The last time Kaldalis and his friends had come through the entry hall to this building, it had been a much friendlier atmosphere. Not to say that they’d been happy to be dragging Onirioago along into an encounter with a horrifying monster, but the mood was much chillier now. Now that Dalgaard had all the information they needed from him, they were no longer incentivised to keep up their end of the bargain. Them going back on their word had emboldened Voker and his crew as well by giving the impression that Kaldalis had no more cards to play. As the group filed into the entry hall, more than one of them rudely jostled or elbowed Kaldalis when they passed close enough to do so.

“Where will she be?” Dalgaard asked.

Kaldalis almost didn’t answer. He made a show of slowly wiping the last of the drying monster blood off his chin while they glared at him. But he still had some hope that he might be able to bring this to a dialogue. And the only way he was going to get anything out of it was if he was still on good terms with Dalgaard.

“There’s two options,” Kaldalis said. He gestured up the stairs nearby. “If she’s stupid and cowardly, she’ll be up there. Down the hall and around the corner, screaming in anguish over the broken tablet. But after what Onirioago did, it can’t help her. And the narrow hallway will pin her down. There will be no escape and no room for her monster form to fight properly.” He gestured ahead down the hall. “If she’s smart, she’ll be at the end of this hall, in the ballroom. It’s set up for a boss fight in there. A big dramatic stage for a big dramatic showdown.”

Dalgaard said nothing. They only mirrored Kaldalis’s gesture down the hall towards the ballroom. Voker was about to protest, but the determination in Dalgaard’s expression left no room for argument. As much as Voker might have wanted to hope for the easy fight, Dalgaard knew better.

The last time Kaldalis had encountered Ara here, she had been waiting out in the open, dramatically revealing her identity. She wasn’t here now, though. At least not visibly. The early afternoon sun was on the wrong side of the building, and the light coming through the large vine-covered windows was more obscured, filling the ballroom with harsh and ominous shadows. Shadows that would allow even the slightest lapse in attention to hide a stealthy creature.

A stealthy creature like Ara.

Despite the obvious threat, Voker’s group started to spread out. Ostensibly, they were searching the room, but they were sort of just looking around, admiring the atmospheric architecture.

“Careful,” Kaldalis said, moving to keep close to Balrim and Myrin.

“Yes,” Dalgaard agreed quickly. “She’s here.”

“How can you tell?” Voker asked, drawing his sword and stepping forward, searching for the threat.

“I can tell,” they said, lowering their voice. They gave Kaldalis a sidelong glance. “Can’t you?”

Kaldalis did feel a sense of very intense unease. He’d thought it was just because they were walking into the lair of a walking phobia factory that literally haunted his nightmares, and found it to be dimly lit and ominously quiet. But there was a very specific prickle passing over his skin. The gross feeling of Ara’s eyes on him, even when she couldn’t see her lecherous leer directly. He could feel his heart rate quicken as the sensation continued, turning the atmosphere from ominous to terrifying.

“Stay with me,” Kaldalis said. He looked around sharply, trying to identify the source of the unsettling feeling. “We shouldn’t split up.”

“You don’t gotta tell me twice,” Balrim muttered, moving to put his back to Kaldalis’s. With a gesture from him, Myrin moved to join them, positioning to watch Kaldalis’s blind spot on the other side. “I’m getting impending jumpscare vibes here.”

“I don’t hate the jumpscares,” Myrin grumbled. “I hate the anticipation before it.”

“You’re right,” Dalgaard said, moving to step a little closer to Kaldalis and friends. “Everyone, stack up. We search together or we’ll get picked off alone.”

“Picked off by what?” Voker snapped, standing his ground out in the middle of the room, even as the rest of his mercenaries began to retreat back towards the entrance. “She’s not here. She’s probably not even in the building.” He gestured at Kaldalis. “You trust this asshole too much. Ara’s probably miles away by now, hiding in the mountains and laughing at our dumb asses for being-”

THUMP.

Ara landed right behind him. In human form, she landed heavily, apparently retaining the weight of her monstrous tail even in her smaller shape. Voker whirled on her instinctively, his shield raised and his sword swinging, but she pounced with a terrifying fanged grin. Kaldalis knew what her strength felt like as she bore down on him, forcing him to the ground. Her face split open with extra eyes and her robe opened up, allowing all her extra arms out to grapple Voker, ripping into him as her fanged mouth slammed against his face in a violent snakelike strike.

She didn’t even wait for him to be dead. She tore at his armor, making an opening wide enough for her claws to plunge into his abdomen. Even as her monstrous form was still forming, her snakelike body unrolling behind her, she ripped out a chunk of bleeding flesh, slamming her face against it to messily devour it with a disgusting moan of pleasure.

It had happened to fast for even Kaldalis to react. Voker was down.

Dalgaard let out a sudden, high-pitched shriek of fear at the sight of her. And more than that, at the no doubt traumatic reminder of what she’d done to them.

“What the fuck?” Yosini yelled. “What the fuck! He’s gone! He’s just… He’s fucking gone!”

Kaldalis looked over and the Suyon healer was gesturing frantically up and to the left, at where the party frames would have been on his UI. If he was saying that Voker had gone… Had he run out of Aplomb entirely? Did he not have enough to respawn?

Was he permanently dead?

Kaldalis remembered that when Ara had eaten Dalgaard, she had grown more powerful. She had become larger, with more strength and additional power behind her attacks. As she messily ripped chunks out of Voker’s corpse, shoving them in her mouth - apparently content to feed if everyone was just going to stare dumbfounded at the spectacle - she was growing again. Her pitch-dark spider eyes took on a reddish sheen. The blackness on her claw deepened and grew, stretching up to envelop her hands and forearms. The tips of her enormous fangs turned black as well now.

“Tank,” Yosini said desperately. “Tank… Tank to the front? Anybody?”

Kaldalis looked around and suddenly understood why everyone was frozen in place. Voker was the only tank for this crew. Overworld aggro rules meant that without a tank, they were in terrible danger if they were the first to strike. And no one could stop her from sauntering dramatically up to Yosini and eating him next. And then Dalgaard. And then any other healers who made themselves known.

There was only one choice. There was a breach, and Kaldalis was going to have to step up to fill it.

“Ara!” Kaldalis yelled, hoping that nobody else could hear the quaver in his voice. “It’s time for this to end!”

Her head snapped up to orient on him, her lips peeled back from her fangs. For a brief moment, she was just an animal. A vicious predator. A monster. He could stomach the sight of her in that context, no different from any of the other carnivores he’d faced in this world. But then she smiled, and he suddenly saw her as a very different kind of predator.

“Kaldalis,” she said, straightening up and fixing her robe, her voice sibilant and slurred around her enormous fangs. “I like that look on you.” She delicately tapped her blood-soaked cleavage with one clawed finger, running it up over her neck to her chin, before licking the gore of Voker’s remains off the tip of that claw. “We match now, lover.”

He felt like vomiting. But he didn’t have time to be sick. She’d correctly deduced that he wasn’t on her side anymore. If she was allowed to run loose in this room, they weren’t going to have enough damage dealers left to kill her.

“Surrender,” Kaldalis demanded. “I’ve brought your victim to give them the closure they deserve. Surrender now, and we can discuss the terms that will end the extinction of your people!”

“Cute,” Ara said. Her clawed hands clenched and unclenched slowly. She leaned forward, her central eyes widening. “I can see your blood in your veins. Where it pools. These are no friends of yours. I see the bruises under the blood and under your clothes. You brought them to feed me, didn’t you?” She licked her lips slowly. “Kneel. Bow your head and surrender to me and I will make them go away.” She cast her gaze around the room. Without a tank, none of the other mercenaries wanted to rush in and die. Not after what had happened to Voker. “And I will have fun doing it. This is the prophecy. This is the sacrifice. Get down on your knees and fulfill your destiny.”

Kaldalis felt his fear cracking away. He was in a room full of scared people. People who would die horribly if he didn’t do something. Those who weren’t trying to back away towards the exit were frozen stock-still with terror. They were afraid of Ara, sure, but their fear was directed most intently at Kaldalis. He had a choice. He could side with them, or he could side with her. And a few of them had given him hell in that makeshift prison cell not long ago.

Underneath his fear, he was surprised that he didn’t find anger. Ara was a monster, and she deserved all the rage he could muster. Instead, he found something else.

Conviction.

There was only one right answer here. Kaldalis leveled his spear at Ara.

It was time to be a hero.