Legacies (Inactive)

Game Master Thron

Twelve years later
Cladissa appears with a shimmer and a muffled rush of displaced air in the quiet courtyard at the house on Jabberwocky Street in Absalom, a black cat coiled around her feet. She looks around at her old home, noticing the new garden planted by the current residents around the familiar stone statuary. Recognizing that the manor house is occupied, she slips out into the main street before she is observed. She turns back around to look at her old residence, the pangs of memory and nostalgia hitting her hard. Cole, her familiar, mews softly at her feet.
With a wistful sigh, she turns away from the old estate, and begins moving through the various boroughs and districts of Absalom. Her path is meandering, without direction or purpose, though everywhere she goes seems to spark some sort of memory. The Grand Lodge of the Pathfinders, where she had stayed during her time as an initiate, where she took the mysterious serum that is still coursing through her body, and where she visited frequently as a true Pathfinder agent. After saving the Society from the attempted coup by the rogue Venture Captain Adril Hestram, she could have become a Venture Captain herself, perhaps even working her way up to become one of the ruling Decemvirate. Yet she had resigned from the Pathfinders almost immediately after, choosing to leave Absalom and head to Galt.
Her wanderings take her past the Blakros Museum, the squat building the site of so many of her missions as a Pathfinder. Other sites, too, she wanders past – the Galtan restaurant where she ate with her mother, Catfolk Alley where she had first caught the eye of Roald, the Puddles where she helped stopped a ghostly invasion, the sunken remains of a school where she helped save a single child, the docks where she ended up getting arrested.
She wonders if the city still remembers her. She had amassed quite a bit of celebrity during her adventures here, though she had largely remained oblivious to it. She had left rather quickly and without fanfare when she returned to her childhood home of Galt.
Her priorities had shifted. She had learned just before her departure from the Pathfinder Society that her father had actually been Cassaild d’Lavigne, the heir to the throne of her home country. He’d died, and her mother had gone into hiding while the Red Revolution ravaged the country in its bloodthirsty purge of all things noble.
The Red Revolution had become a brutal, unending cycle of rebellion, Cladissa had learned. Armed with the knowledge that she was the sole heir to the rightful rulership of the kingdom, she returned in secret to begin a counter-revolution that sought peace and reconciliation. It had consumed her for the past decade and beyond.
Her wanderings through Absalom weren’t entirely random, however. She deliberately avoids the Ivy District so she would not risk passing by Verde Heights, even though she was no longer sure that Argor Constantine was even living there. She hadn’t spoken with him for a long time. She had turned down his romantic attentions, choosing to remain allies in those final days as a Pathfinder. Then she returned to Galt, and while she accepted his assistance for a while, as the campaign to restore order to Galt became protracted and ugly, she couldn’t condone the methods he’d suggested. The tactics he’d suggested were pragmatic, but also ruthless. She couldn’t be a part of them. But then he authorized certain actions without her knowledge. Cladissa had guessed. She’d confronted him, and after a heated argument, she asked that he withdraw all his support.
The memory of that last conversation with Argor still ached, even though years had passed since. And in the end, perhaps he’d been right all along. She wasn’t queen. She wasn’t the ruler of Galt. Ultimately, in order to preserve the peace, she had abdicated her right to rule. She renounced her claim to Galtan royalty, agreed to exile from the country, and bade all those who had flocked to her banner to agree to the treaty. She had spent five years amassing strength and followers before she declared herself as the rightful heir, then several more bloody years in conflict as the country had erupted into outright civil war – something she had desperately desired to avoid. And ultimately, she had managed to broker a tenuous peace at the cost of her ability to return to her childhood home. It was bitter, but she willingly swallowed it to stop the bloodshed. The hope of a whole and peaceful Galt was no longer hers to influence.
She didn’t want to face him. She didn’t want to even think about what might have been had she not sent him back to Absalom. That wonder was had sat like a knife in her belly in the years since. Every time her efforts were betrayed. Every time she deigned to show mercy which her cause later paid for. Every time she took the high road, hoping to be the shining example. Had she allowed more morally gray methods, would she be queen now? She couldn’t know, but she dreaded seeing that answer in Argor’s eyes.
For that reason, Cladissa veers away from a road that would take her past the Golden Raven, though it was not necessarily likely that Argor still owned the fine dining establishment. There were other reasons why she didn’t want to see him. He had at one point harbored romantic feelings for her, though she had rebuffed those attentions. He’d gone on to marry, and he had some children that she hadn’t met. She’d also heard that his wife had died a few years ago. She wonders if he would want to kindle a romance again, now that she no longer was wedded to her mission in Galt. She couldn’t sort her feelings clearly, so she felt avoidance was the best course of action.
Her thoughts are so preoccupied with Argor, she doesn’t realize that her turn away from his property took her directly into view of the Minkaian Gardens. She blinks away more nostalgic tears that threaten to form as she recalls wandering through the immaculately maintained gardens with Sir Preston Riverwyne, her one-time suitor. Sighing, she decides to keep moving instead of turning around and passing by Argor’s property. Her memories wash over her as she wanders the footpaths of the garden. Sir Preston, loved her sight unseen after discovering it was her team’s efforts that had garnered additional support for the Mendevian Crusade that resulted in his life being saved. He had come to Absalom with the intention of undergoing the Rite of Courtship with her. She had agreed.
Tears well in Cladissa’s eyes as the memories of their romance rush back. He was a paladin, a champion of the crusades fighting against the demonic incursion called the Worldwound. He had led her to the worship of the mortal-turned-goddess Iomedae. He was brave, noble and chivalrous, quickly winning her heart despite her doubts and loving her even though the serum had warped her body into the shape of a lust demon – a succubus. Yet, just as their love was beginning to flower, their duties pulled them apart. Cladissa stayed in Absalom to deal with the machinations of Hestram, while Preston was called back to lead the crusades against the demons.
Though their paths crossed again and again, they were not reunited for any length of time. The rise of the Fifth Crusade called Preston to redouble his efforts against the demons, while Cladissa returned to her home in Galt to pursue her own goals of unifying the country and creating a lasting peace there.
Sir Preston was now dead. Slain during a major offensive against the powerful balor called the Storm King, Cladissa received the news during the bloodiest period of her own efforts within Galt. She hadn’t had time to mourn properly, though she managed to find a few private moments to grieve. Now her thoughts are full of memories of Sir Preston, there in the gardens. She stays herself from crying, however, something she was now unused to after her years of molding herself into her own vision of what a ruler should be. She sniffs, her breath catches, and her eyes glisten with moisture, but no tears fall.
Regally, she exits the Minkaian Gardens and continues walking. Hours pass. Cladissa manages to stay anonymous as she moves through the crowds of Absalom that have apparently forgotten her. She looked much the same as she had, but she was no longer a young woman. More lines show on her face, creases around her eyes, and a few gray hairs—the results of intense stress and emotional pain that the serum could not stave off. The alien substance that she’d agreed to inject into her body as the final Pathfinder trial had mutated her body in numerous ways, though in the past few years it had yielded fewer and less radical changes. When she initially injected the serum into her, it had mutated her into a feline hybrid, sparking a mental tug-of-war with the serum over her appearance. After she had developed a measure of acceptance with that form, she had been kidnapped and experimented on by demons. The Pathfinders’ demonic enemies had leached the serum out of her, altered the substance with their own demonic essence, and then re-injected it into her. The result of their experimentation was that Cladissa had mutated into a close approximation of a succubus, much to her horror. That was eventually undone by a later mutation that gave her arachnoid features, including extra spiderlike legs and the ability to spin webs.
Those last mutations have stayed with her for the past decade. She usually keeps her eight long, graceful spider legs folded up underneath her clothes and only deploying them when she needs to use them for a quick burst of speed or to climb one of her intricate spider webs that she spins in the places where she takes residence. The demonic experiment has still left her with the ability to communicate telepathically, and one of her original mutations – that of an augmented intelligence – also remains.
The serum had changed her in other ways as well, she had to admit. She had been a mousy, timid wallflower before the injection. Subjected to a merciless bullying campaign by her stepsister, Auronee Farwynd, her confidence and self-worth had been stripped from her and eroded down to almost nothing. She had failed her Pathfinder confirmation, and seemed doomed to a mundane life as the wife of someone her mother arranged for her. However, she became a Pathfinder by allowing to be a test subject for the mysterious Numerian substance. After that, despite the sometimes terrifying alterations to her body, she’d enjoyed some real successes for the first time in her life as she teamed up with the other Pathfinders who’d also taken the serum.
She’d saved the city, saved people, stopped slavers and reunited family members. She’d won the esteem of nobles and lords. She even tried to effect real change by reforming how slavery worked in the city, giving the indentured people more rights and the ability to work toward freedom. She had staked all her influence, fame and reputation on it, and lost.
She had the chance to be a queen, to unite the people of Galt together in peace and lead through the wisdom she’d gained over the course of her trials in Absalom. She failed in that, instead renewing the bloody conflict by her efforts and now she faces life as an exile from her home. She had observed the rite of courtship, won the heart of a fine and noble paladin, and turned her life to the goddess Iomedae. Yet she had lost him, as well.

As she wanders the streets of Absalom, Cladissa fishes a crumpled letter out of a fold in her skirt. She reads it again, though she’d almost had it memorized. It was a letter of apology from her stepsister, Auronee, that she’d received a year ago. The first of many, actually.
Her stepsister had been a brutal tormentor throughout most of Cladissa’s life. They met when she was about nine years old, when her mother had gotten remarried to Lord Castor Farwynd of Taldor. Auronee was a couple years older, but also immensely talented and charming. Cladissa was neither. She quickly embarked on a bullying campaign against which Cladissa had at first attempted a measure of retaliation. However, Auronee was not only talented at coming up with ingenious torments, she also managed to get away with them in uncanny secrecy. Cladissa lacked that ability, so she ended up in trouble when Auronee appeared the innocent victim. She eventually gave up any attempts at retaliation and simply suffered under the bullying.
The rivalry lasted into adulthood. If the pair had had enough different interests, perhaps they’d have moved on to other things. But they both became enamored with the Pathfinder Society, and so they had both become initiates. Auronee passed her trials easily and was made a full Pathfinder agent. Cladissa had failed, and only became an agent by accepting the mysterious formula.
Though Cladissa still had a number of personal setbacks, including when the formula nearly turned her into a mindless beast, she and her companions had succeeded in their missions and had managed to even save Absalom on a number of occasions. Auronee’s success ran parallel to hers, though the novelty of the Freaks of Absalom ended with more fame and prestige going to Cladissa’s group.
Unbeknownst to Cladissa, this gradual shifting of fates had festered in Auronee. Always used to being the darling of every endeavor, she disliked being gradually overshadowed by Cladissa. Though every time they’d spoken, Auronee had hidden her jealousy, she became more and more desperate. Ultimately, it had led her to ally herself with Adril Hestram in his bid to take over and remake the Pathfinder Society. That gambit had backfired egregiously, as she had been kidnapped by one of Hestram’s demonic allies, the simian demon lord Angazhan.
The followers of that demon lord conducted a perverse ritual that devolved Auronee into an apelike being with an animal’s intelligence. Cladissa and her team had found her in the jungles of Mwangi, and brought her back to Absalom. She had at first thought Auronee was another victim of Hestram, but eventually found out the truth.
Cladissa had looked for a while, but couldn’t find a cure before her mission in Galt took precedence. A possible solution involving reincarnating her had been raised, but Cladissa declined being a part of it. She elected to send the stricken Auronee back to her home in Taldor, assuming that her noble father had the resources and time to devote to her cure.
Apparently, either the curse was too strong, or the money ran out halfway, because Auronee’s letters of apology confessed that she was still apelike in appearance. Her mind had been mostly restored, but she was no longer the favored daughter of Taldor that she used to be.
Cladissa stuffs the letter away again in her pocket, truly wondering if she should go and visit her stepsister. Her letters of apology had gone into detail about how she had realized her mistakes and how her jealousy had led her to ruin. Furthermore, she even apologized for the bullying. It was almost poetic how their roles had almost reversed. Though, right now, they were very close in status. Both stepsisters had lost everything, and both were mutated and had inhuman features. Aimless, both had returned to Absalom, the city where they had enjoyed their greatest triumphs years ago.
Auronee’s letters had told her that she was still doing a little adventuring in and around Absalom since her apelike body was strong and agile. In her spare time, she was a bouncer in a small tavern in a Vanaran district within Absalom. It made a fair amount of sense; Cladissa had even taken refuge in a Catfolk community in the major metropolis when she had mutated fur and a catlike appearance. Auronee had done the same with the monkeylike Vanaras.
Cladissa’s real reluctance was because she didn’t especially like Auronee. The constant bullying and her betrayal of the Pathfinder Society out of jealousy had burned away any sympathy that remained for her stepsister. She had made a conscious decision not to hate her, and she’d been blessed with a forgiving nature. Even so, abandoning her hate for Auronee had been harder than almost anything she’d ever done. Then her efforts in Galt had become so consuming that she’d almost entirely forgotten about her.
Then the letters had started. At first, they were lengthy confessions and apologies. Cladissa hadn’t responded – she had been fairly hard to reach in those last days of her so-called reign, and the letters had piled up before they actually reached her. Recently, the letters had become conversational, talking about her new life she’d been creating in Absalom and her hopes for the future which were, admittedly, limited. They seemed to reflect a maturing attitude, a growing acceptance of her lot as the result of her own actions and the realization that her attitude toward Cladissa had been key to that downfall.
Those letters and the changed attitude of her stepsister drew Cladissa toward the small collection of Vanara who reside in Absalom for some reason or another. She checks her own feelings, making sure to banish any lingering feelings of pleasure over Auronee’s situation – however justified she may be in having them.
The tavern called The Canopy smelled strongly of alcohol and animal fur. Cladissa’s arachnoid appendages had highly sensitive scent receptors all along their lengths, so she could detect distant and faint odors far better than a normal human. Typically ‘bad’ scents were actually a very complex mix of all sorts of other smells. That being said, alcohol was alcohol. This place seemed rough.
Cladissa steps inside the establishment and studies her surroundings. Having been the subject of numerous assassination attempts during her years in Galt, her survival instincts were honed to a razor’s edge. She immediately takes note of every patron, the presence of weapons, the layout of the room, possible escape routes, and possible avenues of attack as she moves further inside.
The Canopy’s usual clientele are natural climbers, and the whole establishment was built with that in mind. Tables are on different, haphazard tiers, and ladders, planks and beams crisscross the open space in the center of the tavern. Deciding that the few tables on the ground were actually the most vulnerable – and that her own spider legs make her a comparable climber to the usual clientele – Cladissa spies an empty table about eighteen feet off the ground near an open window. It takes no effort to reach that level and claim it, even electing to not use all eight extra limbs.
As she climbed, she surreptitiously laid down a small network of gossamer threads from her spinnerets. Those threads would give her precise awareness of any creature touching them. She made sure not to create sticky threads that would catch on someone and draw attention to their existence, but instead used silk threads that would send the vibrations straight to her.
Settling in her seat, she instinctively stays just out of view from the window so no one outside could easily target her. However, she could be able to use it as a means of escape if necessary. All her safety precautions catch up to her and she realizes that she’s behaving like she was still in Galt. Still, her precautions had kept her alive then, and she still can’t say that she trusted Auronee despite whatever epiphany she claims she’s had.
A Vanaran server swings over to her, not appearing very pleased that Cladissa was a patron. She orders a water and then, under her breath, asks if Auronee was working today. The waitress arches a fur-covered eyebrow and nods. “I’ll tell her,” she says simply.
Cladissa waits patiently as the Vanara climbs further up. She busies herself by trying to pick out the different scents of fur and trying to recall Auronee’s scent from twelve years ago. It occupies her thoughts sufficiently but she gets nowhere before she feels the vibrations of someone climbing up the ladder.
Cladissa tenses as an apelike woman sits heavily in the seat across from her. She didn’t look like one of the Vanaras. Her limbs were misshapen and out of proportion, and shaggy blond hair was everywhere her heavy leather jerkin didn’t cover. Her face, too, was the apelike visage that she remembered from all those years ago. “Auronee? It’s you, isn’t it?” she asks quietly.
The woman nods. “Hello, Cladissa,” she says thickly, through large teeth in a malformed jaw.
She studies her deformed stepsister. It was hard to believe it was truly her; her bright, effervescent charisma was gone. The Auronee from her memories was impossibly beautiful, though her smile was always laced with a cruel mocking whenever directed toward her. Now, her shoulders are slumped and her blue eyes can barely look her in the eye.
It was surreal. Cladissa was used to being the one shrinking from Auronee’s judgmental stare, and now it was the opposite. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to rub it in. It felt petty and undignified.
“I got your letters. I was surprised, but glad to hear that you got your mind back. That’s something, right?” Cladissa ventures.
Auronee shrugs, again still looking away. “Maybe. Hard. Body so different.”
Cladissa lapses into silence. There wasn’t much she could say to that. Her stepsister had suffered a serious indignity, but it was largely due to her own making. If she hadn’t been taken by the demon lord’s servants, they no doubt would have come to blows. Cladissa and her friends had been set against most if not all of Hestram’s allies, meaning that had she not fallen to Angazhan, Auronee would have been one of the foes that Cladissa would have had to fight. Though she wasn’t sure if her own powers could have overcome her stepsister, she felt that her allies could have dealt with her – maybe even have slain her.
Auronee’s eyes glance up, accusatory. “You love this,” she spits out.
Cladissa recoils, shaking her head. “No. This isn’t what I wanted for you. I’ve given up seeking revenge. It’s pointless.”
She scoffs, an impressive level of emotion through such an animal visage. “You didn’t write back.”
Cladissa resists the urge to roll her eyes. “I didn’t have the time. I didn’t see your first letter until months after you first sent it to Mother. You knew I was in Galt trying to bring peace, right? I was a little busy.” A flash of annoyance crosses over her, realizing that she’d already started to get defensive when there was no reason for her to be. She again reminds herself that she doesn’t owe Auronee anything.
The apelike woman moves for a moment as the server comes back, placing Cladissa’s water on the table. She leaves it there untouched while Auronee settles back in her seat. “Heard some stories. You were queen of Galt?” She sounded a touch disbelieving.
Cladissa keeps her face neutral, refusing to show her stepsister any emotion. “For a time. Long enough to decide it really wasn’t for me. I’d rather walk away from peace than rule over turmoil and constant rebellion.”
She could imagine Auronee’s old judgmental ways, calling her a failure and other insinuations. She searches her eyes, looking for signs of the delight she always had whenever she learned of another of Cladissa’s setbacks. However, Auronee simply nods. “Sounds… wise. Cladissa. Always wise, always good.”
She blinks at that. “That… was that a compliment?” Cladissa asks, thoroughly stunned. Even with the letters, she hadn’t fully anticipated such a change in her stepsister.
Auronee shrugs a bit, looking sheepish. She doesn’t keep eye contact long. “Didn’t see it for so long. Didn’t recognize. Just wanted to be better. Didn’t see how good you were.”
Cladissa doesn’t react. She’d come to terms with herself, her failings and the way Auronee’s years of abuse had stunted certain aspects of her personality. Years ago, she might have gotten weepy or swept up in the validation from her old tormentor. She might also have disbelieved it, expecting it to be some sort of setup for another cruel prank. Now, however, she just nods once, regally, her face impassive. She’d faced down rivals who, once bested, turned sycophantic back when she held court as queen. To her, now, Auronee was just one more.
When the silence between them grows, Cladissa finally speaks. “Well, thank you. I’ve forgiven you long ago, but I’ll tell you now. I forgive you. Truly. You’re free. Don’t waste your thoughts on me anymore.” She starts to get up. “Goodbye, Auronee.”
“Wait,” she says, simian head snapping up when it looks like Cladissa’s about to leave.
Here it comes, she thinks as she sits back down, but on the edge of her seat. She wasn’t about to get comfortable. “What do you want?”
“Cure. Maybe found a cure.” Auronee waves her hand in front of her face. “Need help. Please. Could you?”
Cladissa shakes her head. “No. And before you get the wrong idea, this isn’t about revenge or anything. But no. I don’t owe you anything. I’ve accepted your apology, if that’s what it was, and I’ve forgiven you. That’s all you’re getting from me. Now if you’ll excuse me—”
“NO!” Auronee shouts, causing some of the patrons in the tavern to turn their heads. “Have to help. Only hope. My chance,” she pleads.
Cladissa studies her stepsister one more time, keeping the disgust from her face. Her compliments, her letters, her apologies, all calculated to get something from her. If Cladissa could truly help cure her, then she couldn’t believe any of Auronee’s contrition. Any desire to help her withers away. “I said no.”
Auronee’s arm strikes like a snake, its simian length stretching across the table and seizing Cladissa around the neck in a viselike grip. She snarls, her human eyes blazing in fury in her apelike face.
Cladissa coughs and chokes in surprise. She had instinctively kept herself at a step outside arm’s length for this very reason, but had underestimated Auronee’s inhuman reach. Her eyes bulge wide and she grabs at the hand clenched around her throat. The formula had as a side effect increased Cladissa’s strength, so she was surprisingly strong for someone of her size. However, Auronee’s curse had apparently lent her even greater strength, because she couldn’t make the fingers budge.
She switches tactics, her spider legs reaching out from beneath the folds of her cloak and she begins battering her stepsister with them. They grab ahold of the table and try to move, to pull her away. Auronee resists, ignoring the unnerving appendages as she puts all her strength into maintaining the grip around Cladissa’s throat. Her eyes cast about, watching the patrons of the tavern make no move to help. Her heart sinks; Auronee had them all on her side.
Her familiar, Cole, jumps in to help. No mere cat, the strange witch powers that have linked her with the being had upgraded him to a Sylvanshee. With a hiss, he claws at Auronee. Her other arm backhands him away, but he flies back in to renew his assault. She hits him again, and this time another Vanara moves in and grabs ahold of him. Cole turns to a cloud of mist, freeing himself.
Cladissa’s lungs begin burning. Her throat clamped shut, she couldn’t cast a spell. She levels a hex on her, causing artic winds to swirl around Auronee hoping to encase her in ice. Though she shivers and the sudden blast of cold bites deep, the accursed former Pathfinder manages to keep from succumbing to the worst of the hex.
Auronee retaliates by forcing Cladissa’s head back hard against the wall while still keeping her hand around her throat. Stars dance in front of her eyes, coupled with the yearning for air of her lungs, her vision begins darkening.
Desperation sets in. Her spinnerets spray webbing at her reflexively while she sends another hex at Auronee, again trying to entomb her in ice. As before, Auronee throws off the worst of the cold and is not encased.
Auronee shakes Cladissa back and forth, noticing the slackening strength of her stepsister. She keeps up the vise around her throat, not letting her cast any of her innumerable escape spells she otherwise would have used. She thinks to her familiar, ::Go! Get Argor!:: The magical cat streaks from the tavern.
As her vision fades and the darkness begins to claim her, Auronee pulls Cladissa forward so they’re face to face. She hisses through gritted, animalistic teeth, “You lose again.”

Cladissa wakes groggily, wanting desperately to cough, though her throat was killing her and something was stuffed into her mouth. She was hanging awkwardly from her arms, her hands tied tightly together. She was pressed hard against a hair-covered back. And her spinnerets were being painfully squeezed by rough hands.
She looks around frantically, realizing it was still night, but the shining lights all around and spires and temples told her instantly she was in the Ascendant Court – the district of Absalom where the major churches were located, surrounding the Cathedral of the Starstone. Sheer terror strikes Cladissa when she sees that she is hanging precariously close to the bottomless pit that surrounds the structure that houses the mysterious object that fell to Golarion and has elevated four mortals to godhood.
“Hold still!” she hears Auronee shout. Cladissa sees her standing close, holding a bow and arrow. She realizes that she’s hanging off another Vanara, a male, who is nearly as burly as Auronee. She realizes that she is tied up and gagged with her own webbing.
In response to her own distress, Cladissa gets a pulse of anxious fear that she senses from her familiar Cole. The two share an empathic link, and can feel each other’s emotions. Now that she was awake again, Cole could sense her rising panic. She thinks hard through the link, but coherent thoughts are not transmitted, and unfortunately there was no specific emotion that could adequately convey a clue about her whereabouts. She struggles, sending a feeling of confinement and claustrophobia to him, and tries to push through a feeling of awe at the towering edifice that is the Starstone Cathedral.
“Give your best silk,” Auronee instructs, snapping her out of her emotional communication, as she tugs on Cladissa’s spinnerets again, causing a line of webbing to flow out that she ties to the end of the arrow.
With horror, Cladissa realizes that now Auronee wanted to use her silk to create some sort of tightrope across the gap so she could reach the Citadel of the Starstone. Unfortunately, she could not resist secreting the substance that instantly dries into the silk she produces from her spinnerets due to the abuse. She groans behind her gag as the other Vanara takes over squeezing the arachnoid organ, and Auronee steps up to the edge. She looses the arrow which sails across the void, trailing the line of silk.
::Are you crazy?:: Cladissa asks by projecting her thoughts into her stepsister’s mind, using her telepathy – a leftover gift from when the demons tried to remake her into one of them. ::You’re not honestly going to try to take the Test of the Starstone?:: Being a resident of Absalom for years, Cladissa was well-versed in the legends surrounding the mysterious challenges to attaining godhood. The first part of the Test was well-known – crossing the bottomless chasm without using one of the three intact bridges spanning the gap.
Auronee pauses in her task of drawing the slack, surprised at hearing Cladissa’s voice in her head. She turns to face her. “I’m getting cured,” she growls.
::I don’t see the connection,:: she thinks at her, but Auronee had already returned to her work. The arrow seems to have attached on the other side, and the line of silk is holding. As her stepsister goes about anchoring the silk on their side of the chasm, a sudden river of fear runs through Cladissa. What was she going to do with her once she was finished being used as a rope? Rope, even spider’s silk rope, wasn’t that difficult to come by. Auronee could have done this years ago. But she waited for Cladissa to come to her. She had lured her here, to Absalom, and like the constant fool that her stepsister always accused her of being, Cladissa had fallen for it.
::HELP!! HELP, SOMEONE!!! THIS IS CLADISSA VELORRYAN, HERO OF ABSALOM!! ANYONE WHO CAN HEAR THIS, I’M IN DANGER!! AT THE CATHEDRAL!!:: she broadcasts at the loudest her mind can generate, in all directions to all minds within a hundred feet, which admittedly wasn’t very far. But this region of Absalom was very heavily populated and she had to hope that someone was close enough.
Cladissa’s mental efforts earned her a punch across the face from Auronee. She shakes her head clear and repeats the emergency message again, and again, each time getting another fist to her face. After four times, Cladissa was too woozy to continue.
“Seems stable. Hurry. Give her here,” Auronee says to the male Vanaran, who had been holding Cladissa all this time. He pulls her bound hands and arms over his neck, passing her over to Auronee. The apelike woman gives the Vanaran a kiss, and Cladissa can hear the clink of an exchange of coins. Her blurry vision finally begins to focus as she looks for anyone who might have been drawn by her telepathic cries for help.
A sudden blur of movement from Auronee draws her attention from the hope of salvation, as the Vanaran takes off running into the night. A sense of Cole, his distant, frustrated emotions evident that he is trying to find her yet not able to succeed in locating her. Oh, Iomedae! Cladissa thinks as she looks to the distant Seventh Church at the edge of the Court.
Auronee pulls Cladissa’s bound arms over her neck and maneuvers her so she is hanging against her back. Any chance of tugging free suddenly became a death sentence as the apelike woman jumps out into the void, catching the line of silk with her hands. Hand-over-hand in simian motion, Auronee brachiates across the bottomless void.
Dangling by her arms, hands bound and mouth gagged, Cladissa considers her options. She could try to make Auronee let go, or at least try to get free herself, and let herself fall. If the pit was truly bottomless like the legends say, she’d have time to work herself free from her bindings which would allow herself to cast spells. She could then cast teleport and get her back to the surface, but would she arrive at her destination with the same velocity she’d be at? It was risky. While she could also attempt to call her flying broom to her, it wouldn’t be able to catch up to her while she was in freefall.
The problem was, her webbing was strong, and it was now being used against her. Auronee had tied her very well, and if the pit wasn’t truly bottomless, then she might reach it before she worked herself free.
Not liking her chances with the pit, Cladissa endures Auronee’s rough swinging as she crosses the chasm. They reach the other edge, and the ape woman grabs some rocky handholds and pulls the two up with her simian strength. Cladissa looks back along the gossamer thread, glinting in the lights of the Ascendant Court, and believes she sees figures back at the other edge. She calls out telepathically, but quickly realizes they’re beyond her range, if they had heard her at all.
The only one she could talk to is Auronee. ::So, you got across. Are you going to go inside? Is your cure godhood? If so, that’s fine. Good luck. I’ll be happy to be a failure here as a mortal. Just leave me. Please::
Auronee grunts as she stands up and roughly adjusts Cladissa so she is thrown over her shoulder. “No, you come with. You see.”
::Auronee, I’m not taking the Test. I didn’t cross. You carried me. That’s against the rules, isn’t it?::
Auronee chuckles. “You helped. Your silk.”
::Then do you honestly plan to carry me through the entire Cathedral? Just leave me here. I’m not going. I’m not taking the Test::
“No,” Auronee answers simply, as her attention is drawn to the massive golden doors serving as the entrance to the Cathedral. Cladissa has to twist her neck to see where she’s being taken, and sees that the doors are beginning to swing open, causing a brilliant light to issue forth.
::Please. Just drop me here. I’m just a burden. I’m a failure; you know that. I’ll only slow you down. Please!!!:: She fights against her bonds and twists her body, trying to pull free.
Cladissa’s pleas are ignored as Auronee tightens her hold. She steps through the threshold and they are surrounded by light.

Cladissa’s eyes adjust, seeing that they are in a massive gold-and-marble entrance hall. Huge columns rise up from her field of vision towards a ceiling out of her view on both sides of them, and the distant walls are covered in flowing patterns. It’s impossibly large, fantastically beautiful, and incredible to behold. Yet Cladissa’s eyes were focused on the doors behind them, swinging shut with a resounding boom that echoed around her with the air of finality.
Cladissa doesn’t stop struggling, but finds it impossible to break her bonds or get out of Auronee’s grip. She barely slows her down. Her stepsister strides purposefully across the seemingly endless hall. The Test of the Starstone was the source of endless conjecture, though common belief is that those attempting it faced myriad traps and guardians. Almost all who had taken the Test had not passed, their names appearing in the Shrine of the Failed within the Ascendant Court. A small few survive the Test while failing to attain godhood, but their stories of the challenges within are wildly inconsistent, leaving most to believe that the Test is different for everyone. Living in Absalom with the Cathedral right there, Cladissa knew that some obsessively studied every aspect of the Test in their dreams of becoming a god. She realizes she shouldn’t have been surprised that Auronee had apparently studied it as well. Nothing less than deification would do for her.
::It’s not too late. Let’s go. You wouldn’t want to be a goddess anyway:: Cladissa thinks at her, desperation in her thoughts. ::You’d lose yourself. Do you think you’d have free will anymore? Think about it! You wouldn’t be able to choose your followers. And all they’d do is want, want, want. ‘Please, bless me.’ ‘Please, do something for me.’ ‘Please, give me a sign you’re listening.’ There’ll be no end to it::
Auronee jostles Cladissa roughly. “Stop talking.”
::I’m not talking. I’m thinking. If you ungagged me, I could talk and you wouldn’t have to have my thoughts in your head:: she offers.
“No. No thinking, no talking. Or I choke you again.”
Cladissa lapses into silence again as her painful and uncomfortable journey into the seemingly endless
Cathedral continues. She estimated that they would have been through the Cathedral and somewhere over the far side of the pit had the space within been normal. But she was used to strange dimensional phenomena. She had even once spent several years within a pocket dimension training to invade the Shadow Plane that to the normal realm was only a few seconds. She expected this place to be bigger on the inside even though she never had plans to see it from the inside.
::Are you stuck? You seem to be walking endlessly. Please, cut me loose. I’ll go back, and you can do whatever you want here:: Cladissa projects after another twenty minutes or so.
“Shut up. Figuring out pattern.”
::There’s a pattern? All I’m seeing is floor::
“SHUT! UP!”
::At the risk of another beating, I’ll note that I haven’t said a word::
Auronee jostles Cladissa painfully, so she decides to stay quiet again. The Cathedral was eerily still and empty. Ornate and opulent columns continue to rise on either side of them, and stunning filigreed artwork line the walls, though they were all of purely of abstract designs and no recognizable images that Cladissa could tell. But she and her stepsister were the only things that moved in this vast hallway.

Suddenly, Auronee lets out a triumphant laugh. “The reflections!” she says, and as if that’s all the explanation necessary, she takes a sharp left turn and passes through one of the columns as if it wasn’t there. Being carried over her shoulder, Cladissa could only guess at the clue that Auronee must have noticed. But whatever it was, she was apparently correct. In a blink, they are in another place altogether.
Cladissa cranes her neck to look around, the boredom of the endless hallway now replaced by pounding fear and anticipation. They appeared to be in a foyer of some sort, with high, vaulted walls and a gateway crackling with energy. Huge statues of androgynous figures of indeterminate race flank the arch with judgmental faces.
“Yes. Yes!” Auronee shouts and without hesitation races through the barrier carrying Cladissa along with her. They each receive a major dose of whatever energy was coursing through the space between the statues. She dumps Cladissa on the floor in the next chamber as she whoops in elation.
::What’s going on? What was that?:: Cladissa thinks at her stepsister as she rolls around to get her legs underneath her. She gasps behind her gag as she sees Auronee undergoing a transformation! The hair all over her body begins drifting off, and her long, simian arms shrink back to normal proportions. And the apelike face shifts back to the beautiful visage that she had had for years before her curse at the hands of the demon lord.
Auronee laughs. A musical, lilting laugh in a clear human voice. She spins in rapturous joy as she runs her delicate fingers up and down her arms and lightly touches her face. Smiling brightly, she spies her stepsister still bound on the floor, looking up at her in astonishment.
“In at least four accounts I’d read,” she says in her clear voice, fully human and articulate, “the Test of the Starstone strips away any permanent magical augmentations very early on in the test. No unfair advantages,” she explains. “Oh, gods, it feels good to speak again. It’s been too long.”
Cladissa mumbles behind her gag, not really feeling the sentiment of being able to speak. Then a river of ice starts to race up and down her spine as Auronee’s words dawns upon her. She shakes her head, vigorously, trying to inch back away from her while hands and legs are bound.
Auronee smirks evilly as the fear and realization fill her eyes. “Oh, that’s right! You’ve got some unfair advantages too, don’t you? How careless of me.”
Cladissa’s shriek is barely muffled by her gag. It becomes full volume as the webbing just dissolves. The threads wrapped around her arms and legs, too, lose their strength and she pulls free. “Auronee, no! How could you?” she stutters as she feels a sudden dead weight on her back. She feels her arachnoid legs go numb one at a time, and then the weight is suddenly gone. Cladissa spins in horror and sees the spider legs that were once a part of her on the ground, twitching and curling up as a dead insect.
Next, she feels her mind get muddy and clouded. “Oh, Iomedae! Please!” Cladissa shrieks as she clutches her head. She feels something akin to a nose bleed, and she looks to see a gray fluid dripping from her nose. She falls to her knees, tears starting to run from her eyes unbidden. But as she wipes them, it is more of the dull gray liquid. The serum, she realizes, but instead of a vibrant silvery color, what was leaking out of her is a flat, dull gray. Lifeless. Inert.
She blinks, taking stock of herself. The serum was gone from her, and all its beneficial mutations.
Sudden anger flares up in Cladissa and she glares at Auronee. “How dare you!!! You had no right!!”
Auronee, however, was standing with that triumphant smirk on her face. “Me?? How dare you?? You fail, and then you get that stuff injected and you upstage me? Over and over? You’d never have made it as far as you have without it! No, you had no right! Now you’re back to loser, mundane, miserable Cladissa!”
Incomprehensible rage and betrayal filled her – telepathy: gone; spinnerets: gone; augmented intelligence: gone. Cladissa breathes in ragged gasps as Auronee’s words and mocking triumph buzzes in her ear. Her whole vision had gone blurry from her fury – wait, no! The very first thing the serum had done was correct her vision so she didn’t need glasses! Even that gift had been removed!
Cladissa screams something barely human and charges at Auronee, who was ready. She takes her stepsister’s blind charge and spins out of her way, causing her to go sprawling on the smooth floor.
“See? Back to how things truly should be. You, inferior; me, superior.”
“DAMN YOU!!!” Cladissa shrieks as she pulls herself up from the floor. She realized she still had magic spells available to her, though her diminished intellect would hamper their effectiveness. Still, in her rage Cladissa casts one of her most powerful spells at her stepsister, hoping to turn her into an inert statue.
Auronee’s skill and fortitude throws off the magic, eyes wide when she recognizes what had been cast at her. “Playing for keeps, huh? All right,” she says as she draws a rapier that had been on her belt the whole time. She steps forward and drives the point deep into Cladissa’s gut. “Cast another spell at me, and I start chopping fingers.”
The witch staggers back, hands clutching the spot of the wound, eyes wide with fear. Most of her powerful spells could be resisted, and if Auronee’s infuriating good fortune was back, Cladissa didn’t have much hope that she’d be able to turn her into a toad or statue or something and end the fight quickly. She backs away from the blurry form of Auronee.
Instead of fighting, she decides to take her chance and get away from this nightmare, to get away from Auronee, away from the Cathedral, and away from the Test. “Gods damn you,” she hisses. “You had your cure but you waited a year until you could drag me into this? Just so you could take the serum away from me? I hope the Test kills you slowly.” She envisions the courtyard of Argor’s home of Verde Heights clearly in her mind and casts teleport.

=========

Cladissa’s position doesn’t change. Her spell failed; that much was certain. Auronee stands where she was before the spell, infuriating smirk proud on her face, tapping her blade against her thigh.
“Still here? Not surprised. All the tales say that teleport and other transportation spells don’t work here.”
Cladissa decides to test the effectiveness of healing magics, and casts a spell to repair Auronee’s sword thrust. It succeeds, and her stomach knits together. “Damn it. Damn it,” Cladissa says, not feeling better about her situation even though her wound was healed. “I don’t want to be here. You kidnapped me. Dragged me here. You took my legs. My webs. My telepathy. You’re evil.” Desperation was setting in, and old hate that she had thought was long forgotten and forgiven is bubbling to the surface.
Auronee rolls her eyes. “Oh, please. You’re so full of yourself. Like the world revolves around you. Every little thing is a huge deal. I do something mean to you, and suddenly I’m some black-hearted villain.” She points her thumb at herself. “I was a monkey for YEARS! My mind was gone, but not gone enough! I knew what had happened, and I couldn’t do anything about it! And then I got just a piece of it back, and that was almost worse! I know evil, Cladissa! What I did was just setting things right! We’re both back to normal! And if you can’t deal with being the way you’d been born, then that just proves how much of a loser you are! The only thing special about you was in that syringe.”
Cladissa glowers at her, saying nothing. Her mind was seething with so much anger she was locked – words, actions, thoughts, nothing was adequate. What’s worse was how impotent her rage was. The serum had improved her strength and coordination. Her brief spar with Auronee showed just how a protracted fight with her would go. And while a part of her wanted to continue to attack, enough of her was determined to not die at the hands of her stepsister.
After a war with herself, Cladissa forces down the anger, knowing that it’s unproductive. She turns, moving away from the large arch that stripped her powers away from her and deeper into the massive room. She strides purposefully, putting Auronee behind her, hoping that there’s a split in the next chamber where she can try her own way to get out of this nightmare independent of her stepsister. She hears a scoff behind her and footsteps as Auronee starts catching up.
“I just want out of here,” she mutters as she keeps walking, Auronee falling in step behind her. Before long, the arcing gateway was far behind them, and the dim light of the massive chamber makes the distant walls hazy and indistinct. The ceiling, too, was so high as to be almost nonexistent. Even if there were things to be seen far away, Cladissa’s suddenly restored poor vision blurred everything to nothingness anyway.
The darkness at the edges of the massive chamber slowly encroaches upon the two stepsisters, surrounding them. Cladissa keeps striding forward until the darkness was directly before her, limiting her ability to see any further than a few steps ahead. Even though she wore a magical crown that gave her the ability to see in darkness, this particular blackness was impenetrable. The two women stop, standing in tiny pools of light amid a massive swath of darkness.
A booming disembodied voice suddenly echoes all around them. AURONEE LYANNA FARWYND. CLADISSA D’LAVIGNE VELORRYAN. THE TEST IS PREPARED.
“Nooo!” Cladissa shrieks, yelling up at the surrounding darkness. “I quit! I’m not taking it!! Just let me out!!”
The voice continues, not showing any sign of hearing her. FOR ONE TO SUCCEED, ONE MUST FAIL. THE TEST IS BEGUN.
A beam of light straight ahead shows an ornate arch. Cladissa shakes her head vehemently. “No. I’m not doing it. I’m not.”
Auronee’s smirk becomes a gigantic smile. “I’m going to be a goddess,” she giggles, taking a dismissive glance at Cladissa. She strides confidently toward the arch.
Deciding to be obstinate, Cladissa doesn’t move. She watches her hated stepsister step forward towards the next challenge. If I don’t do anything, does that mean she wins by default? Could I really stand by and allow her to be a goddess? But that would mean I’d have to— she shudders involuntarily. Her mind wanted to reject the very concept of trying to become a divine being. It was too big, the concept so unreal. She begins hyperventilating as the reality finally caught up to her – she was taking the Test of the Starstone, and if she didn’t succeed, Auronee would become a goddess.
With feet moving slow and reluctantly, Cladissa walks the path toward the arch.

As a Pathfinder, Cladissa had survived exploring mazes, dungeons and monster-filled museums. She and her team had overcome innumerable challenges, most of them succeed-or-be-killed. In her imagination, she’d always assumed that the Test of the Starstone would be similar, just that the challenges would be nigh insurmountable and far more lethal.
She was wrong. Whatever Powers that Be design and create the Test apparently decided that her and Auronee’s challenges would be of the kind that would pit them against each other. There were tests of physical prowess, mental acumen, and magical knowhow. Auronee excelled at the contests of stamina, martial combat, and dexterity. Cladissa managed to surpass her stepsister in most tests of intelligence and a number of the magical challenges. However, Auronee was a capable magic user herself, and had a quick wit. More, she had a level of confidence that was infuriating. She shrugged off a loss and would then win the next two or three. Her smirk grew more pervasive as the Test wore on.
They fought hordes of clockwork constructs and gibbering outsiders. They navigated labyrinths. They climbed walls. They answered riddles. They crossed chasms while flaming arrows were fired at them. They faced mystical barriers that had to be overcome. They endured rooms of noxious gases. They raced. They fought. They pushed. They pulled. They strove.
After uncountable hours (days?) of relentless contests, both stepsisters were on their last legs. Cladissa could barely stand, and had used all her available magics, except for her witch’s hexes. Auronee was in marginally better shape. However, she had outperformed Cladissa by a five to two margin.
Eventually the pair, gasping for breath, again find themselves in the massive chamber devoid of light save for what surrounds them. Cladissa, fully aware of her performance compared to her stepsister, gives her an uneasy look. Auronee gives her a smug smile in response. “I’d offer you a position as my high priestess, but I don’t want your loser self driving away my followers.”
“I wouldn’t worship you if the only other god was Zon-Kuthon,” Cladissa spits.
Auronee tosses her hair with a shake of her head and smirks. “I’ll put in a good word with him for you.”
Cladissa makes a disgusted sound in her throat and waits for the inevitable.
It comes. The disembodied voice again echoes throughout the chamber. CLADISSA D’LAVIGNE VELORRYAN. YOU HAVE FAILED THE TEST. Her heart sinks, and avoids looking at Auronee’s triumphant smirk. YOU HAVE ONE LAST CHANCE. YOU MAY KILL AURONEE LYANNA FARWYND.
Auronee and Cladissa both exchange a look of astonishment. Then they draw their weapons. A worshipper of Iomedae, Cladissa carries her signature weapon of a longsword, though she is not well-versed in its use. Auronee, by contrast, is highly skilled with her rapier.
“I don’t want to kill you,” Cladissa pants.
“You won’t.” Auronee advances.
Cladissa shakes her head and lowers her sword. “I mean, let’s not do this. I’m not going to even try.”
“Too bad. Because I’ll kill you for godhood.”
In desperation, Cladissa levels a hex upon her stepsister, but she approaches undeterred. There’s a clash of steel as the witch brings up her sword to deflect Auronee’s thrust. Cladissa falls back while Auronee presses the attack. She draws blood as her rapier pierces her shoulder, then with a flourish stabs Cladissa’s sword arm. The longsword clatters to the floor.
Cladissa stumbles, nearly falls, then throws her hands up. “I’m done! Don’t—” Her surrender is cut off by Auronee’s rapier piercing her heart.
Cladissa knew enough about anatomy to know instantly that the wound was mortal. She clutches at her chest, feeling the arrhythmia in her damaged heart as she sinks to her knees. She’d only have a few seconds before the blood failed to reach her brain and she would pass out, never to awake again. She and Auronee lock eyes for a brief moment, the look in her stepsister’s eyes telling Cladissa that she knew what she’d done.
Her smug, self-assured look falters. “Just hold on. I’ll have power soon. I’ll be able to—” A sudden gush of blood through Cladissa’s fingers cuts Auronee off, showing her she had no time for empty assurances. She spins and starts shouting at the disembodied voice, while Cladissa collapses to the floor. Though Auronee was only a few steps away, she sounded distant to Cladissa’s ears. The darkness encroached and enveloped everything.

* * *
The Shrine of the Failed
An empty alcove suddenly flares to life. The black-robed attendants toiling away at their tasks, remembering those who have failed the Test of the Starstone, gather around it. A flash of light begins etching a name across the top of the alcove. It reads, Cladissa d’Lavigne Velorryan.

“There! I’ve won! Now where’s the Starstone!” Auronee cries out desperately. Though there is silence from whatever entity had been directing the Test, she spots a pinpoint of light in the distance. Glancing back at Cladissa on the ground, a pool of blood spreading beneath her, Auronee decides to run toward it.
Despite her fatigue from the lengthy and taxing contests, she sets a punishing pace for herself. Auronee’s muscles burn in protest, but she embraces the pain and lets it fuel her need to run faster. A sick feeling wells up from her stomach, but she forces it down into the strain of her exertion.
A part of Auronee questions this sudden urgency of hers to help save Cladissa. She hated her weak and mewling stepsister from the moment they first met. As their lives remained intertwined, that hate had matured like fine wine, into a sort of comfortable contempt. As soon as she began to realize that Cladissa herself was the architect of most of her miseries, it became amusing to watch her flounder at life. No longer did she have to come up with pranks and stunts to make Cladissa appear a fool, she only had to make an off-hand comment and the hapless girl would implode all on her own.
That started to change some time after she had taken that accursed formula. At first it was still amusing: watching Cladissa devolve into a beast while the rest of her companions made the most of their mutations. She had been truly convinced that one day she would hear that Cladissa had become some catlike creature with an animal’s mind.
But then Cladissa had recovered somehow. She grew wings as she had promised. Even the attack by the shadow demon and the succubus hadn’t broken her. Hestram had explained to her the details of that occurrence. Cladissa still managed to fail occasionally, but succeed more often than not.
Auronee’s hatred for her stepsister hadn’t faded after all these years. The injustices heaped upon her while Cladissa continued to garner fame and accolades was just too much. Her revenge had been so satisfying, watching those horrific appendages of hers drop off, twitching. Cladissa was back. The real Cladissa. Not that Freak with the serum who was supposedly the heir to the Galtan throne.
The realization strikes Auronee as she’s running. That’s why it bothered her so much when her rapier punctured her heart. It was the real Cladissa. Weak, pathetic, a loser. If she still had her Freak powers, she’d have been a monster. Perhaps even a threat. Killing her wasn’t Auronee slaying an aberration. It was her murdering her weakling stepsister. It didn’t sit well.
I’ll make it up to you, she thinks to herself as she keeps up her pace, focusing on the glowing spot slowly growing larger. If you die, I’ll talk with Pharasma. Maybe work something out so you can live out your days somewhere simple and safe.
The bright spot Auronee had been running to turns out to be a simple wooden door with a brass handle. She pulls up to it, breathing hard, but checks it for traps as quickly as she could manage. Believing it to be safe, she pulls it open and steps into a marble chamber with high columns and arched ceilings. Bubbling fountains on either side of her poured crystal-clear water down into basins that run along the marble walkway leading into the center of the room. On a massive pedestal upon a dais in the chamber’s center is a fantastically bright, coruscating gemstone about four feet across. The multifaceted stone floats and spins slowly, casting bright colors across the entire chamber.
It’s almost too bright to look at directly, but at the same time, so beautiful Auronee cannot tear her eyes away from it. She steps forward slowly, the burning in her lungs forgotten as the awe and power of the stone draws her in. There’s no doubt; it’s brilliant and thrumming with infinite power, so bright it’s leaving spots in her eyes yet not damaging them at all.
“I made it…” she whispers, barely able to comprehend the majesty and power of the Starstone. It’s strange, she manages to think as she approaches, that she’ll never be able to describe this to anyone. She feels a surge of power even before she touches it. Her first brush with godhood, just being near it. The elation has surpassed any sensation she’d ever experienced in her lifetime.
She takes another step. And another. The Stone is filling her vision entirely, flashing images with every color as the facets pass by her eyes. Things unknowable by mortals are being projected into her mind. The very fabric of the universe begins to peel back, opening up possibilities and concepts that she is about to be a part of. Auronee arrives at the base of the pedestal, within arm’s reach of godhood. She reaches out with her hand…
AURONEE LYANNA FARWYND, YOUR FINAL TEST IS AT HAND
The words boom around her, everywhere, breaking the spell of the Starstone and freezing her hand just inches away from the gemstone’s surface. She blinks for the first time she entered the room, looking around for the source of the voice, yet it remains disembodied as before. “What??” Final test? I won! ‘For one of us to succeed, the other has to lose!’ Cladissa lost! So let me touch this thing so I can save her life!”
CLADISSA D’LAVIGNE VELORRYAN IS BEYOND YOUR REACH Auronee’s heart sinks a bit. She’s certain that would gnaw at her for a long time; she hopes that as a goddess she’ll be above that. Or, better, that once she’s a goddess, she’ll have the reach to fix that mistake.
“Okay.” Dammit. “What’s the final test?” She pushes against whatever it is that’s separating her hand from the Starstone, but she couldn’t make contact with it. She drops her hand down to the hilt of her rapier. She was out of spells and exhausted, so she hoped this didn’t involve another combat. She wouldn’t be able to fight something for very long, depending on what it is.
AURONEE LYANNA FARWYND, YOU ARE TO BE SUBMITTED FOR JUDGMENT
The Starstone’s color shifts, and the images in each facet become clear. Auronee cannot pull her eyes away as the Stone continues to rotate, projecting the images directly into her mind. She sees the beginnings of her life in Taldor, a joyous, happy time with her real mother and her father. She sees the loving marriage of her parents and the wondrous news that she was going to have a baby sister. She watched as her younger self grow excited as her mother’s belly got bigger, speaking to it and telling her how much they’ll play together.
Then, the images Auronee dreaded appear. The carriage ride into town, and the accident on the road. A spooked horse tries to bolt, causing the carriage with Mother inside to tilt on its side. At first, they thought she was okay when she was pulled from the wrecked carriage. Then, that night, the blood running down her legs. Auronee was dragged away from her mother screaming, so the doctors could work. But they didn’t succeed in saving her mother or her baby sister.
She watches the next images. Those of intense sadness. Of her sad play with her imaginary sister, whom she knew would have been the best of friends and a great adventurer. In make-believe, she and her sister would fight monsters, explore ancient places, and save the world together. Then Auronee grew older. She realized her father was still grieving, so she tried to cheer him up. She invited him to open up to her. He began to come out of his shell, and soon the two were smiling again. Auronee and her father, the two of them recovering from grief.
The vision flashes. She arrives. The Galtan refugee with the plots and the plans. Lady Tessida Velorryan connives and manipulates, and soon she and her father are married. She becomes the Lady Farwynd, taking her mother’s title. Auronee hates her. And then she meets Cladissa.
The lady has the GALL to suggest that Cladissa could be her little sister. Never. Never in a million years could that miserable little weakling take the place of her sister. The more people called them sisters, the more she hated her. Her real mother and sister were replaced by two awful people that she hated more than anything.
Images flash before her eyes. Auronee and Cladissa grow as intense rivals throughout their schooling and adolescence, Auronee taking every opportunity to make sure Cladissa is miserable. When her stepsister announces she wants to be an adventurer, her uncle suggests the two of them become Pathfinders. Auronee seethes. She and her real sister were going to be adventurers. Cladissa was ruining Auronee’s perfect life.
The Starstone continues to turn, showing more images of her Pathfinder training, the test, and acceptance. Her first successful missions. The lives she saved. The friends she’d made while adventuring. Her successful business ventures. Then the visions shift. It shows Cladissa’s failure and eventual ascension. The seething hatred festering even more. Adril Hestram. The plot to remake the Pathfinder Society and ensure that no one like Cladissa could ever be a success. The curse. The cure. The years spent in disgrace and exile. Auronee blinks away the visions.
“So, you’re judging me, huh? Against what standard? I mean, you’ve let a drunkard stagger in here and touch it. Same thing with a murderer. I can’t say I’m in the most stellar company. We can’t all be Iomedae.”
THIS ONE IS NOT TO JUDGE YOU. YOU ARE TO BE JUDGED BY THE OTHER
Auronee looks around. “The Other? Who’s that? I don’t even know what you are!” She stays close to the Starstone, as she casts about, trying to lay eyes on the one who will do this supposed judging. She still didn’t see anything. “Can you hurry up? I’d still like to become a goddess so I can revive Cladissa.”
“Aww, I’m touched.”
Auronee spins around to see the small door in this huge ornate chamber swing wide and a figure standing in the opening. She moves forward, hand covered in blood still clutching a dark wet spot on her chest.
“But you needn't bother,” Cladissa says. “Hello, Auronee.”

The rapier had pierced Cladissa’s heart. She was dying, no doubt about it. She dropped to her knees, astonished, watching the eyes of Auronee go from smug satisfaction to a panicky remorse. Cladissa slumped to the floor, trying to focus her regenerative hex upon herself.
Cladissa had used up her magical spells except for a useless teleport, but she still had hexes. They were fairly limitless, with the singular drawback that she could only target someone once every twenty-four hours, or twice for harmful hexes if she immediately tried again. One of her strongest hexes was to grant someone a regenerative ability for a few seconds, powerful enough to regrow limbs and ruined organs. Every time she was injured during the trials, she held off from using that hex on herself, relying mainly upon an old wand of curative magics that eventually ran out of charges. Thankfully, she hadn’t had to use her regeneration hex on herself yet.
As she hit the floor, she hexed herself to start her heart regenerating. She still passed out, though, the blood loss too much. Her final thoughts were a jumble of hoping that she’ll also regenerate enough blood to replace what poured out of the wound, and that her arrhythmic heart would start beating again once it was fully repaired.
Her eyes opened after an unknown amount of time in darkness. The pool of blood was still wet and fresh below her, so she figured she hadn’t been out long. Her chest still hurt, but a check revealed that the hole was repaired. Better yet, her heart was beating strong.
Cladissa pushed herself to her feet and looked around at the empty darkness. Auronee was nowhere to be seen, and the only light was the strange directionless aura that surrounded her and nothing else. It was frightfully eerie, being alone in a lightless void. She started to get flashbacks of the time she, Argor, Thrassk and Gianluca had trapped themselves in a timeless dimension for training that lasted years.
She shook that off with mental effort as she recounted her situation. She had failed the Test, which meant Auronee was off somewhere likely getting elevated to godhood. She rolled her eyes at that, but ultimately decided that wasn’t her problem. She recognized that this could be her opportunity to escape the Cathedral, preferring that to anything else.
The problem was, the lightless void left her with no directions. She looked around, finding her longsword lying near the blood spot, but that was it. Her blurry vision left her with a severe handicap, and she squinted while hoping that she could spot another landmark or something with which she could orient herself. As fortune would have it, she spotted a smudge of light. Ultimately, with nothing else even remotely promising, she started walking toward it.
She walked purposefully, but she felt in no real rush. She had no sense of urgency except for her general desire to escape. Eventually, she arrived at the lighted object, which resolved itself to be a simple door with a brass handle. Steeling herself, Cladissa grasped the handle and opened it a crack, peeking inside.
The chamber beyond was a wonder to behold. She had hardly seen a lovelier setting, but the brilliant gemstone at the center bathing the entire room with coruscating light was enthralling. Her breath caught as it dawned upon her that she was in the presence of the Starstone.
And Auronee was standing before it.
She heard the voice, and Auronee’s conversation with it. She was still undergoing the Test? Some sort of Judgment? she wondered. Then the voice says “the Other” will be doing the judgment, and her heart nearly seizes in her chest.
“Can you hurry up? I’d still like to become a goddess so I can revive Cladissa,” Auronee says.
“Aww, I’m touched,” Cladissa announces as she opens the door all the way and steps inside. “But you needn't bother. Hello, Auronee.”
The look of unbridled astonishment on her stepsister’s face was almost worth the entire escapade, Cladissa thinks as she steps further inside the chamber. Auronee’s eyes were so wide they were in danger of falling out, and her mouth worked but no sound came out. Then a sudden suspicious expression crosses her face and she takes a step to make sure she is interposed between Cladissa and the Starstone.
The voice booms again. CLADISSA D’LAVIGNE VELORRYAN, YOU SHALL RENDER JUDGMENT
Auronee shakes her head vehemently in protest. “No, wait, no! Her?? That’s not fair! You can’t choose her! There’s no way she’ll–”
She’s cut off by a massive pulse from the Starstone. Beams of light streak into Cladissa’s eyes and force Auronee into turning around so she can watch as well. Cladissa is treated to the same images of Auronee’s life from her early days before the two were thrust together, to the moments just before they met again at the Vanaran tavern.
The images change, rewinding back to their childhood. This time, the events play out differently. The two girls get along. Auronee treats the traumatized and displaced Cladissa as a member of the family. A friendship blossoms between the two stepsisters. Rather than tearing her down, Auronee lifts Cladissa up. The two join the Pathfinder Society together, as before. But this time, Cladissa succeeds at her trials.
The adventures play out differently. The Absalom Freaks take on regular members like Nyugusk, Mettera, and Sabrina Henderson, and surprise members like Imrizade Blakros and Jannicke LeGrand. Auronee and Cladissa are on the same team with other regular Pathfinders, and take on some of the missions that had in the other time been given to the Freaks, while others remain the same.
Cladissa is told about her secret parentage before long, and she accepts a courtship with a Taldane nobleman, Halman Deberlyn, arranged by her mother. Argor flirts mercilessly with Auronee, and the two enjoy a healthy relationship which tempers some of Argor’s worst impulses. Cladissa and Auronee join Sabrina in her efforts to throw off the Yellow King’s influence and she succeeds. Hestram fails in his plot before he is able to do too much damage to the Society.
Cladissa and Halman are married, and within a year she bears a son, the first male heir to Galt. By the time they decide to restore peace to Galt, she has a small brood of children, Atticus, Tessie, Halman, and Auronee D’Lavigne.
She never becomes ruler of Galt, but the D’Lavigne dynasty is restored under a constitutional monarchy that Cladissa helps design, and becomes the figurehead guide and defender as the queen regent.
By the time the visions fade, tears are streaming down Cladissa’s face and she is nearly hyperventilating. Outrage beyond anything she’d ever felt welled up inside her and threatened to burst forth. “You… you… you ruined everything,” she croaks, her voice barely above a whisper. Then it starts rising in volume. “I could have been happy. We could have been happy. We could have had EVERYTHING!!!”
Auronee recoils as Cladissa advances upon her. She points her finger, accusing. “Was it worth it?? You saw. You SAW!! All the misery you inflicted on me, it spread. It spread to everyone we know. How could you??”
All Auronee can do is shake her head, eyes wide and horrified at the ramifications of her actions. “I didn’t know. I couldn’t have known. I WAS ELEVEN!! AND YOU WEREN’T MY SISTER!!” she shouts in defiance.
Cladissa doesn’t falter. “AND I WAS NINE!! I’d just lost my dad and my home!! You didn’t try once to sympathize! You didn’t let me get better! I kept trying, year after year, to be friends with you. I looked up to you. And all you did was grind me down.”
Auronee looks defeated. Her shoulders slump and her arms hang limply. “I hated you. That’s all that mattered to me. Making you miserable.”
Bile rises in Cladissa’s throat. With a sneer, she says, “Congratulations. You succeeded in every way imaginable.” Her lower lip begins trembling and her eyes well with tears. “I could have had babies,” she whispers.
With an uneasy swallow, Auronee meets Cladissa’s eyes. Hers, too, are full of moisture. “I’m sorry. I mean it this time. Go ahead. Judge me.”
Deep, aching heartbreak settles in Cladissa. She hugs her shoulders as her blurry vision swims with tears. She yearned so deeply for what she saw in those visions. She could almost feel Halman’s touch and hear the voices of their children laughing and playing. The loss of that possibility, irrevocably, from the start, thanks to a crushed spirit from the years of bullying and torment, kindles a special hatred for Auronee. Now she apologizes? Cladissa’s face contorts into anger. Power courses through her, and she knows it’s coming from the Starstone. Whatever fate she pronounces, Auronee will receive it. If she wanted her back to being a mindless ape, it would happen. Send her back to childhood beset by bullies as bad or worse than she’d been, it would be done. Any number of ironic, fitting, or wholly justified punishments course through Cladissa’s mind. From torments befitting a worshipper of Zon-Kuthon, to horrible, wasting diseases, nothing was verboten.
The ghosts of a family that never was feed into her churning hate. All the pain that she and her friends had endured time and again because of the rift of hate between the stepsisters fan the flames of her righteous fury. She was vengeance. She was wrath.
Cladissa opens her mouth, but only a scream of anger issues forth. Auronee shudders and flinches, squeezing her eyes shut against the awful torment that she will receive. She feels Cladissa’s hand grasp her throat. Auronee feels the fingers on her trembling in rage as her face is brought in close enough she can feel the hot breath on her cheeks. She peeks enough to see Cladissa’s face contorted into seething fury, her lips peeled back into a rictus snarl and eyes blazing. Auronee shuts her eyes again and awaits her judgment.
“I forgive you.”
Auronee looks up in confusion as Cladissa shifts her grip and pulls her towards her for a hug. “I forgive you. I already have,” she whispers. She trembles in the hug, still trying to let her rage dissipate.
Auronee pulls back, gazing at her stepsister with renewed astonishment. Blinking hard, she shakes her head in near confusion. “Why?”
Cladissa shrugs as the two separate. Her face has shifted to one of deep sadness. “What good will revenge do? It won’t make things like what we saw. I’m not going to take revenge on you.”
WHAT IS THE JUDGMENT? the voice echoes.
Cladissa steps away from Auronee and waves her hand dismissively at her. “I’m done with her.”
Her face still a mix of astonishment and wonder, Auronee looks around. Her eyes fall on the Starstone still shining behind her, and glances back at Cladissa.
“No,” she says with a shake of her head. “No, you’re not going to be a goddess.” Cladissa looks up to the ceiling, trying to address the disembodied voice. “Send her home. To Taldor, or wherever her family is. Let her have her life back. Maybe she’ll do some good with it.”
Auronee stares at Cladissa, her face a riot of mixed emotions. She takes one last covetous glance at the Starstone, but makes no move to touch it. She looks back to her stepsister, an expression of acceptance. Her body shimmers and fades with a burst of magical light as she is transported elsewhere.

=======================

Cladissa is left alone with the Starstone thrumming with power. Her attention is drawn to it as it slowly rotates and sends pulses of light and energy throughout the ornate chamber. The power sings in her head as she tries to tear her eyes from it. “No. I failed the test right?” she calls out. “It’s not for me. I’m not touching it. Can you send me home?”
She would be answered with ringing silence were it not for the Starstone’s resonant presence. With Auronee gone, its power seems to have intensified, possessed of a gravity that is pulling her closer. It takes genuine effort to resist its pull. The images and sensations the light contains promises knowledge beyond mortal understanding, and power beyond measure.
“No,” Cladissa repeats, actively pulling away. “I don’t want to be a god. I want to go home. Please.” She thought she meant it, but her imagination starts running with the possibilities. Me. A goddess. A being of infinite power. No one would ever call me a failure. They would flock to me. Why settle for queen when I could be divine?!?
Those thoughts wither quickly. They weren’t her thoughts, she could tell. Temptation implanted by the Starstone. The idea of people worshiping her was repellant. She wasn’t divine, nor had she any desire to be. No. I’m just Cladissa.
Cladissa blinks, and the Starstone remains on its pedestal. It seems unchanged from before, but that inexorable pull has diminished. She backs away from it, not taking her eyes from it. The distance helps. Her blurry vision diminishes the artifact’s glory the further she retreats from it.
“Can I go home? Please?” she calls out again. “I’m not interested in being a goddess. How do I get out of here?”
Again, she is answered by nothing but silence except for the humming power of the Starstone. Suddenly, the reality of her situation crashes down upon Cladissa. She had taken – albeit unwillingly – the Test of the Starstone. She had survived, failed, yet somehow stood before the most coveted prize in all of Golarion. How could she not try to touch it and attain divinity? How could she walk away from an opportunity like this? Even if it incinerated her to ash, it would certainly be a good death. She’d achieved a feat that only four before her had accomplished. Why was she walking away?
Again, she comes back to herself. She hadn’t wanted this. She had been dragged here by her stepsister seeking vengeance, nothing more. They had then been pulled into this test, pitting them against each other. Only after Auronee had thought she’d murdered her had the twisted hate seizing her heart unclenched. Cladissa had forgiven her again, perhaps earnestly this time. They had reconciled, and it had taken the power of the Starstone to do it. That’s enough. That’s all I need to ask of it.
She takes one last look at the slowly rotating gemstone. A slight smile grows on her face as her decision becomes firm in her mind. She was leaving it behind. She had a life to build.
Turning away from the Starstone, she spies the door through which she had entered. She grasps the crystal doorknob, pulls it open, and steps through.

Cladissa steps into a beautiful outdoor garden full of vibrant, flowering plants and elegant stone statuary. The sun shines warmly on her face as she smiles, hearing the songs of birds and inhaling the fragrance of new blooms that fill the air. She didn’t immediately recognize the place, but it was a welcome respite from the infinite blackness that had been behind the door the first time.
“Hello, Cladissa,” comes a strong female voice from deeper in the garden. Stepping around a trellis, she sees a regal-looking woman with dark hair cut short, in a gleaming breastplate and a bright red cape off her shoulders.
Blinking hard to make certain her eyes are not deceiving her, Cladissa nearly stumbles as she approaches. “Iomedae – ?” she begins, tentatively, scarcely believing that she could be standing before the goddess.
The woman smiles with genuine warmth and nods. “I am.” She holds up a hand quickly to forestall Cladissa’s immediate attempt to lower herself into a bow. “No, that’s not necessary. Of all my followers that I have lost along the way, your departure from my host is a happy occasion.”
Caught in her awkward half-bow, Cladissa slowly straightens, eyes wide, her mouth suddenly dry. “You haven’t lost me,” she stammers. A creeping dread begins to crawl over her. She looks around at the idyllic gardens surrounding them, wondering where she could be. “Wait. What’s happened?”
Iomedae’s smile becomes one laced with amusement. “My dear, you touched the Starstone.”
Cladissa shakes her head in protest. “No! I walked away from it! I didn’t touch it!”
The goddess of valor gestures behind Cladissa, pointing to the simple door that is still open, leading to the chamber with the brilliant gemstone in its center. “Look now. Using your true sight.”
Turning around, Cladissa tries rubbing her eyes, realizing immediately that her blurry vision was gone once more. She sees the interior, with the fountains and marble basins, glorious and awe-inspiring. She thinks about using a magic spell, but realizes she doesn’t have to. Just by thinking about it, the veil fades. What she thought was the Starstone was just a tightly-woven series of powerful illusion magics. Everything around it was a similar construct, powerful, virtually real in every way, but still somehow ephemeral. “But if that’s not the Starstone, then where –” She cuts herself off when the illusion of scale fades away. The false Starstone is tiny, almost insignificant. Yet the crystal doorknob she touched on the door to let herself out was immense and coursing with unimaginable power.
“The doorknob,” Cladissa says simply as she turns back to Iomedae. The goddess had changed, as had the garden. Now, Iomedae looked brighter than the sun, tangible powers of good and law so potent that she should be scoured away. Yet somehow she is unharmed in the presence of the mighty goddess. The garden, too, was immense and packed impossibly dense. Each inch of it contained all the flora that she’d encountered in her lifetime and more. She looks, and knows the name of each plant and insect within, though she knew that she wouldn’t have had a clue before.
Her mind rebels, and she tries to find the simple garden from earlier. With some effort, she diminishes herself and for the moment, it’s just Cladissa in a garden. She looks at Iomedae, also reduced in stature, terrified. “I didn’t want this. How could this have happened? I failed the test.”
Iomedae nods sympathetically. “Indeed you did. And in so doing, achieved godhood. ‘For One to succeed, One must fail.’ That was your path to divinity. You had to fail.”
Cladissa stands bewildered for a moment, confused. “But why? That makes no sense. If I failed, why am I here? ”
“Your answers are within you,” Iomedae says patiently.
She senses an endless font of knowledge and power just lurking beneath her consciousness. She had tapped it unwittingly when she pierced the veil of the Starstone chamber, and now it wanted to overwhelm her. It was too much; she was trying with all her might to retain her mortal mind, but there was no way for it to survive godhood. I’m dying, the mortal Cladissa thinks as she stands on the cusp of immortality.
Awareness bubbles up from the godhood font in answer to her questions despite her mortal mind’s resistance. She had failed. But her true goal from the start was escape. She hadn’t sought the Starstone. She hadn’t desired to touch it. Even standing before it, she turned away, attempting to leave and remain mortal. She had failed her test. Her test to remain mortal.
“Oh, no.” A deep, growing pain and dread begins to well in her heart. She clutches at it as she looks to Iomedae for salvation, for help. “Please, no. I’m the Goddess of Failure?” The horrible irony is devastating. She chokes back a sob.
Her former divine patron simply nods with a look of sympathy. “You are, but also the Goddess of Resilience. Of Perseverance. As a mortal, you have endured incredible setbacks. Horrible losses. Devastating failures. Yet you always persevered. You never broke. You always strove to try again. That is why you are a goddess.”

* * *

A wave of desperate emotions crashes over Cladissa. She feels grief, loss and disappointment, but suddenly realizes that they’re not her own feelings. A multitude of souls, facing moments of failure and setbacks in their lives, linking to her, sharing in their grief and pain. Cladissa doubles over as what’s left of her mortal mind nearly breaks from the strain of so much sorrow. “Help. I can’t… I can’t stop it. I can’t turn it off. They’re in my head. They’re in my heart.”
Iomedae puts a hand on her shoulder. “You can’t stop it. I lend strength and power to those in need of bravery and valor. Many do not succeed despite my gifts. I once shared in that pain. You will provide succor to them now. You will share your gifts of resilience to them. They will find strength in you.”
Cladissa looks up, shaking her head. “It’s too much. I can’t do it.”
“Your mortal mind can’t. You’re going to have to let it go, otherwise you will prolong its torment. But you will always feel the pain of the souls who reach out to you. If you did not, how could they know you were there to comfort them?”
Cladissa ponders that, even as the anguish courses through her. She considers the godhood source within her, and the idea of letting it consume her completely. It felt like oblivion. “Will I remember myself? How do you keep yourself intact?”
Iomedae smiles reassuringly. “You will still have your old life to draw upon. You’ll be able to create an avatar of your mortal self, a recreation of your old personality. But you are a goddess now. You need to embrace that.”
It felt like death to her, but Cladissa nods to Iomedae. She shuts her eyes and feels the surging power of godhood crash over her. Her mind is wiped away with it; for a moment all that is left of the cacophony of anguished souls facing hardships. The mother who just had her third miscarriage and feels like her body is poison. The fisherman who is returning to shore with an empty catch and wondering how he’ll feed his family. The businessman mulling over his ledgers, pondering how he’ll pay his employees. The king who has received the news that his army has been defeated by the horde of orcs at his borders. All these, compounded by the hundreds of thousands, across Golarion and beyond, into other worlds. Suffering and failure are universal; and the universe was pouring its misery into her.
Cladissa’s eyes go wide and she straightens. She has become the misery and pain; it courses through her, but also gives her strength. The souls cry to her and they touch her and she offers a comforting caress back. Then it starts. The first prayers. The energy linking her to those who would call upon her name. They can tap into her deep well of power. It’s nothing; the faintest of breath, the smallest of effort, but it matters to them. They call out to her and she answers. Her mind expands, drifts, and spreads across a multiverse. The pain is still there, but it becomes necessary. She wouldn’t exist without it.
A familiar voice, with power of its own, calls out to her. But she’s too big, too spread out to respond. She’s part of millions. The voice calls again, getting her attention. The power behind this voice is too strong; stronger than her. It pushes its way inside, and helps her recall her old existence. She draws that into a speck – so tiny – and sends it to talk to the voice.
Cladissa looks around the garden. She felt like herself, but bigger, and still connected. Not as diminished. She could sense the lives she’s touching, but remotely. “Oh, Iomedae! I was… I was gone, wasn’t I? That’s what I’m like now? As a goddess?” She looks around, feeling off. “How much time passed while I was… like that?”
Iomedae waves her off. “Time’s not terribly linear for us. Don’t worry. Though, you just experienced about a hundred years, maybe double that.” She waits for Cladissa to react, which was fairly entertaining.[b] “But no real time has passed. You’ve already had an experience like that as a mortal, haven’t you?”
Cladissa nods, pulling the five years in the pocket dimension to the forefront of her mind in perfect clarity. Then, suddenly another temporal anomaly comes to mind. She looks to the other goddess in astonishment.
“Wait. Cole??”
Iomedae again nods. Cladissa uses her powers and suddenly her old familiar is present before her. “You knew this whole time! This whole time!!”
Cole, nonplussed as usual, just turns and focuses on a spot of his fur that needs licking.
“The bargain. The powers that sent you to me. The mysterious entity that gave me my witch powers. That was… that was me??” She looks to Iomedae for help with this concept.
The Inheritor smiles enigmatically. “I just told you that time doesn’t work the same way for us as for mortals. You can have an influence on your own past – not much beyond that, but whatever it takes to ensure that you attain godhood. Otherwise, nasty paradoxes arise. Imagine being a goddess but your earlier self passes away at some point? It could unravel the framework of existence.”
Despite her deific knowledge, Cladissa’s head still spins. But her course is clear and she points to Cole. “Okay, then. Time to go. Take better care of me than you did this last time, will you?” The sylvanshee purrs with a look at her like he got the canary, then is sent back to Cladissa’s first days as a witch.
“I’ll take my leave of you now,” Iomedae says. “You’ve got some work to do. I’ll see you around. And there’s someone in my realm that’s waiting to see you. I believe you two made a promise?” With another of her warm smiles, the Inheritor fades from the garden.
Drawing knowledge from her godhood, Cladissa pieces together what Iomedae had meant. She pulls the emotions from the past and draws them into her avatar, and she gasps. She wasn’t Cladissa anymore, but she remembers what the real Cladissa would have felt like at this point. Her joy surges as she pulls more memories and fills her avatar finding other things that her old self would have wanted. There were rules; but she finds a piece of her mortal shell still floating within her. It wouldn’t last long, but long enough. She reaches into the knowledge of godhood, and gets an answer that her mortal self had long sought. With an otherworldly smile, she disappears from the garden.
====================
Korvosa – Varisia
In a run-down section of the city, quarantined with bridges burned or cut down for fear of disease, a collection of buildings serve as the abode of the self-styled ruler of this decrepit domain. The open-air balcony is shielded from rain and sun by a brightly-colored canvas roof that extends up over the area like a dome, held in place by a wooden framework. The inside of the canvas has been decorated in scenes of gruesome debauchery: battlefields, executions, torture chambers, and man-eating monsters all vie for space. The balcony itself contains two major features. The first is a high-backed throne that looks like a poor man's version of the Crimson Throne of Korvosa itself, a thing of blood-red cushions and silks and spikes. Directly west of the throne stands an intimidating device, a tall guillotine of carved wood and bone, its base depicting grasping demonic feet and the housing that holds its glittering blade a leering demonic face.
Seated on the throne is a thin Chelaxian man with bad, pox-marked skin, wearing an ornate royal-looking robe, though upon closer inspection, his clothes are quite worn and threadbare. He lounges, one leg swung over the throne's arm, his foot swinging back and forth like a misshapen pendulum. A large painting is propped near the throne but its face is turned away from the emperor. The painting's subject matter features a shadowy dragon looming large over a scene of figures cavorting and fighting.
A woman with long hair and glowing violet eyes appears suddenly, with no fanfare or flourish. A huge bloodstain is on her chest as if she’d recently taken a wound there. Heedless of the thugs, guards and sycophants around the man in the throne, the woman looks directly at the guillotine, then nods.
The man on the throne points, shouting something about trespassing and order in his court, but the woman barely takes any heed. She waves her hand and every other figure on the rooftop throne room goes flying off their feet and sprawling on the wood. Before they can recover she points to the ornate guillotine, a Final Blade, one of the instruments of death employed by the Grey Gardeners of Galt.
Throughout her campaign as queen of Galt, Cladissa had kept an eye out for the guillotine that had killed her father, and had never found it. Now, thanks to her godhood, she knew that the one that had killed her father and still trapped his soul within had been sold and transported across the Inner Sea to Varisia, where it had ended up in the clutches of a mad crime lord who called himself the Emperor of Korvosa.
Cladissa sends the tiniest fraction of her powers and the Final Blade shatters. As she expected, the tormented souls freed from the guillotine are agitated, life draining undead. But with another wave of her hand and a pulse of divine power, the souls are restored and made whole. Freed from their imprisonment, they race off to Pharasma’s judgment. Except one. Cladissa catches it and keeps it with her. By the time the Emperor is up and marshaling a counter-attack, she is gone.
Taldor – Embrington
The Lady Tessida Farwynd labors for breath. Her time is near, she knows. She had had a hard life. Watching the Red Revolution tear her beloved country apart, a dear friend dying to the Gray Gardeners, having her family disown her for marrying someone of lower standing, then watching the Revolution take them too. She had a daughter, but then lost her husband to the Final Blade, forcing them to flee Galt and put contingency plans into place. She watched her daughter grow, falter and fail frequently enough that she had to place her hopes in the next generation. But then even her daughter sought to thwart that by taking some strange formula and becoming something monstrous. Finally, she sought to unify Galt and failed in that as well.
Lord Castor Farwynd, her second husband, passed away a few years ago. He had squandered his fortune trying to restore his afflicted daughter Auronee, then wasted away himself after she left, only partially cured. Tessida was forced to relocate from the bankrupt Farwynd estate into a small bedroom above a bakery, living off a small stipend her daughter had managed to set up for her.
Cladissa had disappeared on her after abdicating her rights to the throne. They had had a huge argument after she returned to inform her of her surrender. Shortly thereafter, Tessida’s health had taken a turn for the worse. She realizes now that she is about to die, and die alone.
Each breath is a chore. She draws one painful breath in, then lets it slowly leak out. Each one is harder than the last, and she wonders when she won’t be able to draw in her next. She stares at the ceiling, wondering where it all went wrong.
Her final breath comes raggedly in, and her vision swims. Tessida thinks she sees images, her old husband Atticus Velorryan, who was really Cassiald d’Lavigne. He’s floating above her, though she knows that’s not possible. He died to a Final Blade, which traps the souls within them so they cannot be later returned to life. But it looks like him. She smiles.
“Hi, Mom.” Cladissa enters the room. Or just appeared. Tessida wasn’t sure. Her head turns slightly in her daughter’s direction. She’s painfully bright; glowing to the point where she can’t really look at her. Odd.
Her final breath wheezes out of her mouth as she tries to say something. Her mind hadn’t decided what she wanted to tell her daughter, however. It was just as well; there wasn’t enough breath to generate a final admonishment.
“Yeah, me too,” Cladissa says as though she understood her. “Hang on. I think you’re going to like this.”
Cladissa puts one hand on Tessida’s forehead while the other reaches up and touches the image of Atticus. Suddenly, the entire world goes white. When color returns, she is standing, and there’s no pain. Her joints don’t ache and she feels – she feels young again. She looks around and sees a small cottage with a nearby vineyard and garden. A man steps out of the abode and she instantly recognizes him. It’s Atticus, whole and strong and with that mischievous grin that she loves though it infuriates her so.
“Gralton’s nice, don’t you think?” he says as he gestures to the estate. “Not quite Galt, but I think we can make a life here.” He steps forward and gives her a passionate kiss while rubbing her belly. “Have you thought of a name yet?”
A moment of confusion dissipates as Tessida looks down at her full belly and feels a kick responding to Atticus’ voice. “Not yet. But I think he likes you.”
“‘He?’ What if it’s a she?”
A fleeting memory, like a forgotten dream, touches Tessida and then vanishes. “Well, it could be.”

==========================

Cladissa disappears from her parents and finds herself with a thought on the shores of Heaven’s second tier. This was not to be her abode, she knew. There was another place readied for her in the Neutral Good plane of Nirvana. But there was someone she had to see again.
Iomedae’s realm was dotted with keeps and forts, where martial companies conducted drills before being sent out into the multiverse to do battle with evil. But there were peaceful places of respite as well. She sought one of those places out, a white shore upon a brilliant azure lake where souls and archons wandered in the beauty of the place.
Cladissa finds one of those souls and approaches. He is rather short, but well-muscled and wearing gleaming plate mail. He is handsome, though a scar runs along one cheek. Even in death, he kept it. Nearby, a proud white battle steed whinnies and tosses its head. The man turns and furrows his brow as he looks at her. “Cladissa? What are you doing here?”
Her mortal memories surge, and she feels real tears well up in her eyes as she closes the distance. She puts her hands on his chest and sniffs. “You died, you big dummy. I saved myself for you, you know.”
The paladin grabs her arms and pulls her close, though he looks around at the area. “I knew this place looked familiar. Are we going back?”
Dabbing at her eyes, she shakes her head. “No. You’re going to be here, where you’ll become a great archon or something. I’m… —wow, it still feels unreal to say it— I’m a goddess now. I’ll be seeing you, I’m sure.” She leans forward and gives him a passionate kiss. For a moment, the paladin’s soul still remained confused, but he quickly responded and kissed her back deeply. They remained like that for the ephemeral time of the upper spheres until Cladissa finally broke the kiss off and stepped back.
“Goodbye.”
She fades from Heaven as she envelops her full godhood back over her, the last vestige of mortality faded away.

CLADISSA VELORRYAN
Goddess of failure, perseverance, resilience, and forgiveness
Alignment NG
Domains Good, Healing, Knowledge, Magic, Protection
Favored Weapon Net
Centers of Worship Absalom, Galt, Taldor, Varisia
Nationality Galt
Cladissa Velorryan is the newest deity on Golarion, having failed the Test of the Starstone yet achieved divinity anyway. Her ascension is a paradox; in order for her to achieve the title of the Goddess of Failure, she had to fail to the Test, yet still achieve godhood. Most rumors about her ascension say that she was forced into taking the Test, and her true goal was to escape. Therefore, in failing to do so, she became a goddess.
Her holy symbol is that of a bleeding heart surrounded by a spider’s web. Legends say her actual heart had been pierced by her lifetime tormentor while taking the Test of the Starstone. Yet, even while her heart still bled from the wound, she forgave her.
Forgiveness and perseverance is the two main tenets of her faith. She extols her followers, most of whom have come to her due to some painful setback or failure, to forgive their transgressors and to press on. Her faithful say that she feels the pain of everyone who has suffered a failure, and in doing so, can lessen the burden for them. In this way, they can pull themselves back up and start anew, refreshed and much more likely to succeed.
As a mortal, Cladissa had been born to royal parents who were in hiding from the Galtan Red Revolution. Her lineage kept secret from her, she grew up not knowing that she was heir to the crown. Despite being in hiding, her father still lost his head to one of the country’s Final Blades for his work smuggling other nobles out of the country to escape the purges. Cladissa’s mother fled the country with her daughter, relocating to Taldor as refugees.
Once there, Cladissa’s mother remarried. Cladissa, however, started being bullied mercilessly by her stepsister. Her torment lasted throughout adolescence and into early adulthood. She and her stepsister both became Pathfinders and moved to Absalom. Cladissa faced numerous setbacks, but overcame each one to eventually become a hero of Absalom. When she learned of her parentage, she went to Galt in an attempt to unite the country under her rulership. That, too, failed. When the country was about to break into full-scale war, Cladissa abdicated her throne and agreed to total exile from the country.
This action in her mortal life seems to have continued into her godhood, as the country of Galt is a mysterious dead zone for her clerics and paladins. Those who cross the border into Galt find that their spells and powers do not follow them within. No Cladissan cleric has managed to cast a spell successfully within the borders of Galt. Further, any representation of the goddess distorts or fades while within the nation, leading most theologians to surmise that her oath to never return or interfere with Galt has apparently remained with her as a deity. However, many Galtans still recall favorably Cladissa from when she was queen, and will still pray to her during trials and setbacks. While holy symbols of Cladissa have a tendency to break or tarnish while within the borders of Galt, adherents to her faith have adopted a bleeding heart with the blue of the Galtan flag instead of red. These symbols do not have the same breakage issue as the regular ones.
Cladissa’s favored imagery includes spiders and cats, but the spider is never depicted as something fearsome. Instead, it is the spider as the weaver, the patient one. Typically, upon dedication her shrines and temples will become filled with orb-weaving spiders, but they stay away and always spin perfect, beautiful webs.
Some of Cladissa’s worshipers will occasionally craft and wear horned masks to reflect the time she had been made to appear as a demon, though the idea behind it is that while the mask is ugly, the person underneath is not. This is a relatively rare custom practiced only in Absalom. It remains to be seen if it takes off.
The Failed Goddess shows her favor primarily by lifting the pain that comes with enduring a loss or failure. Other signs include a black cat appearing out of mist with a comforting purr, or an encouraging message written in a spider’s web. She shows her displeasure by spider webs appearing where someone has to walk, and sometimes bullies experience their entire rooms and belongings covered in spider webs.
Cladissa’s favored weapon is a spider-silk net, though her paladins favor long swords based on her strong friendship with Iomedae.
A Priest’s Role
Her clerics are generally either individuals who are deeply empathetic and want to help lift others up who have suffered losses, and those who have suffered egregious failures themselves. Sometimes, those who have lost everything find that the only place they have left is one of the Cladissan shrines. After receiving the succor there, they take up the mantle and seek to share their own stories of resilience and recovery.
Paladins of the One Who Failed feel compelled to liberate the enslaved or the downtrodden. They cannot stand those who would belittle and denigrate others, and often come from a background of bullying themselves. They are taught to find forgiveness in their hearts, and though they will not hesitate to smite evil creatures, often they will pause before battle to inform their opponents that they forgive them for what they have done or are about to do.
Adventurers
Having been an adventurer herself, Cladissa draws a number of those seeking to do good while adventuring. As the first (former) member of the Pathfinder Society to achieve godhood, she enjoys a lot of worshippers amongst their ranks. Her followers who are not content to offer succor to those in their communities suffering hardships find themselves on quests to liberate slaves and free the oppressed.
Holy Text
No text has been penned yet, but the major Absalom church has put together a collection of Cladissa’s adventures from the Pathfinder Chronicles along with some commentary about her virtues. Even though hers is the newest religion in Absalom, it is already on its fifth printing.
Aphorisms
The burgeoning faith has only to look to the Pathfinder Chronicles and the legends in Absalom to hear tales of the innumerable setbacks Cladissa faced during her life. They have adopted a number of sayings to celebrate her perseverance.
This, Too, Shall Pass. Setbacks and failures are a part of life, but they rarely last. This is often said by her clerics when someone comes to one of Cladissa’s shrines complaining of a temporary situation.
A Spider Builds Its Web for Tomorrow, Not Today. Hearkening to the mortal Cladissa’s ability to spin intricate webs, this saying is to extol the virtue of patience. Work and effort today will pay off, but rarely at the timetable that is desired.
Forgiveness is For the Wronged Cladissa’s forgiveness of Auronee is growing into a legend among her faithful. Letting insults and injustices fester and stew can lead to bitterness and resentfulness, and rarely, if ever, have an effect on the guilty party. However, forgiveness will let those bitter feelings dissipate.

Relations with Other Religions
Cladissa is friendly with all good gods, especially Iomedae whom she worshiped when she was mortal. Cayden Cailean has taken to flirt with her brazenly, which she finds exceedingly awkward. The revenge goddess Calistria has a serious problem with Cladissa’s sphere of influence, as forgiveness directly opposes her own messages of retaliation. She has been cordial with all the neutral gods who have the time for her, but with the exception of Irori, with whom she has had stirring conversations, she has not yet developed much of a relationship yet. She has not pitted herself against any of the evil gods at this point, and as of yet she has seemed to have fallen beneath their notice.
Realm
Cladissa has found a spot of Nirvana that she has remade to look much like her Galtan home of her childhood, with verdant forests and babbling brooks running through fertile valleys. Vineyards stretch between the centers of populations, yielding wonderful wines throughout the year. The agathions and angels that have taken up residence in her realm have populated the quaint villages and filled them with artwork, gourmet cooking, and song. The entire realm is a peaceful respite for those recovering from loss or failures, and everyone is willing to share encouragement.
Cladissa’s Paladin Code
The paladins of Cladissa focus on providing forgiveness and reconciliation whenever possible. They are dedicated to lessening the suffering of others and defending those who cannot defend themselves.
• I will seek to forgive in my heart, even if I must slay the wrongdoer for unrepentant evil.
• I will not tolerate a bully, but will stand up for the oppressed.
• I will exercise patience, like a spider weaving a web. The threads I lay today will snare the evil tomorrow.
• I will not be drawn in by false beauty, and keep myself chaste and pure for the one who has proven themselves worthy of me.
• I will free the slave, and forgive the slaver while I prevent him from enslaving anyone else. If I am freed, I will forgive my enslaver.
• If I have to work with those who are evil, I will be the example to draw them toward goodness. I will not let their deeds taint my own.
• I will face setbacks and failures. Yet I will get up and continue on.
• I will be loyal and true to my friends and loved ones, but I will not shirk my duty for them.
• I will not hesitate to step in and help a friend in need. I will not let them fall to darkness or despair.