Kaldalis was in a hurry - with under a minute left on the clock - but he couldn’t afford to get caught. He tried to put himself in the mindset of a fire drill. Calmly but quickly. He didn’t know what kind of description they had of him at the front, but slapping on the assassin’s cloak meant that he might not be recognizable. Covering his face and his armor meant he wasn’t going to be immediately clocked as the guy who skipped the checkpoint at the door, even if the cloak made him vaguely suspicious.

The courtroom was near to the back of the building, and Kaldalis had to hurry. He only hoped that the guards had been stupid enough to concentrate all their forces on the second floor instead of following a more intelligent procedure and canvassing the whole building.

Whether by luck or skill, Kaldalis found himself at the courtroom with about fifteen seconds to spare. It was close, but not as close as he expected. Stepping through the double doors, though, he heard armored boots pounding up the hallway behind him. His first instinct was to slam the door and grab something to bar it, but that would have made it clear that he was here. Instead, he stepped to the left of the door and pressed his back to the wall.

The door opened, with Kaldalis standing behind the hinges, hidden from whoever was looking in. There were a handful of people in the room, including Bangen and Gavinkim, but neither Onirioago nor the judge were present. There was a bailiff and a second guard at the front of the courtroom, but they weren’t paying attention - they were talking to each other quietly ahead of the trial.

He feared for a moment that the guard at the door would ask if a shady-looking Vathon had just come in, with him standing next to the door and looking shady, but instead there was a sound of grumbling through the door and it closed, the guard leaving to search elsewhere.

Kaldalis let out a sigh of relief and moved towards the front to sit next to Gavinkim and Bangen, slumping down and unequipping the cloak.

“Everything okay?” Gavinkim asked quietly.

“Yeah, you know,” Kaldalis said, gesturing at the door. “Just the usual.”

“I think you need to recognize that your usual isn’t normal,” Bangen said with a look of obvious concern. “Also you scared the pants off of me. I thought you weren’t going to make it.”

“I’m sorry, there were some extenuating circumstances,” Kaldalis explained. He tugged up on the waist of his armor, showing off one of the bruises he’d gotten from the assassin. “But I wasn’t going to let anything stop me.”

The timer finally ticked down to zero, and the bailiff and guard stopped talking, moving to their appropriate posts.

“All rise,” the bailiff ordered. Everyone in the room got to their feet. “Presenting Judge Ivyuziano.”

The judge entered. Instead of being dressed in traditional black robes as Kaldalis expected, she wore a surprisingly modern-looking charcoal gray business suit with a maroon tie. She was an older-looking Vathon, with graying hair and deep lines on her face, but she had a strange quality of friendliness. Kaldalis found himself inherently trusting her, and he didn’t understand why. She was accompanied by a mousy-looking Talsar who appeared to be a scribe - probably this court’s version of a stenographer.

“Also presenting the accused,” the bailiff continued. “Onirioago, accused of conspiracy to manufacture, distribute, and abuse illicit materials.”

Onirioago entered the room. There was a burly human guard near at hand behind her, and heavy manacles bound her hands.

Despite all that, she stood tall, and had a confident smirk on her face.

The sight of it hit Kaldalis like a brick to the face.

He found himself haunted by all his prior interactions with her. His uncertainty melted away. After his interaction with her in the prison, he hadn’t been sure if she’d had a plan. Seeing the look on her face now, he knew.

She had something up her sleeve.

Though perhaps he’d already thwarted it. As she looked around the room, her smile faltered. Kaldalis wasn’t sure if it was because he was there, or because Demriv wasn’t. Though it could have been any of a dozen other things. She’d lived her whole life in Baimer. Maybe she had a history with this judge. Maybe some old enemy was here watching. Maybe the weight of her impending judgment was finally hitting her.

When her eyes flicked back to him, he smiled at her. He tried very hard to project her own brand of confidence back at her. He didn’t really have anything besides a mad dash for the docks, but she didn’t need to know that.

Onirioago flinched.

Kaldalis wasn’t sure what that meant, but he took it to be a good sign. He needed all the hope he could get.

“Please be seated,” the judge said. Despite her feminine appearance, her voice was deep and commanding. “The crime at hand is more heinous than the charges indicate. The illegal substance involved is not something simple. We aren’t looking at a Merch dealer, or a few tabs of Wax. This case is about Geas Venom, and the conspiracy to use it to subvert the free will of a whole frontier town. I ask those in attendance to recognize the severity of the punishment in the event the accused is found guilty, as is befitting for a crime this serious. We’re talking about a threat to scores, or even hundreds of lives, not a few dozen addicts chasing a high.”

She gestured, and Onirioago moved across the room to take a seat next to a stuffy-looking Suyon man. Kaldalis guessed that was her lawyer. He wore a suit as well, with a tie that was about three shades greener than his skin. One of his tusks had been broken, and was capped with a slightly yellow-white ivory to match the other.

“This court does want to reassure the defense that we will not be swayed by fear alone,” the judge continued. “This trial will be fair and impartial. Geas Venom is among the most terrifying substances on the planet, but this is a civilized kingdom. I will not suffer a threat to Zara’s citizens to walk out of my courtroom unbound, but I won’t be a tool in a witch hunt. The truth is stronger than our fear.”

Kaldalis almost expected her to say something like “let’s have a nice clean game” but instead she gestured to the man next to Onirioago, who stood and stepped forward.

“The defense is, obviously, appalled and horrified by the potential use of Geas Venom,” the man began, confirming that he was Onirioago’s lawyer. “But we have years of service on the record. Onirioago has been a faithful adventurer to the League, and her devotion to League policies is unquestionable. We obviously want to get to the truth of this matter and uncover the source of the claims of Geas Venom in the Ulun Islands, but the truth of this case is clear: Onirioago is as upstanding of a citizen as any.” He gestured behind himself to Onirioago. “And we should not lock up a local hero on a rumor.” With that, the man returned to his seat, carefully straightening his tie.

On the other side of the room, another man stood up. He was a younger Finnian, and while he looked slightly uncomfortable with his suit - constantly fiddling with his cuffs - his movements were practiced and competent as he stepped up to the front. Kaldalis was afraid, for a moment, that the stereotypical terseness of his race might impede the prosecution, but as soon as he began speaking - in a calm and confident tone - Kaldalis knew his fears were unfounded.

“The prosecution will not,” he said, pausing for effect, “dispute Onirioago’s record. As glowing and true as any of it may be. What we will do instead, is state the facts of what happened on the Islands of Ulun. The fact is that Onirioago ordered an uneducated adventurer to find a Deacon Tetra. She then-”

“That’s preposterous,” the Suyon lawyer snapped. “Why would someone with her background do such a thing?”

The Finnian lawyer just stared at him for a long moment, letting the ridiculousness of the interruption hang in the air.

“Once the adventurer returned to her with the fish - and the location of it,” the Finnian continued, “she dispatched a group of lackeys to harvest a large number of them. Then, when-”

“The defense objects to the word ‘lackey’ here,” the Suyon broke in again. “It’s obviously prejudicial, and intended to make the accused out to be some sort of evil mastermind.”

Kaldalis thought it was pretty accurate to describe her as such, but he wasn’t in charge. The Finnian lawyer again let the dispute hang in the air. Kaldalis didn’t know what was and wasn’t okay here. This wasn’t an earth court. He didn’t know if these objections were allowed, or if the Finnian was just letting the Suyon make a fool of himself over and over.

“One of our witnesses - the original hapless adventurer - was propositioned by Onirioago,” the Finnian continued when the moment passed. “She explicitly requested an ongoing supply of Deacon Tetra.”

Kaldalis winced at the phrasing, the use of “propositioned” and “explicitly” in the context of his interaction with Onirioago that night made him intensely uncomfortable. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up at the memory of her brazenly stripping down in front of him, and he struggled to stop his memory from playing the whole night back from that point.

“Hero or not,” the Finnian concluded, “Onirioago’s past does not erase her present. The prosecution will deal in facts, and prove this without any conjecture that could be affected by the quality of her prior service.” With that, he returned to his seat.

“Thank you both,” the judge said. Kaldalis was slightly concerned that she didn’t say anything about the Suyon’s interruptions - was she on Onirioago’s side? “Prosecutor, please present your case.”