For a short bit, things seem to be going well. One squat, hunchbacked demon tries its luck, but it doesn't carry a weapon and isn't especially strong; the only thing that would make it annoying is that it's difficult to injure. Meanwhile, in the rest of the square the defenders seem to slowly be getting the better of their attackers, albeit not without serious casualties.

Ky has never killed anybody before and she will process this sometime after she stabs the demon a lot. Why is it so tough, is this some kind of weird skin illustrati thing.

It's not volunteering answers! A particularly strong hit will injure it, but only slightly; weaker hits will leave it no worse for the wear. It's not immune to physics, though, so if she hits it hard enough it'll still be moved around.

Then, in the space between breaths, everything changes. An enormous, insectoid creature appears, towering over the defenders and buildings alike, and with it come immense swarms of insects. All the defenders within reach of it immediately begin choking as the swarms surround them, but the creature could not care less about the humans scurrying around. Instead, with a prodigous leap it takes to the skies, and swings an enormous scythe once, twice, thrice, each one scoring Terendelev's hide. When it comes down to earth, the dragon comes with it.

Terendelev responds instantly, ignoring the fliers to immediately focus on the real threat here. A part of her is confused, wondering why and how Deskari's here in person, but the rest of her is split between trying to survive and sheer rage at the demon lord for attacking her city. She lashes out with her largest jet of cold yet - he dodges, of course, but it takes out most of his swarms and puts him right in range of her tail-

Ky's hat sprouts a lacy beekeeper-type veil to keep them away from her face. The cloak shifts around Iskander, cinching up and sprouting little airholes. The spear isn't really heavy - it's serving as a weapon by Ky's domain powers but it's not the kind that knocks opponents off their feet - but if stabbing the demon enough works, then it works.

Eventually, the demon gives up and goes after easier to target decorations; it's not a fan of her, but there's less pointy art around here and now it's rather worse for the wear. Some of the bugs do make a go at her, but not in any great numbers and they're not very dangerous without the corresponding density of swarm.

The problem with demon lords, Terendelev thinks to herself, is that they're infuriating to fight. Well, that and being evil abominations spearheading the attempts to destroy golarion in general and her city in specific, but right now she's pretty confident it's the fighting. Deskari can dodge her breath attacks all day, and hitting some of the other demons that happen to be in the cone is poor consolation. Whenever she goes after him with her claws and limbs he dodges half the time and barely seems to feel it when he doesn't, and she's already burned through what's left of her heals trying to survive his attacks. She can't win like this, and if she's being honest with herself couldn't win even fresh and fully prepared; it's time she faces the music and fetches help.

Plane shi-

Absolutely not.

Riftcarver lashes out in an enormous overhand blow, faster than any he's done so far today, and tears straight through the forming spacial warping to slam straight into her neck while she's unable to dodge-

-ift.

The spell goes awry, the tuning fork set into her necklace shattering from the spacial perturbances and the spell structure itself starting to come apart from direct magical interference, but the spell completes at least enough that both head and neck-less body vanish.

Riftcarver, its momentum scarcely abated, hits the ground with an enormously loud noise and a kilometer-long chazm cuts straight through the center of Kenabres. As luck would have it, Terendelev was almost exactly between Deskari and Kybele and Iskander, which means the suddenly vanishing earth puts them right over the crevasse. Unlike most times you might suddenly find yourself taking a tumble, however, that might be a blessing in disguise if it gets them out of ground zero for a pissed off demon lord.

Ky's hat and cloak fluff out to form parachutes and they flutter to the bottom of the crevasse, Iskander clinging to her as hard as he can.

Outside the chasm, things are still very much happening, including what sounds like one of the larger buildings being... aggressively demolished, but once the falling rocks settle the crevasse is much calmer. They're not the only ones who ended up in it, though; about 50 feet away there looks to be a young woman in armor picking herself up, and if Iskander has a good memory for people's appearances he might recognize she's the one who ran to get Terendelev.

He does, in fact. "Hello? You okay?"

"I've had better days. But you know, any fight you can walk away from."

She looks around, peering in the dim light.

"Anevia was right next to me - I was covering for her while she tried to pick off some of the fliers - but I can't see her now."

Ky deparachutes her paper. Cloak breatplate bracers hat spear. "Do you have a way to get back up - presumably not right this second, it sounds bad up there -"

"I'm not nearly strong enough to cast angelic aspect, no; you've got to be a pretty experienced paladin to get that one. And yeah, it rubs me the wrong way to not rush to help them, but I'm not sure how I'd get up and I'm all out of smites and lay on hands for today anyway, so I'm not sure how helpful I would be."

She starts, noticing something.

"Oh, there's Anevia. Crud, I'm not sure I can lift those rocks off her safely myself. Are either of you any good at lifting?"

"Yeah." Ky isn't very much stronger than a normal adult man yet but she's getting there, and between her and Iskander they can get some rocks off.

"Thanks! Gotta say, that's not the least favorite place I've ever been stuck, but it's definitely up there."

She winces as she takes a step.

"Though I don't think my legs are especially happy with me even now that I'm out. Scaling this would be tough at the best of times, but I'm pretty sure I definitely can't now. Does anyone see a way out, or are we stuck until someone comes by with some rope?"

"Well, the crevasse is pretty big, but it can't all be the same depth. If we make our way to the other end, it's probably a lot shorter climb."

Ky hems her cloak and gets the remaining paper into a layered roll around the injured leg by way of a splint. "I don't know what I'm doing but I'd bet this is better than nothing," she says.

"What you want is to immobilize it - a bit more like that, yeah - and then wrap it so it stays in place."

She tests her leg gingerly.

"I can't put much weight on this, but I think I can walk unassisted if it's not very fast and I can probably still shoot as long as I don't need to move at the same time. I could go faster if someone helped me, but there's a tradeoff there between movement speed and being able to respond to emergencies and not tiring out the people who would have to do most of the work."

"Well, do we have anywhere to be in a hurry?"

"I work with the Eagle's Watch on tracking down demon cultists, and we're going to be overworked with everything going on even if we're not missing manpower, but that's not urgent enough on the scale of hours that we should be taking risks for it. A bigger concern on my part is I'd rather get some distance between here and ground zero in case Deskari starts swinging his scythe like that again. He's not likely to stick around too long but it would still really help my peace of mind.

"Plus, in the state the city's in I'm not sure when they'll be in a position to send a rescue party to look here as opposed to, say, unburying people from collapsed houses, so getting out before water becomes a going concern could be pretty important. Unless one of you is a cleric?"

"Don't even know what that is."