As Kaldalis left the town through the beachside gate, he saw that Balrim and Myrin had gone to great lengths to make this an event to properly honor the fallen. There was a big bonfire on the beach - a healthy distance from the town walls - but the gathering of adventurers was more focused around the wall than the bonfire.

Kaldalis joined the crowd to try and see why - as well as the other fruits of his panicked distraction.

Once among the gathering of adventurers, it felt very much like the previous gathering when they’d discussed the research notes on the Infernal Horde. Some people were discussing the rumors going around about Nos Meles and the new town, but once more the largest murmurings were about the Infernal Horde.

This time, instead of discussing notes, they were discussing their actions.

Or, more accurately, the lack thereof.

“I spent all day out there,” someone said, their voice carrying through the crowd to Kaldalis’ ears. After a moment, he recognized the voice as Deytambos, somewhere off to his left in the crowd. “I went all over that jungle and didn’t see even a trace of them.”

“We just beat them back really hard, though,” someone else countered. “Why would they still be lingering around?”

“They’ve always been around,” Deytambos responded, “or at least, some sign of them. But nothing? Call me a pessimist, but I really don’t think that’s a good sign.”

The voices faded into the background as Kaldalis picked his way through the crowd, but more voices replaced it, conversations merging together. Deytambos was far from the only one who had noted that the Infernal Horde was missing, and even farther from being the only one who was afraid of what it might mean.

As he reached the front of the group, near to the city wall, the voices died down and the discussion shifted. When he came within sight of the wall, he could see why. Gathered at the foot of the wall was a collection of items, and it took a moment to parse what he was looking at.

They were tokens of those who had died.

In the middle was a stack of weapons, a spear in the center, driven head-first into the ground at the base of the wall, with two bows on either side, and then a staff laid flat across the ground. There were a handful of daggers at the base of the spear, and two shields with swords laid before them. All around the pile of weapons were bundles of jungle flowers, and as he watched people approached and laid more bundles among them.

Though everyone doing so seemed unwilling to place even a single blossom where they would touch or block the view of the arrangement of weapons at the center.

Kaldalis recognized one of the shields immediately. It was plain and understated, but with a classic look to it that was hard to argue with. It had been Haldir’s, and he found himself despising that the man - all of his fears and goals and dreams - were reduced to just a generic-looking weapon. But he saw that it wasn’t the entirety of the memorial. A Talsar woman was at work on the nearest stone support on the wall, carefully chiselling words into the rock with an expert hand.

The words cut deep into the stone, and Kaldalis knew - or at least hoped - that they would be clear and visible for centuries to come, even in the face of the salty sea winds.

They are no longer here,

So that today you could be.

What followed was a list of names. Among them was Haldir’s. His was last on the list, and Kaldalis supposed that meant that the names were in chronological order of their deaths. With the words done, the woman was just cleaning up some rough lines before the work was likely done.

“Don’t look at me,” Myrin said, sidling up beside him as he stared at the memorial. “I wanted to do that part of A Walking Song they put in the movie, but Balrim said it would have been disrespectful. Keertah said it was too dark, too, and apparently laughing wasn’t the appropriate reaction to that, so I lost my contribution privileges.”

“No,” Kaldalis said, “this is good. I like this better.”

“Thank Balrim, then. I stand by my choice, but I can’t argue the clean and concise route.”

“Succinct and punchy,” Kaldalis agreed. “I think this was the right way to go.”

“I’ve got to finish up some business for this,” Myrin said, gesturing up at the engraver as she finished up, “but be sure to make your own rounds, too. This event was a good idea, but it needs to be hopeful, not gloomy. Do your part to bring people’s spirits up, okay?”

“You got it,” Kaldalis said as she walked up to speak with the engraver.

He tried not to feel too much like he was the one who needed his spirits raised.

Kaldalis started to move through the crowd again, looking for anyone who looked as miserable as he felt. It didn’t take long for him to realize that either he felt a lot worse about this than anyone else, or everyone in this whole game was way better at hiding it than he was. The only person he managed to find who seemed as upset as he felt was Courbois, but she was standing away from the crowd, staring silently into the bonfire. The look on her face told him that disturbing her would be a bad idea, even if it was to cheer her up.

He did, however, see someone near her that he wanted to talk to for unrelated reasons. Dalgaard’s gaze was locked on the ocean, staring out at it as the purple of night began to creep over the horizon towards the sunset. He made his approach carefully.

“Dalgaard,” he said once he was close enough to be heard over the murmur of the crowd. “I wondered if you were still around.”

The adventurer jumped nearly out of their skin, twin daggers in hand before Kaldalis even registered that he’d surprised them.

“Easy,” Kaldalis said, “it’s just me.”

“Kaldalis,” they said, putting their daggers away with deliberate slowness.

Kaldalis could tell immediately that they didn’t want to talk to him.

“I’d ask if you were doing okay,” Kaldalis said, “but it seems pretty obvious that you’re not. Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” Dalgaard said quickly, just short of snapping.

He waited for them to continue, but they said nothing further, turning away and looking out over the ocean again. Kaldalis stood by for a moment, trying to think of a way to continue with the conversation.

“Kal,” someone said from behind them, “how’s it going?”

Kaldalis turned around to see Reno and SeventyEight approaching at last.

“Oh,” he said, suddenly realizing he could use them to try and defuse the tension in the situation, “great timing. Let me introduce you-”

When he turned back, Dalgaard was gone.

For a moment, it was spooky, but then he saw them walking away up the beach. He wasn’t sure if that was better or worse. He was pretty sure he would have preferred it if they had been a spooky ghost instead of an asshole who was trying to ignore him.

“Nevermind,” he said when Reno and SeventyEight stepped up to join him. “I guess I’m not introducing you to anyone.”

“Who was that?” SeventyEight asked.

“Don’t worry about it, Ess,” Kaldalis said with a grimace. “Just someone who might need some help, but isn’t willing to accept it yet.”

“Dalgaard?” Reno said with a grimace. “Yeah. That was some nasty business, huh?”

“Incredibly nasty,” Kaldalis said, his tone a little sharper than he meant. “I still can’t believe Monsoon put something like that in the game.”

“Actually,” Reno cleared her throat, “about that. You’ve slept since then, right?”

“Yeah, I slept last night. A little, at least before Garyung interrupted me.”

“Good, good. Sleeping is how they push patch content. You should have a new menu option for privacy mode. Using it, you can turn off your stream briefly.”

“Great,” Kaldalis said with a bitter laugh, “that sounds like the perfect solution. Don’t patch out the sexual assault monster, just make it the player’s responsibility to spare their audience the spectacle.”

“That wasn’t the reason…” Reno said, but winced and stopped before clarifying. “That wasn’t the only reason. You’re in here so you don’t see headlines, but there was a huge scandal. There are a handful of people who met and started flirting and dating since getting plugged in. One couple in particular has been… A little bit on the fast track?”

“Jesus Christ,” Kaldalis said. “People are fucking in here? How? Why?”

“Well, the obvious reasons,” Reno said, “I’m sure you noticed that everyone is… Well…”

“Fully functional,” SeventyEight provided, “and anatomically correct?”

“Yeah, that.” Reno grimaced. “Just, uh, if you see something like that coming again, you have a way to not subject your viewers to it.”

“Still, that’s not really a solution,” Kaldalis argued. “Shit like Ara doesn’t belong in the game.”

Reno shrugged, but didn’t have anything further to say.

“So how is this event going?” SeventyEight asked, clearly uncomfortable enough to try and change the subject.

“It’s… Well.” Kaldalis gestured around. “It’s going. There’s a nice memorial, and people are gathered. I guess that’s all I could have expected given the timeframe it got put together.”

“It seems nice,” SeventyEight said, “the purpose was to honor the memory of the people who died, right? That does appear to be what’s happening.”

“I feel like we’re doing this wrong. Like this is an event, not a memorial.”

“That’s right,” a raspy voice came from beside him. Kaldalis had barely remembered that Courbois was nearby standing at the fire. “This is about the sacrifice, not the sacrifices. It’s… He deserves better than that.” She looked back at the fire, and Kaldalis could see the glimmer of firelight off of tears in her eyes. “They all did.”

Kaldalis nodded, suddenly recognizing the source of his melancholy. This memorial was just a reminder that they had died, not anything honoring the dead.

But what could he do? The sun was setting. There was only an hour or two before the people would start to disperse for the night.

There wasn’t time to reframe the event.

“You should do something,” SeventyEight said. Before Kaldalis could ask what, he realized she wasn’t talking to him. She reached out and put a hand on Courbois’s shoulder, giving her a tentative touch. “If you don’t think they’re being honored right, then maybe you should honor them yourself.”

It was like watching a computer startup. The despondent glaze over her eyes faded, and suddenly Courbois became not just lucid, but determined. She nodded at SeventyEight, touching her shoulder in turn.

Kaldalis had a weird memory of how many times Amy had helped him in work through tough times in his own life back in the real world with a few words, the exact same way as she had just helped Courbois.

“His name was Jazos,” Courbois announced as she turned away from the fire and towards the crowd. Despite themselves, all the assembled adventurers quieted and turned towards her. “I thought he was… I thought he was one of us. He was absolutely fearless. He’d just bodily fling himself into danger at every turn. I didn’t think… When I saw him lying there after the first raid, I knew he was going to come back. I knew he was one of us. But he just lay there. The others we knew were one of us respawned, and their bodies became skeletons, but he just kept laying there.

“He’s the reason I tried so hard,” she said, visibly struggling to get the words out. “His fearlessness inspired me. That’s why I volunteered for the suicide mission during that last battle. I knew he would do it, and he wasn’t here anymore.”

She started to struggle, and Kaldalis realized that she was about to break down in tears in front of everyone.

He started to step up to comfort her, but someone else was there first. A Vathon woman Kaldalis didn’t recognize. She was clearly more familiar to Courbois, and as soon as she was there the finnian woman sagged against her support.

“Her name was Haalern,” the Vathon woman said as Courbois leaned against her. “She was one of the crafters on the ship. We didn’t really have time to become close, but… She was a friend. Someone who could have been dear to me. She… She couldn’t swim.”

Kaldalis looked over the crowd at the wall. Haalern was the first name on the list.

He tried not to look back out into the ocean that had swallowed up the Persimmon.

The Vathon woman started to lead Courbois away from the fire and out of the spotlight, and someone else stepped up. Their friend was named Sion Wren, and was the fourth name on the list, right under Jazos. They’d also died in that first raid.

And then someone else stepped up, introducing another of the names carved into the wall.

And another. And another.

Before he could stop himself, Kaldalis found himself stepping up when the space vacated.

“His name was Haldir,” Kaldalis said, “He was…”

And that was when he realized he never really knew Haldir. He’d known he worked with the alchemists on the censer, but was that a hobby? A passion? Or was it just a job to him?

“He wanted… He wanted to build a legacy,” Kaldalis said, trying to recover. “He told me he was afraid of…”

Remembering Haldir’s fear of his own mortality forced him to confront their last conversation, where he’d punched the man in the face for no reason. Even just the thought of that conversation stopped the words in his throat.

“It’s okay,” Balrim said, stepping up beside him. “Take it easy.”

Kaldalis looked at him, confused. After a moment - and a reassuring smile from Balrim - he realized what was happening. His stammering, halting speech was worse than even Courbois’s tearful words.

He didn’t look like a fool, he looked like he was too emotional to speak.

“Haldir was our friend,” Balrim said, covering for Kaldalis. “He stood with us through some of the greatest challenges of any of our lives. The censers were his project, and I’m sure we all know where we’d be if it weren’t for his work. It was an honor to have known and been a part of his story.”

Balrim led Kaldalis away from the bonfire just as the Vathon woman had done for Courbois. He decided it was better to play along than admit the truth of his failure. Just the same, after their earlier argument, it was a pleasant reassurance to know that Balrim still had his back.