[The alarm went off, it was 6 AM. Jason was ready to get to work around the farm. He had 39 starting actions]

[Tess’s Almanac: 50th day of Summer! 41 days until the Summer Festival. Looks like it’s another scorcher today! Since it doesn’t look like the Juun bugs are really affected by such things, and they’ll be out in full force, it’s probably best to just stay inside unless you’ve got a pressing reason to be somewhere else. P.S., visiting your fiancé is a perfectly valid reason to be somewhere else]

Jason smiled broadly as he rolled out of bed. He imagined that other subscribers to Tess’s Almanac likely didn’t always appreciate her references to Jason, but anyone who knew Tess at all probably didn’t mind terribly in the long run. He strode up to his window and stuck out his head, and found his smile quickly vanishing as he looked down at his farm.

The buzzing noise was louder than ever. His wheat, which was just now poking up out of the ground, already looked pale and sickly. He had harvested the field a few days earlier, and had only gotten about a quarter of the wheat that he would ordinarily have been able to harvest. Ordinarily, he would keep back as much wheat as it would take to re-plant the field the next day. This time, he had just barely had enough to plant the field with, and had been able to sell the excess for only a few hundred shandys. He had plenty of money in his account from a bountiful previous year, so he wasn’t worried, but it was quite annoying. He had been hoping to start expanding his farm a great deal, moving into other crops and buying new equipment, but it now looked like those plans were going to have to go onto the back burner.

He looked out for quite some time, then slammed the window shut in frustration and marched down the stairs. The cookbook apparently heard him coming, as there was already a nice plate of eggs and sausage on the table by the time he arrived. He sat down gratefully (he likely would have just skipped breakfast altogether if the cookbook hadn’t been so thoughtful), and ate the meal quickly. When he finished, he nodded at the cookbook thankfully, then rose and made his way outside.

His frustration mounted as he walked down into the yard. The buzzing was giving him a headache, and he clapped his hands over his ears. Lady’s ears twitched back and forth, and he could tell that she was in pain. The previous two days of planting and harvesting hadn’t exactly been pleasant ones, and while Jason had enjoyed seeing dozens of the Juun bugs getting blasted into goop on the blades of the harvester, there had been more than a few of them that had survived the ordeal and come out angrier than a hornet. He had the welts to prove it, and so did Lady.

“We need to get away from here for awhile, I think.” Jason took Lady out to her hitching post and poured her some oats, then walked into the stable, closed both the upper and the lower door to seal himself inside (ordinarily, the upper part of the door was only closed during winter nights), and sat down in the soft straw. It was still warm from where Lady had been laying all night, and he sighed deeply. The buzzing was a bit quieter in there, though he could still hear it pressing at the edge of his consciousness.

When he’d finally had enough, he rose and marched back out of the stable in frustration. Lady was almost done with her food, though several Juun bugs were flicking over to start munching on the oats as well. Jason shooed them away carefully, then saddled Lady and climbed up onto her back. It was a wonderful feeling as he rode up to the road and the buzzing began to fade. As he reached the road, though, he cast a look back and forth. Should he go up to Summer Shandy, or down to Jeremiah’s place?

It was a tough question, but in the end, he turned and rode down toward Jeremiah’s ranch. The Lazy-H, it was a sprawling facility that produced thousands of cattle every two weeks or so. He had dozens of hired hands, facilities that he had built up over the course of decades, and more than a few cannons that had come in handy on multiple occasions.

As Jason came riding up to the Lazy-H, Jeremiah was just walking down from his porch. He waved broadly, and Jason slowly came riding up to meet him.

“Howdy, neighbor!” Jeremiah grinned. “What brings you around these parts?”

Jason shrugged and sighed. “I don’t even know. Just needed to get away from all the bugs, you know?”

At that, Jeremiah laughed. “Oh, I get it. The Juun bugs aren’t really bothering the cattle too much, though every now and again one of the bulls will let out a bellow and you just know he picked a fight with one of them and got bit, but I’ve been in the same boat before. Here, we’re always dealing with hoarse flies… Don’t ask, they’re the worst insects ever created… And a few years back we had an infestation of dragon flies. Those were a nightmare, let me tell you that.” Jeremiah paused for a moment, then shrugged. “Though I will say that when a swarm of dragon flies started breathing out fire, they could roast a steer in no more than ten seconds. If you could chase them away before they started eating the thing, you’d have a thousand pounds of roast beef if you could get it packed away in the root cellar quick enough.”

Jason chuckled. “I wish there was a way to do that with my crops. The way it’s going now, it won’t be long before I’m losing money. I’d almost just sit back and wait for the Juun bugs to pass, but…”

Jeremiah shook his head. “That’s a quick way for both you and your land to fall into laziness. Keep at it, and you’ll prevail.” He paused for a moment, then shrugged. “If you’ve got a few minutes, and it sounds like you do, come here with me into the house. I’ve got something that might help.” He turned around and started walking up into the house, even as he continued to mutter under his breath.

“Then again, it might not, but at this point, what do you have to lose?”

“That depends on how dangerous this mysterious thing happens to be.” Jason climbed down off Lady, handed the reigns to one of the hired men, and scampered after Jeremiah. A moment later, they were inside the log cabin (at least… It was made from logs. It was quite enormous, consisting of dozens of rooms, so the word “cabin” didn’t really seem to fit), and Jeremiah was striding rapidly toward the kitchen.

“You’re back early.” Delilah looked up from the dishes as Jeremiah walked inside to join her. “Problems?”

“Not a one, ‘cept maybe that bull over in the south pasture.” Jeremiah answered. “Weatherhand just told me he got his ring caught on a fence post again, so some of the boys and I are going to ride out there here in a few minutes to try and get that all taken care of. Before we go, though, I’m looking for something for Jason, here.”

Delilah turned, and her eyes came to rest on Jason. She lit up and came running over, clasping his hands.

“Jason! It’s been awhile. I don’t know if I’ve said it yet, and I’m sure my husband has, but congratulations! Oh, I can’t wait for the wedding. I do love weddings, you know. They’re so beautiful. If there’s anything that you all need to get your lives started, you just let me know. I’ve got a few extra sets of china that I’d love to give to someone who would use them, and-”

“Honey, that’s going to be a question for Tess, not for him.” Jeremiah pointed out. “Now, do you know where that old repellant recipe got to? You know, the stuff that we quit using?”

“Oh! Yes, it’s right over here.” Delilah bustled to a corner of the kitchen and took down a large cookbook labeled “Farm Recipes.” She put it on the counter and started flipping through the pages, and Jason raised an eyebrow.

“You don’t use it anymore? Really sounds like something that’ll work for me.”

“For all I know, it won’t work any better than anything else.” Jeremiah shrugged. “All I know is that from what I’m hearing from the other farmers, nothing else seems to be working. The fancy synthetic stuff just smells bad and the Juun bugs don’t seem to mind, and the organic stuff is about as useful as throwing flower petals at them and trying to induce them to give up their ravenous ways.”

“That’s… That’s actually a pretty fair description.” Jason nodded thoughtfully. Suddenly, a thought struck him, and he flashed a crooked smile. “Speaking of stuff that does work, that monstertrap spray you left me did wonders. Two or so ounces, and that whole eighty acres is dead.” He paused for a moment. “Now, all the grass died along with the monstertraps, so I’m hoping I can actually get something to grow there again in the future, but one step at a time, right?”

Jeremiah laughed. “I’m glad it worked! Same story out here.” After a moment, though, he scowled. “Now, that said, I didn’t realize it was going to be so all-fired powerful. I ordered a whole palate. Fifty gallons. You know how much fifty gallons of that stuff cost me? I figured I’d use up most of it, then just give the rest to you. Just took a couple scoops from one bottle to solve the problem, and now I’ve got loads of stuff that’s illegal to use anywhere but here. Can’t sell it to anyone, that’s for sure.” He sighed, then shrugged. “Oh, well. If a situation ever does arise where we’re faced with another horrendous invasion of something, we’ll have the means to fight it back.”

“Ah-ha!” Delilah beamed, and pulled a small piece of notebook paper out of the cookbook. She handed it to Jason, who looked down at a short list of ingredients and a handful of instructions. “Here, try this. Back in the early days of our operation, we were on a shoestring budget, and had to make do with just about anything we could find. One of the ways we cut costs was by brewing our own insect repellants. There were a handful of formulas we tried, and this one actually worked against a fairly broad spectrum of bugs. Not all of them, mind you, and it is a little flammable if you happen to get any dragon flies around your place, but…” She shuddered slightly. “We lost fifty head that one time, remember?”

“Oh, I do. Nearly bankrupted us.” Jeremiah sighed, then slapped his thigh. “But we pushed through, in any case, and now we’re here! Well, Jason, like I said, give this a whirl, and then let me know how it goes. As always, if you need anything at all, you know where to find me!”

“I’ll do that, thanks.” Jason pocketed the recipe, then turned to leave. It took him another five minutes to reach the door, of course, as Delilah loaded him down with a picnic basket and enough food to feed him for a week, but he hardly minded the interruption. Soon enough, he was outside and back on Lady, and riding back to his own house.

Along the way, he passed half a dozen other farmers, all of whom were returning from Summer Shandy. He exchanged a few pleasantries with them, but the overwhelming consensus was that no one knew what to do about the Juun bugs. They hardly talked about anything else, for that matter. By this point, all the store bought chemicals had proved useless, so everyone had their own homebrew method that they were planning to test out, and everyone promised to share the results with everyone else if, indeed, it worked.

When Jason rode back up onto his farm, and once again was surrounded by the incessant buzzing, he nearly screamed. Still, he was able to keep it together, and made his way into his house. There, safe from the noise, he was able to thick a bit more clearly, and took out the recipe to look it over.

It was a simple recipe, consisting of a handful of plants and herbs, most of which he already had on hand. There were a couple things, namely garlic and rosemary, that he didn’t have, and he was forced to make a quick run off to Summer Shandy. Tess was off on a dungeon raid, so he didn’t stay long, and within a few hours was back in his kitchen, ready to start.

To begin, he took down a large pot, which he placed carefully upon the stovetop. It was a bit of an oddity, as he had really only used frying pans (of a few different varieties) up until that point. As he stepped back, he added water, then began to dice up the different ingredients into their proper sizes, and tossed them into the slowly-boiling water. It wasn’t hard work by any means, but the recipe was unique (at least among recipes that he had seen before) in that it required things to be done at different times. Instead of just throwing it all into a frying pan and waiting for it to either succeed or fail, he had to throw in the garlic, wait six minutes, then add moldy potatoes, wait three minutes, add a sprig of cilantro… So on and so forth.

All told, the process took the better part of the afternoon, and when he finished, it was nearly dinnertime. That said, he had absolutely no desire to eat anything, as the whole concoction smelled worse than the droppings he took out of Lady’s stall. For that matter, it smelled worse than just about anything he had ever smelled before. The liquid was a thick, brownish sludge, to the point where he really wasn’t sure he would actually be able to spray it at all. Still, though, he had to try.

The pot was almost all the way full, and must have weighed fifty pounds. He let it cool, then carefully took it off the stove and carried it through the house to the front door. A bit of it sloshed on his overalls as he was opening the door, and he groaned. Somehow, he was certain that it wasn’t going to be easy to wash out.

Out on the front porch, he stood there in the evening air, listening to the droning of the Juun bugs, and his resolve set. He made his way over to the sprayer, which he had carefully packed away next to the harvester, and filled it full of water. The recipe hadn’t said how to mix the chemical, so he just put in a few scoops using an old measuring cup that he had no intention of ever using again, then hefted the backpack up onto his shoulders. He gave it a few shakes to agitate, then walked over to the field.

“Alright.” He bounced lightly on the balls of his feet. “Get ready to run if things go south.”

He slowly raised the wand and squeezed the trigger.

[Action Used: Spray Chemicals. Remaining Actions: 38]

Jason blinked as absolutely nothing happened. He glanced at the tip of the sprayer, but didn’t see anything blocking the spray. After a few seconds, he shrugged and tried again.

[Action Used: Spray Chemicals. Remaining Actions: 37]

Now, he was convinced that something was going on. He sighed and shrugged the backpack off onto the ground, then knelt down and started looking it over. Opening up the lid revealed a swirling mass of brownish liquid inside, and he frowned. Curious, he reached down and disconnected the hose at the bottom of the tank, wondering if the liquid would still flow out. That, at least, would tell him if there was a problem in the tank itself, or if there was some sort of an issue with the hose.

As it turned out, both were the case.

It took him several hours of experimenting and fiddling before he really got to the root of the issue. The thick, sludge-like gunk that he had spent so much time brewing had simply settled to the bottom of the tank, at least mostly, and promptly clogged up the entire hose. It then, for good measure, caked itself along the bottom of the tank, utterly sealing up even the small hole that let water and chemicals flow from the tank into the hose. Jason scowled furiously at the thick brown gunk as he took apart the different components of the hose and found them all caked solid. Over an hour was spent washing out the different components and getting them functional again, and by the time that was done, night had fallen over the land. The only bright side, perhaps, was that the constant drone of the Juun bugs had been replaced by the far more benevolent sound of crickets.

He walked up and into his house broken and defeated, and flopped into his bed without a lot of fanfare. It felt as though he would never be rid of the pesky insects, and then… What would come of his farm? Tess was planning on leaving her job at the Warriors Guild. If she did, and then his farm fell into ruin, would they start out their marriage as paupers, moving up to Illumitir to beg on the streets?

The rational side of his brain told him that the residents of Summer Shandy would never allow such a horrible predicament to befall the two of them, but he still found himself worrying nonetheless. He had to find a solution, and he had to find it quickly.

If he didn’t… He didn’t know what he would do.