Chapter 48
They’re Alive.
Hawkin
Brewer’s Reputation: 755.
Dream Cutter Stone Shard Quest: 13,300/15,000 shards.
I roused from a mix of dreams. It was black, and late night stars were still out. The blue of early morning had not yet obscured the night sky. Several dozen yards away, a giant maple towered in the sky. It blocked so many stars that it left a single stripe of darker shadow across the forest floor. Abigail stirred from her bedroll beside me; then murmured.
I struggled up. “All this hiking. I’m starting to wake up sore.”
She sat up, leaned in, and dropped a kiss on my lips. Her stomach rumbled.
“Sweet potatoes?” I said.
She sat back. She still hadn’t opened her eyes, but she faced me. “Do we still have turkey?”
“Sweet potatoes and turkey it is.”
Together we gathered firewood and built a cooking fire. It was a colder morning; summer was now days behind us. The sweet potatoes roasted in the embers. Cooked turkey was warmed near the flames. When the sweet potatoes were done roasting, we cracked the burnt things open. Steam plumed out from the orange-red potato. The flesh was pie-like and a sprinkle of salt brought out an earthy honey. The flavor opened both our eyes. We had to pair dry turkey with foraged black chokeberries. A truly wild breakfast!
After our meal Abigail used Brewer’s Bubble and Fire and Roast to heat up a floating sphere of water. “I still have real tea. Black tea. It’s called copper snake’s tongue because they kept two leaves to one bud when they harvested.”
She made tea. I leaned against an ethereal label forged barrel for support, and Abigail leaned against me. The fire held my gaze.
“This morning feels like a dream,” I said.
Abigail sipped. I felt her sigh. She relaxed into me.
The tea—damn was it good! The black tea was rich with cave flavors—flavors of old stone and baked brick. There was a dark malty sweetness like an amber lager, but it was inherently leafy, like a pile of autumn leaves. The tea revived me.
The sky became revived as sunlight suddenly lay upon the forest canopy before slowly melting down the trees. The sky took on a deep blue, and the stars withdrew. There were no birds, so only the sound of a leaf rustling along its long descent drew my attention. The leaf twirled like it was steeping in sunlight-warmed air. More brown and orange leaves tumbled from the heights of the giant maple. Abigail pointed up at them. We watched them rustle all the way down as daylight strengthened. When they neared the forest floor, we gasped.
Morning light showed us a wilderness covered in silver silky cocoons. Swaths of maple trees were laden with cocoons. Their branches draped like willow leaves. Their trunks were hunched over. Bushes and fern were nearly matted down.
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The sunlight, which had been melting down the trees, finally flooded the forest floor. The cocoons surged to life in the light. They throbbed by the hundreds. Each and every bulbous cocoon moved like it was breathing. It made the entire forest feel like it was breathing out of hundreds of silk wrapped mouths.
And the sunlight behaved oddly. The cocoons were so silver, and the forest was so buried in cocoons, the wilderness looked to be bathed in sharp moonlight. Right beneath a sky of blue.
What’s more, an eerie silence pervaded the atmosphere. The falling leaves crinkled when they hit cocoons; however, there was no wind, no bird, no delicate twig, no rattling cricket, no bouncing grasshopper.
Throughout the rest of 3 steepings of Abigail’s black tea, we observed the wild cocoon laden wilderness.
“Shall we move on from this dream?” said Abigail. “See what things we can forage to make attribute beers with?”
I pulled my gaze from the pulsing world of cocoons and looked up at the giant maple. “Before we go, what if we left barrels of Honey Cocoon ales in the branches?”
“The wind will just knock them down.”
“We strap them down and let them percolate.”
“We could try,” said Abigail. “Let’s try. Then we’ll head back home. After everything we’ve foraged, I can’t wait to continue brewing all the attribute beers I possibly can.”
We broke camp. Just as I was rolling up my bedroll, Abigail hunched over a pile of cocoons that was wrapped around a tree trunk. She put an ear to the cocoons. Her hair fell across her face.
She tucked her hair behind her ear. “Hawkin, come here.”
“What-”
“-Shh. Come.”
I tiptoed over in a flash. I put an ear to the cocoons. The silk pulsed against my cheek. It was like feeling a caterpillar morph within an accommodating chrysalis. I heard a quick heartbeat.
My eyes went wide. “They’re alive.”
Abigail whispered. “How close do you think they are to emerging?”
“What does the Brewer’s Guide to Magic Ingredients say?”
“I’ll look it up when we come back down.”
We sipped from an Anti-gravity ale and leapt up to dizzying heights. Halfway up the tree, where we could still see a slash of night sky on one horizon, and the sun on the other, we took in the view below.
Our efforts throughout the past weeks transformed the wilderness. Swaths of the forest were beginning to grow to giant proportions. A network of silver silk covered everything north and northwest of us, all the way to the Mist Hidden barrier. It looked like the wilderness was covered in wavy pleats of silver snow. It all pulsated from hundreds of thousands of breathing cocoons. It was like the entire forest dripped with silver paint; as if we lived on the body of a titanic slumbering god, and we just so happened to be where their silver hair lay sprawled, cloaking everything. Every vein of silver silk could be traced like river paths to nowhere.
We were in awe. The wind too gasped. We held each other’s hand.
But the sun was climbing and we had the rest of our hike ahead of us. Day was only so long. We brewed more barrels of Honey Cocoon and Aggravated Wild Growth. With the longest ethereal labels I had ever forged, we tied the barrels to a branch, tapped them, and let them percolate in the wind. If the wilderness was so changed already, it was only the beginning. There would be more growth, more cocoons.
When we returned down to hike west toward the sea, I brewed and clone brewed a multitude of beer: ethereal dungeon beers, cream ales, ice billy goat lagers.
Throughout The Ages leveled up to 1927, Flash Ferment leveled up to 1896, Forge Ethereal Yeast leveled up to 1902, Brewer’s Harvest leveled up to 1843, and my Crumble Cloud, Foam Cascade sub skill rose to level 781. Yet gold rank was still out of reach!
Abigail had meanwhile been studying her Brewer’s Guide to Magic Ingredients.
When I finished brewing, she closed the book and slipped an arm through mine. “It takes anywhere between three and four months for the monster fireflies to emerge. They’ll emerge no matter the season or weather.”
“So it’ll be winter by the time the first monster fireflies emerge.”
“That attribute is my favorite so far! And don’t forget-” She closed my hand into a fist. “-They’re going to be this big.”