Okay, so this one isn't that long. No translations, either, which may be a relief for everyone after the last chapter.

Innovation

I touched first one point and then another, and a line obligingly appeared, connecting the two. "Look, hahren. The slope of the line that runs through both those points represents the acceleration for the time period bounded by them," I explained to Innovation. "It corresponds to this equation," I added, underlining the one I referred to with a swipe of my finger. I had already become accustomed to - not to say utterly delighted by - graphs that hung in space and responded to a touch and a bit of focused will.

"Beautiful," the spirit said, circling my graph to examine it from multiple angles. "Such a beautiful abstraction. I applaud you."

"Infinitesimal calculus isn't my - " I began.

"I meant you in the plural, da'len. You mortals," Innovation corrected me with a smile. "Surely this is what you refer to as art?"

"No," I said, studying the graph critically. "We refer to this as mathematics. Art is quite different - but this does have its own sort of beauty."

The spirit dismissed my explanation with a flick of its fingers. "Madness. What could be more beautiful than this?"

"Will you tell me more of Caridin, now? What are lyrium lenses?" I asked. I didn't at all mind showing Innovation the work Lennan shared with me through the letters we exchanged - work I aided him in, in a small way - but the spirit was ancient and, perhaps uniquely, focused on dwarves. If we were going to trade knowledge, there was a great deal I wanted to learn from it.

Innovation gestured, and my graph moved aside, though it didn't disappear. I could see Innovation was still eyeing it, and likely meant to examine it at greater length later. "I fear I cannot explain the precise way they work to you," the spirit told me, pulling its eyes away. "You are not a mage, and lack the necessary senses. But a lyrium lens is not unlike the optical sort from which it draws its name. It can magnify or bring otherwise diffuse phenomena into better focus. It can also filter, as a colored lens filters out certain sorts of light."

An odd apparatus appeared where my graph had recently been located, spinning slowly as I watched. It consisted of a tube of what might have been quartz, about two handsbreadths long, filled with what was probably lyrium, with a copper wire running through the center and out either end. "This is an example," Innovation told me. "Inside - vaporized lyrium, which is difficult to do without igniting it, but not impossible. The lenses can be composed of a number of suitable materials, provided they are magically resonant. There are spells entirely encasing the physical structure - but I suppose you cannot see them."

"I can't," I agreed, trying to commit every detail of what I could see to memory. "Voices, you said. How did they know that the voices came from the Stone? Couldn't they have been - thoughts? Or spirits?"

Innovation arched one of its eyebrows pointedly, and I realized how absurd part of my question was. "Not spirits," it assured me. "And thoughts, as far as I am aware, do not occur in chorus. Besides, the discovery lit Caridin's imagination and set him on the path to creating the golems - and I believe his success is a confirmation that there is at least a kind of life within the Stone."

"I don't think the dwarves remember," I said.

"No," the spirit agreed. "The making of the lenses was lost in the chaos of the first Blight as Tevinter weakened and recalled its mages to defend its borders. And though of interest to the Shaperate, darkspawn were a much more pressing matter to anyone outside. Only a few within the Fade now remember that such devices ever existed."

"A tragedy," I said.

Innovation nodded. "Knowledge lost always is, because it stifles innovation. Genius does not come in the form of giant leaps of understanding. Rather, it comes from taking a thing already known, finding a new angle from which to examine it - or a previously overlooked gap in understanding that it can fill - and then taking a few steps further along whatever path is already there."

"Always?" I asked thoughtfully. "Surely some innovations are great leaps. The Veil," I offered. "There was nothing like it before Solas created it."

"I would not say always about - anything, I think," Innovation replied. "But why would you suppose nothing like the Veil existed before Fen'Harel created it?"

"Because the waking world and the Fade mixed freely," I told Innovation. "I doubt Solas would lie to me about that, and there was Vir Dirthara - "

The spirit shook its head, chuckling softly. "You misunderstand, da'len. Fen'Harel isn't lying about the way things were, he is merely leaving out some of the most granular specifics - likely because you have never asked questions for which they mattered. Do you not suppose that the Elvhen of old might sometimes have had reason to keep spirits or the Fade from a small, contained area?"

I stopped breathing for a moment. "Did they?"

Innovation laughed again. "They did. Of course they did. These vaults, as they were known, used magic from the Fade to stabilize themselves, even as they repelled it on the inside. Like vaults made of physical materials, some were more and some less sturdy. The sturdiest would make anyone who entered temporarily like one of your Tranquil. They were occasionally used as prisons, though such use was extremely controversial. More often, powerful mages would retreat to such places to temporarily refresh themselves when they began to feel the call of uthenera, but still had duties to fulfill."

I realized my mouth was hanging open. "How do you know this, hahren?" I asked the spirit.

"I have existed for many ages," Innovation reminded me. "Choosing to observe dwarves, whose emotions have no reflection in the Fade, required that I form a powerful, durable identity, or my interest would have wandered. But I love the act of creation, of creativity, of subversion, for its own sake, not merely for the triumph the innovator reflects into this realm."

"The Veil isn't like that - like the strongest of the vaults you just described," I observed.

"The weakest vaults kept only certain kinds of spirits from entering, and restricted the general flow of the Fade only slightly," Innovation went on explaining, answering my unspoken question. "The Veil lies in between these extremes, disallowing almost all spirits, but not entirely cutting off the tides of the Fade. I think Fen'Harel made it as weak as he dared - but, as it turned out, still too strong to avoid dismantling the world."

"Do you think he was wrong to create it?" I asked my companion.

The spirit eyed me thoughtfully. "I cannot make such judgments," it told me at last. "I believe it was a stroke of genius that served his purpose - but perhaps a stroke of mad genius that anyone sane would have avoided, knowing how many ends were too complicated ever to be teased out and foreseen."

"You're here," I pointed out, "allied with him in his efforts to dismantle it."

"Yes," Innovation agreed without hesitation, "because the misery it creates cannot be allowed to endure. We need each other, our peoples," it told me, studying my face. "You remind me what I am, affirming my reality. I reflect your world as it is and as it might be, providing inspiration and, for some, wisdom. Without us, your people cannot make anything new of the world. They merely retread the patterns of ages gone by. Without you, my people dwindle and cease to exist, or become twisted into demons in their desperation to survive."

"But - should he do it like this? Isn't there some other, less violent way?" I asked.

"I cannot know that, da'len," Innovation answered. "Not unless someone else proves it one way or the other. I am afraid of the method Fen'Harel has chosen - of course I am. As many spirits as mortals will be destroyed when the Veil falls, and there is no guarantee I will be among those that survive. And yet - this way of things cannot endure."

"Has he even tried to prove it one way or the other - that this is the only way to proceed?" I persisted.

"How can he?" the spirit replied. "Whatever flames of genius burned in him have been smothered by doubt, regret, remorse, and terror. How could he ever see another path, wearing those blinders?"

I felt my shoulders sag, but said: "Thank you, hahren. And now I believe the balance has well and truly tipped in your favor. Have you more questions about calculus? I have been corresponding with a professor from Markham who has applied Lennan's equations to the orbit of our moons, and has begun attempting to use them to find patterns within the motions of stars."

Innovation's eyes widened and it smiled, as delighted as a child at Satinalia. "Oh yes," it said, "tell me all about that."