katjohnadams:

charminglyantiquated:

What the fuck. What the FUCK. Why did I not know until now that Flaming Iron was a Thing. You’ve broadened my horizons, brightened my day.

BUT YES that was back in the 80s and it is SUCH A BIG PART of why the chemistry department is the only group on campus where the fear and respect is entirely mutual.

Flaming Iron is an understatement. A startling one, really. Thermite has some unique properties. First, it’s a powder. It’s a dangerous balance of iron oxide and another metal (like aluminum oxide). Spark it off with a hot enough flame and you get a run-away reaction that burns hot enough to melt through an engine block, destroy artillery, or absolutely ruin any flesh it gets close to.

So when the professor for CHEM305 disappeared two days after demonstrating the power of even low-grade thermite set on top of a inch-thick plate of steel, the students knew what to do.

Red Iron Oxide and aluminum powders were packed into carefully made explosives, ringing the gunpowder core. See, Thermite is not an explosive. It just burns as hot as fury and whiter than the sun. If you want it to cover an area as a weapon, you use something that moves violently, and let it ignite the thermite as it sprays it everywhere. The hell such things can shower on anyone nearby make them beyond inhumane. You don’t use this as a weapon; you use it as a punishment.

Colloidal Silver is expensive, but obtainable. And with the right forged department signatures, quite a bit can be delivered to a college campus. A one-way valve, a simple pump made of iron pipes and tubing and a carefully drilled spray nozzle act like poison to humans. They act like flame throwers to the Unkind.

And so a handful of sympathetic engineers and chemistry students set off into the woods. The Fey saw it coming and rose to meet this fight, thinking Themselves prepared for man’s silly little tools of war. That was Their mistake, They had prepared for war, combat as men do for politics and religious fervor. 

They were not prepared for unbridled, violent spite.

The first wave to fight these “children” collapsed quickly, taken aback by thunderous explosions that sprayed essence-rending iron and fire across the ground. The ones who got through the make-shift grenades collapsed in confusion as the water sprays turned out deadly, turned out painful. 

And the students did not stop. They showed no mercy or willingness to stop. The Fey ranks, broken and terrified, broke and fled into the forest. The students pulled back. Not jubilant or sorrowful, but knowing. This was merely the beginning.

The Gentry struck back in a mad rage, taking and twisting and breaking students and faculty on campus. One class was taken, desks and students alike, in the midst of the third period. Sometimes things like fetches were left. Sometimes just tokens of the students as reminders. The Chem students went back to the forest, they tossed in pipes filled with thermite, fused with magnesium. 

They began burning the forest. 

The militia marched around the flames, spraying, cutting, or burning Anything that stood against them. They gave no quarter. 

On the campus, the Fey retaliated. Things not seen in centuries, Things never seen before, rampaged. Wards and runes and circles cracked and shattered under the strain. Anyone with magical ability fought back, but this had become dire.

And suddenly the assault ended The Beings dispersed into the gloam, fled back to the smoldering, aching forest.

In a great field, circled by a forest burning on one side, quiet as death on the other, met two groups. The Students – haggard but unflinching in their malice – and the Court – bedraggled and angry and fearful. The latter parted and the Professor was brought forward. They shoved him roughly and two students rushed forward and retrieved him. Other students and staff filtered out from the Court side as well, all those taken in this suffocating deluge of violence.

All of them came and hid behind the armed and dark-eyed Chemistry and Engineering students. The Gentry nodded. The students nodded back. This was no easy peace, but a decision not to annihilate one another. The makeshift army walked back out, leaving their weapons behind as well as a note.

“We give you these,
We leave them here. 
This is not an offering.
It is a warning.
~Elsewhere U”