As the fight went on, Kaldalis got a solid grasp on how these new Infernal Horde enemies worked. Like the Malum, their attacks came in patterned sequences, lashing out with each fist one at a time until he ducked out of range or until a strike’s raw power launched him clear of the next blow. Their attacks were blindingly fast, and so managing them was a challenge - especially with so many enemies on him - but their slow movement speed gave him the ability to get some distance and regroup whenever necessary.

But Kaldalis couldn’t simply run around in circles and avoid them forever. The way they lunged to attack and naturally adjusted their positioning relative to each other as they moved around meant that running wildly around caused them to space out. It created a scattered field of giant monsters that he was unable to traverse unscathed without his Jump cooldown. Kaldalis found it was more efficient - and safer - to maneuver to try and keep them in one place, dancing in and out of their attack range, and circling to stop them from making a concave formation that could risk encircling him.

A few minutes after the first monster was sent running, Courbois returned with it, leading it back towards the damage dealers. There was a brief period of confusion among them when she arrived, and Kaldalis knew they couldn’t afford the waffling, given how many enemies were present.

“Focus on the one Courbois has!” Kaldalis shouted. “We need the kills to thin their numbers!”

He didn’t know why the group was listening to him, but as soon as he said it, the group leapt into action.

The best guess Kaldalis had was that he was the only one acting with any authority. He was in the midst of a group of gamers desperate for a raid leader, and he was shotcalling and backing it up with reason.

On second thought, he realized why they were following his directions. It was obvious.

He was the one saddled with the responsibility. If everything fell apart, following his directions meant they could all point at him and say that he was the one who fucked up. That just meant he had to keep from fucking up, with one eye on the pack of monsters menacing him, and another on the whole battlefield to assess the fight for needed changes.

Kaldalis was the fall guy, which meant they needed to not fall.

As the fight went on, though, it seemed they had things under control. Balrim added more adventurers to the party as they filtered out of the camp - including Reno and SeventyEight - and between Kaldalis and Martok, the handful more monsters that emerged from the treeline got picked up and handled while Courbois and the idiot in black platemail held the individuals that were acting as kill targets.

It didn’t take long before the first monster fell.

Courbois knew what she was doing, and Kaldalis’s order to focus it down meant that everyone converged. As the four-armed humanoid staggered and fell, Kaldalis was informed that it was called a Xorn, and that he received a sheaf of research notes for it.

The group moved back to the enemy that the man in black armor was tanking, so Kaldalis focused on his job holding the bulk of the forces while they had things well in hand. He didn’t worry about pushing damage out onto his foes, as his job was just to keep them from running rampant while the rest of the group kept up with the task at hand.

Kaldalis was afraid it would take forever to get the second monster to break and flee, but things seemed to be getting easier.

The group of adventurers whaling away on the kill target were growing as time went on. Kaldalis suspected that there were more tanks among them that he could use to take some of the pressure off himself, but he didn’t recognize any of them, and so he was unable to call them out.

But as the group grew, so too did the damage output. The next Xorn ran away and the man in black armor ran over to Kaldalis’s tight knot of foes to peel one out and lead it into the woodchipper, while Courbois gave chase to the runner.

That was when Kaldalis saw that Balrim wasn’t the only one standing in the gate. There were a small group of people there not joining the fight. It took a moment’s irritation for him to realize that they were the encampment’s crafting NPCs and other noncombatants. Among them were the council members, standing a bit away from the rest - or most of them, at least. Captain Kensah was missing, but from her bloodthirsty nature he guessed she was among the combatants.

“Balrim,” Kaldalis called over to the Talsar. Despite his assignment to manage the party interface, he was still contributing to the battle with the occasional arrow. He lowered his bow as he looked to Kaldalis. “Explain what happened,” he shouted across the battlefield, doing his best to gesture towards Cerh and the other Zaran diplomats, “and let them know I’ll follow up with them as soon as this is done!”

“You got it,” Balrim called back, making his way towards the group as he produced a potion and chucked it across the field towards the man in black armor.

Kaldalis took a fist to the gut for his split focus, but the two hundred and thirty-two total damage was worth getting in the early explanation for what was going on. He wanted them to be presented with the facts of the situation - including his partial blame in this attack - while he was heroically directing the battle against vase-faced four-armed monsters that bled magic floaty sand.

To his shock, his Zaran Approval Rating bar started to climb. He wanted to look over and try to determine what Balrim was saying, but the monsters were furiously demanding his attention now, forcing him to dodge, dip, dive, duck, and dodge.

Despite the pressure put on him to keep things under control, things entered a familiar cycle at that point. Courbois returned with the Xorn that had fled in tow right behind her, and he called for the group to switch targets to finish it off before returning to the other monster. Another sheaf of notes, another chunk of experience points, and one fewer enemy for the camp to fear.

The next Xorn went running, the idiot in black armor picked the next off of him, and a few minutes later Courbois brought it back to be finished off.

It took an agonizing amount of time to methodically chew through the Infernal Horde’s numbers. With the monsters’ mid-fight chase with Courbois, the time from a Xorn being peeled off of his pack to being felled was several minutes. But their control of the situation and the raw number of adventurers present minimized their risk. Their damage numbers overcame the stat advantage the Infernal Horde had over other monsters, and there were so many healers that whenever a tank was struck, there were a half-dozen potions on the way before they could even say ‘ouch.’

It felt like hours wore away as the fight went on, even if realistically it was probably only twenty to thirty minutes. But eventually the mob Kaldalis was dancing around broke and ran.

The quest on the right side of his vision flashed and completed.

It signified that the raid was repelled.

“What’s the plan?” Courbois asked, looking to Kaldalis as her quarry disappeared into the treeline. “Are we chasing?”

Kaldalis stared at the crowd of people - nearly the entire population of the camp - and was shocked and terrified to see every eye on him. They were all looking to him for directions, presumably because Courbois had spoken first and seemed to defer to him.

Everyone was just following her lead.

“The raid is over,” Kaldalis said, raising his voice to address the whole crowd. “Back to your business. I won’t have the camp emptied to pick a fight we don’t need. Keep alert and ready for action for an hour or two, in case they come back, but this was a win. Let’s take it and make ready for the next one.” He gestured out towards the forest. “Make no mistake, this isn’t over, but giving chase won’t end it any faster. What will end it faster is pulling together just like this when we need to. Thanks, everyone, for being here and getting it done!”

There was a little cheer at that, and he felt a little surge of satisfaction from a job well done. He wasn’t one for public speaking, but it had been simple enough to call the day over and give everyone a well-deserved pat on the back for it.

The surge of satisfaction redoubled when he saw his approval bar with the Zaran diplomats take another healthy little bump. That reminded him of how important it was to follow-up on whatever Balrim had told them. Without hesitating, he located the group of them and made eye contact with Cerh before heading towards them.

“Let me start by apologizing,” Kaldalis said once he was close enough to not need to shout. “This attack wasn’t my intent, but I won’t shirk responsibility for it.”

“What?” Cerh asked, blinking his slit-pupiled eyes with obvious confusion.

Behind him, Balrim was making a frantic series of gestures that conveyed that he hadn’t told them what Kaldalis had just admitted to.

With great chagrin, he realized it was too late now. Opening the conversation with “I won’t shirk responsibility” demanded that he followed through on it.

“I’m unsure what Balrim told you,” Kaldalis said, trying not to grit his teeth, “but we’ve uncovered the location of the dungeon in this region. While we don’t know for certain, I believe that locating it ahead of schedule may have triggered this attack early in turn.”

“I should have known,” Captain Kensah snapped. Kaldalis turned to see her moving towards the group from the dispersing crowd of the raid group. She moved quickly to her normal position at Cerh’s side. “I knew you people had to be behind this, but I hadn’t suspected that it was literally you. Do you know-”

“A moment,” Cerh said, raising a hand calmly. Despite the placid tone and gentle gesture, Kensah snapped her mouth closed like she’d been slapped. “Let him have his say.”

“Before we continue,” Kaldalis said quickly, grabbing a hold of the lifeline the Talsar had given him, “were there any casualties? Lives lost? Damage done?”

“No,” Demriv said, matching the speed of his tone, as if she was trying to help him, “not a one. The response was more than fast enough to keep them outside the walls, and organized enough to keep the enemy controlled, despite the immense physical risk Kaldalis took upon himself personally.”

Kaldalis feigned a sigh of relief. “I’m glad to hear that our efforts were enough.” He knew that no one could have been hurt, since he’d beaten the Infernal Horde here. But it was all about presentation. “I can’t possibly take all the credit, though, everyone did their part for this.”

“No politics,” Jetmorpan interrupted. The red-purple Vathon made a gesture that encompassed the whole group. “This isn’t the time for posturing and judgment. Not when those beasts threaten our very lives.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Kaldalis said. His Zaran Approval Rating took another tick upwards, nearly to a third of the bar. He wanted to ride this out for as much as he could. “We need to put politics aside and concentrate on what matters. Safety and survival. Once that’s over, we can get back to our normal business.”

Jetmorpan gave him a rare smile for that, and even Cerh favored him with a nod of agreement.

“We have much to discuss with respect to our next moves,” Cerh said, gesturing over his shoulder, back towards the town. “Perhaps we should move this to a more appropriate location.”