The family forge was a tomb of ice and failure – Scriptorium.
It hadn't been used in months. The great bellows were cracked, the quenching troughs were frozen solid, and the anvils were slick with frost.
Fyrion ignored the cold. He was in his element. This was a lab.
"Silas. Grind this."
Fyrion pointed to a barrel full of the "worthless" black slag coal.
"M-Master?" Silas, the scribe, was trembling. He was completely out of his depth. "Grind... grind it? For what?"
"Into a fine powder. As fine as flour. Use that milling stone. Don't stop until your arms fall off."
"Fyrion!" Lord Valdemar stood in the doorway, his face a thundercloud.
He had followed his son here, his initial shock at the knight's injury now curdling back into familiar, angry confusion.
"What is this madness? You assault the Queen's men, and now you play in the dirt? Are you a child, or have you truly gone insane? Come with me to kneel down and apologize!"
Fyrion didn't look up. He was busy measuring. He'd found sulfur for tanning hides and saltpeter scraped from the damp castle foundations. The ratios were already in his head, a formula as simple to him as breathing.
Carbon, 75%. Saltpeter, 15%. Sulfur, 10%.
"Silas. The powder."
"Yes, Young Master!" Silas, more afraid of Fyrion than his own lord, began to frantically grind the black rock in the heavy stone mill.
"Fyrion, I am speaking to you!" Valdemar roared.
Fyrion finally paused, looking at his father with the cold, detached patience of a master explaining to a particularly dull apprentice.
"You are worried about the envoys. You are worried about the levy. You are worried about the cold. All of these are the same problem."
He gestured to the pile of dust Silas was creating. "And this is the solution."
Valdemar looked at the ingredients. The sulfur. The saltpeter. The black carbon dust.
His eyes widened in horror.
"Gods preserve us... that's... that's blasting powder. Have you truly gone mad!?"
Silas shrieked and jumped back from the mill. "P-poison! He's making poison! Or... or an explosive! Young Master, are you planning to kill the envoys?!"
"To kill..." Valdemar looked at his son, aghast. "You'd bring that level of ruin upon us? You'd declare war on the Crown with a barrel of crude explosive rather than begging for forgiveness?"
Fyrion let out a sigh of pure, unadulterated exasperation.
'They see a bomb. Of course they do. Their minds are... small. They only see what's right in front of them.'
"It's not an explosive," Fyrion said, his voice flat. "An explosive is a failure. It's an unstable, inefficient, wasteful reaction. I am an alchemist. I don't create failures. I make success that stems with elegance!"
He scooped up the three piles of dust. He walked to the center of the forge, mixing them in a large clay basin. He added a measure of water and gray clay, kneading the mixture into a thick, black, gritty paste.
Valdemar drew his sword. "Step away from that, Fyrion! That is an order! You'll kill us all!"
"It's inert," Fyrion said, not even looking at him. "The product is incomplete. It's missing the final, most important catalyst."
"And what," his father asked, his voice shaking with rage, "is that?"
"Me."
Fyrion plunged both hands into the freezing, wet paste.
He closed his eyes.
'In my past life, this was impossible. I had the knowledge, but no Core. I was a chef with no fire.'
He ignored his father's shouting. He ignored Silas's whimpering. He focused, reaching inside himself to that small, warm, pristine sun he now possessed.
He followed the mental pathways he had memorized but never walked. The 'First Canto of the Aura Manual.'
Breathe in. Draw the cold. Breathe out. Focus the will.
He pulled.
It wasn't a gentle stream. It was a flood. His untrained, 19-year-old body was not prepared for the sheer volume of mana his intact Core held. It roared up his spine and flooded his arms, a torrent of raw, celestial power.
'Too much! I'll overload the mixture! Stabilize! Refine! Don't just push it, weave it!'
His Grandmaster's mind took over. His panicked, juvenile body obeyed.
The mana, raw and violent, was suddenly forced through the bottleneck of his will. It refined, it cooled, it became a needle-thin, precise thread.
He channelled that thread of pure, cold aura into the black paste.
FWOOM.
It didn't explode. It ignited.
There was no sound. No smoke.
A brilliant, clean, blue flame erupted from the basin, so bright it washed all colour from the room. It burned with a silent, intense, impossible heat.
Valdemar's sword slipped from his numb fingers.
Silas fell backward, shielding his eyes from the holy light.
The flame burned for exactly three seconds, the aura acting as a catalyst, transmuting the very nature of the materials. The sulfur's volatility was burned away, the carbon's structure was compressed, the saltpeter's energy was bound.
When the blue light faded, the paste in the basin was no longer cold and gritty. It was a single, hot, malleable black mass, glowing with a dull, internal red warmth.
"Yea, now it's complete!"
Fyrion, his face pale and beaded with sweat from the exertion, began to calmly pack the hot mass into a simple wooden brick mold he'd found. He pressed it down, ejecting a single, perfect, dense black brick.
It steamed in the cold air for a moment, then settled.
"It's... it's just a brick," Silas whispered, his voice trembling.
"No," Fyrion said.
He picked up the brick. It was warm to the touch but no longer burning. He walked to the Great Hall's frozen hearth, the one his father could no longer afford to light.
He placed the brick inside.
He took a flint and steel and struck a single spark.
The brick caught the spark. It didn't burst into flame. A small, orange glow appeared on its corner, and then... WHOOSH.
A silent, roaring pillar of clean, yellow-white flame erupted from the brick, as tall as a man.
There was no smoke. There was no smell of sulfur or chemicals.
There was only heat.
A pure, powerful, overwhelming wave of heat that blasted the ice from the windows and pushed the cold, damp air out of the hall.
Lord Valdemar, the hard, Northern warrior, took an involuntary step back, his hand raised to shield his face from the sudden, glorious warmth. He stared, speechless, at the single brick burning with the intensity of a whole forest.
Silas was on his knees, his face a mask of awe.
Fyrion stood in the new, warm light, a small, cold smile on his face.
"This is a 'Sun-Brick,'" he said, his voice echoing in the finally-warm hall.
"And it will make us rich."
And at the same time a small girl entered the room pushing open the doors, "Brother, Viola's here! What happened with the envoy's the stormed out of the mansion and cursed at very maid they could see?"