Kaldalis’s first response was a feeling of intense satisfaction. The Lataxinans hadn’t told him that the Infernal Horde would be back on the islands, but he had extrapolated from what they’d said, and having that guess come true made him feel very smart.

But he didn’t have time to revel in his vindication. Lives were at stake.

“Sound the alarm! Scramble the defenses,” Garyung ordered the soldier. “Now!” Even as he spoke, his eyes glazed over, and Kaldalis recognized that he was accessing the menus that being the leader of the town offered, doing his part.

“How can I help?” Kaldalis asked.

“You’re part of our defenses, right?” Garyung snapped. Without waiting for an answer, he pointed at the northeast wall, in the direction of Cotanaku’s jungle-side gate. “Then scramble!”

Kaldalis wasn’t sure why he didn’t think of that himself - it was what he would have done first thing if he hadn’t been literally in the room with Garyung - but he leaped to obey. Instead of rushing down the stairs, he went straight to the window, throwing it open and perching briefly on the sill to activate his Jump ability to launch towards the jungle, hurtling over the town.

Near at hand, a deep alarm horn sounded, and as Kaldalis flew towards the gate, he could see all the questing adventurers stop dead in their tracks at the sound.

Touching down in the town center before launching himself the rest of the way to the gate, Kaldalis found himself surrounded by adventurers. Given the opportunity, he had to break everyone of their stunned confusion.

“Infernal Horde!” he yelled.

That alone was enough, and when he Jumped again, he wasn’t alone as dozens of adventurers followed him, running towards the gate. A few of them took off with their own Jumps. Some blized across the space at high speed, using their own mobility abilities to rush to the front.

Kaldalis landed on the top of the wall as the guards there were closing the gates, acting in response to the alarm sounding from the town hall. They were fast enough, as Kaldalis only saw the oncoming figures emerging from the jungle. The town’s interior would be safe so long as the gates and walls held. Given the numerous reinforcement upgrades to those structures, the odds were in Cotanaku’s favor.

Or, at least, they seemed to be until he saw the oncoming force.

There were the familiar Syncoresi and Malum among the oncoming forces. But the white-furred long-clawed humanoids and ominously glowing semitransparent figures weren’t the only forces approaching. They were joined by other humanoid forms. The many-armed Xorn and the thrumming red Globins were here as well, which he had only seen outside of Panbu.

He could also see humanoids that looked like walking clumps of wood, dirt, and rock, along with ghostly spirits that were a shimmer of rainbow hues. Kaldalis recognized those two from Courbois’s descriptions of what they faced in Kayore, as Dryads and Tahul.

But even those six dissimilar types of Infernal Horde monsters weren’t alone. There were monsters that were a cacophony of shifting metal plates, looking for all the world like a terrible CGI robot. Next to them were short, stocky humanoids made out of unworked ore, with a furious red glow emitting from their eyes and joints. There were stout muscular beings covered in an umber carapace, covered with reddish markings. Kaldalis could also see ethereal feylike beings that looked almost like normal humans, but strangely shaded with blotchy skin, like background characters in a baroque painting.

There were also other, lesser foes flitting about among them, columns of roaring fire, both bright orange and deeper red, whirling cyclones of wind that were whitish-blue or sea green, oozes made of gravel and sand, Ambulatory waves of water, with a scattered few a sickly purplish hue, and floating orbs of darkness and light.

He remembered what the Lataxinans had told him. The Infernal Horde came in three flavors. And this was a comprehensive bestiary of two of those three types. The familiar humanoids were a monster mash of Conceptuals, which were individually powerful and almost intelligent. And the rest were Elementals, which were individually weaker, but much more numerous.

Whatever Monsoon was doing in the space between their dimensions, it wasn’t reinforcing the numbers of the Infernal Horde that had already been formed and massed. It was just dumping giant masses of them onto the islands at once. The things Kaldalis and his friends had been fighting before were the results of the horde dispersing themselves naturally over centuries.

What they faced now was the first wave of the threat that had nearly driven the Lataxinans to extinction.

Fortunately, there was no sign of the third type of Infernal Horde. The Lataxinans had warned that the Abstracts were destructive in the extreme, and impossible to repel. These incoming foes, at least, were manageable.

Or they would be, as soon as the town’s defenses massed. With the horde descending upon the walls only seconds after the alarm was sounded, there might not be time. The elementals might not be stopped by the walls, and the Syncoresi had been able to scale the barriers when they last appeared. The NPC guards on the walls might be dead before the adventurers could arrive in enough numbers to spare them.

So Kaldalis would have to buy the time they needed.

“Guard the walls,” Kaldalis barked to the nearest adventurer - another man with a spear who had leaped up onto the walls shortly after him. “And get the town guards back to form ranks behind the gate. I want them gathered for if the walls are breached.”

“Why are you telling me?” the man asked, visibly startled by the sudden responsibility. “What are you going to be doing?”

“The usual,” Kaldalis said, trying to sound more confident than he felt. “Charging into certain death for a fleeting tactical advantage.”

He didn’t take the time to elaborate. He just hurled himself off of the wall and towards the oncoming Infernal Horde.

***

Even before he reached them, Kaldalis was under attack.

The Conceptuals that he’d already faced hadn’t been big on ranged attacks, but the Elementals had no such limitations, and a storm of elemental energies hurtled towards him. Luckily, the elementals weren’t smart enough to lead their target, and the attacks missed, but it was going to be a serious complication to his plan if there was going to be a rain of fire bolts and flung stones.

As soon as Kaldalis hit the ground, he activated Sweeping Strikes. The enemy was already nearly on top of him, and while they did move to attack him instead of trying to charge past towards Cotanaku, he needed to keep it that way, and overworld aggro rules meant that once he hit them, they would have to chase him to the exclusion of all other objectives.

His spear ripped through the first group, and he launched himself away even before the attack was complete. He did varying amounts of damage to each target, but the damage output wasn’t important. He needed to just hit and keep moving. Giant fists, flashes of light energy, and shrieking metal monstrosities reached out for him, but he was already gone, landing on top of another clump of Infernal Horde. His spear whirled around, and he carved the head of it through another squad of foes before leaping away again.

Kaldalis was rapidly turning the oncoming enemy ranks into a mob chasing him. As he carved into dozens of foes with every swing - dealing a paltry hundred or so damage to each one - they turned from their objective and chased him instead. When his Jump ability finished running its course, he set to sprinting along the front of the enemy ranks, focusing on keeping ahead of their attacks rather than grabbing every single enemy.

There were more than a few stragglers he missed attacking, who continued onward towards Cotanaku’s walls. But he could already see the adventurers on the walls starting to pelt them with arrows, thinning them before they even approached the gates.

It looked like it was enough. The number of archers increased with every volley as more and more adventurers arrived on the scene. The weaker Elementals were being sent running before they reached the walls.

The element of surprise had been a serious danger to the lives of dozens of guards - if not the whole of Cotanaku - and Kaldalis had mitigated it. They were going to be okay.

So long as he could keep ahead of the small army of horrors right behind him until the town was fully ready to defend itself.