{-Llewel-}
They decided to heed Gouzla’s warning; they didn’t interact with anyone, didn’t draw attention to themselves. They simply wandered through the docks, looking around without seeming obvious. Sometimes they’d give a passing interest to something, if not just to make it seem like they weren’t just walking back and forth. Llewel spent enough time making sure Myr didn’t wander off not to notice when someone walked up to them.
This stranger glanced between the five of them and the surrounding area. “Are you who I think you are?”
“If you think we’re players here for a quest from Kaerio, then yeah,” Zetai responded casually. “Otherwise you might have to be a little more specific.”
“Kaerio sent you? Is it really time to gather all those reports again..?” He shook his head and gestured for them to follow them. “If you’re here for the reports, I’ll show you where I’ve been keeping them. It’s a better place to talk than out here anyway. Oh, I’m Ragnis, by the way.”
They followed him to a shed that, at first glance, looked no different than any others—usable, if not needing a few repairs. But inside was a mess of papers, diagrams, and maps, complete with near-incomprehensible scribbles. Ragnis let out a nervous chuckle before trying his best to quickly clean up.
“Sorry about the mess, I’m never expecting visitors…” he mumbled. “I didn’t want to directly ask this outside, but you’re the Beithana twins, aren’t you?”
They both nodded.
“It’s good to see you’re doing fine. I’m sure you’ve probably been finding it hard to really trust anyone in Kehnore, huh? This place is probably the worst for that kind of stuff—once you leave, you probably won’t have any trouble with the Rune Reactivation Project. Or at least, not enough that you have to actually worry about.” Ragnis glanced outside and let out a wistful sigh. “It wasn’t always like this, you know. It was only until about sixteen years ago that things started getting this bad.”
No one said anything to disrupt him. Somehow they just all knew that it was something he needed to say; it wasn’t like they felt in a rush to get all these reports back to Kaerio. Llewel, at least, didn’t mind hearing more about it.
It was the mess he was created to fix, after all.
“Back in the day, the Rune Reactivation Project would be seen as conspiracy theorists. They kept saying that Emmyth’s sacrifice will one day mean nothing, but they had no proof to back it up. Everyone simply ignored them because there was no way what they said was true. Then it turned out that they were right, and nobody was really sure of how they should react.”
He pulled out a few scattered papers and put them in a separate stack. “I can’t say I understand why they decided to put most of their forces in Kehnore. I suppose there were already a lot of them here, but not enough for the scale they have now. I don’t really know if there were still a lot more than what we saw on the surface, or if they moved a lot of them here. Either way, it became the base of their radical operations. No one spoke up against them. There weren't enough people who were brave enough to try. The few who did try, well… everyone else could see that the Rune Reactivation Project was done being looked down on.
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“There wasn’t really a ‘transition’ in what happened to Kehnore. One minute, I would describe it as a moderately peaceful region like all the rest. The next, it’s swarming with Rune Reactivation Project activists and all the insane things they did. It’s only a little better, since Kaerio stepped up, but it’s nothing like it used to be… You know, we used to hold festivals on these docks. Now there’s thieves at every corner and Rune Reactivation Project guys ready to defend their cause no matter what.”
Ragnis lingered by the window, watching people pass by it for a few moments before going back to cleaning. “Sometimes I wonder if it would’ve made a difference if we knew sooner that there was hope for us. We’d spent a lot of the time thinking that Emmyth’s sacrifice was fading and there was no one else that could make it better again. I wonder if people wouldn’t have risked so much, or perhaps more people would have risked more. Until you two showed up, we couldn’t be sure that there was hope; it was only after Kaerio gathered us all together that we were able to make an organized stand against the Rune Reactivation Project.”
With most of the mess cleaned up, he sat down to more thoroughly organize them. “I’ve seen a lot of people come and go in that relatively short time. But I don’t blame the priests in Nafrius for keeping us from learning about you. They did what was best to protect you. Kind of like what they did after the game’s release. Except, now, the only thing the Rune Reactivation Project can do is throw around empty threats. Nankohm could get rid of us all in a heartbeat, if they were really that set on ending all of this…”
“They wouldn’t,” Tinath muttered. “This place is their crowning achievement. It’s what made a group of friends reach international headlines. They wouldn’t just destroy all of it—trust me, I think they’d done that by now if they were going to.”
Llewel hesitated to say anything at first. “But who knows what’s running through their heads. They’ve suddenly changed their mind about Casrane. Who’s to say they aren’t going to make more decisions that go against what they originally planned?”
Tinath shook her head. “I’m confident about that part. Getting rid of it now would just make the past several years a waste of time.”
“I don’t know about the rest of you,” Reynneak began, “but I think we can wait to talk about all that stuff later. It’s important to figure out what we might need to do, but at the same time, there’s no use in stressing over something we don’t even know would happen. We’ve still got a little while before we’ll know for sure if that’s a possibility, right?”
“I’m telling you it’s not going to be,” Tinath mumbled.
“Well, I believe you,” Myr remarked. “You know them better than any of us do.”
There was a bit of silence that threatened to end with some unpleasant thing; a dwelling of thoughts that would lead to a proclamation of them, something no one wanted to get involved in.
But, luckily for all of them, it was Ragnis that said something first. “These should be all of the reports that Kaerio will need. And thanks for listening to me—I know it’s not the kind of stuff people usually want to hear about, but I always find it’s better to get it off my chest.”
Zetai mumbled “no problem” and took the reports. “Kaerio said that we’d end up heading to Kyirius and Nafrius. I’m guessing we’re going to Kyirius first?”
Ragnis nodded. “Do you know where the Ghost Hunter base is? The person you’re looking for should be there. If not, then you can probably ask their leader—I think. I don’t know, all I’m supposed to tell you is that she’s in Kyirius, but too many players complained of not knowing where to find her or what to do if she wasn’t there…”
“We’ll figure it out,” Zetai decided. She turned around and gestured for the others to follow her as she started to head out the door.
It was only after they were on their way to leaving did he say, “Stay safe out there and be careful! There’s a lot of bad people out there, but you’ve got your friends with you. With the five of you together, somehow I know you’ll be alright.”
“Four of us,” she corrected in a mutter, yet purposely loud enough for the other four to hear, “plus one.”
It was a wonder how they were able to fall into silence. Or, perhaps, anyone that might’ve fought understood that they weren’t going to get anywhere.