The Endless Solvent

Misconceptions litter every department in the Academy. Camaz would go as far to argue that the departments themselves lend themselves to these misconceptions. Of course, he would never do anything about it - he was a spymaster, for Part’s sake. Misconceptions were his bread and butter.

For example, many believe those with Inner Eye abilities have incredible powers including divination, mind reading, maybe even the ability to control time itself. It was stupid to think this since one in every ten Gaians have some degree of Inner Eye abilities - do people think all of them tell the future? Preposterous. If it was true, society would collapse. It wasn’t to say there weren’t people out there who could occasionally glimpse into the future, or others who could sense thoughts. Never had Camaz met anyone who could do it on a whim. Everything has limits, everything has a price.

But not everyone needs to know the truth about everything all the time. Misconceptions are needed for the Great Solvent to flow. These misconceptions translated to effortless respect from others to Camaz, even though he certainly didn’t deserve it. If he had to be completely honest, it was how he got the job at the Academy in the first place.

Another useful misconception: Aris was his lovechild with an unknown woman. Alright, perhaps this one was no longer that useful to him, but it does provide him with hours of entertainment when he listens to reports from his Shades. Listening to Gardlo and Yepla gossip like teenagers never failed to make him smile. The current theory those two has is that Aris’s mother is the wife of one of the Academy’s boatmen who occasionally visits the island to sell wares: this is based strictly on the similar hair color between the two, as if half the island and the Heart didn’t contain Gaians with similar hair color.

He really shouldn’t be wasting his best Shades to follow Yepla around for the sole purpose of tracking the Manus professor’s ridiculous theories but it was simply too interesting - it was probably this very interest that seemed to drive the Shades to follow Yepla more closely. The more he looks forward to Yepla’s next far-fetched theories, the more conversations the Shades record of him. Camaz can think of two possibilities for this to happen: first was that the Shades also have vested interest in Yepla’s stupidity; second was that the Shade can sense his personal interest, so is now taking the initiative on his behalf.

A primarily cone-shaped Shade he called Sharp (yes he names the Shades) liked to follow the manus professor, often broadcasting back to him full conversations in its cone form. The sound streamed out of the wide end of its body, the wide circular end occasionally wobbling as if it was trying to form the words like a mouth. But first, Camaz had to coax the words out and luckily for him, coaxing was his strength.

He’s done it so often now it came easily to him. He sat in his office with Sharp floating in the air, its shadowy body as a cone. He reached out through the Solvent and found a small shard of Solute, a dense crystal of existence that he understood to be Sharp. Camaz pictured a disembodied hand squeezing it, wringing out what he wanted from it.

He could do it to people too. It also made people talk, although what he wrings out of a person is often a tangled mess of memories, emotions and abstract thought. When he did it to Shades, they gave the precise words spoken, as if they had the words written down and and they were reading it back to him in the voices of the original speakers.

“… in the wrong for simply musing how it would be better access?” Yepla’s voice rang out in the office. “Some of the Administrators would spin it to make it look like I want one to open on the island. Of course I don’t want one to open on the island! Why is it so controversial that I think having easy access to one would be beneficial to all of us?”

“It’s a touchy subject,” a female voice said. Camaz vaguely recognized it to be Yepla’s wife, Nelev.

“Yes it is. But what is this rabid response over a hypothetical? Monsters, bad. Death, bad. I get it.” Yepla’s voice raised in annoyance. “Why can’t we focus on fixing the solution instead of bickering on the right or wrong thing to say? Not to mention Part-fucking Camaz backing out. Why become a professor if you’re not going to be an academic?”

Camaz snorted. He would question why Yepla chose to be a professor as well - knowing how to punch things in the face with super strength and speed wasn’t exactly in the realm of academics either. Yet here they are on the island.

“I will handle Camaz,” Nelev said soothingly. Camaz raised his eyebrows upon hearing that. “Right now you must focus on your new students, like our new Sekrelli intake.”

“You’re right, Nel,” Yepla sighed. “Poor boy was dressed up like we were going to immediately send him to war. The other students think I am already playing favorites. As if the rest of them didn’t buy their way into this place. I’ve a meeting with my assistants …”

The voices faded off meaning either Yepla moved away from where the Shade could hear them or the Shade itself left the room. Camaz narrowed his eyes at the Shade bobbing sheepishly in front of him. “Did you stop listening because you were bored?”

As always, the Shade said nothing. They don’t communicate the same way as people do. He had spent a good part of a year trying to find a way to communicate with Shades with no success; it culminated in him just shouting abuse at a shade until it showed any reaction. Another misconception: not every study held at the Academy is done with grace.

The one theory he did end up landing on (and subsequently putting into a paper so that no one would think he wasted his time) was that Shades were motivated by emotion, as if they were attracted to it. It wasn’t that groundbreaking of a discovery: Shades were incorporeal beings that can’t be touched. The running theory was that they both existed in the Great Solvent and in the material world. If that was true, their attraction to emotion wouldn’t be that hard to believe as emotion often affected the Solvent around a Solute.

It’s how someone’s extreme anger can be felt across a room, or how sadness and elation could be contagious. Or how extreme distress can trigger a powerful, uncontrolled attack using the Solvent.

Sharp faded slightly, its job done. It won’t be until tomorrow when it seeks out Yepla again. Camaz had worked out a few ‘scheduled’ actions for Sharp, but occasionally the schedule would be changed for no discernible reason. For now, mid morning was the time to find its object of interest. When Sharp was barely visible, Camaz then sought out a different Shade, one shaped like a handkerchief draped over a small fist. He had named that one Drape.

Drape was the one who followed Aris around. Camaz would like to claim himself to be a stellar guardian who allows his ward privacy, but given the opportunity, he found he would always choose to spy on her. It was the side effect of his job - Aris would understand. However the plan to listen in on all her conversations soon fell short when he found he couldn’t tempt words out of Drape the way he could with Sharp. Perhaps they had different personalities and Drape was less inclined to listen in on Aris?

But even if he couldn’t listen in on Aris’s private conversations, the fact that Drape followed her around was useful. His ward had the misconception that all the Shades tattled to him, so perhaps Drape’s presence would be enough of a reminder for her not to do anything too stupid. Furthermore, Aris had the inconvenient habit of being able to shroud her presence and fading out of notice on a whim, not unlike a Shade.

Drape was nowhere to be seen, even if he tried to summon it, calling out to it through the Solvent. Camaz sighed and made his way out of the tower. It was cold and wet that evening, scatterings of rain coming down sporadically. The ocean wind only made everything colder and more miserable - he hated this weather the most. He should be inside, in his room with the fireplace on, drinking fine wine and reading a book or something. Aris was the only one who could make him give up a night of comfort.

In many ways, the teenage ex-princess was every bit like a Shade: they both wandered the island largely unseen and behaved in a way that was notably odd. His inability to communicate with either was the most obvious similarity. Perhaps he would crack the code on Shade-speak sooner than he would crack Aris-speak.

Why was she so difficult to reason with? Why the fixation with the women’s college? Did she really believe she would return to Caelis with a crown on her head? It was foolish even for a seventeen year old to think. Aris was too busy feeling contempt for the island to see it was the best place for her to start anew. Camaz gave a huff and tilted his head back to let the miserable rain mist his face. Perhaps that was a misconception on his part; just because the island gave him a new start many years ago, doesn’t mean it applies to everyone else.

He arrived at the Academy’s library. While the main section of it retains the desired facade of a grand and prestigious building with smooth stone blocks and tall columns around the front and sides, subsequent additions detracted from it. It wasn’t unlike his own lodgings at the lighthouse with several structures tacked on to create more space, more rooms. Camaz liked it; it was certainly more interesting to look at than plain stone walls. The more interesting it was, the more people will be drawn to it, like a Shade to an emotion.

As always, he used one of the side doors to enter the library. He was almost immediately greeted with shelves upon shelves of books, shelves of every imaginable size and color lining the walls and barely providing space for one to walk. Glow orbs, not lanterns, were used in the library and they scattered in various spots between books and any available flat surface. Occasionally, the aisle will be taken up by a wooden stump inscribed with runes and made to glow more brightly for people to read more easily. As Camaz made his way deeper into the library, the pattern of books and shelves grew more frazzled, erratic but then eased into an fairly open area with several long tables with several librarians working their shift.

A few of them with books under their arms scurried off to replace them back into the shelves. They all wore a specific white painted buckle on their tunic to signify they were librarians. A few were at the tables pouring over open tomes or scribbling into a notebook. One of them was muttering to himself behind his curtain of bangs as he wrote.

“…two volumes… sector 9… removed…” Camaz caught a few words as he wandered closer. He peeked over the young librarian’s shoulder and saw that he was hurriedly scrawling runes onto a page that disappeared after a few seconds.

The sound of a bell made him turn his head. The Head Librarian, a tall middle-aged woman with long, twisting white-blond hair, sat at the front of the long tables. She sat upright in her chair, her back not leaned against it, but her expression was vacant and her eyes unfocused. She had her gaze fixed on Camaz but it seemed more like she was looking through him. Without turning head, she rang the small bell in her hand. A long line of librarians waited next to her, pencil and paper at hand.

“Two, Sector 41, shelf 85,” she intoned. A librarian next to her scribbled what she said on a scrap piece of paper then took two books from the stack and went off to the location indicated by the Head Librarian.

A very common misconception was that the library was a complete Part-fucking mess and it was impossible to find anything in it. It may be true if the Head Librarian wasn’t there; in truth, she knew where everything was and it was all in the right place (most of the time). Of course it would take someone with such a specific Inner Eye ability to run this shit show.

“You know, that look is exactly why people are so reluctant to use the library,” Camaz commented dryly.

The Head Library rang the bell again. “Four, Sector 13, shelf 77,” she said. “What do you mean ‘that look’?”

The next librarian in line groaned but took four huge tomes next on the stack and trudged off, muttering something about how the shelf was probably impossibly high as well.

“The one you’re giving me right now,” Camaz said. “The non-look. When was the last time you stepped out of your head?”

She blinked and seemed to be able to focus for a few seconds before they grew distant again. “Days. Months. I don’t know. I don’t track that sort of thing,” she said. She rang the bell again. The next library leaned forward, pencil ready. “One, Sector 19, shelf 2.”

“We’ve had this conversation hundreds of times - “

“27. We’ve had this conversation 27 times, 28 including this one.”

“Thank you,” Camaz said, annoyed. “Twenty seven times. So I don’t think I need to repeat myself. Try to join us in the real world.”

“There is work to be done,” the Head Librarian said. Another ring of the bell. “Two, Sector 39, shelf 2.”

Camaz sighed. “Is she here?” He decided to let it go for today. The weather was shit and his mood wasn’t the greatest anyway. One problem at a time.

“Yes. East wing, back corridor.” The Head Librarian cocked her head. “I have no record of what books she peruses.”

“Well what books are in the east wing’s back corridor?”

“Farming and agricultural application in runeology,” she blinked. “History of Gaian cuisine. Culinary books, largely recipes of rural taverns east of the Heart. Perhaps your student is interested in being a chef.”

“My dear, Aris would sooner die than cook a meal,” Camaz said. “But thank you. As usual, I was never here.”

“I understand, spymaster.” The Head Librarian almost sounded sarcastic. Maybe she wasn’t a lost cause after all. She rang her bell again. “Two, Sector 43, shelf 90.”