Xv's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

By the second hour, the six travelers had drunk what little Xv kept on his shelves and started naming drinks he did not have. The woman with gills asked for brine wine. The man with the moving shadow wanted a fermented ash the color of his home sky. A small reptile on the bar chirped for something sweet. Xv wiped the counter and watched their faces change from curious to polite. Polite meant they would finish, pay nothing, and not come back tomorrow. He needed a draw before the night thinned out. He pulled every bottle off the back wall and lined them along the cosmic jukebox he had rigged into a shelf. The machine hummed under the glass, its blood-strip intake glowing soft red between the rows. Bottles from four realms stood shoulder to shoulder: a green resin flask, a jar of pale salt water, a bulb of black fizz, and a slim vial of cyan dust he had carried from the nameless realm. None of them belonged to any patron here. That was the point, and also the problem. No single bottle tasted like home to anyone. Xv pressed his right palm flat on the bar. The tattoo warmed under his sleeve. He thought of the suppression blade across his back and decided to risk a thread of power, not a flood. He pulled a clean glass from the rack and started pouring. Salt water for the woman with gills. Black fizz for the shadow man. A spoon of green resin for sweetness. He shook in a pinch of cyan dust last, and the glass crackled like wet sand on a fire. He carried the glass to the round table at the center of the room. The table was a thick wooden ring set on star-metal legs, with a dark purple swirl turning slow at its heart. Travelers had been drifting toward the swirl all night without knowing why. Xv set the glass on the wood and slid it into the swirl. The drink spun once, came back blue, and threw off small pops of light. He filled five more. He named it the Reset and told them the first round was on the house. The woman with gills drank and laughed. The shadow man drank and sat down next to her. The small reptile climbed the glass and licked the rim. Within an hour, two of them had walked back out through the crystal arch at the front and returned with friends. By midnight, Xv had taken enough coin to cover the water tax twice over. He set the notice on the bar and weighted it with the empty vial of cyan dust. The vial was the only one he had. He had used a third of it in one night. He locked the bar at dawn, counted what was left, and understood he had sold a drink he could not keep making.