Garyung was waiting in his office when Kaldalis and his friends arrived. The Bhogad practically jumped up out of his chair as soon as they walked in.

“Great! You’re here. I’ve got good news,” Garyung said instantly. “It took a lot of work, but I think I’m starting to build a rapport with the Contender. I let him strong-arm me a little bit, but I’ve managed to open up our dungeon again. I know that doesn’t help us a lot, but the dungeon is great XP for the newbies and-”

“And it’s an important first step,” Kaldalis interrupted with a patient tone. “But we’ve got to keep pushing. And for more than just our own comfort.” He looked back at his friends who were still with him. “Can we speak to the council? We’ve made some progress and I want to make sure we’re going through all the official channels.”

“Right now?” Garyung asked, though he was already stepping around his desk to move for the door. “This had better be good. Interrupting everyone’s work is a pretty tall order.”

“Don’t worry,” Myrin chirped cheerfully. “I can’t think there’s much bigger news than what we have for you today!”

Kaldalis tried not to grimace at the gross oversimplification, but she wasn’t wrong.

“I want to put it all on the table here,” Kaldalis added, giving Garyung a meaningful glance. “All of it.”

He turned towards his friends. “Those of you who don’t want to turn your streams off for this, you should probably excuse yourselves.”

“What’s going on?” Courbois asked quietly, turning to Balrim.

“You should go with Kal,” Balrim stage-whispered back. “It’ll all make sense pretty quick after that.”

“The rest of us should get some work done,” Reno suggested, her tone much more petulant than her words. “Half the reason we’re here is to keep things from going stagnant, right?”

“You two need some more XP, too, right?” Myrin asked, looking to Reno and Ess. “Let’s hit the jungle and see if we can grind a level or two out.”

Kaldalis watched as most of his companions left, and he tried to steel himself for what was to come.

###

It took a few minutes for Garyung to assemble the council. They were obviously missing Gavinkim, and the ship captain Filomna was not in the town hall at the moment, but the information would get to her eventually.

The people Kaldalis needed were here, at least.

Ikzoz, the head researcher, was the one who most needed to hear what Kaldalis had to say, but the Vathon architect and the Bhogad construction leader would be necessary for the more immediate efforts. The others were just icing on the proverbial cake.

They gathered in the smaller meeting room at the top floor of the town hall, where they could minimize the chance of being overheard.

Kaldalis, Garyung, and Courbois turned off their streams, and Kaldalis started to explain.

With the assembled council, Kaldalis started at the beginning. Garyung hadn’t filled in the Council completely on the events of the trial in Baimer - only explaining that Gavinkim had sacrificed himself to foil Onirioago’s final gambit.

Kaldalis explained the rest, revealing to the council the truth. The Calamity - the event centuries ago that introduced the game system to this world - had been caused by an external entity in another world. More than that, Kaldalis and the other adventurers of “his type” were from that same world.

Before the council could react to that, Kaldalis pressed right onward, blowing past all the other minutiae direct to the Lataxinans. Ikzoz nodded at Kaldalis’s announcement that they were still alive in the Paths Between Paths - word of the scroll translation had gotten to him already - but he joined the others in their shock when he added that he had visited with them already.

The description of Monsoon’s “Great Shovel” and the consequences of its use changed the mood of the room dramatically. As Kaldalis had anticipated, the idea of it activating again made the council nervous. If it began again, wouldn’t that mean a resurgence in Infernal Horde activity?

Kaldalis knew it would deepen the panic, but he needed to lead with total honesty, and told the council about the types of Infernal Horde the Lataxinans had described. The Elementals - innumerable and aggressive - the Conceptuals - organized and violent - and the Abstracts - intelligent and overpowering.

The fear in the room was growing, but Kaldalis needed all the information on the table before he gave the council room to speak. And so he went right to the end, telling the Council that the Lataxinans wanted to return, and they had a way to do it. He also told them the Lataxinans’ true goal. They could undo the Calamity, and return the world to its natural state. And If it took longer than six days to bring them back, they would be extinct, and with them would go the one chance to fix things.

And Kaldalis would do everything in his power to make it happen. He wanted to make right what Monsoon had broken.

That was why he was here, after all.

Kaldalis wasn’t here to ask what to do.

He was here to ask for help doing what had to be done.

“I need access to the raid outside Kayore,” Kaldalis finished. “With the ability available there, we can get them back here. We can set this world right. But I can’t do it alone.”

After he finished speaking, silence stretched for a long moment. Kaldalis couldn’t blame them for it. The nearest analogy he could figure was if someone had come to Earth and rushed right to the nearest micronation to tell their leadership that there were survivors from Pompeii in a pocket dimension, and that bringing them back could make the Greek gods real.

It was, in a word, bonkers.

And so it wasn’t surprising when Garyung was the first to speak up.

“We need to send word to Kayore and Panbu,” Garyung said at last. “They need to be informed.”

“Informed of what?” Sardol snapped. He was the chief among the town’s middle-management. Always quick to object to so-called adventurer bullshit, but absolutely vital to maintaining the logistical necessities for running a town. “Do we want to rush to tell the Zarans that they were right about their type all along? Because it sounds as if Onirioago’s news has yet to reach the frontier, and Cotanaku’s hard-fought independence will come to a rapid and bloody end once it does.”

“About the Infernal Horde,” Garyung said patiently. “If Kaldalis is right, we may be seeing a resurgence in their population. Nothing is more important to me than the preservation of life. If there’s even an outside chance that something is going to rile up the Horde - and bring new and terrifying iterations of them - then we need everyone to know immediately.”

Sardol grumbled his assent to that, but was quick to add: “this is far from our primary concern here.”

“But it’s the most immediate one,” Courbois said. Even Kaldalis blinked in confusion when she spoke up. Amidst all of the exposition, he’d forgotten she was here. “None of this is going to matter if we lose our toehold on the islands. If Kayore falls, good luck getting to the raid. If Panbu falls, good luck getting cooperation from the Zarans in Kayore. And if Cotanaku falls, good luck getting anywhere for anything.”

Kaldalis nodded at that, and was pleased to see the council agreeing as well.

“We need to issue quests to shore up our defenses,” Kaldalis added. “And quickly. Even if the Infernal Horde doesn’t attack again, the end goal here is a full clear of a raid in under a week. We need everyone in prime fighting shape as fast as we can get them there.”

“We have options there,” Garyung said. His eyes glazed over and darted around slightly. Kaldalis knew he was opening and fiddling around with the town menu the system gave him as the leader. “I can get some more watchtowers built, upgrade the walls, and upgrade our town guards’ gear.”

“That sounds like a great idea,” Kaldalis said with a nod.

“That doesn’t address our main issue,” Ikzoz cut in before Kaldalis could ask any further questions. “We need to deal with the Contender.”

“I, uh,” Kaldalis stammered with a grimace. “Well, let’s just keep throwing cards on the table. I don’t have a plan for that. Yet. I’ll come up with something, but-”

“I’m not sure we can help much with that,” Garyung said, his eyes focusing on Kaldalis once more. “As I said when you came in, I just got finished making a deal with him. And, obviously, I can’t abandon my post here and tag along to help further.”

“Why not?” Kaldalis asked.

“Maintenance of the town,” Garyung grumbled. “There’s some grace period where I can let the clock run without being here, but if I leave town for more than a few hours, the town will start to fall into disrepair no matter how many people are here. Not only will it cost more money and resources to restore whatever breaks, but the continued vacancy will drain what little treasury we have. And I burned a LOT of that grace period by going to Baimer with you.”

“Can’t you, like…” Courbois said, pointing between Garyung and Ikzoz. “Pass the leadership around? Keep someone here with the leader spot, but just don’t be dicks with it?”

“We discussed this already,” Ikzoz said firmly. He spread his hands wide, as if consoling a child. “While it would be possible to do so in an emergency, once those transfers are expended, leadership cannot be passed more than twice in a month without a major political event. And we can’t keep holding elections every few hours because someone wants to run off and be an adventurer twice a day.”

Garyung gave a sheepish smile and shrugged. Kaldalis wasn’t terribly surprised, remembering when Garyung had come to him right after the election and begged to be relieved of responsibility.

“I’ll come up with something for the Contender,” Kaldalis said. He wasn’t sure what, when, or even how, but that was a problem for his future self. “I just want to keep you all up-to-date on what’s happening, because if I need your help, I want to be sure it’s forthcoming.”

“Absolutely,” Garyung said. “For now, though, all I can really offer is the constant stream of quests to help people become stronger.”

“Sooner is better on that,” Kaldalis said, “because if I were in a genre-savvy mood, I’d guess that this thing with the Contender is going to escalate pretty harshly before we get to the end of this.”

“Then get a move on,” Garyung said, gesturing to dismiss Kaldalis and Courbois. “Quests will only take a few minutes to set up, but the sooner the council can start talking about logistics, the sooner the quests will start appearing in town.”