Robin sat propped up against a pile of darkly-hued flowers as his followers worked to scrape them all together to get rid of them. Perhaps they could sell them to get proper building materials, though at this point he wasn't sure if it was even worth it to try to build another HQ. It might be easier to just venture out and find something more suitable--maybe an old castle, or an fort that someone else abandoned. Nothing like making the best out of a bad situation, right?
Still, some of the Imps grumbled about all their hard work going to waste. The only bright side in it all was that the Sprites' plans, whatever they were, had also been foiled. Despite it all, he remained steadfast in keeping a positive outlook; after all, both sides seemed to be having a lot of fun with his little prank war. Glitter spray aside, he was loving every second of it!
This book, though...
He gave a small sigh as he shifted the heavy text in his lap, moving to flip through the pages for what felt like the hundredth time. The young imp just couldn't figure out what was so dang special about it! He quickly found the pages that Aibrean had marked, squinting at them with a look of mild irritation as he tried to make sense of it all. They were blank--he couldn't see a thing written there and wondered in vain why she would mark empty pages. Surely there was something he was missing...
He flicked through the pages again, looking through the seemingly empty book until he finally found ink. What he found was a picture of a grand castle, one side bright with rainbow hues while the other side looked like it had been dipped in nightmares. It was drawn elegantly, and the script below was written to match:
"The keepers of dreams,
Two halves of the same whole,
Arrived in Mistica from a faraway realm..."He squinted at the pages again, ears flicking back as he tried to make out more. It was impossible--it was far too degraded. Faded away with time, or something else. He sighed, pulling the crudely drawn map from his pocket and sticking it in the pages as a quick bookmark. He'd have to come back to--
"Woah!" he dropped the book and moved away, eyes wide as red ink began to scrawl across the pages by itself, the work of some magic greater than his own. It gave a very different message, one reacting purely to the map he had acquired.
"To restore the pages lost, a quest must be accepted. Find the not-so-sacred 6 and the history kept hidden will once again be revealed. The map leads to where the journey begins." Robin approached the book slowly, reading over the words before picking up the map and looking at it with new eyes. He thought it was garbage before, leading him to nothing but old ruins and a useless spell book that gave him a flower spell, but maybe there was a little more to it than that. A wide grin spread across his face at the prospect of an adventure and he rushed off to tell his followers. He had to make an announcement! No, he had to put out a
bounty to get more adventurers to take this quest! Treasure hunters loved bounties!
A slight flash of pastel hues shifted, hidden in the forest just out of Robin's view. A silent pair of prying eyes having witnessed the entire thing! Well, the Imps couldn't have all the fun solving this mystery, could they? There was undoubtedly some villain behind the disappearance of the information on those pages, and while he hadn't been able to see what Robin had (why on earth was he reading from blank pages?), the imp's tendency to read aloud had given the spy all the information he needed to know.
"If he wants to set a bounty then we will too." a voice whispered to itself, a faint smirk curling on the lips of the mysterious sprite as he disappeared back into the forest, intent on gathering his own set of adventurers.
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Bounties have been sent out across Mistica! Head on over to the
DnB Forum Game to find out what they said and participate in an adventure to uncover the secrets of the book!
What should our heroes do next? Make sure to vote for your favorite option in the
Poll Both! This post was written in response to your choice in the last poll: 42 members voted to investigate the mysterious book!