The Endless Solvent

A day or two later, Camaz told Aris about Nelev, Yepla’s wife. It worked simply because the girl already had ill feelings towards the entire manus department anyway, she needed little or no excuse to go spy on them.

“That woman seems to have some plan to force me to agree to Yepla’s Gate project,” Camaz said dryly. “I honestly can’t imagine what. I am more curious than anything else she has planned.”

Aris snorted, seemingly ignoring him while reading a book at the table in the lighthouse. She frequently perused the books littered around the lighthouse out of boredom. He knew she spent the majority of her childhood in the company of a book; there weren’t other children on the island. The book was a compilation of papers including a collection of his about Shades.

“Then there’s this Sekrelli student Yepla seems to be favoring. He’s trying to treat this boy like everyone else. Is that the one you saw the other day? We should find out what’s so special about him.”

Aris made another neutral noise, but since it wasn’t a snort of derision, Camaz was satisfied he had piqued her interest. They parted and went about their own ways. It would take a day or two for his plan to work, if it ever does - he honestly hoped that nothing came out of it. He wished that all of this was silly conjecture and he was doing something pointless. The plan was to inadvertently show Aris the isolated room in the Maroon building and lure her into performing whatever enchantment she was planning in that room, as Professor Yepla and Nelev frequent the area around that building. Furthermore, it was to provide an opportunity for her to have time alone.

Perhaps he could catch her in the act. Perhaps he will find a clue towards what she was doing.

He attended several meetings (one regarding the influx of new students, the next was further discussion over Gates) then met with a few new attendees to the Academy. Unlike the other departments, Inner Eye students had little or no generalized curriculum and required professors to dedicate personalized lessons to their specific abilities. Often their abilities didn’t lend themselves to ‘training’ and students settled into research instead. It’s no surprise most people don’t consider his department official and administrators had dissolved it into the Environs department years ago. It was all useless bureaucracy, of course.

After all his obligations were finished for the day, he went down to the pier for a bite and possibly reignited all the gossip the professors had about his ‘affair’ with a merchant’s wife. He couldn’t quite remember which one he was supposed to be getting on with, so he chatted amicably with all of them just in case. Then he made his way to the Maroon building north of the Library.

He kept watch for the Shade he named Drape. It had been diligently following Aris for weeks at this point, fascinated about something that surrounded her Solute. It only solidified his suspicions that Aris was doing something suspicious, or at least something interesting enough to attract the attention of a Shade. Aris knew that Camaz had no qualms about things that were morally gray. He had never tried to ‘father’ her or demand her to act a certain way. The only thing he ever restricted her from doing was leaving the island and that was for her own safety. So why hide it from him?

Perhaps it was wrong of him to raise her that way. He had never thought of being a father, never wanted a family. He thought that Aris wouldn’t appreciate attempts to replace her dead parents. He was to be her mentor and nothing else. Why did the thought of her doing something wrong fill him with dread?

Camaz ‘called’ for Drape and no Shade responded. He was relatively sure that she wasn’t around the Maroon building. That either meant she hadn’t snooped around Nelev or Yeplas at all that day and so wasn’t there, or she was long gone after doing her mission. It was nearing dinner time so most people were crowded in the Market Squares.

He gave a small huff and quietly rounded the side of the Maroon building and slipped through a side entrance. Despite its name, the Maroon building was not a maroon color - it was simply a name the administrators gave it. It was just a dusty stone color like most of the buildings on the Island and the Heart. Inside, it was akin to any other building with offices and classrooms of various sizes. The building itself was quite empty during this time, not a single person roamed the halls. The west wing looked abandoned, the empty shelves lining the hallways had a layer of dust on them.

Camaz peeked into Room 1: it was filled with boxes and crates. It was clearly being used as a storage room. Then he went to Room 2.

It was a wide empty room with a single window and a flat stone floor. The floor was clean. Very little dust collected at the corners, not even grime marred the floors. Camaz silently studied the walls of the room and saw several tell-tale signs of an enchanting circle being used. Smudges of charcoal at several spots were the most obvious proof. Then there were several scratches on the wall.

Occasionally enchanting circles had physical side effects to the things around it - famously the Gates leave scorch marks due to high heat. It seemed like whatever enchantment was used here left scratches. There was no evidence that Aris used this room but there was evidence someone was using this room for a spell in secret. There were ample spaces for runeology students to practice in their own buildings, why would someone use this abandoned room tucked away at the back of a manus building?

He sighed. If he wanted to see the circle drawn here he would have to find someone to divine what was previously here. It would be a specialized job for someone with the inner eye ability and the rune knowledge. And even then there would be no solid evidence that it was Aris who drew it, nor would he know the reason behind it.

Camaz left the Maroon building and rounded back towards the Market Square. He bought a loaf of bread from his favorite bakery, picking the one with the weakest crust. The baker knew him well enough to make a batch like that and reserved them just for Camaz.

“You must try my regular loaves, Professor,” the baker regularly urged him. “The crust gives it shape! Integrity! You can put so many more things between two slices if it has a firm crust.”

“Aris will just peel it all off,” Camaz said. “She feeds the crust to the ravens, you know.”

“Ah, well I must thank Miss Aris for providing my famous bread to our bird brethren,” the baker replied sarcastically. Not that he actually cared - at the end of the day, Camaz was still buying his bread.

Cradling the paper wrapped loaf, he returned to the lighthouse. Idle thoughts accompanied him along the way: how would he find out what Aris was up to? How to get Drape to behave like Sharp?

Upon thinking of Sharp, Camaz looked up at the top of the crooked lighthouse stairs and saw a familiar bobbing shape. Sharp was in his regular cone shape but the outline of his shadowy form flickered shakily as it waited for him. Camaz frowned - it was very rare for the Shade to be waiting for him, but that seemed to be precisely what it was doing.

“Good evening,” he said. It bobbed and floated inside, passing through the door as he approached. It seemed eager to tell him something. Camaz unloaded his items and then went straight to his office, where Sharp was there already, waiting in its cone form.

Without urging from Camaz, Sharp started emitting noise. The voice was faint and echoed strangely, as if he was eavesdropping at the end of a tunnel.

“Get over here.” It was Aris’s voice. The words grew muffled but the tone became more agitated. “…over here…”

Camaz drew his brows together in concentration. He could hear scraping, scuffling, as if Aris was trying to wrangle something. Once, when she was around ten, she tried to capture a raven to be her pet. The sound reminded him of that, but he couldn’t imagine Aris trying to do that again. She had long outgrew her desire to own an animal.

And why was Sharp following Aris? Did the shade understand his interest in what Aris was up to and decided to follow her? Why was the voice Sharp listened to so faint and distant?

Sharp wobbled violently, almost losing its cone form. Then it grew opaque and solid, the most solid Camaz had ever seen a Shade become. It unnerved him seeing Sharp like this, the sight of the solidified Shade raising the hairs on the back of his neck. Then his arm rippled in goosebumps when Sharp suddenly released a terrible hissing noise. It was like the sound at the bottom of a large waterfall, but more consistent and loud. Camaz covered his ears, wincing away from the Shade.

What in the Parts’ name was going on?

The sound continued for a few seconds then suddenly cut off. Then Sharp was silent. It returned to its usual shadowy self, its cone form drooping slightly as if it was tired. Two, three other shades bobbed into his sight. While there were other shades that occasionally allowed him to listen in to conversations they picked up, they never went up to him like this. One in bowl form bobbed impatiently but didn’t seem to be able to make any noise. Camaz carefully prodded its Solute through the Solvent.

Again, that terrible hissing, roaring noise of a waterfall.

The second, shaped like a loaf of bread did the same thing - when prompted through the Solvent, it released the terrible sound. The third, a floating puddle shape that constantly shifted also needed prodding from Camaz. He dreaded hearing the sound again but instead was greeted with Aris’s voice clearing ringing out through his office.

“Come over here and stay,” she said angrily. A clearer scraping sound could be heard - the sound of chalk or charcoal on a hard surface. Then a triumphant sigh and the rustle of clothing. “There. Took me fucking long enough.”

The shadowy blob seemed to shudder and Aris’s voice quickly faded as if she was suddenly far away. Then for the third time, Camaz had to suffer hearing the noise again. Aris was definitely up to something grievous enough that four separate Shade had to report to him. If he would assign any kind of emotion to the shades, he would say they were… upset.

He paced the length of his office for a few seconds before turning to the faded Sharp. “Will you take me to her?” he asked. There was no response. He tried again, this time clearly picturing Aris in his mind - the delicate pointed chin, serious eyes, long dark hair. Sharp shuddered and faded even more, turning almost invisible.

Aris did something reproachable and it frightened Sharp. He didn’t even know Shades could feel fear or have any kind of emotion, save for the ones people project on them. Camaz would have been quite pleased with this new information if it wasn’t for the implication. He had to find Aris and find out what she did. Perhaps it was time to do the one thing he didn’t want to do: confront and ask her outright.