Kaldalis didn’t want to admit that he didn’t really have much of a plan. His path to hold up his end of the bargain with Ara was basically just to get in a room with Dalgaard and try to talk it out. To that end, the only thing to do was follow the trail of the retreating adventurers.

It was obviously an option to wait for Voker and the rest to respawn, and then try to secure an audience by talking to them, but that meant he would have to talk to Voker. Kaldalis was pretty sure that if he had to have a conversation with the man most directly responsible for Haldir’s death he was going to punch him in the mouth.

The adventurers left plenty of trail to follow. Kaldalis finally used his Jump ability to escape the Jormongumos’ ruins, and gave chase. Despite how rudimentary his tracking skills were, the tracks of their passage were visible even at the peak of his jump. There were just so many of them, and they weren’t making any real effort to hide.

This struck Kaldalis as foolish. If the Jormongumo wanted, they could follow this trail to their camp and strike back. Then again, Ara had expressed that the Jormongumo probably didn’t think these foes could be fought. From their perspective, the adventurers were an immortal scourge. Why counterattack when you have everything to lose and nothing to gain?

Their trail went through a few twists and turns, but before Kaldalis could acknowledge that it made it a bit hard to figure out where they were going, he realized that they were just following the path of least resistance through the undergrowth.

With his Jump ability, Kaldalis caught up to the adventurers pretty quickly. Once they’d gotten clear of the camp’s line of sight, their pace had slowed from a run to a healthy march. Though the lack of discipline from the group made it look more like a plod than a march. Their formation was more akin to a group of school kids on a field trip, split into their obvious friend groups, loosely herded along together by a few more responsible souls.

As Kaldalis stopped leaping along and started to scurry along behind them, he found it depressingly easy to stay out of their sight. Those who seemed to be trying to be leaders were paying more attention to their fellows - keeping them from being left behind - than to their surroundings. As long as Kaldalis kept a line of trees between him and the group, he seemed almost entirely invisible to them, and was able to keep pace easily.

“Two more is fine,” one of the ones at the back complained loudly. “But we got three this morning. I think we ran too soon.”

“We don’t need to get a big haul every time,” another one argued. “Every one we take out is one fewer, right?”

Someone grumbled something inaudible. Kaldalis might have been able to hear if he scooted closer to the group - or even moved to walk among them - but he honestly didn’t know what to expect from them if he were discovered. Would they think he was a spy? Some weird spider fetishist working for the monsters?

“Because no one else will,” someone shouted in response to the grumbling. “We’re the only ones out here! If we don’t destroy the nest once and for all, it’s only a matter of time before they infiltrate the camp again! We’re the wall against which the fucking darkness breaks!”

“Yeah,” someone agreed. “Fucking Garyung came out here and stirred them up, and then fucked off on a boat before the day was through. Ikzoz didn’t give a shit, and neither did the Zarans, because they fucking hate our guts! As far as I can tell, they want us to get picked off and eaten!”

“Or worse,” someone added. Kaldalis recognized the voice. Yosini.

“Even if they don’t thank us,” someone said at a more normal volume, and Kaldalis had to strain to hear the rest, “our friends need this job done. And if we do it well, they’ll never have to know how close they were to facing one of those things themselves.”

Things were starting to come into focus. This wasn’t a revenge mission. Perhaps it was to Dalgaard, and even some of the others, but the bulk of this force was here on a righteous crusade. They were eliminating a threat to the camp. The Jormongumo had walked among the people of Cotanaku and tortured them to get to Kaldalis. They’d counted on Garyung to protect them, and he hadn’t given them any reassurance that the task was done before he left.

He would have been impressed with them if they weren’t approaching it like they were an edgy vigilante group. And if they weren’t using it as an excuse to commit a genocide.

“Can we ease up for a day, maybe?” someone asked from farther up the column. Kaldalis picked up the pace through the trees to catch up to hear this part of the conversation. “Some folks gotta get their aplomb reset, and six hours between runs isn’t enough.”

“It’s okay,” someone laughed, “you can say Voker.”

Kaldalis tried not to grin at that. Voker was a reckless asshole, and it felt vindicating that even these crackpots were recognizing that fact. It was likely that keeping track of the man’s antics might answer some critical questions about Aplomb. It was a resource that was recovered slowly over time, and was spent on respawning, and it acted like a multiplier on your maximum HP, encouraging caution between deaths. Of course, he didn’t know what happened when the resource ran out.

“He’s doing his best,” someone said, “he’s just a little overenthusiastic.”

“Did you not see his HP?” the first person shouted back. “Dude is moving like a yo-yo. He’s probably got like twenty aplomb left and he still fucking plays like that.”

“If he cared about the cause, he’d shape up,” someone snapped. “We could have taken five of them this run if we didn’t have to spend so much attention on his bullshit.”

Several voices shouted them down, saying that five was impossible. A bunch more started to vocally agree, seemingly convinced that if everyone took the fights seriously enough, they could wipe the Jormongumo out in one shot. The argument got bigger and louder from there until eventually the entire group just pulled to a halt to yell at each other.

“Come on!” someone bellowed. “Enough! We can have this fight again when we’re back at camp!”

The argument didn’t entirely fizzle out, with a few scattered pockets discussing it in a more ordered fashion. Though it seemed to mostly be people reorganizing to talk to the others who shared their view on the matter. But the group began to move again, making their way through the jungle.

Kaldalis was forced to pull up short when the trees stopped abruptly. Instead of more jungle, there was a field of stumps. He recognized the work, and quickly pressed himself to the nearest tree to keep out of view of the passing group as they entered the artificial clearing.

Ahead was a brief area that had obviously been clearcut. A few yards from it was a crude wooden barricade. Kaldalis couldn’t see over it from here without revealing his position, but as the returning raiders filed in through a one-person-wide gap in the barricade, it was obvious that this was their camp. There were still visible trees within the confines of the barricade, but the clearing would make it difficult to approach covertly - presumably to keep the Jormongumo from slipping in and wreaking havoc against them.

Once the raiders finished filing in, it looked like there were no sentries posted. Or, at least if there were, they were more focused on the returning group than on the outside world. Kaldalis took his chance and activated his Jump cooldown. His first leap took him straight up, into the jungle canopy above him. From that vantage point, he could see to confirm that the adventurers within weren’t looking out at the jungle, let alone up at the treetops. With a quick jump, he leaped across the gap between the treetops of the jungle and the trees that remained within the camp.

“I’m in,” he whispered to himself.

There weren’t many trees within the camp. At least, not enough to give him a run of the place. But those that remained had dense branches and foliage. He was able to hide among the branches easily, and the trees that had been left standing were still big and old enough that their woven-together branches meant that Kaldalis could navigate through the camp to seek his target.

It was easy to be distracted. The camp was strangely well-constructed. Despite the crude barricades, there were actual buildings here. They were mostly shacks and sheds, like Kaldalis’s quarters back in Cotanaku, but they appeared to be sturdy and well-built, even though the camp appeared to be mostly running on campfires instead of anything more civilized. How had they built this up? Was this somehow an official encampment?

Kaldalis shook off the distraction and started looking for people, not structures. He was here for a reason. He was going to hold up his end of the agreement with Ara, even if he couldn’t be sure she would hold up hers. As crude and rudimentary as his plans were in comparison to whatever these people had done out here to build this camp, this was his chance to crack his mystery wide open, and he wouldn’t let it slip through his fingers.

He had to find Dalgaard.