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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2053587" data-attributes="member: 143">Thanks for the kudos. I'm actually looking forward to finishing this story; I'd like to write something non-proprietary (fantasy, just not Forgotten Realms-based) that I could actually market for a change. I also have a novel that's about 1/3 done that I've had some new ideas for. I may keep posting stuff here just for the feedback (reader posts are far nicer than rejection letters from agents and publishing houses). * * * * * Chapter 332With the fissure beginning to close, Mole did not hesitate.  She’d already dipped into her bag of holding, and as the dwarves closed she withdrew two bundles of rope from the magical container and tossed them at them.  “Toss ‘em down!” she said, not even waiting for a response as she turned and leapt into the fissure. Dannel sat on the cracked paving stones a few feet back from the lip of the opening, quickly removing his boots and slipping on his slippers of spider climbing.  By the time that Arun and Hodge had gotten the ropes unwound, Dannel too had descended into the uneven opening, darting precariously down the sharply slanting and uneven sides of the fissure.  Streamers of steam and sulfurous ash filled the space, making visibility beyond a few feet almost impossible.  From below, they could hear the screams of pain and panic of the people trapped below. “Mole!” Beorna yelled into the expanse.  “Ropes coming down!”  At her gesture Arun and Hodge stepped forward, hurling the loosened coils down, keeping hold of the far ends. “Spread out, one to each side,” Arun directed, already moving from the narrow end of the fissure toward one of the crumbling sides. “Watch those edges!” Beorna warned, needlessly; all of the dwarves knew enough about stone and earth to know the danger. It only took a few seconds for the first line to grow taut.  Arun, his legs braced solidly against the pavement a spare pace back from the edge, pulled until a pale human man in the clothes of a day laborer appeared through the smoke.  Beorna grabbed him as soon as he drew close enough to the edge, taking his hand in a crushing grip and hurling him bodily to safety.  Even as the man stumbled back, coughing, Hodge drew a second person up on his line, a woman who cried in pain, favoring her left arm. The ground shook again as the sides of the chasm drew another foot closer.  Hodge and Arun were now a bare five paces distant on the opposite sides of the fissure, but both ignored the closing walls, focusing only on drawing up more people from below.  Another woman, the line secured around her body, her broken arm dangling uselessly behind her, was helped up by Arun and Beorna, while Hodge pulled up a man holding an elvish child who seemed utterly frail and delicate in his soot-stained arms.  Another man followed the woman with the broken arm on Arun’s side, unconscious, the rope lashed around his chest.  Arun and Hodge were nearly close enough now for them to reach out and touch across the closing gap of the fissure. “Mole, Dannel, get out of there!” Arun yelled down into the fissure.  Both dwarves heaved on their ropes, each drawing another person out of the jaws of death.  Both of the victims were unconscious this time, and Beorna had to lean precariously over the opening to draw them in. Dannel appeared then, moving awkwardly up the closing gap, his magical slippers the only thing keeping him from sliding back into the ashen darkness below.  His cloak was wrapped around a considerable burden held close against his body, and his face was tight with tension and effort as he leapt up to a jutting stone that shifted beneath his weight.  He started to fall, arrested only by Beorna’s sudden grab, her arm shooting out to take a fistful of his cloak, focusing on the bulge of his quiver underneath.  For a heart-shattering second he hung from her grip solely by the strap of the quiver secured under his arm, unable to help her lest he lose his grip on his burdens.  Then Arun was there, and the two dwarves pulled him up to safety.“Thanks,” he gasped.  Beorna drew back the cloak, revealing two pale human children, each maybe six or seven years old.  They were conscious, very scared—and alive. “Meeka!” one of them, a little girl, cried, reaching for the chasm. The dwarves turned toward the opening just as the ground lurched again, and with a crash that propelled a last jet of ash and smoke up into the sky, the fissure slammed shut. “Mole!”</blockquote>

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