Now he crouched in a broken crate beside the Wayward King and knew he had been a fool. The ground shook. Orlen cried out weakly, a pitiful sound that might have brought folk searching for the source of the sound. They were all gone, though – fled to Orlen knew not where, or lying butchered and strewn across the street.

Another shudder ran through the cobbles, and the centremost point of the alleyway rose briefly, before falling away into a deep pit. Cracks shot up the wall of the inn with a sound like cannonfire. The structure sagged alarmingly.

Orlen sunk lower in his packing crate, heart hammering. He would have fled, but the terrible face that hung above the city left him too frightened to move. Instead, he watched as black-clad figures with green skin and gleaming red eyes scrambled up from the pit. A sharp stink reached Orlen’s nostrils. The creatures advanced down the alley and Orlen cringed into the deepest, darkest corner of the crate. He was desperate to escape their notice. These things stank of cruelty and malice. The black-robes scurried past Orlen’s hiding place, oblivious to the rag-clad wretch praying silently to Sigmar. They spilled out into the street, some of them clanging away at crude copper gongs, others brandishing ragged black banners with stylised leering moon devices emblazoned upon them.

A third shudder ran through the alleyway, so violent as to shake Orlen to his bones. The man dug his nails into the splintered wood and stayed low, breathing in short, shallow pants. A moan of alarm escaped him as stone splintered and beams groaned, and the alleyway floor heaved. The edge of the pit widened rapidly, falling away in great chunks, and the Wayward King reeled like the drunks who had so often frequented it. Something massive moved in the pit and a huge hand emerged, a gnarled mass of flesh nearly as large as a wagon. Fungi and weird mineral deposits clung to the leathery flesh of that hand, and its talons sank into the stonework of the sagging pub with ease. A mighty heave, and something terrifying dragged itself out of the pit, even as it pulled a great chunk of the Wayward King down into it. Orlen Drell had an impression of a massive humanoid shape, hunching shoulders thick with stony growths, and beady eyes glinting from within the eyepieces of a crude helm. The thing stomped its way down the alley, smashing chunks from the stonework on either side and barely avoiding treading on Orlen where he hid, paralysed by terror.

Another of the massive things clambered up from the darkness, then yet another, each clad in segments of lumpen metal, each gripping massive clubs in their boulder-like fists. Their heads swung ponderously back and forth as though searching for threats, or perhaps for victims.