Chapter 16

Opalescent

I sipped my first Greater Planes Cutter beer right from the bottle.

The crisp style was evident. The Sticky Meringue foam clung to my lips only briefly before melting away with a soft hush. Beyond that, I could not fathom what I was experiencing. I had no words. I simply closed my eyes to immerse myself in the experience.

By the gods, I thought. This tastes like sunlight on panes of brass. It tastes like stone monuments in the quiet of a desert. It has the fragrance of scalding water in a tin cup. A mineral of sand puts visions in my mind of an earth where only barley grows. This beer tastes as though it comes from a world made of metal and grain and nothing else. The body of this beer is too light to be true, like missing a step or skipping a heartbeat. There’s no other way to describe these flavors and aromas. Not when they’re otherworldly.

The taste lingered for the longest moment of my life. When I opened my eyes, I was instantly overwhelmed. I was no longer in my wilderness beneath the massive sumac. I was in a place without land. A place without horizon. A place of nothing but opalescent atmosphere. I stood firm, but there was nothing beneath me. I stepped forward, walked, but went nowhere. Then I jumped, but stayed suspended. I floated as my toes reached for the ground and swam through the atmosphere but arrived nowhere. The ethereal plane was empty.

Then the plane rippled. Even my body rippled and it threw my stomach for a loop. I turned toward the source of the ripple. A woman; Dellia Lucerne. Her form was an outline. Her hair extended for dozens of feet all around her. Strands wavered like seaweed in ebbing water. I could make out no expression. No skin. No clothes. Her entire form was filled with the cosmos. Her entire body was freckled in a reality of stars and planets. I stared in awe as she swam toward me. She had no face, but I felt her mirth and heard her light laugh.

“Hawkin,” Dellia said as she slowed her travel. She stopped before me and her hair nearly cocooned us. “Congratulations. There are few Planes Cutters in your world. Welcome to your very own plane Beyond the Cabin. I’m thrilled that we’ve gotten this far. Tell me what you think.”

I could no longer tell which way was up. Were we twirling through the atmosphere? Were we moving? The outline of Dellia’s faceless chin lengthened. Only a smile could have done that.

“This is… …very different from the other ethereal plane,” I said.

“It is up to you to define what this plane will be, what it will hold, and who will have access here. Its design is in your hands.”

“How?”

“I will guide you.”

“How long do I have here?”

“As long as you’d like, but remember, you’re here in real time. Every hour that you spend here is one hour in your world.”

“Then how do I return home?”

“If you are not ready to call this your home quite yet, simply have another sip of your Greater Planes Cutter beer. If you have no more, simply clone the recipe. But be careful inviting others because those who cannot Forge Ethereal ingredients will be stuck here with no exit. I recommend that you leave clone brews where others can easily find them if they need an exit.”

The disorientation was starting to become too much. I was getting dizzy.

“Drop one of your Beyond the Cabin beers on this plane,” Dellia said.

I withdrew one of the 750ml bottles and let it go. The bottle did not fall. Instead, it began floating away.

“Let’s stop moving,” Dellia continued. She halted in mid-atmosphere. I halted with her and swam back towards the bottle. I realized then that bottle hadn’t been moving. We had been slowly coasting away from it. The bottle was still, just as I’d left it. With one touch, the bottle began to slowly spin. Dellia’s cosmic colored hand righted the bottle. Then she floated aside.

“How big is this place?” I said.

I turned to find Dellia gone. She left no evidence that she’d ever been there. No fragrance. No flower. No breeze or drop of dew. All that remained was the endless opalescent atmosphere. My only anchor was the floating bottle.

I was tempted to leave. Tempted to be done with the disorienting plane, but something within held me back. I stayed instead and swam around. The opalescent colors were changing. They morphed.

I murmured in absolute awe many times while I made my way through nothing but atmosphere. The light of the plane was easy and cool. There was no shadow.

Before long, I wondered if my mana would replenish like it did on the previous ethereal plane. I used my Forge Ethereal Grain skill as a test. I was astonished to find that my mana replenished even faster. So did the progress it took to forge grains.

Meditating was much easier. I couldn’t place why, but I was able to focus my mind to a level I’d never been able to before. I also found that I was more relaxed. I could breathe more deeply.

What a world, I thought. I wonder if Thrush is still prohibited from entering a plane. I’d love to bring him here.

Not that Thrush would be interested in coming somewhere like here. At least, not at the moment. He was preoccupied lately. While I understood he sometimes spent a lot of time with Boggo, he was otherwise distant when it was just us. Things were on his mind. He often talked of elodon ribs. It was something I wish I could give him, or hunt for him. But there were none in my woods.

I spent another hour floating around, performing acrobatics in mid-atmosphere and getting quite disoriented. When I’d had enough for one day, I took another sip of my Greater Planes Cutter beer and found my feet set down on firm ground again. After a single blink, I was back in my wilderness in the same spot I’d been hours prior.

Barnacle-eyes bumped into me. The stack of logs she’d been carrying spilled to the ground.

“Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t see you there.”

“My fault,” I said and bent to pick up some logs. “Where are you taking these?”

“I’m helping Thrush smoke some turkey. Turkey is delicious, Hawkin. Abigail is there too. Come have some goblin spit beer with us!”