Aelyn pushed herself back up and stabbed out, driving one blade into a grot’s chest and another into an assailant’s weapon arm. A greenskin sunk wicked fangs into her forearm with a crunch and Aelyn screamed in pain as its dirty teeth scraped bone. The dagger dropped from her nerveless hand and the grot gave a muffled giggle around a bubbling mouthful of Aelyn’s flesh and blood. Horrified, she punched her other dagger into the side of its head then ripped it out and stabbed again.

Filthy hands grabbed at her. A fist caught Aelyn in the jaw. A knife sank into her back, and agony shot through her again. Numbness came after it, ice spreading through her body, slowing her heartbeat, stifling her breath.

Aelyn slumped back, trying to shield Bartiman with her body. She lashed out one last time, and something squealed with pain as her blade hit home. Another knife pierced her chest, and another.

Aelyn coughed hot blood across her face. As her last breath rattled out, she saw the leering face of the Bad Moon stare down at her from above the mobbing press of grots. A moment of regret sparked in her mind, and then darkness fell.

‘Get back, you damned monster,’ spat Romilla, smashing her ­hammer into a spider’s face and sending it squealing into the dark. The arachnid fell from the gantry, dropping a good thirty feet to hit the stone floor with a wet splat.

The control panel was only one level above them now. Romilla could see it, tantalisingly close, bathed in corrupted moonlight. The face of the Bad Moon leered down through the thick glass of the roof, and she had to fight off the sensation that it was staring directly at her, willing her to give up.

‘One more walkway,’ she said, as much to herself as Eleanora. ‘One more set of stairs and then we’re there!’

Romilla’s amulet was glowing brightly now, its light seeming to redouble with every crushing hammer blow she struck in Sigmar’s name. But the platform they stood on was shaking as though in a high wind. She looked down to see the enormous spider scaling its way up the chamber’s machineries, huge limbs moving with greater speed and grace than anything so vast had any right to.

Dozens more spiders were swarming up around it, and more kept bursting from the innards of the web-strewn tangles of pipes, or dropping heavily from the ceiling to thump down on the gantries she and Eleanora ran along.

Romilla glanced at Eleanora. The engineer’s eyes were glazed, her breathing laboured. A dark stain was spreading across her injured leg and an awful sickly-sweet smell accompanied it. The poor girl was on her last legs, thought Romilla, and the thought threatened to break her heart and her resolve both at once.

No, she thought. Not now. Not when they were so close.