A hush fell over the room at Onirioago’s words, and Kaldalis could tell from her smug expression that she’d hit the note she wanted and was basking in her success.

He wondered what her objective was here. She’d just commended them, right? Onirioago couldn’t throw them under the bus now, especially not with something as damning as the in-world accusations of TOS violations.

“It’s definitely not black magic,” Haldir blurted out, though his tone had all the confidence of a nerd in a nightclub. “Absolutely not. It can’t be.”

“And what justification do you have for believing that?” the expedition leader asked. “What do you want us to say to the Contender if they come knocking?”

Kaldalis saw where she was going with this. She didn’t want to appear to be condoning black magic, or looking for excuses to harbor it. Instead, she wanted to walk everyone through the journey he’d taken with her when he convinced her that it was safe.

Even though she didn’t want the quartet to be exiled or demonized, she had to be on the right side here.

And that meant starting at the beginning again.

“This power came from inside the dungeon,” Kaldalis said in a measured voice. “It came from a physical place. More than that, we can take you there and show you. You could even learn this power as well.”

“A bold claim,” Ikzoz said, “but not without precedent. It would fall to the Contender’s judgement, but if it comes from a physical place we can go, they have typically left such powers alone.”

“What precedent?” the bespectacled human asked. “When has anything like this ever happened before?”

“There are tales in plenty,” another person at the table said. Kaldalis saw that it was the ship captain. She looked different though. It took Kaldalis a moment to realize she’d apparently forgone her customary oversized hat today, letting her close-cropped curly hair show instead. “Though I imagine this table is more than happy to continue ignoring me on any matter not involving the ocean.”

“The precedent is set in more than just tales,” Ikzoz said, speaking over the murmur of complaints that went around the table at the captain’s words. “The Deeds of Nerik involved a number of acts that have been both confirmed by historical record, and determined by Contender of the era to have involved clever application of the mechanics of the world, rather than black magic. They were attached to the Kaska region instead of something learned and carried around afterwards, but the logic could be consistent. Or, at least, consistent enough.”

“We shouldn’t rush into anything, though,” said a suyon man at the far end of the table, at Onirioago’s right hand. “If the Contender elects to be fickle in this matter, we should not all embrace this power.”

“We don’t need to all embrace it,” Onirioago said, taking easy command of the room’s attention again, “only enough to defend ourselves.” She gestured to Kaldalis, turning every eye to him.

For a brief moment, he full-on panicked. She was acting like this was rehearsed, but since he knew it wasn’t, he was struck with a terrible moment of stagefright. He had the mad urge to just flicker out and take a moment in the empty void to get his thoughts together.

“More than anything,” Kaldalis said, stalling for time for his brain to catch up with Onirioago’s plan, “we need to secure our foothold here. The Infernal Horde is not going to let us stay here, and there’s no telling how many more attacks there will be.

“This new ability let me and my team avoid their most dangerous attacks. Without it, we’d be dead on the ground out there, along with who knows how many others. Furthermore, without this tool, we might never have repelled the assault.”

Onirioago was nodding along with him, and he finally saw where she wanted him to go with this.

Kaldalis’ confidence started to build as he reached his logical conclusion. “We need this power to be able to fight back. And a four-person team isn’t enough for that.” He paused dramatically and turned his attention to Ikzoz. “I very much want to do everything I can to support whatever research and investigation is possible, but our first priority is the safety of the encampment. And for that, we need to spread this ability around.”

At the other end of the table, with everyone’s backs to her, Onirioago was wearing a grin that would have made the Joker nervous.

Kaldalis tried not to look directly at her.

“What,” Ikzoz said, carefully choosing his words, “did you actually find?”

Kaldalis took a deep breath and spared a bare glance back at his friends. Despite having been there themselves they were looking to him, too.

He wasn’t sure who elected him leader of this outfit - Balrim was the one who actually assembled the party and Kaldalis was just the tank - but it was too late now.

There was a brief moment of anxiety-driven dysphoria where he was Dylan, an accountant who was now in way over his head, but he pushed it aside. He was Kaldalis. He needed to be fearless. He wasn’t afraid to hurl himself under the claws of a monster the size of a house.

Why would he be afraid of a table of bureaucrats, right?

“Ruins,” he said once he was sure his voice wasn’t going to crack. “The dungeon we found is a labyrinthine defense that leads to a massive underground cavern. In that cavern is an entire city beneath our very feet, belonging to a society of a race called Lataxinans. They lived here long ago, and were some kind of scholars.”

“Truly?” Ikzoz asked, sitting up straight and leaning forward. If his look at the information files on the Infernal Horde had been hunger, the look in his eyes now was outright lust. “An entire city? A whole civilization?”

“At least a city, with hints that they were spread over the whole archipelago,” Kaldalis went on. “At the end of the dungeon, in the heart of the ruined city, there were a set of tablets. Reading them told the story of a woman named Kaia who developed a supernatural ability, hinting at the existence of this civilization. When each one of us finished reading, we were prompted to learn her ability. And we chose to do so.”

“And so, if we send more adventurers through the dungeon,” Onirioago said, clearly leading him, “it would be near-trivial to teach this ability to every adventurer on the island.”

“It would be,” Kaldalis said. “And that’s what we planned on doing.” The expedition leader caught his eye with her hand and she covertly gestured around the table. “A-assuming,” he added quickly, “that you all believe that it’s a good idea.”

“I very much would like to investigate this matter further,” Ikzoz said quickly before anyone else could speak. “Not to say that I desire this power - I have no interest in anything so closely resembling black magic - but knowledge? Information? That is the reason I was sent on this expedition. No matter the rest of this council’s choice, I demand that at least a preliminary investigation be launched into this ruined city, lost civilization, and magic tablets.”

“There’s more,” Kaldalis said. He reached for his inventory and pulled out the scroll case. As he set it on the table, Haldir, Myrin, and Balrim produced theirs as well. “We found a library.”

Ikzoz made a weak choking sound. His slit-pupiled eyes almost bulged out of his skull.

“The library was full of these scrolls,” Kaldalis said, easily rolling the case across the table to the talsar’s hands. “For every adventurer that goes down there, we can bring back another of these for your team to investigate.”

The talsar’s hands were visibly shaking as he carefully opened the scroll case and gingerly tugged out the parchment within. Kaldalis could swear he saw a shimmer of a tear rolling down his scaled face as his slit pupils darted back and forth, scanning the incomprehensible writing.

“This is-” Ikzoz tried to speak, but there was an audible lump in his throat. “This is everything we’ve been searching for. This is why we’re here.”

“You can read it?” Kaldalis asked, shocked.

“Not yet,” Ikzoz said, and when he looked up there was fire in his eyes. “Not yet,” he repeated, with conviction. “All I need is time. And more of these scrolls, if you can get them.”

Kaldalis saw the quest finish on the right side of his vision, and felt a surge of a considerable chunk of exp. Two hundred and fifty experience points in a flash. Before the text faded, though, it was immediately replaced.

Does This Look French To You? (Repeatable)

Pick up another scroll case. (0/1)

So this is where all the experience was going to come from. Kaldalis tried not to groan at the grind to come. Before, it was something he was willingly submitting to to help others, but the introduction of a repeatable quest somehow spoiled it. Now it was Monsoon telling him to do it, and to do it for his own gain. He had to keep the disappointment from his face, though, or else the council might misread his annoyance at tired MMO design structure as reluctance to do his job.

Despite whatever momentary grimace he may have displayed, Onirioago had a look on her face like a cat with cream in its whiskers.

Around the table, everyone was looking at the scroll cases with expressions varying from interest to excitement.

Not one of them looked afraid or distrustful now.

“You think this is the reason?” the bespectacled man asked, gesturing at the parchment. “Surely there has to be more to it than that. The League will not be pleased to have invested enough for this expedition to last through the year when only a few short weeks would do.”

“Even if it’s not,” the suyon man at the expedition leader’s side said, “these people somehow developed a type of black magic-” He paused and shot a quick glance at Onirioago before correcting himself: “or something that looks like black magic. And they made a system that harnesses and distributes it. Even if this information is just a secondary find, this is too big an opportunity to let slip.”

“Information be damned,” the finnian man on Onirioago’s other side said, his voice scratchy and hoarse. “Purpose be damned, too. Survival trumps all concerns. This power is needed to survive. We will do what we must.”

There was a moment of silence as he finished speaking.

Kaldalis had to admit that besides Heluna the sailor, it was the longest speech he could remember hearing from a finnian that he knew was an NPC.

Everyone nodded along, though.

There were perks to keeping your mouth shut, it seemed: when you did finally speak, people listened.

“It’s settled, then,” Onirioago said. She was trying - and failing - to conceal her glee for how well she had steered the conversation around. She set her eyes on Kaldalis and suddenly he felt very much like a piece of meat. “Ikzoz will prepare a research expedition, and do some preliminary investigation using the information these four have already provided. Until it’s ready, these four will bring more adventurers down into the dungeon. They can retrieve more materials from the ruins for the research team, and increase the number of adventurers who can use this power.”

“We’ll split up,” Kaldalis said, turning to his friends, “like we discussed. Each of us takes three new people down into the dungeon. We spread around the experience, distribute some loot, and get people a new power.” He spared a glance around the table, in particular he looked to the mysterious finnian. “For the good of the encampment. We do what we must, because we can.”