Aelious woke up, chest heaving. Something still burned in the back of his vision, and his entire body thrummed with an unpleasant, foreign energy. His heart pounded out of control, his entrails felt like they were scrambling in all directions. Nausea? No, it wasn’t even as bad as a hangover. Slowly, he pushed himself off the ground, only to sway to the side, feet not meeting the stained carpets in the right fashion. The whole Grand Hall was tilted to the side, and the entirety of the fine buffet was splattered upon the prohibitively expensive carpets they had rolled out for the noble reception. The Aureolin Heir grimaced, clutching his skull. All he could remember was a flash and then… Stonge, had Harrow’s Tower been bombed? No one was missing limbs, and all he felt was a steadily intensifying buzz in his mana reserves, the atmosphere itself building up around him. Althein had collapsed to one side, a cake smeared against his face, and Ruel, the one he had been chatting with, was half-submerged in the champagne tower that had fallen. Scrambling down the slope, Aelious crouched beside his half-brother and shook him awake, a gust of wind magic blowing shards of glass away from Ruel as well. [b]“C’mon Lord,”[/b] he said, whole body jittery with anxiety and anticipation, [b]“Get up and work!”[/b] [b]“Magnolia, darling, be a bit mo-”[/b] Aelious narrowed his eyes. He didn’t have time for this half-asleep drivel. [b]“Asleine’s pregnant.”[/b] [b]“By the stonging tomes!”[/b] Althein immediately sat up, almost headbutting Aelious in the process. [b]“What the hell do you mean, brother? Asleine is what?! I mean, Asleine is with [i]who?[/i]”[/b] [b]“No, that’s a lie, but this is way worse. We got bombed. Don’t know how, and I don’t know why. Going to go find out what I can. Wake the others up.”[/b] Already, Aelious was standing up, flicking droplets of wine from his cloak. Althein cast one glance over at Ruel, unconscious despite the shallow wounds on his boyish frame, then towards the others as well. Servants, Monks, Heirs, and Lords, all brought low by an all-encompassing light. He felt the thrumming of his own mana as well, and tendrils of winter wind whisked through the room, the bitter cold shocking others awake. With one deep breath, the young Lord Aureolin was back, wiping frosting off the side of his face and standing up onto his two feet. [b]“Well, this certainly wasn’t the drama I was expecting,”[/b] he remarked, kicking his cane up in his hand. [b]“Yeah, but it’ll make for a great story if we survive it.”[/b] The two shared a grin, and then Aelious was off, kicking open a window before leaping down the side of the Grand Hall. With another burst of hot wind, he landed gently, mismatched eyes scanning the area all around. The entirety of the keep was distorted, architecture forced into impossible angles by some magic unbeknownst to them all. All around the populated streets, people laid upon the ground, some spewing vomit unconsciously, others collapsed under chaotically reformed buildings. Drawing out a whistle, Aelious blew into it, sending an inaudible signal to the wyvern pit on the very edge of the keep. If Harrow’s Keep had been populated with a panicked populace, the signal would have been lost in the white noise, but in this silence… Powerful wingbeats broke the silence, a silver wyvern shooting through the oppressive sky. Leaping up to meet him, Aelious snatched onto the outstretched talons of Freecloud as the beast swooped by. He scrambled up onto his beloved steed’s back, and from there, the two shot up towards the very peak of the bubble. It was definitely a barrier, some construct working to push something out. But the bomb itself had burst from inside the tower. As Freecloud hovered in the air, Aelious took a deep breath and tentatively touched the barrier. It bent, but that was all. Pliable, but not easily broken, and he wasn’t certain if he wanted to try either. He narrowed his eyes too, trying to force his own magic outside the barrier, to generate a gate beyond that gossamer boundary, but nothing happened. Landlines then? Nudging his wyvern into a dive for the Aureolin Communications Outpost, Aelious practically hopped off his steed before they even landed, the urgency of the situation causing him to blast his way into the building with magical force. He landed in a roll, hopped onto his feet, and instantly was assailed by a putrid sight. More than half the people inside, employees that he had chatted with, drank with, worked with, were dead. Some had been crushed underneath heavy machinery. Others had bled internally. Still more choked upon their own vomit. House Aureolin prided itself in hiring low magic individuals and giving them the training to do work beyond simple labour and agriculture, and for all that, this was the result. It was clear now, what the buzzing sensation in his skin had been: artificially induced mana sickness, fatal towards Southern commoners and Northern individuals without well-developed magical lineages. The few that had survived the reap were in bad shape too, splotchy bruises blooming underneath their pale skin, their lips flecked with spittle and bile. They stared at Aelious and he stared back, expression twisting into a mixture of regret and anger. But such expressions never lasted long on him, and soon, a reassuring smile emerged. [b]“It’s fine,”[/b] he said, confidence brimming, [b]“the worst of it is over. Listen, I need you all the act immediately, understand? Expel as much magic as you can in a safe manner, while waking up anyone who can be woken up, and have them do the same. Go on wyverns after, and alert the rest of the town, informing them of all this.”[/b] They stared still, and for a moment, Aelious wished he had some of the ice that flowed in his half-brother’s veins. In lieu of that, though, he looked at them all in the eye, voice steady and clear. [b]“Repeat after me. Expel mana safely. Wake everyone up. Instruct them to do the same.” “Expel mana safely. Wake everyone up. Instruct them to do the same.” “Again.” “Expel mana safely, wake everyone up, instruct them to do the same.” “Again!” “Expel mana safely! Wake everyone up! Instruct them to do the same!” “Again!” “Expelmanasafely! Wakeeveryoneup! Instructthemtodothesame!” “Good! Now get to work; we’ve got lives to save and people to inform!”[/b] Aelious turned on that note, a hot wind scouring the distorted outpost of its vile stench. Outside, Freecloud awaited him, and he hopped on once more. For a moment, he wondered what Aster saw, from all the way up on the mountains. And then, he was airborne once more, flying low as he allowed his wind magic to carry his voice far, hoping to rouse as many townsfolk as possible.