Neo nods.

So does Hailey. And they head off in two groups.

The hatch at the top of the stairs is a little stiff, but the mechanism holding it closed responds to a firm tug and the whole thing creaks open in fairly short order.

The hatch at the bottom of the stairs doesn't seem inclined to open at all. There's a handle, but it's at an awkward angle for levering the thing open, and seems to instead operate a shutter that irises open and closed over the porthole in the middle.

Hailey fights the bottom hatch a little more with Neo's help, then gives up if that proves insufficient, and follows the other girls upstairs.

The first obvious thing about the world above is the wall of thick billowing fog that surrounds this hilltop on all sides, swirling unnaturally with tendrils of darkness whose movements have nothing to do with the wind. Now and then, a tendril reaches out of the wall completely and sweeps along the ground, twisting this way and that before retracting into the fog.

In a few places, the wall is low enough for someone at ground level to see over the top. Some of those views show nothing but sky; some show distant hills, shrouded in a dim and ominous haze; and one shows even more distant mountains, dark against the blue-grey sky.

The sunlight is bright compared to the shine of the Mana Font, but thin and grey by any objective scale.

Scattered across the hilltop are a few trees, a handful of bushes, and an enormous amount of rubble. What stood here once must have been a tower as grand as any cathedral; now all that's left are heaps of splintered timber and broken rock, some of it showing deep gouges like it was torn apart by some landscape-eating beast.

"Well that's fucking ominous-looking," Hailey comments to a chorus of nods. "We've definitely got a threat here. Might just be the fog, might be something bigger. Probably something bigger."

Neo points at the surrounding vegetation, and starts inspecting it for wand shaper viability and ingredient possibilities. The other girls swiftly join her.

All the trees look to be the same species, very generically deciduous without calling to mind any specific Earth species. There's one little sapling, barely two feet high, that looks like a viable candidate for the Wand Shaper creation procedure. Unfortunately it's close enough to the edge of the fog that it might be in reach of those ominous tendrils. They'd need to either transplant it under that threat, or coax one of the taller trees to produce a seed and start from there.

Apart from that, the vegetation is unfamiliar but not too diverse. There's some bushes with plump red berries, reminiscent of a blueberry if a blueberry were the colour of fresh blood and the size of a ping-pong ball. A few flowers whose ice-blue petals are cold to the touch, some of them even bearing sparkling drops of frozen dew. Some orange-red flowers with scalding-hot petals, and some tangly shrubs whose wavy leaves look tough and durable.

A yellow-eyed rat pokes its twitching nose out of its burrow. It looks just about like a normal rat, except for those gleaming golden eyes and the fact that its body is the size of a hefty watermelon.

"Yep, that's a RUS. We need wands. We need combat capability. Maya, look up the vegetation here. Hailey, conjure a spear with Pocket Dimension. Neo, shovel, get ready to go for the sapling. Sable, stay back, you're our healer reserve."

She reaches into a pocket of her skirt and pulls out a spear of her own, eyeing the rat cautiously.

The rat squeaks and twitches its nose, then nibbles one of those red berries off a nearby bush.

"I'm watching you, rat."

Maya looks through the book to see if there are any notes on the berries, or any of the other plants here. Are they edible? Are they usable for wand ingredients?

Hailey sets her spear down and pulls a trowel out of her pocket instead, and accompanies Neo in stepping closer to the sapling. They try to move quickly and get the sapling dug out safely, but before tendrils come for them. They're prepared to dart back at a moment's notice.

Index

This is a very bad index and I'm sorry about that.

Plants

Gutberry: Fat red berries. Makes a decent meal if you can't get a better one. Stew with a pinch of smokereed to improve the flavour. If you let the berries spoil, they stink like you wouldn't believe.

Phoenix's Kiss: Warm orange petals. Alchemists and wandcrafters use this for a basic fire element.

Ice flower: Icy flowers. Water element. I'm told you can also make glass with it, somehow.

Wyrmweed: Big green leaves. I'm told it looks like seaweed. Nature element.

Smokereed: Long yellow flowers that make smoke in the daytime. Air element.

Sporeshroom: Luminous purple mushroom. Harvest at night, avoid during the day. It has uses but I don't know what they are.

Bitterrice: A bitter grain. Grows well in a garden. Tastes bad.

Honeydrop: Hexagonal golden pods. Sweetens any meal, and good in a healing potion too.

Voidcap: Likes dark enclosed spaces aboveground. Useful but annoying. Dark element.

Mandrake: I think it's pink?

Runewood: A tree that glows green. I've never seen one. The wood is useful for crafting and construction.

Trapdoor Vine: Eats people. If you catch one, pick its teeth out, they're good for something.

Unstable Anemone: I don't know what it looks like or what's unstable about it.

Crabbage, Jumping Nut: Better crops than bitterrice, I'm told.

Fractal Mold: ???

The Underschool

I'm told the passages beneath the Mana Font were once used to hold obscure ritual equipment, but that was before the fog. Right now, I don't know what's down there but I know that it frightens me.

The fog waves its tendrils, but doesn't seem to be actively reacting to Hailey and Neo's presence. They have to jump back once to get out of the way of a sweeping tendril, but apart from that they can get the sapling dug up fairly straightforwardly.

She gets the sapling transplanted very near the hatch with Neo's help, settling it into place. 

"The plants up here are gutberry, phoenix's kiss, ice flower, and wyrmweed. The last three are fire, water, and nature elemental materials, respectively, while the first is apparently a tolerable food source," Maya explains, pointing each out." We conveniently do not have to eat, however, so we can figure that out later. Also, we may be able to conjure past foods we have handled. As for the hatch you had trouble with, Hailey, it apparently goes to the Underschool and scared Magister Aspen. We will likely want to leave it be for now."

Then she helps Sable find the page on creating a wand shaper. 

"That's definitely not the materials for even most of our preferred wands. Maybe we'll find more in the next expansion, though."

Sable nods and looks down at the wand shaper instructions. "Yeah. I'll make Hailey a fire wand once I've got this set up, and then we'll see about doing another expansion after that."

Does this wand shaper process look straightforward?

In short:

Plant the sapling in either a large sturdy pot/planter, or a flat patch of ground. Make sure you put a roof over it to protect it from the weather in the long term, but leave it a window or skylight so it gets plenty of sun. Channel Earth magic to bind a bit of stone into it, and Nature magic to split and shape it into a sort of double helix (there's a diagram), then keep channeling Nature and add a bundle of wyrmweed leaves when it starts feeling tense and reluctant to accept more magic; the Nature you're already channeling should bind the leaves in just fine, but if you have trouble, an assistant can help by positioning them here, here, and here for you. If you planted it in the ground it'll be a permanent installation and you'll need to transplant it to move it, which can get pretty involved; if you put it in a separate pot or planter, you can shrink it with Air magic to store or move it easily.

Okay, Sable has the girls start picking wyrmweed leaves and preparing a couple bundles.

Which they cheerfully do.

She has Neo appear a planter for it like one of the ones they remember from either of her parents' homes.

She conjures it in a temporary backpack using Dressing Room and Pocket Dimension, and then transfers the sapling to it.