Kaldalis wasn’t sure what to expect as Ara dragged him towards the sound of the war horn. Obviously, he didn’t expect how fast she was capable of running in her form-fitting robe, but he managed to keep his feet under him. Neither her iron grip nor her pace seemed at all interested in abating whenever he slowed or stumbled, so it was either run blindly alongside her or fall face-first in the dirt and be dragged.

Instead of running him right into a fight, though, she pulled him up a crumbling set of stairs, to the top of the last remaining bit of wall in the ruined town. As they reached the top, Kaldalis could see what was unfolding.

When the Jormongumo had said that they were being hunted, he expected an explanation. When none was forthcoming, he was forced to try and discern an explanation from context. His first thought was that the raiders were other monsters. A rival Jormongumo group might be involved with some manner of religious conflict around the prophecies. Or maybe even a pack of Daemonraptors or other predatory monsters closing in when they sensed weakness. Although, he had to admit, the idea of any sort of monster respawning like player characters opened up more questions than it answered. It had to be regular PCs.

What was much more likely was that The Contender was behind this. If he received intel from Ikzoz that the Jormongumo were out here squatting on a ruin that contained the remains of a broken tablet, he might have demanded some manner of siege against them to force them out for the sake of his investigation. The only hole in that guess was that he had received no such quest in Cotanaku. Of course, that might have been because he was Kaldalis, and the Contender had specifically excluded him.

What he saw now revealed the truth.

What unfolded beneath them was practically a pitched battle. It was very much in the Jormongumos’ favor, too. They had superior numbers and positioning. There were three more atop the wall beside Ara peppering the attackers with arrows. Yet still there was a desperation among them. Kaldalis knew the source. No matter the outcome of this fight, it was a loss on their end. The dead among the attackers would respawn. The dead Jormongumo would not.

They were adventurers. There was no mistaking that. The twenty people present represented a significant force. Four tanks were working in tandem to manage the frontline, while the rest were too scattered and interspersed to determine exact numbers. There were a disproportionate number of healers, though, and they all worked together to turn the battle into one of attrition.

For the Jormongumos’ part, they handled the strategy well. While bound to overworld aggro rules, they were thinking foes, and able to easily weave in and out of each other to prevent the damage dealers from focusing on any one target for too long. And when fresh faces joined the battle, they focused their attention on the softer targets, forcing a scramble from the tanks and healers until aggro could be established.

The truth came from the adventurers’ identities. Kaldalis didn’t recognize them at first, but as one of the tanks led the push forward, recklessly forcing his way into the Jormongumo line to destabilize it, it all came together.

That was Voker. He didn’t even need to see his face through the press of the fight to recognize a reckless asshole in cliche black plate armor for who he was.

As soon as that connection was made, others crept in. In the rear was the Bhogad woman who Onirioago had sent to deliver their ransom demands to Cotanaku’s council. Near to Voker’s side was Yosini. The Talsar that had jumped him first when they’d come upon Onirioago’s floating hideout was in the back as well, firing arrows haphazardly into the melee.

Courbois had told Kaldalis that she’d kept an eye on Onirioago’s little cult. They’d recruited Voker and his “asshole friends” before vanishing into the jungle. And here they were, at open war with the Jormongumo, sacrificing their lives over and over to bleed them into extinction.

Dalgaard was behind this.

The whole issue at hand came into shape immediately. Dalgaard had gathered together everyone he could, paired them up with the remaining cult Onirioago had built around them, and put into their heads an idea of glorious revenge. That’s why they hadn’t dispersed. Dalgaard had used whatever authority Onirioago had given them, and found a new cause for them to lay down their lives for.

This must have been how Onirioago bought them off. Dalgaard hadn’t fallen for her charms. Onirioago had told them her plan for the Jormongumo’s immortality, and promised them the opportunity to strike a blow against the monsters that they would really feel, and eventually eliminate his attacker once and for all. Considering how Kaldalis had felt when he’d faced Ara the second time, knowing she would return, he might have seriously considered working with her as well, if she’d made him the same promise.

And could Kaldalis blame Dalgaard? Ara had tricked them and then ripped them apart. She literally cracked their chest open and ate them alive. Dalgaard’s revenge was not unprovoked. Furthermore, the rest of these forces were likely owed some revenge as well. Ara had directed her forces to attack people in Cotanaku. Some of these folks may have been hungry for revenge of their own.

Kaldalis didn’t see Dalgaard physically present, and he couldn’t blame them for that, either. If he had a choice between being right here in striking distance of Ara herself and being literally anywhere else in the multiverse, he knew what he’d choose.

As the fight raged on, the breath caught in Ara’s throat. One of the Jormongumo fell with a shriek of pain. A roar of approval from the adventurers met that, and they redoubled their assault. The fight became frantic. Adventurers started to fall, but they kept pushing. They would return, and every kill against the Jormongumo would be permanent. Another shrieking death came, and Ara’s chest heaved in a sob.

“No,” she whispered, barely audible over the clash of weapons. “Please, no.”

Kaldalis was slightly gratified to see an arrow punch through Voker’s helmet and send him bonelessly into a ragdoll animation, killed for his reckless advance. As soon as he died, three other adventurers were ripped apart instantly now that the group had no tank holding the enemy back. Retreat was called and the adventurers bolted to the jungle, each one using a movement ability that let them outpace the Jormongumo.

Not that they chased. Even though they had won, a very human cry of agony went up amongst the monsters. Only two had fallen, but it was as if each of the survivors had watched their own siblings butchered in front of them.

With how long-lived they were, and how infrequent breeding opportunities were, Kaldalis realized that they might have been. With only a few score Jormongumo total, they were likely a close-knit group. Many of them were probably literally sisters, but it seemed they were all sisters in a figurative sense. Even Ara, typically untouchable and heartless to Kaldalis’s eyes, was openly weeping.

The Jormongumo started to work to recover their dead. It was an arduous task, due to their long serpentine bodies, but there was a clear reverence and respect for them. They couldn’t drag their tails along in the dirt. A few of the others seemed inconsolable, sobbing over the dead, and they, too, had to be carried away. The adventurers’ corpses were left in the field of battle. Not even recovered for their meat.

As one of the corpses was carried by the wall where Kaldalis and Ara stood, one of the corpse’s bearers looked up at them. She was the leader of the group who had confronted Ara in the tablet room. Her glare spoke volumes. She placed the blame for these deaths on Ara’s hands. And from the look in Ara’s eyes - still locked on the faces of the fallen - it seemed she blamed herself, too.

Kaldalis considered for a moment the very real opportunity to escape. Ara’s iron grip had not abated, but she was distracted now. An Augmented Jump could get him clear of here. More than that, he could join up with Dalgaard’s forces and get clear directions back to town from here.

But… He chose to stay. He couldn’t lie to himself and say that he didn’t feel moved by their obvious mourning for their losses, but that wasn’t what kept him here. Before they’d been interrupted, he’d gotten a whiff of something valuable.

Information.

Ara had been present for the Calamity. It wasn’t just the Jormongumo who had been around in the days of the Lataxinans. Ara herself had seen them. She might be able to answer his questions. The clue he sought to undo what Monsoon had done might be somewhere in her memories.

“What happens now?” Kaldalis asked, trying to stir her from her grief-induced fugue state.

“They’ll be taken care of,” Ara said quietly. “Changed out of their armor into their normal clothes. It’s… It’s tradition. So that when they awaken they are comfortable.”

“And the adventurers?” Kaldalis asked.

“They’re gone already,” she said, gesturing dismissively at the jungle.

“Not those, the dead.” Kaldalis pointed out at the field of battle, where Voker and the others were cooling on the ground. “They’ll be back in thirty minutes.”

“They run when they awaken,” Ara said. “And you see how they revel in our misery. They don’t want to talk. No deals or demands. They only want to kill us and then retreat when their line falters. It would not help to imprison them, either. They rise here on the field, not from their corpses.”

Ara obviously had no intent to camp their corpses and kill them repeatedly, and he wanted to ask why. Before he could, he snapped his mouth shut. From what she’d said earlier, she probably didn’t know how player respawning worked at all. If he blurted out how Aplomb worked - and that it would weaken her foes significantly to drain it as much as possible - that would hand her a weapon that she might turn against him.

An opportunity was before him, though. And as much as it made the bile rise in his throat, he would never be able to forgive himself if he turned and fled from it.

“I think,” Kaldalis said carefully, “I might be able to help.”