Page 38 of Wizards & Weavers
Elyssandra beamed. “No offense taken. I love talking about home. We’re all at least familiar with common plants. I might have a bit of an advantage, seeing as I grew up with a garden that was filled with all sorts of herbs, fruits, and flowers.” She glanced around the cavern, as if measuring its exact dimensions in her head. “Yes. The garden is about as big as this place, actually.”
“You had a garden this big?” Braiden stretched his arms out as far as they would go, his mind boggling as he studied the farthest reaches of the cavern. “I can’t imagine how big your house must have been.”
Loose, scattered pieces of Elyssandra’s strange puzzle were starting to fit together, bit by bit. She’d come from a sheltered background, not entirely able to fend for herself, a bit too bright-eyed and earnest for someone who needed to spend time on the road. Braiden narrowed his eyes even as he watched the redness blossom on her cheeks.
“Now what in the world could that wizard be up to?” she asked, a little too loud, a little too excited. She pointed at Augustin, who’d situated himself by the edge of the bubbling pool. “We should go take a look.”
Braiden took a look, all right — a long, hard, and suspicious one, straight at the back of Elyssandra’s head. But he followed her soon enough, willing to suspend his curiosity.
She’d been a kind and helpful companion throughout the dungeon. Did it really matter that she was hiding one, two, or many more secrets under her elven cowl? Maybe Braiden was just too nosy for his own good.
They found Augustin sitting on the ground with his legs splayed out, face drawn in concentration as he mashed the gloomberries to a smooth, purplish pulp. He filled each glass with the fizzy water, scooping it up straight from the pool, then mixed in a portion of the gloomberry juice until it was all gone.
The wizard thrust his glass into the air, holding his concoction aloft.
“Behold, my creation!”
Chapter
Fifteen
In the lightof the luminous cavern, the juice-laden water was a vivid, beautiful violet. Its color reminded Braiden of pressed grapes, the sparkling bubbles evoking the inside of a gemstone. He nodded his head in quiet, restrained approval. Elyssandra applauded, always so supportive.
“Well?” Augustin asked. “Take up your glasses. We ventured out here for a little something sweet, and here it is.”
Elyssandra collected her glass with all the caution of someone picking up a vial of poison, but Braiden could see her curiosity mounting, pinpoint twinkles in her eyes. He licked his lips again as he watched the bubbles in his own cup, the glass cool in his hands, the fizzy water within even cooler.
Sure, the Wizard of Weathervale had done one or two foolish things since they’d ventured into the dungeon. He wasn’t going to actually get them all poisoned with bubbling berry water, was he? It wasn’t fermented, at least, and it smelled far lovelier than any jar of pickles Braiden had ever met.
As the bubbles raced to the surface and popped, Braiden caught tiny sniffs of a fragrance that was at once fruity and floral. Just one taste. It couldn’t hurt. And if this did poison them,Braiden at least had a fine last meal. It would give him enough strength to throttle Augustin as they went down.
He raised the glass to his mouth, tilting it back for a tentative sip. His lips tingled on contact. Did poison tingle? This was only like ale, wasn’t it? Like Dudley’s best beers at the tavern. He breathed in, the scent of the gloomberries filling his nostrils with something rich, a fragrant, fruity sugar. Braiden drank.
And he drank, and drank some more. The bubbles burst against his tongue as the fizzing juice went down, a delightful experience very much like the feel of drinking good ale. But this beautiful new beverage didn’t come with the bitterness of beer, nor the bitter promise of a hangover.
Braiden drank and drank of the berry’s bounty, the subterranean fruit tasting of deep, dark honey. This was the flavor of oldest earth, rich with jewels that glistened like cuts of fruit.
When he finally pulled the glass away, Braiden sipped in a long mouthful of air, as if he’d neglected to breathe. A few last bubbles blistered against his tongue, his lips still coated with the sweetness of gloomberry.
“I can’t believe I ever doubted you,” he told a grinning Augustin Arcosa. “That was the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”
Elyssandra only spoke after she had fully drained her entire glass in one long pull. “Augustin! That. Was. Incredible. I, too, had my doubts, but my goodness. The flavor! The fizz! I feel so refreshed.”
The wizard wagged his finger as he grinned, his glass only half empty. “What did I tell you? And you’ve only tasted it with gloomberries. Imagine this with the juice of your favorite fruit, or in any flavor you like. You could bottle this stuff and sell it. You’d make a killing. If only it wasn’t so difficult moving bottles of the pool water up to the surface.”
Bottling this lovely beverage? That didn’t sound like a bad idea at all. But the wizard had a point. The best of luck to anyone who tried. Traps in this cavern, elementals patrolling the upper levels? It didn’t seem very feasible at all.
Only the hardiest adventurers would leave the dungeon with enough unbroken bottles of bubbly water. And even then, would the effort be worth it? How much would anyone actually pay for some flavored fizzy water?
“What would you even call this stuff?” Braiden asked, swirling the remains of the pretty purple liquid in his glass. “It’s so delicious.”
“So delightful,” Elyssandra added.
“So divine,” Augustin cooed dreamily. “Beats me. Well, actually, I would go with something exuberant, something fancy that might appeal to my admirers. Augustin’s Effervescent Elixir. Something like that.”
Braiden grinned. “That rolled off your tongue very quickly. Almost like you’ve already given this some thought.”
Augustin chuckled, smoothing back his hair. “And maybe I have, once or twice. Settle down somewhere nice and quiet, open up a shop to sell my bubbly brews? It’d be a welcome change from all this dungeoneering.”
