The ‘mountain’ had no slope. It was a completely vertical climb to a spectacular height from all directions. The mountain was a cylinder made of rock.

“Mt. Sorano is one of the purported progenitor mountains,” Rosalia said. “It's one of the places that people believe humanity first descended down onto. Special fruits, flowers, spices, they all came down onto the peak with humanity too. Some of the seeds were blown into the wind but the plants that don’t propagate that way were left up there. And because of the strange shape of the mountain, humans rarely went back up to find the lost vegetation…”

“There must be a treasure trove there then!” Hazen exclaimed. “Countless exotic-”

“Eh….” Rosalia said. “It's really high up. Whatever special plants supposedly lived up there, almost all died out due to the cold. Alma’s tears are one of the few that remain. And the only reason it hasn’t been cultivated is because the specific level of moisture the cold and wind bring at that altitude are the only conditions in which it grows.”

“Who was Alma?” Hazen asked.

Rosalia raised an inquisitive brow. “Where are you from again? Didn’t you go to school?”

“Ummm…” Hazen hesitated, remembering the former teacher he’d recently buried. “Yes, but I didn’t stay very long.”

Rosalia sighed. “Muscle-heads,” she muttered.

“Alma was the first man,” Tano said. “Landed here. Or at the peak of 4 other mountains, depends on who you believe. He cried because of his separation from his true home. Or because of his separation from his spouse. Or because he had a fear of heights. Anyways the flower came from his tears. Or it came down with him and was named after his tears. Proponents of Mt. Sorano being the cradle of humanity like to point to it as proof that it is the true progenitor mountain.”

Hazen rubbed his temples. Tano wasn’t a good storyteller. He really was more of a bouncer than a bartender.

“Let’s climb then,” Hazen said. He walked up to the base and felt for ridges in the rock. There were very few, it was smoother than sanded wood. He gripped harder and the rock crumbled slightly beneath his palms, enough for him to make his own handhold.

“Hold on,” Rosalia said. “It's not the most popular of the progenitor mountains, but there have been enough pilgrims in history for there to be a ladder built in somewhere.” She circled around the base with Tano and Dina for about 40 minutes before she found a series of iron rods jutting out precariously from the sheer face of the mountain.

“Found it!” she yelled. She looked around. “Where’s Hazen?”

Something thumped behind her. She turned to see Hazen, standing with his feet buried in the rocky ground, bits of brittle stone encrusted on his palms, and a dozen silvery, crystalline flowers with violet stems held between his teeth. He removed the flowers, held them forward towards her, and half-bowed. His sleeping bag, filled with dozens more of the flowers, fell beside him.

“H-How?” Rosalia asked. She poked the flowers, to make sure it wasn’t some illusion she had accidentally created.

“Oh, I umm.. I kept climbing,” Hazen said. “There were- are handholds where I was. Sorry, I should have said something but I was too high up when I thought about talking.” He wasn’t lying- he had made handholds the whole way up the mountain. On the way down, he’d let himself fall, kicking the side of the mountain and scraping his foot against it every 10 meters or so to slow his descent.”

“St-still,” Rosalia said. “Climbing up and down in less than an hour is…”

“I apprenticed a real alpinist,” Hazen said, puffing his chest out. This time he was lying, he just didn’t know it. Most of the peaks Anders claimed to have climbed didn’t even exist.

“And you didn’t know about Mt. Sorano?” Dina asked.

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“If you know everything, you’ll never have the pleasure of surprise,” Hazen responded, quoting Anders with a smug smile on his face.

The peak had been completely flat. There were several frozen tree stumps at the top, a handful of rocks, a few sticks in the ground indicating graves, and then Alma’s tears scattered around in clumps every dozen meters, glistening in the fog, their metallic petals shining.

Rosalia took the flowers from Hazen’s hand, and he lifted himself up from the bow, and tore his feet from the ground they were buried in, shaking off the stony dirt. He’d gotten lazy on the last 30 meters down.

“Would you all mind going ahead without me?” Hazen said. “I want to see the area a bit. I’ll catch up with you in Harwich.”

“We finished early, we can see the area here together,” Rosalia said.

“The flowers can’t survive long outside of their natural environment though,” Dina said. “And the fresher they are, I bet the more we’d get paid.”

Rosalia sighed. “Don’t get in too long after us then Hazen,” Rosalia said. “Or I’ll sell them to the medical institute-”

“And blow off all the profits,” Tano chuckled. He clapped Hazen on the back. “You are a strong one, young man.”

Hazen waited until they were out of sight and the dust clouds their horses left had settled. Then he hefted his horse under one arm and ran, swerving a little ways south to avoid them, and then back up north.

He camped a mile outside of Harwich, his backside completely unscathed. Three days later he knocked on the door of the Fortress and it swung open so hard that one of the hinges flew off.

“Not even two hours late!” Tano exclaimed. “We should have waited for you back there.”

“That’s alright,’ Hazen said. “The area ended up less interesting than I’d expected.”

Rosalia led the group over to the medical institute right away. Everyone in the group except Hazen looked worn, but all their smiles were whole.

Rosalia transformed into Titus, and they walked into the institute. It was an adobe building with a garden courtyard replete with dozens of medicinal herbs.

“We’ve completed a quest that was posted in the Harwich Adventure guild house,” Rosalia/Titus said to the white-robed nurse at the entrance, while twirling her non-existent mustache. She raised a bouquet of Alma’s tears in a stretched out hand, and dropped the sleeping bag containing over 60 of the flowers in front of her.

It wasn’t quite as dramatic as Hazen’s earlier performance…

And it wasn’t as well received.

The nurse frowned. “We forgot to take that posting down. Many apologies. One of our staff made it to the mountain a month back and brought a few bulbs.”

“Oh, but you wouldn’t mind more?” Rosalia/Titus asked, puzzlement written all over her fake face, bleeding over from her real one.

“Actually, we managed to cultivate it,” the nurse said. “It hasn’t been announced publicly yet- don’t want to lose our advantage over the Order of the Half Moon so quickly. Since the dark one fell and the irregular dark clouds disappeared completely, the weather has become more reliable. That’s made it easier to simulate Mt. Sorano’s peak in a few of our greenhouses.”

“But we have so many..” Rosalia said.

“You can sell it to another medical institute; I think Yanter’s could be interested.”

Rosalia’s smile drooped. “That’s two days away. It wouldn’t survive the trip…”

“And they may have already bought some of the ones we’ve grown,” the nurse shrugged. “Sorry.”

Hazen opened his mouth to offer to run the flowers over to Yanter, to reveal his speed.

But Rosalia had already dropped all the flowers and was stomping all over them.

The party returned to ‘the Fortress’ in a glum mood. This time when Tano opened it, the whole door fell off.

Dina sat thrumming her fingers against her bow string, Tano drank from a cup that was already empty, and Hazen twiddled his fingers.

“What quest should we do next?” he asked.

Rosalia jumped up abruptly, and stalked off, her green dress turning white as she crossed the threshold.

Everyone had fallen asleep by the time Rosalia came back, and not one customer had come by and woken them up. Even with the door knocked off, no thief came by.

Rosalia slammed her palm against the table they were sitting around. The two halves wobbled and they jerked awake. She lifted her palm to reveal a gold coin. Her smile shined almost as bright as the coin did.

“How?” Dina asked.

“Who did you loan from this time?” Tano mumbled, rubbing his eyes.

“No one. I sold the flowers,” she said.

“You destroyed the flowers,” Hazen said.

“I destroyed an illusion,” Rosalia said. “The moment the institute said they didn’t need the flowers, I cast an illusion. And then they said they managed to cultivate the flowers- and were trying to stay a step ahead of the Order. They told us that when they apologized, because Titus doesn’t look like a mage. The Order doesn’t need Alma’s Tears for healing, but becoming producers of the flowers would be profitable…”

“Wait,” Hazen said. “You pretended to destroy the flowers and then sold the bulbs to the Order?”

“Sold the bulbs along with a full description of how the flowers were being cultivated. That’s why I had to stop by the medical institute again as a nurse,” she said.

“You stole their property,” Hazen said. “Their idea…”

“And they cheated us,” Rosalia shrugged. “I didn’t really steal it. If I’d just told the Order they managed the cultivation, the order would have figured it out in a couple of days. But then I wouldn’t have made anything. So I went back, copied a few paragraphs of text with a little illusion magic, and here we are.”

“So it's not just me you cheat,” Tano said as he grabbed the gold coin.

“You know,” Rosalia said. “I’ve made ‘the Fortress,’ look like a palace more than once.”

“This will definitely keep the Archmagus off my back for a few days,” Rosalia said. “Unexpected windfall always distracts her. Come on then, MahoganEye!” She said, raising a fist as she cheered. Hazen cringed inwardly at the name, but jumped to his feet nonetheless.