2. Nitrogen

Precisely when Bitz wanted to mix the bubbling liquids of the two flasks, his entire building shook and he spilled it all on the table. A third flask slipped from his long teeth and shattered to pieces on the floor. Now he had to redo the entire experiment.

“Darn—”

A familiar sound reached his ears. Explosions. Bombs. Bitz tripped, then furiously stumbled out of his laboratory.

Mere kilometers from here, his Freethieves army camp ended, and the territory of the Godesweets started. When they’d asked Bitz if he please wanted to join at the front line, he’d instantly agreed. Now he wasn’t so sure anymore. The Godesweets attacked with bombs, grenades, and hails of bullets.

The Freethieves, his Freethieves, didn’t answer at all.

“Shoot! Stop them! What are you—”

“My my! What an idea!” yelled a squad that ran past. “We never considered shooting! What a genius idea!”

They were different animal species, but all of them could walk on two legs and hold a gun with the other two.

“Then why isn’t it happening?”

The first buildings caught fire. The Godesweets seemed like a dragon sometimes, able to squash and burn anyone in the way, especially if you didn’t fight back.

Two soldiers showed their disassembled gun and threw the parts on the floor. “We have no bullets. No gunpowder, no ammunition. We have nothing to fire!”

Bitz looked around. The entire city was filled with weapons that he’d never seen fired. Hadn’t the Islandseekers sent a message about a new island they found? At some remote island on Elwar? They should’ve been back with new guayn by now.

The next explosion threw a battalion of beavers into the blue sky. Bitz looked up. Night would soon fall and that usually meant no more fighting. But if they still lacked ammunition tomorrow, this front would be lost. The Godesweets would take back the entire Frambozi Forest—and probably quite a bit more.

That could not happen.

Bitz hadn’t traveled with them just to watch as they were hopelessly defeated because they lacked gunpowder. He had joined to show his homeland, Doveland, that he was the best scientist ever.

He entered an off-white building with cracks in the walls. The door was slammed shut in his face. He simply gnawed his way through the wood and still entered the room, panting.

“Go away, Bitz,” the commander bellowed. “A beaver wearing glasses who thinks he’s so clever is of no use to us.”

“I am a scientist! I will find a way to make new weapons!”

The commander was a Pricecat, a sly and strong feline. He was a descendant of the family that claimed to have defeated the original godchildren, and still claimed to possess several Heavenmatter. That’s probably why he thought he was better than everyone else.

Bitz studied the map. All the routes between Doveland and Elwar were covered by large red crosses.

“A sea blockade,” he mumbled. “The Casbrita cut us off from the islands. Their fleet is far larger and stronger than ours. That’s why haven’t received guayn in months!”

That’s why we’ll never receive it again, Bitz continued the thought. He’d joined the group to process that white substance. To convert it into more food for the army. A useless goal when the Islandseekers couldn’t actually bring the substance back home to Doveland.

The commander pushed Bitz’ paws away and rolled up the map.

“Of course. A Jurad like yours can never keep their nose out of other animals’ business.”

A Jurad like you. A filthy Jurad. Bitz heard it more and more often. His religion, which he did not even practice outwardly, was apparently enough reason to treat him like a useless child.

They shall never treat him like that again.

“Give me a day. I know the science, the material. I will find a way to create guayn ourselves. The enemy has magic and demigods—then we must have science!”

“As I said: you are useless. Tonight we flee this place. I’m sending you back to university.”

“But—”

“Be happy I don’t send you to jail.”

The Pricecat pushed him from the building. A new explosion sounded, much closer than the first. The door fell off its hinges and the windows burst.

Bitz did not even notice. He ran back to the laboratory, through a thick gray mist and the screams of soldiers who were able to fire their gun. The others hid inside the homes and prepared to flee. Bitz walked through it as if nothing happened, and if he’d been less lucky, he might have been hit by a bomb that night.

But he was lucky and reached his laboratory unharmed.

The bombs ceased. The sun set and the Godesweets paused their attack. When Bitz was certain the floor wouldn’t shake again, he started working.

His wife, Bilara, hopped in to meet him. He’d married his childhood love; his heart still jumped whenever she appeared.

“Bitz! You fool! We must leave. Away from this war.”

“I won’t leave until I have the solution.”

His long teeth carried five flasks at once to the table. There he built a setup of metal, burners and measuring tools, more carefully than ever. The bombs had ruined a lot of his tools, which now circled his feet in shards. He had two, maybe three attempts. If those failed, his laboratory would be empty and he would be a worthless Jurad.

“A solution to what?”

Bilara hugged and kissed him. Without any instruction, she knew exactly which flasks to hand him and when to turn on the heater.

“Guayn. I’ve studied it over and over, and I think it works because of ammonia. That substance makes the ground soft, fertile, better suited to growing plants.”

Bilara frowned. “… the chemical that’s in our urine?”

“No, that’s ureum. But it’s similar. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Guayn Islands are the result of some magical creature peeing in the ocean.”

“And you think we, creatures with no magic, could make it ourselves?”

Bitz had positioned all the flasks carefully. Then he grabbed an unfamiliar metal tube.

“Ammonia consists of two particles: nitrogen and hydrogen.”

“I know, dear. I received a higher grade on that test than you did.”

Bilara recognized the tube once it was used: it was filled with air under immense pressure. They often used that to forcefully rip a substance apart. If you applied enough pressure to anything, it would always break into smaller pieces.

But this tube was pressured to a dangerous extent. Now Bilara was interested, and she circled the table to discover her husband’s plan.

Bitz smiled and pulled on a rope. With hesitation, a light bulb turned on. All other corners of the lab were too dark to see, but the yellow light placed Bitz and Bilara into a warm circle.

“Nitrogen and Hydrogen. Do you know what also contains those particles?”

Bilara’s eyes opened wide. “Air.”

It may sound silly, dear reader, but it is true. The particles that make plants grow faster, or make weapons fire, are in the air all around us. But they are connected in a different way. Two particles could be extremely poisonous one way, but if you pull them apart and bind them to something else, they are suddenly a medicine. Some particles want to be together, some want to desperately be apart. Bitz had the tough task to steal nitrogen—a particle that tried to stay together—from the air and put it in a flask.

It was insanity. Turning the air all around them into something like ammonia. Bitz felt in his bones that it would fail, leading to trembling fingers for the first time since he was a boy. But if it was to happen, then it had to happen under large pressure, at the right temperature, and aided by water.

He placed the final part of the process. He’d thrown everything in his lab against the problem. A deep sigh left his exhausted body.

It was time.

Bilara helped him to turn on every machine in the process. Air was sucked in at the top, while water was supplied from the bottom. The process knew more than five steps, in which things were merged, cooled, mixed, or heated.

The waiting started.

If he was right, he could kill two beavers with one stone. The ammonia makes the soil fertile. But once connected with oxygen—also in the air, of course—it became nitrate. Also known as ammunition for weapons.

The moon hung high and pride. Bitz and Bilara intensely studied the bubbling liquids and the discolored flasks.

Bilara had fallen asleep. Bitz nervously chewed some twigs. In a few hours, the sun would rise and the fight would continue. Then he must—

He looked at the clock. If his calculations were correct, the process would be done now.

His puffy tail wrapped around the searing hot flask like an oven mitt.

He studied the result: it looked like guayn.

He sniffed the result: it smelled like guayn.

He dropped the flask in his excitement. Bilara woke up just in time to catch it.

“Bitz, stay calm, think about this. The invention could change the world but also—”

“Commander! Commander!” screamed Bitz as he ran from the lab and woke up camp.