She could see the human soldiery up ahead, dashing across the open ground towards the greenskins’ shrine. Some paused to loose arrows or fire shots from their pistols. Others dashed headlong, all thought of strategy forgotten as the maddening rays of the Bad Moon beat down upon them and their hated enemies stood revealed before their blades.

Closer they charged, closer to the shrine and the greenskins around it.

Closer to the site of the devastating explosion her comrades were trying to engineer.

‘They’re going to get themselves killed, and us with them,’ she spat. Some of the soldiers had spotted the ambushing forces by now, their headlong rush faltering as they realised they were outnumbered on every side. It only served to string their formation out even more, the front-runners dashing ahead while panic spread in from the flanks and rear.

‘Sooner than you think,’ gasped Bartiman. ‘Stop, stop!’

Aelyn pulled up short, hearing the panic in the wizard’s reedy voice.

‘What?’

‘Magic, a catastrophic build-up of magic–’

Green light erupted around the grot with the crown and the staff. He hefted his moon-fungus high and spat jagged words. Aelyn didn’t speak the tongue, but she understood the spite and cruelty well enough. The fungus atop the grot’s staff glowed brighter and brighter, sickly light spilling from it like a diseased star. Cries of pain and panic rose from the charging human host as the light blinded them. It was as though the rays of the Bad Moon were magnified a thousandfold, and Aelyn dragged Bartiman down behind a heap of rubble as the filthy light swept across the square. She found herself face to face with the severed stone head of Sigmar the God-King, half of his visage blackened by fire, his one remaining eye staring accusingly.

Beyond the rubble, she heard cries turn to gibbering howls and screams. Wild ululations echoed across the square, and voices were raised in sudden terror, jubilation or utter confusion.

‘The light of day, I see it! We’re saved!’

‘Oh Sigmar, get them off me, get them off me! They’re under my skin!’

‘You filth! It was you all along!’

‘Praise the Bad Moon! Praise the Loonking!’

‘Guuuhhhh! I’ll suck the eyes from your skull!’