Underground

### Preface

This fic was written by Saelswith, mainly about Mavka's POV during Session 31 of the campaign, the first time the Amber Order experienced the time loop. For a better reading experience, listen to either this playlist about that session as a whole or this one specifically about Karaa and Mavka that session. :)

### Out of the Frying Pan...

Mavka woke straight out of one nightmare and into another.

Instead of flames and ashes rising up around her, and glowing eyes following her through the smoke, she was being pulled down by something. The weight of it was so crushing that she could barely move or breathe, and she gasped for breath through the combined terror of the nightmare and being strangled awake.

She had fallen asleep alone in the kitchen of the abandoned house the night before. In the days that the Amber Order had been traveling through the Yovell Empire, Mavka had felt a pit of guilt in her stomach the whole time at seeing her friends travel without the warmth of fire. While it was true that traveling without fire would help them remain undetected by potential hostiles, she had other motives. Whether the group could see through her or not, she didn't know, but the weighty feeling of guilt would have been more pressing had she not been distracted by the piercing cold herself.

Last night, knowing the next day would likely bring all sorts of trouble, Mavka had attempted to create and control fire for the first time since what happened in Isaldul. Afterwards, she made an offering to Tyr and went to sleep.

This morning, she woke up being strangled to death by living vines. It seemed safe to say that Tyr had *not* been pleased by her offering.

Panic rising in her throat, Mavka was able to wriggle her hand down through the vines to the hilt of the scimitar on her belt. She drew it, slashing outward and splitting the vines away from her torso and neck. Finally able to breathe, she sat bolt upright, coughing.

While she was trying to regain her breath, a vine attempted to curl around her wrist, its thorns piercing her skin. Mavka shot to her feet with a start as the vine tore away; she hadn't realized they were growing back around her. Though she was able to stand, the violet vines still had a hold on her left leg. Not wanting to scratch it with her blade more than Zund already had, she stooped to try to claw them off, then hesitated.

With some new instinct, a feeling she didn't fully understand, she knelt and touched the sickly-purple vine that was trying to snake around her leg. With a phrase hissed in Sylvan, she cast druidcraft on it. Where once the vine would have blossomed and grown under the influence of her spell, it now disintegrated into black ashes at her feet.

It was at this point that Mavka's heartbeat quieted enough for her to hear other muffled screams throughout the house, and her heart leapt into her throat as she cursed herself. Why should Tyr punish the others on her account?

Mavka straightened, dusted the ashes off her legs, and squared her shoulders. Hand outstretched, she chanted softly in Sylvan, disintegrating the vines returning around her. Stepping carefully through the ashes, she made her way toward Gossamer, who had managed to come down from the top floor. Helio was there too, slashing at vines that held Zeema to the ceiling. The vines were so tight around her throat that her face was turning purple, but Helio cut the ones around her neck as Gossamer worked on freeing her further. Mavka reached up toward Zeema, still chanting quietly in Sylvan, and the vines entangling her shriveled, withering away into a puff of ash and raining back down onto the couch.

Helio had moved on from freeing Zeema, and was now slashing frantically at the fireplace, where he had slept the night before. It happened to be where the vines were originating from. With another wave of her hand and a twinge of regret, Mavka watched more of the vines disintegrate as she made her way over to help him.

There in the fireplace, there was an orb that Mavka had not noticed the night before. Nor had anyone else, apparently. The vines were growing through cracks in the outer shell of the orb; no matter how much Helio slashed or how much Mavka disintegrated, they came back relentlessly.

"Okay," Mavka huffed, irritated. "Let's fix this."

She procured two small magnetic lodestones from her pockets and put one on either side of the cracked orb. With only a word, the two stones snapped together, sliding around the orb with a sound like nails on a chalkboard, then fell to the side. With the orb mended, the vines across the house either fell limp or disintegrated into cinders. Mavka pocketed the lodestones, then picked up the orb to study it.

"Please tell me those were just vines," Zeema said, shaken.

"They were," Gossamer assured her.

Mavka breathed an audible sigh of relief when she saw Karaa descending the stairs, but Karaa looked furious. "What *was* that?" She demanded, out of breath.

Mavka held up the orb the vines had been coming from, and with a proud grin announced, "Don't worry, I fixed it!"

"How did none of us see that?" Gossamer asked. Mavka just shrugged as Caeli descended the stairs, holding a bag that looked like it had been victimized by the vines. Mavka realized she had no idea where her own belongings were, but she was distracted by Helio.

He seemed frozen by the fireplace, and his eyes were terrified. He almost looked like he was in pain. Just as Mavka was about to ask if he was okay, he spoke.

"I— He made me put that there. I had to," Helio choked out. "I didn't know what it was going to do, I swear," he pleaded, looking around the room.

There were half-stifled gasps from around the room, and Mavka's eyes widened. Tannivh was behind this, then— it wasn't another punishment from Tyr, after all. She stifled her own sigh of relief.

"Nobody's seriously injured," she reassured him. "We're all okay."

Karaa was *fuming*. "I—" she stopped herself to get out the plank she had been using to keep track of her tally system, and preemptively put down a tally mark— "I think we should kill Tannivh."

Mavka, taken aback at this uncharacteristic display of aggression, simply nodded her agreement.

Caeli saw that Helio was in distress, and nearly tackled him in a hug. Karaa joined in, then Mavka, then Gossamer and Zeema. After a bit of awkward silence, they suddenly realized what time it was; they had all slept late. It was already after ten in the morning. The Talgrex Moon, if the old woman from yesterday was to be believed, would occur at noon.

They had less than two hours to figure out and stop whatever Tannivh was planning.

The group frantically searched for their belongings, displaced among the vines and ashes. It took Mavka the longest, which frustrated her; her bags had been dragged through the house, scattering spell components everywhere, but she would undoubtedly need them for the Talgrex Moon and whatever else lay ahead. She wanted to be prepared.

Once everyone had gotten their belongings together, Gossamer used the hags' eyes to spy on Tannivh. He was in his tower, by the portal, working on some unseen incantation. The group decided they would target him and stop whatever he was working on.

Mavka went outside to see if there was any sign of the Talgrex Moon yet. To her shock, there was already a dark, red shadow moving across the land toward them. She could hear the screams of the people left in the city as they frantically tried to flee, suddenly understanding the potential danger of the situation. Mavka felt much the same way herself as she felt the hair raise on the back of her neck.

Mavka burst back into the house. "It's happening!" She shouted. "We have to go *now*!"

### ...Into the Fire

The Amber Order took off toward the council's tower as quickly as they could. Townsfolk were stampeding left and right, having suddenly decided that they wanted to get out of the city.

Karaa and Mavka nimbly navigated their way through the dangerous crowds toward the council's tower. When they realized they had gotten too far ahead of the others, who were nowhere to be seen, Mavka cast message to Gossamer to see what was going on.

"Where are you guys? Is everyone okay?" Mavka asked, concerned.

"I'm with Zeema," Gossamer responded. "We're fine, mostly. Just had a bit of a setback with these crowds. Helio and Caeli are together, on their way to the tower still— we'll meet you all there."

Mavka nodded to Karaa. "They said they'll meet us there," she said, grabbing Karaa's hand. The two continued running toward the tower, expertly weaving through the stampeding crowd. They were the first ones to make it to the tower.

Well, they came the closest.

Before they could get too close, there was an explosion of purple lightning at the top of the tower that sent debris falling into the city and crushing people in the crowd below. Mavka and Karaa were close enough to hear screams cut short, and feel the trembling of the earth as huge chunks of stone slammed into anything in their path.

The two of them had stopped running again, frozen in shock. The tower was still standing smoking from the top, but now there appeared to be a disturbance in the skies above. Karaa and Mavka stood hand-in-hand, transfixed and terrified, looking upward. Silver and red light danced across their upturned faces as they watched the clouds.

The dark maelstrom swirling above seemed to gather and twist like a funnel cloud, reaching toward the tower. For a moment, the clouds were illuminated with faint, silvery light. Then, a sudden blinding flash of moonlight blasted through, hitting the tower directly. Karaa and Mavka let go of the each-other's hands to shield their eyes from the radiant light.

The tower began to crack under the energy of the moonbeam. It was splitting in half, right down the middle, with more thundering cracks as stone snapped and fell. At the base of the tower, the earth tore open into deep crevasses, swallowing everything in their path. By the time Mavka had blinked the light out of her eyes to see the cracks in the earth racing toward her, it was too late.

The ground fell out from under her, and she slipped into the blackness.

Before Mavka could realize what was happening, a hand shot out and grabbed her wrist that had been torn and bloodied by the vines. The nails dug in so hard that they drew fresh blood. Mavka suddenly stopped falling and slammed into the side of the crevasse, dropping her staff and jolting loose earth into her eyes. Her momentum had changed so suddenly that her wrist came out of its socket, and she let out an involuntary scream as her staff clattered out of earshot below.

Blinking dust out of her burning eyes, she looked up to see Karaa, her jaw clenched and eyes desperate. She was holding Mavka's wrist so tightly that she was nearly white-knuckled.

Mavka struggled to get a grip on the side of the crevasse, but her legs could only kick the rocky soil loose, and her fingernails only pried away crumbling gravel.

"Hang on, Mavka," Karaa said through gritted teeth, straining to hold on.

"Don't let go," Mavka gasped, still struggling to find her footing. She was slipping, ever so slowly, as rocks and earth and other bodies fell around her. She made the mistake of looking down, and the darkness below her seemed endless. Her face pale, Mavka's eyes snapped back up to Karaa.

Nearby, on the roof of a building that had not yet collapsed, Helio and Caeli stood, watching the chaos. Screams echoed throughout the city as tremors shook the ground and buildings began to fall. A weight grew in the pits of their stomachs as they caught sight of something beyond the city walls on the coastline.

It was a colossal wave, and it was heading straight for the city. Taller than the city walls by far, it would destroy everything in its path effortlessly.

In a feat worthy of its own legend, Helio leapt down from the building and slammed his fist into the ground in a three-point landing. As he did so, using his stone-senses to feel the crust of the earth, he was able to move it. When Helio's fist connected with the ground, the coastline jolted suddenly upward, then began rising steadily, acting as a makeshift barrier for the city. At the very least, it would buy people some time.

Caeli had spotted Arthur, the man who had helped them into the city the day before, holding his daughter at the edge of the same crevasse where Karaa was struggling to hold Mavka.

Arthur's daughter was just a little girl, screaming and crying at the top of her lungs. Arthur was straining to hold her. Caeli jumped gracefully down from the building, her robes billowing in the wind, and nimbly helped Arthur pull her up to safety. Arthur thanked her, and they ran off into the city.

Meanwhile, Mavka was still slipping, and Karaa was so determined not to let go of her that she was beginning to teeter dangerously over the edge as well. Mavka still couldn't find her footing, and she was beginning to tire. Karaa was, too. Mavka could tell.

Mavka tried one last time to kick herself up, failed, and stopped struggling, hanging limply by the wrist that Karaa was still holding onto for dear life. The pain in her wrist was throbbing, and Mavka gritted her teeth as she stared down into the darkness to blink tears out of her eyes before looking back up at Karaa.

"Karaa," she said softly. "You have to let go."

"No," Karaa growled through gritted teeth. "Just hang on a little longer."

"Karaa, if you don't let go right now, we're *both* going to fall," Mavka pleaded, her voice trembling.

Karaa stubbornly shook her head, sliding ever closer to the edge.

There was no sense in them both dying.

Mavka closed her eyes, sending two tears falling into the abyss.

"I'm sorry, Karaa."

With a twist of her dislocated wrist that brought excruciating pain, Mavka slipped from Karaa's hand and began falling into the earth.

She tried not to hear the screams around her. Above her they began; below her they ended. Mavka felt suspended somewhere in between the beginning and the end of them, like time had frozen, but she knew that could not last forever.

Through closed eyelids, Mavka sensed a flash of light, and suddenly felt something beneath her. It wasn't sharp stone, or pain, or nothingness, as she had been expecting— it was something else entirely.

She opened her eyes to look down.

Karaa had cast dimension door directly underneath her, forcing them to swap places. Through the portal, their tear-filled eyes locked in the heartbeat before they switched. Before Mavka could reach out to Karaa as she fell past, or even draw breath to scream, Karaa beat her to it.

"I love—"

"—you!" The voice was suddenly far away, echoing up from underground, and Mavka was tumbling across cold stone.

Numb to the cold, cuts, bruises, and breaks she had just sustained, Mavka scrambled back to the crevasse on her hands and knees, shaking. She reached the edge just as Karaa's last echoing scream suddenly stopped. There was a terrible silence.

Mavka's breath caught in her throat. On her stomach, she leaned nearly over the edge as she searched the darkness for Karaa. She couldn't see the bottom, and she had no idea how deep it was, but Karaa had to be down there somewhere. She had to be alive still. She had been fine after the fall in the Unscaled Peaks— she would be fine, now, too.

But there was nothing. Just inky blackness, and faint, distant screams that did not belong to Karaa.

Helio saw that the wall he had made against the tidal wave was already beginning to break as water poured in over the top. He tried to pull Mavka away from the edge of the crevasse, knowing that they needed to go now if they wanted to make it out of the city.

Mavka shoved Helio so hard that she almost pushed herself off the edge. Helio grabbed her wrist at the last second and slung her over his shoulder as she began to sob. He and Caeli began jogging toward the city exit.

Mavka's fists pounded uselessly on Helio's armor as she screamed. "Put me down! I have to go back! I can't lea—"

With another earth-shattering quake, stone fell from above them. Helio and Mavka were struck by a falling building, pinning them under debris.

Mavka's wooden leg was dashed into nothing but splinters, and her other leg was broken in several places. Her ears were ringing, and her mind was fuzzy with pain and grief. She was so tired, but Karaa was still back there somewhere. Mavka tried to pull herself back in the direction of the way they had come, but she was pinned by debris. Even if she hadn't been, she still had a dislocated wrist, a missing leg, and a broken leg. There was no way she would be able to get back to Karaa in this condition.

Besides, she could feel Helio beside her, still alive, and she distantly realized he still needed her help. For a moment, Mavka was overcome by fatigue, and she let her forehead touch the ground while her shoulders shook with silent sobs. Blood and tears dripped onto the cold stone beneath her as she gasped for breath, trying to slow her breathing and calm herself down.

Wiping tangled hair out of her face, Mavka took a deep breath. Twisting unnaturally in a way that could only be facilitated by one leg being splintered to slivers and the other into shards of bone, Mavka turned to lay on her back so that she could fish two lodestones out of her pocket. Spitting blood out of her mouth and onto her tattered clothing, Mavka placed the stones on either side of her broken leg. She turned back around so that she was facedown and muttered an incantation with a strained voice. The stones snapped together over the back of her leg at the same time that her bones snapped back into place.

Though her vision was blurred through pain and tears, Mavka caught sight of a figure at the top of a distant building; it was Zeema, clinging to the edge of a building that was swaying as water swirled around it. Gossamer was visible in the sky, flying overhead, just as Mavka received a message from her.

"Mavka!" Gossamer shrieked. "I can't find Zeema! She told me to leave her!"

Mavka felt a pang of grief in her chest. "Stay calm," she said, her voice betraying her as it shook. "I can see her now. I'll guide you to her."

Once she had helped Gossamer find Zeema, Mavka turned her attention back to helping Helio and herself; they were still pinned under stones too big for them to move on their own, even with Caeli's help. Mavka was able to muster some of the little energy she had left to wildshape into a warsteed. She stood and reared with a strained whinny, tossing the rocks off of her and Helio. Her wrist that had been dislocated by Karaa was still injured, and she was still missing a hind leg. In this state, she would be barely able to walk, much less carry anyone.

She collapsed back into her elven form, down on her knees, just as the wall of stone that Helio had created to protect the city collapsed in the distance. The waters would reach them soon.

With trembling hands, Mavka rifled through her bag of spell components, which was miraculously still on her person despite being half-shredded. The vials and jars of various spell components that she had wasted time collecting that morning had shattered through the leather bag and into her side, embedding shards of glass and dusting various components into her abdomen. Mavka plucked a stray, bloodied piece of straw from her shirt as an ominous wind whispered through the street.

Mavka held the single piece of straw in her aching hand and listened to the wind; her less-injured hand was locked in a white-knuckled vice-grip on her injured wrist, and her head bowed for a moment. Snapping suddenly out of her daze, she let go and broke the piece of straw in half. When she began scribbling symbols in the dust with each of them, they trailed her own blood.

If there was one thing Mavka knew, it was not to underestimate the forces of nature. She would never be able to keep up with Caeli and Helio, and they would need as much of a head-start as they could get. She couldn't give them that, but she could give them an advantage in the water. While Mavka could wildshape into something that could swim and breathe underwater to give herself a better chance of survival, she doubted she would last long. Besides, even after she was gone, this spell would let Helio and Caeli breathe underwater for hours.

But they didn't need to know all of that. Mavka cast the spell on Helio and Caeli.

At some point, Mavka had lost sight of Zeema and Gossamer, otherwise she would have cast water breathing on them as well. Had Zeema's building gone down already? Mavka was sure that Gossamer had managed to swoop down and save Zeema before it did. She must have. And Helio and Caeli were strong and fast. They could all probably make it out of the city if they left now. They had to.

Mavka felt a weight pulling her down into the earth, but there were no vines dragging her down this time. She had to fight the urge to lie down where she knelt, but she didn't want Helio and Caeli to waste any more time worrying about her.

Mavka looked up at her two friends. "I don't know if it's any use," she said, still trying to keep her voice from shaking, "but you should go now. We'll be able to breathe water if it comes to it, but I wouldn't stick around to find out."

Before they could protest, the wind that had picked up suddenly stopped, and there was a new rumbling that shook the earth.

Mavka looked over her shoulder at the towering wave that had just peaked over a building down the street. For a moment, it looked frozen, arcing gracefully over the roof, glittering in the dim light. It was almost peaceful.

Then there was a magnificent, deafening roar, and the wall of water wrapped around the buildings. It slammed into Mavka with stunning force. It would have been enough to knock the wind out of her even if she had cast water breathing on herself, but she just watched the air bubbles leave her lungs like stars tracing their way across the night sky.

Mavka didn't fight against the tide as it dragged her off into the darkness. Maybe she would find Karaa there.