A figure seemed to materialize in front of him. Likely he’d been too focused on the syncoresi. Didn’t stop him from jumping though. His fear didn’t fade when he recognized the sky blue vathon woman as Onirioago in mid-shout.

He didn’t even process what she was saying until halfway through it.

“...the absolute flying hell have you been, you fucking numbskulls?” she finished.

Fortunately, he was able to pick up from those subtle context cues what she wanted.

“We just got back from the dungeon,” Kaldalis said quickly. “We rushed to your side without hesitation as soon as we saw the danger. Please put us to use however you see fit. We’re here to help.”

“Nice save, kiss-ass,” Myrin mumbled, too low for Onirioago to hear her.

He managed to fight down the urge to elbow her for that one. Not only because it would be difficult to do so without smashing his elbow into her face. But because they were here to save the town. They couldn’t do that if they were fighting with the expedition leader’s ego.

“What the fuck do you think you should be doing?” Onirioago screamed, her face purple with whatever combination of stress, fear, and anger she was experiencing. “Get the fuck in there and kill that son of a bitch!”

Kaldalis didn’t respond. Instead, he broke into an immediate sprint to the aid of the group fighting the giant syncoresi boss.

He saw a few familiar faces in the fight. Aurigeant was among the DPS at the rear of the four-fingered monster, along with the captain of the Persimmon. Heluna was there as well, and Kaldalis was happy to see her alive and well; he hadn’t seen her in a while and he had started to worry that she might have met an unfortunate fate during the earlier attack on the encampment.

Front and center of the fight was the familiar bhogad figure of Garyung, holding the boss’s attention and keeping his shield between himself and danger.

Despite his careful movement and generous usage of the shield, he was looking seriously battered, and Kaldalis feared that he might go down in the fight rather than back off if no one else took up the mantle.

Luckily, Kaldalis was on the way.

“I’ve got you!” Kaldalis yelled as he darted in next to Garyung. He jabbed his spear into the four-fingered syncoresi’s hip. He only did nine damage, and no Gust stack, but that was comparable to what he’d been doing before with the censer in effect. Doing similar numbers with no censer was probably a good sign for his growth.

“About time,” Garyung said, dropping back behind Kaldalis as the syncoresi’s claw slashed diagonally down at the vathon instead. “What have you been up to? Keeping busy?”

“Picking up new gear and new tricks,” Kaldalis said, grunting as he ducked to the left to slip under the attack. “If we’d known you were inviting friends over, we would have stuck around to help kick off the party.”

“I hope you don’t mind if I get out of range of the next howl,” the bhogad said, his exhaustion clear. “I’m about spent if it does it again.”

“Get out and get healed up,” Kaldalis said. “I’m sure they’ll need you at the front gate in a minute. Me and old four-fingers here have some unfinished business.”

The bhogad gave a bark of laughter and and backed away, moving carefully in case the enemy whirled on him. Once he was clear, he broke into a limping jog over to where the healers were tending to those who were already rotated out.

A few of the other fighters backed off as well as Balrim, Myrin, and Haldir joined that group. The talsar called out something about reinforcements or refreshments or something. But whatever was going on over there was worlds away. Kaldalis had a much more immediate concern.

The boss recognized him.

Its beady little eyes narrowed at him, and its lips peeled back from yellowed teeth. It even hesitated before lashing out at him again, the pause borne of undisguised hatred in its toothy snarl.

The next attack was more vicious. It reached out with both claws as if to rip him limb from limb.

He danced to the left of those reaching claws and whirled his glaive around and down into its forearm, getting another nine damage and a stack of Gust. He held his ground, keeping the beast easily in range of the DPS on the far side of it, letting them do their work.

The syncoresi’s next attack was a pair of hugely-telegraphed overhead swings, claws raking down from above at his head and shoulders. He dodged to the left of one and then hurled himself to the right to avoid the second. He wanted to lash out again, but before he could react it swept its right claw across horizontally. Kaldalis threw himself to the dirt face-first to let the attack pass through the air above him.

He scrambled back up to his feet, but not quite fast enough. Its next attack was an uppercut swipe. Claws ripped up the front of him right as he got his knees under him. The attack lifted him off of the ground and nearly sent him flying onto his back. Only the counterweight of his tail let him land upright. The blow also dealt one-hundred and sixty-five damage to him. It was an impressive number, but manageable, as long as he could focus his attention on avoiding what further damage was incoming.

There was one thing he couldn’t avoid, though. The creature inhaled deeply, preparing to unleash its devastating howl attack.

Kaldalis didn’t think. He just acted on instinct.

“Flicker! Now!”

He didn’t even consider what he was doing until he was in the bleak emptiness of the void. He wasn’t surprised when he saw Myrin there, but he was a bit surprised when Haldir and Balrim weren’t. The two floating figures alone in the void looked around, but couldn’t say anything in the empty vacuum of the Paths Between Paths. Eventually Myrin shrugged right before they popped back into the real world.

When Kaldalis found solid ground under his feet - and raking claws reaching for his throat - he also found a stream of screams and curses flying through the air around him.

“Holy shit! How did you-”

“What the fuck was that?”

“Where the fuck did you-”

“Witchcraft!”

“Heresy!”

Kaldalis wanted to yell some sort of explanation, but monster’s claws were coming in at him too fast for him to formulate any response more coherent than: “Shut the fuck up and fight!”

Now that he was back in the real world, he remembered that they’d wanted to keep this new ability under wraps, but the Kaia was out of the bag now. Considering how much rougher the group as a whole looked now - with Haldir and Balrim’s health bars in the upper right of his vision almost half-depleted - he felt like he made the right choice.

But that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to have to suffer the coming consequences.

Claws came in at him, and he tried his best to avoid all he could. Attacks swept and raked at him, seeing to tear at his throat, rend his torso open or rip his limbs off, and he stayed just far enough ahead of the non-stop flurry of attacks that he took minimal enough damage for Balrim to keep up. With Balrim being the only one providing healing, he realized why Garyung had looked so close to death’s door. All the healers were on the sidelines patching everyone else up, not participating in the battle itself.

After he felt the Flicker cooldown come back up, he prepared for another howl, but the battle had apparently been going on for a long while before they arrived. Before it could howl again the hatred in its eyes turned to fear. It turned and ran back towards the front gate, bowling over the adventurers that gathered there. For a moment, Kaldalis feared that it was going to smash through the half-repaired gate, but it instead made an impossibly high leap, clearing the whole gate and vanishing on the other side of it.

A cheer went up, first from the adventurers immediately around Kaldalis who had been engaged in the fight, then from the others who were recovering on the sidelines. Shortly after, a third cheer came out from those on the walls. Distantly, he heard someone shout that the Horde was retreating.

Kaldalis planted the butt of his glaive in the ground and took a deep breath.

They’d done it.

They were safe for another day.

“A-hem.”

Kaldalis looked up to see Onirioago stomping towards him. Despite the victorious grins on every other face he could see, her face was twisted into a scowl.

He had to correct himself. The encampment was safe for another day.

For himself, personally, it remained to be seen.