ZipZing seemed to freeze in shock, while her after-image appeared to spin to glare at the celestial servant beside her. "Yes?" Danika demanded.

"I think it's possible that he's succeeded in obtaining more avatars too," Lin Hao agreed cheerfully as his hands danced over his menus.

Danika glanced between the cat named Thimblepot's Conundrum and the head of the seventh division. "What are you doing here? Why have you pulled me into a celestial space?" she asked abruptly.

"I got your message, and figured I'd waste a few minutes looking into it," he replied.

"Sorry about interrupting your server setup," she apologized contritely.

He waved a hand and told her

"I just want to ask a couple of quick things, because the system is attributing the Path of Blood mostly to you, although Ariana and some of the others were assigned portions, but your report sounded like you didn't have anything to do with it? And I know Devon has checked to make sure that none of us except him are trying to maintain a workload here at the same time."

"Well, I was going to ask about creating it eventually" Danika admitted guiltily. "And I had my assistant make a lot of notes on it, because I didn't want to forget some of the things I'd thought of. I know we've been really busy… but I didn't spend very much time on it. And I definitely didn't tell the Emperor to go ahead! Also I'm not sure that it's got the same scope that I'd imagined for it… but you said the others worked on it? So it wasn't just the Emperor? He made it sound like he just decided to create it."

"Oh, the Emperor created the project, you weren't wrong," Lin Hao said reassuringly. "But it was split into the usual assignments. From the attribution file, I'd guess he probably used most of your ideas."

"But, some of them conflicted with each other," she objected.

"Ariana and the beta testers apparently liked the range and complexity." He shrugged and asked with amusement, "Did you know that you seem to have inspired this Jade Emperor to start creating copies of the King of Cats?"

"What? How? Why do you think it was me?" Danika asked worriedly. "Is he eating them? Is it filling up the server?"

Lin Hao chuckled and assured her, "It's fine, I was mostly teasing you. Probably all of our conversations in this server since we discovered Jade have contributed to his experiment. I'm pretty certain that he's not going about it in the same way that Jade did, although I don't have complete logs. But he's deleting the work spaces when he's finished, and he's definitely figured out how to access some areas that he couldn't before. It may come as an unpleasant surprise to the King of Cats next time he tries to evade the Emperor. I've had the world dragon watching him just in case, so everything's logged in this server."

Danika thought about the way the Emperor had assured her that he was being careful to retain all of the major NPCs in the game. He might be adding things to himself, but he wasn't removing them from the game. She pointed to the cat called Thimblepot's Conundrum and asked, "That's the King somehow, isn't it? They both wanted me to hurry for some reason…"

"Yes, it looks like he managed to take this identity," Lin Hao agreed. "Maybe he's trying to follow you to the tree's version of the Jade Emperor so that he can look at the differences. He may be aware of the Emperor's copies of himself."

"How long have you been watching us?" she asked suspiciously. "And why me?"

He just grinned at her and reminded her, "ZipZing's adventures are always logged now. I know you and Josh blame ZipZing's involvement with the cat on me, since I'm the one who gave your character the Strong Luck that's governed by his routines, but none of the other characters with it interact with him as consistently."

She shrugged, she was aware of his markers on her character, and they had discussed it. "So, do you think he already has the messenger cat avatars he wanted?" she asked with a hint of resignation.

"I'll have to spend more time on it, but from a quick glance I'd say he can only access temporary ones like this quest generated cat that will vanish when this veil does," he replied thoughtfully.

"Not like a message generated messenger?" Danika questioned suspiciously. "Wait, this is a vale?"

"Pretty much, a world fragment instance tied to the tree and a specific character, just like a beginner's vale. The messengers have huge permanent personality files, so this method won't work… although if they weren't generated through the market and were quest generated he might be able to get ahold of them this way. He has to follow the avatars restrictions though, so it doesn't really affect the game play," Lin Hao explained.

Hikaru had been frozen like ZipZing, but the pig hadn't and it was actually bold enough to push against her with a worried expression. "I think you should let me continue," Danika suggested, while gesturing to Thimblepot. "I think the cat wants me to convince him to come with us as he is."

"Are you really going to have the only living flying pig in the world join Endless Song?" Lin Hao asked laughingly.

ZipZing felt a wet pig nose shove her sideways as her perspective returned suddenly to where she'd been when Lin Hao interrupted. She glared at a spot in the air over her shoulder and asked, "Why shouldn't I invite a flying pig to join us?"

"I can think of a lot of reasons, but if you're really inviting me I'll accept?" the little pig replied uncertainly.

The cat seemed to be looking at the spot Lin Hao had been standing, even though it probably shouldn't have been able to see a celestial servant, when it enquired, "Choose to create new path?"

At the same time Danika replied to both the pig and Lin Hao's question, "I am inviting Thimblepot to join the guild."

Another voice seemed to echo the cat's question as Thimblepot said with determination, "I will, I accept!"

"…create a new path?" the voice asked.

"Yes, I wish to find my guildmate and visit the Emperor at the heart of the tree," Jade answered clearly.

The cat called Thimblepot's conundrum vanished with a smug look, as a wild wind blew up suddenly as everything around them tumbled away, leaving four characters huddled together in an empty narrow wooden tunnel, that looked like it really might be the inside of a hollow tree root.

"Welcome to Endless Song," Jade told Thimblepot calmly, as though new guild members were transported to his side every day.

"Thank you," the little AI character replied nervously but politely. The buzzing pitch of its wings seemed to indicate its mood.

Hikaru circled them silently, while blinking its light as though it were commenting.

"You must have finally learned the common tongue?" Danika asked the little pig curiously.

"Er, yes? A few minutes ago when you went silent, your pet explained it," Thimblepot replied.

Danika blinked and told Hikaru, "Um, thanks. I'll try to work harder at learning firefly."

Hikaru blinked encouragingly.

--

Danika was relieved when the rest of the journey to the heart of the tree was short, despite its twists and turns. She was running out of time to play, and it had begun to seem as though they were engaged in an epic quest that could keep them inside the tree for days or even weeks. But the trail of old blood was gone, now that they had each declined to continue on the Path of Blood.

A bit of walking through a dark, but pleasantly wood scented tunnel was no problem with ZipZing and Hikaru's lights. Lin Hao had said that the King of Cats might be trying to follow them, but there was no obvious sign of his presence so far. A human sized doorway stood open as though they were expected, and Jade finally faced the Jade Emperor, who stepped down from his wooden throne with a slightly amused expression.

"How goes?" Jade asked the elaborately robed emperor casually, as though they'd just met somewhere on the street.