"The game defined your place in this story, not me, and I might not even be interpreting it correctly," Danika told Kit seriously.

Kit laughed and replied cheerfully, "I like your interpretation, so it doesn't matter."

Danika thought that Kit had found her own quest far more meaningful than it looked to her, but she just asked, "What happened to the guild hall? The tree has grown a ton within the last few days! Or is it only since yesterday?"

Kit Tay looked up at ZipZing and blinked at the change in subject. Then she smiled and admitted wryly, "I've slacked off on doing guild quests since becoming Empress, and haven't visited it in the last couple of days. Let's go look at it?"

Danika asked, "Want to ride in my garden? I can teleport directly back to Shrubbery's tree."

"Sure," Kit agreed.

Ryullusion was sitting on a bench at the edge of Shrubbery's garden, and he grinned and gave ZipZing a nod in greeting when she appeared beside the dryad's tree. Danika waved her little clawed hand and popped into her garden to tell Kit, "We're here!"

Kit pointed at some of the flowers and asked, "You taught your firefly to water your garden for you?"

"No?" Danika replied questioningly. She looked at the plant and saw the little beetle standing on the aqua stone beneath it. A damp patch surrounded it. Hikaru flickered its light at the attention, and then used its random teleport skill, and the stone vanished as well.

Danika heard a soft plop, and spun, until she caught sight of the firefly again. The little beetle landed on the stone where it had fallen, and water was seeping slowly into the ground around it. She blinked at the firefly, and then looked around her garden. Everything looked healthy despite her recent neglect. The bees hummed to and fro merrily, and a butterfly fluttered around her little apple tree.

"You're amazing!" Danika told Hikaru. "But how are you activating it?"

The firefly's glow looked smug. It cast featherweight on the little aqua stone and rolled it toward the apple tree, like a dung beetle pushing its ball. When the stone touched the tree's root, Hikaru blinked its light several times.

The leaves of the little tree shivered in an intangible breeze and Danika stared as their faint clatter seemed to whisper, "Desino."

She zipped down and picked up the aqua stone, and verified that the flow of water had stopped. After a moment she reached out and patted her little tree gingerly. "Good tree," she told it. "I'll ask Shrubbery to come back and talk to you soon okay? It seems like you've grown up a lot!"

The tree leaves fluttered gently, like a faint clattering purr, and Hikaru flew a circle around it before returning to ZipZing. Danika glanced at Kit, and set the aqua stone back down where Hikaru had left it. "I'll return soon," she announced. "We're going to go look at the guildhall next."

Kit nodded, and reached for the center stone. "Exit," she said clearly, and vanished.

Danika glanced at her pet and her tree again, and then followed Kit out. She was just in time to see Kit run up and hug Ryullusion, while she shouted happily, "Ryu!"

The beautiful dark haired elven bard looked startled and a little wary at first, but at her next words his expression warmed.

"I can be a fairy godmother in other people's stories! I'm that strong now!" Kit exclaimed.

Danika gazed at the guild hall tree that stood in the open area beyond them, and wondered if it had increased in size again or if it was her imagination, while Kit told Ryullusion about the quest she had just completed.

When Kit finished, Ryullusion suggested with amusement, "A goddess, or a fairy queen I think, rather than a fairy godmother."

Kit blushed and protested, "I guess that since I'm the Jade Empress now, I might count as a goddess, but I don't think I can call myself a fairy queen when I'm not actually a fairy. I know I said fairy godmother, but they aren't always actually fairies? They're just, magical, and powerful, and they can fix everything!"

"Or give you an opportunity to fix it yourself?" he suggested. "But fairy godmothers traditionally focus on a single child and maintain a benevolent image. However, celestial goddesses are known as fairies in some mythological translations, and they often descend upon mortals to bestow gifts or curses at their whims, just as the fae folk are said to," he explained.

"You think I'll whimsically curse people?" she asked with shock, and finally released her hold on him.

Ryullusion reached out and caught Kit's hand, while Danika hovered uncertainly and wondered if she'd overestimated his ability to always say the right thing. "Kit, I think you have the power to, whether you use it or not. Always trying to be 'good' can become a great burden on a person, but if you forget that you can do harm, you very likely will."

Kit didn't pull away, she squeezed his hand and said quietly, "Oh, I see. You are right. I'm sorry, I was just so happy that I didn't think it through."

"It's okay to be happy!" Danika protested.

Ryullusion looked up, grinned at her and nodded, before telling Kit more cheerfully, "She's right, it's okay for you to be happy. Being able to recognize your own strength is a wonderful thing."

Kit's smile returned, and she said confidently, "Somehow I'm sure I'll be able to rely on both of you, to tell me if I've let my awesome power go to my head."

"You can rely on me too?" Shrubbery commented from where she'd just appeared beside her tree. "But tell me about your awesome powers first!"

Kit laughed and released Ryullusion's hand so that she could dash over and hug the tall dryad. "I didn't gain any powers you didn't know about, I just… finally realized that I'm more capable than I ever realized. I have the power to help others like I always wanted to be helped?"

Shrubbery blinked and then grinned. "Of course you do," she replied. "Haven't we saved the world together several times now? At least, within the game?"

"Yeah," Danika agreed laughingly, "and we started out by saving a god, although it took him almost as long to realize that as it did us."

"Did not," the King of Cats protested as he sauntered around the guild hall tree.

Kit laughed and went to hug him too. "Thanks," she whispered into his fur.

Danika pointed at the tree and asked Shrubbery, "Since you're here, how has it suddenly gotten so big!?"

Shrubbery grinned at her and said, "It's been growing at the same rate the entire time. About twenty percent bigger every day. Technically five percent each game day."

Danika gazed doubtfully at the tree and Kit laughed and asked, "Doesn't that mean it will be the size of a redwood by the end of the week?"

Shrubbery giggled and replied, "Maybe not quite that big, but it should be done with its boosted growth and ready to move into in a couple more weeks."

"And what happened to all the defensive vines?" Danika asked.

"We don't need them anymore, Logical Heart made a forgery of the philosopher's stone yesterday, and had me embed it in the heart of the tree. I don't quite understand how, but it's powering some kind of defensive cleaning and repair enchantment?" Shrubbery explained.

"Defensive cleaning and repair enchantment?" Kit and Danika asked in unison.

"Watch," Ryullusion suggested.

He pulled his violin out of his inventory, and then put it back and pulled out a wooden flute that Danika had never seen him use. Then he walked over to the tree and swung with all his might. The tree seemed to glow for a moment as the flute shattered against it.

The pieces of the flute fell to the ground, but a moment later the glow that had covered the tree crept out of the soil and covered the shattered pieces. They fused themselves back together, and Ryullusion bent and scooped up the restored flute. He played a trilling fragment of melody and then tucked it back into his inventory.

"He said it won't repair anything with a complex enchantment on it," Shrubbery said nervously. "And that the stone doesn't have unlimited power, but that it will grow with the tree."

"Woah," Danika breathed with amazement.

"Oh, that! The Jade Palace has the same kind of thing," Kit reported. "People tried to trash the throne room when they discovered that the court wasn't open, but even though you could see things being damaged, they were still there and unharmed a moment later. And nobody can open the doors beyond the throne, even if they blow them up!"

Danika stared at her, aghast. It wasn't that she didn't know that some people would do that kind of thing, but it really made humanity look like a collection of thugs.

"I hope the Emperor refuses their requests," Ryullusion said dryly.

"Got eaten by dragons," the King of Cats said smugly.

"Yeah," Kit agreed cheerfully.

Ryullusion looked at her cheerful grin and hid his own smile behind his hand, but Danika knew what he was thinking, because she was thinking it too. Kit Tay really was perfectly capable of cursing someone on a whim someday, as long as she thought it was deserved.

--

When Tayana logged out, she smiled as she disconnected herself from the full motion console and stepped down. It wasn't just within the game that she had finally realized her own power, and Ryullusion was right, she had the ability to either help or hurt others. She had probably always had it, but she had never felt like she had.

She had wanted to have the power to hurt someone, or to help someone, so many times in her life… without ever realizing that she actually could.

She laid her hand on the used console her friend had gifted her. Her friend would probably never be able to understand how her gift had helped change Kit's life forever. It would be difficult to explain how it had wound up making her stronger mentally, as well as physically, but Kit decided that she'd reach out to her and make the attempt anyway.