Kaldalis eyed the smaller figure. “I’m an experienced professional. I know what I’m doing out here. In particular, I can smash a pair of grizzled dragons without breaking a sweat.” He crossed his arms over his chest and returned the kid’s smirk. “What’s your excuse?”

“I had quests to do and no one to help,” they shrugged. “This seemed like my only option.”

Kaldalis grimaced. That was exactly the situation he had been in. He wondered if perhaps this was the result of Onirioago’s meddling. Even if she’d only intended to isolate Kaldalis, any other unfortunate souls who still had a quest to finish after lunch could have found themselves fucked over as well.

“Alright. Well. Did you get what you needed, then?”

“Not yet,” they said with a frown. “Why, are you offering to help?”

“Only enough to get you to safety. It’s dangerous out here alone. You were lucky.”

The kid snorted and waved a hand dismissively. “Yeah, yeah. I got lucky you came along. You’re a big damn hero.”

“No, you got lucky it was a pair of grizzled dragons,” Kaldalis corrected them. “If it was Infernal Horde you’d have been dead before I even heard you. And if I had, I’d be dead, too.”

“Not like it would be permanent.”

“Maybe not,” Kaldalis said, “but only because it was me. What if an NPC came to your help and got killed? Would you be able to sleep with that death on your hands?”

There was a moment where they had a petulant look on their face, and he thought they were going to snap something back at him. But they held their tongue and looked away.

It was a good sign for them. That his words affected them meant they were a good person at heart. The average player might not care too much about the lives of NPCs, and Kaldalis had reached the conclusion that those players were dicks. The NPCs he’d interacted with had not been universally likable, but they’d all had enough personality that they felt like people.

Even Onirioago.

“I can’t be too hard on you, though” Kaldalis said with a frown. “Like you said, I’m out here alone, too. But you need to understand that this is a dangerous game, and it’s not only your own life you’re risking.”

“Fine,” the kid said with a toss of their head. “I get it. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Kaldalis said. “Be better next time.”

“Yeah yeah.” They waved their hand dismissively again. “You’re not mad, you're just disappointed. I got it, dad.”

“Please. Dad is my father’s name. I’m Kaldalis.”

“Dalgaard,” the kid said, offering their hand. Kaldalis shook it. “Pleased to meet you.”

Kaldalis’s real-world social instincts wanted him to ask for their preferred pronouns. He hadn’t been certain on-sight due to the cloth robes doing a good job of hiding their body shape, but looking them in the eye didn’t clarify anything either. They had thick eyebrows and a square jaw, but they also had full lips and a small slightly-upturned button nose.

If Dalgaard had been of another race, he would have chalked that up to some unfamiliarity with their anatomical norms. But they were human. He should be able to tell, unless the game was somehow fucking with his perception because he was a vathon himself.

Then again, he couldn’t very well tell the gender of other vathon on sight, so maybe he was just bad at that.

He didn’t want to be rude, though. So he’d stick to they/them unless he got corrected.

“Who took you on your run through Sunken Ruins?” Kaldalis asked. “I don’t remember you.”

“Myrin,” Dalgaard said, “though I think it would be more fair to say Aurigeant, since he did a lot more to be a leader than she did.”

Kaldalis snorted. “That sounds like her. And him, for that matter.”

“So you’re out here on a quest, too?”

“Yeah,” Kaldalis said, “sort of.”

“We should team up. Work together. Right?”

“No,” Kaldalis said firmly. “I’ll help you with yours, but then you have to head back to town.”

The kid looked at him incredulously. “Seriously? Why?”

“Because my quest needs me to be out here after nightfall. It’s too dangerous.”

Dalgaard seemed unphased. “But not too dangerous to go alone?” They clicked their tongue to the roof of their mouth. “Seems like shitty logic.”

Kaldalis scowled. The kid had a point. But he wasn’t exactly going to admit it.

“I’m a PC,” Dalgaard continued. “If anything happens to me, I’ll respawn.”

“For a while,” Kaldalis said. “Until you run out of aplomb from respawning and then who knows what will happen.”

“I can watch your back for a while, though.” The kid tossed one more healing potion at their own feet, likely topping up the last of their missing HP. “Come on. This is my only shot to do something actually productive today. Let me have this.”

Kaldalis gritted his teeth. The kid was stubborn, which was a good sign for their ability to keep up with him if he was inclined to bring them along. But what gave him pause wasn’t actually the danger he would be putting them in.

It was the second quest objective. He needed to keep Onirioago’s secret.

Then again, he’d been wanting to play fast and loose with that when his escort could have been Balrim or Myrin, or even Haldir.

Kaldalis let out a sigh. “I’m being stupid about this, aren’t I?” He shook his head, not waiting for a sarcastic answer from the kid. “Alright, you can come with me, but the quest I’m on is a bit… Unorthodox. It comes straight from the expedition leader herself, but, uh… I can’t tell you what it is.”

“Why not?”

“It’s one of my quest objectives. It explicitly says ‘tell no one’ in order to complete the quest. I can’t tell you about what I’m looking for.”

“Weird,” they said, “but you just told me about the quest. Aren’t you just fucked now anyway?”

“The secret is the thing I’m looking for, not that I’m on a quest,” Kaldalis guessed. He shrugged. “As long as you don’t know the specific thing I’m looking for, I should be fine.”

“Alright. Well, so let’s go get it, then.”

“Not yet,” Kaldalis pointed at the sky. “I’ve got a few hours until nightfall, and what I need won’t spawn until then. Let’s take care of your quest first. I’m guessing you need the same as what my crafter friend had this morning. Grizzled dragon bones, right?”

“Yeah, I need a few more before I head back.” They gestured at the corpse in the clearing. “That one dropped one for me, but I need three more before I’m done.”

“Well, we’ve got a trail ahead of us,” Kaldalis said, gesturing at the blood on the ground from where the red-scaled dragon had fled into the jungle. “Let’s get to hunting.”

“Alright. If you’re sure.”

“My quest needs me to go way farther out into the jungle than this,” Kaldalis said. “If we’re just going the right direction the whole time, we’ll find more than enough grizzled dragons before we even get where I’m going.”

“That far? Really?” Dalgaard scratched their chin. “What kind of quest is this that it’s sending you so far?”

“I could tell you,” Kaldalis said, “but then I’d have to kill you.”

“Ha ha, very funny,” they muttered.

“Yes,” Kaldalis said, donning a stony expression. “A joke. Ha. Ha. Ha.” He paused, stiffly grabbing his sides, but not breaking eye contact. “Ha. Ha. Ha. So funny.”

The kid grimaced. “Don’t do that. It’s creepy.”

“Sorry,” Kaldalis said, breaking into a grin, “Seriously though. I don’t know how much I can get away with telling you. Safer not to talk about it at all, yeah?”

“Yeah, yeah,” they waved a hand in a dismissive gesture that was becoming familiar. “Don’t want to fail your super secret squirrel quest, I get it.”

“Fail the quest? Shit, I wish that’s what I was worried about.” Kaldalis grimaced and looked back at the jungle, the way he came, as if he could catch the expedition leader lurking in the shadows. “I’m pretty sure Onirioago will suplex me so hard my real actual physical neck back in Monsoon’s lab will shatter.”

“Is she really that scary?”

“YES. ABSOLUTELY.” Kaldalis shook his head. “You’ve never talked to her, have you?”

“In passing, a bit,” they said, “but to be fair, I didn’t know she was a woman, so obviously not enough.”

“I’d say that’s understandable, because vathon are vathon,” Kaldalis said, “but you’ve seen her manner of dress, right? She has to ooze as much femininity as possible to smack people around the head and shoulders with it.”

“I wasn’t going to make any assumptions…” They squinted at Kaldalis for a moment. “Sir?”

“First of all,” Kaldalis said quickly, “don’t call me sir. Just don’t. It doesn’t sound right. Second of all, yes, I am a man. Good guess. What gave me away? Was it the square jaw or the barrel chest?”

“I mean, even odds either way,” they said with a grin. “But what really gave it away is the armor. Only a dude would wear something like that and think it looked good.”

“You got a problem with my kampfplatte?” Kaldalis said, looking down at the armor. “I mean, I don’t know if I think it looks good, but I don’t think it looks bad!”

“I’m sorry.” They shook their head sadly. “I hate to be the one to break it to you, but it’s terrible. Just awful.”

Kaldalis crossed his arms over his chest and snorted. “Do you want to hunt grizzled dragons or not? Because I can just leave if I’m going to be too much of an eyesore to travel with.”

“No, no, yes,” Dalgaard said quickly. “Sorry, I was just giving you a hard time.”

Kaldalis grinned. “Likewise.” He planted the butt of his spear into the dirt and stood regally. “Alright then.” Kaldalis made a mental effort to invite the kid to his party.

There was a momentary silence as the kid accepted the invite.

“What the fuck, dude.” The kid was staring off into space with an incredulous look on their face. “You ate a bunch of attacks from those monsters. How are you not beat to shit?”

“I’m a tank. It’s kind of my job.”

“You have so much HP. What level are you?” Dalgraad shook their head. “Alright, well, then I guess this should be a lot easier than I expected.”

“Just stay close,” Kaldalis said. “If you wander off and I have to choose between rescuing you from monsters and completing the quest for the expedition leader, I’m saving my ass first.”

“Please secure your own ass before assisting others,” Dalgraad said. “Got it.”

Kaldalis turned to follow the grizzled dragon’s blood trail. Dalgraad was a poor substitute for Balrim or Myrin, but a smart ass was at least generally funny. Perhaps they would have some great conversations to keep his viewers entertained.

Or die horribly to Infernal Horde together.

That was always a possibility.