“That’s what the badge says,” Jason grumbled. “Some bloody adventure they’ve sent me on, though. Do you know how many people they sent out before me after this imaginary frigging monster? Eight! I’m the ninth, and I’ll be the last, one way or another. You can believe that. If this monster isn’t out here this time, I’ll personally see to it that the prick sending out these notices gets black marked. A fergax that doesn’t kill anyone or break anything? What a load of crap.”

“That would be the Lindover Lumber Mill you’ll be heading out to, then?” the barman asked.

“Probably,” Jason said. “They gave me a map; I don’t care what the place is bloody well called.”

Jason had trouble grumbling through what turned out to be a delicious drink and a quite excellent dinner, but he did it anyway, resisting his normal urge to seek out the recipe. He retired angrily to his room, performing a simple ritual to shield himself from surveillance magic before dropping the act.

The next morning, he left the inn as irritably as he arrived and set out for the lumber mills. The lumber region was more solid ground than marsh, like most of the delta, but not dry and hard or dead and empty like the desert. It was like walking through a forestry reserve, with straight, earthen roads passing between trees lined up in neat rows. Sometimes it was akin to a natural, if neatly arranged, forest. Other times he was walking past a sea of saplings or the devastation of a recently deforested field. Wagons went past on a regular basis, wheeling loads of lumber to Leust.

Jason passed several large, wooden archways with signage declaring the name of the lumber mill the road behind them led to. When he reached the one labelled Lindover, he walked through it. He followed the road through the trees to a large lumber mill, but it was still and devoid of people. Jason kept going past the mill and up to a sizeable farmhouse.

Knocking on the door, he was met by the most lumberjack-looking man Jason had ever seen and they made introductions. Kyle Lindover was a leonid even larger than Gary, with a red plaid shirt, tough worker’s pants and huge, thick boots. He looked like he could knock down trees simply by punching them.

“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.