“Beer,” he said, and pointed at the shop.

“Beer,” said Gath.

But between them and the beer stood the barrier.

Sometimes in life you have to lose a battle to win a war. Shan dug into one of the pockets of his coat and removed from it a black bottle. The bottle was encased in a titanium frame that kept its cork in place, and the following warning was written on the glass.

THIS BOTTLE CONTAINS ‘SPIGGIT’S OLD RESENTFUL.’ DO NOT OPEN. SERIOUSLY. EVEN CREATING THIS BEER WAS A MISTAKE, BUT ALL ATTEMPTS TO DESTROY IT HAVE PROVED USELESS. IF YOU DO OPEN THIS BOTTLE, YOU AGREE TO GIVE UP ALL RIGHTS TO YOUR HEALTH, AND POSSIBLY YOUR EXISTENCE. BEFORE OPENING, ASK INNOCENT BYSTANDERS TO STAND WELL BACK, OR SUGGEST THAT THEY MOVE TO ANOTHER COUNTRY. DO NOT OPEN NEAR NAKED FLAME. DO NOT SO MUCH AS THINK OF A NAKED FLAME IN YOUR HEAD. DO NOT EVEN SMILE WARMLY. DO NOT INHALE. IF INHALED, SEEK MEDICAL ASSISTANCE WITHIN FIVE SECONDS. IF CONSUMED, SEEK UNDERTAKER.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE: OPEN. RUN AWAY.

Shan and Gath had often looked longingly at the next-to-last remaining bottle of Spiggit’s Old Resentful. It had been developed by Old Mr. Spiggit shortly before people spotted that he was clearly as nutty as a nut-brown squirrel in a nut factory. How bad could Spiggit’s Old Resentful be? Shan and Gath had wondered. The answer was, Probably very bad. Spiggit’s did not issue such warnings lightly. If your regular beer has a biohazard symbol on it, even one with a smiley face, then the special stuff must be lethal.

And so Shan and Gath had long carried the bottles of Spiggit’s Old Resentful around with them, hoping that the day might come when they would have cause to open them. Now, it seemed, that day was upon them.

Shan typed in the seventeen-digit combination on the bottle’s lock, and the titanium cage sprang open. As if sensing that its time was upon it, something rumbled in the glass. Shan looked a bit worried. He looked even more worried as the cork began to remove itself from the bottle under pressure from whatever was inside. Like a man who suddenly finds himself in possession of a live hand grenade, he did the only sensible thing: he handed it to the bloke standing next to him, which in this case was Gath, and began backing away. Gath, meanwhile, might not have been very bright, but he wasn’t entirely stupid. He tossed the bottle straight back to Shan, who caught it and sent it back to Gath, and so a game of Hot Potato continued until Shan saw that there was barely a finger’s width of cork left in the bottle.

He threw the bottle at the occult field. The bottle didn’t pass through but exploded on impact, showering the field with a dark brown liquid that looked like mud and smelled like low tide at a herring factory. Shan’s eyes watered, and his nasal hairs caught fire. Gath fainted.