It was late afternoon when Fiona and company closed up the shop a little early, to head out to the festival.

Except, of course, Fiona was fuming. She'd put her gold bangle somewhere in the store, and couldn't find it! She hoped someone hadn't stolen it, if she left it someplace careless!

“Fiona, just check your office. Maybe you left it on your desk?” Greg suggested after a brief search.

“No, I didn't leave it there, Greg. I am not that airheaded. I swear, someone up and pilfered it when I took it off earlier. And I'm not happy about it, because it was the first treasure I ever recovered about five months ago. It has sentimental value to me as my first hard-earned reward!” She shook her head and examined the cabinet in the break room. She kept smelling cinnamon, and something else metallic and tangy in the air, and had been for a little while. Her perfume wasn't that strong, in retrospect. “I have no idea where I left it.”

“Storage, maybe?” Darla pointed out. “You went back there earlier today.”

“Man I'm freaking out, I can't replace that! Not without cracking some monster skulls. Seriously, is anyone else using cinnamon perfume?” She asked, and Bonnie swiveled her ears.

“I mean, I love cinnamon cookies like any other energetic ray of sunshine, but, no. You sure you that isn't just you?”

A quick sniff test and a chuckle from Bonnie gave Fiona her conclusion. “Nope. Hang on. What is that, exactly? Its cinnamon and…” she furrowed her brow. Wingding was trying to get her attention with a flutter of wing beats on her skin. She found it odd how she could feel it, in a physical stimulation. Wingding was flapping in a pattern. “Okay, Wingding, what's up? You trying to tell me something?”

One flap later, Fiona focused on her mark, bobbing back and forth, while using long and short strokes of her wings, the jeweled heart almost glittering. “No, Timmy didn't fall down the well, Lassie. Alright, hang on…” Meanwhile, she sent out a single-word answer.

S…c…e…n…t…

Fiona recoiled in surprise. “I keep clean, thank you. Mood.”

“Sometimes, I wonder if Fiona is just talking to herself. And then, I see her mark flapping.” Darla stopped with her cleanup, her golden eyes wide. “Fi, question for you. Are you focusing on letting your mark be visible?”

“Uh…no. Why?”

“Because I can see it from six meters away right now.” Darla sauntered over, tail flicking back lightly, and her eyes etched in curiosity. “Yeah, that's a bit weird, right?”

“Not necessarily. There are many recordings of people being able to display their marks without thinking about it,” Bonnie pushed back, while also gathering to see Wingding spell out ‘scent’ again. “You know how we were pushing back about Wingding being alive? I think it stopped being a joke when we realized she could spell out words.”

“‘Scent’. Girl, I shower, I'm no nature-dwelling elf, I don’t smell like grass and dirt and–”

She stopped to pause for a second and took a sniff. That cinnamon and other metallic, tangy scent was there. Was that…her bangle, she smelt? Could she smell gold, as a superpower? No way. Well, Wingding, there’s only one way to test this. She took a deep inhale, with Greg looking at her in confusion.

“No, it’s not me. I don’t use cologne.”

“Shh, fancy pants. I’m testing something.” As she drew in that scent, it started to become more distinct. Almost overwhelming cinnamon and metallic tang, rolled into a new scent fusion, and she arched her head back, as if to gauge what direction it was coming from. Bonnie squinted at her, and giggled with a hand to her muzzle.

“Ahem. Kitsune, here. You know if one of your snacks went missing, I could probably help you, but I don’t think Fiona is a scent I want to be burned in my brain–”

“Shh. The elf is thinking.” Bonnie peered at her quizzically, ears at odd angles as Fiona finally intuited a direction. She headed towards the stairs to the bottom floor–more storage, along with some other odds and ends.

“Where is she going?” Greg queried. She ignored him and pushed down the stairs and hit the arcanist glow panel, so the stairwell and adjoining hallway were lit up with sparkling lights–the marvels of modern magitech at work, where a lightbulb simply didn’t exist yet. She could almost…see a trail?

No, it wasn’t a thing she could see. It was a trail she could feel, snaking through the air, and growing stronger. A vibration she could feel on her skin, and that increasing scent of a metallic tang and cinnamon as she walked down the wooden steps, past the plain brick walls

Her trek led her into the storage space. Metal cabinets and various crates lined the room. Spiders found homes in the corners of the space, and she heard a squeak of mice, startled by the newcomers in the room and scurrying to their dark hiding spots. She spotted little beady eyes glimmering in the light, and she wanted to use her bangle to light the room–except, that was the item missing.

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“Greg, give me something gold,” she requested.

“Oh hang on, Fi. You're gonna do your razzle dazzle thing?” Bonnie asked before pulling out a small gold hoop from one of her furry ears–an earring, that she found quite cute on the kitsune.

“Ugh. Maybe razzle dazzle was too much of a silly name for it. I’ll call it my goldshine, then. That still sounds cool! Wingding, do your goldshine!”

A flap of the wings later, the room lit up with golden light, and Fiona squinted as she tried to focus the light down. To her amazement, she was able to get only part of the earring to glow, and focused the glowing material into a single bright beam of light, that she used to sweep across the dark corners. “Bonnie. You’re a ray of sunshine, ya know that? Or, your earring is, but close enough!”

“Just don’t lose it. It was my grandmother’s,” she cautioned.

“Me, lose gold? Sheesh, Bonnie, I’m the Merchant of Fortunes, I’ll lose my title if I do that. Now as for what I’m doing…”

She paused and knelt to look below a cabinet, and heard a scraping sound. She saw a glimmer in the gloom, and a pair of beady eyes staring at her, and she narrowed her eyes.

“Oh, you little thief.” Sitting in the claws of a rather large rat with golden fur, was her golden bangle. “You stole my bangle, give that back!”

“Squeak.” The offending rat made a small sound and sat there, as if daring her to dive under the cabinet and reclaim her property. What was stranger, was that scent of metallic tang–was it gold she could smell? Her gold, specifically?

“Fiona…did you just…sniff out your item?” Darla called out, sounding intrigued.

“Uh…maybe?” She narrowed her eyes at the booger who had her prize in his little rat claws, like he was daring her to come in. “Hey, uh, Greg. You were telling me about Gilded Rats earlier. Remind me, how…dangerous are they?”

“Domestic, intelligent, and exceedingly dangerous if provoked. Meaning, we will be carting off your gnawed-on bones in a box, if you attempt to deal with them as you deal with normal monsters,” Greg stated with an air of caution. “Might I suggest a barter, with said offender?”

“It’s mine. But alright, fine.” She reached into her coat pocket, and found a small cookie that was sitting in waxed paper–a treat from granny. “Alright you undersized kids mascot, give me my bangle, you get a treat,” she proposed. She placed a piece of the cookie just where she could reach, and took a step back, and watched the rat twitch its whiskers.

“There’s no way this works,” Bonnie scoffed.

Greg wore a small smirk on his face. “Have some faith, Bonnie. I think she’s good with dangerous pets.”

“Tucker isn’t dangerous! Well, maybe to your clothes and your hair fashion, but still, not dangerous,” she rebuffed and watched the rat bring the bangle with its tail. It peered back and forth, took the tasty treat in its mouth, and left the gold bangle as it untangled its tail from the gold accessory. She grabbed it and hastily put it on, letting out a sigh of relief.

“I…don't believe that just happened. Fiona can sniff out gold?” Bonnie gasped. “Also, remind me to never underestimate your ability to handle monsters and animals of all sizes.”

“Oh? Want me handling you, Bonnie?” Fiona commented with a leering smile. Her friend got a little red in the fur at that suggestion and shook her head.

“One of these days, Fi, you’re gonna miscalculate on the answer to that question,” Bonnie retorted, while rubbing at her cheek.

Darla stepped in, raising one finger. “Fiona? Out of curiosity…does that fashion accessory smell like what you were detecting earlier?” Darla queried. Fiona frowned, after she took a sniff.

“Yeah, it does. It’s identical.” Her eyes brightened and her ears stood on end. “I have a treasure scent! Avast, ye swabbies! Fiona the loot pirate is here!” she roared in triumph. “I mean that’s an odd power, right?”

“Merchants with a way to find money. Go figure,” Greg shrugged.

“Hey, it’s not about money! It has immense, sentimental value to me!” she countered with a huff, and then thought of something. “Wait. Maybe I didn’t find it because it was gold. Maybe I found it because it was missing from its rightful owner?”

“A hypothesis that we should test. But it’s late, we should get going,” Greg nudged. “I say we look into this one later, I would hate to miss the start of the festivities.”

Bonnie sighed and pointed to the darting little critters in the corners. “Also, we have highly intelligent rats infesting our place. Figures,” she declared unhappily. Fiona stood up and brushed off an errant cobweb before handing Bonnie’s earring back, where she tucked it into a small piercing opening. “Just saying, we should probably call for a druid. Gilded rats might be smart, but we don’t want them chewing into the arcane circuits.”

“We have to call a druid to get rid of them? Sheesh. In for a copper, out for a blonde vulture’s hoard,” Fiona sighed. “Let’s leave that problem for another moment. Man, the best part? I’ll never lose my stuff again!”

Bonnie laughed at this heartfully. “Well, if I see you sniffing around like you’re a hound dog, I’ll have only a fifty-fifty shot you’re looking for snacks to liberate.”

With nothing left to do, they headed upstairs to the orange rays of the sun coming in through the windows. Fiona was just reaching for the front door when a breeze blew in as the door flew open, and she gasped, as did the others. “Hi, uh…can I help you?” she asked anxiously and felt herself edging her hand to her warhammer.

A figure in a tall, dark cloak silhouetted against the sunlight, standing tall over them. A cowl was pulled over their head, and they wore heavily gloved hands–but Fiona heard the creak of what sounded like wood kindling or something hard–dry joints rubbing against one another. Beneath the cowl was a set of glimmering blue eyes, like fiery orbs.

Except, they were situated in the hollows of a roughly human skeleton standing animated before them, and he let out a toothy smile. “Greetings, I’m so sorry to bother you, I saw the store hours Fiona. It has been a while.”

“Wait. We’ve met?” she asked, her hand drifting back to her side. Her threat sense wasn’t going into overdrive right now, which meant it was probably okay–minus the cute growl from Bonnie, behind her.

“Necromage,” she hissed.

“I was a communer with the deceased. I was–am a medium,” the male voice stated with resignation, before pulling back a sleeve to show their arm bones. Much to Fiona’s surprise, a small mark blazed into existence where flesh would be in blue wisp flames–a skeleton holding a hand with a visage of a woman, eyes closed and her other hand to her chest, a rose in clutched in her fingers.

Fiona knew this mark. She’d seen it once, on a fellow adventurer who had been showing off in her first days. And, while the voice rattled through his now bony head, it carried an air of familiarity to her. Then, it hit her.

“Regis?!” she gasped.