Chapter 20

Falling

Hawkin

Brewer’s Reputation: 600,572.

The light of dawn glowed through the autumn woods.

[Have a Fire Ya Bastard.]

[Silver rank. Level 66/100 Lesser Legendary.]

[Brewed by Erik Skullander in the Northern Quartz Valley.]

[Fermented and force-aged 100 years in liquor barrels.]

[The beer arrives in the glass with a hazy brown color. The foam is Mellow Marshmallow and glitters beige. Aromas of pitch peat assault the senses. Tar, ash, and smoke bog the beer with heavy strength. The foam is almost chewy and the beer is thick enough to sweeten tea.]

“Incredible,” I said. It took some time to fathom the words. Erik Skullander was a master at peaty beers. I was drawn to the flavor.

“Using peat as a fuel for kilning malts is something I’ve never done myself,” Abigail said. “Erik loves it, even though it’s time consuming.”

“I'm acquainted with the beautiful flavor but I know nothing about using peat.”

“Erik uses a combination of traditionally burning peat in combination with the Fire and Roast skill. Believe me when I tell you he’s amassed quite the following in the world of beer. I hear there’s a wait list to work under his tutelage.”

“He must dominate in the Oude Brewer’s Competition,” I said.

“He’s a droll,” Abigail laughed. “He hates the competition with a passion. Every year, without fail, he submits horrendous concoctions just to make the judges suffer.”

“That’s odd. Why?”

“In his words, he wants to ‘knock ‘em down a peg’. Last year he brewed a beer called chunky soup and gravy. The whole panel lost their stomachs. He knows that the judges have to taste every beer that enters.”

“I can appreciate a rebel.” I said.

“That makes two of us.”

We smashed tankards and enjoyed the last of our morning beer.

The aggressive taste of smoked peats obliterated my tongue. When I inhaled, I felt I was a furnace set upon isle cliffs. Abigail went through the same experience. I could see it in her sky-blue eyes. Private thoughts crossed her face. She looked within her tankard and gave a mean nod.

“So, Hawkin,” she said. “What else is in that loot chest?”

I rummaged through the chest and stowed the contents into my inventory as I came upon them. “Brewer skill books,” I said. “Hops, brett yeast, and an Imbue Memory skill book.”

“You’ll be going to your ethereal plane today,” Abigail said. “Will you brew your very first memory beer there? I’d like to see what it’s like.”

“Right after breakfast,” I said.

Everyone came out for a breakfast of smoked fish, dreambons, and stewed broccoli greens with chopped carrots and potatoes. Barnacle-eyes was still sleepy but the stew livened her up. Thrush was deep in thought while he devoured an entire tuna.

“Your flowers have sprouted,” Barnacle-eyes said.

The group turned to look at the tilled earth by Abigail’s shack. Vibrant green sprouts came up in perfect rows and columns.

“Oh, you’re right,” Abigail declared. “The soil is rich here. I’ve got so much more I want to plant.”

“Can I help?” Barnacle-eyes said.

“Of course. That would be wonderful!”

Abigail filled Barnacle-eyes in on her plan for the day. She was set on planting twice as much as she had with the black cohosh. She wanted to do some landscaping and brew specific attribute beers that would help her.

After breakfast, I gathered a stack of planks together. I put a boot on the stack and took a swig of my Greater Planes Cutter beer. The woods, my cabin, the clearing; all of it vanished in the blink of an eye. An endless world of opalescent atmosphere surrounded me. Floating before me was the bottle of beer I’d previously left.

The planks had also been transported. With them, I laid the beginnings of a log house foundation. I used wooden joinery, and labored away until I realized that Barnacle-eyes had the Ship Builder skill.

I’ll have to ask for her help. She’ll like that.

The foundation I’d laid out was the size of my cabin. The views were staggering. When I looked over the floating floor, vertigo attacked my throat and squeezed my gut.

Damn, I thought. This is going to take some getting used to.

I was mostly fine when I didn’t look down. The log house foundation grounded me. I sat on the edge and lost myself in the shifting opal colors. Then I activated my Forge Ethereal skills one at a time. I was happy to find that I was starting to reap the reward of leveling those skills up. I could now produce one hop cone per hour and the rest of the ingredients were much easier to forge as well.

Careful not to spend too much time on the plane, I accomplished one last task. First I absorbed my new Imbue Memory skill book after chugging water. It was a doozy of a skill book and I shouldn’t have absorbed it while standing.

Skill information overloaded my mind. My eyes rolled to the back of my head. I took a step back. My boot scraped against the wood foundation. I took another step back, but there was no more foundation to stand on.

Shit!

I couldn’t see a damn thing, couldn’t open my eyes because information was still suffusing my mind. I flailed as I fell backwards. My gut flipped as I began plummeting. Instinct made me panic. For a tortured moment, I felt as though I were going to fall to my death. For the longest time, I fought to regain control of myself. At last I did and heaved breath after breath as I opened my eyes and braced against the coming ground.

But there was no ground. I was suspended in mid-air right by the log house foundation. I hadn’t been falling at all. I’d been suspended, flailing like a fool. Because panic was still riding my quick heart, I grabbed onto the log house foundation and pulled myself back onto it.

That’s when the headache came on and I chugged more water until my pulse relaxed and my breaths came easy and deep. The only sound to perturb the ethereal plane was my laughter.

I was still chuckling when I began brewing a new beer. A light lager. Something refreshing and easy with light malt. I used an herbaceous hop and made 5 gallons.

With the fermenting wort floating in Brewer’s Bubble, I activated my Imbue Memory attribute skill.

[Begin memory.]

A series of moments: The opalescent expanse of the ethereal plane. The clap of my boots as I crossed the log house foundation. The view over the edge as I kept walking. Then the wild gut feeling of leaping off the foundation; instead of falling, flying forward. Flying-

[End memory.]

[Memory attribute imbued.]

As my own little ode to the ethereal plane, I used the Pearl Bubbles foam sub skill to finish off the beer. Then I trapped the beer in a 5 gallon barrel and plugged the bunghole. I flew back to my log house foundation and forged an ethereal label for the barrel.