Hilde felt a horrible sense of de ja vu. Less than a day before she had been in a similar situation, surrounded by beastial enemies and expecting death. The pressure of the beastmen was a physical thing, squeezing the defenders lines so tight it was nearly impossible to swing a weapon.

One of Isolde’s golden blasts scythed past her and for a moment she had a clear view of Cedric. The tough sergeant was on his knees, the heretic chieftain raising his strange fluid blade to end his life. Hilde raised her pistol and pulled the trigger. The flint flew forward with a disappointing click, too late she realised that she hadn’t reloaded the weapon. In desperation she hurled the empty weapon at the heretic, it clattered feebly off his embossed armor. The warrior turned his head slowly to regard her for a moment.

Hilde snatched her second pistol from her belt and leveled it. Something hard hit her from behind and she sprawled forwards over the corpses of two gor and a knight which were tangled together, the weapon flying free of her hand and rattling across the flag stones. A blast of golden energry  flashed over her head and struck the chaos champion but his armor seemed to drink the energy in without visible damage. Hilde scrambled forward over the corpses and grabbed the pistol firing it one handed.

*Click*

The flint struck and sparked but the weapon failed to ignite. For a horrifying moment she thought she had fired this one too. Realisation dawned. The firing pan had emptied as the weapon hit the ground. Frustration was almost hot enough to taste as she reached into her pouch and found that she had run out of cartridges. 

“Shyalla please,” she all but wept. 

Her fingers brushed something cold in the bottom of the satchel. With a surge of hope she pulled the strange silvery flask of powder free. The Chaos Champions sword was already coming down towards Cedric’s kneck as she poured a shaking pinch of powder into the firing pan, snapped shut the frisson, pointed and fired.

The resulting shot was like nothing anyone in the hall had ever seen. Rather than a dull smoky bang, the little pistol seemed to ring like a bell, pure and clear. No smoke belched forth, instead a strange blast of silver energy seemed to leap from the muzzle, striking the reaver in the shoulder. His pauldron buckled and a strange sound that was either a hiss of pain or a curse slid from his helmet. Most astonishingly the sword, still arching towards Cedric’s neck flickered and went out like a distant lantern, a moment before it severed the soldier's head. Instead the Kurgan stumbled forward, thrown by the lack of contact, nothing more than an ornate hilt remaining in his hand.

[@POOHEAD189]