Three lay dead at Maldred's and Dhamon's feet before one managed to land a blow against the big man. The tallest of the dwarves cut deep into Maldred's arm, bringing a groan from the big man. The great sword clanged to the ground, as Maldred could no longer hold it with both hands. His wounded arm hung limp at his side.
Two dwarves darted in and raised their axes, thinking the large human an easy mark now. However, Maldred's good arm shot forward, his massive fingers closing on the haft of a battleaxe and ripping it free from the dwarf's grip. Without pausing, he pulled the axe back and brought the weapon down on the other dwarf, cutting through his helmet and lodging in his skull. He tugged the axe free as the dwarf fell and swung it against its previous owner, dropping him.
Dhamon dispatched one dwarf by shoving his blade through a gap in the armor beneath the dwarf's arm. Releasing his sword, which he couldn't easily tug free, he scooped up the dead dwarf's axe and swung it around hard, chopping into the neck of another dwarf and sending an arc of blood flying. His immediate opponents dead, he worked quickly to retrieve the broadsword and buried the axe in the chest of a corpse as more dwarves moved in.
Although the odds were turning against them, the dwarves who remained showed no signs of retreating, save the one who found his beard on fire-courtesy of Fetch, who had just arrived on the scene. The kobold grinned maliciously and shouted to Rikali that his fire spell was indeed a great boon. The half-elf ignored him and threw her efforts into parrying the attack of a particularly thickset dwarf who had a scattering of medals affixed to his armor.
Maldred felled one dwarf and was preparing to strike another as the ground started shaking beneath their feet. It was a gentle tremor at first, but it quickly gained energy, and within a heartbeat even the nimble Rikali was struggling to stay on her feet.
Dhamon slammed his blade into the thigh of one of his opponents, then felt the haft of the weapon start to slip from his sweaty fingers. He put all his effort into keeping the blade, rugging it free and sheathing it just as he felt his feet lose purchase against the jarring ground. An instant later his legs were pitched out from under him, and he was rolling down the mountainside, unable to cushion himself from the spires he was thrown against along the way. Fetch dropped to the ground and wrapped one of his spindly arms around a rock that didn't seem to be going anywhere, the other arm snaked out to latch onto one of his bags of crystals. The dwarves and Maldred fared worst, not able to keep their balance and joining Dhamon on a pell-mell descent toward the bottom of the valley.
"Dhamon!" Rikali screamed. She half-slid after him, doing her best to avoid the rocks careening down the mountainside, and crying out when sharp ones seemingly jumped up from nowhere to slam against her arms and legs.
The mountainside thundered. Cracks appeared along the rocky slopes-small at first, like spider veins beneath pale skin, then widening until they resembled the jagged maws of monsters. Two of the dwarves screamed as they were swallowed by one of the growing fractures.
Rikali felt the ground give way beneath her feet as she slipped into one of the widening chasms. Her slender hands thrashed about until her fingers found a spiny tooth of rock. She held on tight as her body was hurled against the rockface, the breath rushing from her lungs. She coughed and blinked furiously as a cloud of dust settled in the chasm, threatening to smother her, then she gasped in terror as the ground began to seal itself. She instinctively propelled herself up the trembling rockface, finding nooks to slip into that an ordinary man would overlook. She hauled herself over the lip and rolled away just as the fissure rumbled one last time and closed.
"Dhamon!" she hollered, though she couldn't hear her own voice. All she heard was the echo of the quake, so loud it was painful to her keen ears. Again she scrambled down the mountainside, kicking up gravel and chunks of crystal. Her heart leapt when she spotted Dhamon's body wedged between a pair of granite columns. Mal-dred was hanging onto one of the columns with his good arm, his eyes shut in the face of flying rocks.
The other dwarves who had tumbled down the mountainside were nowhere to be seen. Only one helmet was comically perched atop a gypsum spire. Fetch was high above Rikali, still clinging to his half-buried rock with one hand, the other somehow still holding fast to a sack of gemstones. Rikali had dashed to the columns and was holding on tight, suffering the fist-sized stones that battered her and riding out the quake until it mercifully stopped.
