Courbois was grinning, but Kaldalis just blinked.

“It’s a what?” he asked, feeling dumbfounded.

“A raid,” Courbois repeated. “Actual raid content. And before the level cap, too.”

“Wild!” Myrin said, leaning in excitedly. “What was it like?”

“Martok and I ran it as the tanks,” Courbois said, energetically talking with her hands. “Three healers and a bucket of DPS came with. First boss was a harsh DPS check, so we needed all the help we could get. We barely won.”

“What was it called?” Kaldalis asked.

“Dymythrae,” Courbous said. She stage-whispered it dramatically, though the effect was slightly diminished by the obvious excitement in her voice. “The Tomb of Ghosts.”

“Spooky!” Myrin said, practically vibrating in her seat. “When can we go?”

“Never,” Balrim grumbled. “Not until we clear The Contender’s blockade.”

“Yeah,” Courbois said, her spirit deflating at Balrim’s words. “Even if the dungeon was within the area we are allowed to access, like the one outside Cotanaku, he’s explicitly forbidden any dungeon runs on top of the range limitation.”

“So we have to deal with him first, “ Myrin said, “which I figure we had to anyway-”

“No,” Kaldalis interrupted, “I went through that train of thought already. I think The Contender is a distraction. If we get him out of the way, I guarantee something else comes up to distract us again.”

“So what do we do, then?” Courbois asked.

“We ignore him,” Kaldalis said, “and when he gets in our way, we go around him.” He shook his head. “We’re getting sidetracked. Our objective isn’t to get into the raid. It’s to save the world.”

“Save what?” Courbois asked, her eyebrows shooting up.

“It’s a long story,” Kaldalis said quickly. He tried not to cast a nervous glance skyward. “I’ll explain it all later, I promise. But you already know the short version.” He tapped on Bangen’s notes about the Calamity, where he had left them on the table.

“If we want to discuss it, we have to turn off our streams,” Myrin clarified.

“So it’s a better discussion to have later at night,” Balrim added. “When we’ll have fewer viewers to shut off.”

“Don’t leave me out in the cold, though,” Courbois said, giving Kaldalis a sidelong glance. “I can’t help if I don’t know the whole story.”

Kaldalis knew that he’d gotten a message telling him not to tell Courbois, but she deserved to know. If he wanted her to be on his team, it wasn’t fair to ask her to fly blind with him here. Not to mention she was right. Keeping the secret was impeding her ability to help, especially if she knew things that the rest of them didn’t, that might not seem important enough to mention without the whole story.

Besides, what was Aaron Stevenson going to do to stop him?

He was in another dimension.

“What if the ruins are the key, though?” Myrin interrupted. She gave Bangen’s notes a meaningful glance. “What we learned in Baimer came from the Lataxinan notes, right? There could be intel in the raid that can complete our understanding. They knew the Calamity was coming, so maybe we just haven’t found the right library yet.”

Kaldalis wanted to dismiss the idea, but there was enough truth in his logic. If he wanted more information, the Lataxinans were a valid source, even if the only way to gather that information was from their ruins.

“There’s some closer sources than that, though,” Balrim cut in. “We know that those spider snake things were contemporaries of the Lataxinans. They worked together, if I understand what that tablet was depicting. Maybe they know something? Or at least, maybe they could tell us where to look.”

“No,” Kaldalis said instantly. “We’re not dealing with the Jormo-”

Kaldalis grimaced. Even saying the name of the Jormongumo made him feel ill.

“We’re not dealing with them. Not unless it’s to wipe them out. I think I know the price they’d demand for information.” He shuddered at the memory of what he’d already suffered at their hands.

“Kaldalis is right,” Myrin said, reaching over and gently putting a hand on Kaldalis’s arm. “Even if they know anything - which is a big if - we can’t trust them any farther than we could throw them. They could demand unreasonable sacrifices and then send us on a wild goose chase.”

“You’re right,” Balrim added quickly, putting a hand to his temple. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Sorry, Kal. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

Courbois looked anxiously between the three of them. Kaldalis couldn’t remember if she knew the whole story of the Jormongumo. Or, in particular, of Ara. He definitely wasn’t in the mood to relive it just now, though.

“If we want Lataxinan information, though,” Kaldalis said at last, “we don’t need dungeons or raids. There were above-ground outposts all over the place in Mallia and Nos Meles. I suspect Huajia will be no different. The answer might be in the last place we’d ever look: right out in the open.”

“I have some questions about those ruins myself,” Courbois said, leaning over the table again, lowering her voice. “Every one I’ve encountered, there’s a space for a tablet like the ones in the dungeon. And every single one is missing.”

“We noticed that, too,” Kaldalis said. “Though I wasn’t going to claim that as a pattern, since I’ve only seen two ruins.”

“We’ve come across five,” Balrim said, gesturing to include both himself and Myrin. “So I’m a little more inclined to believe.”

“I’ve seen eight,” Courbois said with a nod. “Trust me, it’s a pattern.”

Kaldalis didn’t even know there were that many ruins on the whole island. Courbois had clearly taken a lot more time in the wilderness than he had. And if her explorations were more thorough than what Balrim and Myrin had done, she hadn’t wasted her time while they were indisposed in Baimer.

“Okay,” Kaldalis said, “let’s say that we want to start our investigation with that. How?” He gestured at his minimap. The edge of town wasn’t visible from here, but he knew how to make it clear what he meant. “We can’t go out and find new ruins, or even explore the ones we already know about.”

“Technically we’re allowed out and about in Cotanaku,” Courbois corrected, “but you’re not wrong. If we can’t find anything in the one or two ruins within reach of there, we’re back where we started on the Raid.”

“We do still have two resources to tap on that,” Balrim said. He gathered up his notes and put them into his inventory. “We could always talk to Bangen and see if she knows something. Because I think if we’re dropping these anywhere, it should be with her. But before we head back to our own town, we have a closer resource.”

“Martok,” Myrin said, picking up on his idea. “His maps cover about half of this region already. He might be able to tell us something we don’t already know. Or at least give us a starting place.”

“And if we have to go around the Contender’s blockade, we will,” Courbois said with a firm nod. “But if we’re going to do that, we better know where we’re going before we leave.”

“Better than that,” Kaldalis said, looking around the table. “I don’t know what The Contender can do to us if we break through the cordon and get caught ambling aimlessly in the foothills. We might be arrested, and considering what happened to Onirioago, being arrested in a foreign nation means that Garyung might not be able to pull us out of the fire.” He grimaced at the thought. “And if Jetmorpan is going to be in charge of what happens to us, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s already tying a noose for me when he comes to gloat. Unless he can get me a nice cozy cell wherever Onirioago ended up.”

“And that might only be what happens to us,” Balrim pointed out. His reddish scales had taken a slightly paler shade as he put a hand to his throat, pulling on the collar of his robe. “There’s no telling what kind of punitive action they might take against the rest of the town. Bringing the boundary closer to town. Closing all questing. Bringing everything to a hard stop.”

“And pointing the finger at us,” Courbois grumbled. “Everyone hurt by the freeze will be out for our blood. We’ll never be able to find help in this town again. And with this being the jumping-off point for the Tomb of Ghosts, we’ll be giga-fucked when it comes time to fill out raid groups.”

“So we have one shot,” Kaldalis said dramatically. “One opportunity.”

“And if we fuck it up,” Myrin added cheerfully, “then we may as well go back to Baimer!”

Kaldalis winced at that. Hard. He felt his face screw up in discomfort as if Myrin had just squeezed a lemon on his nose, sending juice into his eyes and sinuses.

Courbois let out a surprised bark of laughter at the visceral response, while Balrim was practically rolling on the floor.

“Then we don’t fuck up,” Kaldalis said, raising his voice to be heard over Balrim’s cackling. “We absolutely do not fuck up at all costs, okay?”