In the end, Haldir caved to curiosity, and read the tablets over as well, though he paused for almost a full minute after the last one, when Kaldalis knew he was seeing the pop-up prompting him to learn the ability.

Or was he? If he was an NPC, maybe he wouldn’t see anything? Maybe he wouldn’t have the ability to respond to the prompt and would glitch out and freeze there.

Kaldalis waited and watched.

After a moment, the vathon let out a resigned sigh and accepted it.

Did that mean he was a PC? Kaldalis didn’t know. He’d have to test with other known NPCs. But it was a clue just the same.

“So what should we do with these tablets?” Balrim asked when they were all finished.

“We could destroy them,” Myrin said, though her tone was reluctant. “Then we’ll be the only ones with these powers and everyone will depend on us for anything that needs it.”

“That seems like a dick move,” Kaldalis said, his lips pressed firmly together.

“Yeah, not a fan myself,” Myrin said with a shrug. “I just felt like someone had to suggest it or we’d all be thinking it.”

“We could try and recover them.” Haldir looked at the tablets in question as if they were going to bite him. “We are already taking these scrolls back to the researchers. What if we took these tablets apart and brought them back as well?”

“How?” Balrim knocked on the nearest tablet. “They’re carved out of the floor and walls. They aren’t movable.”

“We also don’t know what gives them their power,” Kaldalis said. “There were similar tablets all over the city in the little parks, but we couldn’t read any of them, nor did they give us any superpowers.”

“They also weren’t inside a building full of furniture that miraculously survived the merciless march of time,” Myrin added with a sweeping wave of her arms.

Kaldalis nodded. “Yeah, so any damage might stop them from working. We can’t afford to risk it. At least not until a few dozen people have learned it. And maybe even then, not unless the researchers confirm that it’s a good idea.”

“And that’s even if we can,” Balrim said, kneeling down so he could look at the base of the nearest tablet. “It might just be game mechanics being game mechanics. They might be immovable and indestructible.”

Kaldalis winced at the word ‘game’, twice. He looked to Haldir, but the man didn’t seem affected.

It still gave no answers, but once more, Kaldalis’ little internal dial wavered between the vathon being a PC and an NPC.

“Regardless, Once we get back to town, we should start ferrying people down here,” Myrin suggested. “If we can’t bring the tablets to the town, then we’ll need to bring the town to the tablets.”

“Probably smart,” Kaldalis said. “Especially if we can split up and each take a different party down. There’s mechanics in here that need to be understood and communicated. We can’t put a guide video online, but we can be guides to get people through.”

Balrim stood and dusted off his knees before surveying the room with a critical eye. “So is there anything else to be learned here? Or are we finished?”

“I certainly think there’s more to be learned here,” Kaldalis said, “but the question is if we have the ability to learn it with the tools at hand.”

“Yeah, there’s not a bunch of shiny blue primers laying around in here, right?” Myrin asked, the first to start away from the tablet room and back towards the library. “There’s nothing we can do to magically learn this language, even if it’s just one letter at a time?”

Kaldalis followed. “Yeah, or to learn anything else, really. I don’t have a background in anthropology to help me figure out what anything in this giant city is or was. But I really want to know who these otter people were.”

“They looked more like weasels to me,” Myrin said.

“Yeah, but the enhydras are definitely otters, and I really think there’s some relation there.” Kaldalis scratched his head. “Also, living on an archipelago like this, I would suspect them of being aquatic anyway.”

“Otters… Are weasels?” Balrim said, furrowing his brow. “Maybe? I don’t know if I remember that right.”

Kaldalis looked to Haldir once more. “You know what? It’s not important to compare them to what animals they resemble. I’m more concerned with who they were as people.”

“Scholars, obviously,” Myrin said as the group moved back to the stairs. She gestured at the library below as they descended into it. “Not sure what else we can glean from here.”

“You’ve been quiet, Haldir,” Balrim said, “and you probably know more than us from your position in the League. Do you know anything about these people?”

The vathon looked thoughtful. “There are some vague texts back in Baimer,” he said, carefully, “but nothing concrete. Ruins were seen on some of the other islands, and it was speculated that the Infernal Horde had been intelligent at some point, driven mad by an unknown calamity. So it’s not a surprise to find the remains of a civilization here. But that it’s short, fuzzy people and not a complex society of a hundred different mismatched elementals is definitely unexpected.”

“I mean, that is what sounds less likely to me,” Kaldalis said, “but I just got here before the boat left, I don’t know what the norm is in terms of civilizations in this world.”

Haldir grimaced at that, but had no further response. The little dial flipped once more.

If it kept flip-flopping like this, Kaldalis was just going to outright ask the man. All this guessing was annoying.

But he’d been specifically warned against it… so maybe he’d wait just a little longer.

Myrin broke the silence that lingered among the group. “So what else can we determine?” she asked as they left the building back out into the courtyard. “They like building out of stone?”

“And wooden furniture,” Kaldalis added. “If they didn’t, there would be stone and metal furniture all over the place here.”

“Yeah, but is any of that information useful?” Balrim asked. “What does that tell us? Were they pacifist philosophers? Mad scientists? Evil wizards?”

“Probably mad scientists,” Kaldalis said. “Judging from Kaia’s tale, it looks like they learned their magical abilities through obsessive study. It’s possible that they did the classic Frankenstein thing-”

“It’s Fronkensteen,” Myrin corrected, unhelpfully.

Kaldalis paused, inhaling through his teeth a moment before disregarding the interruption and pressing on. “If they did their scientific digging without considering the consequences, they very well could have found something that unmade the whole civilization and killed everyone.”

Balrim’s eyes grew wide for a moment. “What if they made the Infernal Horde? What if this is the very place they originated from?”

They all went silent at that for a moment. It seemed like something that would be done on a TV show, some pull-the-rug-out reveal like a polar bear on a tropical island or a self-driving car launching itself off a pier.

Would Monsoon be that obvious? They’d been a little… less than careful with storylines in the past, but this seemed excessive.

“Well then where are they?” Myrin asked. She raised her arms in a gesture that encompassed the city. “Where are the elementals? If they came from here, shouldn’t this city be swarming with them instead of with bugs and other vermin?”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Kaldalis said quickly, wanting to get off the subject of the Infernal Horde. “But, um, guys, I’ve got a real question that we might be able to answer. How do we get out of here?”

“Well, I’d guess we need to backtrack through the whole dungeon,” Balrim guessed. “It’s not like there’s an obvious way back.”

“That’s a terrible design decision,” Kaldalis said. “There has to be a better way. The people who lived here had to escape in an emergency, right? There has to be some one-way path we can find to make our way out of here.”

“But where do we look?” Balrim asked. “It’s not like we have some helpful quest marker to point us the right direction.”

Myrin peered off into the city. “Well, we’ll have to look around. I’d rather waste fifteen minutes hunting through the city for an exit than waste two hours running back the way we came.”

“You just don’t want to climb those stairs,” Balrim said with a teasing grin.

Myrin crossed her arms, a scowl splitting her small face.“Pft. I can have two reasons.”

“Still very reasonable, in my opinion,” Kaldalis said. “There were a lot of stairs.” He grinned and looked at his little four-man party. “Let’s see what we can find. Which way did you come through?” He pointed at the entrance to the courtyard that he’d come through. “I came through that way.”

“We came in over there,” Balrim said, pointing off to the right.

“Uh...” Myrin paused, furrowing her brow. “Let me check something real quick.”

“Is everything okay?” Balrim asked quickly.

“Yeah, I just…” She shrugged as she trailed off. “I tried to imagine how I would handle it, and all I can think is to look behind the library.”

“Smart thinking,” Kaldalis said. “And it’s a shorter trip than walking all the way back to the outer edge of the city. We can check there first.”

Myrin led the way around the side of the library. Kaldalis had, for some reason, expected it to be flush with the building next to it, requiring them to circle around the block. However, there was a narrow opening between the buildings. Or, maybe not that narrow, as he found that there was room to spare even for his barrel chest.

Behind the library was another, smaller courtyard. It looked like it had been a decorative garden, with a few patches of exposed bare earth surrounding winding stone paths. There was a petrified tree in one corner, and a crumbling rock wall encircling it. The garden was enclosed, and Kaldalis was tempted to pop his Jump cooldown to get over the wall and explore the rest of the city. He restrained himself, though, afraid that he might run into an invisible wall and look foolish. Or clip out of bounds and fall into an endless void.

“So what are we looking for?” Balrim asked as he stepped out of the narrow alley and into the desiccated garden.

“Probably that?” Haldir said, pointing to the far end of the garden. The little stone paths wound around and led to a circular stone set into the ground at the back.

Or, rather, not set into the ground. Hovering slightly over it. As Kaldalis watched, the disk bobbed in place, rotating ever so slowly.

“Yeah, that’s a magic dungeon elevator if I’ve ever seen one.” Myrin agreed, stepping up towards it and kneeling down. “We should be careful. I hear these things kill more adventurers a year than giant spiders and animated skeletons combined.”