Rolled 8, 1, 12 = 21 (3d20)
>>5342463There are many more dwarves still within the fortress, though. As they realize there is no escape through you—nor any real chance of engaging your superior numbers and organization in a melee with you shifting the terrain and your forces carefully maintaining distance and chipping away at them from afar, the dwarves still in-the-field regoup inside their little castle-town, braving the flames rather than your wrath.
Ha. If they only knew what was coming.
You step forward with footfalls that literally shake the earth. Gradually, as you advance towards the fortifications, you gain speed. The dwarves seem you coming, and their crossbowmen fire. Quarrels of orichalcum-plated steel impact the rocky ground to either side of you, embedding deeply for their hardness, their sharpness, and the keen engineering of these arrogant tunnel-monkeys. You ignore them, maintain your concentration, and summon much of your mana down from your head, through your organs and down into your gut, and then channel into a single word of power and great stomp.
>20The earth buckles, and breaks. You hear a great lamentation, cries of agony and despair, as the tower twists, shifts sideways, and comes tumbling down in a terrific implosion. Dwarves are crushed, scattered or buried; for its defensible location upon the cliff-face, much of the above-ground structure of this ‘company-town’ now tumbles down into the jutting spikes and inescapable chasms below, dashing its defenders upon the rocks.
From behind and above you, you hear a terrible screeching sound. You turn to see a silhouette ALMOST like a dragon in miniature—rising before the moon to blot it out with webbed, hairless wings. You recognize it a moment later: a great bat. You spare a wave of acknowledgement to the Bugbear Boss, whose mount—easily twice the size of you, with a wingspan four times your size—sweeps low over the battlefield. It snatches up one remaining dwarf in its jaws, hurling him down to the same fate as the dwarves within the fortress, and then divebombs after him—down to ensure the deaths (and collect the flesh) of any dwarves thus thrown down.
The remaining dwarves between you and the ruin of their impromptu keep are terrified, flailing in fearful incompetence. Your pets and minions descend upon them and end what remains of your resistance, and you advance with them, to take the lower levels of this fortress… Only to realize something terrible.
The fortress has not merely toppled, but collapsed in on itself, the rock shelf and rubble of the brickwork and burning wood tumbling DOWNWARD, into the shaft below.
Below… Where the Thief, Paeris, and their squad of assassins was doing battle with the bulk of the dwarven warriors, according to the Translator’s interpretation.
You scramble past your forces, rummaging through rock to find the entrance to the passages below...
[Athleticism roll]
