Over an hour later, Kaldalis was finally able to extract himself from Cotanaku’s research headquarters.

Kaldalis had always liked Bangen. She was usually very calm and easy to get along with. But it didn’t take long to learn that that was only one part of her personality. As soon as he was the primary source for the biggest research find since they arrived on the island, all that easygoing attitude melted away. He went from the provider or research notes to the notes themselves, and Kaldalis found himself feeling a stab of sympathetic pity for all of the records he’d provided to her.

Bangen’s questioning felt like a police interrogation. She kept talking back over and over the same parts of his story, drawing out every detail. Kaldalis had intended to keep some aspects of the story to himself, since they would have required him to reveal more details about the nature of Monsoon’s interest in this world, but Bangen seemed to sense those gaps in the story, and just kept chipping away with pointed questions until he left nothing out.

By the end of it, Bangen didn’t just know the full story of the visit to the Lataxinans and nearly every word they’d said, but she also knew about the streams, Monsoon’s control over the world, and even the guide, Grent, asking Kaldalis to turn his stream off for privacy when he was being intimate with Heluna. He was a little embarrassed, but the normally meek Bangen was in full researcher mode, and there was no judgment or gossip in her expression as she diligently noted the details.

The stacks of notes before Bangen grew taller and wider as they went. She was clearly dividing the information into different piles for later filing, and Kaldalis hoped that she knew that the information about Monsoon and the systems of the world needed to be kept under wraps. He tried not to think about what would happen if that information got back to the Contender.

Considering that nothing had come from Onirioago’s courtroom revelation, though, Kaldalis thought he could trust Bangen. Or, at least, he could trust the Baimer bureaucracy to continue to move as slowly as possible to respond to anything.

When he was finally allowed to leave the research center, though, Kaldalis was slightly chagrined to find that Bangen wasn’t quite done with him yet. Before he could get his bearings once he was out on the dirt streets of Cotanaku again, she burst out of the research building and nearly careened into his back.

“Kal, can I have a moment, please?” she asked breathlessly. Though the official tone was gone from her voice, Kaldalis still felt the tug of anxiety that her probing questions had imprinted upon him.

“What do you need?” Kaldalis asked, trying not to sound as tired as he felt.

“Ikzoz was going to drop some research files off with Garyung, but he hasn’t seen him since the meeting,” Bangen said, waving a thick red folder of documents at him. “He asked me to ask you where we could find him.”

“I don’t exactly have a leash on him,” Kaldalis said, reaching for the folder, “but I can take those and deliver them when I see him next.”

“No good,” Bangen said, pulling the folder back to her chest protectively. “These are sensitive documents. And urgent, too. I need to get them to him right away, and I can’t let them leave official hands on the way there.”

Kaldalis thought it was pretty funny that his status as a part of Garyung’s government only went as far as to be inconvenient, and didn’t apply at all when it would be helpful.

“I’ll help you look, then,” Kaldalis offered. “Though I’m not sure how I’m going to find him when Ikzoz couldn’t.”

At his acceptance, there was a gentle dinging sound, and a message popped up on the right side of his UI.

Have You Seen This Man?

Help Bangen find the missing leader of Cotanaku. (0/1)

Kaldalis didn’t need to expand the quest text for details, because unlike some people, he paid attention to the in-game dialogue. He immediately got his hopes up as soon as he saw the message, thinking that a quest marker would trivialize the pursuit, but unfortunately, the quest indicated only that Garyung must be somewhere on the island. Not helpful.

Kaldalis did his best to search the usual spots for Garyung. With Bangen in tow, he went to the town hall building and searched it from top to bottom.

The Bhogad leader wasn’t anywhere in the building.

Not in his office, not meeting with any of the other councilors, and not in the meeting room.

No one seemed to know where to find him, either.

“That’s not a good sign,” Kaldalis said as they stepped back out of the town hall. “Considering how he’s always complaining about being all but chained to his desk, if he’s not here now, there has to be a really good reason.”

“So what do we do?” Bangen asked, looking around anxiously.

“I guess the only thing we can do,” Kaldalis said, his eyes seeking out the nearest town guard, “investigate.”

The guard nearest to the town hall had, luckily, seen Garyung leaving the building about forty minutes earlier. He was strangely tight-lipped about what he’d seen, but pointed them in a direction at least. It was towards the center of town, and so Kaldalis led the way, looking for anybody he knew who could tell him more.

He didn’t meet any fellow players who could tell him anything. He recognized one of Dalgaard’s crew and flagged her down to ask, but she hadn’t been paying attention to the flurry of activity around her.

Everyone had been engaged with questing to get the repairs underway in the aftermath of the siege.

The only people Kaldalis could find who could reliably tell him anything were those who remained stationary and had gone out of their way to keep an eye on the comings and goings around them. That narrowed it down almost exclusively to the town guards.

Only a few of the guards had seen Garyung pass by, and those that had were reluctant to tell Kaldalis anything. He wanted to see if he could get Bangen to grill them the way she’d questioned him, but now that the topic wasn’t research-related, all the fire had gone out of her.

Kaldalis was going to have to handle this.

The trail went north, towards the jungle-side gate. Kaldalis found that ominous, but it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that he had official business here. The area had a lot of questgivers and merchants. He might have official business with the questgivers - especially to try and encourage adventurers to distribute to the other towns - or he may have gotten enough experience points from the siege to level up, prompting him to upgrade his gear.

Unfortunately, that seemed to not be the case. Neither Sivima nor Misael had seen him. There were other purveyors of weapons and charms in Cotanaku, but Kaldalis was reasonably sure they were the best and most established. If Garyung didn’t go to them, then he likely had come for something else. But none of the quest givers had seen him either. Not even the Suyon woman who oversaw the dungeon quests.

Kaldalis didn’t want to ask the next person he approached. He didn’t want to ask because he suspected they would have an answer for him, and he feared what that answer would be.

But in the absence of any other option, Kaldalis led Bangen towards the jungle-side gate. Stationary on either side of the killbox there were guards watching the jungle for danger. Kaldalis approached one of them.

“I’m going to ask you a question,” Kaldalis said to the guard. He held up a hand before they could respond. “And you’re going to tell me the answer is no. Please just say no when I ask you this: have you seen Garyung come through here?”

“Sir, um,” the guard stammered for a second. She reached up and sheepishly scratched at the base of her Vathon horns. “Did you want me to lie to you, sir?”

Kaldalis winced. That wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

“How long ago?” he asked.

“Maybe twenty minutes ago?” she said. Now she winced. “I’m… I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to say here, sir.”

“Why?” Kaldalis asked. All of the other guards had seemed tight-lipped as well. Now that things were obviously crossing into the territory of the worst possible problem, he couldn’t ignore it anymore. “What’s wrong?”

The guard looked across the gate, to where the next nearest guard was stationed. Her lips went into a thin pensive line for a moment before she finally answered.

“I shouldn’t say anything,” she said at last. “I don’t know what the consequences will be if I do. But I know that I owe you my life, sir. If it wasn’t for your order for us to protect the town’s interior instead of manning the walls, me and Barclay and Selby… We’d have died in the sieges. If I lose everything for saying this, I’ll know I’m at least alive to lose it, and I owe that life to you.”

“The Contender,” Kaldalis guessed, feeling the puzzle piece fall into place.

The guard nodded. “Yes, sir.” She pointed towards the jungle. “They went out there together.” Her enunciation changed subtly, every word becoming more clipped and higher-pitched. “It seemed perfectly innocent, though. Probably no need for further investigation.” As she said it, her eyes cut to the left, out towards the jungle again.

Kaldalis pursed his lips. He could tell she was lying. But more than that, he could tell she wanted him to know that she was lying. Whatever she wasn’t saying was so severe and damning that even her gratefulness for her very life wasn’t enough for her to openly put words to it.

“Thanks,” Kaldalis said. “And what was your name? So that I can check in on you later to make sure you don’t get punished for saying literally nothing to me at all.”

“Carington, sir,” the guard said. She looked back and forth between Kaldalis and Bangen with visible anxiety.

“We’ll continue this search on our own,” Kaldalis said to Bangen. “It looks like we’ll get no help here in town, so I guess we should search the jungle next.”

Bangen seemed visibly confused, but despite her social awkwardness, she seemed to grasp that it was best to just go along with what Kaldalis was saying.

They didn’t get all the way to the treeline before Kaldalis saw what the guard wanted him to find. In this high-traffic area outside the gate - especially in the aftermath of the siege - it was hard to pick out signs of any individual activity. But there were two things that definitely weren’t signs of the Infernal Horde.

First there was a pair of shallow trenches. Just a few inches wide and about a foot and a half apart, it wasn’t hard to tell what they were. Kaldalis stood square in front of them and imagined Garyung standing before him. They were drag marks, placed roughly where Garyung’s feet would be.

The second thing was a little smear of red right next to where the marks began.

“Son of a bitch,” Kaldalis cursed.