I looked back at the group, understandably a bit confused by what this person was talking about. They just shrugged, as confused as I was. I walked over to the man bowing before us. I leaned down and tapped on his shoulder. “There’s really no need to bow to us, sir.”

He made his way to his feet, nodding feverishly as he did so. “Ah yes, of course. My apologies. I was just so excited when I saw you approaching. We all were.” He gestured around to the people around him.

I gave him a puzzled look. “Why would you be so excited for us to be here?”

He returned the look. “Because you are here to save us from our plight, of course. You are clearly a group of well-trained apprentices. You responded to our order and are now here to help us, no?”

I turned back to the group. “Do you have any idea what this guy is talking about?” They just shook their head and I sighed as I turned back to face the smiling man. “I’m very sorry to inform you, but I have no clue what you’re talking about.”

The man stepped back almost like I’d just threatened him. “But you’re all apprentices, are you not?”

I nodded. “We are apprentices, yes, but we’re merely passing through on our way to Gaias. Your town simply happened to be in out path.”

The man collapsed to the ground and began crying. “We’ll never be safe… They’re going to continue to terrorize us for all of eternity…”

Viktor walked past me and over to the man, placing his hand on his shoulder. “Why aren’t you safe? What kind of problems are threatening this town? We may be able to help,” he said, looking back at us.

I smiled and walked forward to the man, Lilith and Julian following shortly behind. He lifted his head off the ground as he wiped the tears out of his eyes. “If you truly wish to help us, you should go speak with the mayor. She knows more about this than anyone else. She’s the one who put out the job order, after all.”

Viktor and I rose to our feet, meeting the gaze of much of the town. “Where would we find the mayor?” I asked. I was met with several people pointing to our right towards a large stone building. It was quite distinct from the other because of the water wheel on the side, something that puzzled me greatly.

We headed off down the road towards what I could only assume was the town hall. There was a bell outside which we promptly rang and waited. After a few seconds, we heard footsteps rushing down a flight of stairs towards us. They sounded pretty light, but very rapid. They stopped and the doors were flung open to reveal the woman behind the footsteps. She was pretty short and had her dark brown hair is a messy bun atop her head. She wore large glasses and had a light green scarf around her neck.

“Greetings, travelers! I am Cheryll Rivers! What brings you to my door this fine day?”

“We were told by those people back in town to come see you,” Viktor answered.

She nodded. “I see. And what can I do for you four?”

“The people of this town said there was some sort of trouble and that we should talking to you about it if we wanted to know what was happening and how we might be able to help.”

Her eyes lit up at this. “You four responded to my job order?! Oh, happy day! I suppose I’ve been so busy that I never checked to see if anyone had responded yet.”

“Well… We actually didn’t respond to the order. We just happened to be passing through and the people in town thought that we were here to help, so we sorta just decided we’d help,” he corrected sheepishly.

“No matter! If you are here to help us, that is good enough for me! Come inside,” she said as she rushed back up the stairs. We followed behind her and at the top we came to a very cluttered room full of papers, books, and lots of what I could only assume was pretty needless garbage. “I do truly apologize for the mess. I haven’t had much time to clean up…” she called from behind a desk stacked high with papers. She lifted the stack in the center so that we could see her.

We all just stood there in front od the desk as she attempted to get her things in order. Occasionally, she would also drop something and one of us would catch it which she thanked us for. It was interesting to think that this woman who seemed not the most put together was running this entire town.

Finally, she finished cleaning up all the paper and she looked up at us. “Alright, now that all of that is sorted out, let’s get to the matter at hand. You have no idea what has been going on with our town, do you?”

We shook our heads and she sighed. “Well, to put it simply, we have a bit of a farm problem. Recently, our farms have been coming to life and smashing the rest of the farms. While they have not attacked any people yet, the townspeople are living in constant fear of that happening. We have no idea what is causing these issues and we were hoping someone could help us.”

Julian stepped forward to address her. “Did anything change that may have caused these attacks to start occurring? Something like an underground deposit of essence opening up and leaking in to the town or something like that?”

She shook her head. “There’s nothing like that that’s happened here as long as I’ve been alive.”

He nodded. “Are there any locations that have had a greater concentration than others?”

“There have! There’s a large farm close to the edge of the forest that has been having some of the worst troubles with this than any of us. It belongs to Celis and Erina Baltis. They were actually the first ones to report any sort of trouble in the first place. It might be a good idea to start there and then see what they know.”

“Thank you for that information, Ms. Rivers. It will prove most helpful in this matter,” he said before bowing to her.

She smiled. “Of course. I’m willing to help in any way possible. And, though you didn’t intentionally come her, I can still offer you the payment I had placed on the job order.”

I shook my head. “That won’t at all be necessary. We’re simply here to help out. You don’t have to pay us at all.”

I was about to turn and walk out, but then she fell to her knees and began bowing over and over. I looked at her awkwardly. I turned to the rest of the group and they gave me some side glances in her direction. I walked over to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Look, it’s no trouble. We’re always happy to help out anyone who needs it.”

“You are too kind…”

I smiled and walked out of the house, a loud yawn escaping my mouth. They turned back and looked at me, puzzled. “I guess I didn’t really sleep all that well last night… And it is getting a bit late,” I replied.

Lilith gave me a concerned look. “Are you going to be okay to stay up all night if this doesn’t go so well and things end up taking a while?”

I shrugged. “I think so. Maybe I can find some kind of energy potion in the Jade Grimmoire…” I was about to reach for the book when Lilith stopped me.

“There’s no need for that at all. I guess you would know since you don’t have it in your world, but here we have something called hyper-accelerated sleep time elixir or Haste, for short. They sell it basically everywhere and if this town has some sort of diner, we can probably get some for you there.”

I gave her a concerned glance. “What is it…?”

She waved it off and started walking. “We’ll explain once we get there.”

We began to walk around the town. Everyone was winding down for the night and the street lights were getting a lot brighter. They cast eerie shadows on us and thinking about the possessed farms made me a bit uneasy around them. We continued on for a little bit until we found a small diner on the corner of the street. We walked inside and were met by an extremely happy and somewhat round man behind the counter.

“Welcome to my diner! My name is Carl. How may I help you today?”

We all sat down at the counter. Viktor began spinning on the stool as Lilith answered his question. “It’s good to meet you, Carl. We were hoping that you might sell some Haste since Avien here is a bit tired and we need to stay up late tonight.”

Carl nodded gleefully and pulled out a glass which he quickly filled with a sparking green liquid. I eyed the drink carefully as he handed it to me.

“I assume he hasn’t-“

“Nope. Never before, actually.”

Carl smiled again. “Wow. Props to him for never needing it honestly.”

I began to sip the drink. “What are you guys…” Before I could even finish the thought, my eyes shut and the world turned black. I looked around, extremely confused. I had heard the word sleep in the name of the drink, so was I asleep right now. I stopped my foot to confirm and watched as the glowing ripples cascaded around my foot. I paced around in place for a while, confused as to what had happened and then, all of the sudden, I found myself sinking in to the inky blackness below me.

I tried to call out, but my vision quickly returned and I was back in the diner with my face in the counter. I shot up and frantically looked around. Lilith smiled at me and Viktor was sitting in the corner watching me with concern.

“Feeling better?”

I thought for a moment before looking at her, completely astounded. My energy was totally back and I felt incredible. “I do! My energy is totally back!”

She nodded. “I imagine you’re a bit confused about what happened, right?”

“And mildly terrified, but that’ll pass. What was that?”

She held up the partially filled glass of strange liquid. “I don’t know the exact make-up of it, but a while ago, some wind apprentice created a concoction that allows a person to squeeze a whole eight hours of sleep in to only ten minutes. It’s extremely useful.”

“I sense a ‘but’ coming.”

“But… There is a bit of drawback to it. You can only consume it once every week. And not just within the day. There has to be a minimum of 168 hours between each time you drink a glass of Haste. If you don’t allow for that recovery period, you risk some serious issues occurring, so just don’t do it.”

I nodded. “Alright cool. So I guess we’re ready to head off now?”

“Where are we going to head off to?” Julian asked from behind her.

“I assumed we were all on the same page here. We’re going to go to that one farm that Ms. Rivers was talking about that was having some serious issues since it has the highest concentration of weird stuff happening.”

“Alright, let’s head out.”

Julian gave Carl some money and we headed out of the diner. We stopped a woman on the street and asked her if she knew the way to the Baltis’s farm. She told us how to get to it and we headed off in that direction. When we got there, we were immediately acquainted with the problem that had taken hold of the town. Pumpkins, corn, and tons of other plants I didn’t recognize were floating around like they had a life of their own.