There was a very insistent part of Kaldalis that wanted him to use his Jump ability. It would allow him to scour the jungle that much faster.

But he could recognize that it wasn’t a smart move.

If he got too far ahead, he was going to be at very real risk of catching up to the whole Infernal Horde army and getting ganked faster than his friends could save him.

He took a short moment to recognize his own growing sense of self preservation.

Besides, Balrim needed a little more time to top off Kaldalis’s hit points. Even if he could guarantee that he would find only the Abstract, it would have been suicide to blunder into it alone at half health.

Unfortunately, it meant that the enemy was able to get a significant lead on them. The area marked by Garyung’s quest had grown too large to guarantee that they could find it. Fortunately, it had eventually stopped moving around the jungle, indicating that the floating monstrosity was likely gathering its strength to heal now.

“Alright,” Kaldalis announced to the group of adventurers with him. “Those of you in parties, split up and search the jungle for that thing. Those of you who aren’t, find groups before doing the same. The last thing I want is to give this thing an even larger bodycount before we can all converge on it.”

He didn’t wait to see if his order stuck. With a gesture, he led the way into the jungle straight towards the center of the quest area. His friends fell in behind him as the denser parts of the jungle quickly separated them from the crowd.

Kaldalis wasn’t sure how they were supposed to find this thing. The whole area was covered in tracks, broken branches, and even some singed leaves here and there, but that had been from the passage of the other fleeing Infernal Horde, and those trails scattered, leading in every possible direction. There wasn’t a reliable way to pick out any one trail, let alone determine which branches had been broken by the flying Abstract and which were from either the wind elementals scattering jungle debris, or the more apelike varieties of Infernal Horde brachiating - traveling through the forest canopy by swinging through the trees instead of picking through the foliage on the ground.

Instincts were giving him vague directions, but if his friends asked, he couldn’t have rooted them in fact. He looked at where the branch debris on the jungle floor was thickest and freshest - and where the foliage and undergrowth had caused the earthbound infernal horde to go around - and just kinda guessed.

The only other option was to scour the whole area and hope for the best, so no one seemed inclined to question him. For a while, at least.

“So where are we going to find this thing?” Balrim asked as they made their way through the undergrowth.

“No way to say for sure,” Kaldalis admitted, stomping his way through a particularly stubborn bush. “Being a weird geometry monster is throwing me off my game, here.”

“What do you mean?” Balrim asked.

“Well,” Kaldalis began, pulling up short when he heard the trickle of a stream through the next thicket. He lowered his voice before continuing. “If we were up against anything else, I’d expect it to be right here. Water is life, after all. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were Infernal Horde there now. But a giant bit of floating metal bullshit? I don’t know if it drinks water at all.”

There was a crackle of branches ahead. Kaldalis wanted to try and take a moment to see if any of his friends had any ideas of where to look, but it sounded like he was right. Danger was near at hand. And if he wanted the search to continue without issue, they had to deal with whatever Infernal Horde they found quickly and efficiently, so that a lower-level group of adventurers didn’t blunder into danger and get eviscerated.

He forced his way through the thicket quickly, spear raised and ready before he burst out of the undergrowth and onto the bank of a tiny trickle of muddy water winding around exposed tree roots here.

And almost right into the waiting blades of a handful of other adventurers.

“What the fuck,” a voice barked. As Kaldalis’s eyes adjusted to the slightly brighter light in his new surroundings, he saw a gesture, and the swords and daggers menacing him immediately withdraw. “Again? Really?”

It took a moment for Kaldalis to recognize the voice. “Dalgaard? What are you doing out here?” he asked.

“Same as you, obviously,” the human healer said, pushing their way through the crowd of now-familiar former cultists. “Looking for that fucking sky-bitch that tried to flatten Cotanaku.”

“But how did you get ahead of us?” Reno asked as she pushed through the twisted undergrowth to join the conversation. “We were leading the group out here, weren’t we?”

“I’m guessing for the same reason you just blundered into us face-first in the wilderness again,” Dalgaard said with a ghost of a smirk. “Your literally fearless leader is forcing his way through as the hook-armed art object flies, instead of following natural trails on the ground.”

Kaldalis looked up. There was a slot of sky here that he could see, and there was a giant gash bashed through the branches near the top of the forest canopy, coming from the direction they were going and moving farther northeast. The monster might have come through here. It was a good feeling for Kaldalis to have his instincts validated.

“Maybe we should work together,” Kaldalis suggested. “I can take to the treetops and follow the tracks a little faster, and you can take everyone else along the trails to keep up with me. You’ll get a direct route to the monster, and I’ll have quick reinforcements once I find it.”

Dalgaard tapped their chin thoughtfully. Kaldalis was sure it was a reasonable suggestion, but given the situations Dalgaard had found themselves in since coming to this world, he couldn’t blame them at all for considering the proposal for a moment before agreeing. The last thing he wanted was to be the same sort of manipulator that Onirioago had been.

“It will be challenging to keep track of you and keep moving at speed,” Dalgaard said at last. “Especially in a tight spot once you find it. You shouldn’t go alone.”

“Ess can keep up with me just fine,” Kaldalis suggested, nodding along with Dalgaard’s logic. “And any of your folk with spears are more than welcome to join.”

Dalgaard wordlessly nodded to two of their companions. One was a red-scaled Talsar holding a long-bladed ranseur, and while the other held twin daggers, the human woman put them away to draw a spear from her inventory.

A part of Kaldalis wanted to object. These people had been his enemies not so long ago, and the idea of isolating himself with them - while separating his friends with the rest of Dalgaard’s group - gave him pause. But he wanted this to work out. He wanted Dalgaard to become a friend and ally. He couldn’t do that without extending trust.

“Let’s move fast,” Kaldalis said, nodding his head up at the gap in the branches where the monster had gone. “If you guys got ahead of us, there’s a chance that someone got ahead of you. That someone finds the monster first? They’re in serious danger.”

“Waiting on you, then,” Ess said, stepping up beside Kaldalis with her spear ready.

Dalgaard’s allies said nothing, but did move into position flanking Kaldalis and Ess. He supposed that was all he was going to get from the terse group. As he’d said, there was no time to waste, and so Kaldalis led with activating his Jump ability and launched himself into the treetops.

The others followed behind quickly, and even before Kaldalis reached the trees, Dalgaard gave a quick signal and the ground group began to move out at speed, making for the nearest break in the undergrowth to follow vaguely parallel to the trail.

Kaldalis was glad for the support. From here, he found that it was much easier to track the monster down. From the ground, the damage to the forest canopy was hard to identify as specifically caused by a giant floating ball with chandelier arms, but up close to the damage, he could easily confirm that this path had been created by the monster.

“I feel kinda silly not starting up here,” Kaldalis said as he took off along the trail, setting a quick pace, but remembering that his other friends on the ground would have to keep up.

“And I feel kinda silly not recommending to Reno that we all get spears,” Ess said, easily keeping up with him. “Though it did feel silly at the time to suggest, it sure would have been useful now.”

“Diversity is important,” Kaldalis said quickly, casting a glance over at the two spear-wielders Dalgaard had sent with them. “But we could just as easily be saying the same about bows after the thing showed up suspended twenty feet up in the air. Or sword and shield if there were some unavoidable attacks that we could catch with Shield Block.” He paused his leaping from branch to branch to shrug. “I’d rather we always have the one person ready for what has to be done than everyone being ready for just one eventuality.”

Kaldalis was suddenly glad he had paused.

Without the clatter of branches and brush flying past his ears, he heard something in the jungle ahead.

Before he knew what he was doing, he raised a hand to call a halt. The pair of Dalgaard’s friends immediately pulled up short at the gesture and went eerily silent. Ess was a quick study and scrambled to stop suddenly with nothing directly under her feet to halt her momentum. She managed to jam her spear into the nearest tree, and her relatively lightweight Finnian form made it a suitable self-made perch.

It was a less silent stop than the other two, but it was quiet enough.

“Help!” the voice came from somewhere ahead. “Somebody! Is anybody out there! We need some serious firepower!”

“We’re on our own!” a second man roared, audible rage distorting the vaguely familiar voice. “Heghlu’meH QaQ jajvam!”

“Oh shit,” Kaldalis snapped. “Of course. The man who knows the terrain better than anyone else would know exactly where to find it and how to get there.” He turned quickly towards Ess. “Find the others and get them to hurry up. Martok needs help, and if we ever want another favor from him, we need to be the ones to provide it.”

“And what are you going to do?” Ess asked.

Kaldalis thought it was a pretty silly question. He thought it ought to be obvious.

“Whatever I can,” he said, before launching himself up out of the treetops and into the sky, in the direction of the voices.