has made their way down the Obsidian Road, not far from the Liminal Express, with several containers of the gnosis-mud and their stonecarving supplies. There’s got to be an answer here somewhere. But it’ll be a lot easier if we’ve got some glasses that can see gnosis.
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approaches Luĉja, spectacles in tow. Now that they’re back on the Road, he’s found time to clean and press his Academy jacket, its familiar white and blue comforting him. Besides, he reasons, there’s an experiment to assist with! He has to actively try not to do a fancy little trot about it.
waves at Archie, “Hello, Friend-Archie! I have possibly made a discovery, and I would love your assistance testing it. Both Salme and I have woven flourishing, burning, and pellucid gnosis into the same object, and it has turned to irrica. I attempted to…deconstruct a piece of irrica, but with unexpected results. It turned into a flourishing cloud of pollen. I am hoping that with your scientific mind and equipment, we might try making another piece and deconstructing it, to see what we can learn. You mentioned that having large amounts of pellucid and burning gnosis could help combat the excess of flourishing in Almachadta. This could potentially explain where it’s all located.”
nods, beaming. “Happy to help! If irrica is created by weaving three types of gnosis together, it stands to reason they should all remain somehow once destroyed. Other than observing the experiment with my pocket lenses, is there anything I can do to help?”
: “Yes! I think first, we should each attempt to create a piece of irrica. If we do not have sufficient gnosis here, I have prepared jars of the …gnosis mud? that lines the ground, so that we can take a quick travel out and fetch some. Here, take this.” Luĉja hands Archie a perfectly normal piece of rock.
takes it, looking at it curiously. “In your experience, does it matter which order we infuse the gnoses in?”
: “I do not believe that it will. Salme started with burning, and I ended with burning. But it would be interesting to see if the two-gnosis combinations are something other than crystal. Why don’t you start with pellucid, and add burning after?”
: “I will attempt to start with burning and add flourishing.”
nods, adjusting his glasses to watch himself infuse the rock with Pellucid gnosis before focusing his energy and intentions towards the rock, suffusing it with gnosis, watching it start to transform.
ꙮ Pellucid gnosis flows into the rock - what sort of rock is it? Is it one with great internal structure? If it is, it absorbs it most readily; if not, you can feel the resistance, feel the way the tiny little micro-crystals that make up the rock try to align and regularize as the gnosis floods in. Pushing a trillion trillion extremely tiny rocks uphill, and they’re all mutually arguing about it. But it’s still possible.
pushes the gnosis in gently but insistently, trying to ease the resistance, to create space. Once satisfied, he takes all of his curiosity and excitement about getting to help with an experiment again and channels it as Burning gnosis, directing it towards and into the stone.
ꙮ As Archie infuses the burning gnosis - his curiosity as burning a thing as it is pellucid, truthfully, and it always has been -
ꙮ Luĉja, you… hear? Feel? Smell? You perceive a ringing sound, resonating from Archie’s little rock, a moment before it rather suddenly and dramatically undergoes chrysopoesis– or, no. Not gold. It’s not a lump of gold in Archie’s paw, now, it’s lighter than gold, in several senses of the term, and sings with power.
: “Fascinating. The intermediary steps are different.”
ꙮ Luĉja - you’d recognise aurichalcum anywhere.
turns it over in his hand a few times, inspecting it with his lenses. “Aurichalcum?,” he asks Luĉja.
: “Indeed. Any guesses what material the last combination will yield?” Luĉja takes another stone and infuses it with as much burning gnosis as they can find.
ꙮ For just a stone, like this? You’ve more than enough of your own fire, and it floods into the stone, making it hot, and bright, and vibrating with potential. Which then?
: “I’m not familiar with it. Where do you know it from? What is it usually used for? I only knew the name thanks to NIP,” he acknowledges, looking upwards with playful feigned embarrassment. “I couldn’t wager a guess, but I’m eager to find out!”
Flourishing next. At the edges of Luĉja’s memory are a feeling they can’t quite remember, or place, as they weave in spirals of flourishing gnosis.
: “Endjinn are made of aurichalcum.” They spin their plating around to show their aurichalcum <core/heart>
: “It is also what happened when I accidentally patched the Academy’s walls. Which makes sense, given the circumstances, almost.”
nods. “I’ve always thought you could have a place at the Academy if you wanted one. Knowing that you’re quite literally Pellucid to the core seems fitting,” he says, smiling. It’s as earnest as it is a joke.
: “You are very kind, Friend-Archie. I don’t feel very pellucid. But it must be so.”
softens his smile. “You’re still plenty Burning, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think any of us are just one thing. But you have a curiosity about the world, a desire to understand and know, that burns at the heart of everything the Academy does at its best. This experiment was your idea, after all! I’m just happy to be your lab assistant today.”
ꙮ Once, there was a place where one could stand and listen to both the clang of distant hammers and the song of birds and wind rustling through trees. You do not know where this was, but an echo of it unfurls like a new bud off a branch, and the stone in your hand cools. ⁂
ꙮ And as it cools, you notice that it’s not a single stone, any more - you’ve a small handful of glassy green gravel and sand, tiny glittering fragments, colour shifting subtly in the light between green and red, depending on the angle the light hits from. As you hold it, the sand and pieces of the gravel begin to aggregate together, clump up, become one.
: “It appears to lack structure.”
looks more closely. “Interesting. If the result was going to be so reminiscent of sand, I would have expected Pellucid gnosis to play a role. Is there something you’d propose we call it? Maybe one of the others will be familiar.”
: “I would first check with the others. Perhaps this is a known compound elsewhere. Shall we make additional samples first, or try adding the third to each of these?”
: “Let’s proceed with the original experiment, for now. It’ll be easy enough to produce additional samples later.”
ꙮ What’s next, then?
: “Very well then. If my theory is correct, we will both end up with a piece of irrica.” Luĉja weaves in pellucid gnosis, attempting to provide the structure for the one rock that is also many.
turns his attention toward infusing the aurichalcum with Flourishing gnosis to complete the irridica sample, focusing on the memory of his all-too-fleeting moment of connection to Almachadta.
ꙮ The fluctuating concrescence in Luĉja’s hand, and the shining aurichalcum in Archie’s– they drink up the gnosis provided like they’re thirsty for it, they coalesce, they grow and become - and they’re both left with a validated hypothesis and a tiny lump of shimmering irrica.
: “Even a second time, fascinating.”
: “Almachadta appears to at least, at one point, have had a very large amount of flourishing and pellucid gnosis, given the quantities of irrica found there. Especially since it is unknown on our worlds.”
nods. “This phenomenon seems to be unique to Almachadta, as well - it’s possible there could be undiscovered reserves of Burning and Flourishing on Samudra, other than a certain recently-created island and its denizens, but I haven’t seen record of them.”
: “Now then, for phase two. I would like you to attempt to de-construct the irrica, and view what sort of gnosis it releases. There is likely a way to do this with more finesse than I attempted. I was unable to un-weave it, and simply crushed it.”
ꙮ Sometimes, smashing things is the answer. Sometimes, smashing things isn’t the answer.
nods. “Understood. I’ll see what we can do.” He begins by examining the irrica through his lenses - is the entire stone one homogenous block of all three forms of gnosis simultaneously, or are the threads visible in the weave? A crystallization here, a striation there?
ꙮ It’s hard to say - once the stone became irrica, it was simply a stone, a solid thing, rather than a moving and fluctuating mass of infusing gnosis – as far as you can tell, though, it softly resonates with all three.
visualizes each form of gnosis as a wispy cloud around the stone. Extending a hand, he reaches for it, imagining the Pellucid gnosis coalescing in his hand like the most delicate lace, settling into some stable solid form.
ꙮ You have the distinct sense that, if you do that, it would unmake the irrica; is this your aim?
: “If it must be so for it to done, then yes. Would it unmake it entirely, or would it transform into jade-sand? Our aim is to find a way to extract forms of gnosis from irrica other than Flourishing. The loss of the stone would be an acceptable cost.”
ꙮ Well, there’s only one way to find out, isn’t there? As you exercise the Virtue of Curiosity, gently pulling out an underlying support of the irrica, the stone fulminantly evaporates - there’s something that’s like both a burst of flame, and a breath of fresh forest air, except neither of these - it does not burn you, although it is pleasantly warm - as the burning and flourishing gnosis you’d fed into the stone is suddenly released.
: “Pull out the Pellucid, get a burst of Flourishing and Burning. I wonder if pulling out the Flourishing would similarly create a burst of Pellucid and Burning. It occurs to me that the stone being, well, stone, is advantageous because of how easy it would be to transport if we needed it somewhere specific.”
: “So…it worked?”
: “Here, if you’d like to try again.” Luĉja hands over their irrica.
: “Sort of? Here, let’s try.” Archie focuses again, repeating the visualization as he gently coaxes the Flourishing from the stone.
ꙮ A feeling like vines, clambering playfully up your fingertips– and then, again, the stone fulminantly evaporates into a burst of warming fire, and a cold feeling, like glass shattering into a million perfectly-symmetrical snowflake-fragments.
while Archie works, Luĉja makes a few more pieces of irrica from stones that were previously destined for carving.
leaps up and grabs Luĉja’s arm. “We did it! I think we just did it! We were able to use irrica to produce a burst of Burning and Pellucid gnosis!”
ꙮ You notice, by the way, that what seems to matter is the second gnosis added, as you work. Both Pellucid and Burning, followed by Flourishing, become the weird green sand-gravel; Pellucid or Flourishing followed by Burning becomes aurichalcum, Burning or Flourishing followed by Pellucid becomes the deep, true azure crystal your sword was made of.
: “You’re a genius!”
nods. “Thank you, Scholar-NIP!”
: “With enough irrica, it could be just what we need to help cure Almachadta.” Luĉja hands over some more pieces. “I spoke with Caion, briefly, and he mentioned wanting to experiment with irrica as well. He mentioned you were going for a visit, and I figured that lined up nicely with providing him with some samples.”
smiles. “As if I could ignore an opportunity to go visit him. I’m curious to hear what he has in mind. Time will tell!” He accepts the samples and starts stashing them in various and increasingly improbable pockets.
: “Oh, and, these might prove helpful.” Luĉja takes the gnosis mud, and infuses one jar each with flourishing and burning gnosis, before resealing them.
: “Hopefully this way they won’t just turn pellucid.”
: “Thank you very much for your assistance, Friend-Archie. I could not have separated the gnosis without your help.”
ꙮ The second you infuse the jars with even a little bit of gnosis, the mud in the jar ignites into stormy, visible clouds of volatile gnosis matching the type you infused. Caion will know how to safely handle it!
accepts these deliveries, too, wrapping the jars protectively in a purple scarf. “Thank you for your idea and inspiration, Scholar-Luĉja. Knowing the right question to ask and discovering a way to find the solution is the hard work. I’m just happy I was able to help.” He yawns and stretches, suddenly aware of his newly-encumbered coat. “Also, hey, we won the Soups together. So, what do you say we pop back in the kitchen and make something for the others?”
: “That sounds like a fitting capstone for our day of experiments. To the kitchen!”
ꙮ I suspect that this time, flush with a successful theory, Archie does do a fancy little trot as he accompanies Luĉja to wherever the tablet is while they’re on the Obsidian Road.