Ashanti's accelerant

A jar of coarse granules out of an alchemist’s satchel, and the piece Ashanti had been missing.

It came off the two brothers hired to burn Haudh-Gwenn’s meeting places. The one who threw alchemist’s fire down a hallway at Koa and was killed for it was the alchemist of the pair, and his recipe book came away with his satchel. The party dumped the whole haul on Ashanti’s worktable in the middle of an experiment. She groaned at most of it, and then found the granules. A pinch thrown into her burner turned the flame light-blue and screaming hot for about ten seconds, and a fire-crystal brazier dragged into her workroom gave exactly the same reaction, which meant the stuff did not much care what it was burning in.

She demanded to know where it had come from, went through the dead man’s book correcting his arithmetic as she read, and came off it electrified: this would be the accelerant she needed. It bridged the gap between what her braziers could reach and what burning the ooze required. Better, she could extend the recipe, weaker by measure but far more of it and a longer burn, which for a volume that had to be taken all at once was worth more than potency.

She asked for a week and one competent pair of hands. Mikhail gave her both, and what finished her process in the end was neither the granules nor the book: it was his remembering which room of that keep the Mól had cut their gems in, and bringing her the old runoff crushed to flecks.