Chương 26: Chapter 24 ~ A Vessel of Pure Potential

05/11/1111 EotTS 16: 00 The library was louder than it usually was: the entire first-year class had just been released from the first philosophy lecture, and all were either trying to find a table in the library, or passing through to go to the cafeteria. Even with all of the students keeping their voices down, the whispers of two-hundred and fifty people built to a din, and echoed off the walls of the library, reaching all the way up to the seventh floor, where Gysel and the others were seated.

"How do you enjoy that?" Wyohla started.

"You two just bickered with Professor Bedhyl like a bunch of crones for six hours." Gysel nodded in agreement with Wyohla: the class had lasted eight hours (technically only seven as they were given a lunch break, that everyone besides Visi, Lyvahn, and Professor Bedhyl took), luckily, the Professor had made actual class attendance optional, stating: 'All class time will be devoted to discussion, each Maiden you will have an essay which will be worth all of that Maiden's Points.

This essay will be all of your work, and the topic will always be on the board, and the door will always be unlocked. Stop by at your leisure.' This was excellent: fewer people, more reading; less talking, more writing. Visi shrugged.

"It's fun. I'm sure they packed all of the first years into one hall to encourage discussions like that."

"Wasn't much of a discussion," said Wyohla.

"There were about two hundred people in there, and only three of you talked."

"No one else got involved." Just because no one else got involved did not mean that the discussion was not of interest: it was (well, not all seven hours of it), but it was just far too daunting of an environment for a novice to get involved in. When one starts learning Operative Alchemy, all one would need was salt and water, or fire and wood, but another lifetime of study would be required for a new learner to feel remotely comfortable in such a setting.

The topic was foreign, too, while the novice had dabbled in some philosophy, it was limited to ancient dialogues on morals and the bland political theory that Father made his daughter read, but none of this was enough to understand the metaphysical jargon Visi, Lyvahn, and Professor Bedhyl were throwing hither and thither, jargon had never been heard before, 'the egregoric manifestation of the hypostasis flows' being three in one sentence.

"That's because you never shut up." Lyma's voice came muffled through the gaps in her arms as she buried her head in them.

"Hypocrite," Visi snorted.

"It's not my fault I can't spend the night on campus."

"It's not my fault I can't spend the night on campus," Lyma repeated in a high nasally tone. Visi did not respond to Lyma, and continued.

"We could have started off a little lighter."

"Uh-huh." Wyohla rolled her eyes.

"For someone who is such a pedant about words, you should be using 'should' instead of 'could,'" said Ardhy, as he scraped dried ink and other material from the nooks of the embossed sigils of his stamps with a fine needle.

"No, I used the right word," Visi said.

"You can drown if you don't understand it."

'Drown' certainly did not seem like the right choice of word; philosophy was far different from swimming and the ocean—both required venturing from the house.

"Well then, help us understand it," Wyohla said, as she leaned back in her chair and tugged on the fingers of her gloves.

"What part?"

"I don't know, how about water. It's fitting for a drowning."

"Fine by me."

"You maniac," Lyma groaned.

"You've doomed us all." This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Visi took a deep breath, and started.

"Water, as we know, is one of the four primary elements and is tied directly to the Moons. So, when we discuss water, it is best to focus primarily on the Moons, but I shall start simply. In the beginning, there were two elements: Water, the feminine and Lunar element, and Fire, the masculine and Solar element."

"While both dissolution and calcination are themselves methods to reduce substances to their basic principles, dissolution leaves most properties intact, whereas calcination reduces a significant portion of the starting substance to ash."

Gysel's face twisted at this; it was a reductive and a rather ill-informed statement on the use of calcination; it was not any sort of wanton and inferior destruction, instead it was a purification through fire, and the remnants, the calx, is the purified essence of the initial substance, the ash was the goal.

Though, it was clearly pointless to bicker with Visi about this, as the moment the conversation strayed away from Operative Alchemy, the experienced Alchemist would be unmoored, lost in an ocean of polemic pedantry.

"The feminine water is capable of beauty in any form—frozen it is snowflakes, which are each unique just like every child; as a gas it is the air that we breathe, and the fog that rolls across the hills bringing the Lunar Dew with it; in its most constant liquid form it was used by the Moons to create the the ground we live on, but dredging the soil up from the sea to form the shorelines, and eroding the ground with melting ice to form the rivers we use for trade and other things."

"Whereas the masculine fire must be fully in control of itself in order to create, or else all it can do is destroy, just like the man; it reduces forests to ash in days, but only through water can those forests grow back. It can—""Yes," Thyres interrupted, "but fire is also used in the smelting of metals and forging of a blade. Fire plays a key part in creation, just as water does."

"But the cold water quenches the blade, strengthening it. All creations require both water and fire; in this case, the blade, like the fetus, was created with both the feminine water and the masculine fire, but the feminine water is what grows the child and hardens the blade."

"But fire is used to reheat the blade before quenching it again; the man is required to help raise the child for the hardships of the future."

"Any man can become a father figure to a child, just as any fire can reheat the blade before you quench it. But all water is the same water; there is only one water to the blade, just as there is only one birth mother to the child.

A fatherless-daughter may become a whore in hopes of filling the masculine void left from her childhood, but she can still create, whether the child is misbegotten or not is irrelevant; the motherless-son may become a lecher, rapist, or murderer in hopes of filling the feminine void left by the missing mother, but the spawn of the lecher and rapist is doomed to repeat the cycle, and the murderer removes creation itself." Thyres opened his mouth, then shut it, only rocking his head back and forth.

Wyohla ran a hand down the bridge of her nose, squeezed her nostrils shut briefly, sniffed, then let out a puff, and gave a quick eyebrow raise.

"Where was I?" Visi said, giving his beard a tug.

"Ah, oh yes. From the ability of water to dowse the fire and further dissolute the calcinated product, and how water is a necessity of life, creation, and its sustenance, whereas fire is only necessary in sustenance, we gather the basic understanding of the relationship between the sexes, and the relationship between a man and the Great Work and Royal Arts.

A man can spend his whole life grappling with the fire within him in an attempt to control it, to allow for him to properly create; he must train and sculpt his body, hone his soul, and make it rational in emotion and knowledgeable on all subjects. This is why you see far more men at the Academy and in alchemy, or in the Arts of Tone and Poetry—the man desires what he cannot ever do, create life, but as he knows full-well it is impossible for him to achieve it, so he finds surrogate means.

"Whereas all women are born with the ability to create life itself, a vessel of pure potential, a vessel which can itself be molded into the Great Work. Now, it is best for both to establish a hierarchy between the Lower Quaternary and the Higher Triad for the best results in any venture, but this is a basic requirement if a man wishes to create something truly great, whereas it is a suggestion for the average woman." Visi paused to take a breath and run a hand down his face.

This was the best opportunity to start taking notes without causing a disturbance (there was nothing worse than a sudden sound while one was trying to explain something), so reaching into her bag, she removed a notebook and a pencil.

"Now with the understanding of the relationship between the element of Water, the feminine, we can look more in depth at its relationship with the Moons—"" Enough! Please." Lyma groaned, raising her head briefly from the cream walls of her sweater, before sending it back down. Wyohla gave Lyma a light push on the shoulder.

"Aren't you glad he can do other things than just talk?"

"Given the chance, I would sew your mouth shut," Lyma said. The pedant had a blessing—especially in the cases where the 'your' in a sentence did not have a clear subject—that being the ability to ask clarifying questions to their own standard. Gysel was no such pedant. There was a delicate tap on Gysel's shoulder, and she nearly jumped out of the chair. The group laughed. Gysel turned to see the Headmaster's secretary.

"The Headmaster wishes to speak with you," she said with a wide smile, baring her tea-stained teeth.