Weaving

Angel gave up. He gave up on attempting to beg, to try and learn from others' lessons, and mostly he gave up on expecting anything from anyone else.

For he now had two desires: one to get out, and the other to break the screen.

The desires were so incredibly alike in the sense that to get out, you had to break the screen, for presumably there was no other way. It was not so, in fact there were many other ways to get out, unlikely they may seem.

It hadn't even accord to Angel that people would be harmed from his decisions, that they could have a fate worse than death because of it. It was like they didn't exist anymore, that there was a transparent barrier through which both sides would wonder at each other as if the other were an exquisite animal, yet never talk.

Because of this, Angel now had no plans to include anyone in his desires, in fact the possibility of someone else working alongside him became a foreign idea, like imagining what the world outside the deep dark would be like.

And so, whereas someone else may had thought of asking someone—such as a scholar or a priest—Angel had no such thoughts. And whereas someone else would want to rush towards the goal, Angel had no problem with delaying the goal as long as it got complete in the end.

And so Angel went to a public library and read history books in the AC-I. He found out that the screen that stretched far above their heads wasn't actually woven by spellweavers but rather made by engineers, and that while the whole screen seemed to shine with light, in fact light covered only half of the screen, with a metre on all four sides of a light.

It was currently NA-|ↄCCLXV meaning that the lights had lasted for 1,763 years. Angel wondered at this, at how something could last for so long without the help of weaving, or imprints. That was an incredibly long time, even for weavings.

It was fascinating, really, how long the screen, or rather, the lights had really lasted, that for the first time Angel doubted wether the city would really fall into complete darkness one day.

However, that thought was quickly subdued as he decided that if it wouldn't diminish on its own he would turn off the lights himself. That thought seemed almost impossible and Angel wondered if the large majority of the Stone-Dwellers were right in worshiping it as their deity.

Apart from books on Stone-Dwelling history, Angel also read guides for spellweavers as well as deep-insight into the minds of people like Kandle Joseph, Jess Queen and Light Novae Era.

Kandle Joseph was from the sixteenth generation of Stone Dwellers, one of the few generations they still counted, and considered the father of modern weaving, having perfected and changed the art of weaving to a much better, well managed manner. The change was so vivid that no-one after the KJ-Era could imagine what weaving even used to be like.

What Joseph found changed the rest of the generations to come. It was unlocking the ability of the eye—the twenty-fourth sense, as well as creating Tabula Percipere, which graphed and lined up all of the twenty-eight senses.

This made studying and building the foundation a lot easier, as now anyone could see which threads were the closest in similarity or compatibility with each other, such as the Thread of Sound and the Thread of Movement, two fairly obviously compatible threads. However, some were harder to conceive, such as the Thread of Light and the Thread of Fire, which would enhance the other's effects, the light enveloping the flame and making it warmer; the fire making the light brighter. Another one that had been a topic of discussion for scholars was now laid out for all to see—the Threads of Speed, Wind and Perception were in fact, sister or brother threads. The Thread of Speed was a manipulation of using Wind to enhance one's speed, and Perception changing the surroundings and enhancing the Wind or Air.

It had been thought so before, but many opposing scholars had argued that it was instead the Thread of Speed and the Thread of Movement that were of the same family, as Movement would enhance one's ability to twist and turn themselves, making it possible for them to turn up the amplitude of force the Speed could manipulate.

However, it was discovered by Joseph that that was not actually the case. Movement changed one's ability to adapt one's body to situations, and did greatly reinforce the wearer against the wind, but did not actually change the necessary parts of the body needed to truly adapt to Wind. 

In fact, it was the Thread of Adaption that truly fitted in with the Thread of Speed. If the Threads of Speed, Wind and Perception were sister threads, then the Threads of Speed and Adaption were engaged threads, the name given to threads that had great compatibility with each other, to a degree that was almost on the brink of impossibility.

The most important discovery Kandle Joseph made was the locked ability of the eye. If Tabula Percipere graphed and lined up all of the known threads, then the ability of the eye allowed the Stone-Dwellers to see those similarities: the most obvious ones that were of the same or similar colours, but if one looked deeply it could be seen in the weaving of the threads that in fact the same-coloured threads were not in fact of the same family at all. And then there were the compatibles, which rarely had the same colour or weave-work, but instead could easily be moulded into one thread. However, this was very tricky at times, as the threads could be extremely close sister threads, threads of parent and child, friends, relatives, or engaged threads.

The engaged threads and the friend threads were the most difficult to tell apart, as both were essentially the same, only the level of compatibility was higher in engaged threads than in friend threads. This was extremely difficult to tell because not only had the spellweaver to be very well taught or managed in order not to accidentally rush or twist too hard on the threads, or else it could slow down or not show the level of compatibility it could actually achieve.

This also meant that if a good enough spellweaver wove the threads together, friend threads could become engaged threads, although this was an extremely rare case, and even in case of this happening, Joseph had sections on Tabula Percipere that stated the highest level of compatibility of all the threads on the giant chart.

This was what truly made Kandle Joseph a genius and the father of modern weaving. 

The books went even further into the sight of the genius, but Angel chose not to read the rest because he didn't want to.

So he returned the rest of the books on the insight of Kandle Joseph and went to review the books on Jess Queen instead.

Jess Queen was the second son of Isabella and Orient Queen, and one of the first spellweavers to have finished laying down their foundation at the age of ten. He was also the first and youngest spellweaver in Stone-Dwelling history that adapted Tabula Percipere, as it was 'incomplete and imperfect' according to Queen himself.

Out of all of the notable spellweavers, Jess Queen was probably the most genius of them all, which was one of the reasons he was still studied after so many years, as well as his young age.

Apart from that, his research also couldn't be ignored. Queen published several writings on how thread-work truly worked, including a few paragraphs dedicated to the fact that while many, including scholars, referred to weave-work and thread-work as the same thing, it was not actually so.

Weave-work was how a Thread was woven and designed in its base weavings, and thread-work how Threads wove together, as well as how compatible they were with each other. 

While seemingly similar, the two were fundamentally different, weave-work essentially being how a Thread was patterned and designed as it was being woven, as well as showing the different designs and weaving methods that were included in the Thread. With enough in depth knowledge of the weave-work of a Thread, one would be able to weave one up themselves, without having to draw from the environment.

Thread-work covered how Threads were woven together instead, by showing the best ways to weave two Threads into one, having to do with the pattern and built of the Threads, then analysing how best the two would mold into each other.

Queen, while not showing how to see these patterns and analyse how best they would fit each other, did give examples of two different or similar patterns which he would weave into one, with the designs of each Thread extremely detailed.

That was how Jess Queen became known at the genius of many years to come, by using his research and adding it inside Tabula Percipere, neither of which were easily feats. In fact, he was the only one after Kandle Josep to have adapted the chart.

Little was known of his life apart from his research, his life outside of it completely mysterious, especially added to the fact that he vanished at fourteen.

The last person Angel studied was Light Novae Era.

Surprisingly, the history books had the least to say about him. Light Novae Era was a brilliant spellweaver who defended the Temple of Ruin against traitors to the Stone-Dwellers who'd escaped and ran for shelter, only to be stopped by Novae Era and killed.

He was like a flame—there one second, illuminating the dark surrounding, then vanishing. You could still picture it in your mind, but it was gone, and you would try all you could to hang onto that picture.