Jeb rushed back to the Academy, mind whirling with possibilities. As excited as he was for the different ideas, he could not help but think about the time he had made Fire mead. Would whatever he Brewed this time be similarly dangerous?

The Academy led him directly into the Stacks, where he nearly collided with Philip. “Just who I was hoping to see!” Jeb said happily.

“How can I help you today?” Philip asked, turning from a shelf as it sped away.

“I was wondering if anyone has ever brewed with Alchemical ingredients before,” Jeb said.

Philip frowned, clearly considering the question. Shrugging, he folded a paper dart and tossed it into the Stacks. Seeing Jeb’s confused look, he shrugged. “My Class advanced recently, and it came with the ability to send messages to other Stacks Librarians. I haven’t figured out the best way of using it, though, so Librarian Margaret suggested that I explore different options.”

Jeb nodded. A few moments later, Margaret came from a hole in the shifting shelves, dart in hand.

“As amusing as I find this idea,” she said, handing the dart back to Philip, “I do recall that I suggested you focus on making less obvious tells for your summoning.”

“You did, Librarian,” Philip agreed.

Margaret eyed him, clearly unwilling to press too hard in front of an outsider. Sighing, she turned to Jeb.

“Did you cause trouble with your day pass again?” she asked.

Jeb shook his head vehemently. “I did not! I met someone who knows one of my aunts, though, which was fun.”

“How many aunts do you have?” Philip asked.

Jeb shrugged. “That live near the farm? Five or so. In total, though, I have no idea.”

Philip opened his mouth to ask another question, but Margaret silenced him with a look.

“Who knew one of your family members?” Margaret asked.

“Cyprus Lionheart. He runs a brewery called Lionheart Brews,” Jeb said. “He gave me really good advice about finding grain for Brewing.”

“Are you taking an independent study on Brewing?” she asked. “I have not seen any paperwork suggesting as much.”

“Dean Aquam told me that it was good to have hobbies, so I’m going to see if Brewing is as much fun as I remember,” Jeb said with a shrug. “That is what I came here about, though.”

Margaret perked up. “Are you trying to make it an independent study?”

“No?” Jeb replied hesitantly. “Should I be?”

“What was your question?” Margaret asked, clearly ignoring Jeb’s new question.

He debated pressing the issue, but decided to let it drop. It wasn’t as though he really planned on doing an independent study, especially since Dean Aquam had told Jeb that he should have hobbies outside of coursework. “I was wondering if there were any resources about people’s attempts to Brew using Alchemical ingredients,” Jeb replied, a little hesitant.

Something sparked in Margaret’s eyes. “There are many resources,” she said quickly, books flying towards them. She handed Jeb a large stack of books, seemed to reconsider something, and then handed him two books from the pile. The first was a thin tome, clearly handwritten. On a soft blue leather, the title, “Basic Alchemical Brews for the Young Alchemist,” was lovingly embossed in gold. The second was a thick book that seemed more like a textbook than anything else. It had a worn exterior, but Jeb could still make out the pressed title, “On Brewing, A Guide for Alchemists.”

He had a few immediate suspicions about how the books were different, but waited for Margaret to explain. When he looked up from the tomes, however, Jeb saw that both of the Librarians were gone, and he was somehow beside his desk in the Stacks. With nothing else in front of him, he debated which of the two books to read.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Theory is usually more helpful, at least at first, Jeb reasoned, picking up the thicker tome. Unlike a lot of the older books he had read, this one did not hide its knowledge behind flowery words. Instead, it simply explained how Brewing worked from first principles, though with a far different lens than how Jeb had learned it before. This tome assumed that the reader was an Alchemist, and so would be familiar with distillation and extraction as techniques, even if they did not know exactly how to apply it to more mundane brews.

One thing that the book failed to mention, at least in the early chapters, was anything pertaining to safety. Jeb still had vivid memories of how much his aunt had cautioned him when he started working with Fire Honey. He did not see a single reference, however oblique, to the dangers.

Leaning back in his chair, Jeb wondered if that was just a consequence of the fact that this book was written for Alchemists. Even from just a single term spent working on the Skill, Jeb already knew that Alchemists generally assumed everything was unstable and dangerous until fully stabilized at the end of the process. As he continued to read the book, Jeb did gain some insights into Brewing that he had not considered. For all that this book was written for beginners, approaching it from a new perspective illuminated parts of the process that Jeb had taken for granted. The section on kilning malt was particularly interesting.

Kilning had always made sense to Jeb. The plant was alive, and needed to be heated in order to kill off the young sprout. The heating after that introduced color and flavor, it was true, but came at the expense of some of the fermentability.

Approaching it from an Alchemical perspective, kilning the grain meant adding heat and fire. In Alchemy, Fire was a force of transformation. It was a subtle reframing, but one that Jeb found helpful as he considered what he wanted to Brew.

After reading through about half of the tome, Jeb’s stomach let him know that he had been reading for far too long. He set the book down, debating whether or not to continue reading it after he came back from his meal. It was an easy decision. Even though Jeb enjoyed reading about Brewing, there was very little new information in the book. While he would plan to finish it eventually, it didn’t seem like he would need to keep reading in order to Brew something successfully.

Setting the book down, he picked up the thinner tome. He began to read as the Stacks gradually gave way to the amorphous hallways of the Academy. This book did not give a single broader application of the Skill. Instead, it was simply a collection of recipes. The beginning did note that, unlike Brewing with Mana Attuned ingredients, Brewing with Alchemicals did not require any particular safety precautions.

Since this book was also designed for Alchemists, Jeb wasn’t sure whether that actually meant anything. He supposed that all the Brewing apparatus he had were from the Alchemy Storeroom, so they would probably be fine for his purposes. The fact that there were no directions for what to do in case of spontaneous equipment failure was somewhat telling, he had to admit.

As he finished a quick meal in the cafeteria, Jeb saw a recipe that looked particularly fun. It only called for Fireleaf and malted barley, and Jeb would hopefully have both of those sometime soon. Standing up, he saw Dean Aquam entering the cafeteria.

The two locked eyes, and Dean Aquam hurried over towards Jeb. “Hello!” Jeb said, realizing that he had no idea what time it was.

“Good morning, Jeb,” the Dean replied. “I wanted to tell you that your barley has arrived. It should be by the plot of land that you have been using.”

Excited, Jeb took off from the cafeteria. He found a barrel and pulled the lid off. It was filled, unsurprisingly, with small grains of barley.

Jeb set a few handfuls aside to plant later. Even though it was fairly convenient to just buy the barley, he knew how to grow it and saw no reason not to. Lifting the rest of the barrel, he carried it over to the brewing shed, where he poured it into a thin layer. With a careful application of Least Conjure Water, Jeb had the grains appropriately moistened. He walked back to the field, noting that the Fireleaf was ready for harvest. Nothing in the Alchemical Brewing book’s directions specified exactly how the plant was meant to be stored, so Jeb started to harvest them, mentally marking that he wanted to reserve at least a few ounces for his own projects. As he plowed the rest of the plant into the ground, Jeb debated what to plant next.

Barley was an obvious answer, but he didn’t know if that was the best use of his time. He remembered how long it took his aunt to go through an entire barrel of grain, and she Brewed as her entire profession. Looking at the field with his Magical sight, though, Jeb decided to let it lay fallow for at least a few days.

The Essence and Attunement was completely unstable, seeming to rapidly cycle between Fire, Soil, and a number of other elements that Jeb could not quite place. The Essence and Attunement were also out of sync with each other, both seeming to shift on their own rhythms. Jeb knew without a doubt that anything he planted in the soil would struggle to grow, especially if it was at all Magical.

He went back to his room, listening as the hour was rung out. It was seventh bell, which meant that it was the wrong time for him to go to sleep, at least if he wanted to keep anything resembling a normal sleep schedule. After a few moments of debate, Jeb decided to take a long nap. He wasn’t suffering too much from having studied all night long, and he figured that his schedule would realign with the day before the term break ended.

When he woke up, he went to check on the barley. To his surprise, it had already started to sprout. It was ready to be kilned.

Jeb poured the plants into a large metal barrel and started spinning it. Carefully activating Least Create Fire, Jeb kept his nose trained on the way that the scent changed.