Sobering Horror

Bobtholamew of Ironforge wiped some of the sweat off his brow as he looked upwards into the afternoon sky.  The sky was almost cloud free today, with a light wind that chilled but otherwise made for a crisp atmosphere.  He'd been rather enjoying himself, taking a stroll and munching on a braeburn when the troops had arrived.  He’d reached up toward the sky, stretching.

The initial hubbub had died down surprisingly quickly.  Now, only the refugees were panicking.  They fled in the face of capture, and the troops we quick to follow.  The local authorities were standing in the streets, arguing with a Banderling woman in some kind of uniform.  Bobthalamew, he gave a mental sigh, Bob for short, had been watching them when a sudden shadow drifted over him.  He looked up to see the most surprising sight he had ever seen; a second airship was now hovering over the town, this one of Aluvian design.

The two colossal beasts of metal and magic soared above Marblebush for several long, tense moments.  No one watching was entirely certain who fired first, but that didn’t matter at anymore.  Each shot rang like horrific thunder.  He felt the reverberations of each impact in his bones.  But worse was a screeching and inhuman sound of twisting metal and thunder mixed in an unpleasant cacophony.

All throughout the town eyes turned skyward.  Every citizen, soldier, and refugee stopped where they stood or sat and universally turned their eyes toward the scene.  If anyone there were able to observe it, this would appear a most ironic sight; in the middle of a war zone members of all races, factions, and loyalties stood peacefully, sharing the same fearful glances one towards another as their eyes were drawn in abject horror back to the battle overhead.  They stand clutching whomever is nearest to them for support, no longer able to remember their previous thoughts, no longer caring if the one they cling to is friend or foe.  All stand, staring at the same sight, all sharing in the same thought, all unable to comprehend the travesty unfolding before their eyes.  No Airship had ever combated another in known history. 

The battle was not pretty.  The airships slugged it out with one another like drunken brawlers; no artistry, no grace, no maneuvering, just two titans pounding the life out of the other.

Bob felt a sudden pressure on his sleeve and turned down, distracted.  A young Kobold boy was there, clinging to his arm, eyes wide with fear.  His heart softened, distracted from his own terror as he realized what this must be like for these people, so fresh from the assault on their own lands.  Bobtholamew reached an arm around the boy's shoulder to comfort him. 

"Don't worry, son."  Bob patted the boy’s hand.  The Kobold was shaking.  "It'll be alright.  That's an Aluvian ship up there," Bob pointed towards the longer, wider vessel.  "They're here to help us.  To keep us safe.  They'll make sure no one takes you away again.  Okay?"

The boy didn't respond audibly, he merely turned his head away from the sight, burying his head into Bob’s coat sleeve and digging his fingers further into Bob's coat.  Bob could feel as the boy’s small frame shuddered with his terrified sobs.  Bob, however, found his heart actually calming a bit as he said the words, realizing the truth of them.  Someone must have gotten word out for a ship to be here this swiftly, and the Aluvian military was second to none.  It wouldn't be long before this situation was settled, and he could get back to his books and trying to find that lovely Tia woman to discuss some of his new theories.  He wrapped his free arm around the boy hugging him close, comforting him.

As Bob turned his eyes skyward  once more, some of the noise above began to fade.  The two airships had stopped firing for whatever reason.  Maybe they'd arranged a cease fire?  The enemy ship began to list towards one side as if to turn and Bob felt relief course through his body, glad that it was finally over.  His face relaxed a bit and a small smile returned to his features. 

"You see?"  He crouched down by the boy who looked at him with swollen tear stained eyes.  "I told you they--"

Bob was suddenly cut off by a noise that blotted out his words.  This noise was beyond explanation.  Having conserved power for several precious seconds, the Aluvian Frigate, Bismark launched a myriad of every broadside weapon simultaneously.  The barrage riped into the enemy’s hull.  The airship shuddered, violently, as its metal started to crack open and it started to slowly fall.  Bob could only stand there mouth open, as he stared at the sky directly in front of him; the words he had tried to say forever lost in the moment.

The hull breached, weapons fire struck the ships most vital point.  The precious Magicite cores cracked open, ripped asunder by Aluvia’s magitechnological barrage.  Powerful Elemental energies exploded outward.  These vast levels of Elemental energy were absorbed directly into nearby atoms.  The atoms then exploded, overwhelmed by the energy they had absorbed;  which was then absorbed and emitted again in lesser amounts, only to be re-absorbed.  The explosion went on and on, repeating over and over.  And as this horrifying sound drown out all other sound, an expanding sphere of nearly uniform height, temperature, and air catapulted upwards.  Within the first several thousand feet of the destroyed airship, the temperature spiked to be several magnitudes hotter than the surface of the sun within femtoseconds.  This heat does not expand far, but the initial blast decimates buildings, plants, and people, vaporizing all it touches.  The people within this radius had no time to realize what was happening, much less react.  Their lives wiped out before their brains even had time to register the sight.  Nothing could survive within this heat, the very ground itself turned to kindling and ignited, quickly becoming a raging inferno.

High energy neutrons, gamma rays, Elemental energies shattered outwards from the Cores in a sphere of pure energy.  Any of these three could kill in small amounts.  The amounts released from the destroyed cores is exponentially greater than had ever been measured before.  Within several more femtoseconds a third shock wave expands past the first two, consuming them in its own nightmare fire and engulfing the the Bismark.  The shock wave vibrates its hull so fast and so violently that the meter thick, magically enforced, specially treated Pyreal hull was reduced to atomic dust in an instant.  Amidst this destruction the Cores of the Bismark fared no better, being rent asunder on the molecular level by the physical stresses alone.  The horror of the first explosion was repeated ten fold as the energy from the first fed into its magnitude.

All of this occurred over the course of a single second.

The energy released was of such magnitude, it reacted with the 8 Ley Lines themselves, which served to 'pull' it inwards towards the core of the planet.  But as the dozens of energies conflicting one with another roiled in atomic fury, they began to accelerate their expansion and pull free of the Ley Lines.  Slowly at first but with increasing velocity, the black cloud of white lightning expanded outwards from the epicenter, engulfing everything in its path in a bath of kinetic, Elemental, electronic, and radioactive energy so powerful that anything caught within was liquefied and then vaporized within milliseconds.  Trees, buildings, animals, air, and people.  As the cloud of chaotic death expanded, the very Elemental energy that sustained life itself within this area was extinguished, which caused a greater and greater pull by the Ley Lines, until finally the pull exceeded the strength of the blast.  At this the cloud of white lightning was ripped back towards ground zero at near the speed of light, the violence of its passing razing whatever was left and obliterating thousands of tons of dirt, rock, and soil until it was absorbed back into the Ley Lines themselves.

Forty seconds later there was nothing left.  The land stood devastated, a bare and ashen crater all that was left of the town, people, and life that had once stood as testimony to the beauty of this place.