Despite the weakness trembling in Ara’s voice, she stood strong. Her arms were spread wide to block Kaldalis’s escape, and he took particular note of that.

This could all be a trick.

She was going to need a strong opening to convince him to stay to listen to the whole story.

“There is a prophecy etched in stone here,” Ara said quickly, the words spilling out as if she thought he was going to use her talking to escape. “It foretells your coming, and the part you have to play in the disaster that is upon us now.”

“Great,” Kaldalis said, menacing her with his spear. “It wasn’t that you wanted to do unspeakable things to me; it was because a rock told you to do it. That makes me feel much better.”

“I misunderstood the prophecy,” Ara said. Despite the harshness of her words, she looked away, unable to meet his gaze. “And I fear that I have led us to ruin. If you are truly driven away from us by my actions, the prophecy might be broken, and our line is dead.”

“The fuck kind of prophecy is this?” Kaldalis demanded.

“It speaks of a man with a noble soul,” Ara said quickly, looking up at Kaldalis again. With visible effort, she closed her extra eyes, leaving only the normal two remaining - though the partial transformation for her extra arms meant that they were still blacked out. “Whose resistance to our kiss would come from both body and mind.”

Kaldalis remembered what Ara had said to him when they’d first met. She’d described him as a noble soul for his protectiveness of Dalgaard - and of herself, when he thought she was just a strange woman lost in the jungle at night - and had been surprised by both his resistance to her charms and how fast he’d recovered from her venom when she had forced her bite upon him.

“That does sound like me,” Kaldalis ventured, though he didn’t lower the tip of his spear yet. “But that doesn’t tell me what you want from it.”

“When I realized what you were, I thought your…” Ara said, but then hesitated, biting her lip. If it was an act to make her seem more relatable, it would have worked a lot better if it hadn’t showed off her venom-dripping fangs, a little bit of the fluid dribbling down her chin. “I didn’t remember what the prophecy said your purpose was. I thought that your flesh would be more powerful, and that consuming you would give me great strength.”

“Yeah,” Kaldalis grumbled, “this isn’t helping your case.”

“After your victory, when I was reborn,” Ara continued, ignoring his snark, “I conferred with my followers. With the actual words of the prophecy in hand, and our combined experience in interpreting the prophet’s words, I misunderstood a second time. I believed you were destined to serve us as breeding stock.”

“Okay. But that’s worse.” Kaldalis tasted bile in the back of his throat. “You do get how that’s worse, right?”

“The prophecies are…” Ara waved one of her hands dismissively. Kaldalis considered leaping for the tiny window the gesture offered, but he had to admit that the promise of prophecy had him a little curious. “Many of them are involved with sources of breeding stock. You understand that we cannot mate with each other, of course, so the prophet’s guidance has kept our kind alive for all these centuries. That, and the Lataxinan’s gift.” She shook her head sadly. “Which brings us to the time of prophecy.”

“What is happening?” Kaldalis asked. Despite his better judgment, the tip of his spear started to dip a little. “What do you need me for?”

“We are dying,” Ara said, her voice pitiful and small as she looked down at the floor, closing her eyes. “We are dying, and for the first time in centuries, we stay dead.”

Her hands started to fall away from guarding the door. More than that, as her shoulders slumped, her extra arms withered, shrinking back into her flesh. Kaldalis’s instincts screamed at him to run. Dive for freedom and get the fuck out.

“You are to be our savior, Kaldalis,” Ara said, looking up at him with eyes that were fully human once more. “I beg you not for forgiveness, but for our lives.”

Kaldalis grimaced. He didn’t like this. Not at all.

She’d just admitted to the worst possible intent that he could have attributed to her actions.

Ara was a monster - and not just the kind you kill ten of for a quest. But if there was one way to get under his skin, it was asking for help. In his heart, Kaldalis always wanted to do the right thing.

Calculated deception or lucky guess or last-ditch honesty, Ara had figured out the one way to get a hook into him. The promise of an opportunity to help the hopeless.

His chronic hero syndrome was going to get him killed.

Fortunately, in this world he would respawn thirty minutes later, so he couldn’t be too worried.

“What’s killing you?” Kaldalis asked. He heaved a sigh and lowered his spear, dropping his combat-ready stance.

The look of sudden hope in Ara’s eyes was almost enough to make him forget that she was a monster who’d threatened to violate him on more than one occasion.

Almost.

“They come from the south,” Ara said, pointing out into the world beyond Kaldalis’s cell. “Led by a man in black spiked armor. We fight them off when they come, but no matter how many fall, they push until at least one of us is dead. And then after they retreat, their fallen rise and retreat as well, vanishing into the jungle until their next attack.”

“And your fallen stay down,” Kaldalis said. “Why? What are they doing?”

If she was telling the truth, she might be convinced to reveal some vital information. If there was a way to circumvent the power of the tablet, he could use that to put an end to Onirioago, if she ever showed her face again.

“It’s not what they’re doing,” Ara said. “It’s what they’ve already done.” She stepped back from the door, gesturing for him to join her. “Will you walk with me?”

“You’re not gonna try any bullshit, are you?” Kaldalis said, raising his spear to point it at her throat, where he’d buried it at the end of their last encounter.

“If you stay at my side,” Ara said, the corner of her mouth quirking up in a smirk. “My warriors will let you be, even unbound, so long as I am near at hand.”

Kaldalis considered his options. As soon as he was physically out of the cell, he could leave at any time using an Augmented Jump. It wouldn’t hurt to play along, especially if he could use his apparent status as a figure of prophecy to barter for information.

As he stepped up beside her, she tried to hook her arm around his. He shook her off immediately with a shudder of disgust, drawing an amused chuckle from her.

Despite the convoluted power structure between them - she his jailor and he her savior - it seemed like he wasn’t going to be completely spared her weirdness.

As soon as they left the room, Kaldalis recognized where he was.

This was the same ruins where he and his friends had fought Ara before, supposedly scattering the Jormongumo settlement. Despite their earlier victory, the Jormongumo were back, and in force this time.

As Ara led him through the ruins towards the large central building, he saw there were many of them living and working here. Some in monstrous form bore weapons and armor and slithered along on patrol, keeping a keen eye out for danger. Others were in human form doing simple chores: washing clothes, mending armor, or tending gardens. A group of ten worked together to carry the enormous carcass of an Irritator out of the jungle, presumably to butcher.

True to his prior experiences, they were all women, explaining why they needed outside breeding stock. Kaldalis quickly shoved the thought down and away from himself. The Islands of Ulun had a grim reputation from past expeditions. He didn’t want to think of how many earlier attempts to make a foothold on the island had ended in a gruesome fate here among the Jormongumo.

“One of your kind reached out to us,” Ara said at last, once they reached the enormous Lataxinan-style building in the center of the ruins. “In our slavish devotion to prophecy, we allowed ourselves to be manipulated.”

“Onirioago,” Kaldalis guessed. He thought he was starting to see how this was going to unfold. It was almost enough to distract him as they entered the building, once more cutting off his access to the sky.

“One and the same,” Ara said with a smirk. “She promised to deliver you to us, and we only needed to follow her instructions. We attacked your town, seducing and consuming, and demanding to have you. She was to use that to get you to come to us. And while you did, she did not use her forces to overpower yours and force your surrender as she promised. She let you kill us, and took what she wanted for herself.”

Kaldalis knew what Ara was going to show him even as she led him up the familiar stairs, and down the familiar hallway.

In the tablet room, two of the three tablets had been rebuilt. Some manner of greenish sappy substance was acting as glue to hold them together. The third was all laid out on the ground, with a single jagged piece missing in the middle.

“This was the result of her treachery,” Ara said. There was a sudden fury in her voice, and Kaldalis almost wanted to try and get away from her. If she’d spoken like that while they were outside, he might have jumped away on instinct alone. The roof above his head kept him from a hasty escape. “When we die, we remain dead. The Lataxinan power has left us, and we cannot restore it.”

“But she still has this power,” Kaldalis said. “I killed her, and an hour later, she rose again.”

“In what manner?” Ara asked. She whirled on him, eyes intent. “Is it different for your kind? Does she rebuild her body from the inside out? That is what we’ve seen from our attackers. Has she shared this power? Is she nearby? Can we reclaim it from her?”

“No,” Kaldalis said, trying not to flinch. “She was reborn in a cloud of darkness. What you’ve seen is… A different thing.” Kaldalis wasn’t sure how much to reveal. “But there’s no way to reclaim the tablet. Onirioago is imprisoned in a foreign land, and she wouldn’t give up the missing piece. Even if we could get her out of prison, she would just commit more treachery and abscond with it.”

Ara’s lips pressed together so tight Kaldalis could see the bumps of her hidden fangs behind them. She clearly wanted to hiss and snarl her rage at what Onirioago had done, but knew that taking it out on Kaldalis would cost her his help.

“She stole this power from us,” Ara said at length, careful to keep her tone even. “And in our moment of weakness, we face a danger greater than any we’ve seen in my memory. Since before the Calamity.” She took a deep breath and put a hand on Kaldalis’s shoulder. To his credit, he managed not to flinch. “And you, Kaldalis, are the only one who can save us from extinction. Fulfill the prophecy, unyielding man of noble soul. Face your destiny!”