“What do you mean, only for a while?”

“I mean that you should tell people where I’m going in an hour or so, and slip in those names if you can. The other bits get out when The Alliance starts telling people actual names.”

Jene gave them a skeptical look. “The Alliance don’t exactly seem like the type to just give that up.”

Difficult to explain without going into possibly problematic details, but she probably needed to know. The issue was that they didn’t know if they should actually trust Jene all that much, especially given that they were quitting Third. They should at least try to trust a little bit, though, because making this easier for Novsha needed that.

Jene had never been anything but friendly, but they hadn’t had all that much of a relationship, either, and they’d brought a big ask to the table for someone who was leaving.

“Falling Dawn members are involved here,” Cadire said, and let that sink in for a moment. Jene had been the guild leader of Third all the way back when Falling Dawn had been falling apart, so she’d know that meant this whole thing was going to be so much messier than it seemed. “And that’s multiple. Me, obviously, plus at least the old guild leader and one other. You wouldn’t recognize the name, but that was their whole schtick. I suspect that she’s going to grab at least two more before this whole thing is over, or that they’ll involve themselves once they hear about what’s going on. The Alliance might not give up info like that for no reason, but when they figure out who they’re dealing with, that’s out the window– Hyrd obviously does the whole reciprocation bit, but he completely ignores when his guild starts it in the first place, he just wants to hit last.”

Jene raised an eyebrow. “I hadn’t heard about The Alliance starting things except for their whole passive slash retributive takeover nonsense. Either with us or anyone else”

They laughed at that. “They usually don’t, but when it comes to Falling Dawn, and Novsha specifically, that’s always been more of a technicality than reality. With the guild out of the picture? I’d sooner believe that he started it than her.”

“A lot of faith in your old guild master. And you’re leaving mine.”

Cadire smiled awkwardly. “Yeah. I don’t really want to deal with split loyalties when you didn’t sign up for it and I’m pretty sure your guild comes second or third.”

Jene nodded, smirking slightly as she sat back in the small wooden chair, and obviously thinking about their ask.

They didn’t dare interrupt that, not when it had the potential to go so very poorly, but they were still getting fidgety by the time Jene spoke, nearly two minutes later. “I appreciate that. You’re allowed to stay in or rejoin after you get back if you want, but I bet you’re going to be part of the new guild, whatever name that happens to be.”

She paused for a second, then leaned forwards, over the table they were speaking at. “With what you’ve told me? I’d rather ally with that guild when it comes up. I can’t offer the guild’s help to your ‘mystery character’ without risking a lot, but I can promise that we’ll at least stay out of it. We… Well, I thought Third wasn’t nearly big enough to make the difference for Falling Dawn back then, but with what happened at the Mount Calf portal? I think we could have managed it, and I regret not stepping up.”

Cadire blinked twice, and had to shake their head to clear it. “Why? It’s not like it hurt you to get rid out the last real holdout.”

“Objectively, no. But emotionally, interest-wise? It’s been annoying, just dealing with the same boring people every time and every where. And I liked Novsha, cocksure idiot and everything.” She rolled her eyes. “Though idiot was just what she wanted me to think, huh?”

Two days ago, Cadire would have said yes without hesitation. It had seemed such a brilliant ploy, passing off strategy to other members so much of the time, and only coming through with the winning plan when absolutely necessary or as a threading of the most difficult and complicated needles. Now, though…

“I’m not sure. It’s possible, but it’s also possible that… uh… she was actually just bored of the simple stuff.”

Jene smiled, shaking her head and sitting back again. “Very possible. Do try to convince her to make a few items for me, if you can, and I’m going to want you to pass off your specialist formations to Horen and Eddes.”

“Already done, along with cutting the friends list down. Convincing, you’ll probably need to do yourself. You’ll see her first, anyways. Plus, she never said anything about a guild, so you might be able to recruit her”

“I might see her first, but we’re going to be officially hands-off until the whole thing’s settled. And showing up with her builds in the middle of that might look bad. As for recruiting her… she’d never take it, so no.”

“Officially?”

Jene’s smile turned strange. “I can, of course, act a little bit on my own without the guild being particularly involved. And the guild can easily ‘coincidentally’ have a few members hanging around when a black op goes violent too close to a city or a ‘teambuilding exercise’ somewhere inconvenient. You should be off, though. Good luck, and… give Vegas some extra hell for me.”

“That’s a plan. Thanks, Jene.”

It was a good thing that they had experience building items for players of so many different levels, because it meant they had a bunch of prototypes hanging around in their inventory of different levels.

Cadire had started the travel just a couple dozen levels above the standard runecrafters’ level of seventy, and even just a few hours into the travel were already gaining levels quickly. It helped that being further from cities tended to increase the average levels in the area, but they still had to stop in the towns along the way in order to speak to some of the players in the area.

No partying, unfortunately, which obviously slowed them down, but the items usually made up for that issue. Still, even acknowledging the fact that they needed to be memorable and seed both the idea of them having the rune and who apparently gave it to them with at least three players in each area, it was probably the single longest stretch of time that they’d ever spent without crafting any new items.

Probably not what they wanted to do long-term, but as a break, it was nice.

Finally, eleven hours after setting out, Cadire finally saw Vegas.

It was a consideration, for just a few moments, whether they should continue to push forward, well past the point of reasonability, and try stepping in to talk to some of the guild leaders there.

Instead, they bound their spawn point and looked around for a few seconds, noting the people who were conspicuously “not” looking before logging out. The guilds would be putting together their responses tomorrow, and Cadire had the full intention to giving them something to work with.