Chapter 178: 10: Containing the Cursed Harp

The man turned out to be the guest that the innkeeper had mentioned. Danika got him out of range of the harp with the silent movement skill and her trick with the water, but she worried that he'd be caught again soon, because he refused to leave the area without whatever unnamed valuables he had left in his room at the inn.

On her way back, her pet firefly emerged curiously from the pebble she carried in the handy dwarf crafted harness that held it on her back between her wings. Danika groaned. "No Hikaru, it's dangerous out here!"

The firefly ignored her and flew swiftly toward the sound of the harp. As they approached, the music changed in tempo. When Ryullusion and the harp came into view, Danika thought that the dancers that circled him looked less energetic than they had. After a minute she realized that Ryullusion seemed to have somehow forced the harp into a slower, but even more complicated song that seemed almost like a lullaby, to ease the strain on the NPCs who circled him.

She was examining the dancers to see which seemed the most tired when Aishin's little bat arrived with his question: "Can he carry the harp into your stone space while playing?"

Danika felt like smacking herself. Such an obvious solution hadn't even occurred to her. She stopped examining the dancers and told Ryullusion, "Aishin suggests that you try moving yourself and the harp into my garden!"

She still couldn't directly approach the harp, but Aishin had already proven that thrown weapons could reach the harpist, and ZipZing could borrow his skills as her familiar even when he was offline.

Ryullusion blinked at her with the same surprise that she'd felt upon reading Aishin's question, and then nodded. "That sounds like an excellent idea, but I won't be able to catch that little stone that holds your secret garden? What will we do if I don't manage to say the entrance word while the stone is in contact with me?"

Danika asked doubtfully, "Can you still move your feet?"

Ryullusion shifted his feet around, and then nodded. "Yes."

Danika declared, "Then I'll aim for between your feet, and you can step on it. We've transferred that way often."

"Okay," Ryullusion replied with a smile. His hands never faltered as he played the complex music.

Danika knew that it was probably just the magic of the harp, but it looked incredible. She touched the magical clasps that fastened the two belts that held the pebble against her back and lifted the upper belt up, drawing the stone out from between her wings, until the whole thing was hanging around her neck and then pulled it off.

Hikaru cheerfully circled the harp with the other NPCs. At least, Danika presumed the firefly was cheerful. Sometimes the firefly's glow somehow had a definitely sullen or angry tinge to it, but usually it was rather hard to guess what the little beetle was thinking.

She used Aishin's skill off of her familiar's list again, and accurately tossed the little grey-green pebble between Ryullusion's feet. Ryullusion shifted one foot and placed his toes over the pebble. Danika suddenly wondered if the harp counted as a person. Aishin had never been able to carry her into one of Logical Heart's enchanted stone spaces. She had to enter them on her own.

Ryullusion didn't even have to ask for the entrance word that Danika had forgotten to remind him of, he remembered it and said, "Dragonheart."

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Danika heaved a sigh of relief as both he and the harp vanished. Apparently the haunted harp either did not count as a person, or that restriction only applied to player characters.

The NPCs who had been circling the clearing stopped their dancing and looked around with confused expressions. The animals were the first to begin wandering off, or in the case of the rabbit who had come to a halt beside the wolf, fleeing at top speed. The wolf just huffed and shook itself before walking away in a dignified fashion.

The boy who had been tending the goats exclaimed, "Woah! The ghost of the harp took that bard away! It must have liked him more than the others? Do you think he'll reappear someday as the master harpist that the harp promises, or that it ate him?"

"I don't know," Danika replied, without explaining that Ryullusion had carried the harp into the stone instead of the other way around.

She gulped down another energy potion and the boy gathered up his goats and led them off, apparently no worse for the wear. Then she zipped over to her pebble, and glanced back to find Hikaru following her.

"Stay here," she instructed the firefly firmly. "That harp will eat you slowly if you come inside right now." She touched the pebble and glanced at the firefly again. "You can wander around or hide somewhere, just don't come into the garden until I tell you it's safe," she amended.

She wasn't sure if the firefly could understand such complex instructions, but she didn't want it to be eaten by the first bird that noticed it because she'd instructed it to stay. She whispered "dragonheart" and vanished.

--

Inside her garden, Ryullusion and the harp made the scene that she always found beautifully enchanting into something truly magical. Of course, the harp was making it literally magical too, but visually it was a breathtaking scene. Her little circle of garden appeared to float in the illusion of the reflecting pond that looked out onto the distant mountains, beneath the golden sunlight of an early summer afternoon. Many of her flowers were in bloom, and the beautiful dark haired elf and the intricately carved harp stood where they'd arrived beside the little center stone beneath her small apple tree.

The harp's music pulled her into circling them again, but in the small enclosed space, the distance it restricted her to was different than it had been in the clearing. It didn't force her up against the invisible walls, but allowed her to circle midway to the edge, above the rising spiral of stone dragon print shaped seats that Aishin and Shrubbery had installed for her.

The little colony of bees, that Shrubbery had encouraged her to bring into the garden to pollinate her plants, hummed in a circle with her. Danika eyed them worriedly. The harp pulled energy from those who circled it, and some of its previous victims had circled it until they died. The bees never independently wandered in and out of the stone contained garden the way her pet firefly did either, that she'd noticed.

Danika looked at her bees with the Analyze Target skill and commented a little anxiously, "I hope my bees can withstand the energy drain. Their health bars are still full for now though."

"That's good," Ryullsion replied. He frowned a little and then instructed her, "Let me know if they seem to be in danger later."

The music of the harp spilled out in dramatic little ripples to match the mood.

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