With each lead they followed up, they were met with more and more dead-ends and brick walls. Jim was pushed to the point of frustration. Time was valuable and with every day spent -- sometimes, multiple, or weeks on false hope, the risk grew. He’d gone from meticulously following each and every thread to now the extreme.
He’d heard the rumours, of course. How exaggerated they were, he didn’t know. But there was a collector, to put it nicely. Of fine things -- treasures. Not quite unlike Gatto, but, Jim prayed this antiquarian (was it right to call her as such?) did not keep her valuables stashed in her belly. Or that she was not literally mountain-sized.
The Eye of Gunmar was a lost relic. A lost treasure, one could say. Stolen out from the Krubera’s guard. If Gatto didn’t have it, then perhaps it ended up in her hands instead. It was the most logical place to start, aside from a blind, wild hunt.
So he’d gotten NotEnrique to spread rumours within the circle of changelings still believing he was working as a mole about the Trollhunter wanting to meet with her. That he had something extraordinarily valuable he’d be willing to part with. After all, who could resist the Amulet of Merlin equipped with the Birthstone and Killstone already?
Jim waited at the meeting place -- a secluded, shaded area of the forest, away from prying eyes -- and hoped that she could not.
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