Vokey slumped against the wall. The cold, gritty stone leached the warmth from his back.
The silence was the worst part.
It was a thick, oppressive thing. A stark contrast to the Invoker's libraries. A world away from the constant hum of arcane energies and whispered theories.
Here, there was only a faint drip of water. The sound of his own breathing.
The air was a miserable cocktail. The damp scent of ancient stone. The tang of ozone from his failed spell. And from one corner, the sharp, ammoniac bite of the latrine.
He hadn't just failed. He'd successfully peeled a sticker off a vault door. The humiliation was a physical taste. Sharper than the acidic water he'd used. The guard's mocking voice still echoed from the peephole.
"My genius," Vokey muttered to the darkness. "Is apparently only brick-deep."
He was beyond angry. He was intellectually offended.
His precise, elegant plan had been sabotaged. By a footnote. A plan derived from the system's own infuriating rules.
The entire grand theory was a fraud. Calibrated to some backwater mudball. A mudball in a completely different plane of existence.
"Of course, it didn't work!" he seethed. He surged to his feet, pacing the three steps his cell allowed. "I was trying to perform surgery with a butcher's knife. A knife forged on another world. This entire 'Central Science' is a cosmic joke. And the punchline? The core constants are from some irrelevant dump named 'Earth'!" He spat the name. Dalton. Blaming the originator of the flawed theory he had so foolishly tried to wield.
A familiar, unwelcome chime echoed in his thoughts. A tone so perfectly neutral it was infuriating.
SYSTEM ALERT: Your understanding of the origins of atomic theory is incomplete. To enhance operational efficiency, a historical overview of John Dalton is required.
Vokey stopped dead. "Oh, wonderful," he groaned. He let his head loll back against the unyielding stone. "A history lesson. I'm trapped in a dungeon. My magical encyclopedia wants to give me a pop quiz on a dead man from a dead planet. Just what I needed."
John Dalton's primary scientific interest was not chemistry, but meteorology, Vex stated. Its voice in his mind was a masterpiece of blandness. Perfect. Passionless. And yet, Vokey sensed a smug satisfaction in its delivery. His work was driven by a desire to understand the physical properties of the atmosphere.
The information landed with a wet thud.
"You're telling me," Vokey said slowly. "The father of this 'fundamental science' wasn't a grand mage. He wasn't seeking cosmic truth. He was a glorified weatherman. Obsessed with puddles and clouds?"
"Our Invoker mages command the storm. This fool just counted raindrops. He was confused that gases in the air didn't separate into layers. We see the breath of the world and understand its harmony. Pathetic."
His meteorological inquiries led him to investigate the nature of chemical combination, Vex continued, its tone as flat as week-old beer. This resulted in his most significant contribution: The Law of Multiple Proportions.
Vex explained Dalton's experiments. Carbon and oxygen. They produced two distinct gases. In one, a fixed amount of carbon combined with oxygen. In the second, the same carbon combined with double the oxygen.
Vokey's eye began to twitch. "Let me see if I have this straight. He burned some charcoal. He made two kinds of smoke. And his profound, earth-shattering insight was that two is… double one? And for this, they gave him a 'Law'? My clan's toddlers perform more complex calculations. Especially when dividing stolen honey-cakes. It's not a discovery. It's basic arithmetic!"
It is also a matter of historical record, Vex added. The pause felt just a little too deliberate. An Irish chemist, William Higgins, published similar concepts nearly two decades prior. He accused Dalton of plagiarism.
Silence.
Vokey's triumphant grin froze. It twitched. Then it collapsed. A mask of pure, unadulterated rage. His head snapped up, a manic fire in his eyes.
"I KNEW IT!" he roared. He slammed his fist into the stone wall. Pain lanced up his arm. Sharp. Immediate. He hissed, cradling his scraped knuckles. The wall didn't care. "I KNEW IT! The system is boring. It's flawed. It's based on fraudulent extra-planar data. And its very foundation was STOLEN!"
"It's a con. Built on a theft. The entire grand edifice of 'Chemistry'... built on the work of a plagiarist. A plagiarist who was obsessed with the weather. Oh, this is too perfect."
This was the ultimate vindication. Every doubt he'd had was justified. Every sneering criticism. It was all understated. The system wasn't just a scam. It was a second-hand scam.
"This whole time," he ranted. He paced again, ignoring the throb in his hand. "I've been trying to follow their rules. I tried dissolving the mortar. A crude application. I tried shattering the atoms. A hopelessly complex one. Both failed. I was trying to destroy the wall. Or rewrite its very nature. But this fool Dalton... this thief... he didn't destroy anything. He just took two simple things. Charcoal and air. He combined them. He made something new. Something with completely different properties. He didn't break the rules. He just… made a better recipe."
The words hung in the air. Vokey stopped. His own rant echoed in the profound quiet. He stood frozen. The manic energy drained out of him. Replaced by a cold, sharp clarity.
A better recipe.
It was an insultingly simple concept. Mages didn't use 'recipes'. They wove matrices of power. They balanced cosmic forces. They imposed their will upon reality. This… this was just stirring pots. Combining ingredients.
And yet… the weatherman had created new substances. Entirely new substances. From the mundane. He hadn't needed grand power. Just the right ingredients. In the right amounts.
He didn't need to break the wall. He needed to transform the simple things in his cell into a tool. A tool for escape. It was the core principle of a chemical reaction. The one useful thing he'd gleaned from the story of the fraudulent weatherman.
Vokey looked around his cell with new eyes. He didn't see stone and filth. He saw an apothecary's shelf.
Reactant A: The cup of acidic water from the guards. A ready source of the bully, Hydronium (H₃O⁺).
Reactant B: The designated latrine corner. Disgusting, yes. But through the slow magic of decay, the urea in his waste was constantly decomposing into a far more useful substance: ammonia (NH₃), a chemical base.
Acid plus base. The simplest reaction in the entire, idiotic textbook.
He wouldn't be making an explosive. That was brute-force thinking. His second attempt. No. This was far more elegant.
The reaction would generate heat. A small, contained fury.
More importantly, he could create something useful. A cloud of pure, choking ammonia gas. Not enough to fill the hall. But more than enough for the peephole.
A targeted weapon. Debilitating. It would incapacitate the guard. It would be created from filth and frustration.
No explosion. Just a silent, chemical coup.
A slow, wicked grin spread across Vokey's face. The first genuine smile since his imprisonment.
"My first two attempts were based on their flawed theories," he whispered, cradling his aching hand. "This third one... this one will be based on their fraud. Time to cook."