All around Kaldalis, people were smiling.

Garyung had a big stupid grin on his face. He’d made a good leadership decision, both asking an important question and lightening the mood. Everyone else nearby on the deck of the ship had a little chuckle, diffusing the tension at the acknowledgement that this world might be - for lack of a better term - real. If Kaldalis had no answer - or at least, any that Garyung could reasonably expect - it would have been a great topic change to let everyone cool down a bit.

The only one who wasn’t smiling was Kaldalis. And for good reason.

“Well?” Garyung asked again. “Where is Demriv?''

His face began to fall as he noticed that Kaldalis wasn’t as amused by his joke. “Uh. Kal?”

“So.” Kaldalis took a deep breath. “Funny story.”

“Jesus Christ, Kal.” Garyung groaned and put a hand to his temple. “Do I want to know?”

Kaldalis shrugged with one shoulder. “Probably not,” he admitted, “but you also probably need to know.”

“Is this, uh,” Reno cut in, “national secrets? Should we all leave?”

“No,” Kaldalis said quickly. “This is important. I think we all should know.”

He knew that Reno was probably right. The smarter move would be to keep what happened to Demriv under their hats, especially since Big Mike was here, and he was technically a member of the Panbu council, the people who they would most want to keep this from.

But smart didn’t mean right. Something this big wouldn’t stay hidden forever. If they lied about it now, if news from Baimer arrived - with enough details to implicate Kaldalis - Big Mike would remember this moment.

A pinch of honesty now would be worth a pound of headache later.

“She attacked me,” Kaldalis said, “on the streets of Baimer. She tried to kill me to make me late for the meeting with the Zaran War Council.”

The mood around the group suddenly went dour. Big Mike muttered a curse Kaldalis hadn’t even heard Heluna ever say. Garyung put his hand over his face and muttered a few more familiar earthly curses, too.

“I’m shocked,” Balrim said, but furrowed his scaled brow. “Not that shocked, but…”

“So where is she now?” Garyung asked. “Did you get her arrested? Do you have to do another trial? Because I’m not sure we can turn this ship around and go back.”

“Uh,” Kaldalis tried to think of a good way to soften the blow. There really wasn’t one. “She’s, uh. Dead.”

“What?” Big Mike roared wordlessly. “What did you do?!”

Garyung’s eyes bugged out, but the Bhogad was unable to form any verbal response. He gasped so hard and suddenly that he immediately started choking on his own spit.

“I didn’t do it,” Kaldalis said, trying to quickly explain before Big Mike could throttle him. “We were fighting on a rooftop, and I got the better of her. Disarmed her and had her by the collar by the edge of a roof. She spit in my eye, screamed bloody murder, and jumped.”

“She jumped?” Ess asked, clearly confused. “Why?”

“She thought guards would be closer, I think. The last-minute gambit was probably that they could ID me and chase me down,” Kaldalis guessed. “But they weren’t immediately at hand, and I had the assassin’s cloak to hide my face while I fled the scene.”

“Seems flimsy,” Balrim pointed out. “Why would she die just to inconvenience you?”

“That’s what I asked myself,” Kaldalis said, scratching his head. “I don’t want to toot my own horn, but I don’t think anybody could possibly hate me that much.”

“You put her sister in jail,” Myrin said. “Probably for life.”

“Yeah, but-”.

“She might also blame you for her country losing an entire fucking town,” Reno cut in. “No offense to Garyung, but considering Onirioago is her sister, she might think you’re some kind of mastermind with him as a puppet.”

“No, I get it,” Garyung said with a laugh before turning back to Kaldalis. “And also you did literally kill her sister, too, and she thought you were going to cover it up rather than tell her. Since you covered up her imprisonment the whole time you were working together.”

“I didn’t know-”

“She also blames you very specifically for the loss of the first iteration of Panbu,” Big Mike interrupted with a grimace. “I probably shouldn’t say what’s been said behind closed doors, but it’s the truth. She wanted Cerh to put you behind bars for it.”

“You said she had a crush on me,” Kaldalis complained.

“Yeah, well,” Big Mike reached up and scratched the back of his neck uncomfortably. “You know how Vathon courtship can be. I thought she just wanted to get you in restraints, you know?”

“I don’t-” Kaldalis put a hand over his eyes. “I didn’t need that mental picture, bud.”

“Yeah,” Balrim said. Kaldalis looked over at the Talsar to see the man’s lips peeled back in disgust. “That lives in my head now. Thanks.”

“What if she didn’t die, though?” Ess suggested. “Maybe she survived the fall. Or maybe Onirioago shared her immortality ability?”

“Yes,” Kaldalis nodded, quickly latching on to the change in subject. “That’s what I thought. I don’t know if she can learn the ability from just one fragment, but if she can, she could have just been trying to get me arrested for her murder, and then playing dead for as long as possible to keep me locked up, possibly long enough to miss the trial. An hour inconvenience for her is a small price to pay to inconvenience me for the same amount of time while I’m on a tight deadline.”

“Do you think-” Bangen began, but then stopped with a grimace.

“What?” Kaldalis asked.

“I was just thinking,” Bangen said meekly, as all eyes turned to her. “What if she knew about Onirioago’s information? What she… was going to say?”

Kaldalis instantly grimaced. Before he could control himself, he blurted out an oath he’d only heard from Heluna once before when she bit her tongue at dinner: “By the Glorious One’s Green and Gold Gonads.”

It seemed to visibly impress Big Mike.

“What?” Garyung asked. “What’s wrong?”

“She knew,” Kaldalis snapped, shaking his head. “I don’t know why I didn’t put it together until now. Demriv said it right before she spat in my eye and jumped. She told her ‘what all of you did’ and she wasn’t going to let us get away with imprisoning her.” He pressed his lips together in a tight line. “She said Onirioago was going to save the world from us.”

“Damn,” Garyung cursed. “So she thought she was making herself a martyr.”

“I don’t know if I'll buy it completely,” Kaldalis said, “but between that, and the possibility that Onirioago could share her tablet, maybe it’s not as crazy as I thought.”

“I appreciate looping me in on all of this crazy shit,” Big Mike said, looking at the scrambling crew around them. “But I think I might need to step away. It looks like the boys need me to take the helm to get us the fuck out of Zaran naval territory, y’know?”

“Sorry,” Kaldalis said. “I didn’t mean to keep you from your duties.”

“Don’t worry, boy,” Big Mike said, reaching across and clapping Kaldalis on the shoulder. “Heavy topics sometimes need an extra pair of hands to hold them up, right?”

“Big Mike,” Garyung cut in. “I can trust you to be… discreet about all this, right?”

“Shit,” Big Mike said with a bark of a laugh. He took his hand off of Kaldalis’s shoulder and immediately clapped it onto Garyung’s. “If they ask me to contribute literally anything to the next council meeting, I’ll be so surprised I might plumb forget the whole damn trip.”

“I think we were about to break, though,” Kaldalis said as Big Mike made his way toward the ship’s helm. “Just let all this settle for a bit, like Ess said.”

Bangen let out a deep sigh of relief. “I feel like I could sleep for a week.” she grumbled.

“It’s been kind of a day for a lot of us,” Reno agreed.

“I’ll meet you on the fishing deck,” Ess said to Kaldalis with a smile. “Okay?”

“Just remember to keep these latest… revelations to yourselves,” Garyung said quickly. “Just for all of our safety, okay?”

The group agreed on that before they started to disperse. Before Kaldalis could make for the fishing deck, Garyung pulled him aside, holding him back as the others passed out of earshot.

“What are you thinking?” Garyung hissed quietly. “You just blurted out the most dangerous information in the entire goddamn game world. Information that is so dangerous, Monsoon is blocking people’s streams to keep it quiet!”

“They have a right to know,” Kaldalis said, suddenly feeling a flush of anger. “We all signed consent forms to be here, and if this is true - which this cover-up seems to imply - then we signed them without some pretty fucking vital information. Even ignoring the implication for the entire fucking world that there are multiverses and people can be sent there - and the implication for the potentially very real people here that dimensional colonists have been sent from an aggressive and uncaring corporation - we’ve been trafficked to another universe basically against our will!”

“There’s gotta be a better way, though,” Garyung said. “We should have talked about it first. We could have quietly discussed it… Just you and me. To find the best way to break it to everyone.”

“Okay,” Kaldalis said with a smirk. “So it’s fine to blurt out interdimensional secrets as long as it’s just to you, then? You, who was so willing to give up responsibility that you were gonna kiss the toes of a room full of inbred fancy pants councilors while they told you how bad you suck. You are the only person who deserves the responsibility of distributing the most important information any of us have ever heard in our lives?”

Garyung grimaced. “That’s not the point-”

“Right,” Kaldalis said before Garyung could get too defensive. “That was out of line. I’m sorry. But try and see it from my perspective. I only told the people I trust most, and there’s more people on that list than just you. I promise I won’t blurt it out to everyone I meet, but look at the big picture here.” He put a hand on Garyung’s shoulder. “This is going to get out. Onirioago calculated exactly when and where to say it to make the biggest splash. News from Baimer might be slow, but it will catch up to us. Do you want us to be the ones shaping the narrative as we bring the information to light, or do you want to be part of the shadowy cover-up and get lynched when it comes out anyway?”

Garyung sighed heavily. “You’re right,” he said at last. “Sorry I suck at this.”

“You’re doing great,” Kaldalis said, “but you have to think bigger than the next few weeks. You’ve been focused so hard on getting out of the hot seat of Cotanaku that your frame of reference is skewed. You’re still going to be in this universe when that’s done.”

“We can talk about this more later,” Garyung said. “But just… Keep this as close to your chest as you can. We can shape the narrative here, but we have to do it very carefully.”

“Of course,” Kaldalis said. “Don’t forget, when Onirioago blurted it out in a room full of people, I almost got murdered right there in the courtroom. The last thing I want is to face that kind of reaction everywhere I go in the towns I helped build.”

“Thank you,” Garyung said, sagging with relief. “We’ll talk about this later, okay? Just.. I think Ess had the right of it to say we all need to cool off for a minute.”

Kaldalis let Garyung walk away to go below decks. He tried to imagine how he thought this was going to go when they had all gathered together in the morning and planned their exit strategy. This was certainly not it.

He hoped Big Mike had a trick up his sleeve to push the ship as hard as she could go. The sooner they got back to Cotanaku, the sooner he could find the next colossal problem to wrestle with. Another catastrophe would do wonders to take his mind off of this one.