Gavinkim was the last to get paralyzed, as he was obviously more practiced in combat than the others. His armor helped as well, making it challenging for them to open a cut on his body even when he was dramatically outnumbered. But after being battered for several minutes, he got punch-drunk enough that his guard slipped. A Talsar claw and a bottle of poison later, and it was done.

Onirioago’s crew had more than enough people to gather Kaldalis and his friends, once they had all been immobilized. They didn’t need to carry them far; they just dragged them into the floating house, manhandling them like furniture. Kaldalis wanted to make a joke about Onirioago ordering them pizza to help her move her stuff into her new place, but obviously the Jormongumo venom meant that he couldn’t really do anything.

Then again, he might have been overestimating his own ability to endear himself to his attackers. It was possible that there existed a combination of charisma and luck that might make one of them willing to talk to him about the situation so that he could be better prepared once an opportunity to escape arose. Or trick them into unionizing. But once he was inside, the chances of that seemed to dry up.

The building was something approximating a two-bedroom apartment. The front door led into a large main room, where the goons happily deposited Kaldalis’ paralyzed friends haphazardly around the floor.

Kaldalis knew that he had no chance to win over anyone when Onirioago emerged from one of the back rooms, crossing her arms to cut a dramatic pose as they were carried in. Even if Kaldalis could try and crack a joke, he wasn’t going to have a snowball’s chance in hell of having an honest discussion about what Onirioago was offering them.

She had changed her outfit - presumably so calm and confident in her victory that she had done so during the treetop brawl rather than helping. Instead of the striped black-and-white prisoner’s uniform, she was wearing armor again. It wasn’t quite the same as her usual outfit, but was still obviously more designed for hugging her curves suggestively as it was for offering real protection. At least the boob window was slightly higher, showing off less cleavage than usual.

“Before we go any further,” Onirioago announced, her tail lazily waving side to side in catlike satisfaction, “I wanted to offer Kaldalis my personal thanks. This coup could never have happened if he weren’t so well-behaved that I could predict his every move. My plans couldn’t have gone this smoothly even if he were actually in my employ.”

Obviously, nobody could respond, giving her the time to let out a sinister laugh.

She was milking this moment for all she could. Kaldalis would have encouraged her to do so - threatening that her victory would be short-lived - but he couldn’t even do that to take the wind out of her sails.

“They warned that the poison wouldn’t last forever,” Onirioago said sharply, once everyone was inside. “Bind them, now.”

“It just started, calm your tits,” one of the Talsar complained. Kaldalis recognized him as the one that he’d knocked out of the tree to the jungle floor. “We have plenty of time.”

“If I were you,” Dalgaard snapped, jumping up in the Talsar’s face, even though they were about two feet shorter than him, “I’d be less concerned about her tits and more concerned about my hands. Get the ropes and bind them.”

Onirioago smirked at the exchange. There was irritation in her eyes that there had been dissent, but she certainly enjoyed that it had resolved itself without her needing to step in. The goon squad produced a bunch of ropes and started to go about binding the hands and feet of the paralyzed prisoners.

Kaldalis tried to panic.

Onirioago was right, the poison wouldn’t last forever, but when he fought Ara the first time, his system had burned it out very quickly. He’d attributed it to being full of adrenaline, and he tried to replicate it, but he just couldn’t. It seemed impossible to force himself to a state of terror when he was paralyzed.

Though it might have been a difference in the threat level of the current situation. After being molested by a monster that messily devoured a person right in front of him, being made a servant to a narcissist megalomaniac seemed positively mundane.

A Bhogad woman started to manhandle Kaldalis into position to tie him up, but Dalgaard appeared next to her, shoving her aside.

“He’s mine,” Dalgaard snapped.

Despite their small stature - and obviously being one of the lower level people in the group - Dalgaard seemed to command respect here. It was almost comical to see the huge Bhogad woman back off from the relatively tiny human.

Despite their aggressive possessiveness towards him, Dalgaard didn’t have anything to say. They bound him with three ropes - one joining his wrists, one joining his ankles, and a third around each knee. With all his muscles seized up, he wasn’t going to be entirely immobilized - Dalgaard couldn’t muscle his arms closer together than they’d been when he’d been leaping to protect his friends - but the bindings were cruelly tight, and Dalgaard had a satisfied grin as they tightened them a little bit beyond even that.

Kaldalis wanted to ask a lot of questions. He had felt responsible for Dalgaard having suffered at Ara’s hands, but he didn’t know that they blamed him as well. They hadn’t shared a word since the attack, not even when Kaldalis spared mentioning their association with Onirioago during her arrest.

He couldn’t talk now, though. Not to ask how they came to be in Oniriaogo’s service, not why they were angry with him, and not even to just ask if they were doing okay. Onirioago must have gotten to them somehow, and built Kaldalis up to be a villain.

And now he couldn’t even apologize.

Onirioago was fully capable of speech, and had taken on the commanding mien of a leader. Three were dismissed to return to unspecified duties, while several others were sent out into the jungle to patrol - warning that if Kaldalis had an extra trick up his sleeve, she wanted them in position to outflank it.

“You,” she said, pulling aside the Bhogad woman. “You’re heading to Cotanaku to open negotiations. Tell them we have their precious usurper and that I’m demanding the unconditional surrender of everyone who didn’t resign their position on his false council.” She chuckled to herself. “I’ll double your pay if Ikzoz faints on the spot in front of everyone, so work on your delivery on the walk there.”

She pointed to two Vathons among the crew. “You two are escorts. They won’t try anything daring without Kaldalis to drive them to it, but they’ll know I know that. I want them to think we don’t have him.” She leered over at him suggestively. “If I would love to keep him as a trophy at the end of this.”

The Bhogad woman pounded off a salute and made for the door, joined by the two escorts. They had to wait for a moment as most of the others left the room as well, off to deal with their assigned tasks. Kaldalis saw most of his friends watching the group leaving, but his attention was on Onirioago, as she grabbed another of her minions for one more order.

“I don’t trust that this is over,” she said, her voice low, but not low enough for Kaldalis to miss it. “I think it’s past time to pull the last ace out of my sleeve.”

The Talsar man looked confused for a moment, and Onirioago rolled her eyes.

“Go and find her,” Onirioago said, putting an unhealthy amount of emphasis on the pronoun. For all his confusion, the man’s spine straightened right up. He knew who she was talking about instantly. “Bring her to Cotanaku. One way or the other, I’ll meet her there. If things go well, that will be the cherry on top. If things go poorly, she will be my final revenge.”

The man scrambled for the door with obvious panic at the order. Kaldalis started to sense his own panic rising. There weren’t many people it could be.

In fact, he could only think of one.

Ara.

If Onirioago was going to unleash her in the middle of Cotanaku - either as salt in the wounds or a kill switch - it was the most dangerous threat she could make. Ara, coordinated with Onirioago’s people, could likely do five times the damage that the individual strikes the Jormongumo had put out, especially if they started targeting the NPC council members.

Though the idea of Ara being at Onirioago’s side on her victory lap - especially with her firmly attached to keeping Kaldalis in her hands - would have been scary enough to make him wet himself, if the muscles around his bladder weren’t still seized up.

All hope wasn’t lost, though. As all of Onirioago’s minions went to work, he saw her one true weakness. She was simply too good at her job. The industrious Vathon had delegated everything quickly and efficiently.

But that meant that all her goons were busy.

Only Onirioago and Dalgaard were left behind.

Sure, Kaldalis and his friends were bound and paralyzed, but Onirioago had made a desperate gambit. She’d bet that she only needed two pieces on the board in defense. Obviously Kaldalis and his friends didn’t represent a threat while they were still paralyzed, but it wouldn’t last that much longer.

So he had just that long to come up with a plan.