Calliope barely managed to avoid the rock as it crashed into the doorway sealing it with the bone crunching finality of an avalanche. Fragments of razor sharp rock sprayed the gnome and the human but blind instinct had already led them to turn their back and thus avoid the worst of it. There was a bestial roar from the otherside of the portal and the two women heaved against the stone uselessly for a moment.

“We have to find another way in,” Grimey cried over a second massive explosion or rock. Hundreds of seabirds alighted from the battlments above cawaing raucously as they wheeled away into the storm. Calliope looked up at the hundred foot tall wall of the keep. It might once have been smooth but centuries of wear had left great cracks in the mortar that provided excellent hand holds.

“Uhh,” Grimey said following her gaze uneasily, “don’t you like have some sorcery that can teleport us through the wall.” Calliope's gaze fell on the gnome, considering the question, her hand unconciously closing around the hilt of her dagger. The gnome took a hasty step back.

“Fine fine!” she squeaked and began to climb the wall. Calliope followed along taking hand holds carefully as she slowly ascended. On the other side of the wall she could hear Sron roaring and the troll howling. Rain sleeted down in stinging sheet as the climbed and above them the sky was rent was jagged flashed of lightning. The capelet she had worn flapped and snapped like a pennant, threatening to tear her from the rockface. Against her chest the amulet was hot even as the rest of her body shivered and she was filled with a wild exhalation and an odd compulsion to fly up into the tumult.

At last she reached the parapet, pulling herself over the top before Grimey, who, owing to her smaller size moves slower. The fortress wall was a long cylinder that joined to a blocky central keep. Around the circle stood a dozen long 12 pound guns, most of them still blocked with wooden tompkins. There was rust at the pivot points of the guns but Calliope suspected they could be made serviceable. On one side of the circle projected a great wooden derick which must once have been used to haul supplies up from the outside as well as being shot and powder up to the gunners. The place was as abandoned as the rest of the fortress so far as she could tell.

 Glancing down into the courtyard she could see Sron and Markus battling with a great howling troll, the thing swung a vast wooden club, it must have began life as a gallows, in great arcs, any one of which would smash even the might gnoll to jellied meat. She was about to begin muttering a spell when the door that lead to the keep proper exploded in a shower of splinters. A second troll, smaller than the first but still massive burst forth casually tearing a stone the size of a small child from a half ruined arch and hurling it down into the courtyard. THe motion was oddly simian, a bit like watching a trebuchet fire. The stone struck the wall ten feet above the battle showering all concerned with gravel.

There was a sudden pop and the troll let out an irritated bellow. Calliope realized that Grimey had fired her pistol at the thing, an action as brave as it was pointless. The demons only knew how she had managed to keep the powder dry enough to fire, Calliope was soaked to the bone. The troll looked up at them and charged, screaming and spraying spittle that steamed in the cooling air. Calliope had ony a moment to react and she snapped a quick and simple spell. The rain that slicked the battlements between her and the troll froze with a sharp crackling sound that rimmed the stone in white. The troll, already at full charge slipped on the ice and slid across it like a beer stein on a polished bar. It made a futile attempt to grab at the ledge and then tumbled thirty feet to the stony ground with a bone shattering crash. Calliope hoped she hadn’t just crushed Markus and Sron beneath the trolls stinking body.