Chapter 70

Into the Awesome Night

BarnacleEyes and Thrush chowed down on smoked fish at the table. It was night and we often ate together before going to sleep. I’d eaten a bit earlier so instead of joining them, I lay in bed and read by candlelight and stovelight.

“Wactha reading?” BarnacleEyes said. She slurped at a hunk of fish in her hands. Juices ran down her arm to her elbow.

“I’m reading my guide,” I said.

“Anything interesting?” BarnacleEyes said.

“A lot of interesting attributes. The one I’m most interested in right now is called Mist Hidden.

“Oh yea,” the goblin said. “You’ve mentioned that one before.”

“I’m trying to see if there’s anything similar to it. If I could use it on the coast, we could better control the goblins.”

“It’s a wall of mist, and If I know goblins—which I do—they’ll just go around.”

“What if it’s wide enough?” I said.

“How will you make deliveries?”

“It says here that ‘When offered as a libation, enshrouds the area in a wall of mist that cannot be navigated through except by those who drink from the same beer.’”

Thrush grunted and said, “I’d have to drink from a Mist Hidden attribute beer in order to pass through the mist and meet the goblins on the other side.”

“Sounds like it,” I said.

“I don’t get it,” BarnacleEyes said. “Why don’t you just do that?”

“I can’t make the beer,” I said. “I don’t have the ingredients.”

“Can’t you go get them?”

“I don’t know where to find them.”

“I’ll ask Boggo,” Thrush said. “It’s a root?”

“Yes,” I said. “‘The cowbell leaves make a dull clang when disturbed by the wind.’ That’s what the guide says.”

“I’ll mention it and let you know,” Thrush said.

Later that night, I again fell asleep with an open book. I kept it open throughout the next day, studying it between tasks. There were quite a lot of base building ingredients, but nothing that would work as well as the Mist Hidden attribute. At least for a base that was all wilderness.

I daydreamed of brewing Mist Hidden beer for days. When I was on the ethereal plane, grinding my skills, it was all I could think about. I thought that if I could put the wilderness and the sea onto an ethereal plane, I would. If I could stay there for longer than a day, then it would be quite tempting. Until then, something like the Mist Hidden beer was all I had to go on.

If I could brew a beer like that, I knew exactly where I would use it.

I could go a few miles north of the cove where the smell of the sea hangs in the air. I would follow the pine trees east until I came upon the young birch that were rejuvenating the scorched earth of an old forest fire. I’d pick the yellow boletes that grew there and feast on them for a day before turning south.

I’d be tempted to travel until the conifers were rare, but I’d stop at the marsh to grill the tiger lilly flowers that grow in abundance there. I’d then head to the coast, and walk up the beaches and forests until arriving where I started. That journey would circle my base. That’s where I would use the Mist Hidden attribute beer.

I heaved a sigh before collecting the last of the hops I planted. My day on the plane was over, and I returned to my cabin. I finished the rest of my oatmeal planes cutter stout, and contemplated the beer. It wasn’t too great. It was missing a lot of good flavor and the hops were all wrong for it. I was craving more of the toasted oat flavor and there was an off putting aftertaste.

I’ll have to work on that someday, but right now, I’m craving some Billy Goat ale, and I wonder what it would be like with toasted oats.

Just like the clone brew, I roasted the malts once more. Then I toasted a generous amount of oats with the same focused attention. I pulled the pan of toasting oats off the stove when I could smell cream, porridge, and a bit of roasted marshmallow. I mashed the grains and oats, and selected slate colored hops from my inventory. I threw those in, brought the wort to a boil, flash cooled it, and flash fermented it. In no time, I had a 750ml bottle of a beautifully midnight oatmeal billy goat ale. I poured a drop onto my collector’s journal.

[Hawkin’s Oatmeal Billy Goat Ale.]

[Rare.]

[Bronze rank. Greater Tavern Ale.]

[Brewed in the northern wilderness with ethereal harvest grains and slate hops from Pike Hill farms.]

[Special Attribute: Skylight. Pouring a drop of this beer as a libation will clear the sky of all weather and haze for 1 hour. Radius is equal to rank and quality of the beer.]

I broke through another quality!

I leveled up and learned the new technique: Brewer’s Bubble. Instead of needing a pot or kettle, I could simply suspend everything in mid-air and simply brew. I knew from experience that I could only brew up to 250ml with a newly acquired skill, but a lot of practice would allow me to do larger quantities at a time. I couldn’t wait to practice.

For the remainder of the day, I brewed simple greater tavern ales, hoppy ales, and oatmeal stouts. Even though the oatmeal stouts took a lot more time to toast, it was still worth it. I traded the greater tavern ales for shards, and ended up with another 40 planes cutter ales to add to the collection. The cellar was beginning to get quite full.

Since a celebration was in order, I asked Thrush and BarnacleEyes if they wanted to have some of the new beer I’d brewed. Both were eager, so we gathered ourselves around a pit of glowing embers. Dusk warned us of night, and night fell.

It was partly cloudy and a haze obscured the faintest stars. I poured two boots of the oatmeal billy goat ale, and one glass for BarnacleEyes.

“Is this a special beer?” she said.

“Yup. This will be our first libation ever,” I said. “To those who are no longer with us. To the goblins.”

I poured a drop. Thrush poured a drop. BarnacleEyes poured a drop. Each drop fell like an incandescent tear in slow motion. Each splash made the earth ripple like a mirage.

Moonlight lit the clearing. Impossible since the moon was only just a crescent. Yet it glowed fiercely. The sky was a net of stars. Abundant meteors connected the dots. They twinkled so vividly that they looked like sparkles in the reflection of Thrush’s enormous eyes.

“Wow,” BarnacleEyes breathed.

Thrush purred.

“There’s BiteTongue,” BarnacleEyes shouted, reaching on her tiptoes to point. “I know that constellation! It’s BiteTongue!”

“Which one?” I said.

BarnacleEyes did her best to point out the constellation but her directions were poor. The more I kept asking, the more frustrated she’d become, and the harder she’d point.

“It’s right there!” She hollered. “I’m pointing at the first star! It’s the yellow one!”

“There are millions of yellow ones,” I said.

“I’m pointing at it! Look at my finger!”

It was impossible to find and BarnacleEyes gave up, opting instead to share the lore of BiteTongue who rose among the ranks of goblins to god-dom. He’d first come to fame from killing his enemies and biting their tongues out for trophies.

BarnacleEyes eventually ran out of steam when she lost her train of thought. By that time, we each poured our third drop. For the next few hours, we gazed into the awesome night.