Getting out of the town hall was easy. Garyung’s kidnapping was the first time there’d been a serious security issue, and so there were just a few token guards in the building. Kaldalis basically just walked from Garyung’s office to the front door without any trouble.

Of course…there were guards standing right outside the door.

“Well,” he said, looking back and forth between them. “This is awkward.”

The one on the left was a heavily muscled Talsar, who narrowed his slit-pupiled eyes at Kaldalis. The one on the right was a Human man, though was no less bulky, with broad shoulders and an almost comically square jaw.

“I concur,” the Talsar said, in a voice that was soft and professional, incongruous with his thick build. “This is quite a moral pickle.”

“We’re supposed to arrest him,” the Human said, in a tone of voice that was much more in line with his appearance. He sounded exactly as dense as he looked. “Seems simple to me, right?”

“Ah, so it would seem,” the Talsar replied, raising a hand as if to stop the Human, even though he hadn’t moved. “But consider the course of the past few days. This is Kaldalis, the hero of Cotanaku. Would we be standing here if not for him?”

“Yes?” the guard guessed. “This is where we were assigned today. And he didn’t assign us here.”

“Ah, but where were we assigned yesterday?” the Talsar pressed, speaking slowly and patiently - still at odds with his over muscled physique.

“The wall,” the human said, pointing southwards. “On the gate there.”

“What happened next?”

“The siege?” the Human said, with the rising inflection of a question. He then paused and scratched at his chin. “Oh. I see what you’re saying. We’d be dead if he didn’t show up and start running the Horde around in the ocean, right?”

“Right,” the Talsar agreed. “So if he’d let us die, we wouldn’t be here to arrest him. Does it seem right to you to punish the man for his choice to preserve our lives?”

Kaldalis felt a faint flicker of hope. He’d gotten a little more information out of the gate guard Carington because of his handling of the sieges. He’d put his ass on the line to save all the lives he could, including those of Cotanaku’s town guards. Perhaps he could get a little bit of leeway here.

“This does seem to be a pretty big philosophical question,” Kaldalis ventured. “Perhaps I could leave you two to discuss it while I go and fetch my friends?”

“That seems fair to me,” the Talsar said. “We could be here a while, though. Right, Jordan?”

The Human man seemed to have caught up with his slightly wiser companion. “Oh yeah, I’m real slow with these quandaries too. Don’t rush back if you’re busy.”

“Thanks,” Kaldalis said.

He almost bolted away, but some part of his mind made him stop and offer his hand, shaking hands with the two guards before running off to the center of town. Maybe endearing himself to them a little more with a show of politeness could buy him a few more seconds if he ran into them again before this was resolved.

All around him, the town was eerily silent. Word of the curfew must have spread quickly, as he was the only one on the streets. Here and there he saw ordinary townsfolk scuttling through the streets, but they looked frightened and furtive. Even though they were exempt from the curfew, the vibe of the town had become very foreboding without the boisterous adventurers out and about.

Kaldalis had thought that it would be difficult to find Balrim and Myrin if the town was in chaos, but with the curfew in effect, there was really only one place to go.

When he reached the part of town that held the adventurer’s quarters, there was a little more sound. Somewhere nearby, he could hear indistinct shouting - though he couldn’t tell if it was a protest far away, or people nearer at hand engaged in more private shouting matches, muffled by the walls of their quarters.

Balrim and Myrin’s quarters were right next door to each other. Myrin’s was still the large tent that everyone had started with, while Balrim’s had been slightly upgraded to a wooden structure with a little more space.

If Kaldalis had to guess, that’s where he would find them.

“Shit, Kal,” Balrim said when he answered the door. “Get inside. You don’t want to get arrested, do you?”

“We can’t just hole up and wait this out,” Kaldalis said firmly. “The Contender has Garyung. He’s taken control of the town, and now I’m public enemy number one.”

His friends exchanged a look, and Balrim flicked Myrin a crescent. “No idea how you guessed that.”

“Genre savvy,” she said with a grin.” As soon as the coin was away, she drew her greatsword with a dramatic flourish. “So, what’s the plan?”

Kaldalis looked at the others assembled. Reno, Ess, Courbois, and Dalgaard were here, too. Kaldalis guessed that they’d been talking about the raid when the curfew hit.

“Pretty simple,” Kaldalis said. “We hunt down the Contender and pay back whatever he’s done to Garyung, with a little extra for all the shit he’s put us through.”

“Hell yeah!” Myrin said, pushing Balrim out of the way to join Kaldalis outside.

Reno and Ess quickly moved to join them, but Balrim and Dalgaard had the same thin-lipped look of concern. Kaldalis was going to need all the help he could get on this venture - especially that of his healers - so he couldn’t let their doubts stand.

“I talked to Brother Gnider, and he says the Contender has gone rogue,” Kaldalis explained quickly. “At a guess, whatever we do to him will pale in comparison to what the church will do when we send him back to Baimer.”

That seemed to satisfy Balrim, but Dalgaard was still visibly hesitant. Kaldalis wasn’t sure why, or what to do to put their fears to rest. But there wasn’t time for that. He would have to have a talk with them later to help understand what they needed.

Kaldalis took the lead, heading towards the jungle-side gate by the most direct route. As they went, he explained what had happened as quickly as he could. Dalgaard had given them the important details of the outcome of the meeting, so that they could prepare for the raid, and now Kaldalis provided the context of that decision. He glossed over Bangen’s questioning - they knew about the Lataxinans already - and explained what had happened after. The trail outside of town, the meetup with the council, and then the source of the curfew and his new arrest warrant.

“That explains those guys who ran up to tell us to go to the town hall,” Myrin said. “Sorry we couldn’t make it. The curfew hit before we got there and we got ushered away.”

“It’s probably better that you didn’t,” Kaldalis admitted. “I don’t know if it would have been as easy for all of us to escape together as it was for just me to slip through.”

“I’m surprised we’ve all gotten this far breaking curfew at all,” Dalgaard added glumly. “We haven’t been set upon by a mob of guards already.”

“There must have been more to the Contender’s orders,” Kaldalis said. “Something that’s keeping them busy.”

“Or maybe nothing more at all,” Balrim said, lowering his voice as he grabbed Kaldalis’s shoulder to stop him from rounding the next corner.

Kaldalis’s instincts wanted to shrug off the grab to keep moving. They were in a hurry, after all. But he respected Balrim’s instincts and heeded the warning instead.

Peering more carefully around the next corner into the main thoroughfare that would take them to the jungle-side gate, he saw what Balrim had been afraid of.

Balrim must have heard them before Kaldalis had. It was a group of around twenty people. Twelve guards were herding a small group of manacled adventurers in the direction of the sheriff’s office, presumably to shove them into one of the cells for breaking curfew.

“We didn’t have any warning,” one of the adventurers shouted, “how could we obey a curfew we didn’t know about?”

“We just got back from the jungle,” another added, “you know, since we were out adventuring? Because we’re adventurers? The town needs repairs and it’s not going to happen if we can’t get these materials back to the builders who need them!”

Most of the guards paid no heed to the complaints and objections. The one at the head of the group was the only one to make a response.

“Orders are orders,” he said. “It’s not our job to make exceptions.”

The captured adventurers were mostly familiar faces. Among them were two he recognized as members of Dalgaard’s crew, Kaldalis’s fishing friend Aurigeant, and Martok, the cartographer. Kaldalis’s first instinct was to let the group pass and then sneak out of town, but he couldn’t let this opportunity pass. Not only were they friends and allies, but he was going to need all the help he could get when it came time to fight the Contender’s fanatical forces.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got this under control,” Kaldalis said, stepping out into the street in front of the group of guards.