Mathias was shocked when he came to the Reis’s farm for the second time. It had only been a few weeks, but already the moongrass was beginning to take over the mundane grass on his property, and a number of the trees in his orchard had healthy-looking growths of heartvine beginning to creep up their trunks, and beginning to sprout flower buds at their base. He knew specialists in magic plants that had a season to achieve similar results, and they had been touted as experts in the field.

If that was the case, then this Reis could only be considered a generational talent. He walked to the door to knock when he saw Reis out in a paddock, working with a bizarre beast, whose like Mathias had never seen before. It was the size of a large horse, but it's visage could not be more different. It had a large shell like a turtle, and from the look of it its limbs could retract like one, despite being much longer in proportion to its shell than any turtle’s. On the top of the creature’s head it’s eyes poked out as large stalks, which it turned about to look at its surroundings. In the center of its shell was a groove, which Reis sat in, like it had been born with a saddle built into its shell.

He patted its shell, and said something to it too quiet for Mathias to hear, and then followed its line of sight to where Reis stood. He slid down from the strange animal and waved to Reis. They met between his cottage and the paddock that the animal was in, and a few shapes that Mathias had first thought were rocks, but now believed were younger versions of whatever this animal was.

“Reis, it’s good to see you,”

“Mathias, was it?” Reis looked Mathias up and down, his eyes finally settling on his new sword. Reis smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. “It seems like a fine blade. I’d heard you’d hunted some manner of spirit beast, it had command of fire, yes?” Mathias eyes had settled on Reis’s own weapon before he’d begun talking, a rope coiled around his shoulder until it met a weight of some sort, with a monkey’s paw knot tied around it, and stuck between his shoulders with some unknown force, but his attention was drawn to the man himself at his knowledge of the hunt.

“It was, how did you know?” Reis’s face went slack for just a moment, the expression barely perceptible, before he returned once more to an easy smile.

“You know how the villagers like to talk, especially craftsmen who get to work on materials from magic beasts,” Mathias masked his suspicion. He knew for certain that Reis had not been to the settlement since he’d last visited, and he also knew that nobody had visited him. They’d been keeping an eye on the route, hoping to find out who had made a deal for his heartvine in hopes that they could convince them to sell it to the Avalanche sect.

“Indeed, craftsmen do love to brag,” Reis seemed to visibly sag in relief when Mathias accepted his explanation, and then straightened, as if remembering that he should have nothing to be relieved about. “I seem to recall you saying that you weren’t a warrior Reis, but, and excuse me if I’m overreaching, that seems like a fine weapon on your back,” The genuinely puzzled look that Reis gave Mathias made Mathias’s puzzlement grow in equal measure.

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“This old thing?” He unwrapped the weapon, and the bludgeoning end fell off his back and into his hand seemingly unprompted, “It’s just a little ball and string I made myself for self-defense,”

“Then you must be almost as good a craftsman as a farmer, and I would wager you’re better in battle than you let on too, Reis. That ‘ball and string’ is putting out at least as much magic as my weapon, and there are few warriors I know of who could hold their weapons to their bodies with sheer force of will,” Reis cocked his head in seemingly genuine confusion at Mathias’s declaration,

“There’s no way this thing puts out as much magic as your sword, it’s made entirely of mundane-” Reis dropped the weapon and stepped away from it when he sensed the mana coming from it. Mathias laughed skeptically.

“Sir if you can bring a weapon crafted from mundane elements to act as yours, I recommend you talk with the higher ups at the guild, they’d pay you a fortune to know how you’ve done it.” Reis looked uneasy at being called out for his lies, but Mathias pressed on, hoping to quell the source of his unease. “It is your relationship with the guild that I came here to discuss with you today, sir,” Reis seemed to grow even more defensive at that, which was well within Mathias’s projections for how this stage of the conversation would go.

“What about it?”

“Reis, it seems to me that you are uneasy with the guild’s presence here,” Mathias spoke. Reis seemed to grow more tense with every word that he spoke, tension that he hoped would be relieved shortly. “I don’t know how you’ve ended up at Culcheth, but I want to assure you that you’ll see no opposition from the guild,” Reis just gave him a puzzled look, but Mathias pushed on, “The guild has officially recognized Culcheth as a sovereign power,’

“Okay?”

“That means it’s against guild law to prosecute you for crimes committed outside of your nation of residence,”

“Okay?” Reis’s continual act of confusion made Mathias second guess himself. Had he misread the man’s situation? Perhaps he was just a recluse.

“So if you’d had a bounty issued, say, on the mainland, no guild member would be able to turn it in without getting disavowed from the guild as a whole, and frankly, with the aptitude that you have shown in your farming of magical crops, Culceth would likely contract the guild with keeping you safe,”

“Why would they do that?”

“I think you know the answer to that very well, but I will make it explicit if you somehow do not understand. The progress on your farm is unprecedented. In my work with the guild I’ve come to work with cultivators before, and never in my life have I come across anybody who could take a few cuttings of heartvine and turn it into the beginnings of a field of them as quickly as you have. In a season or two you will doubtless be a great boon to the town,” Reis seemed to grow bashful at the statement. Mathias took this as a good sign and pushed on, “So, Mr. Reis, will you sell us your heartvine?” Reis drooped.

“I’m sorry Mathias, but I told you, I’ve made a deal for them already,” Mathias sighed, but he’d had to try.

“Very well, if your deal falls through or you have extra after you sell them, the guild-house would be happy to make a deal with you for the remainder,” Mathias bid Reis farewell and made his way to the forest, and the hunting outpost they’d constructed. They’d decided they were going to track one of the larger magical beasts that resided in the wild, and they would stay in the outpost for as long as it took to bring it in.