Kaldalis’s primary concern, as they left Cotanaku, was that they hadn’t brought enough people. Obviously they outnumbered Onirioago eight to one, and had more than enough hands to keep control of her even if a half-dozen monsters attacked them at once. But he still had the sinking suspicion that it wasn’t enough.

It didn’t help that Onirioago herself was acting so relaxed and confident. It might have just been an attempt to make him uncomfortable, but the lack of struggle on her part made him more anxious than anything else possibly could have.

“Are we moving the right direction?” Kaldalis asked Martok after the first five minutes into the jungle. “Is there somewhere ahead where something could be hiding?”

“Too early to tell,” Martok said with a snort. “There’s a lot of unexplored pockets vaguely in this direction.” He waved at the area ahead of them in an arc. “Pretty impossible for me to say yet.”

“Keep an eye on where we’re heading,” Kaldalis said with a grimace. “As soon as we know she’s full of shit, we need to get her back into her cell before she causes any more trouble.”

“I know what the plan is,” Martok said, waving dismissively. “You don’t have to keep telling me.”

Despite the cartographer’s reassurance, Kaldalis’s anxiety refused to abate. It didn’t help that they were moving towards the lake where he’d caught the Deacon Tetra. If she was planning any sort of escape, that spring-fed lake was the resource she would most desire to control.

He tried not to raise any alarm among the group, though.

It would only put everyone on edge if they were all thinking of Onirioago’s precious Geas Venom. The thing she had planned to use to quell any opposition to her control of the town - and to bring Kaldalis to heel personally. A goal she had expressed great interest in continuing to pursue even while she was behind bars.

He reassured himself that it made sense that she was leading them in this direction. He’d encountered Ara by the lake. It would be more suspicious if she wasn’t leading them in that direction, right?

The group picked their way carefully through the jungle in that direction. When they reached the ruins where Kaldalis and Dalgaard had faced the Daemonraptor boss, he took command and directed them around the outside of the ruined outpost. Onirioago didn’t complain, and let him circle around rather than try and blunder through the middle.

Her calm confidence continued to unnerve him.

He knew she had eyes back in Cotanaku feeding her information. Did that mean she had assistants out here in the wilderness? Were they being followed? Did she want them to circle around these Lataxinan ruins to give her people time to get into position for an ambush?

As Kaldalis grew more and more nervous, he started to think that this all could have been part of her plan as well. Her confidence could have been a ploy to put him off his guard, playing mind games with him. Onirioago consuming all his thoughts for however many hours she could walk them in circles out here could be exactly what she wanted, even if she didn’t have any actual plan.

Maybe that was her plan, instead. She wanted him to think she had nothing and was just trying to rattle him, but she actually had a plan for escape.

Or maybe he was just outsmarting himself. Thinking way too hard for way too long about absolutely nothing of value.

All options were equally possible.

Onirioago was cunning enough to execute on an escape plan, enjoyed toying with him enough for that to be her goal if she had no such plan, and smart enough that she could anticipate his reactions and manipulate them to her own needs.

And Kaldalis himself was the exact right combination of smart and stupid to fall into a horrible mental spiral of outsmarting himself.

Kaldalis’s fear reached its peak when they emerged from the dense jungle into the clearing around the lake. He almost expected to blunder into an army of Onirioago’s allies, or a bunch of Jormongumo in monster form, ready to strike.

But instead, there was nothing. The clearing was only slightly less idyllic in the daylight than it had been by moonlight. Its calm water reflected the blue sky like a near-perfect mirror.

And Onirioago didn’t even give the placid pool a second glance.

Why wasn’t she staring at it? Or at him? Did she actually have no plan? Did she want him to think she had no plan? Did she want him to think that she wanted him to think that she had no plan?

“So what’s past here?” Kaldalis asked Martok, trying to be as nonchalant as possible.

“I haven’t been this way personally,” Martok said. He rummaged in his inventory for a moment to produce a small map. It was a sketchy piece of work, clearly a smaller composite of more detailed maps. “But people who have been in this area have seen some things.” He gestured over his shoulder to Balrim. “Those two apparently found a huge tree out this way.” He tapped a spot on the map about two miles north of the lake, where a large tree was sketched in. “The small one climbed above the jungle canopy and said that she saw some stuff out here, but without physically going to those places, their maps didn’t fill anything in, so I didn’t record the details.” He circled the whole area of the map around the tree. “She said there were stone ruins out here somewhere. But nobody who has seen them while on foot has ever told me.”

Kaldalis grimaced. He didn’t like this. If Onirioago had informants feeding her knowledge from around Cotanaku, it was possible that she had knowledge of Martok’s maps, and was using that to draw out this excursion as long as possible.

“I don’t like this,” Gavinkim rumbled from behind them. Kaldalis jumped, having not expected the man to approach. He hadn’t been more than two feet away from Onirioago on this whole trip, and now was no different. The ropes around her had a short lead, and he was firmly gripping it, keeping her well within the reach of his long arms. “This is too far from the camp. The monsters can’t be traveling this far.”

“A couple hours of commute is pretty crazy,” Kaldalis admitted, trying not to be unnerved by Onirioago staring right at him as he spoke. “But it’s not too far yet. As long as getting to Cotanaku and back in a day is possible, we can’t call this a miss. We can’t limit ourselves on what’s reasonable. These are murderous monsters, not people.”

“If someone stirred them up and gave them a taste of good eating,” Onirioago added, voice muffled by her mask, “you’d be surprised how far a beast will go for another bite.”

“Can you not?” Kaldalis snapped. “Just do me a favor and don’t agree with me, okay?”

“You’re in charge, sir,” she said, offering him a bow. It was stilted and awkward, with how she was bound, but it still got her message of mockery across. “You’re an utter fool, completely wrong about everything. Stand aside and-”

Gavinkim yanked her lead, interrupting her.

“Thanks,” Kaldalis said. He raised a hand and drew the group to a halt on the far side of the late. “I think you might be right though. We’re pretty far out. The actual limit of a reasonable search can’t be that much farther.”

“We’re nearly there,” Onirioago confirmed, “It’s just a little ways beyond this.”

“And when were you going to say something?” Kaldalis snapped.

“As soon as I thought you were going to stop,” she said, shrugging under her improvised straightjacket.

“Regardless of how far beyond this it actually was,” Balrim said.

It wasn’t a question.

Onirioago shrugged again, and Gavinkim grumbled something about executing her on the spot.

“You’re full of shit,” Kaldalis said to her. “You’re not moving another foot farther from camp than you are right this second. So just tell me and we can all have a big laugh at my expense, and then march back to camp.”

Onirioago looked at him with a small grin, partially hidden by her mask. The sparkle in her eyes was enough. “If you’ve already made up your mind, why are you asking?”

“You got out of the cell,” Kaldalis said, struggling to remain calm. “You’re out of Cotanaku. In fact you’re hours out of town, with more hours to get all the way back. If you’re serious about having us in your debt, this is where you need to tell us what you know.”

“We are actually close,” she said, lowering her voice, forcing Kaldalis to lean closer to her. “It’s only a few more minutes through the jungle to the northeast.”

“Then why are you being a little shit about this?” he whispered back at her.

“I’m going right back into a cell after this, right?” she hissed at him. “Why wouldn’t I make this take as long as possible?”

“Time to fuck around or find out, then,” Kaldalis demanded, raising his voice. “You tell us where we’re going, we go deal with it, and you wait here and relax in this quiet little clearing until it’s time to go back to your box. Or you keep jerking me around and we start walking back right the fuck now and this is over.”

Onirioago’s eyes danced with joy in a way that made Kaldalis want to pull the plug right then and there. But she gestured with her chin over his shoulder, to the northeast.

“The ruins are that way. Just a few minutes through the jungle.”

“What will we find there?” Kaldalis asked.

“What was it you just said?” she said, her huge grin audible through her mask. “Fuck around or find out?”