“We speak the umgi tongue well enough, Jotunnsson” said the Dwimmulson smith, clapping a meaty hand on Urgrim’s shoulder. Looking back, she raised her voice to the other dwarfs. “Come on, zakis! There’s axe-work needs doing!”
Rushing through the heat and smoke, humans and dwarfs alike bent their backs to the task. Roth returned shortly with what tools he had managed to gather, but the dwarfs were already doing a better job on that front than Sieghard could have hoped for.
Sieghard himself felt as if he was cooking in his heavy armour, exhaustion weighing down his limbs as his throat grew raw with smoke and shouting. Adelbert felt much the same, all his willpower focused on just keeping his feet. Jocasta was the next link along in the bucket chain, her face shining with sweat as she slung buckets with the best of them. Sooner or later, he was going to have to tell her about Balios...
They worked through the night and into the morning, the moons sinking back behind a wall of smoke as the sky began to lighten in the east. They could not stop the spread of the fire down Half Moon Alley and the adjoining streets, but the tireless work of the bucket brigade managed to halt it at Memmet’s Lane. North of the alley, the dwarfs made good headway pulling down the wooden upper storeys of the houses in the fire’s path, but were driven back when the flames reached the brandy barrels in the Butcher’s Head and the tallow stores of a chandler on Pie Street, roaring up above the rooftops with a new ferocity. Four of volunteers were dragged from the conflagration on Pie Street with burns to their face and hands, while in Red Square two of the dwarfs had to wrestle a woman back who tried to run into the fire, screaming something about her daughter.
Those two fiercest tendrils of the fire raced almost to the river gate before the frantic axe-work of Urgrim’s dwarfs managed to finally cut a firebreak in front of them, just a block from the ramshackle warehouses that leaned against the inside of the city wall. Pitch, turpentine and lamp oil all came into Savonne down the river; if the fires had reached those stores, the fight might have been lost for good.
As it was, when the sun finally inched above the eastern wall, the fire finally seemed under control. Smoke drifted from the blackened ruins it had left in its wake, a charred scar that stretched across the Old Town from Tower Street to the Street of Sorrows. It could have been much, much worse - but that would be little consolation to those who had lost everything. As the dawn illuminated the extent of the destruction, their voices began to rise on the breeze, clamouring in grief, confusion, and anger...
Geheimnistag
Elsa awoke somewhere quiet and cool. Blinking, she raised her hands to rub the sleep from her eyes - and felt pain shoot through her left arm, bright and excruciating. Her whole body felt weak and sick, like the world’s worst hangover. She felt as if just moving too quickly might make her bones crumble to dust inside her.
Her left arm was splinted and swaddled in bandages, a dead weight at her side. Looking over her shoulder, she saw Ludo sitting up in the next bed over, sipping from a wooden bowl of some kind of broth. Behind him, the figure of Shallya smiled mournfully down on them from a small stained-glass window, early morning sunlight picking out the bleeding heart on her breast in brilliant red.
“You’re awake?” said a white-robed initiate, entering the room with another bowl. “Shallya be thanked. Here, take this.” She pressed the bowl into Elsa’s good hand. “You need your strength.”
OOC: Spoiler
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Everyone is at the same time, early morning. I'll leave those at the scene of the fire to formulate their immediate plans before throwing any more stuff their way.
A bit of book-keeping: I don't think Elsa picked her staff up again after she dropped it, so that will have been lost in the fire. Adelbert will probably want to check on his rooms on Half Moon Alley and any possessions he had stashed there.
Re: [WFRP] The Bloody Crown X
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