Kaldalis wondered for a bare moment if there was loot to be had, since Ara (the jormungumo, he reminded himself, he had to stop thinking of her as a person) had been kind of a boss. Before he could investigate, though, Myrin appeared abruptly.

Right up in his face.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” she shouted, but she didn’t pause to give him time to respond. “What are you doing out here so far? Running around in the dark asking for trouble?”

“Well, I-”

“Of course you didn’t think.” Myrin threw her hands up, turning away from him and pacing angrily. “You’re dungeon solo hero Kaldalis. Everything in the world has just worked out for you without having to think. Why start now?”

“That’s not-”

“And you dragged some kid into this mess, too?” Myrin continued, not letting him get a word in edgewise. “You better know for a fucking fact that they’re a PC, because if you got an NPC killed-”

“Shit,” Kaldalis cursed, breaking away from Myrin and running towards where Dalgaard had been.

Balrim was crouched down in the grass, blocking his view as he approached. He was grateful that Myrin let up on her lecture once he went to check on the kid. It was weird enough that she was the one yelling at him instead of Balrim. The last thing he wanted to deal with was the lecture continuing when he finally laid eyes on the aftermath of the jormungumo’s meal.

The talsar healer’s face was twisted into a grimace, and Kaldalis found himself matching the expression.

Dalgaard’s body was a near-unrecognizable bloodied ruin. They looked like a setpiece from a horror game that would prompt the protagonist to wonder aloud if that mess had once been human. It took him a moment before he could mentally orient on how the body had been arranged. As soon as he managed to recognize the twisted bit where Ara had wrenched apart Dalgaard’s spine, he saw that they had been flipped face down before she’d started her feast.

The skin of their back had been flayed open, and it looked like flesh had been removed by the fistful and cast aside. Deep rents marked where Ara’s claws had ripped her way into their chest cavity, and blood pooled in fleshy craters that marked where now-missing organs had been. After what the jormungumo had said, he was hopeful that they were still alive, but he realized now that it had been empty threats to intimidate him.

Broken ribs jutted out on both sides of the corpse, framing exposed lungs and heart - all still as stone.

“Jesus,” Kaldalis whispered. “That death was too fast for that monster. Not after she did this.”

“What wouldn’t have been?” Balrim asked quietly. “Ripping her open like this in turn? A liver for a liver leaves the whole world jaundiced.”

Kaldalis didn’t have anything to say to that. Not just because it was ridiculous, but also it was true. Would it make him feel better? Would he really enjoy seeing Ara suffer?

He wasn’t that kind of man. It might feel like justice, but it would haunt him afterwards.

In fact, he would come to regret it.

“They were a PC,” Kaldalis said, trying to ignore how hollow his voice sounded to his own ears. “We should wait for them to respawn.”

“Of course. We, um, maybe shouldn’t stand here looking at this, though. It feels a bit… Invasive?”

“It’s also not good for our mental health, I bet,” Kaldalis said, turning away, suddenly aware that his vision had narrowed to a tunnel as he’d stared. He shook his head to clear it. “If you two want to get back to your camp out, you can go ahead. I’ll take it from here.”

“Yeah, that sounds smart,” Myrin said, crossing her arms. “Because you’ve proven responsible and capable of taking care of them so far.”

“Myrin,” Balrim snapped. “That’s not fair. That thing was a boss monster. How would we have fared against a boss monster out here, just the two of us?”

“No. She’s right. I was careless. I shouldn’t have ranged so far away from them, I just got distracted. This whole… This whole quest is a mess. If I didn’t know better, I’d think Onirioago was using it to kill me.”

“What quest?” Balrim asked.

“That’s the thing,” Kaldalis said, rubbing his temple. “I can’t tell you. One of the stipulations for the quest is that I don’t tell anyone what I’m looking for. I had to get what I was after without them seeing it over my shoulder.”

“She gave you a quest like that and you accepted?” Myrin asked. “That sounds like you were asking for trouble.”

“It was a fishing quest!” Kaldalis yelled, gesturing wildly. “What was I supposed to do, not go fishing?”

Balrim fixed him with a glare. “This isn’t the time for jokes. Might I remind you that someone is dead?”

“I know,” Kaldalis said with a grimace. “But I can’t have known this was what was going to happen here.” He shook his head. “I tried to come out here alone, actually. Well, after I tried to get a party going. I ran into Dalgaard struggling with a quest, having attempted the same thing. They, uh…” Kaldalis grimaced, and his stomach turned. “They talked sense into me to convince me not to keep pushing on by myself. I shouldn’t have listened. If I had just taken them back to the camp, this wouldn’t have happened to them.”

“It sounds like it was their choice,” Balrim said, “not yours. They chose to be here. While I’m sure you could have put your foot down, actions have consequences. Their action was to follow you.”

“It seems a disproportionate consequence.”

“Maybe so,” Balrim said, “but Monsoon created this situation, not you.”

“That sounds like a weak deflection. I was responsible for them. I accepted responsibility. I should have to bear the consequences of this, not them.”

“Unfortunately,” Myrin said with a visible wince, “that’s not the world we live in. Leadership should come with consequences, but it’s the people under you who suffer, instead.” Despite her visible anger, she reached out and put a hand on Kaldalis’s shoulder, giving his upper arm a reassuring squeeze. “It’s good that you feel remorse. It means you’re a good man. The next time you find yourself making decisions for others, think about this moment.”

Kaldalis grimaced. Balrim was trying to make him feel better, which he appreciated, but ultimately Myrin was right. He was responsible for this. He was the reason this happened.

He didn’t need to be sorry.

He needed to be better.

Kaldalis hoped there was some way he could make it up to Dalgaard that Ara had turned them into a casualty of his failure.

“Just can’t help but think I shouldn’t have been such a smartass about it,” Kaldalis said at last. “If I had just kissed her, I’d be the one dead on the ground, and maybe they could have shaken off the venom and gotten away.”

“Or you both would be dead on the ground, with a giant monster spawncamp-” Balrim began, but stopped dead, his slit-pupiled eyes blinking for a moment. “If you had just what?”

Kaldalis sighed and rubbed at his forehead. “If you two are sticking around to help us back to camp, we’ve got some time before Dalgaard respawns… If you want, I can just tell you the whole story.”

With about twenty or thirty minutes before the respawn timer came back up, Kaldalis backed up and explained how he met Dalgaard. And then backed up again to describe Onirioago ambushing him after Garyung’s meeting. Despite having only been a few hours ago, it felt like it had been months since the bonfire on the beach. He then meandered back to the story, explaining how he’d helped Dalgaard hunting grizzled dragons.

He caught their attention with the story about the ruins they had come across, though he glossed over a lot of the details. The explanation they really needed was the encounter with Ara, and they weren’t going to get to it if the pair of them started spitballing theories about the missing tablets.

When he got to the encounter with Ara, he forced himself to keep talking even though he felt uncomfortable describing it. He almost expected to be mocked for deflecting her obvious flirtations, but Balrim and Myrin were good people. It probably didn’t hurt that they knew how the story ended.

As he dispassionately described her threats of sexual assault, Myrin took a moment to walk over to the corpse and stab it a few extra times, which honestly did make him feel a little better.

It wasn’t too long after he finished the tale that Dalgaard’s corpse shuddered slightly, the flesh evaporating to leave behind just a sundered skeleton. Nearby, a robed figure materialized. As soon as they were fully formed, Dalgaard shuddered and dropped to their knees, hugging themselves.

“Hey,” Kaldalis said quickly, stepping up and kneeling next to them. “You’re alright now. You’re okay.”

“I…” Dalgaard sniffled. “I want to go home.”

“We’ll get you back to the encampment,” Kaldalis said. “All of us together, for safety.”

“No, not that,” Dalgaard said. “I mean I want to go home home. Back to Earth.”

“I understand,” Kaldalis said.

And he did.

The first time he died and respawned, it was a surreal and traumatic experience. Dalgaard didn’t have the emergency of the Infernal Horde attack to distract them.

With a firm frown, he continued. “It was my responsibility to protect you, and I failed. Not only that, I failed spectacularly. Sorry isn’t enough. If there’s anything I can do to help you through this, I’m here for you.”

“I just…” Dalgaard swallowed, and Kaldalis could see their chest hitch as they held back a sob. “I just need to put this behind me. As far behind me as I can put it.”

“Then we should get moving,” Kaldalis said, putting an arm around their shoulders and helping them back up to their feet. “The sooner we get back to camp, the better. We’ll all be with you here, alright?”

Dalgaard nodded, and the quartet left the clearing behind, picking their way through the jungle back towards the encampment.

Before they got too far, Kadalis noticed Myrin drop back and stab Ara’s corpse again. For good measure. Or as a pithy expression of disgust.

He absolutely didn’t blame her. For either.