The message began roughly as Kaldalis anticipated. A major Lataxinan political figure - who identified himself as Kran, the scion of the line of Uzra, whatever that meant - issued a greeting to whatever people or society might someday discover this sealed case.

It was a message of hope for a future beyond the unknowable catastrophe they knew was coming.

Kaldalis suddenly realized that they had no idea what the results of Monsoon’s intrusion would be.

They hadn’t been afraid of an invasion.

They had been afraid of an extinction event.

The message wasn’t addressed to survivors of the Calamity, or to a rebellion against whatever force took charge in the aftermath. It was a message to whoever happened to be here, whether it was something they would recognize after thousands of years of technological development, or something new that arose after billions of years of evolution. Or visitors from another world, wondering at what had happened.

Unfortunately, they couldn’t provide much in that arena. They described how their technology had forecast the Calamity, observed it, and attempted to reach out to ask for mercy from the foreign intelligence perpetrating it. There was a brief mention of their plans to prevent or unmake the coming disaster, which interested Kaldalis, but specific details did not follow.

The middle section of the translation wasn’t terribly helpful. Much of the document was about cultural connection. Descriptions of their art and lifestyle, as well as the natural life they were familiar with on the islands.

It all matched with what Kaldalis was familiar with, but there was no mention of the videogame-style elements he’d become accustomed to. When they described the Irritators and Daemonraptors, they never brought up their respective debuff and elemental affinities. When they described the Enhydra, their natural behaviors sounded like a cross between a primate and a raccoon, rather than anything approximating the amphibious treasure goblins Kaldalis was familiar with.

The end, though, was the secret he sought. The answer to his questions, and possibly the key to finding the solution to all his problems.

It was the story of their escape.

Kaldalis had been a paragraph behind the translation when a phrase caught his eye even as it was halfway written by the old Vathon translator’s pen. The Paths Between Paths. That strange place where Kaia’s Flicker sent him and the other adventurers who used that ability. He skipped over the discussion of Lataxinan Canonization - interesting as it was - and went right to that.

The first part was a story familiar to Kaldalis. A great storm had descended upon the islands. A natural disaster that represented an existential threat to their whole civilization.

They had survived, and they owed their survival to one woman. Kaia. With a modified version of her Flicker ability, she had taken the whole city into the Paths Between Paths, and held it there all night and all day. The city emerged unscathed from the storm, and with its resources, the survivors were able to rebuild.

And so they had done the same again. But on a much grander scale. With all their progress, they were able to modify Kaia’s Flicker into something new. An ability that would harness the interactions between time itself and the Paths Between Paths to transport a large vessel full of Lataxinans into the void, and leave it there until they could return safely.

They would not come back from the Paths Between Paths until they were contacted by the outside world, and could be assured that the time for their return was right.

In fact, they could not return without the assistance of an outside force, to ensure that it could not be ended prematurely and land them in potentially fatal fallout from the Calamity. The research had been funded and headed by Kran himself, and so upon its success, it was to be entered into the Lataxinan Canon as Kran’s Temporary Shunting.

What struck Kaldalis the hardest, though, was the lopsided drawing of the sideways figure-eight.

As the translator mechanically reproduced it and added the descriptions, he found that it wasn’t a mathematical proof or formula.

It was a diagram of the vessel.

The place in the Paths Between Paths where the Lataxinans had taken refuge.

Two large chambers connected by a passageway between.

And as soon as he saw it, he knew where the Lataxinans were.

He’d seen them.

“Holy fucking shitballs,” Kaldalis cursed. “The shapes. The- The fucking marshmallows!”

Heluna started to ask a question, but he was already gone.

He activated Kaia’s Flicker.

The Paths Between Paths was just as he had always seen it. It was an empty void. Without even air, his breath bar appeared at the top of his vision. He was floating in roughly the same posture as he had been standing back in the physical world, and trying to turn to look around sent him spinning in a great demonstration of conservation of momentum in a vacuum.

There was just blackness in all directions. All directions except one.

Off in the distance there were two titanic shapes.

They were just indistinct white blobs in the darkness.

Kaldalis had seen them every time he’d used Flicker, and he’d had no idea what they were. In the absence of Lataxinan documentation, he’d have guessed they were always there. Some natural feature of the otherwise featureless empty darkness.

But now he knew.

That was where the Lataxinans were. He could see the pale outer shell of their colony vessel.

“I should have fucking known!” Kaldalis said as the world snapped back into place around him. “It’s them! They’re there!”

Heluna stared at him for a moment. In the brief time he was gone, she had moved closer to the table and was looking at the translation. Kaldalis couldn’t discern if she was as stunned as he was, or if she hadn’t understood him and was simply baffled. He quickly realized which.

“Flicker,” Kaldalis said to her. “You haven’t used it before, have you? Or, at least, not when you had the mental clarity to look around, right?”

Without a word, Heluna vanished. It only took a second for her to reappear, though she was already cursing furiously.

“-of the Glorious One’s golden gonads!” she yelped, mirroring Kaldalis’s own look of agitated disbelief. “It’s right the fuck there!”

“Excuse me,” the old Vathon translator said, still holding both the original document and the translation. “I hope you aren’t going to be upset to realize that I need to report this, right?”

“Report?” Kaldalis asked.

“This is a major historical find. This document recontextualizes everything we know about the Calamity,” the old Vathon said. “It says there was an entity behind it! I need to report this to Ikzoz, and have this information disseminated through the research teams immediately.”

Kaldalis was suddenly reminded that to the perspective of this researcher, entirely different parts of this were important. The document hadn’t said anything specific about the abilities - nothing that could lead the Contender to a negative conclusion, at least - but it was a crucial piece of the puzzle towards connecting the dots that Onirioago had already.

“How long will that take?” Kaldalis asked.

“A few hours? Not much more, depending on what time it is.” The old man looked out the narrow window next to his desk briefly. “Tomorrow morning, start of the day, I think.”

Kaldalis saw things unfold in his mind. This huge finding would cause all the separate pieces of information to be brought together. It was only a matter of days - or even hours - before Onirioago’s big reveal went from whispers among friends in the aftermath of a trial to a legitimate rumor backed up by documented evidence.

After that… Kaldalis might be out of time to make the connections and solve the puzzle before all hell came down on them - either from the native inhabitants of this world.

Or from Monsoon.

Kaldalis had two options. The first - and unthinkable - was to brutally murder this old man, hide the body somehow, and then scramble out of here with his notes in hand in a way that wouldn’t incriminate him.

Considering that such an act was abhorrent to him - and impossible, since the receptionist downstairs had just pointed him here and could recognize him - that meant he had only one option remaining.

“I need to get there,” Kaldalis said quickly. He grabbed Heluna by the elbow and led her out of the office and into the hallway. “Fast.”

“Fuckin’... There? There there? You want…” Heluna sputtered for a second before settling on a single word: “how?”

Kaldalis’s mind raced. He was honestly impressed with himself when all the little pieces of the plan started to come together. Fragments of memories. Things he’d seen. Interactions he’d experienced. He could do this. It was possible.

“Step one,” Kaldalis said. “There’s no air in the Paths Between Paths.”

“The fuckin’ Relic,” Heluna said, eyes widening.

“Right,” Kaldalis said as they hit the stairs and started back down to the ground floor. “I need almost two thousand fish. And I need them before dawn.”

“I’ll round up the boys,” Heluna said, “I’m sure I can get them to help just a little longer.”

“I need all hands for this,” Kaldalis said, doing the math in his head. “Everyone you can get. This is going to be an all-nighter.”

As they emerged from the research center, he gave Heluna a quick kiss on the cheek before letting her go to fetch her friends.

“And this is, unfortunately, the easy part,” he said to her departing form.