She was, without a doubt, absolutely the same creature Kaldalis had encountered at the lake. Considering the lazy resemblance between Onirioago and Demriv, he had a hope that they’d just reused Ara’s character model as well. Even when she had taunted him, there was a chance that the Jormongumos’ apparent intelligence gave her the idea to use that resemblance against him.

But once she transformed, it was obviously no longer a joke.

After eating Dalgaard’s body right in front of him, Ara’s monstrous form had changed, becoming more imposing, with numerous small changes that added up to a very demonic appearance. Her eyes were all pitch-black, including the two central eyes that had been human a moment ago. Claws at the ends of her hands were maroon purple - nearly black in this light - and the scales on her lower body were darker as well.

He knew firsthand that this form meant she was more powerful as well.

Despite all the attacks on Cotanaku, and the people who had been brutalized in those attacks, none of the other Jormongumo had been similarly empowered. That led him to believe that only one Jormongumo could take this form. That might explain their rage at him for killing their “champion” if that was the case. But he had to also entertain the idea that Ara’s empowered form meant that she was an authority, and her word carried weight if she spoke against him. Their hatred of him might have been just a translation of her own aggravation after he resisted her charms.

Of course, all of these thoughts and considerations were just Kaldalis’s brain trying to protect itself. The more it raced through all the things that led up to this moment, the less it had to think about this moment itself.

Ara was only content for a moment to bask in Kaldalis’s obvious terror. The slithering charge that followed was almost enough to make him break ranks with his friends and flee. He didn’t want to abandon them, but his fear almost overwhelmed him. The most cowardly part of his brain assured him that Garyung and Martok were here and could tank for them if he broke and ran. This building seemed to be a hotel of some sort. He could probably find somewhere to hide, or at least run through the halls nearly indefinitely.

But he couldn’t. Even if there wasn’t the very real chance that the Jormongumos’ obvious animus against him would let her ignore overworld aggro rules to chase him, he couldn’t abandon his friends. Even if it meant facing his worst fears, he couldn’t turn this operation into a Scooby-Doo musical montage.

He stood his ground.

Well. He stood his ground as much as he could in a game system that demanded constant movement.

Ara’s claw swept down to bat Kaldalis’s weapon out of her way, but he was able to turn the head of his glaive such that her claws met the sharpened edge of it. She moved the weapon out of her path to close with him, but she took one hundred and eight physical and twenty-eight earth damage to do it.

Despite her enhanced form, she still flinched at the damage.

He should have been heartened by her pained snarl, but her bared fangs made him want to flee all over again.

Claws came in at him from three different angles, forcing Kaldalis to jump backwards to avoid all three attacks at once. She surged after him instantly and one of her hands struck his shoulder, her claws digging into him for an incredible three hundred and two physical damage and forty-three darkness damage. She tried to turn the strike into a grab, but terror helped his instincts to make the right choice, and he spun away from the strike in a way that slipped her grip.

As she struck, Kaldalis’s friends and allies encircled Ara, and their weapons connecting started to do real damage to her. Despite Martok and Garyung hammering on her as well, she still surged towards Kaldalis again, eyes hungry and claws reaching.

“Do you know the truth yet?” she demanded, clawing at the air just behind Kaldalis’s retreat. “Do you know why I sought - and still seek - you over all others?”

This was the part Kaldalis hated above all else.

The other monsters were frightening in combat, but they lacked this ability that had made Ara truly frightening.

She could multitask.

Even as she sought to rip his organs out for a feast, she could speak clearly and coherently. For his part, terror drove him to keep his mouth shut. Every word from her dumped unhealthy amounts of adrenaline into his system. Even if he could put two words together, his voice would betray just how badly her presence affected him.

“What’s the matter?” she purred. A claw caught his face, raking across his cheeks for another chunk of damage. “Something has stilled your tongue? Perhaps I can try and find a way to waken it for you...”

Without even consulting him, his terrified lizard brain activated a charge of his Jump cooldown. He juked left and then launched himself past her towards the center of the room. He needed space to work, and, more than anything else, he needed to get the fuck away from her.

Again, despite two other tanks smashing her freely - and nearer at hand - she folded herself over her snakeline lower body and beelined for Kaldalis again. To give her charge speed, she lowered her upper body to the floor, and the bottom pair of clawed arms reached out and dug into the stone tiles, doing a breaststroke to close the distance all the faster.

“Yes,” she hissed, obvious jubilation in her voice even as several armed foes chased close behind her. “Run, little rabbit. The prey is so much tastier when he makes me chase him!”

It was actually slightly comforting to be threated with murder and cannibalism. The nightmarish part of their encounter wasn’t her fangs and claws, but the grosser threats that had accompanied her wandering hands.

If she was trying to kill him, she was a very different - and much more psychologically manageable - kind of monster.

All eight arms slammed into the ground for a moment, claws giving her a sudden burst of speed as she pounced on him, fangs bared. He managed not to yelp as he leaped back again, desperately wishing for her to just turn and attack someone the fuck else.

Kaldalis grunted in pain as his back slammed into the downed chandelier in the middle of the room. There was a huge rattling sound as the impact shook the giant metal lighting fixture, and the scraping of the metal against the back of his armor was terrifying to him even as his tail lashed to keep him properly balanced. He didn’t want to know what would happen if he got caught somewhere in the mess of angular decorations, even as Ara charged again.

She was outpacing his friends now. Only Myrin was keeping up with her Aggressive cooldown, and that would only last a few moments.

Kaldalis knew he couldn't keep running away from Ara. Her charges after him were dramatically reducing the damage his friends could do. If he kept this up, she would eventually catch him when he ran out of Jump cooldown, and when she did, his friends would be far behind and unable to help. And their inability to damage her meant that she would be nowhere close to falling to spare him her attention.

He thought it was enough to face his fears by participating in the fight at all. But if he didn’t stand up to his nightmare she would control the situation, and use that control to do what she wanted to him.

Kaldalis had to put on his big boy pants and do what needed to be done, even if afterwards he would have to clean whatever mess his terror made of them.

Instead of leaping as far as he could when she pounced this time, he jumped to the left just far enough that her spread claws couldn’t catch him. Ara slammed into the chandelier twice as hard as he had, sending the whole thing scraping across the floor by a foot. He stepped back into her, his glaive slashing across her back before she could regain her footing. Or… Coil-ing? He had long since been spoiled by foes whose anatomy didn’t challenge his word choices, and now he wasn’t sure what to call it.

Claws reached for him again, and Kaldalis struggled not to bolt again. Ara’s eyes were full of the undisguised hunger that had terrified him in the first place, but he had to let his friends get to work. Kaldalis needed to keep her standing still for them, and that meant staring down those eight horrifying beady monster eyes and letting her reach for him.

He just couldn’t let her get a solid grip, or else he was going to die. Not necessarily from what she would do to him, but because his heart was getting ready to explode in his chest from raw fear.

Maroon claws reached for him, and while Kaldalis did his best to minimize the incoming damage, they did occasionally catch him, slashing away huge chunks of damage - faster than Balrim could keep up. Once his friends caught up and started attacking her, he allowed himself to duck back away and lead her on a slow circuit of the downed chandelier, using it as a wall on one side to limit the range of motion of her four left arms.

Her taunting comments still cut through his psyche, but he gave up on fighting back. Focusing on keeping his physical and mental state in order was more important than tapping her for little chunks of damage. He needed to make a serious effort to push aside her teasing demands for his flesh - in either sense of the word - just to keep from turning tail and booking it in a doomed effort to escape her.

Ara’s body started to show signs of the damage that was wearing down on her.

That actually made it worse.

The little black dress going from pristine to ragged only gave her more ammunition to pelt him with, teasing him with the bared parts of her midriff and muscular back.

She promised him that her claws raking down his back in turn would come soon enough, and he almost physically seized up at the traumatic memory of her body pressed against him. Grasping claws caught both of his shoulders, using the momentary flinch to grasp at her victory. Fangs bared and she let out a cackling laugh.

But he had a weapon against her. When his memory tried to assault him with the memory of her lips on his, another memory blotted it out.

Heluna.

He’d spoken all of Ara’s assaults aloud to her, sending them away. Everything Ara had done to him had dissolved in the salty ocean. Her truest power over him had been washed away by Heluna’s hand gently squeezing his. A quiet confirmation of his permission at every touch. Her lips meeting his amid the crash of the waves that had eaten his story.

With sudden lucidity, Kaldalis’s glaive interposed itself as Ara’s face descended towards him. The point of the weapon was lined up with her mouth. Ara tried to adjust her course, but she had committed.

The weapon jabbed into her throat, driven by her own forceful attack on him.

She shrieked in pain now. Audible frustration reverberated off of the walls. The chandelier shook at the volume of her cry.

She sagged sideways, leaning against the metal chandelier.

“This isn’t over,” she hissed. Two arms still gripped Kaldalis’s shoulders, and six others were now feebly reaching for him, even as his glaive jammed into her neck , keeping the distance between them. “I’ll return again. I’ll seek you out again. I will find you again. And if you best me then, I’ll try again again. Eventually you will be in my clutches. I will have my…”

Her eyes went glassy. Instead of finishing her threat, her throat rasped out her last lungful of air.

There was a little victorious chime as the quest completed. The Jormongumo settlement was dispersed. And with it, he received a nearly impossible amount of experience points - nearly enough to take him to level fifteen all on its own.

Kaldalis finally allowed himself to scramble away from Ara, flailing his arms to break her death grip, as if trying to clear a swarm of bugs from his crawling skin.