Chasing down the injured grizzled dragon was harder than Kaldalis expected. Most of the times when he’d sent something running, he either didn’t chase it - only needing to run it off - or he chased it immediately, catching up to it and re-aggroing it before it got too far.

The last time a creature had really escaped him had been the first day on the island.

Luckily, the wounds he’d opened on the creature were large enough that the blood trail gave him a pretty decent start on tracking the scaled beast.

“So,” Kaldalis said as they picked their way through the undergrowth, “a healer with twin daggers, huh? An unusual choice.”

“I was using a staff at first,” Dalgaard said. “The one I spawned with had Poison affinity, and stacking debuff procs seemed like it would scale super good with attack speed.”

“I understand. I had a Gust polearm for a while there, and I thought it would be straight-up busted with dagger attack speed.”

“It is.” Dalgaard grinned crookedly. They picked their way through some underbrush, moving like they were born for the journey. “I got Gust daggers on day one of the crafting stations being up, and I haven’t looked back yet.” They patted the weapons on their hips. “They do good work, as long as I can get that first proc to go off.”

“Not much you can do when you’re outnumbered, though.”

Dalgaard’s grin faded. “I swear there was only one of them when I picked the fight,” they whined. “The red one waited until the second I attacked to charge out of the brush into the fight.”

“Then maybe I’ll let you handle it on your own when we catch up to it,” Kaldalis suggested. He reached out and held back a particularly long, thin branch, so that he and Dalgaard could move under it. “You can show me what you’re working with.”

“Maybe you should,” Dalgaard said, puffing out their chest. “I could probably teach you a thing or two, old man.”

With a snort of laughter, Kaldalis let go of a branch he was holding back. It rocketed backwards and the very end whip-snapped and slapped Dalgaard across the face. To their credit, they kept their feet, but that only meant Kaldalis didn’t feel bad as they sputtered and flailed at the unexpected prank.

“What the fuck?” they exclaimed as they extricated themselves from the foliage. They turned their head and spat out half of a leaf.

“Pride goeth before a fall, kid,” Kaldalis said with a smirk. “Or half a tree to the face.”

“I don’t think I deserved that.”

“Maybe not,” Kaldalis said, “but you don’t always get what you deserve, and you don’t always deserve what you get.”

“Yeah, yeah,” they waved dismissively. “Wise words from the town hero. I get it. But being a hero doesn’t mean you aren’t a bully.”

Kaldalis didn’t have anything to say to that, so he went back to tracking the visible passage of the grizzled dragon. The trail had become less bloody, but while tracking the trail of thick red smears across the jungle floor, he’d grown accustomed to the other signs of a grizzled dragon’s passing. His eyes easily traced the pattern of clawed footprints through the softer parts of the undergrowth.

They were getting close. He was starting to see signs that the footprints were fresher, with bits of foliage still bouncing back from the footfalls that had bent them.

“So how much longer?” Delgaard asked.

“Not too much. We’re catching up,” Kaldalis reassured them, keeping his eyes on the trail.

“Not that,” they said with an irritated sigh. “How much longer until you break down and ask?”

“Ask what?”

Dalgaard sighed. “Oh, are we going for this game? You don’t care what gender I am? What choices I made in character creation?”

“No? Should I?” Kaldalis said, trying not to worry at the sudden turn in the conversation. “I just assumed you were nonbinary.”

There was a moment of silence as Dalgaard seemed to struggle to process what he said. “Huh. People never guess that right. Well, I mean, they do, but when they do they accuse me of being an attack helicopter.”

Kaldalis shook his head. “I’d never make that joke. It’s stupid. I had a nonbinary friend in high school. They made enough people regret that kind of shitty dismissive bullshit that I know better.”

It was only half true. They had been more of an acquaintance than a friend. While Dylan had been a videogame nerd, J (“Not Jay, not J short for anything. Just the letter J.”) had been an anime nerd. There was a lot of overlap in people among the two groups, but that didn’t mean they were friends all the way across.

The only conversation he could remember clearly was when J had explained - in detail - that neither Rei nor Asuka were best girl, but that Misato was the thinking fan’s choice of anime waifu goals.

But J had always been extremely vocal about their identity, and despite not being allowed on any school sports teams due to the gendered divisions, they had linebacker shoulders and were able, willing, and even eager to defenestrate anyone who gave them an excuse.

“So, you don’t need me to explain my identity?” Delgaard asked. “Justify my existence? Educate you about gender theory?”

“Nah,” Kaldalis said, mimicking their dismissive wave gesture. “Not necessary. And if anyone on my stream needs a refresher on how you should treat other people with basic decency, how about you jump over to Delgaard’s channel or page or whatever and ask them with a donation.”

Instead of grinning, Dalgaard grimaced. “Ugh,” they said. “Don’t remind me that I’ve got an audience. I got almost a hundred crescents from subs this morning and I thought I was going to die of embarrassment.”

Kaldalis declined to disclose his payout again, and changed the subject. “Alright, well, we’re getting close,” he said, lowering his voice. “Not much farther now.”

Dalgaard fell quiet and stepped up behind Kaldalis, staying close.

The dense jungle foliage didn’t give way to a clearing, but there was an area where the trees grew thinner. There was room to move around between them, and Kaldalis set eyes on the battered grizzled dragon once more.

A narrow stream cut through the area, and Kaldalis suspected this place was a curated set piece that the Monsoon map design team had set up to act as a battle area so that every fight didn’t take place in the same clearings every time. Otherwise it didn’t make sense that nearer to water there would be less vegetation.

In the absence of natural explanation, only the unnatural explanation made sense.

“Alright,” Kaldalis whispered as the grizzled dragon dipped its scaled muzzle into the water, “get in there. Teach me a thing or two.”

“You were serious about that?”

“C’mon,” Kaldalis said with a grin. “Show me your moves!” He grabbed them by the shoulder and pushed them forward. “Don’t worry, I’ll be right here to jump in again if you need the help.” When the kid didn’t move, Kaldalis rolled his eyes. “Look, would you rather contribute, or just feel like the nub following around their friend with 500 paragon levels picking up the trash I don’t bother with identifying?”

“Alright, fine,” they grumbled. “I’ll show you a nub, alright.”

They burst out of the foliage and charged the monster. It looked up with a snarl at the sudden appearance of danger, and Kaldalis got his spear ready. He rested a mental finger on his Jump cooldown, ready to hurl himself into the fray if things went sour.

The kid knew what they were doing. Kaldalis had to give them that.

They danced around in a circle, both blades flashing rapidly in strike after strike against the red-scaled monster. Their movements were very predictable - they just kept circling around to the left, running a little ring around the big lizard. It wouldn’t work against a smarter beast - or perhaps even the grizzled dragon itself, if it weren’t so beat-up already.

But on this damaged, tired creature? The strategy worked just fine.

It took them a while to get their first proc of Gust. Kaldalis couldn’t tell if their affinity was very low, or the grizzled dragon’s affinity was higher than he expected. Just the same, though, eventually a blast went off. Kaldalis wasn’t getting updates on their damage numbers, but the kick of energy off of the proc was the same as when he was wielding a Gust-inflicting polearm. The beast was hurled into the stream, sending a spray of water over the nearby trees.

Dalgaard pounced, jumping into the stream on top of the grizzled dragon. Kaldalis lost sight of the fight as both flailing figures sent up sprays of water, obscuring what was going on. He figured it was going well when the second proc of Gust came through before the creature could recover from the first one.

There was another booming report as a third proc came in shortly after that, and then the water went still.

“How about that for showing you my moves,” Dalgaard yelled as they stood up out of the stream, gesturing wildly around the clearing with two bloodied daggers. When they couldn’t pick Kaldalis out of the foliage, they turned and kicked the grizzled dragon’s body, sending up a little plume of water. “Falcon kick, bitch!”

Kaldalis stood up and started to pick his way around the narrow trees towards their little victory dance, hoping that the adrenaline of combat hadn’t gotten to them too much to recognize him when he got within striking distance.

Unfortunately, a huge crashing sound from the undergrowth to the west caused Kaldalis to experience a spike of adrenaline. Given his concentration on the fight unfolding, he hadn’t noticed a critical detail that should have been too important to overlook. The wilderness had gone quiet but for the sound of the two adventurers and their quarry.

Kaldalis could remember only one time when even the birds went quiet in the dense jungle.

As if on cue with his recognition, a feathered monster the size of a school bus burst out of the wall of vegetation. Purple slime dripped from enormous teeth as it beelined straight for Dalgaard. It was a beast so fearsome that nobody had blamed Kaldalis even once for mistakenly thinking it was the Infernal Horde.

An irritator was upon them.