‘The trail continues along the right-hand fork,’ she said. They had been tracking a trail of slimy smears and purple fungi that began at the emptying-out point for the grain silo and led deeper into Draconium’s tangled sewer network. Aelyn had a sense they were onto something concrete here, if they could just avoid getting swept away.

‘How much further are we going to press this?’ asked Romilla, rubbing at her arms. ‘Should we not gather the others?’

‘Probably,’ replied Borik.

‘Our trail is scuffs and smears, and a few small fungal blooms,’ said Aelyn. ‘How long before it is eradicated in these conditions? Even I cannot follow a trail that has been scoured away in a flood.’

‘So, we press on until, what, we encounter the source of all this corruption?’ asked Romilla. ‘There are three of us, Aelyn. Sigmar helps those who help themselves, you know.’

‘There are four of us,’ said Borik, hefting his cannon meaningfully.

‘I wish to find where our quarry entered the sewers,’ said Aelyn, raising her voice to be heard over the rushing water. ‘I don’t believe anything could dwell in these tunnels. To whit, they must have entered them from somewhere else to make their way to the grain stores and do… whatever they did to them.’

‘So, we find their entry point and that gives us something to work from,’ said Romilla. ‘But then we get out of here and find backup, agreed?’

‘Agreed,’ said Borik.

‘There are a lot of pipes affixed to the walls of this next tunnel,’ said Aelyn. ‘Be careful not to scald yourselves.’ The pipes that provided thermal heating to Draconium’s more well-heeled properties ran through the sewers, threading in and out of the brickwork and sometimes vanishing off down their own, smaller side-tunnels. They gave off a constant wall of heat, and frequently belched clouds of steam that Aelyn and her comrades had so far been careful to avoid.

‘I’ve served on Kharadron airships, crawling around tangles of endrinworks in spaces far narrower than this while two miles straight up in the sky,’ muttered Borik. ‘I think I can avoid–’

His sudden pause caused Aelyn to halt, holding onto the walkway railing with one hand.

‘Avoid what?’ asked Romilla. Borik held up a hand.

‘Pressure differentials,’ he muttered then, louder. ‘Out. Now.’

Aelyn drew breath to speak, then felt it too. A rising wave of air pressure, a sudden oppressive sense of something stirring. She felt the vibration that ran through the railing, and her eyes locked with Borik’s where they stared from behind his helm’s eye lenses.

‘What? What?’ Romilla’s voice sounded tight with alarm.

‘There was an entrance back that way,’ said Aelyn. ‘Swiftly.’

She spun and, as she did so, a violent jolt ran along the tunnel. Mortar dust puffed from fracturing brickwork. Water leapt and splashed high, causing Aelyn to hiss with pain where it hit her bare skin. The walkway groaned beneath them.