Swamped

The fact is, you don't know what they're doing down there. And you don't have the means to work it out from up here.

But... you do have a weapon now. So maybe it's not so foolish to see what they're up to. You've got something to fall back on if it goes sour.

"All right. I don't think I can handle the lack of information here any longer. We're going to have a talk with our wizard."

"Are you nuts?" Corvus says.

"We've got Gregor's silver mixture now. If they're not inclined to talk, we use that and get out. We've got no idea if this is about flooding or if they just want a water source. We are in the desert, after all."

"If they can control gateways, they could just go where the water is," Corvus shoots back.

"Maybe that's a lot of work. And we don't know what the spell will do if we disrupt it too suddenly."

"The wizard's going to notice," Dominique says. "Any decently-trained wizard will cancel a spell if they see something going wrong with the ether. And all our theories involve pretty advanced spells, not the sort of thing a novice would even have a clue how to attempt."

"But maybe there's something we overlooked. I don't want to risk too much on that chance. Even if Gregor's mixture ends up not working, it should serve as a distraction while we get away."

"Except we don't really have a quick way back up," Rudolph interjects. "A distraction's all well and good, but it won't do much good if you don't have a way to retreat."

"If we were going down there, sure," you agree. "So I was thinking we'd persuade the wizard to come to us instead."

Everyone looks at you skeptically. Well, they haven't heard the plan yet.