The knock on the door lead to a brief silence, before the door opens, revealing a rather tired looking elf in an armchair behind the desk. The elf's gaze rose as Marric approached, and with a serious tone of voice, the elf spoke up a bit nervously. "I am glad to see you return alive and well." The elf is visibly shaking. "I was running a few tests, and though I didn't believe it at first, I have come to a conclusion."<br/><br/>The elf's hand gestures, and the large doors shut and the room's interior suddenly has a sound of a playing lute in the air, a strange, eerie melody rising in the air. "My apologies, but this cant reach outside. It has too many dangerous implications." Standing, the elf stared at Marric. "The piece of stone you have is truely part of the starstone. What's more, when I did a little scrying, I learned that there's a total of ten shards in just few days ride from one another here. That's enough to assemble maybe a third. Other shards are more widely scattered, but here's the bad news."<br/><br/>Holding a breath, the elf lifted right hand pulling a sleeve back, showing a withered, burned hand that once touched in a delicate, tender fashion, now looking like it belongs to a corpse. "I paid this price for scrying on the stones. Someone noticed me, someone else also searching for them. I smelled sulphur. That would suggest something from the pits, or at least a powerful mage of some sort, or perhaps an infernal priest. Nonetheless, the harm is done and I will recover but it will be a while. Physical injuries are one thing but that thing tore into my mind too, damaging both my confidence and my mind's clarity. I think my intellect, and I might even say my effective charisma have been torn by the attack. Something this capable of attacking a person's mind is a dangerous foe."<br/><br/>The elf's hand shook as the burnt hand was hidden in a sleeve again. "When I heard you had been captured I feared the worst. I am glad to see you are back safely." Swallowing, the elf then pulled a thick vellum scroll from a shelf, opening it to show a map of the local areas, with several red marks.<br/><br/>"Here. These are the local stone pieces I could find. Please. Collect them for yourself and add to your power, or at least prevent them from falling into the wrong hands. I believe I can trust in you with this, you may hate being called a hero but it seems like you at least have the sense to pursue worthy causes, not going on a mindless crusade against the world with their power. Goblin monarchs.<em>Bandits Kings.</em>Fae Princess." The elf tapped three marks on the map. One of them was at the mines that Marric had visited before. "I crossed this one over, its at most a resonance from how long the stone spent there already, but that still leaves 9 stones scattered about."