Kaldalis didn’t have a lot of options, nor did he have a lot of time to come up with new ones. He also wasn’t going to get a lot of help from his two companions. Gavinkim was struggling to keep the door closed, mostly depending upon his physical weight rather than his strength. There was no way he was going to be able to contribute to any discussion. Not without losing what precious little time they had by allowing the door to burst open way faster than necessary..

Bangen had picked up a book off of a nearby shelf and started flipping through it. Kaldalis wanted to scold her for the distraction, but she wasn’t even looking at the book. She was visibly frightened, staring at the door and flinching at every thump against it. Grabbing the book wasn’t her characteristic obsession kicking in, it was panic. The familiar feel of a book in her hands was keeping her from completely losing it. As much as he would have liked to have her more immediately mentally present to help, there wasn’t time to snap her out of it.

Three options presented themselves, and none of them were particularly appealing.

First and foremost was to trash the room. Even if he couldn’t find any sort of secret door or crawlspace, there might be a weak spot in the wall he could Kool-Aid man through to find another escape route. But he wasn’t sure if he had enough time to do such a search. Perhaps if he could have both Gavinkim and Bangen helping, the three of them could toss the place before the guards outside could force the door, but that was impossible right now. He couldn’t move fast enough on his own to pull it off.

The second option would have to be his absolute last resort. He still had Onirioago’s War Weapon. Fighting his way out was not an attractive prospect, but it was an option he had to admit was on the table. It might not be physically possible for him to chew through dozens of armed and ready combatants, but he was reasonably certain where this was going to end if he just laid down and let them catch him. He’d never gone down without a fight in his life, and he wasn’t going to start now.

There was only one option remaining. It was a more attractive choice than mass murder, but not by much.

“Alright,” Kaldalis said, clapping his hands to get the attention of Bangen and Gavinkim. “I’ve got good news and bad news.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Gavinkim grumbled, grunting with effort as another thump against the door almost dislodged him. “Do you maybe want to share with us before we’re overrun, or are you waiting for afterwards?”

“I can get out of here,” Kaldalis said quickly, “but I can only take one of you with me. Someone is going to have to stay behind.”

“Take her,” Gavinkim said immediately, nodding towards Bangen. “Go.”

“Are you sure-”

“Now!” Gavinkim barked as another thump against the door sent him scrambling almost a foot away from the door. “There’s no time!”

Bangen looked up at them, confused. She was trying to process what was just said through the haze of panic that clouded her vision.

“I wish there was another way,” Kaldalis said. He moved to Bangen and put an arm around her shoulder, guiding her away from the door and towards the window. “But this is only going to work because of Nyxlas’s Augment.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Gavinkim said with a grimace, confirming that he hadn’t run the dungeon in Panbu. “But there’s not time for a lecture. I’ll tell them I tried to convince you to surrender. Maybe I can make them believe it.”

“I’m sorry,” Kaldalis said.

“What are we doing?” Bangen asked, snapping out of her terrified fugue at last. “How are we escaping?”

“Well, the way I see it, there’s only one option,” Kaldalis said. He pulled out his spear in his free hand and jammed the head of it against the grimy window. It took two thrusts to shatter it, and then he swept the weapon around along the frame to clear away as much of the broken glass as possible. “We’re going to have to jump. By which I mean I’m going to have to jump.”

He pointed out the window. It faced towards the ocean, and at a relatively sharp angle to the left was the docks. They hadn’t been able to see it clearly through the dirty glass, but it was there.

“Why do we have to leave Gavinkim?” she asked.

“Because only I can do this jump,” Kaldalis said. “And I can only carry one of you.”

A part of Kaldalis wanted to try and carry them both. He suspected it was theoretically possible, due to the obscene power Nyxlas’s Augment offered. But Jump was a multiplier to his jump height, not a fixed level of power. Because he was a tank, with more Vigor than Clout, it was very possible that he just wouldn’t have the physical strength needed to hold two people at once. As much as he might want to risk it, if it proved to be too much weight once he was in the air the consequences could be deadly. Either he might lose his grip on one and send them tumbling to their doom, or they might all be dragged down and unable to get up enough speed to actually escape.

Another impact against the door made it clear that further discussion was impossible. This wasn’t the sound of guards throwing their shoulders against the barricade. This was the sound of an axe hacking against wood. The door would splinter in a few moments.

Bangen flinched and immediately threw herself at Kaldalis, scrambling onto his back. He lowered himself down enough for her to get her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist, carrying her piggyback style.

“This is gonna get a little weird,” Kaldalis warned, “so hold on tight.”

Bangen whimpered as the next impact against the door came faster. More than one axe was testing the door. A crack started to form, spraying a fountain of splinters against Gavinkim’s face. Bangen’s arms and legs became uncomfortably tight around his neck and waist.

“Go!” Gavinkim barked. “Now!”

Kaldalis wanted to say something dramatic and heroic. An apology for not being able to take him as well. A promise to remember him. A declaration of brotherhood. Something. But there wasn’t time to come up with the words and say them. Rather than blurt out something half-assed and ineffective, he activated Nyxlas’s Augment, sacrificing a chunk of his health in order to empower his Jump ability.

With Bangen clinging to his back, he hurled himself out the window and towards the docks.

Rocketing into the sky was a different experience when you were jumping out a window, going from a dimly-lit interior to the bright afternoon sun in an instant. It was also a different experience while someone was choking you and screaming directly in your ear. Bangen hadn’t anticipated exactly what was coming, which Kaldalis considered was probably his own fault. He hadn’t done anything to properly prepare her, and Nyxlas’s Augment was a lot more extreme of an experience than anything else Kaldalis had seen in this game.

World. In this world. Despite himself, he had to acknowledge that he wasn’t sure if Onirioago was telling the actual literal truth, or if she was just the delivery mechanism for a story twist. He had already decided that the only moral action was to treat the NPCs here like real people. Was it that far of a leap to consider that the world might be real as well? Whether or not he needed to reshape his thinking was a mystery to be explored after he’d secured their escape.

On the topic of their escape, true to his expectation he didn’t get the same height as he had with the Augmented leap when escaping the assassin by himself. The extra weight of Bangen clinging to him was reducing his jump distance. It wasn’t enough to completely counteract the boosted Jump ability, but Kaldalis saw it as confirmation that he couldn’t have had Gavinkim clinging to him as well if he was hoping to make it all the way to the docks.

Bangen calmed down after a moment. Or, at least, she stopped screaming. The breath bar mechanic meant that her grip around his throat wasn’t going to be a pressing issue for a couple of minutes, and he was able to hit the first rooftop after landing without issue and kick off again, this time giving himself more horizontal momentum, flying over the city of Baimer at impossible speed. Bangen squeaked at the sudden increase in velocity, but at least she wasn’t screaming right next to his ear again.

“Gavinkim,” Bangen said quietly as they sailed through the air. “Will he be okay?”

Kaldalis made a garbled choking noise, prompting Bangen to finally loosen her grip.

“Sorry,” she added with a nervous laugh.

He almost blurted out a lie. Kaldalis wanted to immediately say Gavinkim was going to be fine. More than that, he wanted to believe it. But he had no confidence in that possibility. The justice system in Baimer seemed to be extraordinarily flimsy, considering that an entire courthouse had suddenly erupted into a riot at the idea that he might be some kind of invader. From space, possibly.

Although having punched through the checkpoint and slipped security might have had an extremely small effect on that response as well.

“I don’t know,” Kaldalis admitted. Honesty had gotten him to the point where Bangen and Gavinkim had sided with him despite Onirioago’s announcement. It seemed wise to retain that policy going forward. “He wouldn’t have yelled at us to run if he didn’t have a plan to get out okay. But I don’t know what it could be or if it could work.”

Bangen made an uncertain sound of agreement. Kaldalis’s honesty wasn’t helping.

“Besides,” he continued, pausing just long enough to kick off from the next jump, giving himself a little more lift to get over the taller rooftops of the next block of buildings. “If he’s still in the courthouse, he can make sure they pass judgment on Onirioago. I know he won’t let her escape in the chaos.”

Kaldalis wanted to hope that she might get a slightly harsher sentence for causing that chaos - and for the chaos that would follow once word got out, implicating every PC in the world - but he knew that was wishful thinking.

Kaldalis got one more good jump from his Jump ability, and sacrificed another chunk of his health bar for another Nyxlas’s Augment. At the peak of his jump, he used Slowfall. True to his expectation, Augmented Slowfall entirely halted his vertical momentum. The leap turned into something that very closely approximated actual flight. If his math was right, the trajectory would take them all the way to the docks - possibly even onto the Rambutan’s deck. Or at least into the rigging.

“How are you doing this?” Bangen asked. Kaldalis thought for a moment that she was awestruck, but it was soon apparent that it was the researcher in her wanting answers. “What is this ability you’re using?”

“I’ll explain everything later,” Kaldalis said, looking down at the streets below. “I’ll even demonstrate it for you with a nostalgic disney musical number. If we escape.”

He pointed down to where a cluster of guards were running along the street below. A movement ability was letting them keep up with him. As he watched, the guard leading the group looked right up at him, making eye contact. This wasn’t just a fast-moving patrol. They were following him.

“I just hope I got the trajectory right,” Kaldalis said, trying to focus on where he was going to land. “Or else the Whole New World I’m gonna be exploring will be an Onirioago-adjacent cell.”