"STOP!"

Striding into his laboratory, Aleister was surprised to find Suzette tossing bottles and pouring his precious ingredients into various jugs or beakers with no respect for measurement—and actually juggling with full bottles! Zephyr was behind her, stirring a huge pot of boiling mugwort leaves with one hand and what smelled like chicken soup with the other.

Suzette smiled over her shoulder as she picked up a jug of blue liquid and poured it into eight potion bottles without looking. "Can't stop Aleister, you know that. I'm in the middle of making potions. It will ruin the batch."

"Ruin what batch? How do you even know what you're making?"

After she had stoppered two dozen bottles of various colors. Suzette wiped her hands and turned on the stool to face Aleister. "I'm sensing some concern here. Didn't you ask me to help you catch up on the potions you need for all the dungeon delvers?"

"I will admit to asking, yes. But that is not the proper way to measure ingredients, and you know it. None of those will turn out correctly. And why, in the name of the Golden Order, are there bubbles inside those bottles?"

There was a proper way to do Alchemy, and while he had no idea what Suzette was doing, it wasn't proper!

Suzette looked up at Aleister and smiled at him. It was like the sun came out, and he had to remind himself he was married. "Tell you what, I'll finish this batch while you watch. Then you can check my work. If they're bad, I'll pay for them and go back to the old way. But if the potions are good..."

"They won't be. They can't be. They have bubbles!"

"But if the potions are good, you have to learn how I'm doing it and help me perfect it. Deal?"

"Deal. There is no way those are properly mixed."

Suzette glanced at the two dozen potion bottles that were rapidly fermenting. "Oh, well, if you are so sure, how about we make it a real wager? Your wife is making her cherry and rhubarb pie tonight. I'll wager my piece of pie against yours."

There was a gasp from Zephyr. This was getting serious.

Aleister was fond of pie and never gained weight. This was a very good deal for him, "I accept. I'm looking forward to eating your slice in front of you."

Over the next half hour, Suzette took four bottles at a time, uncorked them, and placed them on the heating pad until they reached the correct temperature for adding her mana to the mix. Each one turned the traditional shade of red, blue, or yellow that signified a good potion. Aleister then tested each one for quality. As the last one was analyzed and identified, the alchemist grumbled something under his breath.

"I'm sorry, Aleister, I didn't hear that correctly. Can you repeat that?"

"I said, and I repeat, You Cheated! Now show me how you did it. You weren't even measuring!"

Suzette shook her head. "Nope, don't need to. Once I've used a recipe, I can always toss the right amount of ingredients into the mix. It's a barmaid skill called Mixology - lets me put drinks together fast. What are potions except fancy magic drinks?"

"And the fermentation?"

"Oh, that's more complicated." Suzette pulled a small notebook out of her apron. "Notice that in each potion, we have a base of alcohol and water. You even showed me the method for turning a bottle of wine into a weak potion in an emergency. My conjecture was that rather than starting with alcohol, I'd ferment it from the natural sugars and the potion ingredients. Most ingredients are plant-based, and some are even fruit. So, I started with those some raw honey and wine yeast. The Wine Fermentation Cantrip makes them ferment quickly and brings out the effects of the ingredients. Then I follow it up with empowering the potions normally."

Aleister studied her notes. "I see, you are using brewing techniques to...brew potions...dammit, that seems so obvious when you put it that way. How did you figure it out?"

Zephyr waved her hand. "She didn't daddy, I did."

Suzette agreed with the girl, "Zephyr's been helping me out at the tavern and learning some of the brewing. One day, she said how nice it would be if we could brew potions in barrels the way we brew beer. That got us brainstorming."

"We started mixing up the two systems and made a hell of a mess down in the basement. Once we got the basics down, we worked over here with small batches and figured out how to perfect the process. By my estimation, I'm using about half the normal mana, and the potions need twenty-five percent more ingredients to make, but also are fifty percent more effective."

"And we have a new beer recipe. We have a 2-gallon cask of lager that's aging over at the tavern. Once we bottle it up, it should make some nice healing potions."

"Healing beer? And the advantage of that?"

"Normal potions all taste medicinal; these taste like beer. Plus, they should go down nice after a boss battle. They're obviously better." Suzette racked the potions on the wall and started to clean up.

"Oh no, not so fast." Aleister began pulling out ingredients and grabbed another dozen empty bottles. "If you're stealing my dessert, you must earn it. I want to work through the whole process again to understand it." He had a few points left from their dungeon diving. He couldn't believe he would toss them away to learn brewing cantrips.

Zephyr could tell that dinner was going to be a bit late. She made a snack for her mother and came back to assist with teaching an old dog a few new tricks.

Suzette thought the pie was especially tasty that night. So was all the experience she'd gained from a week of playing mad scientist, making a lot of messes, and creating a couple of small explosions.

[You have successfully merged knowledge from Brewing and Alchemy to enhance each profession.

You have gained 500 experience in Alchemy

You have gained 100 experience in Brewing

You have gained 50 experience in Hermetics

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

You have gained 50 experience in Hedge wizard

You have gained 100 experience in Teaching

For pioneering a new type of Alchemy, enhanced by Brewing, you have earned a one-time bonus of +5 Enhancement Points.

For pioneering a new type of Brewing, enhanced by Alchemy, you have earned a one-time bonus of +5 Enhancement Points.

You have gained the following recipes that you may teach to others:

- Honey Brewed Healing Potion

- Honey Brewed Stamina Potion

- Honey Brewed Mana Potion

- Healing Beer]

Ozzy walked over to where the new worker housing was going up. Jorges and a crew of several stone masons had been working for a week on the building during the day shift. After dinner, they had the help of fifty more people. Everyone was anxious to move out of the huts. Not everyone had the skills to help with the building, but everyone could haul materials, dig the basement, or haul dirt away. The first story of the building was of stone. Each piece brought over from the quarry was two feet wide, three feet long, and a foot high. They weighed nearly half a ton each, and the heavy wagons could only pack about eight of them per load. Two workers guided wagons back and forth from the quarry to the building, making constant trips. Jorges needed a lot of stone for the first level.

He'd gone back and forth on the plans. He would have loved to make a nice motte and bailey. Maybe something like Cardiff in Wales during the 1300's. But they needed something a bit more basic, so he settled on a structure that was a large rectangle, 200' x 100', with a 60' x 120' courtyard. He could add corner towers and a nice gatehouse later and make it a proper little castle.

With a roughly 600' perimeter, they needed 200 of the large stone bricks per layer. That was over 2400 bricks just for the outer wall and another 2000 for the inner wall. The two feet between the two walls would be filled with hard-packed dirt from digging out the basement. Jorges didn't know about magic or monsters, but such a wall could easily stop cannonballs and siege engines.

Eight bricks per wagon, two wagons making two trips each per hour for sixteen hours a day, was about 500 bricks hauled in each long day. It took nearly two weeks just to haul the stone from the quarry. Four stone cutters worked daily using their specialized skills to carve the stones from the quarry. Vern had complained about all the manpower going towards building worker housing. Billy wasn't worried. He had plans for a grand regional headquarters, and this was just practice. Maybe something cozy like Versailles.

Each evening, the workers finished with their daily chores would haul in a steady stream of logs to the building site, dragging or carrying them. These were quickly turned into beams and thick planks. The flooring between the basement and first floor was a foot wide and six inches thick, similar to what would be used in a medieval castle. The upper levels would be mostly wood and didn't have to be quite so heavily built.

The second level was where everyone would live, either in a large dormitory at either end for men or women or in one of the smaller rooms in between. An open hallway with a railing overlooked the courtyard below. The first level would have a kitchen and common room at one end. All meals would be taken here, and in the evenings, it would be a nice place to relax. The other end of the building would be a bathhouse and sauna.

The basement would cover the entire area of the building with storage for grain and food, along with some workshops. Jon and Cham had plans for a small drinking establishment in the basement, but they figured it was better not to tell Jorges that until after they got it built and moved in the beer. The tavern was a bit expensive for most of the workers and was overrun with players too much of the time.

Ozzy helped out each evening and often in the morning. He was able to easily heft the stones and move them quickly to where they needed to be laid. It was ironic that he wouldn't even be sleeping here. But playing pack mule for Jorges had some benefits, like when you needed a bunch of rock for a pit bar-b-que.

"You need something Ozzy, or just early to haul rock for me?" Jorges had moved his forge over near where the front gate would be. This let him hammer out hinges and nails while keeping an eye on the growing walls.

"You'll get my help later if that's alright. I came over to see if you had some smaller rocks, maybe left over from putting up the walls. I need a bunch to upgrade my pit." He sketched out the plans in the dirt and Jorges wrote down some notes.

"Yeah, we can do that. I'll have some of the guys turn the scrap rock over at the quarry into some usable shapes and we'll haul a couple of wagon loads over to you. I for one am happy with what you cook up in there. I was getting pretty damned tired of Groat muffins and the taste of chicken. Between the meat you're cooking up, the beer Suzette is making, and Betty's bread, meals are getting tasty. And all of the crew feels that way."

"Yeah, I agree with you on the meals. I mentioned to Billy that we needed some better food, or he might have a riot on his hands someday, but that might be acceptable to him if he saved money on the deal. Maybe once work gets done on your little castle, we can use some evenings to put in a few gardens for vegetables. I think ACME would happily feed us crap for five years. If we want better food, we'll have to get it ourselves."

Jorges nodded in agreement, "Hmm, I’ll put some thought into that. Maybe a big root cellar right under the kitchen - and a cold storage section in the sub-basement. We have an ice wizard, might as well make use of him."

"Sounds like a plan. I'll be back by the pit late afternoon and can help them unload the rock. Have to go see a farmer who lives down the road about some pigs. If all goes well, I might be making bacon."

All around him, ears perked up at the mention of the magical word. Jorges smiled widely, "Bacon? That would be good. I'll make sure the crew gets those stones to you as soon as they can."