.

Over and over again.

It was mostly Solaena's healing attempts that brought me back to the edge of consciousness, with only sometimes others who tried their hands at it, before Solaena shortly returned.

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I believed those absences were just Solaena going to sleep before returning.

Counting everything, excluding the unknown amount of time that passed at the beginning, if I were healed every hour, more than a month had passed.

That was not realistic.

A healing session per eight minutes was more likely, as that was the standard for Guardian-level care until they decided to change it.

Still, at least it was clear Solaena was the one taking care of me.

That fact became even more obvious when, by the time my [Awareness] had barely recovered enough to extend past my own body, I found her lying still, not far from where my body lay.

Sleeping.

From there, it was only a matter of applying my [Comprehension] to when I was healed by others, and I swiftly got myself a reference timeframe.

One healing session per eight or so minutes.

One opportunity every eight or so minutes.

And in-between...

A lot of thinking.

About how I nearly died, just like that.

About what the future held for me.

About... the little fairy that was helping me.

If forming the [Will] Aspect were an easy endeavor, everyone would form it.

That wasn't the case.

Forming the [Will] Aspect was the mark of someone [Worthy] of respect, someone who never gave up, no matter how ridiculously against them the world revealed itself to be.

Looking back at my first thoughts upon waking up in this state, some things I never dared to ponder on became inordinately clear.

My [Will] was just that.

Was my current state worse than the one that Solaena found herself in, following the ruination of Volow?

Yes.

But I also had people I was counting on to keep me alive.

And that was it, really.

I anticipated being healed.

Meaning, logically thinking, I didn't truly intend to form the [Will] Aspect except if I just happened to do so.

Thus, I would fail to form the [Will] Aspect.

How disappointing.

Yet so realistic.

Was that the infamous acceptance of one’s true self at death’s door, where stripped of delusion and restraint, one finally understood what truly drove them forward?

As my [Awareness] steadily returned to a state that allowed me to apprehend the world around me in more detail, I eventually came to terms with that new disheartening [Comprehension] of my own nature and [Will].

I still tried, but slowly, I came to dedicate my time to watching a young existence I once believed was something akin to my younger self.

Now that I was given the chance to observe her extensively as she took care of maintaining my body alive, waiting for my [Recovery] to take over, I realized things.

Disturbing things.

Like how her apathetic bearing never truly lapsed.

As though emotional absence genuinely constituted her natural state of existence.

Or how she already started relying less on her senses in favor of her [Awareness], her every action being [Guided] with less and less reliance on her biological senses.

Or how she had almost entirely abandoned breathing, only drawing the occasional shallow breath whenever speech made it necessary.

A suboptimal activity, I remembered her calling it.

Also, how she never removed her armor except to maintain it, which she did with movements that betrayed deep [Comprehension]s of metallurgy, structure, and function.

[Comprehension]s I invested years of my life acquiring.

And how, beneath that armor and the bodysuit she wore underneath, existed a [Physicality] that had absolutely no right belonging to someone barely two years old.

It was not immediately obvious.

Not to the eye.

Not even to a casual sweep of [Awareness].

I doubted anyone unfamiliar with both fairy physiology and the effects of extreme physical conditioning would have noticed anything particularly strange.

But I happened to be both a Seeker and a Sentinel.

So I recognized the abnormality for what it truly was.

There was not an ounce of fat on her body.

Not just unnecessary fat.

There was also no necessary fat.

Not a single ounce.

And looking back on the first time I met her and learned of her circumstances, it was obvious she should have been a malnourished wreck.

Thin. Frail. Underdeveloped.

But no.

She wasn't.

She looked normal.

Her [Cycle], supposedly formed before she was even born, had supposedly compensated for everything.

Except she was not normal.

She had never been normal.

Her very Essence revolved around survival, no matter the cost required to achieve it.

And to someone like that, even a single gram of fat, necessary as it might have biologically been, had represented inefficiency.

Weight.

Waste.

So, somehow, and I recognized the absurdity of it now, she simply did away with it entirely.

From the moment I established that unfeasible fact, I found only one reasonable explanation for how she could even be standing.

All of her freestanding energy had been integrated into some hogwash passive [Cultivation] [Cycle].

That, or her body had outright forgotten how to store energy as fat, and some form of [Adaptation] had filled the gap.

I once presumed her Essence overdevelopment issues stemmed from her youth.

It was now clear I had been wrong.

Acutely wrong.

And she wasn't a younger version of me.

She was more akin to an [Ideal] mirror [Truth] version of my younger self.

Someone I would have really liked my younger self to be, but that I pertinently knew was hopeless.

She didn't develop her Essence to its present state through things as inane as talent or luck.

She achieved it through unwavering [Will] and relentless [Exertion]s.

Shortly after I attained that [Comprehension], Solaena returned from wherever she went, probably helping out with the other injured, and once again [Will]ed my consciousness to wake.

This time, as if something had given way, a sliver of my cognizance pierced through the shroud of unconsciousness, and I sluggishly reconnected with concurrently familiar and unfamiliar sensations I inherently knew to be those of my body.

It wasn't a dream.

I gradually pried my eyes open, accepting the devastating [Truth] that I lost my four limbs and much of my organs.

My Path had shifted course, and there was no adjusting it without years of daily hours-long healing sessions, which there was no way I could receive, even as a Guardian.

That or the wondrous combination of the [Regeneration] and [Will] Aspects, the former of which I could hopefully synthesize within the next decade, and the latter which I just reckoned was out of my relatively weak-[Will]ed grasp.

In conclusion...

By the time I fully healed, the moment would have come for me to finally tackle the formation of the [Longevity] Aspect.

My Path would otherwise gradually grind to a halt as the burden of age slowed my Essence development to a crawl, leaving nothing short of a miraculous enlightenment capable of restoring me to...

To...

To what... exactly?

"Finally awake." Solaena's indifferent, infantile high-pitched voice broke me out of my daze, and before I knew it, she had jumped on top of my mangled torso to stare down at me with the same dead, emotionless eyes she had first acknowledged my existence with.

"How does it feel? Bad? Want me to kill you now and resurrect you later? Want to join my [Faith]? I already converted a hundred or so others, so one more won't really burden me, even if it's a limbless freak like you."

She bent down to stare at me with her big, clear, iridescent eyes from even closer.

"Are you speechless? Can you try to speak up for me? Say something like 'I accept'. I promise I'll give you your limbs back within the next century. You'll have to survive till then on your own, though. Good luck on that."

She delivered the same brutally naive and [Truth]ful banter as ever, which was right up my alley, but the circumstances were so different compared to before that they didn't even cause my lips to twitch.

However, shockingly, her proposal... truly did embody a Path I could now worm-crawl on despite my condition.

The Path of [Faith].

The Path of those too weak-[Will]ed to forge their own Path.

Right up my alley...

"What happened?" Dismissing my musing, I asked the most important question.

"Want the short or the long version?"

"The better one."

"Medium it is." She nodded sagely and crossed her arms like an ancient Lorekeeper preparing to recount some profound historical epic.

"Once upon a time, a devious faction named Rustfang decided to assault the grand and holy Faith Of The Aspects in pursuit of members of the Threadforge Guild."

"A grand battle followed, one in which the Faith steadily routed Rustfang... right until a majestic explosion tore through one of the streets leading to the fourth-floor Lower Temple, killing hundreds, while crippling over a hundred more."

"On the edge of [Life] and [Death], a certain Guardian Elric, who should have rightfully been left to die, experienced his most fortunate turn of events."

"For instead of following common sense and allowing [Fate] to take its natural course, the merciful fairy known as Solaena hurled herself directly into the smoke and fire to rescue the person who had once welcomed her into the Faith, back when she was still a gullible little street rat."

"After fighting through flames, debris, and unbreathable air, she eventually located the thoroughly overcooked armored remains of the extremely lucky Guardian Elric and proceeded to spend nearly all her remaining energy keeping him alive."

"As most of his organs had catastrophically failed, she elected to prioritize existence continuity over complete restoration. The unfortunate cost of opposing his otherwise very justified [Fate] of death happened to be the loss of all his limbs and the majority of his internal organs."

"Still, with some assistance from passing giants, Guardian Elric was eventually dragged to safety. Fortunately, the broader disaster everyone feared never materialized, as no factions took advantage of the explosion to assault the Lower Temple, which would have forced the fragile fairy to flee without a single remorse."

"Even so, enormous amounts of work remained afterward, so Solaena stabilized the now tremendously indebted Guardian Elric one final time before departing to address the surrounding [Chaos]."

"In the end, it was Guardian Cipactli, who somehow rode the explosion’s shockwave like a particularly violent air current and escaped most of the blast, on which fell the duty of command."

"Like that, four days passed."

"That day, surrounded by no friends and no family, the future [Faith]ful of Solaena, Guardian Elric, finally cracked his eyes open and asked the single most reasonable question someone could ask after waking up with neither limbs nor future."

"What happened?" She finished with a theatrical oration no less bizarre than usual.

"So everything is fine?"

She shrugged. "I'm fine, you're alive, Guardian Cipactli hasn't succumbed to the pressure of command, and we only incurred a total Sentinel loss of twenty-four, with everyone else injured or crippled to some extent. You judge whether it's fine or not."

"What an utter disaster," I breathed out, the sheer scale of the losses pressing down on me like a suffocating weight.

"For you, maybe. For me, again, I just got myself a hundred or so [Faith]ful, with maybe four or five serious ones in the lot," she said, not granting me a single second to wallow in the misery of life's unexpectedness.

"By the way," she added, still as forceful, tilting her head slightly, "Care to tell me if you're even remotely interested in forming the [Faith] Aspect for me? I’ve got plenty of coins to donate to my own cause, as I can’t be bothered carrying them all the way to the Everwell Sector."

"Let me think about it," I weakly voiced, a wisp of the blooming mess that was my inner reflection on my future Path coloring my voice.

"You do you," she replied easily. "If you're serious, though, speak up, I’m not about to waste hours of idle time writing a biography, compiling a religious canon, sacred scripture, and whatever else you’ll need to get you started on my [Faith] if you’re not actually committed."

"Don’t you have other patients to attend to?"

"Oh. Now that you mention it, I do have a few of your future fellow [Faith]ful to take care of." She paused, then gave me a casual wave. "Try not to die in the meantime. Your future is still as glorious as before, just… differently shaped."

"Go," I said flatly, no longer in the mood to endure her infuriatingly [Truth]ful presence.

"Alright. See you."

With a single smooth beat of her wings, she rose into the air and, before long, disappeared from both my sight and [Awareness].

[Faith]...

If I survived...

Why not?

A dozen minutes passed, and before I knew it, unconsciousness crept up on my disorderly mind, once again claiming me.

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