[Erenthril Mael'tharias]

Mistress Llorai grinned at him.

“Hopefully you don’t think everything we use is a byproduct of urine, now, don’t you?” she teased, flipping back an errant strand of her hair and studying her student’s bashful smile for a second before examining the collection of flasks and vials she had at her disposal. It was quite the arsenal, admittedly, and after learning that white phosphorous was explosive when it came into contact with air, Eren was rather acutely curious as to what other means and methods she had at her disposal.

“Good. Because dung is another great resource often overlooked. Look here,” she spoke, holding out a small container that had the word ‘saltpeter’ spelled out on the side of it. Besides the fact it was a rather unusual name, Eren thought it looked a little strange to be made from dung also. It had the consistency of… well, powder. “Now, this is made from a multitude of things, but dung is one of them. You’ll need some soil that’s been fertilized with it, you see, and then the dung itself. Dry it out for a cycle or two, and let it sit outside. That’s important, because a crust will form on the side where the wind’s blowing, on top of the dung. It’s called Nitre, or Saltpeter..which is what you have in here.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Not a chance,” she grinned, placing the bottle down.

“Well…what do you use it for? Besides turning it back into fertilizer?”

“Ah, good question. You need it to make Blackpowder, and also for the more complex alchemical concoctions, like Aqua Regia and Aqua Fortis. But yes.. it’s the primary ingredient for blackpowder – useful for blasting and the like. Aside from that, however, its properties are vaguely useless and rather uninteresting,” she spoke, her lips tugging into something of a frown as she returned the item back atop of the wooden table and gestured for him to turn around.

Behind him were two large crates filled to the brim with charcoal, as if they’d just recently been resupplied. “That’s made by partially burning wood, then tucking it away in a metal container you place in the kiln. Those vents let the gasses escape, and essentially dries the wood out without setting it alight. Fairly simple concept. This one’s more interesting…

“Sulphur.”

She held it up for him to see, and Erenthril took it from her gingerly and scrutinized it appraisingly. It was a yellow liquid that was rather sloshy, and moved about rather easily inside the glass jar.

“Sulphur is commonly a catalyst in most alchemical reactions, and is created by smelting metals. Iron, steel, bronze… it’s all in there. Steel and bronze are alloys, by the way. You get bronze from tin and copper..” she remarked dryly. Eren stared at her. It was hard to believe such a young woman knew so much about… well, life in general. Everything that seemed to make up the world.

“Anyways, Saltpeter, Charcoal, and Sulphur are everything you need to make blackpowder. I’ll let you experiment with the correct ratios – away from here though,” she winked.