Martok’s quarters in Kayore were closer to a match for what Kaldalis had in Cotanaku. It was a little shack with little in the way of decoration. Kaldalis knew that Martok had a slightly larger place in Cotanaku, but after seeing Courbois’s place, it looked a little depressing. It made Kaldalis decide to invest in growing his space as soon as possible.

Martok made his own decisions clear as soon as he came to the door.

“Not this one,” Martok snapped, pointing at Kaldalis. “The rest of you are welcome, but this one? No. Take a walk while the adults are talking. I’m not dealing with you.”

“Hi Martok,” Kaldalis said, ignoring the aggressively negative greeting. “Long time no see. How are you?”

“What’s wrong?” Balrim asked, putting himself between Kaldalis and Martok. “What problem do you have with Kal?”

“I have better things to do than get involved with this one’s impetuous behavior,” Martok spat. The tone he put behind the word ‘impetuous’ made it sound like it was the worst insult he could think of. “Or did you already forget that I got poisoned and tied up? That I helped cart a dead body all the way back to town with you? That I didn’t even get a thank you? Did you all forget that, or were you just hoping that I did?”

Kaldalis grimaced. He had to admit that he had sort of forgotten about Martok in the shuffle of everything that had happened. He wanted to point out that the man had seemed to be pretty unflappable, but that was no excuse for neglect.

“You’re right,” Kaldalis said, cutting in before Balrim could escalate the argument. “I’m sorry. I didn’t give you the proper respect-”

“Don’t even start,” Martok interrupted, fixing Kaldalis with a withering glare. “This isn’t about an apology. You have your reasons, you didn’t mean it, I’m a big boy and I can take care of myself.” He waved his hand dismissively. “This is about basic pattern recognition. Whenever you get involved, no matter what the situation is, you find the most chaotic and untidy way to dance along the edge of disaster the entire way through it.”

“You didn’t have a problem talking to us,” Myrin pointed out.

“That’s because you two are useful,” Martok said, glancing between Balrim and Myrin. “You do good work, and you don’t make trouble. Not unless this clown is involved too.” He shot Courbois an apologetic look. “And I’m sorry, but all of your good faith can’t outweigh my self-preservation instinct on this one.”

“We aren’t looking to drag you into anything,” Courbois said, raising a hand in a placating gesture. “We just need some information. A quick peek at your maps and we’ll be out of your hair. You don’t even have to talk to Kal. I’ll keep him on the opposite side of the room from you the entire time.”

Martok started to object, but pressed his lips into a thin line and stepped aside with a grunt. Kaldalis suspected he knew what was going on here. The two of them had taken on the tank roles together in the raid fight they’d had to do for the town. Kaldalis knew that whenever he’d done raid mechanics with another tank, he often found himself trusting them outside of raids as well, whether or not they’d done anything to earn it.

Once you’ve done a tank swap with someone, you know that you can put your life in their hands.

It makes other matters seem so much smaller.

Kaldalis elected to keep quiet as the group filed in. Martok grumbled something about the point of his work being to share it with the world. But once they were inside he returned to the nearest desk and went back to work on a large map that looked to be of the coastline where Kaldalis had just been fishing. True to her word, Courbois gently guided Kaldalis to the other side of the room, away from Martok. There was another table there where Balrim and Myrin went to work gathering a few maps and other documents.

“There’s not a lot here, obviously,” Myrin began, pulling out a larger sheet with a rough map of the region. It was incomplete, and looked to be more of a guide than an actual map. Martok’s handwriting was scribbled over it, listing names of explorers and charting routes for future ventures. “But that might be because we don’t have the full picture yet.”

“Thank you for that, by the way,” Martok called angrily from across the room. “Because I assume that was your fault, too.”

Kaldalis wanted to shoot back a self-deprecating joke. Mostly because Martok was right. But Courbois glared at Kaldalis before he could even start, and so he kept his mouth shut.

“We really only have three options, it looks like,” Balrim continued. He brought out three smaller maps, and laid them on top of the one Myrin had. After a moment, she grabbed two of them and swapped their positions, making it clear that they were laying the three maps out over the place they correspond to on the main map. “I like this one best, but that’s because I’m big on getting more than one bird per stone, y’know?”

Balrim was pointing to a map that was mostly blank. There were a few circles where Martok had written notes covered in question marks.

“This is an unexplored area,” Balrim explained as he pointed to the blank area. He dragged his finger across to a rocky-looking spot on the map. “But this is a pretty high peak. Someone was up here and looked down over the region, looking for landmarks. They didn’t see any ruins, but there was a clearing here which is probably something. If we go out here, we might not find ruins, which is a risk. But either way, we’re going to come back with valuable exploration data.”

“Might get me some goodwill here,” Kaldalis said. “I see where you’re coming from.”

“I don’t like the risk, though,” Myrin said quickly. “I’d rather go here.” She tapped one of the other pages. This one was more complete, and there were very clearly ruins drawn on the map. In the corner of it was a detailed cutout - an actual birds-eye-view street map of the ruins, with the library at the center clearly labeled, including an intact bridge over the wide river that bisected the ruin. “These ruins are pretty well-documented, and they’ll definitely be there.”

“I don’t like it,” Courbois said, shaking her head. “People have been farming Toothtown since the first tents went up. If there was anything of value there, it’s either been pilfered or trampled by now.”

“Toothtown?” Kaldalis asked.

“There’s a giant boss battle in the middle of town here,” she said, tapping the town’s central square. “As soon as you touch the door to the empty tablet chamber, it lurches out of the river and watches the door for you to leave.” She held her curled hands in front of her face, miming enormous jaws. “The Grand Dracosuchus. A proper world boss fight with a fuckoff huge crocodile. Terrifyingly fast for its size, breathes fire, and takes a whole lotta pepper without flinching. But it drops between six and eight teeth per kill, and they’re extremely valuable. They sell for like eighteen crescents apiece to the NPCs, or you can use them for charms, potions, weapons, whatever. In charms and weapons, they give something like an 80% increased chance to roll fire affinity stats, which is the only way we were able to make such short work of the Dryads.” She made a dismissive gesture at the map. “I don’t think there’s anything to be found there, unless we’re in desperate need of fire affinity gear as a participation trophy.”

“So what’s our third option?” Kaldalis asked, grimacing at the choice he’d been presented with.

“You could always go back to Cotanaku and make trouble far away from me,” Martok grumbled from across the room.

“I know this one,” Courbois said, pointing to the other map. “And I don’t know if it’s the way to go, but it’s probably the lowest risk of failure.”

“What is it?” Kaldalis asked, peering at the map. It didn’t appear to have any ruins on it, though a big section in the middle was covered in indecipherable overlapped handwriting.

“This is the raid,” Courbois said, tapping the big scramble of scribbles. “We shouldn’t even need to go inside. There are ruins around it. A lot of them. I don’t know if there’s a library, but there should be.”

“Whatever you think the raid is, you’re wrong,” Martok said from across the room. For a moment, he seemed to argue with himself, but eventually heaved back to his feet and crossed the room, pulling out a sheaf of papers. To Kaldalis’s surprise, Martok walked to the group and handed the sheaf right to him. “The area around the raid is barren of vegetation. A lot of the Lataxinan ruins have been overgrown. Reclaimed by the jungle. But this is something more. Nothing can set deep roots here.”

“So I think the raid is going to be another underground city like the others,” Kaldalis said tentatively. “You’re telling me it’s not?”

“It’s not,” Martok said, but tapped the sheaf of papers. “It’s an underground facility. Something built for a purpose.”

Kaldalis looked at the papers. They weren’t notes. They were drawings, and not of maps. They were landscape sketches. Scenery. They showed ruins and thick undergrowth, punctuated by rocky formations and stony fields.

“I’m missing the difference between the two,” Kaldalis said as Martok went back to his desk. “Or what matters to this discussion.”

“What Courbois is talking about isn’t a small outpost near to a dungeon entrance,” Martok explained, speaking slowly as if talking to a child. “Not any of the ruins you’ve seen before. What surrounds the entrance is support facilities. I don’t know what they’re doing down there, but around it? That’s where they lived. That’s the closest we’ve seen to an aboveground city. It dwarfs the little village the Jormongumo are squatting on.”

True to Martok’s words, the pages of sketches went on and on. It was like the city they’d seen beneath the dungeon, but exposed to the aboveground elements for centuries to wear it down. Which, if Martok was to be believed, it was.

“Alright,” Kaldalis said with a nod. “I guess we know where we’re going.”