PANDEMONIA EXCLUSIVE: Classified Scroll Leaked!

A Drinking Contest with a Twist

The Defunct “Wiz Light” Brewery. Audio Companion Below, Barrington Goldwater’s Theme: “Crackpot Wizard” - melody written by Centaur Guitar.

Chapter 12: Wizard’s Brew

DanHam grabbed the rusty door knocker at the entrance of the dilapidated brewery. It promptly fell off its hinge. Undeterred, he attempted to pound the door with it, but it crumbled into a poof of dust. However, the heavy door was unlocked and swung slightly open. “Well, so much for knocking.” The pair entered the ruins of the brewery. The air smelled of old yeast and rot. The beer vats were long gone, leaving behind rusted platforms, a splintered bar, and a lone hammock sagging in the corner. As their eyes adjusted to the low light, a figure seemed to materialize in the dust at the bar, humming nonsensically to himself. He smoked a cigar, whistling and blowing raspberries in between drags.

“Great,” said Pickle to DanHam, “you’ve dragged me to a hobo hideout.”

The man at the bar appeared not to notice his guests, continuing his one-man symphony with all the gusto of a musician playing to an adoring crowd.

DanHam cleared his throat. “Excuse me. We are looking for the Great Barrington Goldwater.”

The man at the bar took a long drag of his cigar, which exploded with a loud bang, and swiveled toward them. His wild grey eyebrows, blackened with soot, shot up like spooked pigeons. “Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a pickler’s fortnight.” He was wearing a steel-blue, silk smock emblazoned with silver Trikselions and Caduceuses. It would have made a grand garment at one time, but bore the telltale signs of neglect - it was now stained, dingy, and frayed. He wore wool socks with Birkenstocks, no pants, and no undergarment.

“Aw, gross,” shuddered Pickle, “socks with Birkenstocks?”

“What are you, the fashion police?” growled the man at the bar. His voice was gravely yet somehow musical. His eyes were a ferocious penetrating cosmic blue, all at once stern, mirthful, and probing. He was a fellow of maybe 60 years, with a steel grey beard and a long crooked nose. Nothing wrong with that, lots of wizards look like that. But socks with sandals? Why? thought Pickle. The Wizard picked up his massive glass beer stein from the counter, lowered it below his waist and began relieving himself into the vessel, each eye locked unwaveringly on Pickle and DanHam, respectively. The pair gaped in silence as the man and mug sounded off: splash, gurgle, burble. Drip, drip, drip. He raised the glass to his lips and chugged. DanHam gagged, then fainted, crashing to the floor. Pickle could only muster a weak, “Aw, c’mon dude… Please stop.”

The urophagic smacked his lips and belched. “Anyway, where was I a paragraph ago? Aye, I was once the Great Alcohol-chemist Lord Barrington Goldwater, Advisor to Kings, but you may call me The Wiz.”

Pickle recovered himself, “The Wiz, huh? Isn’t that a little on the nose?”

“No, it’s out the urethra!” The magician guffawed at his own witticism. He procured another cigar from his breast pocket, ignited the tip of his index finger, and puffed. He shook the flame from his finger, took a long drag, and the cigar exploded in a blinding flash.

The man tittered to himself, then he straightened his posture and boomed in his best wise old wizard voice: “I am known by many names: Goldwater, Zurn, The Quagmerican Standard, The Kohler Kid, and Flowmaster. Anyway, if you can give better nicknames than our liege, knock yourself out.”

Pickle bowed his head in deferent assent. “Yes, he is a true Master of Monikers.”

“The Sultan of Sobriquets.”

“The Noble of Nicknames.”

“Yes, he is the Caesar of Pseudonyms. A toast to our King, long may he reign.”

“I’m afraid he’ll need more than a toast. He needs you, and Quagmerica needs you.”

“Well, if it’s piss he needs, I’ve got buckets of it. Otherwise, they can all go hang. Quagmerica and King Rex Machinor cast me out.”

The Wiz took a laborious gulp from out of his mug.

Pickle grimaced and ventured, “Does the name Melody ring a bell?”

“More than one bell. It conjures up a series of notes. Bright girl, tough-minded, raven hair. Great tits. I’d like to make sweet music with her, if you know what I mean.”

Pickle’s eyes narrowed. “You’re talking about my wife, you old creep.”

The Wiz’s eyes darted back and forth. “Maybe I’m thinking of some other Melody.”

“No, you’re not. Leave it to me to remark upon the majestic mountains that are my wife’s awesome tits.”

The Wiz raised his glass and eyebrows in a gesture of begged pardon.

Pickle composed himself and tried again, “What’s your relationship with Dr. Ant Sickle?”

The Wiz’s eyes widened, taking on the aspect of a horned owl in a nocturnal bloodlust, and he hurled his glass stein at Pickle, who leaned sideways and watched it smash on the brick wall behind him. “I take it you’re acquainted.” A new mug materialized from the ether into The Wiz’s hand. He took another manic guzzle.

“That backstabbing invertebrate is the reason I’m here.”

“You’ll never guess what he’s up to now.”

For the second time today, Pickle recapped his adventure. He stumbled through the scant secondhand details from Melody’s trip to the library, the missing pages, and the mystery of the Dark Crystal’s origin.

“Impossible,” The Wiz said, his countenance darkening, “That book was just the deranged blather of a pseudo-archeologist, the unhinged ravings of a historical conspiracy theorist. But… if the Crystal is real, and the Plague is real, then… the demon Corona is real.”

“Lord Goldwater,” said Pickle, “you’ve done your own research, we need your guidance on how to exorcise this demon.”

The Wiz slouched. “I tried to stop him, you know… Dr. Sickle. I said the Crystal research was distracting him from his real work. I even snatched the clue to the relics off his desk, but by then it was too late. The next day, I was deposed with a vote of no confidence from the Privy Council. My experiments in Bio-Alchemy were a side project, but they worked, dammit!”

“Bio-Alchemy?” Pickle piqued.

The Wiz smacked his lips and began, “Few believed that I could transmute waste materials into something useful and delicious. Oh sure, urine is good enough to tan leather, treat jellyfish stings, and for use as a teeth whitener, but when you mention making delicious beer with it, the cognoscenti drop their monocles right into their martinis!”

Pickle noticed that the magician’s teeth were a blinding titanium white.

“Those like Sickle who bore witness to my craft were threatened by it, or at least used it as an example of my lunacy. So they cast me aside and I’ve been swimming in warm piss ever since.” He sighed forlornly. “I don’t want for much, but I will admit that it’s nice to be needed again. You’ve seen with your own eyes the least of my power, the rare wonder of the magic of recycling. Gold and steamy to cold and dreamy. But after Sir Bud of Wiser, in his Pride, transed his own beer and flopped, the market for piss beer dried up.”

Pickle’s patience was at an end. “Lord Barrington, look at yourself. Pantless, drunk, wearing wool socks with Birkenstocks, addicted to exploding cigars, and also, pantless. A literal em-barr-ass-ment. The realm is in peril, and here you sit, bare-assed in self-pity.”

The Wiz looked at Pickle with a manic gleam in his eye. “A challenge to rise to the occasion with Sir Pickle, eh? Let’s make it fun, then. I’ll lend you my magic, on one condition. You, good Knight, have the wonderful opportunity to sample some of my homebrew… My ‘Eye Pee Ehh,’ as it were. So you need my help… then erase all doubts from your mind, it is time you believed in magic again! Think ye be a hero, a true leader of virtue true? Then slurp up my hot piss, big shot!” The Wiz procured a cold mug from nowhere, balanced it upright on his palm in front of him, and pushed it toward Pickle. Born upon a cloud, it glided over, and hung sparkling in the air in front of our hero. “Piss or beer? Trust is the foundation of magic, and a noble heart is the source of trust. Do you have what it takes?”

A standoff ensued:

Now, choose your own adventure! Will Pickle brave the uncanny test of The Wiz? Free subscribers can redeem their single-use Unlock on this paywalled content. Otherwise DM me or comment, and I’ll pull some strings with the Quagmerican government to allow you access to the punchline.