Chapter 4

What Do You Think

Brewer’s Reputation: 600,726.

Abigail’s Sunflower and Toffee ale had been out of this world. It was a shame to follow the gold rank ale with a silver rank Lesser Planes Cutter ale. I shared the beer with her anyway, and introduced her to the ethereal plane.

She was in awe for some time. She touched the honeysuckle flowers. Her fingers grazed the cosmos. She delighted in the multitude of poppies and collected unknown flowers. I walked with her while she explored the fields. I listened to the things she had to say.

“The sun is easy here,” she said. “If the breeze is always like this, it’s a dream. Reminds me so much of my hills in the south. The fields get like this. When the animals graze, sometimes all that’s left are thistle. Then the mountain goats come and take care of those.”

“Sounds like an amazing place,” I said.

“So what do you do here?”

“The atmosphere replenishes your mana, so I grind my Brewer skills. I brew beer; cultivate ingredients.”

“Work, work, work.”

“It’s a joy,” I said. “I never push myself. When I want to stroll through the fields, I spend the day doing that. Sometimes I swim.”

“Swim? There’s water here?”

I escorted her through the goldenrods and curly docks toward the river. We ambled while she told me of the Oude Brewer’s Competition in Lavenfauvish.

“The next one is in mid-spring next year,” Abigail said. “It happens every year. Brewer’s from all over the world compete in various categories. Categories are divided by rank, then style, attribute, and then adjunct.”

“Have you competed before?”

“Every year. I won a gold medal in bronze rank beers when I first started brewing. As a result, I had a lot of apprenticeship opportunities which catapulted my career as a Brewer.”

“What was the beer?”

“It was an ice goat ale.”

“I love goat beers! Do you still have the recipe? I’d love to sample more of your work.”

“You want me to brew a bronze rank ice goat ale?”

“Yea.”

“How about I brew a gold rank ice goat ale?”

“I’ll take it.”

“I imagine you’ll be competing as well,” Abigail said.

“No, no I don’t think so.”

“Why not? It’s an excellent opportunity to test your skills against others. To learn from others, to network, to secure awesome opportunities and enrich your potential.”

“Some of that sounds good, but I don’t want to travel. I don’t really want to be around people.”

Abigail fell silent after that and in short time, we arrived at the river. The water flowed calmly. I removed my boots, socks, and rolled up my pants. Abigail hiked up her summer dress and we waded through the river. We took seats upon a half submerged boulder and let the current pull at our ankles.

“The water feels so nice,” Abigail softly said.

We swung our feet in the water and chatted more about the Oude Brewer’s Competition. Abigail caught me up on past winners. A lot of styles she mentioned were quite new to me, and I was curious to learn more. To try those beers. To explore the variety of beers and attributes the world had to offer.

Right before going into some of the diamond rank winners of the past, we both noticed something move through the grass on the bank of the river.

“Did you see that?” Abigail whispered.

“Yea,” I said. “That’s odd. There are never animals here.”

The grass shuffled. Rustled. There was a brief moment of inactivity before a blue bestie launched out from the grass and into the river.

“Is that… Boggo?” I said.

Boggo hit the river with a soft splash. He floated for all of 2 seconds before disappearing from the ethereal plane entirely.

“Boggo?” Abigail said.

“He’s Thrush’s friend. A blue bestie. They play games together and I guess he got his hands on one of my Lesser Planes Cutter beers.” I burst into laughter. “I bet he’s been enjoying his time on the plane.”

“I’ve never seen one of those before,” Abigail said.

“They’re really sweet. They’re super quiet and hardly make themselves known.”

“Except for that one.”

“Yea, except for that one. My guess is that he feels safe here. Thrush mentioned something about Boggo becoming more curious about the surface of the world. That he thought this plane would be a good first step for the bestie.”

“You’ve got all manner of creatures living around you.”

“I first discovered them in the cellar beneath my cabin. Thrush found them. Speaking of, let’s head back to the cellar on this plane and transport some barrels back to the brewery.”

Just before our time on the ethereal plane ended, we put a few heavy barrels into our inventory. Brewer’s Portal attribute beers brought us to my cabin and we left the barrels by the brewery doors. Then we sipped another Brewer’s Portal attribute beer to return to the frontier of our hike.

It was still twilight.

“So what do you think about Brewer’s Portals?” Abigail said as we tucked into our bedrolls.

“Convenient,” I said. “I’m honestly kind of shocked about it. Great for emergencies, but I think it’s also taking a lot of my mana to use. Leaves me somewhat exhausted.”

“The more you improve your Alchemical Control skill and rank up, the less mana it will consume at once.”

“I bet you travel all over the world,” I said.

“Funny you mention that. One thing we have in common is that we’re both averse to traveling. I live alone in my hills. Prefer it that way”

“I admire that,” I said.

“Remember drinking my Heart of Time ale?”

“I do.”

“If you would have been silver rank, you would have portaled to my mansion with no way to return home besides on foot.”

“That would have sucked.”

“Perhaps,” she said. “We would have met sooner.”

“Well, yea. It might have saved you the hassle of coming to find me, but I would have had to navigate home without attributes to help me.”

Abigail looked at me across the dwindling flames of our campfire. “I would have helped you,” she said.

After a moment, I said, “thanks for guiding me on how to brew Brewer’s Portal attribute beers. I appreciate it. I wish I could make portal beers for Thrush.”

“Unless he follows the Brewer’s quest path and reaches silver, it won’t work on him.”

“He’s been talking about Omes Arbor lately. About smoked elodon ribs.”

“I see,” Abigail said. “You’d want to help him easily revisit Omes Arbor.”

“Exactly,” I said.

We spoke of Thrush some more as the twilight quickly dimmed to night. Abigail put her nose in her journal and began writing. I spent an hour using my Forge Ethereal Hop skill to bring the hop I was forging to 30%.