The melee was beyond brutal. Camilla saw a goblin, perhaps the same one she had first freed, tear a dwarf’s throat out with its needle like teeth, dark blood gouted over its chin as it looked up at her and shouted something in its own tongue before hefting the fallen dwarfs shield to balance the axe it already had. Another dwarf was split from shoulder to hip by a vast overhand strike from a burly orc who held one of the great dwarven axes as if it were a toy. A second chaos dwarf stepped forward while the beast was trying to free his blade and sliced one leg of at the knee. The orc looked surprised as he toppled over and maintained the look of stunned stupefaction as the dwarf stepped and and delivered a beheading coup de grace. The noise was incredible. Weapons clanged over bestial war cries and the swelling chant of the sorcerers. Orc shrieked feral war cries as they smashed their improvised weapons against their dark armored foes. It seemed to Camilla that the very mountain rumbled in accompaniment to the violence.

The Dawi-Zharr were beginning to recover from the sudden assault and in a few moments they would be able to form up into a fighting unit that would be able to repel the nascent slave rebellion with far greater efficiency than the individual dwarves could manage. If there was to be a moment of opportunity, it had to be now. Camilla stood and waved both her arms frantically at their companions, gesturing to the altar. Ivan yelled something and stood fitting an arrow to his recurve bow as he lead the charge down the obsidian steps towards the altar. They were nearly to the ampitheatre floor before the Chaos Dwarves realized their peril. A single spark of light, cold and beautiful as the dawn star leaped from Dietricha’s fingertip and lanced towards the assembled sorcerers. The tiny dart struck something black and monstrous that hung in the air around the altar. Pulsing bands of black energy were suddenly visible hanging in the air like an intricate net. Small cracks of light seemed to be spreading through the sorcery, each pulsing the same pale blue of Dietricha’s spark. One of the sorcerers turned in panic only to be punched off his feet as an arrow struck him between neck and shoulder.

“We need to go!” Camilla yelled over the din and ran forward through the melee. She ducked under the axe swipe of an armored dwarf and thrust the tip of her blade into the gap at the things armpit, it roared in pain and staggered back gurgling as blood began to fill its lungs. Dark steel whistled towards her and she barely managed to parry it downwards, leaping into the air so it swung through the empty air beneath her feet. Cydric stepped forward and delivered a vast overhanded blow that caught the dwarf on the crest of its helmet. A shower of sparks spewed into the air. The helmet deformed like a dished in cooking pot, though the steel didn’t actually break and the dwarf slumped to the ground.

With a crack like all the cannons Camilla had ever seen discharging at once the great black spell weaving shattered in a flash of light so shockingly blue that Camilla fancied she could see through the Dwarves in front of them. The concussion knocked everyone in the room from their feet with a clatter of metal that seemed barely audible after the blast. Rock groaned and a great stalagmite plummeted from the stygian darkness above like a bolt from the heavens. It smashed into the lower tiers and shattered like a morar bursting, shards of rock shredding and crushing chaos dwarves and orcs alike. Camilla lay on the ground across Cydric coughing and gasping for breath. Purple after images of the detonation danced across her eyes. She staggered to her feet, among the first to do so, a few feet in front of her an armored dwarf was pushing itself to its feet. She shoved her blade into the back of its neck feeling bone grate against the point of her weapon. 

“Cydric,” she croaked, her throat as dry as the deserts of Araby and reached down to help him to his feet. Dimly she realised that the blast had snuffed every torch and that they were in pitch darkness. Somehow she could still see well enough to move, although just barely. There was a terrifying roar, somewhat attenuated by the ringing in her ears and she saw the beast on the altar bite the top half off one of the sorcerers on the altar and shake the corpse, the legs flying off into the darkness as spine and flesh were shredded by the things maw. It gulped down hungrily even as its great claw disemboweled another of the dwarf things. The creature reared onto its hind legs and sprang into the ranks of combatants still trying to find their feet, scorpion like tail lashing.

Half supporting each other they staggered the twenty remaining feet to the base of the altar platform. Camilla leaped, caught the edge with her finger tips and flipped herself up and over the edge. A moment later Cydric clambered up, breathing hard. Behind her she could hear the screams of dwarves and the roars of orcs only as a counterpoints the furious howls of the monster as it tore into them. There was a sudden flash and a bang to her right and movement behind her. Camilla spun her sword held low to see a sorcerer that had been creeping up behind her stagger backwards with a whole between its beady eyes. Yantz stepped down onto the platform groping blindly, pistol smoking. Dietricha held his hand, like an older sister leading a young sibling in a game of blind man's buff. The altar was carpeted with dead sorcerers, most of them were bleeding from the ears and eyes, heads shattered by the concussion of the blast. Curiously a baleful bull like idol still stood in the center of the altar, apparently untouched by the destruction.

Dietricha raised her hand and spoke a word. A pale blue light, wholly without apparent source, filled the chamber. Combatants, previously blinded, struck at each other with the vigor of terror. A thick pall of dust was falling from the ceiling and it scattered the light like lightning behind a storm cloud. It was a compromise that allowed the humans and orcs to operate, even though it revealed them to their enemies. Ivan stumbled onto the altar, leading Konrad and Skaldi, all of them held bloody weapons and Skaldi’s face was soaked in blood from a scalp wound.

“We need two minutes!” Yantz yelled as Dietricha began to chant. Motes of blue light seemed to suck out of the artificial cloud and coalesce around the wizard. Camilla had a distinct taste of mushrooms at the back of her throat. A green hand appeared at the edge of the platform and she neatly amputated it with a flick of her weapon.

“Are you insane, the whole place will be on us!” she yelled, unnecessarily loud for being half deafened. Yantz was biting one of the oiled cartriges open and pouring the powder into the mouth of his pistol. He shoved the paper after it and spat the ball in.

“It isn’t exactly my idea of a Sigmarzeist Parade either!” he yelled as he pulled a slender ramming rod from the socket and rammed the ball home.






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