Status Updates From Neferata: Blood of Nagash

‘I’m offering you mercy, King Borri. I am offering you the lives of those of your people who survive. And all I ask is that you–’ she said, bewildered.
‘The living do not serve the dead,’ Borri said.
‘You dwarfs do nothing but serve your dead,’ Neferata spat. ‘This whole place is nothing but a tomb! It’s a monument to a failed race!’
‘Then let it be our tomb,’ Borri said simply.

Neferata stalked into the plaza in front of the temple of Valaya. It was carpeted with the bodies of slain. Little bodies, some of them, impossibly little; and something in Neferata curdled and she was once more in Lahmia, watching as the soldiers of Rasetra and Khemri and Lybaras snatched Lahmian children from their wailing mothers and swung them by their ankles against the walls of houses.

‘Neferata,’ Khalida of Lybaras said in a voice like the rustling of ancient silk. Her slim form was bound tight by the ceremonial wrappings and her proud head still wore her funerary head-dress and the mortuary mask that hid the ravages that death had made upon her once beautiful face. ‘In the darkness I dreamt of you, cousin.’
‘I dreamed of you as well, little hawk,’ Neferata said, rising slowly to face her cousin.

Naaima caught up with Neferata. ‘You have a plan, I trust,’ she shouted, trying to make herself heard over the roar of the forges and the cries of the charging dwarfs.
‘Oh yes!’ Neferata said, laughing. ‘We will make them afraid of the dark.’

Regardless of the size of the attackers’ force, there was no way to lay siege to a dwarf hold. A mountain could no more be surrounded than it could be levelled by conventional means. It must be inundated and worn down from within as well as without. Both could take years.
She had months.

As they made their way out of Nagashizzar, the whispers began again, stronger, as if the touch of dark magic had given them a strength they had previously been lacking.
‘I am coming,’ Neferata hissed in reply. And somewhere, in the darkness, something cried out in triumph.