Chapter 106: 24: Abandoned in Stone

"The messengers are images of actual NPCs within the game?" Aishin questioned after Danika explained.

"I guess that's not much different than SaltySiamese's guess that the NPCs from the beginner's vale can also be found elsewhere within the game?" Danika pointed out.

"That should be easy enough to verify," Aishin said.

"How?" she questioned.

"I can track the NPCs from the vale by their names," he replied with a grin. "But the messenger animals don't have names that I know of."

A walrus laboriously dragged itself out of the bushes after awhile. They'd been talking more about how much more complex the NPC conversations were compared to other games, and how their individual memory records probably affected that, without concluding anything. Aishin halted mid sentence and stared at the walrus.

Danika giggled at his expression, and read Xander's message: "Hey! Aren't you guys going to rescue me too? Surely it's been long enough for you to have escaped with that pesky cub?" 

She read it to Aishin and asked doubtfully, "Do you think we should rescue him? It doesn't say anything about where he is or what kind of situation he's in. Maybe Kit was right and he's a sketchy sort of person who's trying to lure us back to the Envoy?" 

Aishin gasped with mock horror, and asked dramatically, with suppressed amusement, "You want me to doubt the integrity of my fellow fan?"

Danika giggled again. 

Aishin brought up his menus and said more seriously, "Finding him is easy enough, the problem is that I'm about out of time, and like you said, we don't know what kind of situation we'd be walking into."

Danika wrote a reply that asked: "What's your situation? Can you give more detail?" The messenger version of the snow leopard cub bounded happily away with the message.

"Or not," Aishin commented. Danika looked at him curiously and he said, "He's inside the stone I think."

The walrus returned a minute later. Danika took the message and said, "Wow, he writes fast."  

She read: "Barnacles! You got the cub as a messenger? So unfair! You didn't even let me tame it and collect the 200k first. I'm stuck in the hallway inside the stone room, which is freaking amazing! I was about 10 feet from the entrance, but I can't tell you anything more than that, because if I leave to look they'll catch me!"

Aishin asked, "Do you want to go collect him?"

Danika replied with a question, "You tagged him?" 

"Yeah," he admitted. "But I don't want to risk a target teleport for him, one hit and I'd die a third time today."

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"You've definitely died too much already," she agreed a little sourly. "You said we shouldn't return to Kalunay because we'd be targeted by the townspeople, how bad do you think it would be?"

Aishin ran his hand over his head and then sighed and said briskly, "You want to go get him don't you? Let's not waste any more time then." He fished a couple of energy potions out of his inventory and handed them to her. "I'll accompany you back to the edge of town, then you go invisible and see if you can't get in and bring out the stone. If your health starts to drop I'm coming in after you, so be careful." 

"Ok," Danika agreed simply. She sat on Aishin's shoulder and wrote a reply to Xander while Aishin dashed back down out of the foothills at the same reckless pace he'd used to take her to the human capital a few weeks ago.

Her message said: "It's dangerous to return to town, but I will try to sneak back in. Stay inside the stone until I tell you, so that I can carry you out. It will probably take awhile." 

The snow leopard cub growled a complaint at her when he took the new message, and then leapt off of Aishin's shoulder.

--

Danika zipped as silently and quickly as possible toward the Envoy's house. Aishin had circled the edge of town until they were as close as possible without entering. She landed on the roof and activated her color cantrip as her invisibility ended again.

She adjusted her position until she thought that she was approximately 3 meters from the entrance, and then pried up a roof tile. It was surprisingly heavy, and there was an ominous creaking as the whole section of overlapping tiles above it lifted too. Danika cursed silently, and struggled to separate the tile from its neighbors. 

Finally it broke free, and fragments clattered down the roof, and she froze. A moment later she realized that that was only giving them time to investigate, and she quickly used her claw swipe to tear through the wood beneath the tile. She pulled herself through the hole into the dark space revealed.

She cut through the next layer a moment later. Luck favored her, and the hallway was revealed below. She cast her invisibility and zipped down and over to the stone laying against the wall. She cast her featherweight on it, and then snatched up the dark stone. Outside people were arguing, and then there was a heavy thump from above. 

Danika zipped deeper into the house. The door to the courtyard had appeared to be an old fashioned sliding door when they'd come for the cub, and she thought that she might be able to open it. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the door was already open. The Envoy himself was visible through it. He appeared to be examining the bodies of his men who were arrayed in neat rows. 

Danika landed beside the door and poked her head through. There were archers standing on guard on each side of the courtyard. Danika was a little surprised that so many bodies remained. Normally bodies would dissolve after awhile, slower than the slimes had, but in a similar fashion. Like the enormous rotting turtle in the swamp had shown, decay in "Living Jade Empire" was usually quick.

Danika refreshed her invisibility and peeked through the doorway again. She hadn't been wrong, one of the archers was obviously an elf. Fortunately he didn't seem to be looking her way. She backed up and scuttled into a room farther back along the corridor. She hurried to the wall that she thought was closest to the outside and gulped down a dose of Aishin's energy potion.

She set down the stone, kept her stealth activated, and alternated between her wind slash and her claw swipe to tear through the wall. It went too easily, because it wasn't an outer wall, and another room was revealed. Danika muttered inaudibly and pulled up her menus.

The party menu said that Aishin was back toward the courtyard. She oriented herself 90 degrees to him. There was another doorway in that wall. She picked up the stone and darted forward. She reactivated her color cantrip to match the floor just before darting through. 

She crossed a narrow hallway and entered another room. This one had windows along its upper edge, and she heaved a sigh of relief. The woman who was sewing quietly in the corner looked up at the faint noise, but she didn't seem to spot ZipZing, as she reactivated her invisibility.

Danika cast featherweight on the stone again and zipped up to the windows. She managed to turn one of the simple latches with her tail. Then she used her hind feet to catch hold of the ledge so that she could shove the window open with her head, using her dragon strength without letting go of the stone. She shoved herself through the gap, and the little window banged shut behind her.

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