Free Compendium by Alia Luria Page B

engaged Mia with his hazel eyes that oscillated from gray to green, even if they did so behind delicate silver spectacles slung low on his nose, and infectious enthusiasm for his special inventions.
    Brother Cornelius instructed Mia to remove all the spore growth afflicting the ancient texts. The amber gourds did well in preserving the old volumes’ paper and ink, but the benefit it provided the tomes was equally advantageous to a low-light spore that conducted itself through the air ducts and settled on the books. Brother Cornelius taught her the laborious process required to kill the spores. She had to remove each book from its shelf, scan the binding and pages for signs of spores, and administer a flash of light from a special gourd. This particular gourd was long and thin and emitted twice the brightness of standard lighting gourds, but it produced a bright light only for a moment when shaken. As soon as the shaking stopped, the light did as well.
    “How does this work?” Mia asked him, amazed at the old man’s ingenuity.
    “’Tis a simple matter of the agitation that causes a chemical reaction,” he said simply. “Nodes of separate chemicals are clustered inside each gourd, and the shaking makes them bounce together and release the chemicals, which when mixed, cause the flash of light we see. I created it through a system of iterative breeding. I call them wands.”
    Awestruck, Mia nodded. “You’ll have to show me your garden,” she said, giving the wand a shake to produce the sparkling flash of light.
    “I don’t keep a garden, my child,” he said, and chuckled amiably. “I keep a laboratory. When you complete the delicate task of ridding our most treasured historical tomes of the spore infestation, I’ll take you to it and show you all my secrets.”
    His eyes sparkled, and Mia smiled for the first time since arriving at the Order. Savoring the happy thought, she proceeded with him toward the back of the dark room.
    “So how far back to do the books go?” she asked.
    “The oldest of the tomes in the Archives dates back thousands of cycles. There are precious few from that far back, though. Much was destroyed.”
    She looked at him quizzically. “Destroyed?”
    “My child, you really must sit in on the history lectures that we offer the acolytes.” He gave her a reproving look then sighed and continued. “Many hundreds of cycles ago, Lumin was thrown into chaos. Now all that’s left are the remnants of what was, and the Order was established more than five hundred cycles ago with the sacred duty to protect those remnants and learn from them what we can to restore our future.”
    Mia nodded and smiled. “I’ll be sure to sit in on some lectures then.”
    She had no intention of doing any such thing. Most acolyte study was individual. Each of them was allotted private study time that could be conducted in laboratories, reading rooms, the barracks, or the library. Alternatively each acolyte had the option to attend any number of subject lectures held by clerics for the benefit of the others. To date, Mia’s study time primarily had been composed of snooping around the Compound and listening carefully for the sounds of trees. As a benefit, her job in the Archives provided ample time to think through her present situation.
    She had questioned Cornelius extensively about his methods when he first had described the amber gourds to her, and her attention pleased him. He mistook Mia’s enthusiasm for deep interest in the archival process. Of course her fascination was derived entirely from the idea of modifying flora to suit her needs. She’d never before considered the possibility that she could modify the flora around her to accomplish such specific tasks. Most of her skill lay in repurposing existing roots for different ends, such as rerouting power from damaged roots to functional ones or encouraging them to grow in specific ways to establish hearths and the like. The idea of creating entirely