After the meeting, the Zaran diplomats departed first. As soon as they were gone, Garyung was showered with praise by the council. Ikzoz was the first to call Kaldalis’s assignment “unexpectedly shrewd” and as soon as Kaldalis heard that, he excused himself before he made an unpleasant outburst that could have destroyed the town’s power structure.

He wasn’t able to get out the door before Sardol said something about how this strategy was “brilliant” before he rolled his eyes. Kaldalis just couldn’t help himself. The only person who could see his childish reaction was Filomena, who responded with her usual shit-eating grin.

Knowing his luck, there would be consequences for not keeping his attitude under control, but for now that was a problem to be dealt with later.

He had to, apparently, start packing up and getting his affairs in order.

Reno and SeventyEight were the most immediate priority. He had to fill Balrim and Myrin in on this change of plans as well, but they were already headed to Nos Meles, so this would be better news for them than it would be for the newbies.

Finding the two wasn’t very hard. They were in the second place he looked. The town crafting stations were busy, but not so much that Kaldalis felt like they needed to go somewhere else to talk.

“Great,” Reno said as Kaldalis approached. “You’re back. Is everything okay?”

Kaldalis sighed heavily with a shrug. “For the town, yes. For our plans? Not so much.”

“What did you do?” Reno said in a disappointed tone as she crossed her arms over her chest.

“Why do you think it’s his fault?” SeventyEight asked.

“Thank you, Ess,” Kaldalis said. “I’m glad that someone can be reasonable about this.”

Reno clicked her tongue against her teeth. “Yeah, see, I can’t help but notice that you haven’t told me what you did.”

“It wasn’t my fault this time,” Kaldalis said as he ran his fingers through his hair. “For reasons that are too complicated to get into, I’ve been given a job I didn’t ask for that I said I didn’t want.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t sound familiar at all,” Reno scoffed.

Kaldalis glared at his best friend. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Reno just glared right back at him.

A standoff. Kaldalis could play this game.

He glared harder.

SeventyEight looked between them, a confused look on her face. “Wait. What’s familiar about it?”

“Right! Excellent,” Reno said, abandoning her glare. She reached over and put a hand on SeventyEight’s shoulder. “This is the perfect opportunity for us to discuss why this is exactly a classic-fucking-Kaldalis move.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kaldalis lied, even as he saw Reno’s trap closing around him.

“So there I was,” Reno said, waving a hand like the chorus setting up the scene in a play. “Minding my own business. Levelling Necro in this guild with a DPS spot secured in the raid team once I’m at cap. And this little message pops up! Kaldalis has joined the guild! And I think to myself, what a weird name! Who is this fucking guy?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Kaldalis gestured dismissively. “Cut the drama, we don’t have all day.”

“And so for the rest of the week,” Reno went on, ignoring Kaldalis, “this weird guy is being all friendly in guild chat. He tanks a few dungeons for people, and I see Slippy saying that the new guy is really good, and maybe he should get a raid spot. BenHill needs some crafting mats, and what do you know? The new guy is maxed out on fishing and has that shit up on the AH, and just takes it down - eating the AH fees - and gives it to him.”

Kaldalis grimaced at the oversimplification of the situation, but he could see that the story was drawing SeventyEight in.

Even if he tried to get in the way of Reno telling it now, he was just going to get shushed.

“So I don’t know what’s fucking happening. This random fucking Warrior asshole is just… Just being around.” Reno threw up her hands, exasperated. “Every time someone’s looking for help, he’s just there to give it. I needed a leg up to get through the 42-48 range before the good dungeons are back in the roulette pool, so he just invites me to a duo party, takes me to the 2.5 patch raid and solos the trash with Warrior’s hashtag-balanced bullshit to get me there in an afternoon instead of a three days.”

SeventyEight laughed. “I don’t understand why you’re upset about this. It sounds like this was all good things.”

“Because it got him made a guild officer within two fucking weeks of joining the guild!” Reno snapped.

“Ten days,” Kaldalis said. “If you want to be precise. Joined January twenty-sixth, promoted February fifth.”

“Yeah!” Reno said, stabbing an accusatory finger at him. “And here we are, with your dumb ass being made an officer again because you’re too fucking helpful!”

Kaldalis held up a hand to halt her. “Technically, I’m an envoy. Not an officer.” He turned to SeventyEight. “I’m going to be acting as Cotanaku’s acting authority over the support we’re giving the new town in Nos Meles.”

Reno groaned in frustration. “Oh, good. So not only did you get made officer, but it comes with a road trip! Great. This is perfectly fair and not at all classic fucking Kaldalis.”

“I didn’t ask for this!” Kaldalis said with more attitude than he meant. “I told him not to give me the position! I told him that I had other shit to do with my time, but Garyung is a fucking dumbass and couldn’t come up with a Plan B.”

SeventyEight stepped between them before they could return to their glaring match. “Okay, okay. This is fine. We can work with this. We just all have to relocate to the new town. As long as there are quests there, we should be fine, right?”

Kaldalis took a deep breath and nodded. “Considering the whole operation is to build a new town there,” he said, “there are going to be quests. It’s just a matter of if they’re newbie-friendly or not. If Nos Meles is the next area, it might be higher level than the jungle around Cotanaku.”

“Well then,” Reno said, reaching up to lean on Kaldalis’s shoulder, “I guess it falls to the power leveler to protect us.”

“Of course it does,” Kaldalis grumbled. “Well, if you’re both amenable to it, I don’t know the timeline I have on this, so we should get moving. I guess.”

There were no complaints, shockingly, and so they made their way down to the docks. To make the journey to Nos Meles.

The large ship that had been moored on the pier was already gone, but it was visible on the horizon, a small dot anchored off the coast just barely within sight of Cotanaku. In its place, though, were about a half-dozen longboats lined up against the pier. Several of them were being loaded up with goods, and one of the sailors present was quick to flag the trio down.

“On the way to Panbu?” the man asked.

“Uh,” Kaldalis blinked. He pointed to the horizon where he could see the tiny shape of the distant ship. “Panbu?”

“Yeah, yeah,” the sailor said with a laugh. “Panbu is the new Zaran camp.”

“Then yes, thank you,” Kaldalis said. “We can ride with the supplies, right?”

“Oh yeah, of course,” the sailor said. “Sardol arranged the supplies, but Garyung has been sending folk along with them since the ship left.”

“On we go, then,” Kaldalis said, gesturing for his friends to board the longboat ahead of him.

Once the boat was loaded - including a lot of milled lumber - they were on their way up the coast. It was a smaller craft, and rested very low on the water from its load, but it cut through the water with surprising speed. There were six sailors on the craft, trading shifts of four paddling at a time.

“How long is the trip?” Kaldalis asked.

“About seventy minutes,” one of the sailors said. “Long enough to be annoying, but quick enough that we can make the trip a bunch of times a day.”

“That’s a hell of a commute,” Kaldalis said with a grimace. “I really hope we can make the Nos Meles side of the island work. It’s going to be really iffy to be on the Cotanaku side if the Zaran diplomats need me.”

“We all have to make compromises,” SeventyEight said, sitting on the edge of the boat and running her hand along the surface of the water. “If we have to suffer a bit so that you can meet your obligations, we’ll just have to do that.”

“Thanks,” Kaldalis said, giving her a smile. He turned to look at Reno. “I’m sorry about this mess. I got really hosed on this one.”

“Look. I tease you, right?” Reno said, grimacing at the water from her perch in the exact center of the boat. “But I know you didn’t do this on purpose. I’m pissed about it, but I get it that you’re not the asshole here.”

“Yeah, I know,” Kaldalis said with a laugh. “I promise you’ll be on my squad when I settle on the most acceptable method of petty revenge against Garyung.”

SeventyEight smiled, looking around. “I like the boat trip. It’s kinda nice.”

“Yeah, absolutely,” Kaldalis agreed, leaning over the edge to watch the water zooming past beneath them. “This beats the hell out of any loading screen I’ve ever seen. Annoyingly realistic travel time or not, it goes a long way to making the world feel large.”

Reno grumbled something inaudible at that, but he chose to ignore it.

He could tell from the way she was sitting that she wasn’t enjoying the boat ride.

Almost exactly seventy minutes from the time they left Cotanaku, the town of Panbu came into view. It looked startlingly familiar.

Panbu looked just like the encampment had on the first day they’d arrived. Piles of materials were gathered - and still being unloaded from longboats - but otherwise it was near-identical. The start of a guard tower was a growing frame of wood on the side of the camp closer to the jungle, and the place was scattered with tents in various stages of assembly.

Kaldalis recognized a handful of people around the encampment, but one group stood out to them. They were the architects who had built the encampment walls - and the killbox - for Cotanaku. The architects were poking around the outer edge of the camp’s perimeter, no doubt planning the defenses they would build.

Reno made a sound that was definitely not a yelp as the longboat hit the sand and slid up onto the beach, where there were already a handful of sailors ready and waiting to start unloading the supplies. The trio did their best to get off the boat and clear of the work without spending too much time in the way.

“Alright then,” Kaldalis said, “Do you want to head into town to find quests, or do you want to head for the jungle to see what we’re up against?”

“Kaldalis!” a familiar - and aggravated voice barked at him from the center of the camp.

With a grimace, he turned towards them. He didn’t know how the Zaran diplomats beat him here, since they’d all been at the same meeting not long ago, but they seemed visibly aggravated with his failure to match their pace.

“Uh,” Kaldalis turned back to Reno and SeventyEight. “Would you two excuse me for a moment? Again?”

Reno only glared.