The festival is going well, which means it's only a matter of time before something like this happens. There's an entire squad of guards standing around the stretcher and doing exactly nothing to solve the problem. Useless.

"Step back, everyone! What happened here? What - who did this?"

"Demons, prelate! We found her barely alive outside the walls."

Well, technically one of the scouts did, but he left as soon as he reported it, and there's no use in him getting credit now.

She's still bleeding and her chest is barely moving, but she doesn't seem dead yet. He's lived much longer than his fellow inquisitors by assuming anything out of the ordinary is a demonic plot and he's not going to give that up now. He'll play along, but he's watching for any slip-up.

"And none of you had a potion?" He rushes through a prayer to Iomedae, but her chest wound stubbornly fails to close. Probably cursed, or an illusion. 

"You there! Yes, you - stop dithering and gawping and make yourself useful - go and get Terendelev!" Either this is genuine and Terendelev can help, or it's not and Terendelev can destroy them. 

There's a lull as they wait - none of the guards want to meet Hulrun's gaze. The festival continues on around them. The sun shines down out of a blue sky, people laugh and shout as they drink and game, and the scent of pie and ale fills the air.

Estel is waking up. She has a headache, and she has no idea where she is, but those voices sound like Hallit-accented Taldane, so... not in the Wound? Probably safe to respond. Not that she's great at faking anyway.

"Where am I?"

"You're in the town square, disrupting the Day of the City. Who are you?"

"Estel, currently of the Steel Exiles. Which city?"

He's never heard of the Steel Exiles, which makes this rather suspect. Sometimes adventurers show up to try and help and have ridiculous names, but mostly when that happens it's a succubus and her thralls. She's obviously not being helpful, so he's still considering his options when the choice is taken out of his hands.

The ground trembles and a low keening buzz cuts through the air. Portals rip through space and demons launch themselves through, tearing into the partygoers and scattering blood across the cobblestones. Mortals in the square stagger as the fabric of the Abyss twists their senses, nausea and bile rising in their guts while the thick acrid scent of congealed blood overwhelms everything else.

She has never run into this particular monster before, but she has plenty of reflexes for it nonetheless. She tugs the armor back in place and staggers to her feet, using her pike to lever herself to standing. And while she's taking a round to get up and mobile, asks herself some questions.

Is this demons?* It's probably demons. This tastes like the Abyss.

Where are there demon attacks in a city?** 

Uh, there's a city along the wardstone line in Mendev, isn't there? And that would match the accents. So... she has a duty to help. And falling back on training is easier than thinking anyway.

"Right. Not where I expected to fight demons today, but it'll do. Teleport specialist, fifth circle, where do you want me?"

* Knowledge: Religion roll: 20, Knowledge: Planes roll 24
** Knowledge: Geography roll: 20

A lot of things are happening in that round. There are several dozen demons in the square at this point, mostly schirs and dretches slaughtering the partygoers with ease. The few people who start to fight back effectively get jumped by nabasus or vrocks. There's even a vrolikai standing in the ruins of the stage, three of its arms idly eviscerating the band while it looks around.

A monstrous voice reverberates through the city, "Behold, crusader gods, behold. Iomedae, you poor Imposter. Your city will fall to me. Your followers will feed my hunger." The sky darkens as clouds of locusts flow overhead.

Hulrun is a little busy and doesn't actually hear her. His sword is wreathed in flame and light and the way he ripped through the nearest schirs has earned him a nabasu* to duel. It's fangs are currently clamped on his left arm and tearing through the bracer while Hulrun tries to get enough leverage to drive his sword into its gut.

Terendelev could clear the square of demons with Holy Word but she doesn't want to kill all the non-good people in it. In a few rounds that won't be a problem. She calls down a flame strike on one cluster and changes back to her normal form, claws and wings and tail whipping out to shred the demons nearest to her.

"Deskari, Lord of Locusts! Leave. My. City!" She roars her defiance at the sky and coils her body to launch up out of -

No. He plunges down out of the swarms and pins her to the ground with Riftcarver. The scythe swings up faster than anyone in the square can follow, then comes down. Terendelev's head goes flying and eighty tons of silver scaled meat collapses beneath his claws. 

That is a silver dragon, and not a young one, and it just died like a chump. This just ceased to be winnable.

The name Deskari actually takes slightly longer to register than that, but doesn't exactly change her reaction.

Also, Estel's chest is bleeding quite a bit, from a wound she does not remember receiving.

That fucking hurts but it is not important right now. She'd never have made Signifer if something like pain could keep her from casting or assessing a battlefield.

So. The correct place to be is not here, but she is really extremely good at teleportation and can bring four passengers on a dim door from five yards away, more if they're carrying children. And pop six yards unaccompanied in half a moment.

So she's going to sight a cluster of civilians where she can grab at least that many, be in their midst with a thought, call "Evacuating you, don't resist", and aim for eight hundred feet away down one of the boulevards.

You know, if that works this close to a godsdamn demon lord.

The wound and the demons and the swarms of bugs and the sickening rasping underneath it all are definitely not helping, but her rescuees are absolutely not resisting. There's a couple huddled against each other and a wall, each holding a kid, and she can pull in two more nearby adults while she's at it - one of them in the last instant before a bardiche could hit his chest.

She's the most interesting food left in the square at that point, so he's on his way over when her spell completes. A million eyes looking down from the sky show exactly where she went. He has other plans and little time, but he can reach her from here.

"Run and die, mortal gnat." Riftcarver slams down again, empowered by his will, and shears straight through the street. The city rips in half for a mile in front of him, a chasm opening up beneath Estel's feat as everything around her collapses.

Then he springs out of view to the west.

Well shit. They're probably not going to survive this fall, are they.

Ow. She's not doing great about it either. She valiantly struggles to hold onto consciousness, and might even have managed it if not for that chest wound, but she passes out down in the dark.

She comes to an unknown amount of time later, lying in a pool of blood and filthy water. The only light comes from bulbous glowing mushrooms hanging from the walls of the cavern.

She survived! Good, she wasn't entirely sure of that part.

She will cast light on her pike and... she doesn't have fly hung today or know how far down she is. One more dim door. Let's... search for other survivors.

Though also she ought to check, do her bags of holding* still have all the trade goods she was headed south with?

*three, each 'type I' with 30 cubic feet and 250 pounds capacity

Three bags, all accounted for once she picks up her scattered belongings. She finds the bodies of two of her rescuees nearby in the cavern, mangled by the fall. No sign of the others - either they landed elsewhere or left without leaving a trail. There are two exits - smaller caves cutting out from this one. If she kept her sense of direction during the fall, one is to the north and the other is back southwest towards the market square.

So whatever gave her a huge sucking chest wound wasn't interested in looting her even of the easy stuff. Future problem?

Let's go with hopefully-southwest.

At a tight corner of the cave up ahead Estel spots three giant spiders lurking in their webs near the ceiling.

She can pop past if it looks like they're moving, that's usually good enough to fool vermin.

Easily enough - she can do the same for the sleeping pair of monitor lizards and the next group of spiders too, at which point she hears voices, arguing, up ahead. She's concealed from them by a rock outcropping but she can see the ruins of a tiled floor and crumbling pillars from here.

Okay, two approaches here: mask on, which lets her use it to check alignment, or mask off, which makes her less terrifying.

...They're arguing. It might turn into a fight. Mask on.

She'll round the corner in her bright-shining silvery skull-and-bones horrorshow armor.

"I know it's here somewhere. It has to be. We've got to keep looking." 

The speaker looks like the result of a mad vivisectionist stitching together lizard and man. Green scales surround a yellow eye across half a face and continue on down below the rags he wears, while a single horn curls back from his forehead. He carries a longbow and quiver full of arrows on his back, and is kneeling on a pile of debris and yanking on a particularly large chunk. 

He looks up and notices Estel and freezes.

"Wenduag!"

Standing up from where she was slumped against the wall, bored and annoyed with Lann's idiocy.

"What, did you find it?" 

When she too spots Estel she drops down into a fighting stance, pulling out her own and an arrow. She looks like a cross between a cat and a spider, many-jointed legs curling up over her shoulders through holes in her cloak. She has matching yellow eyes and blue skin and bares her teeth at Estel's mask.

They're clearly allied. Well, sometimes you guess wrong.

She reaches up and removes her mask, and attempts to smile.

"Peace. I thought I was walking into a fight for a minute, but I don't want to start one. I just fell down here from the surface."

"Wait, do you know what's going on up there? There've been collapses all over the tunnels."

"Deskari showed up and smashed a line down the middle of the city with Riftcarver. The city's in bad shape; the dragon protector is dead, too. I can get back up, but I was looking for people who survived the fall first... Which I assume you aren't?"

"No, we live down here. If - damn, if things are as bad as you say, we all have to hurry." 

"The surface isn't our problem, Lann. Did you come down through the Shield Maze? It's back the way you came, made of brick and full of cultists and some dead neathers?"

"They're not dead yet, Wenduag. I can feel it."

He turns to Estel too, "We do have to hurry though, some kids went in there when the shaking started and they need someone to help them."

"No," she says to Wenduag, "I fell. You can go almost see the sky now, if you like, it's just back that way. Why did kids go in, if it's so dangerous?"

"All the legends say that when the need is most dire, the underground crusaders will return to the surface and win back their honor in glory. They thought the collapse would let them make it through like in the stories."

"Ah. Kids of warriors trying to prove themselves with unwise bravery, right." Ata's tribe mostly doesn't have kids but there are enough that Estel's seen this in the last few months.

"Sure, I'll help get them out. And if you want to return to the surface for honor and glory... Pretty sure they'd welcome the help just about now."

"That's terrific! We'll come with you! We just need to find the sword first. Oh - this hall is where we keep the relics of the first crusaders, and one of them is a holy sword, and if we can find it we can convince Chief Sull to bring the whole tribe with us." He says with utter confidence that it will be just that straightforward.

"Even if you find it, Lann, you won't be able to pick it up. It's an angel sword and we're cursed" she spits out.

"Even if it burns me, I'll tie it to my hands if I have to. We have to do something! If we can get everyone, the Shield Maze won't be able to stop us."

Wenduag scoffs at that, and Lann goes back to digging.

"You're still here, aren't you? You must think there's a chance."

"No one's so cursed by their birth that Good won't recognize them if they see it."

Or at least, so Corl keeps telling her, and she's guessing it won't hurt to say even if she doesn't quite believe it.

"You're sure the sword's that important?" Detect magic, on general principles.

1st round: yep, there's magic afoot

2nd round: there is one magic aura and it is Strong

3rd round: it's in a pile of rocks closer to you than Lann, and it has a powerful abjuration and evocation aura, and (36 spellcraft!) it burns and blinds demons who touch it, and it deals holy damage and is incredibly well made, and, unfortunately, it's very broken.

"Ah, I see it," she says, and gets in to lift the rocks out of the way, "Looks like the years haven't been kind to it, but it's still working."

The moment she reveals it Light pierces through the darkness. Glowing warmth rushes over her and her chest bleeds again, painlessly, as a vision unfolds in her mind. 

She is the angel Lariel, betrayed and dying here in the dark. Beside her is a wounded girl, paying dearly for refusing to join the traitors. Those are up ahead, hiding but not well enough, waiting for her to die from her wounds and the poison. It sears through her blood and she knows her time is ending. She can spend the last of her strength on saving the life of her comrade, or on striking back at the traitors.

The greatest threats refuse to hide, the Pike says. Technically, that doesn't apply here. But when you put her in pain with a blade in her hand and monsters to hunt...

"I'm sorry," she murmurs to the girl, and charges.

They scatter and scramble away. A young half-elf with his hair up in a knot shouts back "You and your goddess have given us nothing, Lariel, Nothing! But Lord Deskari will give us everything! And there is no power in the world that will stop His advance!"

The darkness ahead stirs in a wave of horrible piercing chirruping and rustling. The cultists fall to their knees screaming and chanting and the fallen girl thrashes and dies behind her. A nightmare made flesh pours over her and drags her to the ground. 

In her final moments, Lariel-Estel's thoughts are suddenly clear. She sees her enemy and will never bow before him. Her sword flares to life, bright and pure, flickering with rainbow-hued sparks as if it was a sunbeam wrapped in stained glass. The blade slices through the demon's flesh and it recoils howling. With a last burst of strength, she plunges the sword into the rock.

The vision disappears, vanishing in a burst of colors. The heat blazing in her chest fades away and the edges of her scarlet wound close, leaving not even a scar behind. Looking down, she sees the flaming sword in her hand - or, rather, its outline, which lets out another surge of soothing light and vanishes, drawn into Estel's hand. She senses she can bring it back - all she must do is call it. 

"I won't," she mutters to herself; "We won't. To the end."

It's not that she's forgotten she's not alone, but it's not terribly salient at the moment.

It's terribly salient to him. "That... that was it! The Light of Heaven! It chose you!"

"What did you do with it? Where did it go?"

"Here," she says absently, and summons it again.

"I saw - felt - Lariel's last moments. She died fighting cultists and demons. In great pain. And she left this here for someone else to continue her work. Standing against Deskari... I guess I count."

She doesn't feel worthy, but being a Hellknight is hardly disqualifying for this war.

"Thousands of gongs and none of us could touch it, but the first surfacer to come by gets a vision and picks it right up. Figures."

He stares for a moment in unabashed awe.

"Don't be jealous, Wenduag. The sword picked her because she's not tainted. We're born with evil inside us and it's up to us to prove ourselves better than that."

He turns back to Estel, excited. "If you can keep doing that, it'll be easy to rally the tribes! Will you come to Neatholm with us?"

"If Deskari tunneled down here instead of challenging Kenabres's guardian dragon, whichever of you survived probably could have picked it up just fine." She doesn't know Lann well, but she recognizes an unhealthy preoccupation when she sees one.

"And yes, of course. That's the way to the Shield Maze anyway, isn't it?"

If she'll help them she can be as condescending as she wants. "Yep! We had to sneak past some beasts to get here but it looks like you made it through fine, any of em who see us we can take on together."

That didn't land well at all, did it? Eh, that's a problem for whoever his officers are after the beasts are beaten back.

"Sounds good. While we're walking... What do you know about Lariel? I only got a few moments of her life - I guess I'm not even sure 'her' is the right word."

"The legend goes that fifty thousand gongs ago, our forebears found a dead angel here along with the bodies of his companions. We buried them with their weapons, except the sword that no one could move. Now we know it's true! They even got the name right on the tombstone."

"How long is a gong, in hours? Do you track hours?"

"We ring the bell once in the morning when everyone wakes and once at night before everyone sleeps. So, seventy years ago, in uplander time."

"And that's legend, now? That usually takes..." Generations. She is maybe understanding why they might feel cursed by blood.

"It did," she hisses. "Our grandparents' grandparents."

"We know we live shorter lives than uplanders. It's part of our curse, passed down from the first crusaders."

"That... does sound like a curse. Gods, and other races think humans have it bad because we only get a century. You get, what, ten thousand gongs?"

"Usually closer to twenty thousand, especially if you're not one of the hunters."

To Estel's eyes, Lann and Wenduag are both clearly well practiced and able hunters, but amateurs in comparison to the Hellknight archers she knew.

"You must grow up fast... You're better archers than the Kellids I've been training, I'd bet, and they're years older."

Not including the more specialized hunters of the Steel Exiles, but they've been training more than being trained.