Knowledge Is Power: The Last Reader

The next morning, Aria and Kelme found themselves sitting in a library.

Not reading. Researching. There was a difference.

Aria had six books stacked in front of her, their spines cracked and their pages yellowed with age. She’d been flipping through them for hours, her eyes growing tired, her head beginning to ache but she didn’t stop, she had this feeling the first time Milo got her a book, it was kind of a bitter sweet momery, she wondered how his plot was doing, he probably already solved it, his smart like that.

Kelme had one.

He was already asleep.

His head was resting on the open pages, a thin line of drool connecting his cheek to the paper. He looked peaceful. Completely, utterly at peace.

Aria poked him with a book. "Wake up. you useless piece of meat, I got traded Milo for this idiot. life is so unfair."

Kelme opened one eye, his expression one of profound annoyance. "Did you find the recipe?"

"No."

"Then wake me when you do."

Aria stared at him. "You’re supposed to help."

"I am helping."

"How?"

He held up the book with the hand that wasn’t serving as a pillow. The cover read: A Beginner’s Guide to Farming.

Aria slowly lowered her head onto the table, her forehead connecting with the wood with a soft thud. "We’re doomed. you Idiot that’s not even the right book."

---

Three hours later, they had learned absolutely nothing useful.

do it in 250 words and it needs to be interesting

Sugar was complicated. Apparently, there were different kinds. Different methods. Different plants. Different processes. Some books even disagreed with each other, contradicting information on the very next page.

One volume insisted sugar came only from cane, describing towering mills crushing stalks into sweet blood, the syrup boiled under vacuum until crystals bloomed like frost. The next Chapter swore beets were the true source, their pale roots sliced into ribbons and steeped until the water ran thick with sucrose. A third text dismissed both, arguing that "sugar" meant any sweet—honey, fruit, palm sap—while the marginalia scribbled by some long-dead reader scoffed that real sugar was purely refined sucrose, nothing else.

Processes clashed just as badly. Some authors described a two-stage journey: cane to raw sugar at the mill, then raw to white at a distant refinery, washed and decolorized until it gleamed like snow. Others outlined a single, seamless operation where beets entered one end and pristine crystals emerged the other, no raw stage at all. Steps appeared and vanished between pages—affination, carbonatation, ion-exchange resins—each presented as essential, then ignored.

It wasn’t just technical confusion. Terminology shifted underfoot. "Raw sugar" in one book was barely refined brown crystals; in another, it was an industrial intermediate no baker ever saw. "Refined" sometimes meant pure white sucrose, sometimes merely clarified syrup. Even the definition of sugar itself slid between chemical precision and culinary vagueness.

Standing amid the stacks, she realized sugar wasn’t a single truth but a web of practices, crops, and conventions. Every contradiction mapped a different perspective: farmer, refiner, chemist, cook. The more she read, the less certain she became—except about one thing. Whoever controlled sugar controlled sweetness itself, and in a world this tangled, that meant power.

Aria slammed one shut, the sound echoing through the quiet library. "Why does making sugar require more knowledge than fighting a monster?"

"Because monsters don’t require accounting."

She looked at him. "That’s not comforting."

"It wasn’t supposed to be."

Eventually, Aria found something interesting. A reference to an old sugar-processing technique, buried deep in a book that seemed to have been written centuries ago. The handwriting was faded, the diagrams crude, but the information was there.

She read it twice. Then a third time. Her eyes widened.

"Kelme."

"What?"

"I think I found it."

He leaned over, squinting at the faded text. "Can we actually make it?"

Aria smiled. "Probably."

"That sounds dangerously close to confidence."

"It isn’t confidence."

"What is it?"

She paused. "I have no idea what I’m doing."

Kelme nodded, his expression one of genuine approval. "Much better."

---

Their first attempt took place in an abandoned shed outside the city.

It was small, dusty, and smelled faintly of rot. The roof had holes in it, the floor was uneven, and the only source of light was a single window that hadn’t been cleaned in years.

They had almost nothing. No proper equipment. No money. No experience. And, most importantly, no idea what they were doing.

Aria stared at their collection of supplies. A pot. A wooden spoon. A bag of something that might have been sugar cane, or might have been weeds. A fire pit they’d dug themselves.

Kelme stared too. "This looks suspicious."

"Everything looks suspicious when you’re poor." Aria paused, then added, "Also, I kinda of took them without permission."

"From where?"

"Various places."

"Various places?"

"I didn’t want to narrow it down in case someone asks."

They began.

It went badly. The fire was too hot, then too cold, then too hot again. The mixture burned, then boiled over, then burned again. The smell was unpleasant—acrid and sharp, like something that wasn’t supposed to be cooked.

Then worse. The pot cracked. The mixture spilled. The fire almost went out.

Then somehow even worse. Aria coughed through the unpleasant smell, her eyes watering. Kelme opened the door, waving his hand in front of his face.

"We’re going to need ventilation."

"We’re going to need a miracle."

After several hours, they finally produced something.

Aria picked up a tiny sample. It was brownish, clumpy, and looked more like dirt than sugar. It was also slightly warm.

Kelme examined it. "Is that sugar?"

Aria squinted. "Technically?"

"That’s not an answer."

"It is if we’re optimistic."

Kelme tasted it. His face immediately contorted—his eyes squinted, his mouth twisted, his entire body recoiled.

Aria laughed. "What?"

"It tastes awful."

"We can’t sell this."

"No."

"We absolutely cannot sell this."

"No."

They stared at their pathetic creation. The tiny, brownish, terrible-tasting lump sat in Aria’s palm like an accusation.

Then Aria smiled. "Good news."

"What?"

"We know how not to make it."

Kelme sighed, his shoulders slumping in defeat. "That is the worst good news I’ve ever heard."

Aria grabbed the book again, flipping through the pages with renewed determination. "Let’s try again."

Kelme looked at the ruined batch, the cracked pot, the exhausted fire. Then he looked at Aria, who was already hunched over the book, her eyes bright with stubborn refusal to admit defeat.

"You know," he said slowly, "most people get jobs."

Aria smiled, not looking up from the book. "Most people aren’t us. Also, we can’t go to the guild without the money I owe them."

Kelme couldn’t argue with that but he didn’t want to point out he didn’t owe them shit, but he didn’t want to leave her alone, she was kinda his only friend.

And somewhere in that miserable shed, surrounded by failed experiments and unpaid debts, their ridiculous little business officially began.

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