Kaldalis counted himself lucky when they got out of the meeting without further incident. Garyung carried himself well in the remainder of the discussion, doing his best to evade arguments by accepting blame. At first, it seemed like he was letting the Panbu council walk all over him. But Kaldalis soon realized it was more of what Garyung had said earlier. He was doing his best to imitate how Kaldalis acted.

It was somewhat disheartening to realize that he’d been letting them treat him like trash without lipping off, but he - and Garyung - had had his hands tied. When you could be personally responsible for starting a war, it was a lot easier to accept some demeaning treatment.

“Kal,” Garyung said as the pair of them let the Cotanaku council out of the Panbu town hall. “I need you to do me a favor.”

“If you need me to make a hundred thousand crescents appear from thin air,” Kaldalis said with a grimace, “I’m not in the business of making promises I can’t keep.”

“No, don’t worry about the money,” the Bhogad said, waving his hand dismissively. “I’ve got that covered. What I need your help with is the Panbu council’s mood.”

Kaldalis scoffed. “If I knew a magic way to fix that, I’d be doing it already.”

“I have an inkling of an idea,” Garyung said with a smirk. “Like, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they don’t like you.”

“No shit.”

Garyung’s smirk widened. “So I have an idea of something you can do to help,” he continued. “You could do us all a favor and not be seen around here for a day or so.”

Kaldalis grimaced at that, but it didn’t take long to realize that Garyung was right. The old saying said that absence would make the heart grow fonder, but a more appropriate turn of phrase was time healing all wounds. Kaldalis felt like he should stick around Panbu and help with the rebuilding effort, but that meant that he would be around and visible the whole evening, having dinner, sleep, and breakfast here.

It was possible his fellow adventurers might draw attention to him in the wake of all he’d done to keep them organized, too.

And all that meant that the council would be constantly reminded of him, his failure, and their view of him as a thorn in their sides.

“I was thinking I could catch a ride with you to Cotanaku,” Kaldalis said, quickly, as if he hadn’t just thought of it.. “You know, I have some business to take care of over there. Maybe it might take all night to deal with. I might not make it back to Panbu until tomorrow, or even the next day.”

“Shame,” Garyung said, giving a sage nod with a wry smirk. “I’m sure they could use your help over here. But if you have other obligations, then you’re welcome to ride with us.”

###

The boat ride was surprisingly isolating. Kaldalis had expected Garyung to want to unload a bunch of baggage on him about all the recent events and needs of Cotanaku, but instead the Bhogad’s attention was held by the remainder of the council aboard the longboat, discussing plans for where the money was going to come from. The only other person on the boat who wasn’t included in the discussion was Filomena, and she was engaged with handling the boat.

Seeing her, though, reminded him of something he could actually do in Cotanaku tonight. If he could track down Heluna, they could have that dinner he’d promised her. He also felt like he owed her a serious display of gratitude as well, since, according to Garyung, she had been the reason the people of Cotanaku had rode to the rescue in the first place.

He wasn’t sure how, exactly, he was going to thank her. If she was as interested in him as he suspected, she might want a real relationship. Which Kaldalis wasn’t sure if he was okay with, given that she was an NPC. And if she was interested purely in a… physical arrangement, he was absolutely sure he wasn’t okay with that. Not just because she was an NPC, but because of what he’d gone through just a few days ago that he was still energetically repressing.

Kaldalis tried to focus on anything but his memories as they coasted along the shore towards Cotanaku. But with no conversation to be found, and no distractions otherwise, his memories were all he had.

By the time he got off the boat, Kaldalis was in a sour mood.

Garyung gave Kaldalis no obligations when they arrived in Cotanaku, so Kaldalis decided to make his way towards the entrance to town nearest to the lumber yard. The area around there had been staked out as belonging to the sailors when the town had been a camp. The upgrade had involved a lot of changes for the camp, but he was surprised at how many more changes had happened.

Many of the individual quarters around the camp were still tents, but not all of them. Some tents had been replaced with small shacks, sheds, or cabins. It seemed that the upgrade to a town had turned the makeshift camp sites into customizable housing lots, with many people taking time to invest in them. The space between each structure was still very small (there wasn’t anywhere near enough room for people to build huge lavish mansions) and that created a very bizarre landscape somewhere between a suburb and a parking lot.

Neat little rows of miniature homes just sprinkled throughout between the camp’s walls.

The sailors’ part of town was much the same, but with many more of the occupants sticking with the canvas tents their personal quarters had started as. He wasn’t sure if that was because they were being kept too busy with their work rebuilding the Persimmon to engage in it, or if it represented the predictable income inequality between the sailors’ labors and the adventurers’ quest spam.

Cotanaku was a busy place at the moment.

Many of the residents who had rode to Panbu’s rescue had come back during the meeting, and so had arrived ahead of Kaldalis and the council. Long enough to disperse into the town, but not long enough to have settled back into normal events. The paths and proto-streets that crisscrossed the town were full of people.

All Kaldalis could do was look for silver skin. Heluna was the only Finnian Kaldalis had ever met who dressed in a way that didn’t conceal every inch of her body. It sounded simple, but the crowds made it a challenge.

After a time, he caught sight of a familiar splash of color, but not silver.

It was someone in a flashy red-and-yellow robe that was hauntingly familiar. The vibrant colors evoked flames, or perhaps feathers.

The sight of it stopped Kaldalis’s lungs and kicked his heart into overdrive at the same time.

That was the same color and pattern on the garment that had been worn by Ara, the shape-shifting monster that had assaulted him in the forest with a mixture of seduction, venom, and cannibalism. Just the barest glimpse of it reminded him of an unwanted tongue invading his mouth. His eyes unfocused as he shoved the memory away, causing him to lose track of whoever was wearing the unique robe.

And that wouldn’t do at all.

Ara, with her last breath, had bloody revenge on Kaldalis. If whatever monster she was could respawn and retain memories, it was possible that it wasn’t just some healer in a robe they thought was rad.

It could, in fact, be a spider-snake monster walking among the adventurers here as an imposter.

His hunt for Heluna would have to wait.

Red sus.

Kaldalis pushed his way through the crowded street towards where he’d seen the flash of color.

He didn’t want to cause a big scene, so he didn’t shout for people to clear the way or to help him search. Not only would it cause potentially dangerous panic, since the streets were so crowded with bodies, but it might scare away his quarry.

Kaldalis thought it would be impossible to find the pattern again in the crowd. But he caught another glimpse of the robe within a few seconds.

He got a better look this time, and true to his memory, the similarities to Ara’s garment didn’t stop at the pattern. It was sleek and form-fitting from the waist up, clinging to defined biceps, with openings at the shoulders showing off pale skin beneath. It flared at the elbow, and the bottom half of both sleeves were voluminous, hiding the wearer’s hands. Below the waist, the garment looked like a complicated series of sashes hugging around their thighs and then falling to pool on the ground behind them.

They were walking away from him, and so he couldn’t see their face. Their body shape was feminine, but their hair was shorter. Ara’s had been a long cascade of raven hair loose down to the middle of her back. This person’s hair was the exact same shade of black, but barely a foot long, and tied in a low ponytail that bared their milk-white neck.

If it was Ara, then that meant that monsters could change their appearance.

As soon as the thought crossed his mind, it seemed crazy to think it could be possible, and crazy to think it could be impossible at the same time. Ara had displayed intelligence enough to make him think she was a fellow adventurer.

Why shouldn’t she be able to cut her hair?

But at the same time, he couldn’t picture any other monster taking similar steps. He found himself picturing the four-fingered Syncoresi that had menaced him for so long sitting before a well-lit mirror, powdering its sunken cheeks and painting its ragged, claw-like nails.

He held that image in his mind, because if the person he was following turned around and showed him Ara’s face, he was at very real risk of fainting on the spot at the sudden reminder of what he’d suffered.

Jumping to conclusions wasn’t appropriate, though.

It was still possible that it was just a random alpha player in super-nice gear. That made even more sense, didn’t it? If the red-and-orange phoenix-patterned robes weren’t an existing outfit for normal people, it would obviously make for a terrible disguise for a shapeshifting cannibal, right?

Monster or no, they were making good time through the town. Their slim profile and graceful movements meant they slipped through the crowded streets with ease that Kaldalis couldn’t quite match with his barrel chest and heavy armor.

The gap was growing wider by the moment.

Whoever it was, they were going to escape if he didn’t do something. He couldn’t let them-

“Kal!”

Kaldalis turned a corner and nearly ran face-first into Heluna. Her features turned from irritated at the near-collision to absolutely gleeful as soon as she recognized him.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” she asked, slapping a hand to his shoulder.

“I was…” He glanced over her shoulder and saw a flash of red-orange robe vanishing around the next corner. Too far to catch without taking drastic and dramatic steps. “I was looking for you, actually.”

She gave him a doubtful look, but couldn’t stop smiling. “Oh?” she asked, “what for?”

“Well...” Kaldalis said, trailing off with a grin as he found her smile infectious. Even though Ara’s monstrous gaze lingered in his mind. As her venom coursed through his veins. “I was wondering if you had plans tonight.”