Bewildered, alone, and shocked mute by the sudden ripping away of all she had known, Eleanora had been sent through the city’s great Realmgate and onto the streets of Hammerhal Aqsha. She supposed, in a detached fashion, that she would have died there, impoverished and starving, had not blind chance brought her and the Swords of Sigmar together. She had been with them ever since, she their ticket to all manner of ballistic and explosive devices, they her driftwood spar in the turbulent ocean of the realms. Romilla had nursed her back to health, had got her talking again, acting more like a mother than a virtual stranger.

Her presence made Eleanora feel stronger. Safe.

So yes, Eleanora endured the usual stares from the engineers around her when she entered the Draconium Ironweld Guildhouse, but after all that she had faced in the last few years of her life, those stares had even less purchase upon her than before. And soon enough she had been led, albeit grudgingly, to a workshop where she could at last lock the doors, spread out her tools and components in the proper and orderly fashion, and get on with some work.

Eleanora’s foot still hurt. She shifted and winced, but she paid it no real mind. The others hadn’t seemed to be very interested when she tried to tell them about the spider, and it seemed to have been driven from Romilla’s mind by other events, so Eleanora assumed it must not be all that important. If she concentrated on her work, she could ignore the dull throb and the heat radiating up her ankle. Hendrick had requested bombs, explosives large and small, anything clever she could come up with ‘in case things got interesting’. Bombs, Eleanora could do. There was already a small stack of munitions by her workbench that attested to the fact.

Clever, she could do also. And then there was that spider repeller that she had been thinking about ever since she was bitten. She was sure she had some time to work on that too, in amongst every­thing else.

Distractedly she brushed her hair back from her eyes and tied it out of the way with the ribbon her father had given her on her tenth birthday, the one that had been on top of her largest gift. He had fashioned her a set of tools at his workbench. He had presented them with a proud gleam in his eye.

She still used the tools now.

Eleanora wiped away a couple of tears at the memory, not even truly conscious she had shed them, and set to work.

There was a lot to get done, after all.

‘Strange enough for you, Bartiman?’ asked Hendrick.

‘Well. I mean. Yes!’ The death wizard sounded oddly delighted, Hendrick thought, for a man staring at one of the most unpleasant and unnatural sights he’d ever seen.