did not smile. “All I know...” I paused for a moment. Just how much should I tell this girl?
“All I know,” I began again. “Is that he wants to go to the spires.”
“What?” The blonde asked, dropping the metal bolts she was examining. “Why?”
“He’s collecting… something,” I muttered.
I doubted he would ever answer me as to what.
“Something? From the spire?” Kewyn seemed a little skeptical.
I wondered what the humans had in the spire besides an eye in the sky to warn against dragon-kin. Though, I noted, now there was not even that anymore.
“Yeah,” I paused for a moment, knowing I was going to have to explain the situation to her. I took a big breath.
“We’ve already gotten two of whatever it is,” I said, trying to make it sound less like the dragon-kin had us unwittingly help him into two shrines and temples to steal some ancient treasure for an unknown purpose.
“The first was in a decrepit shrine on the Volin Isle, and the second was underground not far from here.” I decided not to announce that we had seen the hidden city of the merfolk.
“What are they, though?” She asked, resuming her search.
“To be honest, I don’t know. They’re small, though, whatever they are because they disappear into his pocket without any trouble.”
I was complaining a little, now, and my search through the bucket had halted. Realizing this, I leaned over and stared into the thing. The piece we needed was sort of octagonal, but so many of these were similar it was neither fun nor easy to discern a difference.
“Strange,” she said. “Has he said why he is after them?”
My heart sunk and went cold. I had forgotten what his answer had been, and it seemed a little more ominous now that I was involved. It was much easier to forget about when the kin was just a passing individual, but now there was… attachment.
“When a friend of mine asked after we got the first one, he said…” I paused. This was not easy to phrase without scaring a human out of their wits.
“What?”
“He said that he was collecting them on official orders.”