Kaldalis feared that the Contender had him right where he wanted him. But there wasn’t really anything he could do now.

The only card Kaldalis had to play was to try his best to ride out whatever speech the smug clergyman had prepared and improvise a solution when it came.

He tried to cheer himself by pointing out how much that had been his solution to every problem. Against the Infernal Horde, dungeon bosses, and various other monsters, it had worked out great.

But against a thinking foe?

Onirioago’s gambit in the courtroom came to mind.

That comparison made Kaldalis feel all that much more anxious.

“Where are the Lataxinans?” the Contender asked. “In simple words. Assume that I have only just arrived on the island.”

“The Paths Between Paths,” Kaldalis said carefully. He fought the urge to use the most condescending tone he could muster. This guy was being willfully ignorant, but if he was prepared to make Kaldalis look like a fool, he didn’t want to walk right into it here in front of everyone. “It’s a mystical void that exists outside of the world. It was the only place where they could be safe from the Calamity.”

“Oh, how simple,” the Contender said with a derisive snort. “They’re merely in a mystical void. How could we have forgotten to check the mystical void in the last few centuries? Well, you know what they say: ‘You always find extinct civilizations in the last place you look.’”

“The use of Kaia’s Flicker gives us access to the Paths Between Paths,” Kaldalis continued. He didn’t know why he was explaining it like this. Everyone at the table knew. The Contender merely wanted to walk him through his little game. “When there, you can see the shape of the Lataxinan vessel, where they’re living now. Though it’s in the distance from where the ability puts us. It’s just a big white shape in the darkness.”

“So how did they tell you anything?” the Contender pressed. “Did they ride out from their protective bunker to chat with you in this mystic void?”

Garyung turned slightly to look at Kaldalis. He didn’t remember if Garyung got the whole story of how he’d gotten there.

Sating the man’s curiosity wasn’t his first priority, though.

What was the worst that could happen if Kaldalis revealed his trick? What was the worst that could happen if someone here tried to get to the Lataxinans?

Kaldalis wasn’t sure. And because he wasn’t sure, he damn well didn’t want to give them an itemized list.

In the end, however, if he wanted to navigate this, he had to rely on the Lataxinans to protect themselves. Keeping his mouth shut was just going to be giving the Contender ammunition against him, to deny his claims and declare him a liar.

“I performed a repeatable sequence of actions,” Kaldalis began carefully. “The use of Kaia’s Flicker is obviously required, and I had a friend beat me nearly to death with a Slow debuff weapon to make the ability last. But it also requires Nyxlas’s Augment, from the other dungeon, and the spear’s Jump ability, to get the momentum to cover the distance.” Kaldalis winced when he realized the missing piece of the puzzle, but he was too far in now to backtrack. “I also used my new relic fishing rod to bypass the danger of running out of air in the Paths Between Paths. After using Nyxlas’s Augment and being hammered down to get the Slow debuff, health does become a concern.”

“Repeatable,” the Contender said carefully. “A specific set of tools that only you have - including expressly forbidden magics - and you call that repeatable?”

“The majority of the people on these islands have those abilities,” Kaldalis shot back. “And I’m sure there’s a way to bypass the unique one. I just haven’t found it yet. Some potion or other item. Or else just chugging health potions.”

“So you admit that you’re the only source for this information,” the Contender continued, raising his voice, clearly done with the questioning, and moving on to his argument. “And no one - least of all the law-abiding people of Zara - have the ability to fact-check your claims. That certainly sounds like it isn’t a trick.”

Kaldalis looked back and forth between Cerh and Jetmorpan. Garyung had carefully pried the conversation away from the accusatory tone they’d begun with. Now the Contender had smashed it with a few uncharitable questions and an obvious effort to cast the most unfavorable light over the answers.

The Contender hadn’t even questioned Kaldalis’s conclusions.

He had no dispute that the Lataxinans were there.

He had no dispute against the information Kaldalis had conveyed, either.

He didn’t even question how he’d known that the Infernal Horde siege was coming.

Instead, he’d just handed the two town leaders their pitchforks and moved them back into attack position.

It reminded Kaldalis of a part of the Model UN club in high school that he’d repressed. One of the other minor nations had been led by a kid who was just oozing with charisma. Fucking Brian. Not the good Brian, who had been Dylan’s friend. The other Brian. Popular Brian. His nation was a minor one, but nobody could have told from the way he was basically running the show. Brian had everyone eating out of his hand, and he didn’t use anything remotely approaching facts or logic to get them there. He ruled with an iron fist made out of force of personality alone.

And the Contender was now doing the same. And Kaldalis was no more prepared to deal with him than Dylan had been prepared to deal with Brian.

Fucking Brian.

The Contender kept talking, and Kaldalis started to tune it out. It was all bullshit.

That didn’t stop the Contender from hamming it up. He started with a simple report of what they’d done in Baimer - again, presented as unfavorably as possible - prior to their encounter with the Contender. Kaldalis’s brazen use of forbidden magics in broad daylight to commit an assault - ignoring that it was against an assassin. Garyung’s flagrant misuse of his power as leader of a nation to force the Contender to release Kaldalis from custody - ignoring the very real need Garyung had for Kaldalis’s council.

The whole story stank. But Cerh and Jetmorpan were captivated by it.

It took Kaldalis a moment to recognize what mistake he’d made.

Kaldalis’s story was a threat to the status quo. He’d just name-dropped a group of people who were the next best thing to mythology. It was as if he’d walked into the governor’s office and told him that he’d just spoken to Zeus, and that the sky god had told him to convey his opinion on public policy.

Meanwhile, the Contender was painting Garyung and Kaldalis with the same brush that Cerh and Jetmorpan had already expected them to be. Kaldalis’s tale was far fetched, and challenged their worldview. The Contender’s ad hominem attack was telling them what they already wanted to believe.

And there wasn’t really anything Kaldalis could do to challenge it now.

“I don’t understand what your point is,” Garyung cut in at last, when the Contender finished the sordid tale of their meeting in Baimer. “What does any of that have to do with the attacks on our towns? How does your skewed perspective of events across the ocean inform our decisions here? Decisions, might I add, that will affect the lives of our people.”

“I’m just filling in the blanks,” the Contender said, enunciating each word as if explaining to a small child. “I just want to make sure everyone knows how far you’ve gone to halt my investigation. In order to verify even the most basic details of your story requires us to make ourselves complicit in your magics well before I can determine if they are or are not irreparably corrupting our souls.” He shook his head with a tsk tsk sound. “It sounds like you want to gather allies against me by corrupting the local government with dark powers.”

“There are other ways to verify our story,” Garyung snapped. “We predicted the Infernal Horde siege. What other evidence do you need? I’ll tell you right now that we haven’t seen the last of them. They will be back at all our gates, and if we aren’t prepared, things are going to go even worse.”

“Is that a threat?” Jetmorpan snapped. “Are you-”

The Contender held up a hand to stop the man from continuing.

“Then I think we are in agreement,” the Contender said, looking to Cerh. “No action will be taken - least of all any that could interfere with my investigation - until we can be certain that this prediction was no mere fluke.”

“So moved,” Cerh said at the Contender’s prompting. “No actions will be taken until more trustworthy sources can be found and presented.”

“You will need your defenses in order,” Garyung said. “This is not a joke. You’re giving up people’s lives for-”

“The matter has been tabled,” Cerh said firmly. “If you have nothing else to bring to the meeting, I believe we have nothing further to discuss.