The alchemical cellar had transformed. It was no longer just a lab; it was a storage house.
Stacks of dull, gray "Common-Bricks" lined the walls, radiating a steady, dry heat. Fyrion was seated at his father's old, dusty desk, a massive ledger open. Beside him, piles of silver coins were neatly stacked in columns of ten. He was counting.
The heavy door creaked open, not with a bang, but with the hesitant, reverent push of a convert entering a temple.
"Master! Master Fyrion!"
Silas scurried in. The weasel-like man was no longer pale with panic. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes gleaming with the feverish, wild-eyed joy of a gambler on an impossible winning streak.
"He's finished, Master! He's done for!"
Fyrion didn't look up. He calmly finished a stack of silver. "Details, Silas. Be precise."
"Grom! The Butcher's Guild!" Silas was practically dancing, unable to contain his glee. "He... he laughed at me when I made one last offer! He said 'ten times the price or rot!' So I did as you said! I didn't argue. I just left!"
"And?"
"And then," Silas said, his voice dropping in dramatic awe, "we flooded the market. Just as you commanded. One-quarter the price of firewood. We set up stalls in the lower town, the middle town, even at the castle gates! At first, people were suspicious. They called it 'lord's dirt.' Then... then the first one bought one. Just to try."
Silas's smile was a gap-toothed, beautiful thing.
"Master... they came back. They came back in droves. From every nook and cranny of the surroundings! Even form the neighbouring territories. They were crying! A woman kissed my hand, said her children hadn't been warm in a month. They're buying them in stacks of twenty! They're burning them in their homes, their shops... the entire town... Master Fyrion, the town is warm."
Fyrion nodded, making a neat notation in his ledger. "Good. I excepted this but you did a great job in speeding up the process."
"Grom!" Silas cackled. "He's trapped! He thought he was selling tallow. He thought we were his only customer! But you... you weren't buying tallow. You completely made a fool out of him hehe!"
Fyrion finally looked up, a cold, thin smile on his face. "He held his product hostage, assuming I had no alternative. He created a market vacuum, and I simply filled it with a superior, cheaper product. He's a butcher, Silas, not a merchant. He never saw it coming."
"His hall... it's a disaster!" Silas reported, practically vibrating. "He hoarded everything. He bought tallow from every farm for fifty miles, thinking he would bleed us dry. Now it's all starting to...rot. His hall stinks of rot. And the people... they're not buying his meat anymore! Why buy his overpriced, half-frozen beef when they can buy our bricks and a bag of grain for half the price?"
Fyrion leaned back, lacing his fingers together. It was a classic, flawless economic execution. Grom had leveraged his monopoly on a single resource, tallow. Fyrion had countered by eliminating that resource entirely.
'He was a whale, and I was a piranha,' Fyrion thought, with genuine happiness in a while. 'He never saw me coming. He was too big, too slow, and too arrogant to ever look down. Thanks, old man. Because of you…no, I will never fully acknowledge you but this one time, you helped me thanks for that.'
The image of that dirt cheap alchemist flooded his mind, his only mentor and a reliable father figure he had after being sold just at that moment.
CLANG!
The cellar door was kicked open. This time, it wasn't a joyful scribe.
The man who filled the doorway was a mountain of trembling, red-faced fury.
Grom.
He was holding his massive, blood-stained meat cleaver. His five brutish sons, all holding clubs and smaller knives, filed in behind him, their faces pale and confused. They looked like cornered, stupid animals.
"You!" Grom roared, his voice echoing off the stone. He pointed a sausage-like finger, shaking with rage, at Fyrion.
"You... filth! This is witchcraft! It's dark magic!"
Fyrion calmly finished his line of coin, took a sip of water, and then looked up. "Good evening, Guild Master. To what do I owe the pleasure? Have you come to negotiate a new price for your tallow? I'm afraid I'm no longer in the market."
"Ruin! You're ruining me!" Grom bellowed, taking a heavy, threatening step forward. The floor shook. "No one is buying! My stock is rotting! My men... they're starving! This is your fault, you little eunuch-spawn!"
He raised his cleaver. "You're going to stop. You're going to stop selling this... this dirt, or by the Gods, I'll cut you down where you sit!"
Silas shrieked and hid behind a stack of bricks.
Fyrion didn't move. He didn't reach for his aura. He didn't even stand up.
He just looked at Grom, his eyes as cold and still as a frozen lake.
"You're a fool, Grom," he said, his voice quiet. "You come into my house, my forge. You threaten my life, in front of my guards?"
Grom faltered, suddenly remembering where he was. He looked around. Fyrion was alone, save for the terrified scribe. "Your guards? What guards? Your father's men? They're half-starved old men!"
"No," Fyrion said. "Your men."
Grom blinked. "What?"
"Your five sons. Your twenty butchers. Your ten apprentices." Fyrion began to tick them off on his fingers. "They're strong. They're armed. But they're also... hungry. And you have no money to pay them. You have no food to feed them. Your entire Guild is bankrupt. You just haven't admitted it yet."
Grom's face went from red to a sickly, mottled white. He looked back at his sons. They were no longer sneering. They were just watching, their expressions grim.
"You," Fyrion said, his voice full of a terrible, predatory pity, "are just a loud, angry man with a knife, standing in my hall, with nothing to offer the men behind you. You're not a Guild Master anymore. You're a liability."
Grom's cleaver wavered.
Fyrion stood up. He walked to the coin table, picked up a single, solitary silver coin, and walked right up to the massive butcher.
Grom was a foot taller and outweighed him by a hundred kilos. Fyrion didn't care.
"I'm not here to ruin you, Grom," Fyrion said, his voice a perfect imitation of a polite merchant. He was almost smiling. "I'm just a humble merchant, pursuing fair trade."
He tossed the silver coin. It spun in the air, landing with a bright, insulting clink on the flat of Grom's cleaver, which was still embedded in the floor.
"I'll buy your Guild Hall," Fyrion said. "Your building. Your contracts. Your stock of rotting fat. Everything."
He pointed at the coin. "For that one silver."
Grom's eyes bulged. "One... silver... coin...?" It was the ultimate, final humiliation.
"And in return," Fyrion added, his voice dropping, "I'll hire your men. Even your sons. They look strong. I need men to shovel ash, haul bricks, and slaughter pigs. They'll get paid a fair wage. My wage."
He looked past the stunned butcher, his cold gaze landing on the five sons.
"Which, I assure you," Fyrion said, his voice clear and carrying, "is infinitely more than the nothing he'll be able to pay you tomorrow."
Grom looked at his sons. They were looking at the coin. They were looking at the piles of warm bricks.
They were no longer looking at him.