Despite Onirioago’s brief shouting, the group was able to drag her to Ikzoz’s tent without incident. Bangen was there talking to Ikzoz already, who seemed positively stunned by what he heard.

Then again, if he was stunned by Bangen’s testimony, Kaldalis didn’t know if there was a word for his reaction when they brought Onirioago to him.

“How?” was the only word he managed to get out.

“Perfidy!” Myrin said cheerfully.

“Perfidy is how we got the confession,” Kaldalis said, correcting her. “Actually catching her required the power of friendship.”

Onirioago grimaced and fixed Ikzoz with a glare. “You don’t actually believe this, do you?” she asked.

“I see no reason to doubt Bangen’s testimony,” Ikzoz said, though he was visibly unwilling to meet her eyes. “She has ever been a trustworthy member of my team. I’m afraid I must take her words as seriously as I take this accusation.”

“This is absurd,” Onirioago snapped. “I will not stand by and allow this mutiny to continue. I demand that you have me untied at once.”

“I shouldn’t need to tell you why I can’t do that,” Ikzoz said.

“Can’t, or won’t?” Myrin asked.

“Either,” Balrim said.

“Hush,” Kaldalis hissed. “This is not the time for jokes.”

“Think critically, Ikzoz,” she hissed, ignoring the trio of adventurers. She kept her eyes fixed on the talsar’s averted gaze. “That’s what you’re best at, isn’t it? You can’t make this punishment stick. Not without the support of the League. This accusation is false, and keeping this charade going is doing nothing but making me your enemy once I’m free of whatever temporary red tape you can tie around me. And if it was true, I would make you my first victim once I’m free again.”

“If you had any fucking fish,” Kaldalis said. “By the way, I lied to you about the spinner lures. Your mob of idiots is out there using the wrong bait.”

Onirioago whirled on Kaldalis, with murder plain in her eyes. Even though she was still tightly bound, he flinched as if she was about to strike him.

“If you’re going to so carefully dance around pretending about your innocence,” Ikzoz said dryly, “then perhaps you should measure your reactions more carefully.”

She turned back to the talsar, and he flinched as well.

Kaldalis was glad it wasn’t just him.

“I’m going to call the council to discuss what should be done,” Ikzoz said at last. “Given the hour, I’m sure this will be a mess, but I’m confident that they will see the importance of a rapid response.”

“Do you need our help?” Balrim asked.

“Yes. But what I need is for you to keep doing what you’re doing. Hold on to her. If she escapes, there’s no telling what havoc she could wreak.”

“We’ll wait here, then,” Kaldalis said with a firm nod.

Ikzoz looked around the tents. “Not a good idea. Bring her to the meeting hall. It should be easier to hold her in a wooden room than a canvas tent.”

As soon as the research leader left, Kaldalis started to lead the way towards the meeting hall at the middle of town. Onirioago resisted being dragged around, but only lightly. She only fought enough to make sure they were really paying attention, not enough that they could really complain.

They got there ahead of any of the council members, and Kaldalis felt a little more confident in their ability to keep her contained once they were inside. Kaldalis was still tied to her, and so he walked her to the back of the room, to the far side of the door. Myrin stuck by the door with her weapon out, and Balrim positioned himself artfully between Onirioago and Bangen. For her part, Bangen kept a healthy distance away from the expedition leader, and despite her normally meek demeanor, she didn’t look visibly shaken, even under Onirioago’s baleful gaze.

“You think this is the end?” Onirioago demanded. “I wasn’t lying. They can’t make this stick. Deacon tetra or no, you’ve made a powerful enemy today.”

“You’re the one who made powerful enemies,” Myrin said from the door, her voice sharp in a way Kaldalis had only heard on the rare occasion where she had scolded him. “The way you treat the people around you. The way you looked at us. The way you put power ahead of anything else. I’d be shocked if your actual lackeys won’t fall over themselves to betray you. Have you treated any of them with kindness? Respect? Basic decency? Or are you out bossing them around, threatening them with retribution, and eye-banging them at every opportunity?”

“Is that what you think?” Onirioago strained against her bonds, forcing Kaldalis to pull back on her lead to keep her from charging across the room at Myrin. “Leadership necessitates the carrot and the stick. Don’t let your perceptions be colored by which I determined was the best tool for you. You think I don’t know when to use the carrot?”

“Is the carrot ever anything besides your tits?” Myrin asked with a smirk. “Or is there an ass man on the payroll, too?”

Onirioago lunged at her.

Kaldalis wasn’t sure how it happened, but he found himself hurtling backwards. The rope around her arms unravelled, freeing her from the lead tethering her to him.

Onirioago was suddenly loose in the room.

Myrin reacted admirably, raising her sword and putting her body in front of the door.

Balrim, however, dropped the ball just as badly as Kaldalis had. He moved to get between Onirioago and Myrin. The expedition leader’s initial burst of speed was towards the door, but she changed direction as soon as Balrim moved. She deftly rolled over the top of the meeting table in the middle of the room, and when she got to the other side, her hands were untied.

Before Kaldalis could even get back to his feet, Onirioago had pounced on Bangen. Despite them both being DPS classes, Onirioago got her arms around the purple-hued vathon, holding her hostage between herself and the adventurers. Her sword appeared in hand, and she held it to Bangen’s throat.

“There are two ways this ends,” Onirioago snapped. “I’m getting out of this room in the next thirty seconds. Either you clear the way to the door and I leave alone, or her and I leave together as corpses.”

Kaldalis felt a sudden paralysis come over him. He was willing to put a lot of things aside for the sake of bringing her down. Her planned crime was the act of an unforgivable monster. He’d put himself under the knife in a heartbeat to stop her. With someone else’s life on the line, his feelings were quite a bit more malleable.

“Don’t do this,” Kaldalis said. “You said it yourself, they can’t make this stick. You would choose death?”

“I would choose my own fate, yes,” Onirioago said. “A choice denied to many, I would-”

And that was when Kaldalis’s opinion of Bangen took a sharp turn.

The reddish-purple vathon twisted in Onirioago’s grip with a suddenness that shocked Kaldalis almost as much as it obviously shocked Onirioago. There was a sharp crack, like that of wood on wood, as Bangen slammed her head forward.

Kaldalis felt the impact reverberate through the room. They’d struck horn-to-horn, and Kaldalis felt a pang of sympathy pain in his own horns. Despite their fearsome appearance, they were very sensitive.

Both women fell to the ground, clutching at their heads in agony.

“Get her! Get her!” Myrin barked, diving forward. “More rope, more rope!”

The trio of adventurers were on her in a flash. Balrim dragged Bangen clear of the expedition leader’s flailing as Myrin and Kaldalis wrestled her around and re-tied her bonds. Myrin bound her hands behind her back this time, where Kaldalis could see them from his position at her back, with a considerably shorter lead.

“That was brave of you,” Kaldalis said once Bangen recovered her wits. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“My pop always told me that we were born with these horns to use them,” she said, still rubbing the spot where they met her scalp. “You just have to know how.”

“That looked like it really hurt, though,” Balrim said. “How do you use your horns when it knocks you out, too?”

“My pop called it the gift of the old tribes,” Bangen said with a smile. “But really it’s just simple evolution. We developed these horns as ornamentations originally, which is why they’re so sensitive. They’re basically secondary sex characteristics, never intended for combat. The sensitivity is what drove the proto-vathon people to form tribal groups before even the invention of language or basic tools.” She tapped her horns. “Every vathon, no matter how weak in physique or stats, is an equal to any other vathon, one-for-one.”

“The winning team,” Kaldalis said, following the logic, “is the one with the most friends. Whoever’s still on their feet after all the heads have been butted cleans up the mess.”

Bangen nodded with a smile. “I knew it would work because I had more friends than she did.”

“Still,” Balrim said, “it was very brave of you. If she’d been a little faster she might have been able to kill you before you could strike.”

“I knew you all would help me,” was all she said.

Kaldalis wasn’t entirely sure how they would have saved her if Onirioago had opened her throat, but he didn’t have a perfect understanding of how damage worked in this world. Wouldn’t Onirioago have only dealt normal damage, rather than a killshot? Then again, without knowing their respective levels, there was a chance it may have been a oneshot regardless.

With Onirioago contained again - and all of them on their guard for her to try and loosen her knot again - it was only a few tense minutes until the council started to trickle in.

Despite the unusual arrangement of three adventurers all but sitting on top of the expedition leader, none of them seemed willing to make eye contact. They filed in one by one, and took their seats as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening.

“You all know why you’re here,” Ikzoz said when he came in with the final member of the council - Sardol - and started towards his seat. “No matter the hour, we can’t shirk our duty. Not when we’re dealing with accusations as severe as these.”

He settled down in his seat, next to the empty chair at the head of the table - where Onirioago would sit if she weren’t being held captive in the corner of the room. “Let us begin.”