A moment later Danika almost gasped in surprise as the cat shifted into the form of a slender dark haired boy in scruffy clothes. Her guess had been correct, he and probably at least two others could shift into human form.His cat-like eyes flickered with amus.e.m.e.nt as he said, "Let"s be friends little dragon, so that you can contact me when your guildmate is ready to get rid of the philosopher"s stone."
She hesitated as she read the system notification, that read: "Befriend Smoke, the Prince of Thieves?"
Her eyes narrowed. Since he"d given her an excuse to interact with her menus, she quickly wrote: "Let"s wait and see where they go afterward? It says he"s the prince of thieves." Then she replied aloud, "You killed that poor crane after you knew that the stone that you wanted was already gone."
His eyes narrowed menacingly, but he didn"t deny the responsibility, even though he didn"t appear to be the same person who had actually beheaded the crane. "That stone of yours was not of insignificant value either, but you were faster than I had predicted, and that one was too slow," he replied sharply.
His eyes showed her where another dark grey cat was lurking beyond the perimeter of the cacti. "Killing me wouldn"t have helped you get the philosopher"s stone back," Danika pointed out.
The corners of his mouth turned up in amus.e.m.e.nt. "It was supposed to have resulted in an exchange."
Danika finally tapped accept. It would let him track her almost as well as his mark, but it would go both ways.
Even as a human, sharp eye teeth flashed as his grin widened. He walked away, but he paused at the edge of the flower border and called back, "Your Endless Song will continue longer, if you get rid of that cursed stone."
A handful of furry shadows followed their leader out of the sandy bowl that Endless Song had claimed, as though they wanted to display how many of them had been lurking in wait. Danika couldn"t see any evidence of SilentSky and MatchlessMinion following them, but she worried that a character who could wear the t.i.tle "Prince of Thieves" would have better detection skills than she did.
ShinZing zipped over to her as soon as they were out of sight, and she asked him with amus.e.m.e.nt, "Aren"t you working?"
"Technically," he agreed, "but there"s a lot of idle time. What did the cat say? Or werecat."
"He"s not a werecat. I"m not sure how he shifts, but it has to be a skill like my cat shape and not a spell," Danika replied quickly. "But now that I think of it, my shapeshift with my druid skill is probably G.o.d granted and not a spell too?"
"I suppose that"s true," ShinZing agreed.
She summarized the brief conversation, while keeping her menus open so that she could verify that Smoke"s location matched SilentSky and MatchlessMinion"s location, as they moved farther away. The other members who didn"t specialize in stealth gathered where she and ShinZing hovered in the center of the plot, and made comments about what she should have said, or about what Smoke had said.
Danika wrote a question on the guild board: "Match, did you check that the philosopher"s stone isn"t actually cursed?"
Logical Heart answered her aloud, "He did. He had me look it over to see if it could be useful to us, or if he should try to sell it."
"And?" several people asked at once.
"Um," Logical Heart replied nervously, "I don"t know? It"s not cursed, but I couldn"t find anything reliable about how to use it. There are a lot of in game references to grinding it into sand and mixing the particles into things, either to trans.m.u.te metals or to bestow eternal life, but nothing specific about how to grind it or what to mix it with."
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Danika frowned at the mention of sand. It made her think of how the crane had insisted that it was being fed sand in order to turn it into gold. "What if the crane didn"t swallow the philosopher"s stone, what if it swallowed sand and somehow turned it into that?"
"You said it told you that it swallowed the stone he was trying to make gold with though," ShinZing pointed out.
Danika rubbed her nose and then said, "But what if it was talking about one of the other stones? It"s not like we ever got to ask it."
"There are more stones?" Logical Heart asked curiously.
"I think they are all still in my garden," she replied, with a glance at ShinZing, who nodded. "MatchlessMinion said the first batch that came out with the philosopher"s stone were diamonds."
"Diamonds," Logical Heart repeated thoughtfully.
Danika zipped over to where she"d tossed the pebble that held her garden. It still looked like an ordinary little grey-green pebble, but she"d had it for so long that she thought she could probably pick it out of a pile of similar pebbles, let alone find it easily where it lay in the golden sand. She scooped it up and waved everyone over.
"Wait," ShinZing said quickly, with a glance around. "Just because we saw a lot of cats leave, it doesn"t mean that they all left. You don"t need to let them know about your stone s.p.a.ce."
"How did all of you get here?" Danika asked. "That cat, Smoke, already knows that I"ve been able to teleport long distances before. ShinZing and MatchlessMinion both entered and exited the stone beside the lake, so it"s probably not really a secret."
"We came one at a time, I think most of us just used the town portals," Icieth volunteered.
Danika glanced at the ottermin, and asked what she"d been wondering before, while holding her pebble out to its creator, Logical Heart. "Is there a reason we couldn"t claim the whole depression?"
The ottermin looked smug as it replied, "If we fooled our own guild leader with the fake boundaries, n.o.body else has a chance, right? We did have Kit claim the whole area. She"s so nice isn"t she? I know she and Shrubbery stayed up really late to finish it all."
"They are both great," Danika agreed with a grin. "But I don"t understand why the fake outer boundary?"
The ottermin gave her a disbelieving look, and glanced at the others.
"Finish reading the guild board logs," ShinZing instructed laughingly, "and then ask what you still want to know."
Logical Heart spoke up, "Anyone want to escort me back to my lab with these? I wish I could figure out a way to make a portable portal."
"You can"t put it into a stone s.p.a.ce?" Danika asked, as several people volunteered. "I shouldn"t go with you while I"m friends with that suspicious cat."
Logical Heart shook his head. "You can"t put one inside a s.p.a.ce enchantment. It collapses the whole thing."
"I guess it"s related to why Shrubbery can"t move to my apple tree, although she says it"s because it"s not connected to the world," Danika replied.
Logical Heart nodded, but he replied contradictorily, "Not really, I"ve been working on that one. But even if I succeed, it"ll only work for dryads." Still, he had a very thoughtful look on his little gnomish face as he lead the two bards and the ottermin away.
Danika grinned and shook her head.