Eventually they reached the western city gate, which was known as the Imperial Gate.

  Since it was said that when the first Empress besieged Haigan, back when the city had consisted only of the Upper and Lower Old Town, she had pitched her tent on this very spot.

  Of course, it was probably a myth. In front of the gate stood a statue of the First Empress, carved in pale marble and facing toward the city center, her back turned to the open road as she was still preparing to besiege the city.

  The morning mist still clung to the fields outside the walls, softening the distant fields and the distant tree line.

  The great iron gate stood wide open while a pair of bored guards warmed their hands over a nearby brazier to ward off the early chill.

  Kavisha stepped forward first, producing her guild token with the casual confidence of someone who had done this a hundred times before.

  Eleonora followed a little more stiffly, holding her own token as if it might suddenly bite her.

  Lucien and Isadora both imitated Kavisha’s easy manner, though Isadora’s posture remained prim even in imitation, and

  Lucien gave the guards a polite nod out of habit.

  The guards barely glanced at them. One stamped a ledger in front of him on a lectern as the other waved them through with a yawn.

  “Back before sundown if you value your skins,” the one at lectern muttered, already turning his attention to the next travelers.

  Once they were clear of the post and the noise of the city had faded behind them, Kavisha slowed the group with a sharp whistle.

  “Alright, huddle up before we wander off and pick the wrong weeds.”

  She shrugged her pack from one shoulder and pulled out a folded bundle of papers, their edges worn and stained from previous trips.

  Carefully she spread them across a flat stone by the roadside. The sketches of leaves, roots, and strange lumpy mushrooms, each labeled in a neat script.

  The pages were an invaluable tool for adventurers, the sort of quiet miracle most people took for granted now.

  Before the age of the press, such guides had been copied by hand, passed from mentor to apprentice, riddled with errors and omissions.

  Now, even a newly formed party could carry accurate illustrations drawn by master herbalists who had never set foot outside the capital.

  The printing presses, though tightly regulated by imperial decree, produced hundreds of identical copies with unmatched proficiency, their ink crisp and their lines precise.

  What had once been the privilege of wealthy scholars had become something almost ordinary and cheap enough that the guild could issue botanical cheat sheets to anyone willing to sign a contract and pay the modest lending fee.

  Even so, the guild kept careful track of every page.

  Smudged ink, torn corners, or God forbid a missing sheet meant fines deducted from a party’s reward.

  “First up is the mooncap fungus,” Kavisha said, tapping a drawing of a pale mushroom with faint blue veins.

  “It grows near damp stone, usually near a creek or other shallow body of water. Don’t touch the gills with bare hands or else they’ll numb your fingers for an hour.”

  Eleonora leaned in close to study the picture wanting to be usual as possible.

  “It looks…kind of pretty even though it's a mushroom,” she said.

  “Most things that kill you do,” Kavisha replied dryly.

  “Next is redspire moss. That one’s easy, it's a bright red color.”

  Lucien leaned over and pointed at another sketch.

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  “What about this one? The star-petal?” He asked pointing at the drawing of the flower in question.

  “Hardest of the lot,” Kavisha admitted. “Only blooms in the shade after a good rain. If we’re lucky we’ll find three or four.”

  Isadora clasped her hands together, peering over Eleonora’s shoulder.

  “My lady,we can use our storage rings to help preserve and carry the herbs we find.”

  Eleonora straightened immediately.

  “Ohh good thinking, Isadora. Would that be ok Kavisha.” She gave Kavisha a hopeful glance.

  “Ya thanks, that will be a big help,” Kavisha said with a smile.

  The four of them studied the papers a moment longer, the early sunlight fluttering across the drawings.

  Kavisha traced a few of the illustrations with her finger, explaining the small differences between plants that might look nearly identical, but only one worth a good coin.

  With the other likely to leave a person vomiting for hours.

  She pointed out a handful of additional herbs and mushrooms to keep an eye out for, things the alchemist would probably buy even though he hadn’t specifically requested them.

  “Extra finds mean extra pay,” she said.

  “And no alchemist I've ever known turns away fresh products.”

  Lucien leaned in, squinting at one particularly ugly fungus.

  “That one looks like it’s already tried to crawl away.”

  “It might have,” Kavisha replied dryly. “Magic can do strange things to perfectly normal mushrooms.”

  Eleonora listened intently, committing the shapes to memory with the seriousness of a student before an exam.

  Isadora stood at her shoulder, nodding along even though she clearly trusted Kavisha’s judgment more than her own ability to tell one damn plant from another.

  At last Kavisha gathered the pages back together and tucked them into her belt, the leather creaking softly.

  “Alright,” she said, rolling her shoulders as if shaking off the last of the morning’s stiffness.

  “Eyes open, feet quiet, and don’t eat anything you can’t name. Let’s go get paid.”

  The small woodlands they were foraging in, was just beyond the farmland outside the city.

  It was cool and quiet that morning, a welcome contrast to the city they had left behind. Sunlight filtered through a loose canopy of young oaks and ash, dappling the ground in shifting patches of gold and gray.

  The air smelled of damp earth, crushed leaves, and something faintly sweet.

  A narrow, well-trodden path wound between the trees, used more by farmers and other foragers than by travelers. In the air birds flitted overhead, unconcerned by the small group passing beneath them.

  Kavisha led, keeping her pace steady and her eyes moving, pointing out landmarks as they went.

  Lucien followed close behind her, spellbook secured at his side, occasionally crouching to examine the ground where Kavisha indicated.

  He had a surprisingly good eye for fungi, able to distinguish between useful caps and ones that were poisonous.

  Isadora brought up the rear, her posture relaxed but alert, one hand always close to the hilt at her side.

  Eleonora did her best to help, even though she was completely out of her depth.

  She had already pointed out the wrong plant twice and nearly touched the mushroom that made your fingers go numb for an hour.

  Each mistake left her cheeks a little warmer, but she refused to retreat to the safety of simply watching.

  She crouched beside Kavisha, peering at a cluster of damp leaves with fierce concentration, as if determination alone might teach her botany.

  “This one?” she asked hopefully, indicating a pale stalk with faint blue veins.

  “No,” Kavisha said, not unkindly. “That’s gutter-wort. Good for making dye, terrible for making money.”

  “Oh,” Eleonora said.

  she withdrew her hand as though the plant had personally offended her. “They all look so… similar.”

  Lucien gave a quiet laugh from a few steps away.

  “That’s because they are similar, my la...Eleonora. The trick is noticing the slight differences between them.”

  Isadora hovered close, ready to intervene if anything so much as moved wrong.

  “You’re learning, my lady,” Isadora said with gentle encouragement. “No one expects mastery on the first morning.”

  Eleonora straightened, brushing dirt from her skirts with more dignity than the situation deserved.

  “I know. I just… I want to be useful. Not some wilting noble.”

  Kavisha glanced at her, lips twitching at that comment as she tried not to laugh.

  “You’re doing fine. Better than most first-timers. And at least you ask before grabbing things.”

  That small praise brightened Eleonora morning even more than a bowl chili would have and she returned to the search with renewed resolve, determined that the next plant she found would finally be the right one.

  As the morning progressed, she kept trying as she knelt in the dirt without complaint, carefully brushing soil away from the plants that Kavisha identified, repeating their names under her breath so she wouldn’t forget.

  Her gloves were stained and her armor would be a pain to clean that night, but she was absolutely happy.

  Every successful find made her eyes light up, even when Kavisha reminded her with a dejected sigh by the 3rd admonishment that squealing was not necessary every time she found something.

  By midday, the sun had climbed higher, warming the clearing where they paused to check their baskets.

  So far, everything had gone super smoothly and there had been no monsters or surprises.

  Just the rustle of leaves, the distant sound of farm work beyond the trees, and the quiet rhythm of an easy job done well.

  Kavisha straightened suddenly, lifting a hand.

  “Hold,” she said.

  Everyone froze expecting the worse.

  She stepped forward and crouched beside a fallen log half-sunk into the soil.

  Nestled in the shade beneath it, their pale blue caps barely visible among the moss, was another cluster of the herbs they needed.

  Kavisha allowed herself a small, satisfied smile.

  “There,” she said. “Good spot for them. Let's take a break, "Kavisha said.

  It was at that moment things went wrong.