‘Go!’ urged Borik, and they broke into a run. Aelyn led the way, footfalls pounding the wooden boards as they creaked and shook. She heard her comrades behind her, Romilla’s quick, light footfalls, Borik’s slower, heavier gait.

Aelyn felt another surge of force, a sudden shift in air pressure violent enough to make her ears pop. The tunnel seemed to buckle around her, a jagged crack racing along its ceiling and vomiting mortar and dirt into the torrent below.

‘What in Sigmar’s name is happening?’ yelled Romilla over the rumble of the earthquake and the roar of the water. Aelyn kept running, almost pitching from the walkway as a board broke loose and fell away with a chunk of railing attached to it. The water snatched the wreckage hungrily and swept it away, smashing it to flinders against the tunnel walls.

‘Rust it all, just move!’ yelled Borik, his voice amplified by some duardin artifice in his helm. The light from his shoulder lamp jolted madly as they ran, strobing the tunnel to illuminate frothing water, shuddering brickwork and cracking wood.

Aelyn rounded a corner and saw a metal ladder ahead, its rungs reaching down from a circular shaft to meet the wood of the walkway.

Another surge hit, and Aelyn watched with incomprehension as the raging waters flowed impossibly up the tunnel walls. Wobbling globules of sewer-water broke away and drifted up to splatter against the cracked ceiling. At the same time, Aelyn felt her feet leave the gantry. She snatched at the railing and managed to get a hand to it. Desperately, she tried to work out what was happening, attempting to reconcile the violent dizziness and the weightless feeling of her body as it drifted up from the walkway. Behind her Romilla yelled in alarm. Then came the thudding footfalls of Borik, moving fast like a drunk trying not to topple over his own feet as he runs.

Aelyn felt an impact as Borik slammed into her and bore her down the tunnel, Romilla colliding unceremoniously with her. Aelyn looked down to see that Borik was running as though on tip toe, his feet just making contact with the floor. He had them both, his gun locked to his back by lodestones, his arms wrapped around his comrades’ waists as he made for the ladder.

His armour, she thought in bewilderment. His armour is heavy enough to weight him down, just.

Then came another pulse, a shockwave of pressure thundering up the tunnel behind them. Pipes buckled and burst from the wall. Brickwork exploded. The floodwaters fell with sudden fury and smashed down so hard that they sent hissing geysers spraying up towards the ceiling. Borik cursed as the gantry gave way with a crunch of buckling wood and a scream of twisted ironwork.