"My brothers and sisters," said one of the assembled who were concerned over the missing pen. "I sense we are in no true danger or trouble. Yes yes, the loss of the pen is a potential disaster. But we have no reason to panic or to inflict, ahem, 'motivation' on our gofers. Our goal of having the pen has always been to insure that it is never used. We know how the cycle can go, either the human will abuse the pen, making themselves king of the world, find it empty, and simply fade themselves out of existence, leaving the pen ours again.
"Or the kind we truly the fear, the visionaries, the kind the pen seems naturally drawn to, the kind who instinctively seek to transform humans into something new, creatures that we can no longer manage, something we can no longer control.
"But these two are dealt with in typical fashion. Either a self-rigtheous magical tough guy will seek to have them punished for 'abusing their power' as they always see it. Or the visionary, unable to keep their discover to themselves, will share this power with another, at which point in immediate short order the visionary is again 'put in their place' and their work in transforming human is halted by the person who they shared this reveal with.
"I sense this latter scenario has already occurred. Any number of former humans who will now be beyond our ability to herd will be minimal. They can be left to die of old age or be silently eliminated as the situation warrants. It's possible this type will do a better job of keeping the pen from being used to transform humans into creatures who we can not use than we can. Yes yes, I can hear your anger. But please, these type ultimately see the changing of unaware humans as wrong, and therefore, shall not do so, and keep the pen from BEING used, and thus keep our system intact and safe. We've exterminated living rubber anthros who thought they could be a peaceful co-species with humanity. We've eliminated new tribes of fairies who would have preserved nature, living crystal minotaurs, imps, cherubs, we're terminated all new forms the souls of humanity could inhabit. But more often than not, whoever the visionary shares the pen with, will stop things dead in their tracks FOR US. Therefore, I say as long as we don't antagonize them with assassins and thugs, they will keep the pen out of use FOR US."