Solaena's [Guided] Journey (Fantasy LitRPG)

Hovering before one of the Pulse Tower's assignment boards, I reread the same entry for the third time despite my [Clarity] having already confirmed that I hadn't misunderstood any portion of it.

Cult Of The Divines.

Pillar Temple.

Projected duration: two months.

Temporary medical reinforcement requested in preparation for an extended sequence of religious ceremonies, public rituals, private observances, visiting congregations, and several events whose descriptions meant little to me beyond the fact that they were apparently expected to attract tens of thousands of participants.

Pulse personnel requested across multiple ranks.

A Restorer serving as supervisor.

Four Menders.

Sixteen Aspirants.

And a small selection of auxiliaries and trial Aspirants whose specific responsibilities weren't relevant to me.

I finally found it.

An assignment close enough to [Perfection] that continuing to wait for a better one would be irrational.

What's more, it was even one that would take me straight to a Pillar Temple, which ranked third according to the Cult Of The Divines' Temple hierarchy.

Ember Temples occupied the bottom.

Then Beacon Temples.

Pillar Temples.

Throne Temples.

Firmament Temples.

And finally Apotheon Temples.

From what little I read about them, the differences between each rank covered everything that defined the Cult Of The Divines as the primary organization behind the [Faith] Aspect and all its infinite syntheses.

Size.

Influence.

Access.

The importance of the [Faith]ful and divine practitioners attached to them.

The scope of rituals they were equipped to host.

The rarity and complexity of [Faith]-related phenomena they could safely accommodate.

Their repositories.

Their institutional authority.

Their relationships with the broader Cult.

Everything.

And what only highlighted the opportunity that this assignment represented was the fact that the highest Cult establishment in the Everwell Sector was a single Firmament Temple located within Everwell Prime.

Beneath it were then four Throne Temples.

And under them came sixteen Pillar Temples.

After that, Beacon and Ember Temples became numerous enough that I hadn't bothered memorizing the count, only knowing they came and went by the hundreds according to demographic shifts.

That the assignment before me concerned one of those sixteen Pillar Temples would have arguably been enough for me to go with it even if it lasted only a single day.

As for the fact that this Pillar Temple lay somewhat farther from Everwell Prime than even the peripheral district the Pulse Tower I was in belonged to, meaning I would have to travel in almost the exact opposite direction from the one I had taken during the Utopia festival...

That was irrelevant.

What did it matter when the assignment offered a two-month-long stay at a proper Pillar Temple?

Even if the target Pillar Temple was one of those where every [Faith]ful allegedly dedicated themselves to obscure interpretation of [Faith], [Sacrifice], [Devotion], [Revelation], [Martyrdom], or some similarly narrow concept whose usefulness to the [Foundation] of my own [Faith] would be difficult to judge without first possessing a broader [Comprehension] of the Cult...

Finding a reason not to go would be harder than finding reasons to not pursue a useful [Insight] that manifested itself to me from nowhere.

Besides, according to my preliminary research, this Pillar Temple was not one of the specialized Temples; it was a plain general one.

Old.

Large.

Institutionally important.

Home to priests and believers pursuing numerous and diverse forms of [Faith].

Connected strongly enough to the Cult's wider hierarchy that someone inside it should actually be capable of explaining why things were done the way they were rather than simply informing me that a particular tradition had been followed for three centuries and therefore required no explanation.

And the assignment, again, was projected to last two months.

Long enough for it to stop being a visit.

Long enough for novelty to fade.

Long enough to observe what people did after they stopped treating me like a temporary outsider likely to disappear tomorrow.

Long enough to learn schedules.

Hierarchy.

Relationships.

Factions.

Politics.

Disputes.

Interests.

Who actually possessed authority.

Who merely looked like they did.

Who believers sought when their [Faith] failed them.

Who priests sought when doctrine stopped matching reality.

Which rituals mattered.

Which ones existed because no one possessed sufficient reason to abolish them.

Which teachings appeared universal across the Cult.

Which changed between individuals.

Which contradictions everyone politely ignored.

Two months was thus excellent for my own [Purpose].

Then there was the Pulse component.

I unfolded the personnel section again.

Restorer supervision confirmed.

The individual's identity wasn't yet listed.

Their specialties weren't either.

But a Restorer was still a Restorer.

Someone whose [Vitality] [Mastery] exceeded mine by such an absurd degree that even observing their routine applications could provide useful [Comprehension].

If circumstances proved favorable, I could even simply ask for personal guidance.

My experience under Xafsa had already established that competent mentors saved time.

No reason existed to pretend rediscovering established [Knowledge] independently possessed some intrinsic virtue.

The rest of the assignment was equally favorable.

I would remain an Aspirant of the Pulse while inside the Temple.

That granted me an obvious reason for being there.

A function.

Credentials.

Access to medical areas.

Regular contact with Cult personnel.

A justification for asking questions about ceremonies whenever those ceremonies possessed medical consequences.

And several other Pulse members would accompany me, reducing the probability that the Cult simply assigned me to some tiny isolated infirmary and forgot I existed for two months.

I read the entry one final time.

Could something better appear tomorrow?

Certainly.

A four-month assignment directly inside the Firmament Temple of Everwell Prime, personally supervised by a Pulse Lifewarden who had mastered [Vitality], conveniently possessed the [Flow] Aspect, had somehow formed the [Foundation] Aspect, knew everything about the Cult Of The Divines, and inexplicably wanted to dedicate their entire time to educating me would be better.

Perhaps they could also happen to possess a fully documented Essence overdevelopment disorder identical to mine and the exact solution I never knew I needed.

Maybe the assignment could pay ten thousand credits per day.

And conclude with everyone deciding to form [Faith] in me.

I stopped fantasizing about the impossible.

Waiting for [Perfection] may as well mean waiting forever.

This was good enough.

More than good enough.

I picked up an application form, filled in my Pulse identification and my fields of [Mastery] before swiftly going down the list of questions that followed.

Availability?

Immediate.

Known scheduling conflicts over the next two months?

None.

Medical limitations?

None relevant.

Specialized environmental requirements?

None.

Experience with [Faith]-related medical phenomena?

Limited.

Willingness to participate in a prolonged external station?

Yes.

Then I submitted it and returned to my ordinary [Cultivation] routine.

Several hours later, after reviewing the basic relationship between my [Harmony], [Purity], and [Foundation]al structures during communion, I visited the assignment station to find I had naturally been accepted, with a reminder of the expected departure time in seven and a half days.

Other than that, there were also a bunch of details about travel arrangements and equipment being taken care of and lodging being provided by the Cult, but I simply gave it a read then dismissed those irrelevant matters entirely.

I had seven and a half days to schedule for.

Not because I required seven and a half days to pack my possessions, though.

My entire personal material existence could fit inside containers small enough for giants to mistake them for decorative boxes.

Clothing.

Uniforms.

Notebooks.

Writing supplies.

A few specialized instruments.

Copies of important records.

That was nearly everything I owned that I considered worth bringing.

No, packing definitely wasn't something that would take me more than an hour.

The issue was what I had been postponing.

Returning to my booknest, several drafts waited there.

The first occupied a stack I had gradually rewritten and drafted new chapters for over the previous year and a half.

"The Nascence Of Solaena".

My autobiography.

My first [Faith] text.

The original version ended right before my departure from the Red Sand Sector.

A record of how I came to be.

How my Path emerged.

How [Guided] formed before I possessed any meaningful [Comprehension] of existence.

How my struggle against hunger gave rise to my formation of the [Exertion] and [Cycle] Aspects.

How I formed my now synthesized [Insight] and [Perception] Aspects.

How the ruination of Volow opened my Path to the [Will] Aspect.

How I joined the Faith.

Learned.

Changed.

Formed relationships.

Developed my overdevelopment disorder.

Defined my [Ambition].

Advanced my Path one step at a time.

However, so much changed since I wrote the original that several of my retrospective explanations no longer represented what I now understood of my "nascence".

Naturally, that led me to rewriting and amending my previous chapters.

Not changing what happened.

That would defeat the [Purpose] of an autobiography.

Clarifying.

Correcting interpretations.

Adding where later [Comprehension] revealed that I had misunderstood my own motives.

Removing passages where unnecessary elaboration obscured the actual event.

Separating what I knew then from what I only understood later.

And alongside that, I also wrote new chapters.

My departure from the Red Sand Sector.

My passage through the Crimson Hollow Sector.

The Darkened Spires.

The Violet Radiance Sector.

My arrival in the Everwell Sector.

My joining of the Pulse.

Becoming Xafsa's personal aide.

My various Aspect advancements.

My formation of the [Mastery] and [Vitality] Aspects.

My contemplations on the overdevelopment disorder that had shaped years of my Path.

The planned formation of the Aspect through which I hoped to finally begin overcoming it.

Those chapters weren't all polished.

Some were barely even drafts and chronologies accompanied by notes about which memories deserved expansion.

Others had already gone through several revisions.

One contained a single page reading "Explain why spending months repeatedly killing plantoid tissues was worthwhile without making it sound either less or more interesting than it actually was."

As such, if I wanted to present a coherent and clean copy into the Cult Of The Divines, the departure time gave me a deadline of sorts.

So I started working.

Pages moved.

Paragraphs shifted.

[Guided] both made old memories resurface whenever my recollection grew ambiguous and [Guided] my writing.

My [Clarity] distinguished what I had genuinely believed at the time from conclusions imposed retroactively.

And my [Purity] repeatedly made me question if anything I wrote accurately represented my Path.

Not whether I was proud of it.

Not whether it made me look intelligent.

Not whether another reader would approve.

When this accuracy was even the slightest affected due to the inaccuracy of a passage...

I changed it.

And when this accuracy felt adequate enough despite a passage making me appear naive, arrogant, mistaken, needlessly brutal, or simply ignorant...

I didn't change anything.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

That was my autobiography's [Purpose].

I had no interest in acquiring [Faith] through presenting a fictionalized version of myself and my Path.

Which brought me to the second collection of documents.

They were significantly less organized.

Several notebooks.

Loose sheets.

Pages torn from earlier drafts.

Lists.

Questions.

Diagrams.

A handful of passages written months or even years apart, some of which contained conclusions directly contradicting one another.

One entire notebook had begun as an attempt to define what obligations I might have toward future [Faith]ful, then transformed halfway through into speculation about [Guided], [Inspiration], [Exemplar], [icon], [Ideal], and [Paragon].

Another mostly contained observations about Guardian Elric.

A third was technically about institutions, though half its pages were now comparisons between the Faith Of The Aspects, the Pulse Of Eternity, the Nexus Order, the Fairy House, banks, commercial organizations, and anything else whose structure had provided me an [Insight] potentially applicable to a future [Faith].

[Chaos].

Still, this [Chaos] had a name.

"The Path Of Solaena's [Faith]".

I even intended this hectic collection of [Insight]s to be the basis for my second [Faith] text, one that would contain all the grand lines of how I intended my [Faith] to operate.

As for its current state of advancement, one of its more complete chapters concerned what was probably the most immediate problem facing any nascent [Faith].

Recruitment.

Of which I already possessed several leads.

Orphanages, where children raised without guardians might find something familiar within "The Nascence Of Solaena", whether through donated copies or my personally reading it to them.

The slums, where those broken by injury, disease, violence, or simple failure sometimes found their previous Paths rendered effectively impossible, much as Guardian Elric once had.

And prisons—particularly those serving perpetual sentences—where abundance of time and Civilization's convenient concept of "repentance" could make [Faith] an appealing alternative direction.

All three were [Worthy] of an in-depth investigation.

However, as another chapter demonstrated, what mattered wasn't merely acquiring [Faith]ful.

It was also determining what made someone place genuine [Faith] in me, what exactly they placed that [Faith] in, and whether that relationship served the [Purpose] I intended.

Quantity presented similar uncertainties.

Ten [Faith]ful could be known and be [Guided] personally.

Thousands would require another kind of organization altogether.

Millions would demand doctrine, delegation, and systems capable of preserving my intentions across people I might never meet.

Then came the pragmatic question of "quality".

Intensity of [Faith].

Alignment with my Path.

[Comprehension].

Influence.

Longevity.

Capacity for independent growth.

Different [Faith]ful offered different advantages, and optimizing any one trait before I properly understood the whole would simply invite me to construct the wrong [Foundation] more efficiently.

So as I got started organizing this mess into a semblance of [Order] for actual [Faith]ful of the Cult Of The Divines to browse through and critique my methods, [Insight]s, and [Comprehension]s, I wrote one reminder.

Do not optimize recruitment before determining how many of what is being recruited.

And that was precisely why the upcoming assignment mattered.

I knew my current design couldn't possibly be optimal because I lacked the [Knowledge] required to make it so.

I had never meaningfully observed a sophisticated [Faith] organization from within.

I didn't know how it handled competing interpretations, authority, recruitment, doctrine, resources, internal politics, or the relationship between objects of [Faith] and those who built institutions around them.

My visit to the Pillar Temple existed to correct that ignorance.

Thus it was that I spent the remainder of the week working on that while only giving a modicum of [Focus] to my continued pursuit of the [Flow] and [Foundation] Aspects.

I revisited the [Flow] of air during flight, heat through my body, blood through my vessels, and [Vitality] throughout my tissues.

For [Foundation], I continued stripping my Path back toward its basics.

My Aspects.

Their roles.

Their simplest synergies.

The parts of my body, mind, [Knowledge], and Path upon which everything else genuinely depended.

Nothing dramatic occurred.

No Aspect formed.

No advancement began.

Only one [Cultivation] after another, each refining something I would eventually require.

Like that, by the time the week came to an end and the time for departure arrived, I was ready and joined the group that had assembled beneath the Pulse Tower.

The group was neither too big nor too small once everything was accounted for, from the Pulse personnel to the supplies, the sealed medical containers, the personal luggage, and several large cases whose markings indicated contents I wasn't authorized to access.

The scene faintly resembled the time I departed for the Utopia festival.

That journey had also involved Pulse members traveling alongside enough supplies to sustain medical operations away from the Tower.

This time, however, Xafsa wasn't accompanying me.

And when we entered the underground transport network...

Our train headed in the opposite direction from Everwell Prime.

I settled atop one of the supply containers, elevated enough that giants wouldn't accidentally sit or step on me, all while being positioned where my [Awareness] could follow most of the group.

A familiar solution.

A comfortable one.

From there, I had all the time I needed to acquaint myself with the members of the group, from the sole Restorer, to the four Menders, to the other fifteen Aspirants, to the rest of the trial Aspirants and auxiliaries.

I knew some of them, and for those I didn't, no introduction beyond names had occurred yet.

That was fine.

No one was in a hurry when we would be together for two months.

There would be time.

The train moved.

Acceleration pressed faintly against me.

Then stabilized.

I expanded my [Awareness].

Not as far as during my first train journey.

Back then, everything had been new enough that every tunnel junction warranted investigation.

Now...

I had another reason.

[Flow].

The train moved through air.

Air displaced.

Pressure accumulated ahead.

[Flow]s dragged along its exterior.

Every station changed passenger movement.

People entered.

People exited.

Crowds [Flow]ed through narrow openings, spread inside compartments, reorganized around seating and luggage, then compressed again before each stop.

I observed.

Didn't turn it into an intensive [Cultivation].

My quota had already been planned.

But observing cost almost nothing.

One more [Flow].

One more expression of [Flow].

A couple of hours passed before the train eventually decelerated and our group reorganized around the supplies.

Doors opened.

People [Flow]ed out.

So did we.

The route back toward the inhabited surface contained the same sort of sprawling underground infrastructure I remembered.

Signs.

Stairs.

Lifts.

Ramps.

Platforms.

Corridors splitting repeatedly.

Except this station was less crowded.

Or rather, it was merely less saturated with movement than the routes beneath Everwell Prime.

When we emerged, I saw the Pillar Temple before anyone needed to point toward it.

Difficult not to.

It didn't rise like the towers surrounding it.

That distinction drew the eye first.

Most prestigious Everwell structures competed vertically.

Height.

More floors.

More visible influence.

More proximity to the Strata ceiling.

The Pillar Temple instead occupied an enormous section of ground and seemed almost defiantly uninterested in becoming a tower.

Stone dominated it.

Not the pale metallic-white material so common throughout the Pulse.

Actual stone.

Or something imitating it so perfectly that from a distance, I couldn't immediately distinguish the difference.

Dark gray.

Pale cream.

Black.

Brown.

Red-veined.

Green-flecked.

Different materials joined without any apparent desire for a unified color scheme.

Yet somehow...

It remained coherent.

Age held it together.

Not literal age alone.

Architectural age.

Expertise accumulated until thousands of individual additions looked less like modifications and more like layers.

Massive walls rose into pointed arches.

Buttressing structures extended outward in repeating geometries, some ending in sculptures several stories tall.

Spire after spire pierced upward.

None rivaled the neighboring towers in absolute height.

They didn't need to.

Their proportions made them appear taller than they were.

Narrow.

Elongated.

Drawing the eye upward until the surrounding city momentarily ceased to matter.

Huge windows occupied impossible portions of the stone walls.

Glassworks.

Not mere transparent panes.

Images.

Patterns.

Entire scenes assembled from thousands of colored fragments held within intricate frameworks.

Light passed through them and spilled across exterior plazas in patches of red, blue, green, gold, violet, colors overlapping whenever the angles aligned.

Sculptures covered everything.

Individuals.

Creatures.

Abstract forms.

Representations of Aspects I recognized.

Others I didn't.

Some figures towered over entrances.

Others occupied tiny recesses that could have hidden dozens of fairies.

Metalwork curled around doors.

Jewelry...

That was the only term that fit some portions.

Not jewelry intended to be worn.

Jewelry enlarged until gemstones became architectural elements.

Chains thick as roads hung between pillars.

Faceted stones the size of buildings had been set into upper structures.

Metallic filigree spread over entire walls.

Paintings occupied sheltered exterior galleries.

Some were so enormous I couldn't take in the complete image without increasing distance.

No white-and-gold institutional palette.

No uniformity.

No obvious attempt to make every century match the previous one.

Instead...

Art.

Everywhere.

Different styles.

Different materials.

Different understandings of what deserved reverence.

Accumulated.

Preserved.

Built upon.

The Temple looked old because it knew how to be old, which presented a certain contrast with the Pulse Tower primarily conveying efficiency and cleanliness.

This place conveyed that countless entities had believed something here before I was conceived.

And that countless more expected to continue doing so after every individual presently walking beneath its spires was gone.

Interesting.

And very relevant to the reason for my presence.

We approached one of the side entrances rather than the monumental central gates.

The supplies required processing.

Our identities required verification.

As the Pulse had obviously coordinated everything beforehand, the ensuing settlement proceeded quickly.

Rooms were assigned.

Medical cases were transferred.

An infirmary tour was carried out.

Emergency routes were explained.

Communication procedures were established.

Restricted areas were identified.

Temple personnel were assigned as points of contact.

The reason for our presence was equally clarified.

Over the next two months, the Pillar Temple would host an unusually dense sequence of rituals and ceremonies.

Some recurring.

Some exceptional.

Some associated with unique visiting groups.

Some requiring long periods of fasting.

Others prolonged wakefulness.

Public acts of [Faith].

Group communions.

Offerings.

Processions.

Aspect demonstrations.

Rites whose physiological consequences were considered mild.

Rites whose physiological consequences were sufficiently severe that a Restorer had been included in the Pulse deployment rather than relying on local healers.

Then there were the ordinary problems created by bringing tens of thousands of Essence Entities of every imaginable morphology, Path, temperament, and belief into one institution.

Falls.

Crushing.

Overexertion.

Dehydration.

Aspect misuse.

Uncontrolled manifestations.

Panic.

Violence.

And...

[Faith] disputes.

Which was apparently pretty common despite the "sanctity" of the Pillar Temple.

Not necessarily disputes on the level of wars over doctrine.

Sometimes two individuals merely disagreed strongly enough about an object of worship, divine principle, interpretation, ritual, or personal revelation that [Faith]-aligned Aspects began answering their disagreement.

Then someone ended up injured.

As such, the Cult preferred having healers nearby to handle the aftermath.

For me, all that was pretty much secondary.

Perhaps even tertiary.

The work itself would still provide me some opportunities to interact with new physiologies, and the presence of a Restorer remained relevant to my [Vitality] [Mastery], but neither represented the reason why I was here.

My schedule arrived before I had even finished arranging my writing materials.

Infirmary stationing.

Rotations.

Emergency availability.

A few ceremonial periods where every Pulse member would be required to remain on alert.

Plenty of free time.

Excellent.

I memorized it.

Stored the physical copy.

Then departed.

Not from the Temple.

Into it.

My [Awareness] expanded.

My first objective was evident.

Map everything I was authorized to access.

The Pillar Temple's size and internal architecture were absurd.

Corridors branched.

Stairs rose.

Others descended.

Open halls connected to enclosed galleries.

Courtyards in elongated shape populated by all manner of flora sporadically appeared before me, surrounding structures called "shrines".

I wrote the terminology down.

Libraries.

Lecture halls.

Meditation chambers.

Public prayer spaces.

Private devotional rooms.

Administrative offices.

Residences.

Kitchens.

Storage.

Art workshops.

Rooms dedicated to maintaining the Temple's immense collection of paintings, sculptures, glassworks, metals, fabrics, relics, and ceremonial objects.

I followed every permitted route.

When a passage was restricted...

I noted it.

When access depended upon rank...

I asked what rank.

When it depended upon affiliation...

I asked which affiliation.

When an answer became too cryptic for me to understand half the words used...

Even better.

Then I started talking.

At first, to reception workers.

They knew where things were.

They knew which visitors asked which questions.

They knew which Temple personnel dealt with outsiders.

I asked about the upcoming ceremonies.

Then I started conversing with attendants.

They knew how rooms were prepared.

Which priests were demanding.

Which groups arrived early.

Which rituals always overran their schedules.

I asked about logistics.

Then I naturally approached believers.

Asked them the seemingly very broad question, "What brings you here?"

And received responses that were rarely broad.

A family tradition.

A personal divine experience.

A specific priest.

A promise.

A recovered illness.

An Aspect.

A dead relative.

A living patron.

A philosophy.

A miracle I couldn't verify.

A miracle I probably could.

An obligation.

A pilgrimage.

Curiosity.

Habit.

Fear.

Hope.

[Ambition].

Gratitude.

Some didn't even know.

That answer interested me enough to continue speaking with them longer than intended.

Then I moved on to Cult Of The Divines' priests.

Not all priests were called priests.

Titles changed according to role, Path, tradition, and internal branch.

More terminology.

More questions.

What did they believe?

Not what the Cult officially taught.

Though they could give me that too, so long as I hadn't already read about it or heard another already say it.

I wanted theirs.

What did [Faith] mean to them?

What made an object worthy of it?

Could [Faith] be conditional?

Could it be transactional?

Could someone hold [Faith] in several incompatible things?

When did reverence become devotion?

When did devotion become subservience?

What did an object of [Faith] owe those who believed in it?

Did it owe them anything?

What if it didn't want their belief?

What if [Faith]ful misunderstood it?

Could a [Faith] survive the explicit rejection of its own doctrine by the being it worshiped?

How did [Faith] affect the object of [Faith]?

That question produced a wonderfully long answer.

I listened.

Recorded and remembered everything.

Asked another.

And another after that.

I had no intention of sharing either "The Nascence Of Solaena" or "The Path Of Solaena's [Faith]" yet.

Doing so this prematurely would be stupid.

I had been inside the Pillar Temple for hours.

I didn't know these people.

Didn't know the institution.

Didn't know its incentives.

Didn't know which part of the Cult handled emerging objects of [Faith].

Didn't know whether presenting myself as someone actively planning a personal [Faith] would make me interesting, laughable, valuable, threatening, or all four to different people.

I didn't even know which outcome I preferred.

Therefore...

As any such unknown situation warranted, I first [Focus]ed on learning as much as I could.

This Pillar Temple had to possess its own web of interests, after all.

Everything did.

The Pulse did.

The Faith Of The Aspects did.

The Nexus Order did.

Banks did.

Fitness centers did.

Even an aquatic center existed because enough individual interests converged to make dedicating an absurd amount of valuable urban space to pools profitable.

This Pillar Temple wouldn't, and couldn't, be different.

Donations moved credits somewhere.

Authority came from somewhere.

[Faith]ful gave something.

Received something.

Priests competed for positions.

Or didn't.

Different [Faith] cooperated.

Or tolerated one another.

Rituals consumed resources.

The Temple gained influence.

The wider Cult had to expect something in exchange.

And somewhere within all those overlapping relationships existed the answer to the question I had been trying to solve for long before I set out on this convenient assignment.

What should my [Faith] become?

And to uncover this answer, I would learn the [Faith] of every priest willing to explain it.

Query every believer interesting enough to question.

Investigate every [Faith] I could access.

Research every doctrine whose consequences I could observe.

Not even the Cult was above me, as I would readily learn the intricacies governing an organization operating on the same incomprehensible scale as the Pulse Of Eternity if they were unveiled before me.

And while I learned...

As always, I would integrate it all to my Path in some way, if only as irrelevant [Knowledge] [Guided] already possessed an absurd amount of, ready to drown me in it whenever it was required.

Fairy manners.

Pulse etiquette.

The social conventions I had copied throughout my time in Everwell.

Institutional politics.

Aspect theory.

[Faith] theory.

Fragments of theology.

The conversations I had held.

The books I had read.

The reactions people gave when I phrased one question too directly.

The reactions they gave when I smiled.

When I bowed.

When I expressed curiosity.

When I demonstrated ignorance honestly.

When I displayed enough [Knowledge] to stop being treated like a child.

When someone preferred formality.

When someone responded better to enthusiasm.

All of it was [Knowledge] that existed and that I had accumulated in droves.

All of it could be used.

All of it had a [Purpose].

And [Guided] was always lurking within me, ready to pounce whenever they could be leveraged.

When someone saw me as someone eager to learn and was willing to teach me, I became an excellent student.

When someone wanted to debate, I conveniently became sufficiently informed to make the debate interesting.

When someone wanted to speak about themselves, I acted like the best listener and let them.

People possessed an astonishing willingness to explain their Path when someone demonstrated genuine enough interest in understanding it.

And in my own way, I was interested.

Not in them for their own sake.

But in what they knew.

What they represented.

What their experiences could add to my own [Comprehension].

What place they occupied within this Temple's web.

Yet the distinction didn't need to matter to the conversation.

I could be erudite.

Receptive.

Sociable.

Pleasant.

Curious.

A tiny Pulse Aspirant fairy with pale opalescent hair, iridescent wings, an unusual amount of [Knowledge], and seemingly endless questions about [Faith].

Memorable enough to be invited back and mentioned in idle chat.

Unthreatening enough to be given answers she shouldn't hear.

I had two months to work with.

Plenty of time.

So long as I didn't waste a single second, that was.