Data Dragon Danika

Danika couldn"t see why the dwarves didn"t just use the stream itself as the dividing line, and there wasn"t any obvious evidence of valuable resources on one side or the other. She asked MatchlessMinion, "Can you detect any valuable metals or anything?"

"Nope," he replied without even bringing up his menus. "While you couldn"t play we went over the whole area a dozen times looking for any hidden reasons that they care where the border is, and other than the water of the stream itself we couldn"t find anything, and it loops in and out of both kingdoms several times in other places too."

Another group of dwarven troops came into view as the other side approached. Justin, Quin, Terri, SaltySiamese and Ranma were all visible. The leader of their troop came forward and demanded loudly, "Will you not renounce your Kingdom"s false claim to the area defined as ours in the histories!?"

The leader of their side stepped forward and shouted back, "The boundary stones have not moved in a thousand years and we shall not be the ones to move them!"

Danika"s party all dashed forward at the drop of his hand. Their goal was to get far enough ahead of their own side for Justin"s area affect sleep to miss them, and their job was to put the dwarven troops on his side to sleep as quickly as possible. They were each targeting the opposing side so that if anything went wrong the NPCs would at least still give the winning side their quest reward.

ZipZing zipped forward with her full dazzling power and drew every enemy eye, even those who weren"t stunned momentarily by it. She darted right up to the leading dwarf and huffed her breath attack at his (or her) nose. She didn"t stop to see the result, but simply moved to the next.

Shrubbery entangled their feet in the gra.s.ses they were walking through, and MatchlessMinion shot them with the sleeping darts they"d bought him. Aishin didn"t have any skills for putting anyone to sleep either, but he blocked attacks and stuck more sleeping darts into dwarves.

It was over, or at least, every member of the dwarven troop had been induced to sleep in just a few minutes. Everyone except Shrubbery had acquired a few minor wounds, but they just drank the health and energy potions they"d prepared, and turned back to look at how their "own" side was doing.

One of the bigger warriors was apparently immune to everything Justin"s party had tried. Danika zipped toward the dwarf and shouted, "I"ll save you sir!"

The dwarf gazed at her with a startled expression and then shook his head and ignored her dazzling. Danika landed on his shoulder and huffed her breath forward, right under his nose. He staggered a little and Justin hit him with his spell one more time. Danika huffed another breath.

The dwarf complained, "You"re not helping…" and fell to his knees. With all of them against him, he at last fell asleep and toppled over.

No one had died yet. Danika looked around frantically, and heaved a relieved sigh as Kit appeared at the top of the hill.

--

They marked out the actual boundary line under Kit"s directions and stared at it with baffled faces. It was perhaps a handspan from the direct line between the two boundary stones. Not only that, but the variation was in the direction toward the Kingdom claiming that their historic rights were being ignored.

Danika suggested quickly, "Let"s dig up the dirt around the boundary stones so it looks like we tried to move them? And you guys can say, look, "we moved the boundary", and we can say, "look we prevented them from moving the stones"?"

After a moment Justin nodded. His party quickly disturbed the soil around the Eastern stone, and Danika"s targeted the Western stone. They didn"t dig deeply, because soon the most resistant dwarves, and the ones who"d been put to sleep less deeply were already starting to wake up. They quickly abandoned the stones and heaped the peace offerings on either side of the border and then retreated to their own sides.

Aishin helped the leader of their skirmish party sit up and handed him a fruit. While MatchlessMinion declared with satisfaction, "Ha, we stopped them from budging those boundary stones, that means we win right?"

Shrubbery and Danika surrept.i.tiously targeted their growth spells on the flower seeds they"d marked the druid detected boundary with, so that as the dwarves of both sides watched, the boundary was newly marked with little white flowers.

"Where did you get this fruit?" the dwarven leader asked suspiciously.

Aishin said calmly, "The adventuring party acting as mercenaries offered it in return for sparing their lives."

Danika thought with amus.e.m.e.nt that as long as he didn"t specify which adventuring party, it wasn"t even a lie. The dwarf ate the fruit with a rather blissful expression, but then drew himself up and announced, "I cannot simply take your word for it, we must measure the stones placement and make certain.

The other side seemed to have reached a similar conclusion and both groups sent out dwarves equipped with what appeared to be surveying equipment. A tense half hour pa.s.sed as each group carefully measured the positions of the stones. Their team returned and reported, "The stones have not been moved, and the soil around them had only been lightly scratched."

The leader of their skirmish party gave a satisfied nod, but Danika worried that it would be too obvious to the other side that the stones hadn"t moved if they could tell so easily. She cast her invisibility and flew ZipZing over and landed her on SaltySiamese"s shoulder and used her blend cantrip as her invisibility faded.

SaltySiamese hissed, "What are you doing? It"s going so well! Did your side fail?"

Danika whispered, "No, ours is good I think, but they could tell so easily that they really hadn"t moved that I got worried."

Justin"s avatar stood comfortably beside the leader of this troop with a bland expression. He asked a bit loudly, "And so, did your measurements confirm that the markers are now positioned beyond the historic line?"

The leader looked down at the note paper he held and then nodded. He frowned though, and said grouchily, "I cannot help but feel that there is something strange about how the white bells said to mark the pa.s.sage of the first slime are suddenly so prominent, when last week there were only a few scattered throughout the meadow."

Danika looked at the line of white flowers and blinked. She looked at Justin again who said, "I told you that growth magic was used to bring them into bloom so that they could be seen more clearly."

Justin had provided the seeds she and Shrubbery had grown. He"d known that they were one of the markers his side was using and hadn"t told them. She wondered if he"d kept it secret so that he could reveal them as border counterfeiters later if he needed to.