Today’s snippet, titled “The Fall”, is a piece I wrote about my PC in Mark’s new (Good) Pathfinder Campaign.
      Be forewarned, there are mature themes and naughty language below.
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      Darkness.
      There was something sharp and uncomfortable digging into her back and she shifted, wincing. Everything hurt, mildly. Preternaturally sharp, her gaze focused in the deep, lightless air.
      Underground…?
      There was a groan from nearby, a whimpering cry further away, and near her feet she heard a growl of angry agony – “Who is there? Who’s here, damn it! I cannot see anything!”
      “No one can,” came the surly reply.
      Mere heartbeats later, torches sparked around her and the glare blinded for a moment. With the light came a flood of scattered images. Rhiallis could not breathe. She saw the great evil – Khorramzedeh – rising up in the same moment an explosion rocked the plaza. The Kite vanished in a searing column of energy – The Wardstone! she thought even as the memories tumbled over each other. Terendelev, her sparkling silver scales triumphant in the afternoon sun, was there to defend her city. She howled and the Balor-Lord bellowed and they fought. His whip, crackling with electricity, tore across the square killing dozens of people instantly.
      Rhiallis felt tears upon her face as she remembered the entire city crumbling around them, demons boiling up into the streets as buildings exploded. Terendelev’s enormous eye falling upon the huge crowd in Saint Clydwell Plaza just in time to see the cobblestones split beneath their feet. The ground, rent by some force Rhiallis could not even begin to understand, opened up to swallow them all. Despite the danger to herself, for she was still in fierce combat with Khorramzedeh, Terendelev split her attention for just one instant – surrounding the people of her city with a protective spell.
      That moment was all the opportunity Khorramzedeh required.
      The last thing Rhiallis saw as darkness descended upon the vision, was Terendelev’s dead face falling toward the ground – her head struck from her neck by a single blow from the demon prince’s blade.
      “Where- What?”
      Even as the other survivors began to move around, climbing to their feet and talking, Rhiallis knelt beside the nearest body and felt for a pulse. There was none. As her eyes adjusted she could make out several other unmoving forms. Terendelev gave her life to save us… so few… so few.
      “I can’t move – my leg. Someone, can you help? Someone?”
      “Shut up with all that moanin’ would ya? Damn!”
      “Hey, a little help over here?”
      Rhiallis recognized Mira’s voice, but she could not see her friend and twisted around, scanning the area. There! She’s fine, Navara’s there and- where’s Emma? Oh, by the Herald, where’s Emma?
      “Everyone who is injured, come toward me.” Emma’s silvery hair caught the light and Rhiallis breathed a sigh of relief – all four of her friends were accounted for.
      “I can’t come to you, you silly cow, I can’t see a thing. And this one over here – crying about her leg. Why don’t you come this way?”
      Closing her ears to the bitter retort – Oh, Emma, must you always be so stand-offish with new people? – Rhiallis, inched closer to the young woman who complained about her leg. She could tell at a glance that it was broken.
      “Don’t move, if you please,” Rhiallis said quietly. Her voice was pitched for the girl’s ears only, trying to make herself heard beneath the din of other voices bickering, rather than over it. “My name is Rhiallis, I am a healer. May I take a look?”
      “Yeah,” the young woman nodded, wincing. “I’m Anevia. Anevia Tirablade.”
      Smiling briefly, she put her deft fingers to work. The torn trouser leg had to be ripped open, but Rhiallis was pleased to see that though the bone was broken, it had not pierced the skin. “This is going to hurt, Anevia. I’m terribly sorry, but it is best we do it now – before it begins to swell and makes the setting that much more difficult.”
      The woman nodded, reaching for a bit of rubble. She placed the hunk of wood between her teeth and gripped a fallen timber until her knuckles went white. “I’m ready. Fire and Blood, I hope my wife is all right.”
      The momentary distraction was an opportunity and Rhiallis seized it. Skilled hands pressed here and pulled there; with help from Emma, who had appeared at her side like a silver wraith, Rhiallis managed to set the bone back into place. Someone handed her a pair of sturdy boards – nearly twinned, and just the right length for Anevia’s shin – and she wrapped a length of rope around the calf, securing it as best she could.
      “It will hold,” she said, trying to reassuring her patient.
      “She’s out,” Emma shook her head, standing. “Someone hand me some cloth – clean if you can. Gonna need to wrap that grumpy elf’s eyes.”
      All around them, the other survivors were talking and moving around; there were seven she recognized from the plaza, and three others (including Anevia), she did not. Navara and Mira had begun collecting what gear and tools and supplies they could find in the debris. The elf and man she had seen chuckling together earlier – they had introduced themselves as Idril and Lucien, if she recalled, for she had not been paying as much attention as they seemed to believe they warranted – were now peering into the darkness for danger. A huge hammer rose onto one burly shoulder and Rhiallis glanced up to see the man called Mickey moving toward the middle of the clearing.
      “Something up there.”
      “A spider?”
      “Mm. A big one,” Mickey nodded. “That’s the only way out I see.”
      “Agreed,” Idril said, nocking an arrow. “Lucien and I will take take point.”
      That hardly seems like a good idea, she thought, but wisely bit her tongue. Just let them sort it all out, you’ve got two injured folk and that uppity noble to keep track of. If he bleats about his precious person or his bloody rapier one more time…
      Rhiallis did not allow herself to finish the thought; surely she could not blame him. To a wealthy, important man like Horgus Gwerm, his person must seem sacrosanct. This entire event – from the destruction of his city to the murder of the Guardian, Terendelev, and to the long fall into this chasm – had to be terribly trying for him. Which was not to say it was un-trying for the rest of them, but Rhiallis got the impression that the excitement of danger was more of a boon to the others than poor Horgus.
      “What’s that?” One of the others said, and knelt. In the gloom, Rhiallis could just see her sharp-eyed elven friend reaching for a bit of sparkle in the dirt. Suddenly, she could make out a few other objects, twinkling in the artificial glow of several lightstones. There was one just a few feet away. Almost in unison, seven of the ten survivors of The Fall, reached out and picked up a tiny, glimmering disk. Rhiallis, held hers up to examine it more closely. A scale? She wondered, turning it over between her fingers. Its as shining as platinum, but a truer shade – silver? How strange…
      Seven pockets received seven scales and somehow, neither Anevia (who was blessedly, still unconscious), nor Horgus, nor the newly blinded elf, Aravashnial, objected.
      “It is moving.” Lucien’s voice was a hoarse whisper, “Get ready.”
      Rhiallis was grateful for her ceremonial graduation garb; she had worn her armor, her freshly-painted shield, and her blade to the plaza today. Quick as she could, she pulled her shield from its resting place over her back and stood guard over Anevia’s body.
      It was all over in a few horrifying seconds. The spider was dead – had been dead, probably for days, Idril said afterward – but from its writhing corpse had emerged several enormous, wriggling, hideous maggot-like creatures.
      She had thanked Iomedae a thousand times for helping her hold back the vomit that surged forth upon seeing (and smelling) the foul beasts. Anevia, though she did not know it, was probably very grateful for that as well.
      Beneath their feet, the earth began to tremble and falling debris threatened to clobber them all over again. Anevia was wakened and an awkward, if serviceable, stretcher was cobbled together for her. Idril offered to help Rhiallis carry her and the young woman seemed embarrassed to be such a burden. Of course, Rhiallis thought, rolling her eyes as Emma muttered behind her, Everyone, except me, I suppose, wishes she would just shut-up about her wife. There are thousands of people on the surface who are injured or dead and many of them are folks we care about as much as she loves her wife.
      With little conversation, the survivors gathered themselves and whatever supplies were scrounged from the rubble, and headed off down the passageway Idril had deemed ‘most likely to be safe’ or perhaps, ‘least likely to outright kill us all’.
      Aravashnial, complaining bitterly, positioned himself behind Mira, who would act as his eyes. Rhiallis could not help but be impressed at the easy way Mira ingratiated herself to the elven spellcaster. Somehow, with a few kind words and that gregarious halfling nature, she had made a friend of him, whereas Emma had only aggravated both he and Horgus. It only goes to show that appearances are not everything and beauty does not signify a winning personality, she thought, then chided herself for being unkind.
      For herself, Rhiallis followed the rest of the party without complaint. She chatted with Anevia, as much to kill time as to keep the injured woman calm and distracted from the pain. Her wife was Irabeth Tirablade, a rather famous Iomedaen Paladin of the EagleWatch. Rhiallis had ever met her personally, and did not realize she was married to a woman, but she had heard her once or twice, and had seen her spar with some prentices. Each time, she had been impressed at the way a half-orc woman purported herself amongst the crusaders. Rhiallis’ experience with the breed had not been overwhelmingly positive and it pleased her to know that there was good in them, after all.
      “Wait! I hear something,” the raspy whisper came from the front.
      Then Navara’s voice chimed in, “They’re huge.”
      Gently setting Anevia down, Idril reached for his bow, Rhiallis drew her blade, and the party fell upon whatever horrors awaited in the darkened chamber before them.
      “For Iomedae!” she cried, and the adrenaline rush of her first real battle surged within her veins. “For Glory!”
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Note: Image is “King Jagiello Statue Central” by (Mulligand) from SXC.hu; edited by me