Jocasta’s eyes widened as the crack spread and opened like a yawning mouth. One of the dwarves scooped he up and tossed her over his shoulder like a sack of grain. With an eerie unison the dwarves and Beren leaped sideways pressing themselves close to the wall. The stonework there had humped strangely, and Jocasta realized that it must be some feature of dwarven architecture to guard against being crushed during cave ins. The human architecture did not fare so well.  Sarcophagi and their cargos of ancient bones slide down into the expanding rift like a charnel avalanche and the dwarves were suddenly wading against a tide of rubble. For a moment Jocasta thought they would make it to safety, when a sudden blast of dusty air exploded upwards from beneath the rumbling floor. It stank of mould and old death and then a vast dagger shaped head emerged from the dust, ice blue orbs glowed with malevolent light as dust ran in rivers off scales the color of late season snow. 

One of the dwarves, perhaps several, shouted a word in their own language Jocasta had never head it before, but it seemed somehow seared deep into her memory, like an ancient primordial truth never truly forgotten.

Dragon.

The dwarf caring her dropped her without ceremony and she landed on her rump. She twisted around to keep her eyes on the beast now blocking the way back to the house even as it continued to shoulder its way upwards, crumbling stone work and ancient timber around it. Great foreclaws appeared now , clutching at the edges of the crevice, half obscured by the billowing dusk. The beast opened its mouth in a mockery of a smile revealing fangs of yellowed ivory the size of daggers. They were laid out in rows like some great marine predators, jagged and crosswise like a lamprey.

“At last,” the dragon rumbled, its voice a primal force of nature which would have driven Jocasta to her knees had she not already been there.

“Long have I lain imprisoned in this place, a great wyrm bound by the blood magic of a petty human rat,” it rumbled.The dialect was a human one, though very old and hard to parse.

“Kar gaz chul, largarama kel svar!” Otar snarled in his own tongue. The dragon made a sound that Jocasta recognized as laughter only by context.

“No stone skin runs will stand between and my freedom. I was cursed to lay bound till the last of the House of Morelocke has passed away… and now I shall see it done. Come forward mewling beast and meet your end!”

To Jocasta’s horror she saw  Martinus crabbing forward along the wall, drawing closer to the dragon as the dwarves readied their weapons. Beren looked as though he wanted to make a grab for the old man but there wasn’t room for him to get past Otar and Varin.
“I am the last,” Martinus said, his voice strong and dignified with none of the quavering weakness he had displayed earlier.
“I have heard of you Frimssarr, heard how my ancestor damned you with his death curse, have you truely lain trapped beneath the earth all these years on the strength of a humans word?” there was pride and a hint of mockery in Martinus’ voice, which was either total embrace of the inevitable or insane stupidity. 

“No longer human,” Frimssarr gloated a great greyish tongue curling in glee. Jocasta stared at Martinus in horror as she saw that the old man was clutching a jagged piece of stone behind his back. At once she fathomed his intent but she knew he was never going to make it. The dragon’s head slid back, its maw opening to reveal a bluish glow  of hellfire deep in its gullet. She acted without thinking.

“Wait!” she shouted in what came out more of a squeak than the bellow she had intended.

“He lies! He is a faithful servant only! I am the last Morelocke!” she shouted. Martinus let out an anguished sound and the dragon whipped its head around to face Jocasta. A jet of flame so blue it seared her retina jetted towards her. She ducked behind the sarcophagus, gripping the stone and channeling all the warding energy she could into the solid rock. Alot of things happened at once. The flame struck the warded stone, shattering it to powder and hurling Jocasta back into the billowing dust. The dwarves surged forward eager to reach their ancient enemies. The fireblast divided by Jocasta’s spell craft blasted out horizontally, smashing deep into the sides of the ancient crypt, pulverizing stone like a wave washing over a childs sand castle. Martinus struck, with what proved to be the broken tip of a stone sword, salvaged from one the tombs. He struck with all the force he could muster, plunging the sharp rock into the wyrm's left eye, which exploded in a gout of flame that burned off Martinus’ hand and set his dressing gown on fire. The beast roared and went berserk, thrashing wildly and sending hellfire in all directions. Support joists exploded, there was dust everywhere. The beasts great limbs spasmed in wild disharmony, shredding the earth beneath them like tissue paper. The entire crypt simply gave way, dropping everyone into a void of roiling dust, screaming stone, and thrashing dragon. Jocasta’s last thought before something struck the side of her head and dropped her into unconsciousness was that, just this once, she should have kept her mouth shut.