The worst part of everything was that Kaldalis knew now that killing Ara wasn’t going to be the end. She’d returned for this fight, and would again even though she was dead at his feet now.

And, worse than that, she needed him for something.

If she just hated him and wanted revenge, it was possible that she would just leave him alone at some point due to his apparent resilience. But he suspected that there was something more, and that she wouldn’t be satisfied until she achieved her goal.

This wouldn’t be their final encounter.

He jumped when a hand touched his back, though he relaxed once he realized it was just Myrin.

“Are you alright?” she asked.

Kaldalis looked around and felt a little anxious when he realized she wasn’t the only one concerned about him. He must have looked as haunted as he felt. Reno and Ess were near at hand, visibly worried about him. Balrim was pointedly avoiding looking at him, but when Myrin got Kaldalis’s attention, the Talsar took the opportunity to interpose himself physically between him and the fallen Jormongumo, blocking his view of the glazed-over leer of her death mask.

Garyung, Martok, and Gavinkim looked confused, and Kaldalis realized that they were the only ones here who hadn’t known about his prior encounter with Ara. Myrin and Balrim had been there to rescue him, while Reno and Ess had been out in the real world, either watching the stream, or hearing about it afterwards.

The other three had only context clues to tell them why everyone seemed so concerned.

Weirdest of all was Onirioago. Gavinkim had held her out of the fight, but had kept her close enough to the group that she had seen the whole thing. He couldn’t see her mouth, but her eyes told an interesting story.

She was going through a whole internal adventure.

At first she shared in the others’ confusion, but he had mentioned his first encounter with Ara to her, and realization dawned. The story hadn’t been a fabrication of his deception. After that, he couldn’t read her expression further, but he hoped that she was doing some soul-searching to examine why her own behavior needed to change.

She was, in some ways, too similar to Ara for comfort.

Maybe she could learn from this experience.

“I’m fine,” Kaldalis said. It was partially a lie. He was very much not fine right now, but he knew he would be eventually. “But she will be back again. And just that much more eager to hunt me down.”

“We’ll just have to look out for you,” Reno said, stepping up and hooking her arm around his, leading him away from Ara’s corpse. “As long as we’re with you, we’ll put her down again. And eventually, she might be pissed off at us instead of you.”

“We’ve got other matters to take care of, anyway,” Balrim offered as the group started to head back the way they came. “Dungeons to delve and ruins to explore.”

“And fish to catch,” Myrin added.

“I can’t let my guard down, though,” Kaldalis said quietly, more to himself than to his friends. “Eventually, she’ll be back. Maybe next week. Maybe the week after. Maybe after a month of planning, but she’ll be back.” He let out a heavy sigh. “I need to be constantly aware that some sex-crazed demon is going to jump me.”

“It won’t be so bad,” Myrin said, though without the cheerful tone she usually gave her jokes.

“Lucky,” Balrim said, socking him in the shoulder, “you’ve got a consistent storyline to drive viewership now. Most streamers have to figure out some contrived bullshit to make what you’ve found organically.”

“Ass,” Myrin snapped, punching Balrim in the hip. The Talsar stumbled sideways, almost falling over.

“Listen, I’ll be okay,” Kaldalis said, feeling a little guilty for all the concern everyone was showing him. And maybe a little patronized. “Don’t we have bigger fish to fry right now?” He nodded a head towards Onirioago.

“Oh, wait,” Reno said, looking around, “I also wanted to check this place out before we go.”

“Why?” Kaldalis asked. “Looking for more nightmare monsters to fight?”

“These are ruins, right?” Reno said, gesturing around herself. “That means there should be another of those Lataxinan tablets, right?”

“Maybe a room for one,” Balrim said, rubbing the spot on his hip where Myrin had punched him. “But all the tablets in aboveground ruins have been trashed.”

“All of the tablets in aboveground ruins so far,” Reno corrected him. “And none of them were surrounded by a bunch of murderous spider-snake-women.”

Kaldalis looked over at Gavinkim, who only shrugged. He seemed to have Onirioago well in hand, and she’d been honest with them the whole time. It was due that they extended her a little bit of trust. She could be out of her cell a little longer while they searched the building.

He tried not to ask himself what the worst that could happen was.

“Just this building,” Kaldalis said at last. “It shouldn’t take too long to search, right? If it’s not in here, then there won’t be one.”

“I suppose Martok, SeventyEight, and I will stay with Gavinkim to hold onto Onirioago,” Garyung said, “while the rest of you dig around?”

“Yeah, let’s split up to cover more ground,” Myrin said cheerfully. “Nothing can go wrong from that!”

“Okay,” Kaldalis said, starting to see the writing on the wall here, “Garyung and Martok stay with Gavinkim again, but this time Reno stays with them, too.”

“How come?” Reno asked, crossing her arms. Her tail twitched in obvious irritation, and Kaldalis wondered how much of his mental state was on display from his own.

“Toolkits,” Kaldalis said, pointing at the daggers on her hips. “Out in the open, the spear’s jump ability made Ess the best candidate to get from the clearing to us if something went wrong. Inside this building, though, all Nyxlas’ Augment is going to get her is a knock on the head. Your daggers’ dash ability is what we need here.”

“Fine,” Reno grumbled, moving to stand beside Garyung. “Use facts and logic. See if I care.”

With that settled, Kaldalis led the other three to do a cursory search of the building.

The first floor didn’t yield much.

There were many side rooms, but the ones that hadn’t been encroached upon by jungle flora growing in through the windows were just empty stone - their contents either rotted to nothing or cleared out by the ruins’ Jormongumo inhabitants. One of the rooms was obviously a kitchen of some sort, and another had shelves along the walls, which led Kaldalis to question what the other rooms had been. He had already assumed that the building was a hotel, but now he started to question his logic.

The second floor met his expectations much closer. Narrow halls and many rooms, and these had intact wooden doors and showed some signs of furniture remnants. Nothing that could easily be identified as a bed, but in the absence of further explanation, that was his best guess. At the end of the first hall, there was a larger room with a long stone table that reminded Kaldalis of the meeting room back in Cotnanaku.

The group leapfrogged their way down the hall. No room went unchecked, but only one person needed to poke into each room. These seemed more like hotel rooms, with interior walls that made it impossible to check the whole space just by poking a head in the doorway, even when the door didn’t need to be wrestled with to get the old wood unstuck from its stone frame.

When Kaldalis finished checking a room, he would walk past his companions until he found a closed door, and checked that one next.

The hallways formed a U-shape in the upper floor, and Kaldalis got the feeling that the only place their objective could be would be at the very end.

But the absolute last thing he wanted was for them to blunder into danger and have a monster lurking in one of these rooms trap them in the dead end.

He wanted to make sure they were safe.

It also helped to give him more time to distance himself from the experience of combat with Ara. The farther behind him the memory was, the less likely he was to hyperventilate and pass out if another Jormongumo appeared.

True to his expectation, though, the end of the hallway was a large stone doorway. Kaldalis gave it a gentle push and was so surprised when it swung open that he nearly fell on his face. There was nothing blocking it, and unlike the wooden doors for the other rooms, it had obviously been well-used to keep it from sticking.

“I guess that mea-” Balrim began, but then stopped mid-word.

There were three stone tablets in the room.

Kaldalis was just as stunned as Balrim.

No skeleton, no blockage, nothing, but the tablets were present and intact.

“Everything I know is wrong,” Balrim said at last.

“Up is down, left is right, and short is long,” Myrin supplied helpfully.

Kaldalis looked over his shoulder, anxious that perhaps some boss monster was going to sneak up on them. When nothing appeared, he figured that Ara had probably counted as the boss monster for this place. They’d already gotten rid of her, meaning they were free to examine the tablets and acquire the new power.

After Kaldalis’s hesitation, Balrim had stepped into the small tablet room, and was poring over them. His eyes scanned the sequence of images and symbols quickly, but when the Talsar turned around, his face held only confusion and frustration.

“It’s not working,” Balrim said. “The language isn’t changing. It’s just… It’s just rock, like the ones elsewhere in the underground city. Not the ones that give abilities.”

“Let me see,” Myrin said, pushing past Kaldalis to Balrim’s side. “Maybe it’s gender locked.”

The Suyon squinted at the stones. She obviously lacked Balrim’s patience to carefully scan every inch of the stone, but equally obviously, nothing happened.

“You,” she said, snapping her fingers and pointing at Kaldalis. “You try. Maybe it only works for straight people.”

“Wait,” Kaldalis said, looking at Balrim with confusion, “you’re not-”

“Bup bup bup,” Myrin interrupted, pointing at the tablet. “Less talky more looky.”

Kaldalis rolled his eyes and looked at the tablets. He sensed behind him that Ess pushed past the other two and was looking over his shoulder as well. He scooted down a little so that she could see all three tablets clearly without his giant horned head blocking her view.

He knew instantly that it wasn’t working. The text on the stone was still illegible otter-scratch writing. From the carved images he got the impression that this technique was the product of joint efforts between the Lataxinans and the Jormongumo, as both races were depicted working together on the research, but without the text, the events were otherwise just a bunch of figures dicking around. One of the images on the third tablet appeared to be a funeral, but it looked like it was an accidental death, as in the last image, Lataxinans and Jormongumo were standing together, apparently friends.

“Nothing,” he said at last. “Maybe it’s not a technique. Maybe it’s just a historical account of how they built this place.” He pointed to a few of the images. “You can see that it looks like the Lataxinans and the Jormongumo hated each other at the start, but after working together, they got along.”

“But then why put it here?” Balrim asked, gesturing at the building. “A tablet commemorating that should be out in front in the courtyard, right?”

“Maybe that’s at odds with Jormongumo culture,” Ess suggested. “Snake bodies might struggle to get around that kind of obstacle.”

“But then it might still be better downstairs,” Kaldalis said, scratching his chin. “Somewhere where it could be on display. Not in a closed room literally as far from the entrance as physically possible.” He shook his head. “This is a mystery we lack the tools to solve right now. As much as I hate leaving things undone, we do have a prisoner downstairs to get back into her cell.”

“I know I’m probably not going to be part of that discussion,” Ess said as the group started back down the hall to return to the stairs. “But she kinda came through for us all, didn’t she? She was telling the truth the whole time.”

“If the attacks stop,” Balrim added.

“Right. If the attacks stop,” Kaldalis agreed with a grimace, “then maybe a discussion should take place about some generosity in turn for her honesty. But we all know what her crime was. She’s not earning her freedom in this lifetime.”

“Maybe she’ll take more opportunities to be helpful,” Ess suggested. “And we can continue to succeed without someone’s iron fist at the helm of every task. If we can show her how valuable it is to have a society of diverse opinions and mindful leaders, maybe she can be rehabilitated someday.”

Kaldalis wanted to argue that her crime was too severe to hope for rehabilitation, but before he even spoke, he realized the source of his cynicism.

He was afraid.

Onirioago had sworn revenge specifically at him. Ess wasn’t suggesting letting her out right now. She was suggesting that Onirioago could be shown that she was wrong. That her plan was flawed. That achieving her objective would have made the expedition less successful.

After the fight with Ara, he had hoped that she might re-evaluate how openly and aggressively Onirioago expressed her sexual appetites. Perhaps, with time, her megalomania could also be curbed as well.

“I hope you’re right,” he said at last. “Maybe someday-”

“Guys!” Reno bolted down the hall to them at a speed that sent the doors around them rattling. “Yo, guys, we have a problem.”

Kaldalis immediately regretted that he never learned the cost of experiencing a moment of optimism.