Martok went to work immediately. He started to scan the ground moving in a slowly expanding circle from the scrap of rope. His movements were clinically precise and professional, in such a manner that led Kaldalis to believe that Martok’s experience tracking might not have come from game hunting.

Kaldalis stared at the scrap of rope. They’d gone so far without a sign of hiding their tracks. Did they start now? Did that mean they had to slow down? Were they close?

“Shit, shit, shit,” Garyung cursed, pacing back and forth. “The trail can’t end here. The end of the trail has to be where they are, right? And they’re not here. So this isn’t the end of the trail.”

“What do we do?” Balrim asked. “How do we find them now?”

Kaldalis looked up to see if someone had an answer, and was chagrined to see that Balrim was directing the question at him.

He needed an answer, and he needed it fast.

Garyung was slowly dissolving into panic, and Gavinkim looked like he was about to throw himself on his own sword. Not that it would work, apparently, if it wasn’t a War Weapon.

Kaldalis found himself feeling somewhere between the both of them. His heart rate was steadily climbing, and if they couldn’t pick up the trail somehow, death might be a preferable option if Onirioago was going to seek a way to drug him into slavery.

“The trail ends here,” Kaldalis said. He glanced over at Martok’s concentric spiral search before adding: “for now. Unless and until we find the next bit of their trail, we assume she’s nearby. Maybe there’s a hidden dungeon entrance, or some buried ruins. Martok will hunt for the trail. The rest of us operate under the assumption that she’s right here somehow. Spread out. Find a door or a pit or a fake tree or whatever.”

Before he was even done talking, half of the group had already gone to work. Garyung and Gavinkim started closely examining the tree right before them - where the scrap of rope sat. Garyung was examining the roots, clearly looking for something like the dungeon entrance that was outside of Cotanaku, while Gavinkim was looking up, seeking signs of handholds that might have let them ascend into the dense jungle canopy.

Myrin was already scanning the surrounding ground, looking for any other sign of a hidden door - though she only physically examined the spaces Martok had already moved past in his own search. Balrim, Reno and Ess jumped to join her as soon as Kaldalis finished speaking.

Having successfully delegated, Kaldalis now needed something to occupy himself, or else he was going to have a breakdown. But until Martok really got some distance on his search, the six other people in the group were already tripping over each other searching the area they already had. He wasn’t going to be able to help down here.

Luckily, Kaldalis was feeling very smart.

Using his Jump cooldown, he leaped up into the jungle canopy above them.

His initial big-brain idea was to look for ruins, cover, or tracks from above. As soon as he arrived at the branches above, he realized the problem.

“Fuck,” he cursed, swatting at the dense leaves, vines, and branches that suddenly surrounded him. “I can’t see shit from here.”

He wrestled with the branches, and found that his Jump ability was only good for getting up here - and would be good for getting back down - but in the trees, his locomotion was more akin to burrowing or swimming than anything his jump could help him with.

There didn’t seem to be a useful reason to push through the foliage, but Kaldalis found himself doing it anyway. He knew there was a chance he could find a thinner spot in the canopy somewhere that he could use as a vantage point, but he hadn’t spent a lot of time in the treetops here. Kaldalis didn’t know where to look for such a place, or even if finding one was a reasonable expectation. But he didn’t really have anything to do otherwise.

Pushing his way through the solid wall of leaves and branches kept him occupied.

Because if he stopped to think about Onirioago out here with access to the Deacon Tetra - this very spot was only a few minutes’ walk from the lake - he was going to freak the fuck out.

“You find anything?” he heard Garyung ask from some unseen spot below him.

“We ain’t found shit,” Myrin shot back.

Martok wasn’t saying anything - not even space gibberish - which didn’t bode well. If he wasn’t finding anything, it meant that they might have actually lost her. And if that was the case, not only did they not know where she was, but she’d been getting farther and farther away while they were executing this fruitless search.

It took a significant mental effort to keep his panic at that thought under control. For all Kaldalis knew, Onirioago was at the lake already, fishing up the Deacon Tetra and grinding it into Geas Venom by the gallon.

What took the most mental effort, though, was reversing direction and heading back down through the vegetation to return to the forest floor. A part of him wanted to find somewhere up here in the trees to hide. Kaldalis had been put in charge of this whole operation, and as much as he could probably get the guilty-feeling Gavinkim or the panicking Garyung to take responsibility publicly, he knew this was his fault.

So he kind of just wanted to curl up into a little ball and pretend he wasn’t here. He knew it wouldn’t make the problem go away, but a small and immature part of his brain tried to convince him that if nobody could come up here and find him, then somebody else would have to fix the problem.

Kaldalis wasn’t that kind of coward, though. He was going to have to face the music, and he didn’t want to make them send Ess up here to come get him back down when he didn’t come back. So he put on his big boy pants - figuratively - and started to pick his way down through the branches to face the music.

He’d been on a bad luck run for a while now. Every time something seemed like it was going right, it had to come out from under him.

Kaldalis was considering the possibility that he might be a jinx.

And the much more realistic possibility that he was just an irresponsible piece of shit who wasn’t as smart as he thought.

Only Gavinkim watching Onirioago? No second guard? Her tether was just being held in hand, and not affixed to anything? A force of just under a dozen folks when they knew for a fact that Onirioago still had sycophants?

All of these were obvious mistakes that he should have seen.

Not that he had any way to, but he should have been prepared for everything.

This whole thing was a fuckup waiting to happen. He’d set this escape on the tee for Onirioago.

Kaldalis was solely responsible for this. He was going to-

Catch a lucky break.

In the few minutes he’d spent in the forest canopy, he hadn’t found any thin spots in the foliage. The trees had formed a very tight and dense roof to the forest in an (unsuccessful) effort to choke out the competing plants on the ground.

But as he burrowed down through the brush, he blundered face-first into something unexpected.

A wall.

It was a plain wooden wall, made of cleanly-cut planks neatly arranged in a tight formation to keep the foliage out. He wasn’t sure how far up in the canopy he was, but he was well above the ground.

As soon as he saw it, he knew what was going on.

He immediately fell dead still, quieting the foliage around himself.

There were no sounds of alarm or reaction. Good.

Kaldalis gently started to creep his way through the branches, making his way along the wooden wall.

He didn’t find any windows, but he did find a corner. Around the corner there was a door right next to a tree trunk.

This was the answer he desperately needed.

Onirioago had gone to ground right at this spot. But instead of finding ruins to hide in, she’d had her fans build a hideout where it would be nearly impossible to find. Even if the first place they’d checked was straight up, it would have taken them hours - or even days - to find this place without raw luck on his side.

He didn’t have time to come up with a new pile of concerns. Was the place full of alchemy stations converting Deacon Tetra to Geas Venom? Was Onirioago standing at the door, dramatically waiting for him to try and sneak in for her to ambush him with a big jar of fish poison?

Scrambling down the tree trunk quietly was a challenge, but not impossible. The foliage next to the trunk was thinner, and the branches up here were widely-spaced, but thick and strong to support his weight.

After a few seconds, he broke back down through the underside of the canopy, and let himself drop to the ground.

Martok was near at hand, still making his concentric circles around where everyone else was searching, and Kaldalis flagged him down.

“I found her,” Kaldalis whispered. He pointed straight up. The treehouse wasn’t visible from here, but Martok didn’t need to see it to know what Kaldalis meant.

“What’s the plan?” Martok whispered, moving quickly to Kaldalis’ side.

“What else?” Kaldalis replied. He did his best impression of a bird call, catching the attention of the others as he waved for them to join him. “We’re going to go up there.”

“Capture?” Martok asked. The Vathon cartographer reached for his inventory and produced a rope.

“Not anymore,” Kaldalis said, shaking his head. “If she wants to play rough, that’s okay. She can say hello to our little friends.” He gestured at Martok’s daggers.

“What’s going on?” Garyung said as he approached. The others were right behind him, with the same curious look.

“We’re going up,” Kaldalis whispered before accepting the rope from Martok, and readying his Jump cooldown. He would bring the rope up to the treehouse, so that everyone else could climb up with ease. “And then we’re going to bring Onirioago down.”