The following morning, Ed managed to drag himself out of bed early to show me the plant that he’d mentioned the night before. To my surprise, it was well off the beaten path.

First, we headed to a garden that was on the other side of the city.

“Why were you all the way out here?” I asked Ed.

“Oh, the Watch had me working in this area. There’s been a small spike in zombie squirrels in the area. Mostly harmless, since they’re so weak that even a basic wave of undirected ungated mana can scare them off, but they’re a bit of a hassle.”

Within the garden, Ed led me into a thicket of trees, and I was forced to repeat my earlier question.

“I was chasing one,” Ed said. “I didn’t wanna kill them again, just lay them to rest, and it kept escaping my binding spells.”

“You were defeated… by a zombie squirrel?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “Truly, what a champion of the people you are. We can all rest easy, knowing that a stellar warrior like you is guarding our homes.”

“Oh shut up,” Ed said, hitting me with a spray of conjured gravel.

We walked in until the trees started to thin, revealing a large spire of rocky crystal. It looked like quartz, probably, but I wasn’t a geologist. I didn’t even have telluric mana.

As we crunched up to the spire, something stabbed through my shoe and poked me in the foot.

“Primes!” I swore, stepping back, and Dusk summoned a second gate healing potion for me as she hopped off my shoulder to take a look. I drank it, then bent down to examine the nail I must have stepped on.

Instead of a nail, I saw rocks.

No, not rocks.

It was a small, sharp, rock-like grass. A flicker of Analyze Life revealed that it was probably about first gate, and had a decent amount of mana, bound up in active functions.

“I brought a sample to Meadow,” Ed said, and I turned to glare at him.

“You knew about this?” I asked.

“You were fine,” he said, waving his hand, and I growled at him in annoyance. That only seemed to amuse him further, so I flicked a finger and sent a single spiral of Briarthreads at him. His arm turned to stone before it struck, and he started laughing even harder.

Oh, he was in for it now.

I lit up with Briarthreads and rushed him, and he dodged and weaved backwards, his Skin of Stone spell blocking hits before they landed.

A small part of the back of my mind noted he’d clearly made a lot of progress with the spell, since he was now only turning the limbs to stone right before the briars struck, then letting them return to flesh the next moment.

That took skill, and it had to save him a tremendous amount of mana.

“Mercy!” Ed called after several minutes, doubled over in laughter. He’d stopped with his more advanced technique at this point, and was just full stone.

“Fine, fine,” I said, cutting off my mana.

Ed stopped laughing and straightened up.

“I asked Meadow. They’re good in density altering potions, gravity altering potions, and a few other stone related potions. They’re also quite sharp to walk on, as we both experienced. There’s not really a bounty on removing them, but they’re considered a hazard, so relocating it would be helpful for everyone.”

“That does sound useful, thanks. Actually no, I retract the thanks for making me step on them.”

I summoned a trowel, handed another to Ed, and we began to dig it up, and Dusk took the much easier method of simply teleporting the plants into her internal realm.

“I’m surprised it’s still around, this late in the season,” I mused as we worked.

“It’s a rock plant,” Ed said. “Are you really surprised that it’s hardy enough to endure the cold?”

“A little,” I admitted. “Power doesn’t inherently make something stronger to the elements. I mean, stunning grasses, which are also a nuisance like this, are all dying down.”

“They’re not rock plants, though,” Ed said. “They’re stunning plants.”

“Fair enough,” I snorted.

Ed had to leave not long after that, and once Dusk and I had settled the Stonesprout in the autumnal quarter, we left as well, heading back into town to take a mission.

For the first time in what felt like ages, I entered the Spiritwatch and Wyldwatch facilities.

They’d changed. Most of the Wyldwatch activity had begun to drop down as it grew colder – magical beasts hibernated just as often as non-magical ones, and even magical plants still had to bow to the power of nature.

I felt a surge of gratefulness that Dusk allowed me to keep my plants fresh year-round. It would be a pain if my blood carnations and other summer plants had died out for the entire winter.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

The Spiritwatch side of things, however, was the exact opposite. As winter grew closer, and death energy peaked, there was far more work to be done.

I saw tons of young members of various guilds taking jobs and chattering. There were combat-focused groups, like Liz’s, who took on combat missions, guilds of wardcrafters picking up work to reinforce cemeteries, enchanter halls dropping off spirit traps and divination compasses, alchemy associations with crates of potions…

For the first time, I seriously considered looking at applying to a guild. I’d idly entertained the thought before my mana awakening, envisioning myself throwing fireballs as a squad leader, but it had never been too serious.

Ed, Liz, Kene, and I would make a good guild squad, too.

Liz was a heavy hitter, with her legacy allowing her to twin every lunar spell, and her ability to mix in desolation mana covering for lunar’s generally weaker attack power.

That, combined with her own full gate spell in her desolation gate that made her spells more potent, made her a powerful offensive mage.

Ed was an amazing wall. His multiple layers of armor spells and shield spells could take on most things, and with Kerbos making those stronger, his defenses would only continue to grow.

On top of his absurd defenses, he had multiple ways to pin things down, trap them, and bind them. If we got a mission to catch a rogue troll, he’d be able to pin it down just fine.

Kene was a great healer, and his alchemical skills only furthered that. Healing was a complex field, and Kene was more advanced than most people our age, due to his early mana awakening.

Then he also had a handful of other spells that were useful – invisibility, his fire runes, and plant-divination spells, namely.

Meadow would certainly make a good guild-leader, too. She was plenty strong enough for it, and per her own words, she already kept a simulacra as a teacher in Elohi.

Was becoming a guild leader here really so different?

I… Honestly, I probably brought the least to the team on my own. I wasn’t an especially powerful offensive mage, but I was capable of offense. My defenses were alright, but I wasn’t a wall like Ed. I could throw together a healing potion, but I wasn’t a healer like Kene.

I was flexible, but had little else. My spatial and temporal magic was probably the most unique thing I brought in, but those still needed a lot of time to mature and grow.

I was pulled out of the thoughts of guilds by a familiar voice.

“Malachi,” Riley said.

I turned to see the dark-skinned, white-haired, red-eyed vampire smiling at me. They still didn’t show any teeth with their smile, though.

“How are you?” I asked them. “I admit, I’m surprised to see you here.”

As I spoke, I started trying to whip a mana current up around the borders of my gates, veiling my power. Riley was nice enough, but they were really good at veils, and they had great mana-senses. There was no need to freely display my new power.

“Not everything I do is market business,” they teased. “I do freelance work for the Spiritwatch to help pay the bills. You’d be amazed how effective… my… magic is for it. I’ve got a second gate spell that allows me to drain the death energy out of undead and use it to strengthen myself.”

I raised an eyebrow, surprised they weren’t speaking about their vampiric nature when it was so physically obvious. Still, I respected their choice.

I also felt a small pang of annoyance. That spell sounded amazing, but I’d already planned to seal off my second gate death mana. Between the werewolf shadow spell, that spell, the death harvesting spell, and spirit trap, it was an annoying level of sacrifice.

Still, it was something I was willing to bear.

Dusk made a river-babbling sound, asking Riley if they’d found any interesting missions.

“Oh, yes,” Riley said, bobbing their head in a way that reminded me of a chicken. Were there any blood magic spells that sacrificed chickens? Or was that just fearmongering from the warlord ages that had never gone away?

I was getting distracted, and I tuned in again.

“That is actually why I approached you,” Riley said. “As well as wanting to say hello. There’s a small group mission that is recruiting people. It’s going to be a team of four. I don’t know the other two, but if we both signed up, we could at least have someone that we’ve met. Better than total strangers.”

“Let me look at the mission first,” I said skeptically. I didn’t think Riley was an awful person, given the way they comported themself, but they were still in the… something… of a hag.

I didn’t know if it was debt, or if they were the hag’s student, if they worked for the hag, or if it was something more complicated.

But their hands probably weren’t squeaky clean.

I wondered for a moment if I was being prejudiced against them for being a vampire, but I didn’t think so. I was more concerned with the hag connection than I was with their vampirism.

Was I being prejudiced against hags?

That was something to think about. Hag nature was fundamentally different from a human’s, but they didn’t have to be evil. But they were different. They were parasitic, but so were vampires, and I was fine with vampires.

Was it because of Kene that I was prejudiced? After all, vampires could reproduce consensually, while someone like Kene didn’t have the choice.

There was also the mind to consider. Turning into a vampire would change anyone, but becoming a hag meant losing almost everything.

“Mal?” Riley asked, and I realized that I’d been spacing out and they’d started to lead me to the board.

“Oh, sorry,” I said, following along.

The mission they pointed out was an interesting one. It had been marked urgent – the watch would send a full member to do the job if freelancers couldn’t get it done quick enough. The paper requested four combat capable mages, ideally ones capable of trapping spirits. My spirit gourds made a decent stand in for a spirit trap, so I figured I probably qualified.

The actual mission involved an old, run down house in a village that was a bit north of the capital, which had become home to some sort of dark spirit. One person had been forced to flee while trying to do a routine spirit trap on it, their defensive enchantments barely holding long enough for them to get out of the house, but it had still landed them in the hospital.

Luckily, none of the people in the village had been stupid enough to actually set foot in the house, having reported the signs of movement, lights, and mana surges to the watch.

It offered a reward of a thousand silver per person, as well as a bloodruby each. I didn’t exactly remember what bloodruby was or did, but I knew they’d been used as a major part of the currency in the warlord era, before Mossford was unified. They had a very real value… I just couldn’t remember what it was.

With a name like bloodruby, it would probably be good for my death mana, though.

It would be a dangerous mission, going in with strangers and Riley, but it presented a good amount of money.

On the other hand, there were dozens of other jobs on the board – hunting ghosts that had escaped cemeteries, quelling asomatous risings, helping relocate a flock of phantom birds…

I scanned them, looking to make sure I had another option. One of them in particular stuck out to me – it was in a smaller orphanage in town, and it apparently had been having problems with an asomatous scaring the children. The mage in charge of the orphanage was a mentalist, and had sensed the spirit, but been unable banish it.

It paid out in a third gate mindshield ring, which was a more than fair price – if I was to hazard a guess, the mentalist in charge had likely made it.

Both were good missions that would help people, and I didn't get a sense either was shady. I just needed to pick one.