Instantaneously, automated and reactive instincts took full and total control as she dived straight onto the ground and scrambled back to underneath her bed, her hands covering her head and ears protectively.

Masked by the fireworks and celebration, a hellstorm of an opera of potent explosive shells reinforced by a legion of inaccurate incendiary rockets came raining down in enraged fury upon the whole city; dozens left behind hardly any trail, while dozens, mostly rockets, rained down in a sparkly trail of putrid…nasty-red.

Boom, pop, boom, pop, boom, pop, boom, pop, boom. Impact after impact after impact shook and tremored the entire city, echoing both close and from afar.

The whole world froze as celebration instantly ceased, the fireworks ending as whistling screeches of raining fury and tremoring booms overtook all other sounds vibrating the air around, augmented by the echoes of unrelenting thudding and hellish shrieking from the coast afar.

Rejoicing celebration was swiftly replaced by screams, wails, shouts, and cries…panicked mobs fleeing, stampeding, and trampling over each other…as shells and rockets rained down.

Shells detonated upon impact, dozens exploding in a strange, yet powerful, red-orangish flash, shattering windows and blowing roofs, pavement, and streets apart; some shells had a delayed detonation, penetrating into buildings before going boom; and many, owing to the scale of the once celebratory crowds outside, smashed right into panicking blobs of people as they all scrambled for their lives…tearing apart many from the explosive impacts…with shrapnel ripping into the rest.

The rockets, however, detonated randomly and haphazardly…some impacting the ground and buildings, some exploding before ever reaching, dozens exploding midair above the city, all of them exploding in fire that washed onto anything and everything below, burning buildings and people alike—truly, there existed no worst kind of scream than that of those being scorched alive.

Her room shook with each impact…to a point; most of the echoing impacts seemed concentrated farther off and away…closer to the coast and inner-city, the outskirts being hit with stragglers indiscriminately and without care—those rockets most especially.

Muffled in her obscured ears…were so many sounds of the utter carnage unfolding; screams and cries that tore throats apart, the wails of those being trampled by their own…or crushed by debris, all those shrieking weeps and sobs…of those left alive. All such echoing sounds and tremors…as if an entire city was being ripped and torn asunder…pierced through her very spine.

Yet all she could do…was remain fixed underneath her bed…covering her ears and head, waiting this entire affair out…provided that she even survived until its end.

She kept count. Twenty seconds, thirty seconds, finally…after forty long…long…seconds, the tremoring thuds and shrieking whistles…calmed and slowed…before it all came to a stop, the last few rounds exploding…as a deafening silence…filled the air, disturbed only by the crying sobs, clamoring screams, and the burning noises of a rising inferno.

She waited ten more…excruciating seconds…and then five extra more just to be certain…before finally crawling her way out from underneath her bed, standing back up. Miraculously, her room had survived. But…this smell…this…putrid smokey smell…was piercing into her room from outside, despite her window still being intact, albeit perhaps a bit cracked.

Against better judgment, she quickly yet cautiously…went straight to her window in order to evaluate what in the domain of all existence…had just happened—or more specifically…to inspect the aftermath.

Immediately, her ignited eyes were met with that cloudy sky…becoming a fiery orange and red. Devastated buildings and debris…littered so much. Fires…fires were developing all over the place in the outskirts. Though, it was clear almost immediately that…the city beyond the inner-walls had taken the absolute blunt of this…surprise bombardment.

The horizon beyond the inner-walls…was bright, glowing ablaze in violent putrid red…so much strange smoke spewing out into the air.

She shook her head, snapping out of this fixation as she immediately reprioritized her attention, inspecting everything close, near, and around her periphery.

Compared to the interior beyond the inner-walls, her area and the outskirts in general did not seem to have been hit nearly as much, implying that the outskirts were not the intended target—assuming there even was a target to begin with. Though…this putrid fiery smell…bleeding in from outside…indeed, quite a lot was on fire and by no means was this ordinary fire.

Glowing away in that furious potently putrid red…this nasty fire popped, crackled, and even ‘sparked’ as if it were oddly ‘charged’ and ‘energized’…somehow. It was ‘sticky’ and growing…burning through everything, even the stone and pavement to a point.

No doubt, given she had seen such ‘enchanted’ shots and bullets with firearms, whatever had been bombarded upon them with such incendiary properties…was likely chemically ‘enchanted’—augmented by, or was a direct product of, the arcane.

In fact, she could probably extrapolate that to…whatever had caused those tremoring explosive impacts as well; indeed, the buildings around were not simply damaged…entire faces had been blown off by individual impacts…even damaging buildings next and near; never mind, also, the scale of the craters left behind on the street and the strange…residue.

The streets around were full of rubble, debris, fiery pieces, and…bodies…so many…bodies…and their pieces; torn, ripped, organs splattered about…it was not a pleasant sight; people and animals had been victims alike. One or two straggling shells…were all that was needed to inflict so…so…much death. Indeed…maybe the street was too narrow for a parade. Though, many had simply been trampled and stampeded to death by the fleeing crowds.

She could see…in the now emptied and devastated streets…many things. Lovers dragged the bodies of their maimed and dead partners, unconvinced that they were a lifeless corpse; weeping mothers clung to their dead children, having to be dragged away by others, unleashing the most horrid of cries; denizens still in shock…either catatonically lingered...or wandered aimlessly with such widened eyes, minds broken...some missing limbs or…maimed in other ways—on death’s door.

Screams, cries, shouts, weeps, throats being torn…desperation, panic, shock, and terror…so many such sounds. Truly…completely alien to the sounds heard prior this night. Truly…such sounds were more familiar to her than she ever wanted them to be.

Familiar scenes from ancient memories flashed in her mind.

How many times…had she seen…this same…exact…sight? Why…was this all she so seemed to remember…of places like here? How many times…had she…heard these denizen noises echoing in such rotten air? Truly, in every conceivable fashion, she despised these denizen noises, which pierced her mind and soul as if needles that flashed and pulsed memories and screaming echoes lost in time.

Yet…for as scared and panicked the denizens were, for while many remained cowering and hidden, taking cover and hiding, first starting with a few brave souls…quickly became many…then most, as denizens of all kinds and creeds…rallied.

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Shouts and hails, names being called, denizens scrambled through the debris and buildings, helping those trapped and injured; many scrambled for buckets, pots, or literally anything that could even vaguely hold water, making way to the wells, aqueducts, public baths, fountains, even latrines, and the sewers…anywhere with water. Frantic, they desperately tried to put out the fires.

Though…she could tell from a simple glance at those putrid-red fires…water would not be enough. However, most of the fires in the outskirts—at least from what she could see— seemed…more conventional and typical…but they were still growing and spreading. She did not even know if this building was on fire or if it was even structurally intact.

Regardless, if those flames spread…they could devour her apartment, along with all of the…all of the…powder, charge, and other explosive-stuff stored within it; oh face-fucked shit.

« Síc aghé jamja! Et vadé ad assistandù! Aghé soldate glupissime! » the foreigner shouted to herself in lambasting scorn; she needed to stop standing at the window—of all dangerous things to stand near in these situations—with such bewildered eyes and act now and help them!

Having assessed enough, the foreigner sprang into action. She had not the time, at all, to get herself properly dressed and ‘readied’—no thanks to the amount of time she had wasted staring out the window. Instead, she quickly tossed on a primitive hooded full-cloak of sorts before shoving her boots on. She swiftly barged right out of bedroom, attempting to make way to her door…before…abruptly halting in a sudden freeze.

Her ignited eyes stared down…and then up…noticing a very not-so-pleasantly-made hole in the ceiling above; staring back down…she saw…stuck and lodged firmly in place…into her thick wooden floor…rather the not-so-pleasant-looking…primitive shell. Metallic and marked in both red and orange, it ‘sparked’ somewhat as if violent reactions were occurring on the inside.

Ah…so her apartment had been hit, and…dangerously close to that special locked door leading to an equally special large storage space…ah…so close, indeed. But it was a dud, from the looks of it…

Or rather…not a dud. Her analytical eyes noticed quickly…ah…wisping out from it ever-so faintly…were streams of this all too familiar ‘creamy’, ‘refined’, and ‘soft’ gold radiance, roots having been imbued into it.

She sighed in relief; she knew, definitively, that it was permanently decommissioned and made inert, with not even the faintest chance of going boom at random.

Indeed, as if I would let some sudden barrage be your death, no no

Too anti-climactic, your death should be more…

Meaningful and narratively conclusive

Not random, sudden, nor mundane, like all the rest

Truly, it would be unbefitting for one such as you

Although she was in the safe…most certainly, she could not help but feel more irritated and annoyed by this fact than grateful. It intervening in such a way was…not usually a positive sign, even if the outcome was beneficial.

Regardless, without any more delay, the foreigner quickly moved past the shell and headed straight to her front door; she attempted to open it, but…it would not budge. She continued to finick with the handle, yet the door seemed…stuck almost—not even locked.

An obstruction by debris in the hall, perhaps? No…not only was she so clearly hearing denizens stampede past her door in panicked hurry down the hall…but the door opened inwards into the apartment, not outwards into the hall.

Then…she noticed, yet again, wisping off the handle and edges of her door’s frame…that same unmistakable…refined and creamy gold radiance. Oh…of course…

I would apologize, but sometimes scenes have to be… forced

The front door is such a boring mode of exit, after all

Thankfully, there does exist another

One that will only save you time

By giving you an early climb

The foreigner sighed and immediately withdrew away from her front door, not bothering with kicking it open, for such would be futile—that door was not going to open no matter what she did.

She reentered her bedroom and went straight to her cracked and already damaged window; climbing slightly and angling herself appropriately, she bashed it open with her boots.

Instantly, the smokey putrid smell from outside…intensified and worsened as it spewed into her room. Her nose burned, her eyes watered, her lungs sored; this was…certainly indeed…some seriously nasty stuff in the air. Thankfully, she had the luxury of automatic repair capabilities encoded into her essence; the denizens, however, not so much…

She climbed out of her window and began scaling up the building, struggling more than she ought to as she did so. Truly, she felt so…lethargic and weak; her grip was suboptimal; her body…truly did feel as though…it was running dry…or something. Yet, nevertheless, she persisted…having not any the choice.

She reached the roof and sprung herself a top, standing as she inspected and eyed. Hot…the air was hot. It was clear to her that her building had been spared by the fires about, even though it was still damaged…the shell lodged into her floor had not been the only one to strike, one or more other shells having had penetrated through other sections and detonating.

Nevertheless, the primary problem was all the burning buildings around it—the ones ablaze with those putrid nasty-red flames especially; those strange ‘sparks’ that were produced from…whatever chemical violence they were experiencing…were seemingly capable of causing ordinary combustion fires around their periphery.

Denizens were desperately trying to put them out, but…as she expected, they struggled to do so. Those nasty-red fires, despite their color, were exceptionally hot…water vaporized and steamed violently upon immediate contact. Clearly, either some nasty chemicals were involved and or this was a violent combustion of arcane-sourced substances…even the smoke produced seemed oddly charged and was especially putrid.

The more she eyed and scanned, the more it became clear that…the outskirts had been hit far more than she assumed moments prior—the quantity of fires was…rather large at all angles and distances. People were trapped inside devastated buildings, many jumping down from windows of those on fire to escape the flames.

Then…she noticed the horizon…the interior of the city beyond the inner-walls…that glowing fury of orange and pulsating red was becoming stronger and even more visibly potent, the strange smoke emanating only intensifying. It was clear to her that…whatever had been concentrated on, whatever had received the brunt of this bombardment…was an inferno developing into a violent firestorm—one that may not stay behind those inner-walls.

Truly…there was so much needing to be done, so many people…begging and crying out for help, yet…there was only one of her…and she needed to prioritize what was closest: the very building she stood atop of; she needed to help evacuate this building which, should these flames spread to it, could go boom from that storage-turned-armory in her very own unit.

Though…her ignited eyes turned and evaluated the…apartment building in front and near her own. While it was apparent that her apartment building was damaged, the neighboring apartment building looked in even worse shape—structurally not so happy at all.

Not many denizens were fleeing out of that building compared to the amount fleeing out of her own—though most people, in general, had been outside when the bombardment happened. Regardless, people could be trapped inside of there…though also…people could be trapped inside of the one she stood on top of…

Ugh…she did not have the time for this deliberation; she needed decisive action, now. First help evacuate her building and inspect the sections that had been struck for any trapped or injured, then make way to the neighboring building to help there, everything else to come she will figure out after; thus, she decided.

Without any more delay or ensnaring cogitations, she made way across the roof of this wide and long building…approaching a section that had been so clearly the victim of a large boom, leaving behind quite the shattered hole on the roof.

Standing at its edges…she inspected below. The shell had penetrated through the roof and detonated within the room, destroying…most of it…and collapsing the remains onto the floor below it, taking some of the hallway along the way.

Truly…judging from the not-so-large size of that shell lodged into her own unit’s floor relative to the impact devastation she was staring at, some of these primitive shells seemed to have had an exceptionally potent destructive capability in spite of their size—though, this building being of perhaps questionable design and quality certainly did not help.

Hmm…jumping straight down through this hole could risk destabilizing this section even more than it already was, thus she opted to simply climb down the building somewhat, breaking through a window of a unit next and near to get back into it.

With swift haste, the foreigner began to get to work…doing whatever she could to help any who may have found themselves trapped inside and help evacuate this building. Though, in the end, she did not need to worry too much about this building; as she found out, the denizens themselves had done most of the work for her.