From a distance, Panbu seemed fine. But as the boat approached the doc, he saw more and more damage. It wasn’t until he got off the boat that he saw the full extent.

Kaldalis didn’t judge too harshly when he saw the visible damage to the ocean-side walls. Cotanaku hadn’t come through unscathed. He thought it was odd that there weren’t yet repairs underway, but he told himself he didn’t know what such repairs entailed. Cerh must have had a valid reason to leave the town’s defenses in such a state.

When they walked through the damaged gate, he saw the reason.

In Cotanaku, the damage was almost entirely confined to the walls. The courtyard had some scars from the battle with the Abstract, but Kaldalis had kept it under control for the most part.

But in Panbu, the damage continued throughout the entire town.

Doors and windows had been smashed on the buildings nearest to the walls. There were scratches and blood spatter all over every wall as Garyung and his retinue passed through the town. Several buildings had been physically torn apart, reduced to messy piles of debris. There were signs here and there that the debris had been turned, digging out survivors.

Or, at least, Kaldalis hoped that they had been digging out survivors. He didn’t want to think about the alternative.

It wasn’t until they reached the center of Panbu before they saw where the repairs were taking place. The town hall was nearly in ruins. Scaffolding surrounded the building, and it looked like the spindly exoskeleton of walkways were offering the walls more support than the building interior. Physical scratches around the frame of the newly-replaced front doors were definitely the work of Syncoresi. Kaldalis shuddered to think how many must have been here to do so much damage to such a sturdy building.

The interior was in significantly better shape than the outside. There was a pile of wooden debris that had been swept into a corner of the main meeting hall, but there was no sign of where it’d come from. All the furniture in here was either intact, or had already been replaced. He wasn’t sure which.

Kaldalis’s best guess was that the town hall needed to be at full efficiency to oversee the repairs.

Either that, or Cerh was a self-centered asshole.

Either option seemed equally likely.

Garyung’s retinue was relatively small. He brought two town guards, Ikzoz, and Kaldalis. Ikzoz had explained that they needed to bring as few people as possible to avoid putting the others on the defensive, but if Garyung and Kaldalis went alone, with neither escort nor advisor, they might read that as an even larger threat somehow. The extra bodies certainly made Kaldalis nervous. He remembered when he had needed to escape from Baimer, he had no choice but to leave Gavinkim behind to save Bangen. If things went that badly here, who was he going to have to save this time? And who was going to get left behind?

Kaldalis’s heart sank when they entered the more private second-floor meeting room. The entire Panbu council was here - including Big Mike and Captain Kensah, who he might be able to expect some support from - headed by Cerh. The two spots immediately to his left were vacant. One of those seats had been previously held by Jetmorpan, who now sat at the far end of the table, flanked by his own guards and advisors. The other seat had formerly belonged to Demriv.

Hopefully no part of this discussion would lead back to uncomfortable questions about her whereabouts.

What had worried him most was who was seated along the side of the table, opposite the seat that had been obviously left for Garyung. Kaldalis hadn’t even considered that the man might be here. But not only was he here, but the body language of every person in the room displayed deference towards him.

The Contender.

The smug-looking Talsar just gave a gesture for Garyung to take a seat. With the only other option being to walk up to the vacant seats near Cerh, it was clear that Kaldalis and the others would be expected to stand.

“Shall we get this meeting underway?” Garyung said, putting up a convincingly unflappable facade. Kaldalis could sense that the man was just as worried about the Contender as Kaldalis was. But he was doing a much better job keeping his concern off his face.

Kaldalis and Ikzoz took up positions flanking Garyung, with the guards just behind them. It was an approximation of what Jetmorpan’s people were doing, except that he had three advisors and four guards, giving him a much wider “pyramid” of support behind him.

The Contender also had five people with him to Garyung’s four - three priests and two guards. Kaldalis hoped that the meeting wouldn’t reach a point where the amount of physical might gathered in the room would matter. But if it did, he didn’t hate his odds here. Kaldalis and Garyung were formidable adventurers. It was possible that the two of them - with their two guards as backup - could hold their ground against six guards, plus Captain Kensah. Especially since they wouldn’t expect Kaldalis to have a War Weapon buried in his inventory for them.

“Indeed, it is time to begin the first meeting of the council of councils,” Cerh said after a moment’s pause. With all the focus in the room on the Contender, Kaldalis was surprised the church official didn’t take command of the meeting. But this was Cerh’s home turf, and so it made sense that he would take command here. “Our first order of business is about the recent attacks. And the extremely inauspicious events surrounding them.”

There wasn’t even a moment before Jetmorpan slammed his hand down on the table, going from calm to visibly fuming in a fraction of a second.

“What did you do?” he demanded. His attention was fixed entirely on Kaldalis, and he looked to be about ready to lunge across the table at him.

“It is no mystery at all what we did,” Garyung said calmly. Something in his tone drew the eye away from Kaldalis and Jetmorpan. There was an aura of confidence and command in the man that Kaldalis hadn’t expected. “We received information. We extrapolated from that information and found a threat to our town. We extrapolated from that threat to determine that you were also at risk. We passed that information to you. Anything that happened after that was strictly the result of your actions, not ours.” Garyung paused for a second before narrowing his eyes at Jetmorpan. “Or, rather, your lack of action.”

Kaldalis was impressed by how Garyung got Jetmorpan sputtering. The red-purple Vathon almost instantly diverted his ire from Kaldalis to Garyung. But he seemed to be trying to give voice to three different disputes at once, and was unable to force just one of them out.

“If this council is for slinging blame,” Cerh cut in, “then perhaps those with glass walls should be careful of what they’re throwing. How could we have been expected to react when your every action is on the knife’s-edge to a declaration of war?”

“What actions?” Garyung snapped, whirling on Cerh with a scowl. “You expect betrayal at every turn from me, when I’ve offered you everything I could give. I, personally, am the only reason you even have a town. If I wanted to declare war, I would just call them all home to Cotanaku and keep them there until the wilds reclaim everything I built for you.” Garyung made a visible show of calming himself down, taking a breath and running a hand over his close-cropped hair. “I apologize, that was out of line. I’m just so frustrated that I’ve done so much to try and extend friendship to you and you just keep slapping it out of my hand. I expected you to be grateful for this information and use it to protect your people. Not throw it back in my face after an avoidable tragedy to try and make me an enemy that I simply do not want to be.”

Kaldalis could see what Garyung was doing. It was an act. He’d planned this response before he’d even arrived, and was ready to put on an angry face and then make apologies. The man had grown as a leader in a lot of little ways, but what was most important was that his anxiety was gone.

And for good reason. After what he and Kaldalis had been staring up at in Baimer - the Zaran War Council, which had been an extremely intimidating display of titles, bureaucracy, and political clout - these guys were small timers. As a nation, Zara had a lot of power, but out here on the frontier, they had sent small fries and not big fish. Garyung didn’t have to be as afraid now that he wasn’t sitting in the capital city of a global superpower.

Garyung’s outburst had surprised Cerh almost as much as his first bite had shocked Jetmorpan. The talsar stared at Garyung for a long moment in silence.

“Fine, then,” Jetmorpan snapped on the other side of the table, finally finding his tongue. “Then we demand details on this information. Clearly, you jumped to the right conclusion, but we can’t be expected to believe that you did when you don’t share your sources, and only give us your conclusion.”

“We’ve spoken to the Lataxinans,” Garyung said. Kaldalis felt his eyes bug out at the man just dropping the news like that, but the man’s complete and total confidence made it sound like he wasn’t just blurting out nonsense. This was a measured, planned reveal. “They warned us that the process that brought the Infernal Horde down on them would begin anew. We can stop it if we can bring them back to this world. Or we can keep facing more and more of the Infernal Horde until they wash us out to sea.” Garyung crossed his thick arms over his broad chest, looking back and forth between Cerh and Jetmorpan. “The choice is yours.”

The revelation seemed to shock them all to silence. Even the Contender seemed surprised. Kaldalis could see the wheels turning behind the Talsar’s eyes. He had stayed out of matters so far, content to let the other leaders attack Garyung, and even content to let Garyung successfully defend himself.

What was his game?

Kaldalis feared that as they dug into the subject of the Lataxinans - and their abilities - he would find out.