The trio tracked down Courbois pretty easily. She was hanging out by the town hall, shooting the breeze with some of the people gathered there looking to get meal chits. Reno and Ess weren’t around, but Courbois quickly assured them that the pair were off on a crafting binge.

“We need to talk shop,” Kaldalis said, “is there somewhere we won’t be overheard?”

“Why?” Courbois asked. “Who are we hiding from?”

“Honestly?” Kaldalis said, glancing skyward for a moment. “The Contender’s people. I want to be able to make plans without being afraid of him barging in and foiling everything just because he doesn’t like me.”

“We can use my place,” Courbois said, leading them towards the town’s player housing area. “It’s pretty secure.”

Courbois was right.

Her place was great.

Kaldalis was immediately jealous of it.

It was a larger space with two rooms and a loft for storage, giving her a more private bedroom behind a closed door, and a spacious den, with tables, chairs, and decorations. The house was a minibar and a big-screen away from being a real party spot.

Kaldalis took particular note of the paintings on two of the walls. One was of a mountain at night, with layered colors separating the peak from the starry night sky, and the other was a simple piece of a single pink and yellow flower. They tied the room together well, and he wondered if he could send something similar back to Baimer. It might be a nice gesture to buy a painting from Verhaldar for his place, since he was so flush with cash.

“So what’s up?” Courbois asked as the group settled in around one of the tables.

“It’s a long story,” Kaldalis said, “and I can’t really tell you the whole thing. But here’s the short version.” He produced Bangen’s notes about the Calamity. “This island was the site of a great catastrophe. Some giant explosion of power that was visible around the world. Obviously, the details are fuzzy.”

“This is where the Infernal Horde came from,” Courbois guessed. “Or what they did to get rid of the Lataxinans.”

“Right,” Kaldalis said. “But there’s more.” He flipped through the notes, finding the spot where Bangen had said that the Calamity was what brought the game systems into the world. He turned the page towards Courbois to let her read it herself.

“Is this a…” Courbois gave a brief bark of a laugh. “Does Tao Wong know about this? Is Monsoon giving him a cut?”

“That’s what I said!” Kaldalis cried, throwing his hands up. “Thank you!”

“What are they talking about?” Balrim asked out of the side of his mouth to Myrin.

“Don’t worry about it,” Myrin whispered back. “Nerd stuff.”

“Anyway,” Kaldalis said, getting them back on track quickly, “I think the Infernal Horde is the critical piece to a larger puzzle. I think if we can figure out more about them, we can unlock some real secrets-of-the-universe stuff.”

“I get it,” Courbois said, nodding along. “Find the Deep Lore. Get the views. Get paid. Easy money, right?”

“There’s a little more to it than that,” Balrim cut in.

“That is a motivating factor,” Myrin added, “but there’s some potential here beyond that. What if we could set things right? Remove the game mechanics? Make this world normal?”

“To turn the MMO into a generic fantasy setting?” Courbois asked, furrowing her brow. “Why?”

“For the people who have to live here,” Kaldalis said quietly. He tried to give Courbois a meaningful look, but he wasn’t sure if she was picking up on what he was trying to convey.

A long, puzzled moment passed between them. Kaldalis almost wanted to have them all shut off their streams so they could talk plainly. After a moment, Courbois either understood, or had given up on understanding and was just going along with it.

“You want to know about the Infernal Horde in this area,” she guessed. “On that topic, I am definitely ready to give you some information.”

Her eyes glazed over for a moment, and then she produced six sheafs of notes. She pushed two across the table to each of them.

Kaldalis flipped the first sheaf open and saw a drawing and description of a monster. It looked loosely humanoid, but the drawing included a forest backdrop, making it clear that it was semi-transparent. The accompanying description said that despite the transparency, it was not difficult to spot, thanks to the rainbow shimmer that constantly rippled over its form.

“Research notes,” Balrim said. Kaldalis looked over to see similar notes about the same creature, though written in a different hand.

“That’s what I was just doing,” Courbois explained. “I’ve been feeling a little guilty about getting out in front of EXP against you guys. And about you missing out on the excitement. I figured these notes would set us square. I just traded some meal chits for them at the soup line.”

Kaldalis looked at the name at the top of the notes. Tahul. Like the Syncoresi, these foes had no damage type on their attacks, but they moved extremely fast and unpredictably, their bodies being like stone one second, and smoke the next. They were the first wave foes, and while individually weak, they were insanely destructive if left unchecked. And checking them was nearly impossible.

They seemed to ignore traditional aggro rules, though the text indicated a specific condition that could hold their attention. This sheaf of notes didn’t specify what it was.

The other sheaf of notes described a more familiar-looking creature. It was called a Dryad, and unlike the Tahul, their camouflage was their specialty. Their appearance and affinities shifted based on their surroundings, as instead of being tree spirits, they were “wilderness elementals” according to the notes. Part of the description on the first page mentioned that Courbois had formed a strategy for fighting them, which had involved blasting the battlefield with sawdust from the construction effort, forcing them into a wood-based form, in order to make them predictably vulnerable to fire damage.

“You can take those to Bangen if you want,” Courbois said, “or any researcher. Get your intel in a few days, get some EXP. You know.”

“Thank you,” Myrin said, with a beaming smile. “We really appreciate this. Don’t we?”

“Yeah,” Balrim chimed in. “You went above and beyond for us. Thank you.”

“This is perfect,” Kaldalis agreed, putting the notes away for now. “This is going to yield some significant information once the researchers are done with it. That’s stuff we can use. Until then, care to give us a bit more of the story?”

“It was nothing like the other two towns,” Courbois said, leaning over the table and steepling her fingers. “Though we thought we would know what to expect. The Tahul lair was much closer. Basically right next door. Instead of a rare raid, they were always lurking in the wilderness around town. We had a lot of weird talks with Jetmorpan and the council about what to do, since they were so damned unpredictable.” She started to gesture with her hands, wiggling them to and fro. “Sometimes they’d sprint at you instantly the second they saw you, sometimes you could walk up on them and they’d stay still as a statue for hours. Sometimes they’d attack you one time and then immediately bolt for the mountain before you even hit them back. Sometimes they’d follow you around, completely passive, until you struck first.”

“Change elemental,” Myrin read off of her notes. “Sounds more like chaos incarnate.”

“That’s what we started calling them,” Courbois said with a smirk. “Regardless, we determined that while they were annoying, they weren’t that dangerous. Nine times out of ten, when you saw them it wouldn’t attack. And you could see them from miles away because they look like a neon pride month display projected onto Bubble Buddy.”

“And then after the raids,” Kaldalis said, tapping the other sheaf of notes in front of Myrin. “That was when the trouble started.”

“We’ve noticed that the second group of Horde always covers a weakness of the first,” Courbois confirmed with a grave expression. “Syncoresi had no real destructive power, so the Malum came. The Xorn were slow and easy to wear down, so the Globin brought healing.” She shook her head. “The Dryads weren’t a big threat during the raids. They were strange and tough to fight, but not as bad as the rule-breaking Tahul. But after?” She sighed, sinking down to put her head in her hands. “We lost eight people the next day when people went out questing. Not us. NPCs.”

“Their camouflage,” Balrim said with a grim nod. “You got used to working around the Infernal Horde. Grew complacent and familiar. And then they snapped the trap on you.” He tapped the notes in front of him. “You can barely see these guys until they’re already on top of you.”

“Some of us took it kind of personal,” Courbois said, looking up at Kaldalis. “Martok and I especially. Me, because I was trying to be you, and him because he took it personally.”

“Martok was the one who uncovered the dungeon,” Balrim said to Kaldalis. “The trigger for the second raid. He told us a little bit about it when we met earlier, but now I understand why he was so tight-lipped,”

Kaldalis nodded, but Courbois interrupted before he could say anything.

“It’s not actually a dungeon,” she said. Despite the morose look in her eye only a moment ago, she seemed suddenly energized. Excited even.

“What do you mean?” Kaldalis asked.

“There’s a reason it popped the final Infernal Horde attack after the first boss,” she explained. The tragedy of the Dryad’s first attack was forgotten now, and she steeped her fingers again with a smirk worthy of an anime antagonist. “That’s no dungeon. It’s a capital-R Raid.”