Irene’s plan to build a minimal guildhall with the least amount of material didn’t happen. Everyone wanted to try ideas they dreamed up since the completion of the annex. The group spent two evenings and the entire free day working on it. They targeted a rest near a new entrance to the south of the annex. The entry courtyard was filled with mushrooms, so it was named the mushroom entrance.

  The group's experiments paid off in a lot of new or improved rooms.

  Joe and Valin joined the team for the build. Joe supplied two bags of gathered planters he bought from the scavengers of his square. They were in two materials, red pottery and white porcelain. After a first attempt without integrated pots, it was confirmed that they were required. The plants that were placed in the white porcelain pots appeared already planted in the built-in beds of the grow room, in a much larger size.

  Valin was shocked that the humans could turn a rest into a house outpost. He told them about different rooms he remembered from house outposts in the elven Kingdom, giving the team even more ideas. He also supplied a twist of metal that he called an escape. His jewelry master was training him to make the escape out of aluminum when Valin left the elven kingdom. He never mastered the pattern in aluminum but he hoped the iron version would work in the low tier rest. It did, adding a back door much like the door on the terrace at the annex, only this door opened into a stairwell that ran both up and down. It gave them two more routes to reach the rest quickly.

  Irene decided to try to spawn an inventory access by writing the code for it on the wall. Game spawned inventory accesses were all decorated with it. It didn’t work. After the failure, she remembered the totem Enchanter told Companion about.

  “What are you calling a totem?” Valin asked, when Irene mentioned it.

  “Companion asked Enchanter if she knew how to spawn an inventory access. She drew a bone covered with symbols. Her mother owned one, purchased from a specialty vendor. In a holy place with the correct ceremony it would call an inventory access,” Grandmother explained. The old selkie’s drawing of the item from her childhood was so detailed that Irene thought she could reproduce that code.

  “A fetch,” Valin replied, recognizing it. “They are incredibly expensive and nearly useless without a pointer. Pointers are almost impossible to win. Fetches are also one time use only. No one uses them to get an inventory access. Those are too common.”

  “What is a pointer?” Todd asked the elf.

  “They come in many shapes. Usually they are stones covered in symbols. The smaller they are the farther away the location can be and it will still point to it. They are rewards from the gods and cannot be crafted,” Valin informed them. “Their usefulness is limited because they point to where a thing, vendor, rest, inventory access can be, not necessarily where it is.”

  “Ellen mentioned that once,” Todd said.

  “Yes,” Grandmother admitted. “I remember. I wondered if that was what the amulet I got from the coliseum was.”

  That evening after Irene put together another code snippet to try from the fetch code example, she searched through her Speedwell closet and found the amulet. She brought it to the rest project the next day to get Valin’s opinion.

  There was a slight tremor in Valin’s hand as he reached out for the necklace in order to examine it. The stone looked like a chip off one for automata that fought in the arena. Or possibly a chip off the walls of the pit itself, since the automata matched the walls. It hung from a silver chain. The stone was covered with tiny symbols engraved into its surface.

  “Yes,” Valin confirmed, “it is a pointer.” Grandmother could feel his avarice. The elf was a spy and a thief, and couldn’t really be trusted. She looked at the elf, narrowing her eyes just slightly. The stone coloring from the pendant switched off. His glass armor turned a flat gray along with the translation ring through his ear. The ceramic cloth armor he wore under the glass was a pure white. It was the least changed of the elf's possessions as the game augmentation turned off. This turning off of augmentation was not a spell. Spells were a preset set of motions or sounds that controlled the technology in the structure. This was something Irene trained her nanobots to do as a tier six.

  A fever grew in Valin’s bones. He could feel her attention. Her knowledge that he could betray her. If he became a danger, regardless of how much she liked him, she would remove him. It was her duty.

  “It is a very rare one,” Valin said. He would not betray her. Not now. Not ever. “The silver chain is an indication of its rank. It is the second level of tier six.”

  “Second level?” Irene asked. She relaxed her eyes, sensing the moment of temptation was past. All the augmentation in the structure reappeared in her vision.

  “Yes, there are three levels to tier six items. Copper, silver and gold. Admittedly silver items are almost myth and gold items are only legend, but this is definitely silver,” Valin responded.

  “Is your translator tier six?” Grandmother asked. “Is that why it looks like copper but the list of materials is so impressive?”

  “Yes,” Valin admitted. “There aren’t any tier six crafting spells, only tier five, so a tier five crafter can make some tier six items. They can only master six tier six patterns at any time. If they learn a seventh, they lose mastery of two they already know. The worst part is that there is no way to know which two, until you go to try to make the tier six item again. My teacher claimed that with enough repetitions a crafter could make three of the six items at the silver level. And enough repetitions after that one of those silver items could be constructed in gold.”

  Valin crafted jewelry. Grandmother suspected his identification of copper, silver and gold as an indication of level was a result of that metal craft. Grandmother caught a hint of something else in it.

  “When I first claimed the crystal in Home Square, the inn gave me a room with ceiling beams bound in copper,” Grandmother told the elf. “After I fought in the coliseum and won that necklace, the beams were bound in silver.”

  “The pointer is not responsible for that. I don’t know what is,” he admitted painfully. Valin really hated it when he didn’t know something his primary wanted to know. He was her information officer. It was his responsibility to gather the information she needed to make an informed choice. Irene never appeared disappointed when he didn’t know. Instead she always looked intrigued.

  “As a tier six, this will point to multiple instances of multiple items,” Valin held the chain up, allowing the stone to hang below. He tapped on the stone once. One “edge” of the stone began to glow. The edge was not sharp, but worn and didn’t call attention to itself without the glow. It ran from near the top of the stone in its hanging position to a rough point on the bottom surface. The stone twisted in the air. Grandmother thought she could accomplish that with the use of a gyroscope.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “That way,” Valin said, pointing in the direction of the glow line and rough point had rotated to, “is the nearest instance of the primary feature this pointer is tuned to.” Grandmother noticed that Valin was pointing at a downward angle. She shifted her position a bit and decided he was right, the pendant tilted down from its rest position in addition to rotating. Valin tapped the pendant twice and the stone pointed twisted north and the glow reduced.

  “That will be the second closest instance. The glow is an indication of distance,” Valin explained.

  “What is it pointing to?” Grandmother asked.

  “The only way to know is to go there and look. Remember it is a place the feature could be, it may not actually be there now. Since you won this in the coliseum, it is likely it is pointing to one,” Valin suggested. “You can try up to six taps. If the stone doesn’t move there isn’t an instance within its range.” Grandmother looked at the north western trajectory.

  “That would be the coliseum at Peking,” she commented. Valin tapped the stone three times. The stone rotated east. “Now that is interesting,” Grandmother observed. “It must be on the other side of the Speedwell.” Four taps and the stone turned to the back to the west, pointing farther south than the first position. At five taps, it turned north again and at six east. There wasn’t any glow this time, just the rotation. Indicating this last feature was extremely far away.

  Valin was impressed. Coliseum’s were rare features spaced months of travel apart. The distance this pointer was finding things was impressive.

  “You said it could point to different features. If the taps are the next instance, how do you change what it is looking for?” Grandmother asked.

  “You have to change which side is down,” Valin answered. He sat the stone down on the table with the hole the chain went through at the top. He turned it onto a side from that position and tapped the stone. The stone spun like a top, half lifting itself from the table to point downward. Magnets, Irene thought, she could accomplish that effect using them. The glow was very bright compared to when it pointed to the first coliseum. Valin sat it back upright and the glow faded. He tipped it over to another side and tapped it.

  The stone did not move at all, instead the entire surface glowed.

  “Ah,” Valin responded. “It has found this rest. We will want to remember that surface.”

  “Is it the rest,” Grandmother questioned, “or the possibility of an inventory access?”

  “The rest. It will only glow like that when it is sitting on the item. If it takes you to a possibility it will continue to point at a wall or the floor or something no matter how close you get,” Valin reported. “Although it may not be the rest it is sensing but the crystal. We are inside its protection area and that qualifies as sitting on the object. If it is the crystal it will point to outposts and squares as well and you won’t know which one until you get there.”

  “That’s disappointing,” Grandmother said. “It would be nice to find a square from far away. Rest’s are so common they would completely mask the presence of a larger crystal.” Perhaps, Grandmother thought, Control wanted it that way.

  Valin stood the stone back up and laid it over onto another side.

  “If it is tier six, there should be six sides you can lay it on,” Valin commented. “Each side will point to something different.”

  “There are seven sides,” Grandmother announced. “I could see that when I analyzed the symbols.”

  “Seven?” Valin said with astonishment.

  “What other kinds of things can it be pointing to?” Grandmother asked.

  “I’ve seen pointers to inventory accesses, rests and vendors,” Valin admitted. “I’ve heard of outposts, squares and coliseums. It was my teacher who thought it was actually crystals, not the different rooms.”

  “You said no one uses a fetch to get an inventory access. What do they try to get?” Valin told her that the day before. According to him they were too expensive to waste on such a common game feature.

  “Squares,” Valin said. “If you know where a square once was, you can use a pointer to locate its dormant crystal. Then a fetch will cause the square to respawn with a small crystal.” Valin paused a moment, deep in thought. His brush with her attention was still fresh in his mind.

  “My people have a problem with ring. It is often used to destroy squares, even though it bounces back on the caster’s square destroying their crystal too. Knowledge of where a square once was is common,” Valin confided. Grandmother frowned. Valin felt her anger in his bones. The only thing that made it bearable was it was not directed at him. Suddenly Todd was there. Until now the warrior was elsewhere in the growing guildhall working on some other upgrade.

  “Is everything alright?” Todd asked with a hand on the hilt of his rather large knife. His gaze was locked on Valin, although he was speaking to Grandmother. The warrior was clearly ready to kill the elf even though Valin was tier five and Todd was only tier four.

  “Yes,” Grandmother said, with a quick shake. The pressure in Valin’s bones faded. “Valin has just told me something distasteful about his people. I am afraid it rather hit a nerve. I value honesty.” Grandmother stated to Valin. “I will endeavor to reward you for it.”

  “Duty to my liege requires no reward,” Valin stated. Todd didn’t know what liege meant. He’d have to look it up in the Speedwell when they got back. Sometimes he wondered where Control got all the words it used in Valin’s translator.

  “I have the fetch code written,” Grandmother said with a wave of her hand to the wall. This was her second attempt to get an inventory access and was based on the code in Enchanters totem drawing. “So I am ready for the next round. Valin and I are working on trying to get this rock to point to the correct wall for the next attempt.” Grandmother thought the blank input wall might not be good enough. She may need to put it on the wall the inventory access would appear on.

  “I’ll tell everyone to hurry it up,” Todd promised. He gave one more sharp look at Valin, before stepping back into the hallway.

  “What was that?” Ellen asked Todd as he passed the door to the library. Grandmother and Valin could hear their voices clearly.

  “Something distasteful about elves,” Todd replied, before continuing on.

  “Do you know ring of death?” Grandmother asked, looking thoughtful.

  “No,” Valin responded. He really didn’t. It was a line he drew for himself. When he realized he would cross it if he stayed in King’s Court, he left. Not just King’s Court, because leaving the square without the King’s permission was treason, he fled the entire Kingdom.

  “I found the spell hint for it in the green at Redfalls. It just struck me that it may have been meant for you. There was another spell hint for a tier five crafting spell in a gallery under the square. Remind me to give you my sketch of it. It might have been for you too,” Grandmother commented.

  Three of the surfaces pointed at the central feature of the enlarged rest. When the first side pointed there, Grandmother thought it must be pointing at the inventory access point. When the second pointed there she was forced to rethink that idea. At the third result, even Valin thought maybe he accidentally repeated a side, further testing proved there were three.

  Another side pointed to a section of wall in the hallway just past the enlarged rest. Grandmother thought that one might be pointing to a location that could hold a vendor, since it was roughly where she expected the food facilities to open up. Both north and south galleries spawned with a specialty vendor in their food preparation area.

  She decided the easiest way to figure out which side was the inventory access would be to find one and then use the stone next to it. One of those three sides should point straight at it. It was a way to confirm the rest or crystal and coliseum sides too. Actually, now that she thought about it, they should try the stone in front of anything interesting until they identified all the sides.