Every so often Emmaline promised herself that she was going to knuckle down and study. Like most of her promises these occasional vows were pretty hollow, abandoned for the more attainable goals of sleeping late, drinking wine and lifting a few stray Imperials from an overburdened mark. Running around in the hold of a barge filled with gunpowder moments away from being torn apart by a corpse that had birthed a scorpion the size of a horse seemed like a particularly poignant kick in the rump from the gods to actually follow through this time. She ran along the length of the barge, screaming all but incoherently in the classical arcane tongue. Golden light spilled from her finger tips as she touched each keg of gunpowder. The effort was making her dizzy, but the imminent fear of death was an excellent motivator. She wouldn't have attempted this in her dizziest day dreams if there were any other choice. She made a circuit of the barge, breathing hard from fear and lack of recent vertical exercise. The barge groaned alarmingly as her spell took effect, settling deeper into the water. Her work done she stuck her head up to see Neil wisely fleeing from the frustrated chaos beast.

"Run to the back!" she shouted breathlessly.

"You mean the stern!" Neil yelled, wheeling around and bounding over shattered timbers towards the rear of the barge. There were shouts of alarm from the shore now as the ruckus wakened the city watch and the populace alike. The moonlit night was even punctuated by the odd crack of musket fire as watchmen or citizens decided, understandably, that the barge was under attack by the agents of Chaos that besieged the city. Emmaline was dimly aware that the stray musket balls were more threat to her and Neil than they were to the chitinous horror that was pursuing Neil across the deck. By now the Engineer had reached the rear of the barge, back against the railing. He was staring at her as though asking for instruction. Emmaline didn't have the breath to shout and wouldn't have been heard of the shriek of crushed timbers as the spider crap thing smashed its way back along the barge to finish of the young thief. As soon as its forlegs touched the step up onto the quarter deck Emmaline cast her spell, sending arcane flames into a barrel of powder beneath the decks. There was a mighty boom followed a half second later by a roar which shattered the glass on the houses to either side of the river. A great gout of smoke and fire erupted beneath the beast, stabbing upwards like a pillar of flame. The blast caught the thing just forward of center, flinging it fifty feat into the air. Its shattered carapace smoked and its legs pinnoned as it arced over the Reik like a nightmare pinwheel before crashing down on a stone quay with a crack like the gods smiting a vast lobster with a hammer. Emmaline was thrown off her feet by the blast momentarily stunned as purple white after images danced in her eyes. It occured to her that she should probably give an offering to Ranald on the next feast day that she hadn't been shreded by flying splinters. Neil was frozen with a rictus of horror on his face, clearly unable to process that the barge hadn't been blown to atoms by the blast which had, hopefully, finished off the scorpion thing. Emmaline staggered upright and pulled herself towards the hole in the deck. There was an unpleasant sound of sloshing water but when she looked down into the waist of the ship she could see that the remaining casks had the grayish hew of granite rather than the dark timber they had had before she worked the transmutation. Four kegs of gunpowder had detonated, surrounded by the stone kegs her spell had protected. An alarming amount of embers danced on top of the temporarily inert barrels and the shock of the blast had started seams. The barge only had a few minutes before she settled to the bottom of the Reik.

"Can you swim?" Emmaline asked as she crawled to Neil's side. Her ears rang prodigiously and she could hardly understand herself.

"What whim?" Neil asked, shaking his head in confusion. Emmaline pointed to thick cable, and then to the shore. Neil blinked for a moment and then nodded in understanding. He grabbed the rope and leaped into the dark waters, striking out towards the stunned onlookers on the shore. In the end they managed to haul the barge ashore before it grounded in the muck. 

"We are Agents of the Order of the Fiery Heart," Emmaline lied as a squad of terrified guardsman rushed aboard halberds leveled.

"You men, get to work unloading these barrels, and douse whatever embers you see with river water," she commanded in her best Altdorf Noble accent. Emmaline was not sure what an Agent of the Order of the Fiery Heart sounded liked, but figured that was her best chance of being obeyed. The guardsmen looked shocked and confused.

"NOW YOU MEN! Do you want half the city to go up in smoke!" Neil roared in a credible imitation of a drill sergeant. That seemed to do the trick and the guards began to dump helmets full of river water onto the charred timbers around the blast site. Others began to haul up the stone kegs. Already the stone was fading back to the original timber as Emmaline's spell began to wear thin. Exhausted and emotionally spent, she sat down on the cobblestones beside Neil and watched the city guard and citizenry form a chain to begin passing up kegs of gunpowder.

"That better be worth a Tower," she muttered.