As Kaldalis leaped over giant chunks of the jungle, he did what he always did shortly after making a hard decision: he second guessed himself. He tried to shake it off, but he came up with one thought that gave him pause.

What if the decision to take on The Contender was exactly what Monsoon wanted?

Faced with two problems, one of them was more immediate, more tangible, and easier to tackle. Of course he’d chosen to chase a solution to that problem first. But was he really interested in the path of least resistance?

What if Monsoon had put The Contender in his path as a distraction? Especially with his association to unexplained “magic” that might present a solution to the real problem, he was the perfectly attractive choice.

And if the Contender didn’t give Kaldalis the tools to keep moving away from the problem of what Monsoon did to this world - allegedly - then what would they turn to next to keep him busy? The return of Ara? His friends in danger? War between Cotanaku and Zara? Kidnapping Heluna?

Monsoon wasn’t creative enough to keep putting good obstacles in his path.

Eventually they were going to fall back on the worst cliches to keep him busy.

Kaldalis had taken a solutions-oriented approach. What he needed was a problem-oriented approach.

Namely, causing problems on purpose.

“Everyone knows about the Contender,” he muttered to himself as he got back to Kayore, landing outside the town walls and moving towards the jungle side gate. “Let someone else be Kaldalis on that one for another week. If he’s still here once I’ve saved the world, then we’ll talk.”

He grimaced as soon as he said it. Who knew how many people were watching him right now. Considering that Aaron Stevenson had sent him a message to stop talking about what he’d heard, Kaldalis could only imagine what was going on back on Earth. Was there a social media firestorm hitting Monsoon demanding to know what they’d cut from Kaldalis’s stream? Were there ten thousand people watching right now, furiously taking notes on his every word. If they were, suggesting that he was saving the world was probably launching a thousand speculative blog posts.

Despite himself, as soon as that thought hit him, he knew what he was going to do. As much as The Contender demanded a response, taking care of the real business at hand was going to draw a lot of eyes to him. It might even let him catch up to Ess in his stream payout next month.

And if he was going to draw every eye right to him, he knew exactly who he needed to talk to.

Balrim and Myrin were catching lunch at the cafeteria. Like Kaldalis and Ess, they were seated outside, and a little scorched pile of charcoal near at hand told him that they’d also circumvented the meal chit system. Balrim had likely slapped down a campfire and whipped something up quick right on the spot instead. The benefit of leveling crafts.

“Balrim, Myrin,” Kaldalis said, rushing to their ‘table.’ “Are you ready?”

“For what?” Myrin asked around a mouthful of what appeared to be a burrito filled with fruit.

Kaldalis struck a pose, pointing out into the jungle. “To save the world!”

Balrim immediately started to choke on his burrito. It took a moment for him to clear his airway enough to make it obvious that he was laughing.

“Nice read, Clark,” Balrim said, once he could make words again. “Though you should work on the pose. You gotta puff your chest out a little more to draw attention to the S printed on it.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Kaldalis grumbled, waving the comment away. “You in? It’s sure to get a lot of eyes on the streams, you know.”

“Well, obviously,” Myrin said. “But we’ll have to keep turning them off to talk about it, right?” Her eyes darted down and to the left, where Kaldalis knew the indicator for a stream blackout was. “Might make it hard to attract an audience.”

“The time for words is over,” Kaldalis said, puffing his chest out. “Now is the time for action!” He paused to shoot a grin at Balrim.

“Better,” Balrim said with a nod. He mimed a clap, though he still had half a fruit burrito in one hand.

“What kind of action?” Myrin asked, rolling her eyes. “Because Martok made it pretty clear he doesn’t have anything for us. We’re all over barrel here, since the Zarans are keeping us penned in.”

“Martok,” Kaldalis said, snapping his fingers. “What did he say about the region around here?”

“I thought this wasn’t the time for words,” Balrim said, arching the scaled ridge that acted as his eyebrow.

Kaldalis snorted at that. “Words can be actions, too.”

“He’s got some rough maps of the surrounding area,” Myrin cut in. “But nothing is up to his standards. He wants to get back out there as soon as possible, but until then, he’s working with the exposed areas of the minimap from everyone who was here before The Contender showed up.”

“Surprised nobody’s calling him the obvious rude nickname yet,” Kaldalis said. “Since he seems to be getting in everyone’s way.”

“What obvious rude nickname?” Myrin asked with a smirk.

Kaldalis cleared his throat. He wasn’t going to say it out loud. Some words were just too inappropriate. Reducing their enmity with The Contender to dirty words was far too juvenile an outlet. Kaldalis had too much self-respect to stoop so low.

“Anyway, we need some answers about the area before we plan our next move,” Kaldalis said at last. “I was thinking we would go right to the best source available. The Kaldalis of Kayore: Courbois.”

“You gonna make that nickname stick?” Balrim asked with a smirk. “I was just starting to hope you weren’t a glory hog.”

“She started it,” Kaldalis shot back. “Besides, I would have loved to get a sweet title after getting Cotanaku set up. I figure the nicest thing I can do for her is to treat her with the respect that I never got.”

“Yeah, respect in the form of a barrage of questions.” Balrim finished his burrito in two more quick bites. “What do we need, anyway?” he asked around the mouthful of food.

“The local Infernal Horde,” Kaldalis said. He pointed out towards the ocean, where the other island was a little bit of a bump on the distant horizon. “She said they were a different type of monster entirely over there.”

“I thought that was weird,” Balrim said, tapping his chin with a clawed finger. “Though I remember the tall tales we heard about previous encounters with them were different from what we eventually found here.”

“They’re connected to this,” Kaldalis said. Consulting his inventory, he produced the notes Bangen had gotten him in Baimer. “This story makes very clear that the Infernal Horde showed up after the Calamity.”

Both Balrim’s and Myrin’s eyes shot down and to the left, looking for the stream blackout indicator. Kaldalis knew better. This story was part of the established lore. He had already gotten the green flag to talk about this, as long as Aaron Stevenson, Jordan Carver, or Monsoon didn’t get brought into it. Though he suspected it was skirting close enough that someone probably had a finger on the button.

“Okay,” Balrim said carefully, making a show of choosing his words. “So what are you hoping Courbois can tell us about the problem?”

“We don’t exactly have a lot of leads to work with,” Kaldalis admitted. “And the only real lead I can follow is that the Infernal Horde are somehow attached. Maybe if we lay out all the information available, it’ll make a perfect shape of some kind.”

Myrin snorted at that, but Balrim was unconvinced.

“No, really,” Balrim pressed. “What’s the long game here?”

“Depending on how you read this,” Kaldalis said, pointedly holding up the notes. “The Infernal Horde either caused the Calamity, or were caused by the Calamity. Either way, they’re connected. If we want to undo it and put this world back the way it should be, that’s how you start.”

“Like a chemical equation!” Myrin said suddenly. She put the rest of her burrito aside and sat up straight, suddenly at attention as she spoke energetically with her hands. “If we can measure the products, we can maybe figure out how to turn them back into their reactants! The Infernal Horde obviously represents energy emission from the reaction, so if we can turn them back into whatever allegorical chemical bonds they were before, that could bind up whatever the Calamity did to break things!”

Kaldalis stared at her blankly, having very little idea what she was talking about. Balrim laughed at his obvious confusion.

“I get it, though,” Myrin said quickly. Despite the agreement implied by her words she slumped back down in her seat. “I think you’re on the right track.”

“Should we go get Ess and Reno, then?” Balrim asked.

“No,” Kaldalis said immediately. He didn’t want to bring them into this, but he didn’t necessarily want to discuss why. “They need the catch-up time out here. I get the feeling that where we’re going, the exp is going to be few and far between. And when we need them, we’ll need them to be ready to rumble.”

That seemed to mollify them as Myrin finished her burrito quickly and Balrim started to brush off the dishes and return them to his inventory before kicking away the hot charcoal that had been his cooking fire.

Kaldalis tried not to think about Ess and Reno, but it was impossible.

Reno probably deserved to be left out of this. Kaldalis was afraid of how guilty she’d seemed over the past few days, and he had kind of been letting her avoid him. If she wanted time and space to get her feelings in order, he was happy to give it to her. She had always been a true friend to him, though. He didn’t have to ask to know that when the chips were down and he needed her help, she would jump in with both feet.

Ess was another story. Kaldalis feared that she might take an extreme stance on things one way or the other. Her fears about being unwanted colonists on this world - perhaps even precursor to an invasion - were sound concerns. He didn’t think she was wrong. But he was afraid of what actions she might take on those concerns. As the mystery unfolded, she might think the best choice would be to give everything to the Zarans and live as hermits until their contract on this world ended. And depending on the situation, she might be able to make that viewpoint look extremely attractive.

If she could use a convincing argument to amass an Onirioago-like following, the whole world could be brought to its knees. There was no telling what Real Time Strategy Legend SeventyEight would be capable of if she had an army to command.

She had also made it clear that she wanted to go home, and Kaldalis was afraid of what length she might go to on that goal. What if Myrin found a way to synthesize the Infernal Horde into dimensional glue? Would SeventyEight be okay with shutting the door, trapping them on this side of it? What if they found a big red self destruct button that would sacrifice all of Rundan to eject them back to Earth?

Kaldalis needed to know for sure that the people with him were stable. He was okay with them having doubts and views different from his own, but he had to be able to trust them to look before they leaped.