The Way Ahead

Chapter 86a: Burning Questions

“Xares above, I swear if those two don’t stop scheming soon, I will personally throw them off the branch.”

“I’ll carry Keir if you get Rhita,” Edwin agreed, handing Fissath one of the white logs they used for heating the kiln, “Are we aiming for the river?”

It had been two days since the sabotage/attack from Othniel’s group, and now that they were back in the lab, Keir and Rhita were busy planning their countermove against the rival alchemist. Normally, Edwin may not have minded overmuch, but instead of heads together, quietly plotting in the corner, they were very loud and very much in the center of the room.

“No, if we just retaliate with midnight smoke, it’ll just look derivative! Besides, don’t you think they’ll be expecting that? They probably have some Skill like whatever it was Edwin has that’ll nullify the attack. What we need is something that’ll break their kiln.”

“We don’t wanna escalate, though! If we break theirs, they’ll break ours, and then Fissa will really throw us off the branch.”

“So they can hear us, then,” Edwin noted, “I just wish they’d listen to what we actually said.”

“You’d think they’d be smarter about it then,” Fissath muttered, “Pipe it down or take it outside!”

“What’s most important,” Rhita carried on, “is that they don’t see it coming, and that it doesn’t give them cause to keep growing in scope. Like… maybe instead of using midnight smoke, we lace their beds with noctan. Then, they sleep at least a full day.”

“Bah! You with your sleeping powder. Can’t you come up with anything original? Besides, we want escalation. If they escalate too much, then we can get the Guild involved!”

“You want to get the Guild involved? That’s just outright telling the boss that we can’t handle it. That he can’t handle it. You really want to tell him that?”

“Hm. True. Well… what about if we fill their canteens with canopia? That’ll work!”

“No, that would be too obvious. The traces would be everywhere.”

“Obvious? When did you care about being obvious? They smoked us out two days ago!”josei

“Okay, that’s it!” Fissath threw down her tongs, “Edwin, are you ready?”

He set down the log he was getting ready to hand off, “I’m getting Keir?”

When the pair saw Edwin and Fissath actually going after them, they dashed outside, their argument continuing even as they fled.

“But it was specifically tied to the lab! If we…”

Edwin gave his coworker a glance and a shrug, then together they went back to their work.

“So what are these things anyway?” Edwin hefted one of the white logs.

“You’ve never seen arycal before?”

Getting- and keeping- the kiln lit was quite the feat. Half of Edwin’s day, or so it felt, was spent keeping it running, and his curiosity about what they were using for fuel had only grown as he kept working with it. The kiln dominated nearly half of the wall it was in, the black, alchemically treated clay reminding Edwin slightly of Blackstone. A hole in the wall opened to a cavernous structure with enough room to hold several crucibles suspended within, as well as a few flat surfaces where other objects could be set. While quenched, the interior was nothing but an inky black void, but when lit, it glowed almost white-hot, eerie shadows spilling from its mouth into the grander laboratory, but that was nothing in comparison to how brightly the furnace itself glowed.

Even Fissath, who claimed she had Skills to prevent being blinded by bright light, used goggles made of almost black glass when looking inside the furnace part of the kiln. Edwin, for his part, managed to get an entire level in Adaptive Defense when he accidentally looked into the lit fire under and surrounding the kiln’s ‘oven.’

Whatever the white logs- arycal- were, they burned obscenely bright. So bright, Edwin couldn’t help but wonder if he would be able to use them for flashbangs. Hence, his curiosity.

“I’m not going to claim that I know the full story, but Wendell loves to boast about how my family’s fortune is thanks to an alchemist, which is not true,” she angrily shoved another log of arycal into the furnace and slammed the door, “We had Skills that were more than adequate for centuries before whatever Alchemist came up-”

“Master Pyroalchemist Sadi!” Keir ‘helpfully’ provided.

“Shove it up your tailfeathers!” Fissath rebutted, “Before whatever alchemist came up with this stuff. It’s a mix of some kind of alchemical metal and kiangah,”

“What?”

“Kiangah. You don’t know what that is?” she tapped her talon on the floor, “It’s… ah… fireclay? Keir, can you pipe up for once when it would be actually useful?”

“Don’t bother me! I’m busy.”

“The one time I…” she sighed, “Thoril! Explain kiangah to Edwin.”

“Do I have to?”

“Do it! You’re not doing anything important right now.”

“Neither are you!”

“Thoril!”

“Uuuggghhh. Fiiine.”

“Quit whining before your talons turn brown!”

“That expression doesn’t even… Bah. Edwin, get over here! I don’t want to keep yelling. Oh! That was fast.”

Edwin just shrugged. Casual Longstrider use had paid off, and while it was tricky navigating the cluttered lab without running into anything, he could manage it if he really worked at it these days.

“So you wanted to know about kiangah? Do you know it by any other name? Fireclay? Lightstone?”

Edwin shook his head.

“It’s this magic stuff that glows a bit blue or green in air, or you can use to set fires. If you leave it out, it’ll be contaminated and turn kind of yellow or with a bit of treatment, red, but the pure stuff burns really hot.”

Something tickled the back of Edwin’s recollection, and he desperately hoped he was wrong, “Does it… show up really weirdly to any magical tests, like it’s all but nonmagical? And spontaneously catches on fire at times?”

“Yeah! You do know it, then.”

“…Please tell me you don’t use white phosphorus as fuel in your furnace.”

“Wait, you don’t know it as phosphorus but you do know it as phosphorus?” Ah great, Polyglot was acting up again. It always did that when there was a word it wasn’t entirely sure how to translate. He wished he knew what caused it so he could stop it, but he wasn’t having much luck in that regard, “How do you know the technical term for it if you’ve never heard of its more common names?”

Edwin shrugged, but his mind was still racing with the revelation that they used phosphorus for fuel. White phosphorus, no less. Well, at least they had some kind of… they used a metal as well, didn’t they?

Please don’t actually be lithium, please don’t be lithium.

“And the metal you mix with it?” he hazarded.

“That one is this stuff we call elektron, or when purified, sianaaka. Though, you might know it as magnesium. It burns hot and bright, do you know it?”

At least it’s not lithium.

Edwin closed his eyes, held his head in his hands, and quietly screamed. This… this was fine. Totally fine, he was sure. That they decided to use a mixture of magnesium and what looked to be white phosphorus was totally fine. Never mind that magnesium flames reached temperatures above 3,000 degrees celsius, and white phosphorous had a nasty habit of spontaneously igniting at room temperature, or even just when exposed to air.

The only way to ensure that white phosphorus wouldn’t suddenly catch on fire simply from exposure to air was by storing it underwater, but whatever idiot was responsible for this travesty had mixed it with magnesium, which could- in its elemental form at least, such as when it was on fire- react with and burn under water.

“Are you… are you okay?” Thoril asked, and Edwin worked to regain his composure, moving his hands together and pinching his nose.

His eyes closed, he breathed in and exhaled, “I will be.

“I’m just trying to reconcile the fact that someone decided that the perfect fuel to use was a mixture of a metal that burns hot enough to boil iron, even while underwater and an element that spontaneously catches on fire when exposed to air.

“I just… I just need a minute, is all.”

“You know, it’s kept alchemically stable. You specifically need a Skill or a bit of liquid fire to ignite it.”

Edwin inched an eye open to stare skeptically at the blue-skinned man, “And is Master Pyrealchemist Sodi-“

“Master Pyroalchemist Sadi.”

“Same difference. Is he-“

“She.”

The glare redoubled, “Is she still alive?”

“No.”

“How did she die?”

Thoril shrugged, “Lab fire, some… oh, five years ago?”

“Really.”

“Yeah, really. It was a shame, too. Complete loss of her and all of her notes. Burned to the branch.”

“Any idea what started the fire?”

The alchemist scoffed, “No. How would we know that?”

“So let me get this straight. The inventor of this stuff died in a fire five years ago, in a blaze so intense it burned down her entire lab, and presumably was strong enough to overcome whatever fire resistance Skills she may have had, and I’m guessing she likely made a lot of it?”

Nod.

“Great. So she died in a fire, but you don’t know how it started, and you just blindly figure that this stuff is stable because it probably needs a Skill or alchemical firestarter to get going?”

Nod.

Edwin massaged his temples. He was almost sad that she was dead, because that meant he couldn’t track her down and punch her squarely in the face. Actually, he might still be able to. He just needed to figure out if magic made either resurrection or time travel possible, then use that with the sole purpose of bringing alchemist Sadi face-to-face with him, just so he could give her a solid whack to the face.

She had combined two ingredients commonly used in fireworks into a literal explosion waiting to happen. Why, just why would you do that to yourself?

At least on the bright side, Edwin supposed, she wasn’t around to keep setting things on fire. Her legacy would have to settle for being the creator of an unholy abomination against lab safety.

Edwin’s head fell back into his hands, and this time, he didn’t hold back his scream of frustration.

“No. I’m not touching those things.”

“You had no problem earlier. Come on, nobody else will lend a wing, and it’s so much easier with two.”

“That was before I knew what they were!”

“Where did you learn all that about alchemical ingredients anyway? You don’t have a clue how to make a potion, but you randomly know the proper names for phosphorus and…”

“Magnesium.”

She clicked her talons against the floor in a motion that sounded like a finger snap, “That.”

“I had… let’s say an unusual education in alchemy.”

“What? That’s it? The mysterious Alchemist-Errant, rolling into town with Polyglot on your lips, strange potions nobody has ever seen before, and learning a bit of alchemy, no ties to hold you here?”

Edwin flashed a grin at her, “That’s me. Mysterious. Enigmatic. Fascinating. Other words that vaguely mean unknowable.”

Fissath shot him a glance that… hey, that was probably annoyance! He was slowly picking up on avior body language, “You’re incorrigible.”

“You started it.” He poked back.

“Just hand me the arycal, would you?”

Edwin looked at the dormant firework with skepticism, “Could I borrow a set of tongs?”

She looked to the ceiling, “Here. Use mine.”

While the fact they were iron wasn’t the most reassuring, given the metal usually boiled at something like 2800 centigrade- less than magnesium burned at- they were at least something. It had been an unpleasant revelation that he’d likely been on the knife’s edge of death last week when he had been making his fever elixir. If not for his mastery of Firestarting, to the point where he could completely contain the effect to precisely where he wanted it, the Skill area of effect would have included the arycal logs in Cope Hall, and probably set them on fire. That would not have gone well.

Even contained in a magical kiln that was supposed to be as insulating as alchemy could manage, Edwin could still feel the heat emanating from the fuel, reaching him as he stood near the arycal stock and looking at a very impatient avior.

“Right, right. Sorry, sorry. I’m just contemplating mortality.”

“Yeah, well do it after handing me the arycal. I do not want to have to get the kiln back up to temperature and you don’t want me coming over there.”

Edwin reluctantly agreed and gingerly picked up a cylinder from where it was stacked- though he hadn’t noticed it the first few times he handled the substance, they were slightly hexagonal for easy stacking - with his borrowed prongs. He moved it over to where Fissath waited, handling the block like it was radioactive.

It made it all the more stunning when the glassblower picked it up in her bare wing, opened the upper hatch to the furnace, dropped the log inside, and withdrew another burning block without so much as gloves. She studied the arycal, broke it in half, and tossed it back inside the glowing furnace.

She turned to see Edwin’s dumbstruck expression, and Edwin got a sense of smug satisfaction from her, “What? My family’s kilns burn hotter.”

Edwin quietly resolved to never, ever get on Fissath or her family’s bad side.