Kaldalis wasn’t sure how much time had passed when he awoke. Opening his eyes he was inside of a stone room. He couldn’t judge based on the light coming in through the window, since he didn’t know where he was or which direction was north, east, or whatever else. What he did know was that the windows were barred. He was in a prison cell.

“Hey, me,” he said weakly as he tried to sit up. “You’re finally awake.”

He was surprised to find himself not tied up. Jormongumo venom only lasted a few minutes, so he took that as a promising sign that he might have only been taken a short distance from town.

Unfortunately, when he looked down at his wrists, he found fragments of rope caught on the edges of his armor. He had been bound while they were carrying him and unbound when they’d tossed him in the cell.

At least the cell was spacious. Instead of a tiny little box like Onirioago had been kept in, this was more like a whole drunk tank all to himself, at least twenty feet long and fifteen feet wide, though the ceiling was a little under eight feet. When he stood, he’d have to hunch over to avoid his sensitive horns scraping along the stone. Combined with how worn the stonework was, he assumed he was in a Lataxinan ruin. This one was shockingly well-preserved for being aboveground, but the signs he saw seemed to indicate that it was not from luck.

In places, the stone appeared to have been worn at different rates. This wasn’t a complete room that had survived the elements. It had been maintained. Someone had taken stone from other parts of the ruin and used it to patch the holes and keep this prison cell unbroken.

Someone… Or something.

Kaldalis shuddered.

He was a prisoner of the Jormongumo. It was very obvious that he had to get out of here.

The door was near at hand, and made of new-looking metal. No escape there.

Next to the door, though, was his first real clue.

Someone had left a meal for him. He was obviously not going to eat it - it was probably packed with poison or worse - but he could learn from it. The meal was a simple grilled fish. On sight, he could recognize it as some sort of catfish. From his fishing knowledge, he knew they were freshwater bottom-feeders. This one was relatively scrawny, indicating that it wasn’t a pond-dwelling monster, but that it had come from a river.

There wasn’t a river on his minimap from here, but there had to be one nearby, or they wouldn’t have this fish to feed him. If he could find it, then following it to the sea would be his way to safety. As soon as he hit the beach he could look for Cotanaku without having to worry about getting turned around in the jungle.

So what did he have? His inventory was still full, from his weapons, his charms, and his materials, all the way down to the stuffed soakanine and the bouquet of flowers. So he was armed and ready to fight. He wanted to switch to his sword and shield, and hope that the extra Resistance stat might help him against their poison - now that he knew for sure that the kiss was an unnecessary delivery mechanism, since his ambusher had just bitten him on the neck - but he needed the Jump ability if he wanted to escape. As soon as he had open air above him, he was gone.

All he could do was crouch down on the stone floor, ready to hurl himself at the door the second someone came in. He just needed that one opening. Open door. Open sky. And he’d be gone.

Five minutes passed. Ten. Twenty. Under ordinary circumstances, Kaldalis would have relaxed by now, either out of fatigue or boredom. But sheer terror roared up and down his every limb. The tingling numbness that clung to the side of his neck reminded him of the cost of letting his guard slip for a single second in this jungle. He would not be under their venom again. He would not be subjected to whatever horrors they had in store. He would fight and die rather than let them have their way with him.

It was nearly half an hour before the door rattled.

Kaldalis tensed to leap, contemplating in this moment if Nyxlas’s Augment would be necessary.

But when the door opened, it wasn’t the Jormongumo ambusher. Nor was it a simple guard or soldier or cook.

It was Ara.

She was in human form, wearing the phoenix-patterned robe she’d worn when they’d first met.

The sight of her looking like that was enough to make him freeze up in panic.

They stared at each other for at least a full minute. Her frame filled the small doorway, and her hand was still on the handle, ready to slam it shut. He was coiled to pounce, ready to launch across the space between them at lightning speed.

“I’ll kill you,” Kaldalis heard himself say. His own voice sounded like someone else was talking in another room. “Get out of my way or I will fucking kill you.”

“I could have killed you a dozen times,” Ara said calmly. She raised her free hand in a show of surrender, but her other hand didn’t let go of the handle to the metal door. “You were unconscious for hours. You didn’t have to wake up with your kidneys intact.”

Kaldalis had a sudden - very much unwanted - memory of Ara’s near-orgasmic moans as she’d taken a bite of Dalgaard’s kidney. He almost lunged just then.

But she was right. He’d been bound, poisoned, and knocked out. But he was still alive. She wanted something from him, and it wasn’t his innards.

“Your mistake doesn’t have to be mine,” he snarled. Kaldalis felt himself dissociating, but he forced his consciousness back into his body. He needed to be here. He needed to be in control. “Let me go or I will fucking kill you. I won’t say it again.”

“I can close this door,” Ara said, nodding her head towards it. Her raven black hair flicked with the motion. “I can wait until hunger has made you more reasonable.”

“My inventory is full of fish,” Kaldalis snapped. “You’ll be waiting a long time. My friends will come for me.”

“If you like, I can bring them to you,” she said, her lips quirking into a smile. Despite being in her human form, her teeth were just a little too sharp and pointy. “Would you like to share the cell, or will I need to house them elsewhere?”

Kaldalis heard his teeth grinding. She was pushing his buttons and enjoying it. He shifted slightly and his mood significantly improved as she flinched, her casual stance changing to make her more ready to slam the door closed if he leapt.

“Wait,” she said quickly, holding her hand out as if to ward him off. Parts of her face quivered, and he knew that they were her extra eyes. He’d surprised her enough that she almost began her transformation, but she was holding on to her human form. “Just let me come in and we can talk like civilized beings.”

“Cannibalism isn’t civilized,” Kaldalis snapped.

“And it’s not cannibalism if you’re a different species, is it?” she said quickly.

“So you ate Dalgaard on a technicality?” Kaldalis demanded. “Is that really how you think you can make me submit to whatever weird mating ritual you have planned?”

“It’s not a mating ritual,” she said, shaking her head. “I promise. It’s nothing like that.”

“Great,” Kaldalis said, “then you won’t turn this around on me when I say it.” He fixed her with a sneer and enunciated each word carefully: “fuck you.”

“I need you to listen to me,” Ara said carefully. She paused for a moment, clearly trying to think of a way to convince Kaldalis to hear her out.

It was enough of an opening for him.

He didn’t want to give her the additional warning of Nyxlas’s Augment, so he just popped Jump and hurled himself at her. All eight eyes snapped open in surprise as he shoulder tackled her. He drove his spear into her chest the same way he’d done to Onirioago. Despite that having been a fatal attack, Ara was not just figuratively a monster, but literally. She took only seventy-seven damage from the strike. Way too little to hope to kill her alone.

Arms sprouted from her with a sickening crunching sound, each one trying to grab him.

He kicked away from them before she could get a grip, terrified of what a single swipe of her claws would do, but her hands were waiting at every angle. The only direction he could go to avoid getting shredded was back into the cell. He only went as far as he had to go to keep out of her grip, but he immediately lashed out with his spear again, slicing the forearm that held the door, forcing her to let go.

Kaldalis had to hold the doorway.

As long as the door was open, he could escape. Her transformation would be the opening.

He only needed enough space to leap past her. Once he was out of the stone box, he could-

“Please,” Ara said. No, she didn’t say it. She sobbed it. When she looked up she had forced her other eyes closed. Her human eyes were filled with tears and her face had gone pink and splotchy. “Please don’t leave. I know what I did was wrong but… I need you.”

Despite himself, Kaldalis paused. He found himself remembering that while she was a monster, she was a thinking, feeling being. She was flesh and blood, same as him. Her fear wasn’t the result of quest programming gone wrong. She was genuinely afraid.

As much as she was a monster, she was a person, too.

“Talk fast,” Kaldalis said, though he didn’t lower his spear. “And start with the most important part: why I should stay to hear the rest.”