When Kaldalis returned his attention to the group, Balrim and Myrin had more or less caught everyone up. Or, at least, Kaldalis assumed so from the mixed expressions. Courbois looked pretty vexed, but nodded grimly, knowing that what had happened had needed to be done. Reno and Ess seemed a little more upset, but couldn’t raise any complaints.

“It couldn’t have gone any other way,” Myrin admitted. “Pragmatically, it was a smarter move to eliminate an enemy and make a friend than it would have been to make an enemy for an ally we can’t trust.”

“Still,” Courbois said with a grimace. “I usually walk the road less traveled for that kind of thing. I guess we’ll never know what we could have had.”

“I’m sorry,” Kaldalis said, interrupting further discussion with a gesture. “What’s done is done. Dalgaard deserved their closure and Ara deserved to die. We can’t reload an earlier save here. Time only goes forward, and so do we.”

“So,” Ess said tentatively, “where do we go from here? Which way is forward?”

Kaldalis felt an enormous weight on his shoulders at the question. He already felt guilty about his decisions, and how they were affecting his friends. He didn’t know where to go without Ara’s lead, but he had to take responsibility for his choice. Nothing was coming to mind, though. He couldn’t think of any solution besides what they’d already come up with: just searching Lataxinan ruins and hoping for a miracle.

“I just don’t know,” Kaldalis said with a heavy sigh. “The whole draw of working with Ara was that I have no idea how else to continue. If I knew of any other way forward, I would have killed her myself the first time I saw her.”

“Surely she said something useful,” Balrim said, searching Kaldalis’s expression. “Something a little too specific? Something that tipped her hand?”

“Give me a second,” Kaldalis said, putting a hand to his temple, trying to remember.

It all felt so fuzzy and distant, even though it was just earlier today.

As soon as he started thinking of things Ara had said, it all came crashing into him again. Not the conversation when he had tried to tease a thread of info out of her, but her threats. The feeling of barely contributing to fighting her down while Myrin did the lion’s share of the work. Knowing that a single sweaty palm or unexpected turn of the wrist would have had Myrin and Dalgaard dead in an instant, with Kaldalis under Ara’s venom.

“She was around for the Calamity,” Kaldalis said, trying to shove that memory aside and go back farther, struggling to picture her face in human form. “She didn’t know the exact information, but she knew… that she’d know where to find it?”

“Right,” Balrim said, stepping up next to Kaldalis and putting a hand on his shoulder. “Focus on that. Did she say anything about where she would take you? What place would have the information?”

“Something about…” Kaldalis suddenly remembered Ara’s face close to his. Uncomfortably close. It made him wince. “There was a place where the Lataxinans gathered before the Calamity.”

“Okay,” Balrim said, nodding with a smile. “That’s a start! We can do something with that.”

“A place the Lataxinans gathered,” Courbois said, tapping her chin. “That’s certainly a hint, at least. Maybe if we re-check the ruins we’ve already seen, we can find signs of an exodus.”

“We need to loop Bangen in,” Balrim said quickly, still nodding energetically. “If anybody knows something, she would. Maybe we can get a rosetta stone for the Lataxinan language and iconography. We could figure something out from there.”

“Are you sure she’s safe to include in this?” Courbois asked.

“She knows what we know,” Myrin said quickly, looking over to Kaldalis. “She was there when Kal found out, so there wasn’t really a way to cover it up.”

“What actually happened?” Courbois said. “I feel like we’re dancing around something and everybody knows it but me.”

“It’s an extremely sensitive story,” Kaldalis said, rubbing his browline as he felt a headache coming on. “I will tell you when I can. But every time I start, I get a bunch of direct messages from Monsoon devs telling me to keep my mouth shut.”

“Are you alright, Kal?” Heluna asked, peering at him carefully. “No offense, but you look like shit.”

When he looked at her, he started to understand what was going on. He realized that his arm around her shoulders wasn’t just for comfort. It was for physical support. His knees and ankles felt weak. Everything was feeling heavy and fuzzy and he just wanted to lay down.

“I just…” He pointed back over his shoulder towards the ruins that the Jormongumo called home. “I just faced down my fear. Literally wrestled with my demons while she screamed promises of revenge in my face. And before that, I was at her mercy in an inescapable stone box. And then I had to face one of my top five failures since I got onto this island. This has been…” He sagged against her. “This has been a lot, okay? I know it’s not even dark out, but I’m fucking tired.”

“Adrenaline crash,” Myrin said with a grimace. “He’s been riding high all day and now he’s paying the price.”

“And I can’t even crash here,” Kaldalis grumbled. “Just the thought of being physically vulnerable within spitting distance of a Jormongumo makes me feel sick.”

“This has been a hell of a day for you,” Balrim said, scratching at the hornlike nubs on his scaled head. “Maybe we should brainstorm individually and come back tomorrow to talk it out.”

“Sorry, guys,” Kaldalis said. “Don’t call it a day on my account, though. You all can brainstorm together. There’s no reason we all have to stop dead because I’m wiped out. You already all uprooted your plans to come rescue me.” He turned and started to head back in the direction he now knew Cotanaku lay. “I’m just going to go lay down for a while. Maybe until morning. Maybe until Monday, I don’t know.”

“Uh,” Heluna stammered, quickly moving to his side. “I’m… Not part of this plan, so I’ll just make sure he gets home alright, okay?”

“Maybe we should all go,” Reno said with a smirk. “Somehow he keeps finding trouble bigger than he can handle alone.”

“They’ll be fine,” Myrin said quickly. She gave Kaldalis a brief wink when he looked over at her. “We should follow up with Dalgaard. If we can sit in on whatever peace negotiation is going to happen here, maybe we can figure out if any of the other Jormongumo are as old as Ara. And we might need all the muscle we can field for that.”

Kaldalis thought he might feel better if his friends went off on their own. It seemed reasonable to be relieved to find he wasn’t holding them back. But instead he was all the grumpier about it. He felt like this whole misadventure chasing the Calamity was his responsibility. It didn’t alleviate his guilt at all to know that they were working to clean up his mess.

“You alright?” Heluna asked.

She was searching his expression, and he was suddenly very embarrassed at his own guilt. Obviously she couldn’t read his mind and know what had him feeling so bad. She was a person like anyone else, not a supernatural videogame lady plugged into his brain to give him the most narratively dramatic storyline.

“Yeah,” he said, “like I said before, everything has just been so impossibly stressful. I absolutely just need to crash and sleep for like a week. I’ll be fine once I-”

Kaldalis winced as soon as he said it. She came all this way to rescue him in time for their date, and now he was canceling. He wasn’t even canceling, he had just decided to collapse and sleep through it without so much as a half-assed text message.

“I’m sorry,” he said, trying to reverse direction. “What time is it? I’m sure I can sleep off this crash in time for dinner. I’ll-”

“No, no, don’t fuckin’ worry about that,” Heluna said. She stopped walking and put her hands on his shoulders, stopping him as well. “You went through some serious shit. You’ve got physical tenacity for fuckin’ days, but emotionally? You’re a sensitive guy. Take all the time you need.”

That just made Kaldalis feel even worse. Not only had he been a real heel about the date, he’d guilted her into letting him off the hook. As soon as he started to slump, she just looked more worried. He took a moment to shake himself out of it. He was too deep in his own head. Wasn’t it possible that she actually cared about him?

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “No, I’ll stop saying that. I’m sorry for apologizing so much.” He gave a weak laugh. “Thank you. I was looking forward to dinner with you, though. Maybe tomorrow night would be okay?”

“I’d like that,” she said. Her face lit up with a smile. She was clearly satisfied with the compromise. Her hand slipped down his arm to take his hand, turning to start back towards Cotanaku. “But I do have a gift for you I’ve been holding for way too long. I hope you don’t mind accepting it before then.”