Damn me for a useless old fool, he thought. I can at least give Aelyn her rites before this nightmare ends.

But now, still trapped beneath several bodies and barely able to see the twilit sky, Bartiman felt everything begin to shake.

‘No, I don’t believe it,’ he whispered. Despite everything, Bartiman felt a fierce pride as the rumble grew to a howling roar that seeped up from beneath the cobbles. Bartiman choked out a dry laugh, heaving aside a last corpse and managing to haul himself into a sitting position amidst the bodies.

He was in time to see the eyes and mouth of the greenskin idol glow like furnace fires. Jets of steam blasted skywards around the idol, blowing shrieking grots high into the air. He saw a troggoth consumed by a sudden eruption of flame, just as it was about to swing its club through a reeling mass of watchmen. The regal grot with the moon-fungus staff spun, a look of horror on its face, and Bartiman felt a savage satisfaction at the thing’s look of sudden panic. That sense was only slightly spoiled when, a moment later, the grot vanished amidst a filthy puff of green smoke to leave its lackeys wailing in terror at its sudden disappearance.

‘Spit… on your… plans…’ rasped Bartiman. ‘And… spit on… your ugly… damned… Bad Moon.’

The explosion was titanic. It was apocalyptic. It washed out Bartiman’s senses and threw him backwards into the heaped bodies with bone-breaking force. It obliterated the poison stocks, evaporated the ground water, and incinerated the warring armies of grots and humans still entangled together at the heart of the square.

Bartiman felt rather than saw the entire heart of Fountains Square bulge upwards like a huge bubble, then burst in a spray of flame and cobbles and flailing bodies.

Debris rained down, trailing smoke, pulverising the corpses around him, and Bartiman took a deep breath as he prepared for his end at last. It was long overdue, he supposed, and at least they had avenged their friends.

Then the heart of the square caved in, thundering down into a huge pit. Bartiman began to slide, felt panic overwhelm his fatalism, clawed frantically at the sliding corpses around him. Something blunt and heavy smacked him in the head, and he knew no more.

Epilogue

Epilogue

DUSK