Brewer 1 read the festival notice twice, then let the gears in their chest tick faster. The grand tasting was six weeks away. Win it, and every brewer in Thynderfall would know their name. But their copper body brewed only plain ale, and plain ale never won anything. Brewer 1 was a walking still. Steam pipes ran up their back. Gauges glowed on their belly. A single blank eye sat in the center of their brow, and a wrench hung at their hip. They lived above the Steamworks Alehouse, where the timber beams smelled of hops and soot. Every morning they filled their tank, boiled it, and poured out ale that customers drank without a word. Not once had anyone leaned back and grinned. The problem was the recipe. Judges wanted a signature hops variety, something no one else could match. Brewer 1 had tried the common green cones from the market. They tasted like everyone else's beer. Tonight they cranked the boiler high and dumped in a double handful. The gauges spiked. Steam hissed from every joint. Brewer 1 tapped a sample and sipped through the intake valve. Plain. Flat. Wrong. Brewer 1 dumped the batch down the drain and gripped the wrench until their fingers ached. A knock rattled the alehouse door. Brewer 1 opened it to find Rook the Alchemist filling the frame. The ogre magi was red-skinned, yellow-eyed, with a black goatee and a hooded robe trimmed in gold runes. He held a thick black book under one arm, its edges bristling with colored bookmarks. "Your steam woke half the street," Rook said. He did not wait for an invitation. He stepped inside, eyed the empty tank, and sniffed the air like a hound. "You are brewing garden ale and expecting a crown." Brewer 1's eye narrowed. "I use the best hops the market sells." "The market sells what everyone brews." Rook set his book on the counter and flipped to a bookmarked page. Diagrams and runes covered it. He tapped one drawing: a hops cone with silver-white petals. "This grows on the high ridge. Wild. Bitter as a curse. No brewer has bottled it, because no brewer survives the climb." Brewer 1 leaned close. The petals in the drawing looked like nothing at the market. Their gauges twitched. A signature variety. Exactly what the judges wanted. "Show me where," Brewer 1 said. Rook closed the book and smiled with too many teeth. "I'll draw the map. But the ridge is not kind to copper things. Rust wants you. Cold wants you. And the ones who live up there guard those cones." Brewer 1 lifted the wrench and slid it back into its loop. "Then I leave at dawn." Rook tore a page loose and pressed it into their hand. On it, inked in gold, was the ridge trail and a single silver cone. Brewer 1 held the map to their eye. The plain-ale problem was solved. A far harder one now waited on the mountain.

Brewer 1 climbed the ridge trail at dawn. The map led them to a shelf of stone where silver-white hops grew in a thick patch. Their gauges spiked. This was the prize. But the moment they stepped close, a huge shape rose from the rocks. The guardian was a beast of matted fur and long claws. It planted itself between Brewer 1 and the cones and let out a low growl that rattled the copper in their chest. Brewer 1 backed up a step. They had no food to offer. No trick to distract it. The wrench at their hip would only make the beast angrier. Their eye swept the shelf for anything useful. A voice called from below. "Don't just stand there staring at it!" Brewer 6 came up the trail, longer arms and legs carrying him fast over the rocks. He looked almost like a mirror of Brewer 1, a copper keg on legs, but a bold six was painted on his barrel. He stopped, spotted the guardian, and puffed a cloud of steam. "I followed your boiler noise. Half the valley heard you leave." "It won't let me near the patch," Brewer 1 said. Brewer 6 crouched and pointed at a shadowed crack in the stone. A cluster of slender mushrooms grew there. Their cone caps caught the last of the moonlight and shimmered blue and pink. "Beasts like these. My kind saw them dig for glowing caps up here before." Brewer 1 understood. They knelt and pried a clump of the shimmering mushrooms loose. The guardian's head snapped toward the glow. Brewer 1 tossed the cluster across the shelf. The beast lunged after it and pinned the caps under one paw, sniffing and chewing. "Now," Brewer 6 said. They rushed the patch together. Brewer 1 stripped cone after cone into their tank. Brewer 6 filled his own barrel with fistfuls of silver-white petals. The bitter smell was sharp, unlike anything at the market. Brewer 1's gauges climbed with joy. The beast finished the mushrooms and turned. It roared and charged. Brewer 1 and Brewer 6 scrambled down the trail, tanks packed full, claws tearing the air behind them. They did not stop until the ridge fell away and the beast gave up the chase. Brewer 1 checked their tank. It held enough silver-white hops for a dozen batches. They had done what no brewer had done before. But Brewer 6 patted his own full barrel and grinned through his single eye. "Good haul," Brewer 6 said. "I'll be entering the tasting too. May the better brewer win." Brewer 1's gauges dipped. The rare hops were no longer theirs alone. The one who had saved them was now the one to beat.