“Eminently sensible. When was the last time you saw it?”

“Five days ago.”

“Probably too long to track it from the last summoning,” Jason said. “I’ll give it a go, though.”

Jason conducted the ritual Clive had given him at each of the summoning sites he had found. Ghostly images of a bear-like creature appeared briefly, but there wasn’t enough residual magic to imprint the summoner’s aura on a tracking stone.

“Yeah,” Jason said as he kicked the salt he used for the circles into the dirt. “We’re going to need a fresh monster sighting.”

“That last appearance was less than a week ago,” Kyle said. “That could be some wait.”

“No worries, Kyle,” Jason said. “I’ve already laid some groundwork.”

* * *

Jason returned to the inn as the sun ducked below the horizon, unhappier than when he left that morning.

“Food and drink, same as before,” he demanded of the barman. “I’m out of here at first light. I’m not staying a moment longer than I have to.”

“No luck?” the barman asked.

“It’s not a matter of luck when some idiot is making things up,” Jason said bitterly. “I swear, if one more report comes in from Lindover, I’m not coming back. I’ll have him black-marked on the spot and let the damn bureaucrats sort it out.”

As promised, Jason departed at first light down the road to Greenstone. He passed through the next town as well to make sure before he cut back cross country to the Lindover Property. The trees made stealth easy on the occasions he saw workers on the properties he passed through.

It was three days before the fergax appeared. With his aura fully restrained, he followed it with a recording crystal active as it roamed around for several hours. Kyle came out and spotted it, running when it roared at him, but it didn’t give chase. It didn’t do anything but roam about until it vanished when the summoning duration expired. All the while, Jason quietly stayed out of its path, watching it as the image was captured by the recording crystal floating over his head.

“The problem is we have bears around here,” Kyle said as he and Jason looked at the tracks left behind by the fergax. “Sometimes they get curious and come in close, and their tracks are pretty much identical. Some of the other adventurers that came out thought I was seeing bears and getting rattled.”

“Well, we have the recording now, so at least we can demonstrate there really is a monster,” Jason assured him. “That means a black-mark is off the table, at the very least. Next, we see if we can't do a little better than that.”