Even before he arrived, Kaldalis could see that he had been gone too long. Balrim and Myrin were waiting on the beach for his return, and as soon as the camp came within range of his minimap, he could see a couple of markers that indicated new quests were ready.

Kaldalis had spent his entire boat ride looking for something to distract him from the problem that Onirioago’s imprisonment represented, and it appeared as if the situation in Panbu was more than ready to provide.

“What are we looking at?” Kaldalis asked Balrim and Myrin, hopping off the boat before it even came to a full stop on the sand. He didn’t stop to wait, instead gesturing for them to follow as he started walking towards the town.

“We’ve got them,” Balrim said, falling in beside Kaldalis. “The Xorn have a den like the Syncoresi did. Except its halfway up the side of a cliff. With their four arms, they scale the sheer surface to get to the cave entrance. I think if we want in, we have to circle around the cliff and rappel down from above.”

“It’s way out there, too,” Myrin said, falling in on Kaldalis’s other side as the trio headed back towards town. She had to almost run to keep up with her longer-legged friends. “That’s probably why nobody saw even a sign of one until we forcefully triggered the raid. Almost a ninety-minute walk, straight out from those ruins the landslide uncovered, so two hours from camp. If we want to hit them there, we’ll need to have people in position ahead of time.”

“I don’t know if we can afford that,” Kaldalis said. With information being provided to him as he entered the town, he felt a bit like the protagonist in a political drama on the way to issue a statement to the press. “Until we know what we’re up against, I’d much rather we have all hands here in town rather than sent our best to be two hours away.”

Balrim wound a finger through the air. “On that note, we don’t really know what we’re up against. Like the Syncoresi, it was just the Xorn there. No sign of whatever backup they’re going to get.”

They reached the town gate and Kaldalis made his way towards the nearest of the quest markers on his minimap. “How are the quests going?”

“Just three more for now,” Myrin said, picking up on where he was going. “It looks like the focus is on defense. The guard tower and wall reinforcements needed more wood, and the wallf hides from the first quest in the morning wasn’t enough.”

“And nothing yet after that?” Kaldalis asked, angling himself towards the Talsar questgiver who had earlier given him the quest for gathering lumber. “What’s everyone doing in the meantime?”

“Reno and Ess have their noses to the grindstone,” Balrim said, gesturing towards the crafting area. “And a lot of people are doing the same. Lots of gathering means a lot of materials.”

“I gotta catch up on crafting,” Kaldalis grumbled. With a moment of focus, he noted that all his other skills were caught up to his current level besides Charmcrafting - and the other crafting skills he hadn’t touched. “It’s on my to-do list. But there’s too much else going on.”

“Not once you finish these quests,” Balrim said with a grimace. “Once these are out of the way, you’ll be in the same waiting pattern as the rest of us.”

“No I won’t,” Kaldalis said, waving him off. “If I finish these and there aren’t more waiting, then I have to hunt down the council. If they’re gonna fuck around, then they’re gonna find out.”

Despite his insistence that he didn’t need the help, Balrim and Myrin accompanied Kaldalis on his run with the quests. Balrim argued that he needed more crafting materials anyway to keep ahead of things, since he was planning on chasing all five crafting trees at once, and Myrin warned that if he was alone fighting the wallves, he was going to have a bad time. Kaldalis felt confident in his abilities, but he had to admit that it was easier than it would have been alone when Myrin was obliterating everything that stepped within reach of her blade.

As expected, though, when the three of them returned to Panbu and turned the quests in, the situation was unchanged. Balrim went off to go do his crafting, and Myrin was joined to him at the hip, which meant that Kaldalis was left alone to track down the council himself.

Unfortunately, the only person he could easily track down was Captain Kensah. He knew just talking to her meant risking his hard-earned approval bar, let alone coming to her with demands, but since the meeting room was just a room with no offices, he didn’t know where he could find a more amenable diplomat.

“Captain,” Kaldalis said, clambering up onto the narrow walkway that ran along Panbu’s defensive wall. “If I could bother you for a moment of your time?”

The cranky Suyon shot a glare at him, and he expected his approval bar to plummet. It didn’t though, and she made a gesture for him to approach. He wasn’t sure if she was just in a good mood, or if he was still riding the wave of support for his take-charge attitude at that last meeting.

“What can you do for me?” Kensah said, returning her gaze to the treeline. Her tone made it clear that the choice of words was not a mistake.

“Only what you let me,” Kaldalis said. Considering her attitude, he allowed his tone to be equal parts harsh and polite. “That’s what I’m here about. I thought I was clear at the last meeting. We’re here to get stuff done.”

“Yes?” Kensah said, visibly bristling at his unspoken accusation. “And?”

Kaldalis gestured behind himself at the town, where there were no new quest markers. “The quests must flow.” He shook his head before she could argue. “I’m not here to tell you what I can do for you, nor what you can do for me. I’m here to tell you what you can do for yourself.” He stomped on the wall they stood on, and shifted his hand to gesture at the nearest of the half-finished watchtowers. “If you think this is the best we can do, I’m offended. Challenge us. Make us really work. If you really want this camp done in three days, we need you to be taking this as seriously as we are.”

She was silent for a long moment. He expected anger.

To Kaldalis’s utter shock, his approval bar ticked up a little bit.

“Why me?” she asked at last. “Why come to me, and not Cerh or Jetmorpan?”

Kaldalis almost spoke with total honesty, telling her that she was the only one he could find, but he stopped himself before blurting it out. He needed a better story than that, though.

“Because I knew you would understand my goals,” he said. He waved his arm, encompassing both half-built archery towers and the wall beneath them. “Panbu’s defenses are the concern at the forefront of your mind. If anyone on the council cares about what we’re working for, it’s you.”

Kensah nodded quietly for a moment. “Shift change is in forty minutes. Once I’m relieved here, I’ll make sure the council does as you say.”

“Why wait?” Kaldalis asked, gesturing behind himself towards the makeshift ladder that he’d just scaled to get up here. “I could relieve you now.”

Her upper lip peeled back in a reactive snarl as she glared at him, but within a second her glare turned from contemptuous to pensive. He wasn’t sure if it had just been a snap reaction that she was rethinking, or if he’d impressed her by not flinching.

“Your relief is Remel,” she said at last, turning and giving him a salute by striking the side of her fist to her chest. “He’s always five minutes early. Make him wait until the top of the hour before you leave, or he’ll never learn.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Kaldalis said, mirroring her salute. “Thank you.”

Kaldalis thought he was going to get a touch more approval out of her for that, but he’d certainly settle for her heading down off the wall to convey his needs to the rest of the council.

Guard duty went roughly as Kaldalis expected it to. It made him glad to be an adventurer, for one thing. It was boring as hell to just stand on top of the wall and watch for nothing to happen. It was also somewhat annoying twenty minutes in when quests started to pop up on the minimap behind him. He had to stand and wait while adventurers streamed out the gate into the jungle, getting a head-start on him.

Captain Kensah would have his head if he ran off. Even when Remel arrived - ten minutes early, in fact - Kaldalis stood his ground and waited until the hour rolled over.

He didn’t see her anywhere. She wasn’t waiting at the bottom of the ladder, nor was she waiting by one of the questgivers.

But just the same, his approval bar ticked up a little bit.

It might have been Kensah carrying word to the council of his eagerness and devotion to the cause, or the confidence and aptitude he was displaying. But he was relatively confident that it was that he’d followed through on her orders.

He wasn’t sure which it meant: that her opinion of him was so low that following simple directions one time was worth improving it, or that her opinion of adventures as a group was so low that one of them acting like a guard for forty minutes merited a change in worldview.

Either way, he’d take what he could get. A little more buffer for the next time things went wrong, and a handful more quests to show the council he meant business.