“If I was a tree and saw you coming my way,” Jason said, “I think I'd just surrender. Do you like pressing wildflowers?”
“No,” Kyle said. “Why do you ask?”
“Just something I heard about lumberjacks.”
Kyle showed Jason around. Kyle had shut down the mill after the repeated fergax sightings, not wanting his workers to get hurt. His business was lucrative enough to sustain the downtime for a while, but his reserves were falling short and most of his workers had taken up with other operations, having their own families to feed.
“My wife and kids are staying with her parents in Greenstone,” Kyle said. “I've been maintaining things here, but every time I look at starting back up, the monster appears again. I keep getting adventurers out here, but they don't find anything. I'm afraid I'm going to be black-marked.”
“We’ll have to see what we can do about that. I’d like to start by seeing all the places the monster was spotted.”
Kyle did exactly as asked, taking Jason all around the property. There was the lumber mill, the farmhouse, and a dormitory for the people working the mill. There was also a small farm, producing food for Kyle, his family and the workers. Kyle was doing his best to keep everything in order, but he was clearly getting overwhelmed.
Jason said he wanted to look around for himself, leaving Kyle to go back to the farmhouse. Jason made his way around the property until his map ability had fully unveiled everything. Afterwards, he sat down with Kyle at the farmhouse, enjoying some fruit punch Kyle had made while Jason was roaming about.
“This is really good,” Jason said. “Can I get the recipe?”
Looking over his map, Jason marked out the areas the fergax had been spotted. He could just tap a finger to the map and set a marker, or drag his finger to mark a whole zone. Kyle watched curiously as, from his perspective, Jason was waggling his finger in empty air.
“Invisible magic map,” Jason told him, not looking up.
“I figured it was something of the like.”
As he examined the map, the general area the monster was coming from was quite clear. Jason marked out a grid pattern to search, then left the farmhouse to get to work. He took out the watering can Jory lent him, complete with extra-dimensional water storage, and started sprinkling it over the area marked on his map. Kyle looked on with curiosity.
“What exactly are you doing?”
“Looking for salt,” Jason said. He kept moving from spot to spot, sprinkling little bits of water as he went.
“Salt?”
“That's right,” Jason said. “When you use an essence ability to summon a monster, the first step is to make a summoning circle. It isn't complicated, but you do need to use the right material. I have some friends who use obsidian dust and iron filings, but exotic materials like that are generally for the fancy summons. Most people just need a circle of good old salt, including people who summon a fergax. I'm betting the summoner just kicked it into the dirt after, rather than collect it up.”
“You think someone is summoning the monster?”
“I do.”
“You think someone is trying to drive me off my land?”
“I do.”
Kyle hung his head.
“Why us?” he wondered.
“You’re independent,” Jason said. “You don’t have a backer in Greenstone to push back with.”
“How am I meant to prove what’s going on?”
“You’re not. I am. Adventure Society, at your service.”
“I’ve had the Adventure Society out here before,” Kyle said. “How are you going to prove any of what you’re talking about? We don’t even know who’s behind it.”
“Sure we do,” Jason said. “This investigation is taking a two-pronged approach. Best of both worlds, you might say. What we’re doing here is using some local ingenuity to follow the magic. That’s one prong. The other is a method we use where I come from called following the money.”
White smoke started rising from where Jason had just sprinkled water.
“That’s our first hit,” Jason said.
Jason took out a metal stake with a bright red ribbon tied to it and shoved it into the ground. Then he went back to moving through his grid pattern, sprinkling more water.
“There isn't a lot of business regulation, locally,” Jason said. “That's what happens when the people who make the rules are the ones who own the businesses. When I took this contract, however, I discovered the lumber industry is a notable exception. The industry and its attendant land rights are very regulated.”
“That’s why I’m in danger of losing my land,” Kyle said. “There are production requirements for landholders, and we haven’t been producing since this monster started showing up.”
“Well, good news,” Jason said. “Since investigation here seems to consist of finding the first guy that can throw fireballs and asking him to take a look, no one seems to have invented shell companies. I found where all the records were kept, spent a few hours to poke around and found everything I needed. With a little help from a bribed official.”
“You bribed a city official?”
“Not to do anything illegal,” Jason said. “Just to help me navigate a less-than-helpful records system. That’s how I know who’s behind all this and why.”
“You already know?”
“Yep,” Jason said. “Now I just need some corroborating evidence, by which I mean whoever they’re actually paying to come out here and summon the monster. I get that person to talk and we can get you back up and running.”
“You think they will?”
“Maybe,” Jason said. “Even if they don’t, we’ll get something we can use.”
Jason searched out his whole grid, putting down a stake each time Jory’s water-potion mix found high salt content. When he was done, Jason took stock. His stakes with the eye-catching ribbons were clustered in a small area.
“About what I thought,” he said. “I checked the whole area to make sure, but it looks like our summoner comes out here and summons his monster in more or less the same spot, every time. Then he has it wander about until you see it. I take it you never chased the creature.”
“A huge aggressive monster?” Kyle asked. “No, I didn’t.”
“Eminently sensible. When was the last time you saw it?”
“Five days ago.”
“Probably too long to track it from the last summoning,” Jason said. “I’ll give it a go, though.”
Jason conducted the ritual Clive had given him at each of the summoning sites he had found. Ghostly images of a bear-like creature appeared briefly, but there wasn’t enough residual magic to imprint the summoner’s aura on a tracking stone.
“Yeah,” Jason said as he kicked the salt he used for the circles into the dirt. “We’re going to need a fresh monster sighting.”
“That last appearance was less than a week ago,” Kyle said. “That could be some wait.”
“No worries, Kyle,” Jason said. “I’ve already laid some groundwork.”
Jason returned to the inn as the sun ducked below the horizon, unhappier than when he left that morning.
“Food and drink, same as before,” he demanded of the barman. “I’m out of here at first light. I’m not staying a moment longer than I have to.”
“No luck?” the barman asked.
“It’s not a matter of luck when some idiot is making things up,” Jason said bitterly. “I swear, if one more report comes in from Lindover, I’m not coming back. I’ll have him black-marked on the spot and let the damn bureaucrats sort it out.”
As promised, Jason departed at first light down the road to Greenstone. He passed through the next town as well to make sure before he cut back cross country to the Lindover Property. The trees made stealth easy on the occasions he saw workers on the properties he passed through.
It was three days before the fergax appeared. With his aura fully restrained, he followed it with a recording crystal active as it roamed around for several hours. Kyle came out and spotted it, running when it roared at him, but it didn’t give chase. It didn’t do anything but roam about until it vanished when the summoning duration expired. All the while, Jason quietly stayed out of its path, watching it as the image was captured by the recording crystal floating over his head.