By the time she was curled up at her mother’s side, waiting for her father to come back from hell-knows-where he’d been these past four weeks, Everie was deep in thought.

After depositing her back in her bassinet - not for the first time, either - Daphne had gone about her usual duties. Which meant changing Everie’s diapers (something Everie still couldn’t believe she had to go through multiple times a day, now) and changing her blankets.

The actual cleaning of her room Daphne did with magic. And Everie was still bemused by the ease of which her nanny levitated her quilts and punched them with invisible fists to get rid of the dust, the other maids watching her with envy - and something that looked like respect. Odd, especially for someone that Everie could clearly see was the equivalent of a junior conscript.

I don’t get it, Everie had thought. How the hell does that work?

She’d promised herself earlier to push back any further experimentation, but Everie couldn’t help but feel hungry for action. Cautiously, Everie flexed her will. It was the first time in weeks she’d done so, having yet been afflicted by residual shellshock from her... awakening before. But now, she was too curious. And bored.

Mostly bored.

She frowned. Maybe reincarnation has affected me, after all? Everie thought. I don’t recall being this reckless in my previous life. She coughed.

Gently, she coaxed that same feeling of circulation out of the... knot isn’t a good name, Everie thought, frowning. More like a well. Right. To her surprise, the first part of the process - drawing water from the well - was easier than before. Like the invisible hole in her abdomen had widened somehow, to a degree which Everie could comfortably fit her mental feelers in.

It was a strange sensation; akin, in a sense, to reaching into a literal well. Only, like water, it was difficult for Everie to reliably withdraw anything of substance with her bare hands. She scowled as she felt her consciousness snag onto something, only for it to fall back out of her hands, plummeting down below.

“Hmm?”

Next to her, the woman she knew as Briar shifted, causing Everie to still. She had fallen asleep while reading from a thick, gold-embossed storybook to Everie, the words of which she could only barely understand. Much about her was a mystery to Everie; as far as Everie knew, she was just some noble lady that happened to be bedsick all the time. She seemed caring, but Everie still didn’t know anything about her, which made it difficult to trust her.

And despite possessing one of those cores that people like Daphne and Cherry had, it felt... weaker; neither did Everie feel the same sense of intrigue or danger from Briar that she felt from the other two. There was barely any flow of energy - ether, Daphne had called it - in her body at all. It was like her core was dead.

Her core...

Everie’s eyes widened. Her core. Of course - that was the thing Everie had almost created, back before it had... well, exploded. And been sucked, along with the fragment the Crying-Demon had given her, into that thing in her abdomen. Like it was a black hole.

She blinked. Like a black hole, huh? That’s a surprisingly good analogy.

If her suspicions were correct, that meant ‘cores’ - if that was what they were even called - weren’t just simple storages for ether. It had a more metaphysical quality than that, meaning control over one’s ether depended on it. The... greater? A core was, whether that meant density or size, the greater the mental will one could exert on it. Like an auxiliary organ, designed to not only contain but also to direct.

That meant to solve her current problem of control - yet another mote of energy slipped out of Everie’s mental feelers as that particular thought passed through her cognizance - all she had to do was form a core around her current well. She already had the source: all she needed was something to control it. To direct it. Just thinking wasn’t enough.

She scowled. Of course, that was an understatement. Earlier, Everie’d used a black-hole analogy to describe the well; it turned out, that was accurate in more ways than just a description of general appearance. As she tried to absorb the energy hanging in the air, shaping it into a roughly ball-shaped core around her well, it was immediately absorbed, just like before.

Looks like I’ll need a lot more energy for this to work, Everie frowned. She could still feel the ether now, actually - it was roiling, mixed with the other, much purer motes of energy trapped in her well. Actually, it felt like the ether was dissolving, though Everie didn’t really understand how that worked.

She considered continually absorbing ambient ether, but felt that might be a little suspicious. Everie couldn’t be the only one able to sense ether; if Daphne or Briar or - even worse - anyone else saw that wherever she went, the surrounding area became devoid of energy, they might react poorly. And there were the other, less specified dangers, too; after all, Everie’s black-hole theory was still really just that - a hypothetical. The scientific method demanded she go through relevant testing and safety procedures before following through.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

Last time still echoed in the recesses of her memory, making Everie shiver. Even though Everie now suspected that incident had been part of the natural process of how her new powers worked in this world, it had been sheer luck that had been the case. What if she messed up now, and she made some permanent, unfixable mistake?

She steeled herself. That same impulse for experimentation, for power, still slithered within her; it was something Everie was no stranger to, but she’d never felt it to this extent. It almost felt like a foreign thought.

No. She knew this wasn’t the way - she had to be careful, not aggressive. In an unfamiliar situation, the last thing one should do is be reckless: she should know this better than anyone else.

Besides, she thought. There’s something off about all this. Why is this source of my energy-thing different from everyone else’s?

Everie frowned. Everything about this smelled fishy. And that painting earlier, too...

There was nothing magical at all about it. It was just an oil- painting: admittedly, an unnervingly realistic one, but just an artistic depiction nonetheless. Yet there had been something familiar about it...

Which doesn’t make sense, Everie grumbled. ‘S not like I’ve ever seen her before. I was practically just born!

She twisted, flopping on her back. Everie gazed up, into the sleeping face of Briar. She’d been far more clingy these past six weeks than in the first two. She didn’t really understand why. It was annoying.

...Still, at the same time, it was kind of nice.

Everie stretched her limbs. She reminded herself that for an infant, her rate of growth should be pretty staggering; she’d be walking in no time. Maybe two months? Everie could amuse herself by watching Daphne and Briar’s antics ‘till then.

And no more experimentation ‘till you can read, Everie reminded herself, sternly. Hells, if I end up killing myself, that would be an embarrassing second death.

...Part of it might be that I’m scared. Those... things I saw in the void scare me. I’ll admit it - I’ve never seen anything like it. But that’s not an excuse to rush a process that I have absolutely no knowledge of to try and attain some inkling of a power I don’t understand.

So she settled herself, curling up next to her... mother’s prone form, and promptly dropped into the pits of slumber. As she did so, though, one last thought flitted by her relaxing mind. Something Daphne had said earlier in the day, when she’d caught Everie next to that painting on the grand staircase.

Everie hadn’t understood everything the girl had said, but one word stuck out to her. She hadn’t thought much of it during the occasion, but something about the term resonated with that… thing in her soul.

Hero.

----------------------------------------

It was later that night that Everie awoke to the sound of groaning.

She blinked, still groggy. What’s going on?

It took a staggeringly long amount of time for her to reawaken, which was yet another disadvantage of infanthood. If Everie’d had this tendency in the field in her old world, she would have died six times over. Maybe seven. She lost count.

I’m goddamn lucky to have been born into fortune this life ‘round, Everie thought, darkly, and stretched out her limbs. Someone had removed the storybook Briar had been reading to Everie from Everie’s side and adjusted her covers in the meantime. She was swaddled in blankets, but those were easy enough to get out of; Daphne had certainly learned of that fact many times in the past six weeks.

So. Her eyes flickered, darting across the darkness. Where’s that sound coming from?

A sob. Everie spun - well, rolled - as best she could, and found herself face-to-face with a mountain of silk. For a second, Everie’s brain stuttered, until she remembered she still had yet to grow two feet tall and that her sense of scale was likely still skewed from her previous life.

Oh, she thought. It’s just Briar.

Everie frowned. Why was she crying, though?

Well. The woman was going through something, that was for sure.

She sighed. Everie didn’t know. And by all means, she shouldn’t have cared, either; like she’d thought to herself before, she didn’t actually know anything about this woman. She could be yet another demon-cultist, for all Everie knew - although that was unlikely. This world already felt sufficiently strange enough for that to be plausible.

But something about her - this black-haired, pale-skinned woman, so obviously having never been in a fight for her life or survival - felt so familiar. Everie couldn’t place what it was exactly, but the emotion was one she recognized.

Sympathy.

Sympathy? Everie thought, incredulously. What for? It’s not like you’ve ever seen a crying woman before. Everyone loses something in their lives. It’s just a fundamental truth.

Everie twitched. Briar trembled; she shook her head, as if she was trying to look away from something, trying to run, trying to-

She flinched, before stilling. Everie sighed. With some difficulty, she’d managed to climb over Briar’s back and wriggled into the crook of her chest, effectively making her the small spoon. Everie’s infant body must’ve been lighter than she thought, because Briar didn’t utter a hint of subconscious protest at her hasty clambering.

Either that, or she was having one hell of a nightmare.

Now, though, Briar was still. In fact, she was so still Everie had to check if she was even still alive - indicated by the faint rise and fall of her bosom.

What am I doing, Everie thought, suspiring. She’d gotten soft. She couldn’t be like this - couldn’t trust anyone.

The Crying-Demon had been a temporary ally at best. The Sisterhood might have looked up to her, but she had failed them once before and broken any measure of trust between them. Sure, she liked Daphne, but it was more of a temporary infatuation than anything lasting. Everie didn’t trust her.

Like Daphne, Everie didn’t know Briar. She could be anyone. Anything. Certainly not a mother, or even a sister. Not to Everie. Not when the only person Everie’d known to be real in this accursed universe had already left her.

That was how it should have been.

But as Everie curled up in the warm embrace of Briar- her mother, she had to query herself if sleep, even as an infant, had felt so relaxing ever before.