Maikana
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Chapter 43 – Misery gets company
🕑 Added 2025-03-29 22:04:09 +0000 UTC<Note>
Sorry about the delay everyone.
</Note>
With the first of her two months without a formal apprenticeship at its end, Kori was beginning to enjoy her time spent at the brewery. It wasn’t the frenetic paced work of Bolst’s lab but it was fun. The pair worked closely together for the past weeks, him assisting her in mastering all of the equipment in the prep room she needed to use for concocting and her lending him a hand with his own duties whenever possible. She’d begun to see inklings of more than just Skills at work in her time with Aldr, the Abilities from his class clearly affecting various aspects of the brewing process. Whether it was fermentation happening faster than it should or how if he was involved the product was just better in some way, she could see things that didn’t line up to what her burgeoning Skills predicted.
Deciding that she would ask him, well, ask if she could ask him as she didn’t want to be rude, Kori approached him between tasks one day. “Brewmaster, do you mind if I ask a question about Abilities?” She asked, knowing that asking specifics about classes was often seen as rude.
“Hmm? About time. The others kept telling me you asked endless questions, which you do, but I was surprised you hadn’t asked yet.” He laughed. “What d’ya want to know, youngling? How I got such a good Class?”
Surprised by his candor, her questions quickly shifted from the intended generic queries about Abilities and she dove into what she really wanted to ask after she heard his response. “How good is your class?”
“Hah! And she just goes right for it!” His barked laugh echoed through the chamber, “Awfully rude thing to ask, but I guess I opened that door for ya, didn’t I?” He gives his head a shake, clearly amused rather than offended by the question. “Well, I might as well tell ya then, I started with an Uncommon ‘Novice Distiller’ Class, and managed to evolve it at tier three to Rare by pushing the brewing side as I leveled, I’m now a ‘Brewmaster of the Depths’. Fantastic class, perfect for a kobold who toils away brewin in caves.” Chuckling at himself as he beams with pride.
Taken aback by how the class went from something simple sounding to seeming grandiose, Kori looked at Aldr somewhat confused.
“What?” He asked, “Surprised a simple brewer like me has a Rare Class? A good half the Elders managed to pull off that little feat. Not telling which ones though.” He teased.
“Only half?” She replied, which just fueled his laughter further.
“’Only half’ she asks.” Spoken between his boisterous laughing, “Do ya know how few of us start off with an Uncommon Class?” Pausing to wipe away a tear from the corner of his eye. “About one in five manage it. Fewer still make it to Rare when they evolve it.”
“But can’t you evolve a Common class into a Rare too?” She asks. With barely a breath in between to answer she asked another question right after, “Or could someone start with a Rare Class?”
Choosing to answer the last question first, Aldr shook his head at the audacity of the little kobold, “Start off as a Rare? Ya, it happens. There’s two in the whole,” Spreading his arms wide and drawing out the word, “Clan. An ya already met the pair of em too.” He returns to his laughing as he sees her confused look. “Ain’t tellin ya which of em either. Though they’re not hard ta guess.” Seeing her tilt her head to ponder what he’d just said setting off yet another bout of laughter. Taking a few moments to settle himself down again before he returned to her prior question, “As fer jumpin straight from Common to Rare? Course ya could. Same as ya could swim down and touch the bottom of tha deep lakes an come back up with an armload of fish. Possible, but not bloody likely.” Aldr dissolved back into a fit of laughter, to the point he needed to lean on the nearby table to keep himself upright.
It took several minutes for the Elder to calm down, only truly stopping when the next stage of what they were working on needed to be tended to.
While they worked, Kori attempted to return to her original line of questioning. “What I wanted to ask earlier was, how do Abilities work?” Not letting him interrupt her question before she tried to give some context, “I’ve seen ingredients that should have burnt in the roaster be fine when you were tending it, or whole brews that turned out better than others after you spent some time working on it.” She continued, “My Skills tell me one thing, then you do… something… I’ve got no idea what, and the whole thing changes…”
“Yup! That’s Abilities for ya.” He responded, “If ya wanna know the ‘why’ of it, I hear you’re pretty big on that one, you’re better off talkin to the Matrons. That’s their thing.” Pausing and giving her a smile as though that was all he was going to say.
“That’s it?” She exclaimed, clearly not satisfied with his answer.
Laughing again at his little joke on her, at least until he nearly spilled something he was trying to pour at the same time, he let her wait for the answer until he finished and set down the jug. “Course not. But I had ya goin for a minute there, didn’t I?” The fierce look of reprobation she gave him threatened to send him back into another fit of giggles. Which he didn’t bother resisting, gasping out, “Stir that a sec, would ya?” Pointing back to what they worked on while he stepped back to continue his cackling.
The dirty look Kori gave him as she took up the long paddle used to stir the small batch, though small around here meant about ten litres, of mead they were working on, could have soured the whole batch. They were in the final steps of the process; they’d just separated the sludge that formed on the bottom and were mixing in something to sweeten it. Adlr still lost in his own humour as he sat down on a stool behind her missed the sudden mischievous look on Kori’s face as she stirred.
“Hey brewmaster, how likely is mead to explode?” She asked. Her words sounded innocent enough, but after the incident a few weeks past, one that still loomed large, literally, over their heads, Aldr’s laughter cut off instantly with a series of choked coughs.
“What?! No! Definitely not!” He screamed as he rushed forward and grabbed the paddle away from her. “None of that now!”
It wasn’t until he’d inserted himself between Kori and the vat that he finally noticed the grin plastered on her face. It was her turn to fall into a fit of giggles this time. His glower sending her further and further into nonsensical glee.
“Oh ya think that’s funny, do ya?” He bellowed, the panic fading into anger for a moment before he too started chuckling. “Yeah, suppose it was. Guess I deserved that, did I?”
Still in the grips of her mirth she managed to respond with a quick, “Sorry.” As he continued to shake his head at her antics. After she managed to settle down for a moment, she looked back at the mead in front of Aldr with a look full of curiosity, “I really could have imbued it.” Seeing the brief moment of panic that statement instilled on his face she quickly added, “I didn’t though!”
With a sigh of relief that she hadn’t, Aldr scratched the scales by his horns as he thought about what she said, “Huh, wonder what that’d do.” He looked deep in thought for a few moments before he shook himself out of it and said, “Nope. None of that. As much as magic booze sounds fun, I ain’t riskin it.”
“Definitely not!” Kori agreed. “Well, maybe if we took it somewhere away from everybody first…” She mused, earning herself a dirty look from the Elder.
It took the pair some time to get settled back into their work, their previous conversation on hold while they cleaned up and began the next task. Eventually Kori brought up her earlier question and his lack of response, this time getting a bit more serious of an answer from Aldr.
“So, like I said, the Matron’s can tell ya more about all this stuff.” He started, “Skills are about what you know, the more ya know, the more they guide ya to do what you’re doin.” His explanation at the most basic level of things. “Abilities ain’t like that. They do things. For me, that means speedin up the ferment, or aging my malt, or improving the quality of my brews.” He continued, “Some of these things just happen, if I work on a batch, it’s just better. Some of em are things I gotta use and they use up a bit of my stamina or even mana.”
“Wait, you use mana? I thought only mages used mana?” Kori quickly butted in.
“Now why’d think something like that?” Aldr shook his head, “Ya think that just cause most of us don’t do magic that we got no need for mana? That all the rest of us just had it on our Status’ for nothin?”
“Umm… Maybe?” She admitted.
Replying with a huff, “What’d the Matron’s teach you lot?” Shaking his head at the absurdity of it. “Course I use mana. Everybody does in some way or another.”
“Oh.” Was all she could say in response.
“Anyway. Like I said, Skills help you do things, Abilities do things for you. They make your work easier or faster or better, they reduce how much stamina, or mana, you use when you do things, stuff like that. That’s why a youngling like you can learn to brew, but a brewer will always be better at it.” Pausing for a moment before adding, “Never mind askin how, cause I don’t know.”
With that his explanation was seemingly done. Kori found herself left with more questions than she began with, but seeing that his attention had returned to their work she followed suit. The rest of the day passed with idle discussions and a few laughs between them before Kori joined the apprentices in cleaning up for the day. She wasn’t a fan of cleaning the stills, but she was one of the few who could actually fit their whole selves into the large contraptions and scrub the bottoms properly so she helped as needed.
<<Skill proficiency improved. Basic Brewing level 2 -> 3 >>
She did manage to raise her brewing another level, so between that and learning a bit more about Abilities it had been a pretty good day. It was a lesson she had mostly gotten from the Matrons, but she’d never really had any easy to observe examples of previously so it helped a great deal in furthering her understanding.
With the days work done, she walked back to the brood chamber with her siblings. The trio had spent quite a bit of time together in the last few weeks, she had gotten to know Qot much better than she had before over that time. She and Losq had of course always been close, but it was nice to spend time with him throughout the day. They’d barely seen each other for months while she apprenticed under Ortik after all.
On route to their home, Losq hung back and waved Qot onwards. He wanted to talk with Kori. Once the pair were by themselves, as much as walking amongst the streaming adult kobolds returning from their own days work to their dens would allow at least, he broached a subject that had been occupying his thoughts for weeks.
“Kori, will you help me with something?” He asked nervously, his eyes darting around to those passing by.
Seeing his discomfort, she pulled him to the side away from everyone else, “Of course I’ll help you. You always helped me when I wanted to ask the minders things or just wander about.” She answered, a nostalgic smile on her face as she spoke of the past. “Is someone taking your food again? I bet its Beys, isn’t it?” Making her intent clear if someone’s bullying her brother.
“What? No. Nothing like that.” He quickly responded, waving his hands. “Its… well it’s about those Titles you got.”
“The ones for making the thing that half the clan still gives me dirty looks over?” She replied.
“Yeah… Those.” He nodded, feeling bad that he brought it up since it was beginning to be a bit of a sore spot.
The news, and eventually even the truth, had spread through the tightknit community of Emberscale Caverns fairly quickly. Even if her name had been kept out of it at first, it didn’t take people long to figure out that one of, if not the, most well-known younglings in the entire clan had been to blame. Her time spent working under Ortik had made sure that a large part of the clan was aware of her and gossip ensured that they were well informed of her history leading up to the incident.
She could still hear the whispers and see the pointing as she passed through the tunnels and halls, the yelling and accusations had thankfully been put a stop to relatively quickly. Now she mostly got looks of pity as the ‘thrice failed apprentice’, that’s not to say people had calmed down over the incident, just that the glares had been mostly turned on Bolst.
“What about them?” She asked, not really sure what he was looking for.
“Well… Could you help me try to get them too?” He asked meekly.
“Help you get them?” A look of shock on her face at the request, “I barely even know how I got them myself… I mean we can try but…”
“But you’re so smart, you’ve gotta have some idea of how we might brew up something special?” He pleaded.
“Like I said, we can try… But the Titles need more than just something special. It’s gotta be something ‘unique’.” She said with emphasis. “Like if my thing had just been a giant flame flask, it probably wouldn’t have worked.” She shook her head, “It’s only because it was unstable and ready to blow up any second that it counted…” She continued. She went on to say something that’d been on her mind for the past few weeks, “I doubt mine was even the first to ever be made… Just the first to not blow up long enough to get appraised…”
Ignoring the part about nearly blowing herself up, Losq gave her a giant hug, his arms enveloping her entirely, “Thanks Kori!” As he easily lift her off her feet.
Struggling against her giant of a brother’s grip, he was already taller than most adults while she remained decidedly less so, she batted his arms away as best she could. Which she found was a lot easier than she had expected. He still had a much better base in Might than her, but she was quickly catching up between her higher level and Titles. “Let go. Let me down, Losq!” She complained.
When her feet were finally back on the floor she looked back to her brother. “If we’re going to do this, it’s gotta be me helping you.” She said, “I doubt you’ll get the Title if you aren’t the one doing the work.”
He took a moment to think about what she said before replying, “I guess that makes sense.”
Giving a definitive nod, Kori continued voicing her thoughts, “So our best bet is my imbue Skill, either I teach it to you and you do something to make a unique brew, or you make something special and I imbue it to get it where you need it to be.” Giving herself a nod, agreeing with her own statement.
Losq’s eyes widened at the prospect of her teaching him the skill. “Do… Do you really think I could learn that?” He stutters out, “My Magic isn’t exactly high…” His voice dropping as he mumbles out the last bit. “It’s only 7…”
With a wide grin on her face, Kori replied in a tone that caused Losq to worry about what he’d just begun, “Won’t know til we try, now will we?”
