Kaldalis would never be sure if he looked over his shoulder at just the right moment, or if Onirioago had been waiting to make her move until she knew he would see. It seemed like something she would do, but he wasn’t so self-centered to think that her every move was made with him in mind.

When he looked back, he saw that Gavinkim was distracted, watching the fight and preparing to intercept anyone who tried to move towards Onirioago.

She made quick use of the moment of distraction. It was so quick that Kaldalis wondered if she’d been doing so the whole time, whenever no one was looking. He couldn’t tell exactly what she was doing, but her hands were moving under the improvised straightjacket in a way that implied that they were no longer tied.

In one fluid motion, she burst out of her bonds.

Kaldalis had never closely examined the mechanics of drawing his weapon from his inventory. It just seemed to appear and had never been relevant otherwise.

As Onirioago drew a weapon, it physically sprant into existence, ripping through even the tough canvas they’d wrapped her in. She’d positioned her hands in such a way that the weapon ripped through the tie wrapped around her shoulders as well, freeing her arms completely.

The weapon wasn’t her usual sword.

This was a spear, with its head formed of two sharp points that ran parallel to each other before arcing in and meeting at their tips. Its whole length was made of a single piece of black metal, from the joined tips at the head to the cruelly barbed butt of the weapon.

Something about the weapon seemed strangely sinister, as if there was something he should be able to tell about the weapon on sight that he didn’t have the necessary information to guess at.

Before Gavinkim could react, the haft of the weapon jammed into the chain at her feet, and with a single twist, she snapped the manacles.

And in that same motion, she drove the head of the weapon into Gavinkim’s shoulder.

Kaldalis expected the weapon to curve away from hitting, like his own. But it struck true, jabbing into Gavinkim and breaking his grip on the back of her neck. The man yelped in surprise, pain, and anger as Onirioago broke away from him, leaving him with a bleeding wound in exchange for her freedom.

Kaldalis grunted as someone punched the back of his head while he was looking away.

The blow rattled him almost as bad as the sight of Onirioago loose with a weapon that could apparently hit people in PVP.

She looked up and met his eyes. With a smirk and a playful salute, she turned and ran down the hall away from him.

“Get her!” he shouted, unthinkingly stepping out of line. Someone tried to use the opening to push into the space he’d just vacated in order to attack Myrin from the side.

“Onirioago HoH!” Martok barked, stepping up to take Kaldalis’s vacated space. “Go! Go!”

Kaldalis didn’t need a translator to pick up on the context clues. He pushed his way back past Gavinkim at a full sprint, running after Onirioago.

If he lost sight of her for more than a few seconds, she could just be gone, into one of the side rooms and out the window. He couldn’t let that happen. It was bad enough that he’d let himself believe for a moment that this whole operation wasn’t a setup, but he’d never forgive himself if he let that setup succeed.

Her head start meant he was unlikely to catch her, but he didn’t need to.

He just needed to stop her from escaping.

As long as he was on her tail, she couldn’t squeeze through any of the windows to freedom without him grabbing her and yanking her back in.

Instead of trying to escape, though, she ran the length of the hallway, not stopping until she reached the tablet chamber. Kaldalis had left the door open, but as soon as she reached the room she ran inside and slammed it shut behind her. Kaldalis rammed his shoulder into the door, but it held fast.

“You fucked up now,” Kaldalis yelled, slamming his fist against the stone. “You’re trapped in there. No way out. And the tablets don’t do anything!”

Silence met him.

If Onirioago heard him, she said nothing.

He slammed his body weight against the door again, and it was entirely unmoving. She had barred it somehow.

And then she was laughing again. Even through the stone the sound made him shudder uncomfortably.

“I didn’t believe it,” she said, her voice muffled by the closed door. “And yet here I am. And here it is.” There was an unidentifiable cracking noise. “And now it’s mine and mine alone.”

Kaldalis forced his weight against the stone door again, and this time, it started to yield. Onirioago cursed and he could feel her weight against the door opposite him. She was stronger than he was, but he managed to wedge the toe of his left foot in between the stone door and the stone frame. He grimaced at the pain of the stone crushing his foot, but she couldn’t wedge the door closed again with whatever she had used before.

“It’s done anyway,” she snapped at him. “You’re too slow by far to match yourself against me.”

The door flew open and Kaldalis found himself staring down the tip of Onirioago’s spear. Behind her, the tablets were smashed to pieces, and while she held her spear in one hand, the other hand held a large chunk of the broken stone under her arm.

“What have you done?” Kaldalis demanded. He moved to draw his own spear, but the head of her weapon lunged towards him, making him jump back as she kept the sinister tip levelled at him. “What are you doing?”

She moved her off-hand, and the stone she held vanished into her inventory.

Instead of steadying her weapon with the now-empty hand, she set it against her hip, giving him a satisfied smirk.

“I’ve won,” she said simply. She had exuded an aura of comfortable self-assuredness even when she’d been imprisoned.

But she’d never quite resembled herself as expedition leader. She’d lacked that aura of indomitable authority. Now it was like everything had gone back to normal.

Onirioago didn’t just seem confident and in control.

She was confident and in control.

Her weapon dipped towards his face again, and he slipped under it. Her attack was clumsy in her cockiness, and so he was able to duck in towards her, landing his fist in her gut with a satisfying whump.

Despite the heavy blow, she laughed in his face.

Onirioago’s foot smashed into his leg before he could properly set his feet, knocking him over. He almost landed on his face, but the lashing of his tail caught his balance in time for him to drop to one knee instead.

Her spear lanced into his calf, and the searing pain of actually being fucking stabbed ran up his leg. There wasn’t a damage readout, but it was a very real hit from a very real weapon. Kaldalis’s superhuman endurance made him aware that this wasn’t near enough physical damage to his body to be more than a minor inconvenience even if he wanted to get up and go for a jog, but it still hurt like a bitch.

“As much as I love seeing you kneel before me,” Onirioago purred, twisting the weapon just enough to make Kaldalis gasp in pain. “This whole thing has just been step one.”

She kicked him away as she ripped the weapon from his leg, sending him face-first to the ground. His horns banged against the stone floor, and the shock of pain that ran straight down into his scalp stopped him from scrambling to his feet for a full second.

“Don’t worry, Kaldalis,” Onirioago said. For that second before he could move again, her eyes roamed over his body in that same uncomfortable way they always did. “It won’t be very much longer before I’m stepping on you.”

When he saw her with a spear, he had some vain hope that she didn’t have the skill to use the weapon’s abilities. But that was obviously not the case. Instead of running past him, she coiled her legs and launched herself with an unmistakable jump, shooting down the hall at breakneck speed.

Once his limbs responded again, Kaldalis scrambled after her. She was already around the corner before he had even started running, but he didn’t know what else to do.

He gave chase.

It wasn’t until he was halfway down the hall that he realized his head had been rattled harder than he thought. He drew his own spear and launched himself down the hall.

When he reached the head of the stairs, he found the brawl he left behind was now in total disarray. Myrin and SeventyEight were sitting on the stairs, visibly battered, while Balrim was wrapping the wound on Gavinkim’s shoulder with improvised bandages. Martok and Garyung were standing there dumbfounded as Dalgaard, Onirioago, and the half-dozen other goons in their group were retreating down the stairs. Reno was trying to give chase, but looking back at the rest of the group, obviously not wanting to go alone.

Onirioago shot Kaldalis a wink as her group hit the bottom of the stairs and vanished into the hall. Before Kaldalis could get his head around what their next move should be, they were out of the building and into the jungle.

The one thing they wanted to stop was Onirioago’s escape.

And they had just failed.