Cold wind knifes across the shale as Slaan, Bram, and the Paladin scramble uphill. Behind them, chapel shouts bounce off the stone, still too close.
The Paladin
The ridge. Reach the ridge, and they lose the trail.
Bram glances back at the broken slope, then points to a narrow cleft ahead where the rock narrows into a hard choke point.
Bram
Not a trail, a snare. But it may buy us a breath.
Slaan climbs first, the pack tugging heavy at her shoulders. The Sun-Eater records thump against her back as the ground shifts under her boots.
Slaan
The shale is loose. One wrong step and the whole slope gives way.
Below them, dark figures crest the broken wall of the temple yard and spill into the hills, spreading wide to cut off the climb.
The Paladin
Keep moving. I hold the rear.
✓ Quest Accepted
Break the line of sight from the chapel scouts
“Is there a large shelf of shale above us three”
NO, AND WORSE (Likely, rolled 98)
Slaan scans the heights for a ledge to shelter them, but the slope only steepens into a sheer, crumbling face of loose scree. There is no shelf to be found, and the vibration of the pursuers' boots below triggers a fresh, grinding slide of rock that threatens to sweep the entire path away.
Slaan
The ridge is a trap, and the mountain is coming down with us.
✓ Quest Accepted
Escape the collapsing ridge
“I let a lower level spell mage bolt fly at a section of the cliff”
YES, AND MORE (Likely, rolled 4)
Slaan's bolt strikes the cliff face, but the impact triggers a violent, cascading collapse of the entire ridge rather than a controlled shift. The mountain face shears away in a thunderous roar, burying the path ahead under a massive, impassable wall of jagged stone and suffocating dust.
The Paladin
The path is gone, Slaan. We are trapped against the wall.
− Scene Quest Removed
Break the line of sight from the chapel scouts
“" well it worked. " I claim a little more " not how I wanted it to"”
SUCCESS (Good Willpower, rolled +2)
Dust boils around them, then thins just enough for Slaan to straighten. She lifts her chin at the ruin and lets a dry little calm settle over the three of them.
Slaan
Well, it worked. Not how I wanted it to.
The Paladin turns his shield slightly, glancing from Slaan to the buried path, then back. The edge in his shoulders eases a fraction.
The Paladin
No. But it kept the scouts off us.
Bram brushes shale from his sleeve and looks toward the broken wall with a scholar's frown, as if measuring the mountain's temper by sight alone.
Bram
That collapse bought us distance. Enough to hide the records, if we move while they are still guessing.
The wind drags dust past their boots in pale sheets. Behind them, the temple yard is only a smear of stone and shouting.
The Paladin
Then we take the quiet while it lasts. Slaan, do you see a safer line?
“" Drake's den, it's in rennon fields also, if we're quite about it, the drakes will do the work for us, they don't like noise" I say planly”
SUCCESS (Good Agility, rolled +0)