“What do you mean?” asked Elise.

She was not surprised at all to hear the word “Aetherborn” come out of Maggie’s mouth. All the ???s seemed to know about aetherborn, so why would she be an exception?

“How much do you remember?” asked Maggie.

“About what?”

“Your past.”

Elise hesitated before responding. That was a very loaded question. But if Maggie had already been dreaming about her for five years, it wasn’t entirely unreasonable to assume she knew about Elise’s past on Earth. It wasn’t reasonable either, but Elise had a gut feeling that it was true.

“...Which past?” she asked.

“After you died. Before you were born.”

“After I-?” Elise paused. “What?”

“It seems nothing.”

There was something between when I died and woke up as a rabbit??

“Don’t worry,” continued Maggie. “You will remember. Eventually. As you evolve. As your Rune of Fate becomes ingrained deeper in your soul.”

“What does that mean?”

Maggie looked down at her for a few seconds, then closed her eyes, bent her head down and put her hands together. After a minute or so, Elise shivered slightly, and a moment later, Maggie opened her eyes, which were now glowing silver. She stretched one hand down toward Elise, and beckoned for her to take it.

“Take my hand,” she said. “I will show you. I swear on my honor as a Paladin of the Light that I will not harm you.”

“...Alright,” said Elise, taking the other woman's hand.

She activated {Fey Bargaining} too, of course. Just in case.

The moment her hand touched Maggie’s, the world spun, and when it stopped, she was somewhere else. The vault and the mushrooms were gone, replaced by a grassy meadow. Maggie was no longer in front of her, but after looking around for a few seconds, Elise saw her relaxing under a tree at the top of a hill.

She looked different. Gone was the crazy homeless lady dressed in rags with dirt on her face and hair like a rat’s nest. In her place was an almost regal-looking woman wearing silver armor. Her helmet was on the ground beside her, and her dark hair was done back in a long braid that brushed against the grass when she turned her head. A sword at least six feet long was resting on the grass beside her, as sleek and polished as a mirror.

She beckoned for Elise to join her, so Elise walked up the hill and sat down beside her. For a moment, they sat in silence, watching clouds drift by. Then, Elise spoke.

“What is this place?”

“This is my soulspace,” said Maggie. “My domain.”

“A Domain Skill?”

“Similar,” she said. “Domain skills are simply an external manifestation of the soul space. I cannot manifest my own Domain, so I prayed to Lucena, the goddess of Light, to grant me the power to bring you into my soulspace instead.”

“I see…” said Elise. “But why?”

“To help you understand,” replied Maggie. “What do you think an Aetherborn is?”

“...I’m going to assume based on your phrasing that it’s not just someone who was born with an unusual amount of aether?”

“I’m sure you can come up with a better guess than that.”

“...Is it someone who was reborn?”

“Closer, but still not quite. Generally, aetherborn are simply those who have an unusual amount of aether. However, the amount of aether is merely a symptom of something deeper. Aetherborn are those with anomalous souls. Oftentimes, those are souls that have made it intact through the cycle of death and rebirth, like yourself. Other times, they are simply lucky. Or perhaps unlucky, depending on your perspective. And there are a few more edge cases that there is no point in going into.

“Regardless of origin, all aetherborn possess aether in excess and they all possess the rune known as ‘Fate.’ This rune is one of the primordial runes that existed before even the gods. I do not know everything it can do, but at its core, its main purpose seems to be to facilitate the flow of large amounts of aether. This means that the gods can use it to grant the aetherborn large amounts of their own aether at times, making aetherborn a favored tool of gods.

“However, that is only a temporary state. As an aetherborn lives and grows, their soul adapts to the Rune and integrates it within itself. When this integration is complete, the rune ceases to exist in its raw form, and becomes something more.”

“So I won’t be able to channel the divine aether anymore after that happens?” asked Elise.

“You might,” said Maggie with a shrug. “It depends how it changes. The aetherborn chosen and used by gods usually can continue to channel the divine aether. Most of the rest can’t. In fact, most of them don’t ever learn that was a possibility in the first place. You are in a unique position of having been chosen by a goddess who does not care for servants.”

“Then I will be able to do it?”

Maggie shrugged again. “I dunno. Will you? That’s up to you. And it’s why I brought you here. Since you haven’t noticed yet, I want you to take a look at yourself.”

Confused, Elise looked down, and was shocked at what she saw. She was not her normal rabbit form, nor was she any variation of human that she had ever been. She was humanoid, yes, but she was utterly featureless. She wasn’t wearing any clothes, but it didn’t matter, because there was nothing to hide. She wasn’t even a manikin. It was more like she was a crude clay doll. The only notable feature she had was a flower-like pattern drawn in red on her chest. She recognized it as the Rune of Fate.

“Wh-what am I?”

“Right now, you are your soul,” said Maggie. “This is the current shape of your soul.”

“Why do I look like this?”

“Because you do not look like anything else.”

“What?”

Maggie reached to her side and lifted up her sword and held it out in front of her. Elise saw her reflection and noticed that her face was featureless too, and was hardly more than an oval. However, it did have two odd protrusions sticking up, almost like rabbit ears.

Maggie wasn’t looking at her. She was simply looking at the blade.

“This is my soulshape,” she said. “In the world, I may be dressed in rags. I may be addicted to Euphoria. I may be lost and wandering. But no matter how I dress or act, at my core, I am and always will be a Paladin of the Light.” She turned to Elise. “But you… Do you know what you are?”

“I-” started Elise, but she couldn’t finish.

“To the world, you are a rabbit changeling, but is that how you see yourself?” asked Maggie after a few seconds.

“No…”

“In your past life, you were human, but is that how you see yourself?”

“Y-” Elise started, but once again, she couldn’t finish.

“If you are human, then what are these?” asked Maggie, reaching over and touching one of Elise’s rabbit ears. “You do not see yourself as human anymore, but you also have not embraced your new form. You have no desire to pick up where you left off in your previous life, but you have not found what you want to do in this life either. Your soul is in limbo. It has not yet consolidated into a form. Right now, you are nothing.”

Those words hung in the air as Elise looked down at her amorphous form. She felt like crying. Maggie’s words had struck something deep within her. Not just in her new life, but in her past life as well, she had never had strong direction. Her greatest ambition was getting away from her adoptive parents. She had worked herself to death in college trying to get into medical school, but why? For what? To help people? Maybe that was part of it, but she knew that wasn’t the core of it.

She was running away. She dove headlong into her work to distract from the fact that she had no idea what she actually wanted to do with her life. She forced herself to choose so that she wouldn’t be forced to face her own feelings. Perhaps if she worked hard enough, she would find the answer along the way somehow.

And now, here she was with a second chance, but still doing the exact same thing. She had previously resolved herself to become a goddess and to build her evolutions toward helping people. Or at least she thought she had resolved herself. Now, here she was talking to a stranger, and all that resolve was crumbling. If she actually knew herself properly, it wouldn’t have fallen apart so easily.

For just a split second, she resented Maggie. If not for this woman, she would have just kept moving forward. She would have evolved in line with whatever Oberon was trying to get her to understand, and slowly worked her way toward goddesshood, perhaps acting as a vigilante because that’s what she believed she wanted to do. Now, because of this conversation, she was confused. She could dive back into the same path, but in the back of her mind, she would always hear Maggie’s voice.

“You are nothing.”

She immediately regretted this resentment. Perhaps she would have moved forward without Maggie’s interference, but that doubt had already existed in her mind. Deep down, Maggie’s words were nothing new. She would have had the same realization on her own eventually. But by then, she might have gone through a few irreversible evolutions.

“However, in being nothing, you are also everything,” said Maggie, cutting through her thoughts. “You are a blank slate. You can be whatever you choose. A hero. A villain. A monarch. A beggar. A farmer. A librarian. A warrior. A hunter. A rabid beast.”

“But how do I-?” Elise’s voice broke. “How do I know? How do I know what to be?”

“That’s up to you.”

“That doesn’t help!” Elise snapped.

“Why do you want me to tell you how to live your life?” asked Maggie. “I am not you. If I give you direct guidance, it will no longer be your decision. You need to find out what you want on your own.”

“But I don’t know!” Elise shouted. “I don’t know what I want! I don’t-!”

She paused for a few seconds, then pulled her legs up and buried her featureless face in her featureless knees.

“I’ve never known,” she said quietly.

“Then start small,” said Maggie. “What do you want right now? Something small and simple.”

Elise didn’t respond.

“Just say the first thing that comes to mind.”

“...A hug.”

She felt foolish, but before she could take it back, Maggie had pulled her close and embraced her. At this point, Elise noticed that she had shrunk. She was no longer a full-sized human. She was like a child, and Maggie’s arms felt like a mother’s. Despite the hard steel, she felt warm and dependable.

“What do you want now?” asked Maggie.

“...To stay like this for a little while,” said Elise.

And she did. She lost track of how long they sat like that. Neither of them spoke. Elise’s mind was racing at first, but slowly calmed down as she stayed in Maggie’s arms. A light breeze blew through the meadow, ruffling the grass below and making the tree branches sway. Elise found herself feeling a bit drowsy, but roused herself before sleep could take her, and then pulled away from Maggie.

Maggie was smiling. It was a warm smile, the likes of which Elise had hardly ever seen.

“Ready to head back?” asked Maggie.

Elise nodded, and the world spun again, and she found herself back in the vault surrounded by mushrooms. Maggie was back in her rags, but she wore the same smile, and her eyes were no longer glowing silver. They were still holding hands, and Elise noticed that Maggie’s felt comfortingly warm.

“Despite all that, I just realized that I never properly introduced myself,” said Maggie. “My full name is Magdalena Delarossa, and I am the last remaining member of the Paladins of the Light. You can still call me Maggie though.”

“...I’m Snowberry,” said Elise. “It… means something else in my original language.”

“It’s nice to meet you formally, Snowberry,” said Maggie. “By the way, what are you doing here?”

Elise looked around the room, only just then remembering where they were and what she had been doing there.

“I was investigating this place,” she said.

“For what?” asked Maggie.

“This,” said Elise, gesturing toward the mushrooms. “Crime.”

“And what are you going to do about it now?”

“...I don’t know,” said Elise. “Report this organization, I guess.”

She had been expecting something a bit more blatantly terrible for her to bust. The mushrooms were a bit anticlimactic, but they were still illegal drugs that ruined peoples’ lives. She had to do something about them.

“Why?” asked Maggie.

“Because it’s illegal,” said Elise, frowning. “They’re producing hallucinogenic drugs. Those are dangerous.”

“True,” said Maggie. “But what about everything else they do? The orphanage? The peace in the streets?”

“Well…”

“Do you know how Euphoria is made?” asked Maggie.

“Is it more than just growing the mushrooms?”

“Yes,” said Maggie, plucking another of the mushrooms. “This mushroom by itself is not Euphoria. This is a rare species of mushroom known commonly as the Null Cap. The mushroom has the intriguing property of taking on different properties depending on the environment in which it is raised. Most aren’t aware of why, but these mushrooms are highly sensitive to aether, and will absorb it from around them.”

Elise thought back to the mana circuits running from the orphanage into the planter boxes.

“Then these mushrooms…” she started.

“Are absorbing the pure, untainted aether of happy, healthy children,” said Maggie. “And not in a bad way. All living things give off aether. The formations in the house simply take in the ambient aether that the children give off and siphon it down here. After all, if the children were constantly being drained of their aether, they likely wouldn’t be happy or healthy.

“Euphoria is a massively profitable product, so this organization takes great care to make sure that their supply is undisturbed. They take in children from all over and raise them in peace and comfort. They spare no expense in hiring competent personnel and providing the children with ample resources to grow and thrive. And of course, they need a healthy environment for that, so they also keep the peace in the streets.”

“Why not do it in the nicer parts of the city then?”

“Too many regulations. And the tunnels under the main city are policed. They wouldn’t be able to do this undisturbed. Too much risk. It’s easier to make the slums a safe environment than it is to navigate legal issues arising from operating out of somewhere else in the city.”

“I guess that makes sense. Why are you telling me this though?”

“It’s related to our conversation earlier,” said Maggie. “You said you don’t know what you want to do, yet here you are, investigating a criminal organization and preparing to take them down. Why?”

Elise’s frown deepened. “To help people?”

“Why?”

“Because… Do I need a reason to want to help people?”

“No,” said Maggie with a smile. “No you do not. However, you should also make sure you know what you’re doing. Will you taking this organization down actually help people?”

“What do you mean?”

“This place profits off peace and happiness. Peace in the streets, and happiness and success for the children. Aside from selling drugs, they do nothing wrong, and in fact, you could argue that they are quite a positive influence on the world. The crime rates here are almost as low as they are in the rest of the city, the children in the orphanage typically have successful careers, and there are no starving children in the streets.”

“But they still sell Euphoria,” argued Elise. “That drug ruins lives.”

Elise didn’t actually know how big of a problem Euphoria was, but based on what she knew about other illicit drugs, she could assume a few things.

“True,” she said. “But think about this: what will happen to all those Euphoria users if their supply disappears? Will they all suddenly get clean? Stop using drugs? Get their lives back on track?”

“...Probably not.”

“Probably not,” agreed Maggie. “They will turn to something else. Something potentially worse. And think about the children in the orphanage. What will happen to them if this group is no longer able to sell Euphoria?”

Elise didn’t respond.

“Now, the reason I say these things isn’t to discourage you from busting this group,” she said. “However, right now, you don’t know what you want to do with your life. You want to help people, but you’re not sure how you want to do it, so you’re trying the easiest way you can think of: catching criminals. But you need to understand that your actions have consequences.

“What if I wasn’t here? What if you simply reported this place and then left, assuming you did a good deed. Maybe you would have successfully taken down a drug production operation, but what about everyone else? What would happen to the children? What about all the crime that will return to the streets once they are no longer policed? What about the next group that takes over in this area with the power vacuum you’ve just formed? I doubt they’ll be better than these people. Can you take responsibility for all that?”

“...Probably not,” Elise replied.

Oberon had the power to do something about the children, and even about keeping the peace in the slums. But would he? If she asked him, he might, but only until he got bored of it. She was under no illusions about his nature. He would not care one way or the other about the children or the slums. If something more entertaining than Elise came along, or if Elise fell out of favor, he would abandon them without a second thought. In that case, it would be up to her to handle it, but did she have the power to do that?

No. No she did not.

“Wanting to help people is an admirable goal, but doing things like this is not the only way,” said Maggie. “I have a hypothetical question for you. If your goal is helping people, which is better: to save the lives of ten injured people as a healer, or to feed ten starving children for a year as a cook?”

“I-”

“Or what about bringing joy to 100 lives as an entertainer? Or providing a comfortable and reliable place to stay for thousands as an innkeeper?”

“I- I don’t know.”

“Exactly,” said Maggie. “There are many ways to help people. You don’t need to dive headfirst into something like this. Just like with finding what you want to do with your life, and finding out who you are, you can start small. A piece of bread for a homeless person. A compliment to someone who’s feeling down. Tending to the wounds of one injured person. Small things with small consequences.”

“I see,” said Elise. “Wait…”

At that moment, Elise realized that she had just been convinced not to bust a drug operation… by someone addicted to said drug.

“Yes?” asked Maggie, looking quite innocent.

“You’re not just telling me this so that I won’t cut off your supply, right?”