Ikzoz stared down at Onirioago’s corpse with the most peculiar combination of horror and relief. Kaldalis wondered what he was trying to say as his mouth snapped open and closed over and over, serrated teeth clicking together every time. But even if the man was speaking, he probably wouldn’t have been able to hear.

Filomena was babbling wordlessly, the blood draining from her face as she blanched in open fear. Kaldalis wasn’t sure if it was some sailor superstition, or because she had something to hide - as a known troublemaker, it wouldn’t have surprised Kaldalis if she had been attached to some component of Onirioago’s plan.

Sardol was trying to establish order by explaining the gravity of the situation, announcing for everyone’s benefit what Garyung and Kaldalis feared: that this could be a political nightmare in their dealings with the Zarans. But the man was not immune to panic, and his method of trying to establish order was to keep raising his voice to speak over everyone else, which had the exact opposite effect: the louder he yelled, the louder everyone else got in turn as he built the energy of this room.

Most of the others were targeting their panic at Garyung. The architects were asking what had happened. The shifty-looking Suyon, whose name Kaldalis had never learned, was loudly drafting a story for it having been an accident, and directing the story towards Garyung’s face. Gavinkim was trying to calm people down and deflect them away from Garyung, even as Onirioago’s dried blood was flaking off of the chest of his armor.

This was a mess of mythic proportions. Kaldalis had a sudden mad vision of this scene as a baroque painting. Everyone yelling, screaming, panicking, gesturing, all around a corpse dramatically sprawled across the table.

Kaldalis stepped up to the table and slammed his hands down, palms-flat, trying to make the loudest sound he could. He landed it solidly, and the sound cracked through the room, reverberating off the walls like a gunshot. His palms stung, but the thunderclap he’d made still put an end to the chaos.

A finger of insecurity tickled Kaldalis’s brain as all eyes turned to him. First and foremost, they needed to catch everyone up to speed. Even if they all understood what was going on - either inherently, or from Sardol barking it hoarsely at the top of his voice - they needed to establish the ground they were standing on.

“Onirioago is dead,” Kaldalis said into the sudden stillness of the room. “She escaped us, used our pursuit to ambush us, and she made it clear that the only way she was coming back under our custody was… Like this.” Kaldalis wanted to get lost in the details, but for now, the council needed the broad strokes. “As you’ve all gathered the death of a Zaran citizen in our custody is going to be a problem. It was me, if that matters. I killed her. And if that means someone had to go under the bus, then I guess I volunteer as tribute.”

“Out of the question,” Garyung said, “We stand behind him; this wasn’t a selfish act of Cotanaku. This was for the good of all. She was going to be using Geas Venom. I don’t think anyone would believe she was going to stop with us.”

Most of the group gave a somber nod at that, though Sardol and Ikzoz wore unpleasant grimaces. Kaldalis was glad he had been the one to put forth the idea of throwing himself under the bus, since the two of them looked like they would have put the idea on the table faster and more emphatically than would have been polite.

“We could try and keep it under wraps,” Ikzoz suggested. “They don’t have to know it happened until we build a slightly better relationship with Zara.”

Kaldalis had been about to object to that, but Garyung sliced his hand through the air, taking command of the situation.

“Keeping this a secret for more than a day is out of the question,” Garyung said, glaring around the room. “For one thing, her underlings know already. If we try and hide it, they may spill the beans as her final revenge. Foremost on my mind, though, is that we start as we mean to go on. If we want to build a good relationship with Zara we can’t build that on a foundation of lies, even if we could guarantee we could keep it secret. They hear it from us, as soon as possible. It’s the only way.”

Most of the council nodded along again, and this time Sardol and Ikzoz nodded as well, though their lips were pressed together in grim lines.

“This is going to suck,” Garyung continued. “Coming clean about this is going to hurt, and we don’t have any way to minimize the risk that this is the straw that breaks the Zaran’s backs. This could be the last meeting we have as an independent ruling body - or even as living beings - if Cerh and his people decide that they mean to conquer us by force in retribution for this.”

The somber mood of the council room grew more somber at that. Despite the mood, Kaldalis was impressed with Garyung. He had asked the council to face death, and their trust in his authority meant that they were just… doing it. He’d convinced them without even trying that this was the right thing to do.

It struck Kaldalis as well that Garyung had convinced him, too. And he’d done it in the most insidious way.

By believing it himself.

Despite their periodic disagreements, Garyung was a good man. He prioritized doing the right thing above even his own safety. Executive dysfunction or no, Kaldalis had to recognize that the camp had made the right choice in electing him leader.

“I’ll send word immediately,” Ikzoz said. “We will have a meeting with Cerh and his people, and prostrate ourselves to beg forgiveness. We’ll need to bring her body and give them custody of it for them to determine what final rest she deserves.”

“Unfortunately,” Sardol added, “it’s unlikely that her wrongdoing will be investigated. Zara will have no motivation to do so, since her crime weakens their position with us. Furthermore, there’s no risk of her following up on her schemes, given her… condition.”

Kaldalis nodded at that. It made sense, from what he knew of Cerh and his self-centered philosophy. It hurt that all his work would never be vindicated. He’d stopped Onirioago’s plans, but she would never really be brought to justice. It might even make her a martyr, with her crimes swept under the rug forever. He shuddered to think of the unflattering - or even downright malicious - light he would be painted in by Cerh and his people in reports that went back to Baimer.

At the very least, though, Onirioago had been stopped. She had done all the damage she ever would.

Of course, that was when the scariest thing anyone in the room could think of happened.

Onirioago’s corpse became a skeleton.

Kaldalis’ first instinct was that it meant that she had been a player this whole time, and not an NPC. That would mean she had just respawned, leaving the skeleton behind, either returning to her home point or reappearing at the location of her death out in the jungle. But what happened next revealed that what was happening was something much different, and much more complicated.

The scream started quiet, as if from far away, and Kaldalis wasn’t sure if it meant that something was happening outside. But as it grew louder, he realized it was coming from inside the room, just growing in volume.

A space near the head of the table darkened in a roughly humanoid shape, and as the screaming grew louder, it was apparent that it was coming from that shape.

The screaming reached a crescendo, and then stopped abruptly. The shadowy figure staggered, grabbing the table and audibly gasping for breath.

Shadows parted.

Onirioago sagged against the table for a moment.

Everyone in the room was so tense and still that Kaldalis could hear the click in her throat when she swallowed. At length, she looked up and around the room with the same calm and commanding expression she’d worn the whole time she was Expedition Leader. Despite the mounting horror and confusion on every face in the room, she calmly moved to the chair at the head of the table and sat down.

“Ikzoz,” she said slowly, “what is on the meeting agenda today?”

His response - a choked cry of panic - broke the spell of hesitation over the assembled group.

The entire room erupted into chaos again.

Gavinkim flipped the table to charge across the room at her. She laughed as she leaped back up out of her chair to dance away from his enraged pursuit. Sardol shrieked like a terrified chihuahua as half of Onirioago’s skeleton fell into his lap. Ikzoz threw himself backwards, pressing himself into the wall as if trying to leave the room by pressing himself through it into the next. Balrim and Myrin leaped to block the door, and Balrim barked something at Courbois and Martok, pointing at the window along the side of the room, and they moved to block the potential exit if Onirioago tried to run for it. Garyung was the only one in the room who still seemed to be literally stunned, and Kaldalis guessed his executive dysfunction had come back full-force and overloaded his brain.

Kaldalis, however, was putting together the pieces in his head.

It was the tablet.

The Jormongumo - or at least Ara - had the ability to respawn after death. The encounter in the jungle village proved that when he not only clearly recognized her, but she recognized him by name. The tablet in the building hadn’t worked for any of the ones who had tried it, but the only ones who had tried it had been Kaldalis and his friends. As PCs, they already had the ability to respawn. Not only that, but a better ability. Onirioago had taken over an hour to come back, and had been apparently forced to respawn at her corpse - even after it had been moved by those she would consider enemies. Without the stats panel for the ability, he didn’t know the specifics, but it seemed to be working against her instead of with her, like the system Kaldalis was familiar with. He also didn’t know how it interacted with the Aplomb system.

Of course, this revelation felt like a gunshot in his stomach.

Onirioago had smashed the tablets. Even if just reassembling them could restore their magic, she’d also taken a chunk of it and put it into her inventory.

Without being able to kill her and loot her inventory, this power was hers and hers alone. It was the perfect tool for him to achieve his dream of never letting another NPC die like Haldir had, and Onirioago had slapped it out of his hand before he’d even known he was holding it.

Of course, the core of this overwhelming guilt was remembering a choice he’d made when they’d left Cotanaku this morning.

He could have brought Heluna with him.

Gavinkim had gotten his hands on Onirioago’s shoulders, and despite the gleeful grin on her face, she had one hand clamped around the side of the Bhogad’s ratlike muzzle, pushing it away, while the other slowly peeled his grip off of her. His roars of anger and rage were the only words Kaldalis could actually pick up in the chaos of the council chamber. So many people were talking and screaming and panicking, but one thing was clear.

“I should have known you were one of them this whole time!” he roared, “only one of them would want to enslave us all!”

Deep down, that hurt Kaldalis’s feelings a little bit. He and Garyung had worked closely with Gavinkim this whole time, and it was a bit of a shock that their collective respect and friendship had done nothing to cut through the weird anti-player racism that everyone in this world seemed to hold. Just the same, Onirioago was seconds away from wiggling free of his grip, and Kaldalis didn’t want to know what tricks she still had up her sleeve, after she’d managed to break the rules and return from the dead.

Right as he reached the fight and set to work restraining her, the next impact came that silenced the chaos before immediately replacing it with more.

Balrim and Myrin were sent flying in the wake of the door to the council chambers being shoved open. Despite both of them being sent to the floor by the strength that forced its way in, it was only one person. She stepped into the room with a fury that dwarfed even what burned in Gavinkim’s eyes. Behind her was the Talsar man that Onirioago had sent to activate her ace in the hole.

And what an ace it was.

“Garyung and the council of Cotanaku,” Demriv all but screamed into the room, “I demand the immediate release of Onirioago into my custody. I promise she will be subjected to Zaran investigation and trial for her crimes, but your continued imprisonment of her is unforgivable!”

It was obviously a rehearsed speech - some bit of a political script for this sort of thing - but her eyes went wide and wild when she saw what was actually going on in the room. This was what Garyung - and Kaldalis - had feared above all else. He’d been afraid of what the Zarans would say if they found out that a Zaran prisoner was being held, and now one of the key members of Panbu’s council had been not just notified, but notified and marched right here, denying them any time to make any sort of plan. It was made all that much worse by the sense of vertigo it gave Kaldalis to see her in the same room as Onirioago, due to the painfully strong resemblance between the two.

Despite the chaotic mess in the council chambers, her eyes zeroed right in on Kaldalis as he was trying to get Onirioago in a headlock.

“Kaldalis!” Demriv roared in fury. “What are you doing to my sister?”