The Great Hall was in a state of quiet panic.
Lord Valdemar, Fyrion's father, paced the stone floor, his heavy boots echoing the frantic rhythm of his heart. Silas, was pulling at his thin, weaselly hair, a stack of ledgers open and ignored on the table.
"He has us, my Lord! He has us!" Silas lamented, his voice cracking. "We can't make the bricks without the tallow, and we can't get the tallow unless we pay his price! But if we pay that... that obscene price, we'll be bankrupt by the end of the week! We'll have no gold left for grain, or for the men's wages!"
"Silence!" Valdemar roared. He rounded on Fyrion, who was standing by the hearth, calmly observing the perfect, smokeless flame of a single Sun-Brick.
"This is your fault, boy!" Valdemar jabbed a thick finger at him. "Your arrogance! You pushed the butcher too far! Now Grom has his boot on our throat, and you stand there staring into the fire! Just... just pay the man! Pay him whatever he wants! We need those bricks!"
Fyrion turned his head slowly. He looked at his father, at the fear in his eyes. He looked at Silas, at the naked desperation. They were trapped. They saw one problem, one solution, and one roadblock.
Amateurs.
'They're still thinking like vassals,' Fyrion thought, his mind already miles beyond their simple crisis. 'They see Grom as the source of the binder. Grom is not the source. He's a supplier. A convenience. And a convenience is never a necessity.'
Tallow was a luxury. A high-energy, stable, easy-to-use lipid. It created a perfect, premium product. It was Plan A.
A true Alchemist always had a Plan B.
Fyrion turned and walked out of the Great Hall, not bothering to grab his fur-lined coat. The sudden, biting cold of the courtyard was a relief.
"Fyrion! Where are you going?! I'm not finished!" his father bellowed.
"I am," Fyrion said, not looking back.
He walked past the gates, past the nervous guards, and headed straight for the town's rubbish pit.
The pit was a frozen, miserable valley behind the main village. It was where the townsfolk dumped everything they couldn't eat, burn, or trade. It smelled of frozen waste, spoiled grain, and human misery.
The Northern villagers, huddled in their homes, watched him. The "rubbish son," the mad alchemist, was now walking into the actual rubbish. The rumors must be true.
Fyrion ignored their stares. He walked with purpose, his boots crunching on the frozen, trash-strewn snow. He wasn't looking for scraps. He was looking for waste.
He found it in the far corner. A massive, gray, frozen mound.
It was ash. Hardwood ash, from the hundreds of inefficient hearths and kilns that had been desperately burning wood for the last three years. It was worthless. Too acidic for the fields, too spent to burn. It was the literal bottom of the barrel.
Fyrion knelt. He scooped up a handful. It was gritty, cold, and smelled faintly of lye.
'There it is,' he thought, a cold smile touching his lips. He remembered his true master in his past life, the eccentric Imperial Alchemist who had taught him the fundamentals.
"All alchemy is, boy," the old man had cackled, "is convincing one material to let go of what it has to become what it could be. Waste is just a resource you're too stupid to understand."
Tallow was a simple, high-grade binder. But lye, caustic potash, leached from hardwood ash, was a chemical binder. It was volatile. It was dangerous. It was disgusting.
And he had tons of it.
"Guards," Fyrion called out. Two of his father's men had followed him at a distance, their faces a mixture of confusion and fear.
"Bring shovels. And every empty barrel in the castle. I want this entire mound dug up. Now."
The forge was thick with an acrid, chemical stink that burned the throat.
"Master! It's... it's hissing!" Silas yelped, jumping back from the large clay mixing basin.
Fyrion ignored him, his face covered by a damp cloth. He was pouring the dark, caustic lye-water he'd leached from the ash into the powder of coal, sulfur, and saltpeter.
The moment the liquid touched the powder, it reacted.
It wasn't the clean, silent infusion of the Sun-Brick. This was a volatile, angry protest. The paste bubbled, releasing a gagging, yellow-green smoke.
"It's failing!" Silas choked, his eyes watering. "It's poison!"
'Damn it. It's unstable.'
Fyrion's mind raced. The lye was too crude, contaminated with other minerals. It wasn't just binding the mixture; it was catalyzing it in the wrong way. It was on the verge of flash-boiling, turning into a useless, toxic sludge.
'This is what separates a master from an apprentice. Control.'
He didn't have the raw power to overwhelm the reaction. His Aura Core was still weak, still new. He couldn't be a hammer.
He had to be a scalpel.
"Hold your breath, Silas," he ordered.
He plunged his bare hands into the hissing, bubbling paste. It was freezing cold and burned his skin at the same time.
He closed his eyes. He didn't pull on the flood of his aura. He sipped.
He drew the smallest possible thread of mana from his Core, a line of power as thin as a spider's silk. He didn't try to suppress the reaction; he guided it.
He pushed the thread of aura into the lye, targeting the volatile sulfuric compounds. He forced them to bind, not with the saltpeter, but with the carbon.
The hissing softened.
He wove another thread, separating the unstable water molecules from the potash.
The toxic smoke thinned.
He was sweating, the concentration immense. This was infinitely harder than making the Sun-Brick. This wasn't just following a recipe; this was creating a new one in real-time.
Finally, after a long, grueling minute, the bubbling stopped. The paste in the basin turned from a hissing, yellowish slurry into a thick, dull, concrete-gray sludge.
Fyrion pulled his hands out, breathing heavily. He was exhausted, his Core aching, but he was alive.
He grabbed the brick mold and packed the ugly, heavy paste into it. He ejected the brick onto the stone floor.
It wasn't the sleek, black, impressive Sun-Brick.
This brick was gray, pockmarked, and looked like something a child would make from mud.
Silas stared at it, his nose wrinkled. "Master... it's... ugly."
Fyrion said nothing. He picked up the ugly, heavy brick and walked back to the Great Hall. His father was still there, pacing. Fyrion walked past him and tossed the brick into the hearth, right next to the beautiful, blazing Sun-Brick.
He struck a flint. The spark hit the gray brick.
WHOOSHHH---
It took a moment, then it caught.
It didn't light with the clean, white-yellow flame of the Sun-Brick. It lit with a dull, functional, reddish-orange glow. It smelled faintly of chemicals and ash.
But it burned. And it was hot.
Silas's eyes widened. "It works... It actually works!"
Fyrion looked at the two bricks, burning side-by-side. The black, noble Sun-Brick, and the ugly, common gray one.
He turned to Silas, a slow, cold smile spreading across his face.
"This," he said, pointing to the new one, "is the 'Common-Brick.' It's ugly. It smells a little. It's half as efficient as the 'Sun-Brick.'"
He paused, then delivered the killing blow.
"You will sell it for one-quarter of the price."
Silas's mind, the mind of a gambler and an accountant, whirred. He gasped, his eyes lighting up. "But... but Master! At that price, everyone... the entire town... the entire North... they can afford this! They'll buy this instead of firewood and even meat which is costly to keep them warm! We'll corner the entire market!"
Fyrion's smile widened. He looked at the door, in the direction of Grom's guild hall.
"Let's see who buys his overpriced meat for heat now."