Chapter 37 – Breaking of Symmetries

Von Agrippin had just answered Professor Emberfell’s second critical question when his gaze swept over the raised hands in the hall and lingered on Valentina.

It was only a moment, but she knew that kind of look from men. A quick, almost involuntary registration, followed by a more conscious double take, and then, most often, an attempt to hide it. Some men hid it better than others, and Von Agrippin hid it very well.

“The young lady in the fifth row, please.”

Valentina stood up and cleared her throat. “Professor Von Agrippin, your demonstration was breathtaking and your theory is undoubtedly elegant, but I believe it has a problem that hasn’t been addressed yet.”

Von Agrippin nodded encouragingly at her. “Then please address it.”

“If I understand you correctly, the Grundgestalt is the natural state of maximum symmetry, and the eight Essences arise through a breaking of this symmetry. But then the obvious question is, what causes this symmetry breaking and what sustains it, because…”

She paused briefly to organize her thoughts into the right words.

“In nature, we observe no spontaneous transitions between the Essences like you demonstrated right now. Leb remains Leb and Viur remains Viur, and so on. And in over a thousand years of documented observation, no one has ever recorded such a transition, or otherwise, it would have been discussed at great length. This means that the barriers between the broken symmetries must be either incredibly high or, under natural conditions, fundamentally insurmountable.”

A soft murmur ran through the hall, but Valentina did not let herself be interrupted.

“Both of these points pose a problem for your thesis, don’t they? If the barriers are practically infinitely high, then while the Essences may share a common theoretical origin, they would be separated from one another in every respect that matters to the scholarly art. In that case, unification would be mathematically interesting but practically inconsequential. And if the barriers are finite but very high, then your theory must be able to explain what determines their height and why they are so uniform. So what is the mechanism of symmetry breaking?”

In the front row, Professor Veilford had slowly turned around and looked at Valentina with approval. Behind him, an elderly Master Weaver from the city nodded emphatically, as if he had had exactly this objection on the tip of his tongue the whole time.

Von Agrippin was silent for a moment, deep in thought, and then a smile spread across his face that seemed much more sincere than his charming, ever-present smile before.

“That,” he said contentedly, “is the best question I’ve been asked today. And frankly, one of the better questions I’ve ever been asked on this subject.”

Valentina felt Innogen’s hand on her leg, briefly and firmly squeezing her knee.

Von Agrippin stepped out from behind the podium and took a few steps toward the middle rows, closer to Valentina, as if he wanted to reduce the distance between the speaker and the questioner.

“And I want to give you an honest answer, even if it isn’t the comprehensive solution you’re probably hoping for.” He raised his hands as if surrendering. “I don’t have a complete explanation for the stability of the broken symmetries. Not yet.”

A satisfied nod from some of the more skeptical professors. Von Agrippin ignored it.

“What I can offer you is a working hypothesis. Imagine a river that has been flowing in its bed for centuries. The water could theoretically flow in any direction since there is no physical law preventing it. But the riverbed has been deeply carved out over a very long time, and the force required to lift the river out of its bed and redirect it exceeds anything acting upon it under ordinary circumstances.”

He traced a river in the air with his right hand. “I call this geometric inertia. The Essences may have settled into their eight stable states very early in the history of the world, and the effort required to overcome these established conditions is what makes my transformations in the lab so challenging.”

“But that’s speculative,” Valentina pressed.

“That’s right, it’s purely speculative,” Von Agrippin confirmed without hesitation. “Developing a rigorous mathematical description of the stability mechanism is one of the most important open problems I still need to solve for my theory, and to be honest, I’m still a long way from that.” He tilted his head. “But I’m working on it. And I’m glad someone is asking this question today, because it shows me that there are people in this auditorium who think deeply enough to tackle the problem at its core. So maybe I don’t have to do everything on my own after all!”

Then he looked directly at her. “What is your name?”

“Valentina of Palewood.”

Something flashed in his eyes. “Valentina of Palewood.” He turned halfway toward the decan. “It seems to me that Bridgewater produces some excellent students, Decan Valemont. I have a feeling I have a lot to look forward to in this year’s seminar sessions.”

Valemont nodded, flattered, and appreciative laughter went through the audience.

Valentina sat back down. Her pulse was racing, and she could hear the blood rushing in her ears. Next to her, Innogen leaned over toward her, close enough that only Valentina could hear.

“Well,” she whispered. “You certainly made an impression.”

“Too much?” Valentina asked quietly.

“Just right.” The corners of Innogen’s mouth twitched.

Next came a long-winded objection from one of the city scholars, who harped on the fact that Von Agrippin had so far demonstrated only four of the eight Essences.

“He dodged you very cleverly,” said Vyxara, while Valentina only half-listened to the discussion because the demon’s voice in her head was more interesting. “The river metaphor is actually pretty good, but again, it’s incomplete.”

“In what way?”

“Because the real answer to your question has to do with what demons do when they corrupt Essence. The barriers between the Essences that you so elegantly described are real, but in a sense, they aren’t equally high for everyone. Demonic manipulation operates on a deeper level than conventional Essence Weaving, closer to what he calls the Grundgestalt. That’s why demons can do things with Essence that human Essence Weavers consider impossible or unnatural.”

Valentina’s jaw almost dropped, but she tried her best not to let on.

“What exactly-“

“Later.”

“You always say ‘later.'”

“And later always comes.” Amusement radiated from the demon.

The discussion continued for another fifteen minutes, and Von Agrippin answered every question with charming patience. At one point, the entire hall burst into laughter when he replied to a particularly stubborn critic with disarming friendliness that he considered it a good sign when a new theory provoked such fierce opposition, for general agreement in the scholarly art was usually a sign that nothing worth saying had been said.

Then Decan Valemont thanked the visiting scholar, the audience applauded, and the benches emptied amid a clatter of creaking wood and a hundred conversations starting at once.

Valentina deliberately dawdled a bit as she gathered her notes. Innogen waited beside her, but Crispin had already stood up and muttered something about wanting to go to the library before saying goodbye.

As the stream of people pushing their way out thinned and they turned toward the exit, it happened, and her gaze finally met his.

Von Agrippin was still standing at the front of the hall, surrounded by professors and scholars who were talking to him and waiting for his attention. But his gaze had swept over their heads and found her, as if he had kept track of where she was standing.

He gave her a barely perceptible nod.

“I love it when your knees go weak like that,” Vyxara giggled in her mind.

~

Later that evening, after the lecture, she just had to try for herself.

She had reduced the transformation sequence that Von Agrippin had demonstrated in her notes to a series of geometric sketches. She had just hastily jotted everything down on parchment during the lecture and then refined it from memory after she came home. Now she was trying to follow his steps not only on paper, but also in practice with her own Distilled Essence.

She constructed a simple, cleanly proportioned circular Leb-resonant pattern and kept it stable. Then she began to carefully stretch one side, just as she had observed Von Agrippin do.

On the first attempt, the pattern collapsed with an ugly bang as she shifted the mirror axis. On the second, it held longer, but the resonance faded completely before anything could change. On the third attempt, after she had corrected the order of the stretches and adjusted the accompanying Altothal, something flickered to life, if only for a heartbeat.

It was Viur.

Valentina released the pattern with a pounding heart. So it really hadn’t been a sleight of hand after all. It was possible.

“Not bad for just one evening’s work,” said Vyxara. “Of course, you have an unfair advantage. You intuitively understand more about the relationship between the Essences than you even realize, because you’ve been working with me for two years.”

“Can you explain to me why the transformation becomes unstable at exactly this point?” Valentina pointed to the spot in her notes where the pattern had collapsed during the first two attempts.

“Imagine you’re carrying a heavy pitcher of water across a narrow footbridge,” said Vyxara. “The footbridge is the transformation. The water is the Essence. If you walk too fast, it spills over. If you walk too slowly, you get tired and drop the pitcher. There’s a pace that’s just right, and that pace depends on the specific geometry of the transition.”

“That’s a helpful image, but it doesn’t explain the mechanism.”

“The mechanism,” said Vyxara patiently, “has to do with the deep structure of the Essence. What Von Agrippin calls the Grundgestalt doesn’t exist merely as a mathematical abstraction. It’s something very real, and demons work closer to this deep structure. That’s why the barriers you mentioned in your question are lower for us.”

Valentina stared at her notes. “Wait, does that mean the Eye of Deceit-“

“Operates on this level. Yes.”

So the Eye of Deceit was not an artifact that manipulated individual Essences, as she had previously assumed, but one that operated on the deeper, unified level, where the distinctions between the eight Essences did not yet exist. Or something like that.

“Don’t touch it tonight,” Vyxara interrupted. “You don’t have enough Distilled Essence, nor have you made the necessary preparations. Patience.”

Valentina nodded slowly, but her gaze wandered to the spot where the iron box containing the Eye of Deceit was hidden.

“Patience,” she sighed.

“I know how much you hate that.”