Chapter 54: Trail of Smoke

Brandon jumped the fence surrounding the maintenance area and stumbled into the vacant room. “This is not for maintenance. It’s a laboratory, an amazingly stocked one at that.” Still dripping wet, he squelched towards the extensive shelf on the right and turned vials, sniffed rocks, and picked up various chemicals to investigate.

Biscuit’s nostrils flared up after taking several quick sniffs. “I recognize a smell, faintly.” Following his nose, he stalked up to the large metal tanks in the stream. “Smells like Smoke.”

Sylph had not left the water yet and waded towards the tanks to inspect. Facing away from her stood a metal tray, propped up in the stream by a few rods. The remnants of black, bark-like crumbles sat on top like leftover breadcrumbs. “This has nothing to do with heating the baths. This is where she makes Smoke.” Sylph’s gaze followed the piping back to the assortment of alchemical apertures. “Or rather, where she keeps some poor sod to make it for her.”

“Smoke?” Brandon hurried over and bent over the fence. “This is a highly inefficient set-up to make any meaningful amounts of it-” his words trailed off as he spoke. He lifted his finger and followed the pipes, mumbling all the while until he turned back with a ghostly pale face. “No one produce any kind of fire or electricity,” he said, buried his face in his hands and rushed up to the table in the rear. “This is terrible.”

“What is it?” Sylph jumped the fence.

“In easy words, the Smoke is the byproduct of what is in these containers. And in these tanks,” he swallowed again. “These tanks are filled with what’s known as pyrrithium, in its liquid form. A horribly unstable liquid if allowed to get too warm. If they ignite, all that remains of Senbo is a memory on a map. The water cooling is the only thing stopping it from exploding.”

Their gazes were drawn back to the tanks. The sleek metal barely had any features, and yet it evoked a queasy dread inside of her. Unlike the sensation and rush of facing a maw full of teeth or the tip of a sword, the ominous fear was cold, calculated, and simply sat in the room like a sleeping wyvern.

“Why does Nahana need liquid pyrr—a bomb?” Sylph asked, but could answer her own question; Revenge against the human town next door.

Biscuit and Elina joined Brandon in sifting through the documents on the tables. “I think I found your answer,” Biscuit said, wiped the table clean and unrolled a scroll. It showed a map of Prina overlaid on the underground rivers. Four big crosses marked four exits. Some sort of calculations filled the space surrounding the outlines.

“More importantly, the map marks all drains,” Elina pointed out. “This is coming with us.” She rolled up the plan.

“Wait,” Sylph said, and unrolled the map again. “Four crosses, four tanks. Prina will be dealt with. She plans to blow up the slavers’ capital.”

“And look at this,” Biscuit spat, and threw another scroll of paper at Sylph. Her eyes narrowed as she deciphered the barely readable cursive. It turned out to be an extensive list of guards and patrols and a few extra notes about people of interest, and a cost estimate of bribes and fees. At the end sat a small squiggly signature with a heart drawn next to it. “Tanno.” Her scales flipped upside down at the mere memory. “I really messed up her plan by killing him, didn’t I?”

“Those marks are in range of some very important buildings.” Biscuit pointed at some of the larger rectangular outlines. “The mayor’s office, the guard post. Ripping out the heart of the slavers, they wouldn’t be able to recover.” Poking at the market, his claw pierced the paper. “Justice for the things they did.”

“That does not feel right,” Elina said quietly and gestured at the surrounding squares next to Biscuit’s hole. “There are so many dragons around there. They can’t do a thing, they can’t even flee.”

“And don’t forget that not everybody is involved with the slavers,” Brandon added.

Biscuit’s head snapped around. “And what would you know about that?”

“Stop it, look at this,” Sylph pushed her head between them and pointed at a sketch on another piece of parchment. It showed a dragon spewing a thin stream of fire and a large building collapsing. “Looks like a hatchling drew it.”

“Or Tanno,” Elina said. “That shape feels familiar. Only one round building like that exists; The mayor’s manor. The place where all the important people will take shelter after the bombs are set off.”

Nahana’s plan seemed clear enough. “She wants someone to light it on fire. And maybe bring it down, judging by those squiggly lines in the middle.”

They could simply leave, forget what they saw and hope killing Tanno messed it up sufficiently. But, like she went back for Biscuit, she could not ignore this. She hated Prina, but blowing it up would kill indiscriminately. “This feels odd. Why are these plans laid out down here and not locked away?”

Elina nodded. “Because this place is as safely shut away as could be in the palace. If you wanted to dig up the dirt beneath her claws, you’d start in her office or her room. Not the sewage river lab that nobody knows about.”

“You are all thinking of a bomb. It’s not a bomb,” Brandon hissed. “The truth is far worse.” He poked the map with extreme prejudice and gestured at the calculations. “They are all placed in the stream below the capital. If you mix pyrrithium with water, the result is a deadly gas, before it explodes if you add too much that is,” Brandon finished and the color returned to his face as he turned towards the silent apertures. “No sane alchemist uses more than a vial of that stuff. With these amounts, you can kill everyone in the city. The gas is heavier than air. Refugees would seek the highest place, which she will then set on fire.” He clenched the paper.

“Does it affect dragons too?” Biscuit asked, “Or just humans?”

“Of course it does!” Brandon spun around and hissed back at him, “Alchemy doesn’t care what you are. You are simply a pile of organic material. We should destroy it.”

Sylph turned to face the tanks. He had the right idea. In no world would she let Nahana have access to a weapon like this if she could do anything about it. “Wouldn’t it react with the water here, too?”

“No, no, no,” Brandon jumped in front of her to stop any stray thoughts she might be having. “Destroy as in safely neutralize it. I have a plan.” He turned to look Sylph straight in the eye, and she nodded.

With a small click, the door in the back swung open. A frail old man with a shoddy beard entered. He did not notice his three new dragon statues standing in the room and closed the exit with a smack while whistling a cheerful tune.

Perhaps the idea of somebody in his lab this late at night had not even crossed his mind, so when the sluggish thoughts fell into place like flies into a web and his whistle squeaked up in pitch, Sylph had already thrown him to the floor. “I’m going to release your mouth, you won’t scream or I’ll gut you,” Sylph said, and the men nodded as fast as he could with her pfod pushing down on his face.

She released his mouth, and he drew a deep breath. “What are you doing in here? Can’t you let me work in peace for one night?” Judging by his reaction, getting jumped by a dragon barely surprised him, which spoke volumes about his employment.

“We don’t really need him, do we? Let’s just gag him and be done with it,” Biscuit motioned and grabbed a piece of large cloth. Sylph rolled the elderly man over towards him.

Meanwhile, Brandon had already fiddled with various vials and liquids and lit a small burner.

“Wait!” The old man threw himself out of Biscuit’s grasp and stumbled forward. “What are you planning to do with those?”

Sylph’s tail flicked through the air and hit the old man square in the chest. He coughed a single huff and fell backwards. Biscuit caught him. “Can you perhaps not let the prisoner go free, you chocolate sprinkle?” Biscuit looked up and down at his pfod and the man, unsure how he had broken loose.

“I will undo what you planned to do,” Brandon answered the old man with grim determination in his voice.

“No! She’ll gut me!” the old man yelled and tried to break free once more. Surprised by the force he had to muster, Biscuit struggled for a second before the man relented and sagged backwards.

“This is not the purpose of alchemy,” Brandon continued. “Our job is to push what we know, to experiment and research, all in the name of progress.”

“If you think Nahana cares about Myria’s path, you are naïve. Alchemy is a mere tool for her. As am I.”

“Be quiet!” Biscuit stuffed the piece of cloth into his mouth, which the old man spat out immediately. “You mess with this, you are as good as dea-” Elina came to Biscuit’s rescue with a long segment of cord, put the cloth back and neatly tied it around his head.

In the following silence, Brandon raised a bottle with a brownish liquid and pointed at Sylph. “Drying this would take me hours. Can you do it in seconds?”

Sylph grabbed the bottle, turned it against her scales and moved her center of water. Reaching through the mirror lake inside her, she tugged on the fuzzy, watery thread that made up the center in more detail. The tentacles reached for the liquid yarn in the bottle and sucked up every last drop.

Brandon spun back to work, the next flask already prepared. He handed her powder after powder to hold, dry, or shake, all while he narrated what he did as usual. Normally, she followed the process, but right now, he seemed to do ten things at once.

When he turned on another burner and placed a mixture on its flame, he drew the first full breath in over a minute. “I shouldn’t say this, but this is amazing.” His smile faded as quick as it appeared. “I wish I had this kind of equipment at home. I could do so much with it, so much better than make deadly chemicals.” He huffed a content sigh as he browsed through the stocked shelves and pulled out a silvery dust. “This alone is worth more than our entire shop.” With a gleam in his eyes, he poured the entirety into another black-ish powder and mixed the two. “But who cares about stealing on the long list of crimes she could accuse us off.”

As he shook the powder, Sylph recognized the shimmer. “This is the flashing paint, isn’t it?” Sadly, her can stood somewhere in her bedroom along with her satchel.

“Not exactly. Recall the formula in my cell. Water, pure.” He held up the container beneath her head as if it was a faucet. Happy to oblige, she commanded the center to her head. “You can be glad that my ability works like this.”

He laughed. “I am betting on it. It is far less viscous, unable to be painted on, but soluble in water. So you can disperse it into your wings on your own and then infuse it with water to store it again whenever you want.” Brandon held up the container to her shoulder height. The silver shimmer coursed through the mix like a swirling cloud and dispersed like a school of tiny fish when she placed her pfod inside.

“That is what you did in the cell? I just kinda scratched my initials into the rock.” She dragged the liquid into her back, suspended in a watery yarn behind her deadly weapon.

He turned and smiled, swishing another vial. “I have the perfect partner for this. You cut away hours of waiting for things to dry. Also,” he took back the empty container. “This fresh paint is toxic and stupidly expensive, so don’t let it get into your system.”

Not even lingering for an answer, he spun back around, handing her another glass tube with a white powder. “Just a few pure drops of water, as pure as you can.” A small plume of smoke rose from the powder as she did. “Perfect.”

“This is exciting to watch. I do not know what you are doing,” Elina said. She sat next to Biscuit, the bound old man between them. They certainly made sure he would not move again on his own. They had wrapped several straps and cords and pieces of rope all around him with no coherent system or idea.

“Alchemy,” Brandon said.

“Magic,” Sylph said and splashed the now frothing white mixture into the bottle Brandon held up.

He mixed it once more, walked up to the largest of the pipes and poured it in, much to the gagged old man’s mumbling complaints. Brandon stepped back to examine his work and proudly crossed his arms. “Done. I just ruined years of production in under two minutes.” He laid down the bottle. “Let’s get going.”

Sylph watched the tanks, expecting something to happen, a sound perhaps, a gurgle, or a hiss, but the metal remained silent and motionless, which in alchemy terms was probably a good thing for the extremely dangerous liquid to do.