A green glow radiated from within Bartiman’s clenched fist, growing into an eldritch beacon of cold emerald light. One by one, flares of the same grave-light burst into being above his head, whirling faster and faster until a howling vortex of unnatural energies haloed the death wizard. With a scream of effort he flung his hands out, towards the rooftops on which the grot archers crouched. The vortex of energy billowed outwards, and as it did so, it split into dozens of wailing spectral figures whose yawning maws and crooked bones were hidden beneath clinging shrouds. Translucent and terrifying, the swarm of gheists boiled along the rooftops, passing through shocked greenskins as though they were no more solid than smoke. Where each gheist burst from the back of a grot, it did so in a spray of ectoplasm and blood. Their victims’ flesh crumpled inwards like old parchment, their eyes shrivelling and their teeth falling from their gums. Thumps and thuds echoed along the street as desiccated grot corpses rained from the rooftops.

The few surviving greenskins turned and fled, diving into attic windows or scampering away along ridges to escape. Bartiman stood tall and threw out his arms as the screaming gheists spiralled up and plunged back towards the humans in the street below.

‘BEGONE!’ he boomed, and as though a gale had ripped down the street, the malign entities tattered apart and vanished. Bartiman swayed, leaned heavily on his staff and sank back into cover.

‘Impressive,’ said Aelyn, while the two militiamen stared at Bartiman with undisguised fear.

‘Tiring,’ he replied, coughing wetly into his fist. ‘And possibly unwise, given my condition. Still, we must all continue on until Old Bones takes us.’

Now the advance pressed forwards with great speed. Whether Bartiman’s display of sorcerous might had indeed frightened the fight out of the grots, or whether their enemies simply didn’t have enough bodies to keep flinging into the path of the Draconium advance, Aelyn didn’t know. She didn’t care, either, so long as they were keeping their enemies’ attention focused away from the pipehouse.

Across an intersection heaped with bodies, up a street part-flooded and riven with deep chasms that spewed fungal blooms, and suddenly Fountains Square stretched out in front of them.

‘That is truly hideous,’ breathed Aelyn.

From afar, the half-chiselled greenskin idol had been unpleasant, its gaze weirdly knowing. Now, its grotesque features nearing completion and the real Bad Moon hanging menacingly above it, the idol was horrifying. Its lunatic gaze seemed to bore into her mind, making Aelyn want to cringe away and cover her face.

‘Steady,’ bellowed Watchman Shen as the watchmen and militia balked.

‘There’s the poison,’ said Aelyn, pointing to the huge pyramidal stack of black and gold barrels that towered above the shrine.

‘Hmm, and their defenders,’ replied Bartiman. ‘Not so many as I’d thought.’