Even as she climbed rocky hills and wandered past shadowy copses, Nanazin was determined to look pretty.

She had her pride as a southern Kovatellian, a pride that insisted she continue wearing her traditional clothing rather than shift to the tightly fitted tunics and breeches of the north.

The southern edge of the nation was warm and humid more often than not; this afforded fashion to lean toward loose, flowing clothing that breathed instead of allowing moisture and sweat to cling to the skin.

Although pride was the correct word, it didn’t feel entirely accurate.

Nanazin wasn’t so prideful as to let herself freeze or make her work harder than it needed to be. She wore a dhoti and kurta set in red, dyed beautifully by berries local to her home city, with small dots of yellow along the edges. That wasn’t entirely enough – a golden yellow shawl with embroidered teal and red flowers kept her warm as she scaled closer toward the Staargraven.

She was a long way off from the high, cold mountains, still in the rocky foothills. To Nanazin, who grew up among grasslands and wet, vibrant forests, the foothills were mountains.

They were steep and difficult and frustrating, yet Nanazin refused to go back to the guild settlement empty-handed.

Pride still wasn’t correct. She was… stubborn, yes. Strong-willed was a nicer term. She knew exactly what she wanted and how she intended to get it. In all things, this was true.

Today, as usual, she wanted vetta root.

The material was one of the most prized ingredients in the entire continent, as it was a primary component of healing potions. Without vetta root, healing potions simply did not exist or work.

They were one of the unique flora of Aestrux, in that their propagation and growth was entirely controlled by the System.

Usually, the system only interfered with the natural environment in select [ territories ], broad circles of land that were constantly renewed by the system in set increments, replacing plants, minerals, ores, and beasts alike. [ territories ] were the lifeblood of any Adventurer’s Guild, as most highly prized materials could be found there in quantities whose renewal did not rely on a Landwise’s propogation or a Beastmaster’s breeding efforts.

Vetta root, however, grew solely underground as the root system of small, spindly trees with grey, stripe-like markings on the bark. These trees died once the roots were removed, so the system regularly replaced them.

But it never put the replacement vetta tree in the same spot.

Sure, each vetta hunter had their own checklist of requirements – near a body of water, hidden from any roads, surrounding trees must be 30 ft tall at minimum, etc – but those requirements were more superstition than fact, as vetta trees were found in many biomes across the world.

This meant people like Nanazin – vetta hunters – could become very wealthy with only a few good finds.

In most of Kovatelli, the root sold for almost double what it did elsewhere – if there was one superstition that proved itself true, it was that vetta trees did not like growing in grasslands and open spaces.

The predominant theory from well-traveled naturalists was that the fragile-looking branches with their sparse, hair-like leaves were remnants of the development process, whereas the primary vetta was the root system itself, not the tree.

And the root system often relied on surrounding flora or fauna for nutrients, quite literally absorbing life and magic without destroying its neighbors.

Therefore, grasslands were too shallow to properly feed the subtly vampiric vetta tree. Here, in northern Kovatelli, there were trees, shrubs and bushes, and plenty of magical plant-life to sustain vetta trees. Even some of the magical ores could be beneficial, too.

Nanazin wore leather armor under her lovely shawl, protecting her from the rare beast that wandered this close to the dragon’s lair. On her belts hung a handaxe, mattock, and trowel, all entirely necessary for cleaning out and removing the parsnip-sized chunks of root that were required.

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She paused in her hiking, leaning on her tall wooden staff as she did. Something felt different in the distance, something distinctly magical.

She possessed a detect magic skill like many mages, but as the System customized each person’s class and abilities to the individual, Nanazin’s skill was to detect magic at a distance, as if looking through binoculars. If it was within her distance to distinguish with her eyes, it did not register as magical.

However, a flicker of something in the far trees was indeed magical.

Nanazin tilted her staff in front of her, a bronze ring with a red jewel swinging from a white, wooden jaing-ram’s head on the end.

“Run, Varāza, break the stones!” she called out.

The invocation brought forth the summoned spirit with a burst of magic.

As all spirits did, Varāza seemed to be made of glass, transparent and shiny in the scattered sunlight. It was a large boar-like beast, with multiple curved tusks adoring its bristly face. The spirit ran on all fours, its limbs longer than a pig should be, almost ape-like in nature.

“Varāza, go forward and find the source of that magic, then return to me if it is safe to move.”

Nanazin was an amateur summoner. This was her second spirit that agreed to respond to her call, which meant she had to give it very specific instructions.

The boar spirit collided with a tree. Its eyes were dotted along its sides, like little gemstones mounted under the ridge of its back. That did mean that Varāza had terrible frontal vision.

“Move left, then proceed,” Nanazin called out, trying not to laugh.

The spirit did wonderfully in grasslands, but such densely populated forests were still new to the creature.

It snorted off into the distance, circling the magical thing then running back with gleeful kicks.

“Oh, did you find vetta?” Nanazin continued onward with a smile, unhooking a net-like bag from her shoulders as the spirit ran toward the tree once more.

Spirits were difficult to train, but when a summoner was successful at building a relationship, the spirits shifted from emotionless recipients of commands to mirrors of their summoner’s personality.

Nanazin herself was honorable, considerate, and caring, yet she was prone to loud and large emotions – glee and anger alike.

Varāza had begun to show signs of reflecting its summoner, in how it conveyed success (passionately, such as kicking, jumping, spinning) or how it communicated refusal (turning its back on Nanazin, as to pridefully ignore her).

The bristly spirit waited by the tree for the mage’s order, expectant. When it came, Varāza began to dig deep trenches in the dirt with its tusks, creating furrows as it unveiled the thick roots underneath.

They looked like long radishes, but with the same subtle stripes of the bark. It took an hour or so for the pair to gather all the pieces – a lot quicker than many vetta hunters who had to uncover the roots by hand – then Nanazin strapped the bulging netted bag onto Varāza’s back.

The clock was ticking; vetta roots went bad if they sat around for too long. Not rotten or poisonous, but unusable in healing potions.

The summoner had grown up with an alchemist father and an herbalist papa. She had a workstation outside of her tent too, much like Samir, except this one was a little more reinforced as some of the glass equipment was delicate.

The pair began making their way back to the guild settlement, Nanazin eagerly telling Varāza about her plans to make potions. Even if the roots somehow went off on the walk back, they were still good for lesser potions – ones that healed slowly over time, rather than all at once.

Once the sound of Nanazin’s bell-cheerful tone faded in the distance, the saltsmith lowered themselves out of a nearby tree. They felt a little guilty for stalking the woman, but not enough to stop. They had no purpose in this world other than a mindful curiosity, one that was sated by keeping an eye on the mage from a distance.

The glass-bright beast was one of those curiosities. It didn’t seem dangerous, but it took orders from the woman, so perhaps it could be use for fighting?

It reminded the saltsmith of little glass figurines popular in the last decade or so back home. The smith’s father suggested trying their hand at those, especially with a preexisting forge, but then again, their father was a farrier whose labor was diminishing in value under the heavy gaze of the automobile. His views on maintaining relevancy changed rapidly in less than a decade’s time.

The tree, however, seemed of good wood. The saltsmith examined some of the broken pieces -- the boar’s enthusiasm toppled the trunk and split a few limbs, allowing some examination of the grain. While they knew little about all types of wood, the saltsmith knew what types were good for making tools.

In particular, a straight grain was best for hammers. They examined the tree to find that this grain was close enough to correct, with tight growth rings and nearly invisible cells.

They didn’t have an axe, but the carpenter did. Perhaps tonight, the saltsmith could do some work.

In the morning, Atteberry found a strange thing on his workstation. A large piece of vetta wood lay across the table, splintered on each end as if it was broken by hand. The carpenter was focused on a smaller piece of scrap wood nearby with a crude drawing of a hammer, clearly made by charcoal from the fire.

A small arrow pointed at the handle of the hammer.

Atteberry furrowed his brow at the drawing, but he cleaned the edges of the vetta wood out of a sense of due craftsmanship. He set the pieces aside for later; the carpenter had to finish up the first building before the rains set in, but maybe if he had time, he could fill this cryptic request.

It was strange, though. Atteberry thought that the guild staff would have just asked him for this task instead of leaving a note.