They ran to the corner of the last house of a narrow alley and stopped in front of a wide avenue and held their hands near their heads, covering it and not fully aware of what was happening around them. They wanted to run forward into the alley, as the building across the street was blown to shreds, bringing down shards of glass, bricks and metal pipes on people running past. A boiler room was installed in one of the apartments, which additionally released burning layers of steam outside. The explosions continued to rattle one after another. Local residents running from the east side to the west gathered in a group and ran around the ruins of the house and did not even stop to see if anyone was left alive. They were worried about one single question: where and how exactly to hide from the impending hell, cruel and merciless.

There was a momentary lull and they decided that this was their chance to cross over to the other side, but hesitated and saw a squad of one hundred combat inquisitors running in a chain ten meters away from them, armed with steam crossbows, first-class swords and spears.

"Are they so eager to hide their lies that they are ready to put their lives on the line?"

"That's good, isn’t it?"

"Well, yeah."

The visible part of the street was empty, but the muffled sounds of crossbows and the hooting of melee fighters could be heard louder and louder from the east. They looked at each other, they understood that they had to run, but the body stopped listening to what the brain told it, transmitting its refusal through the nerve endings to the arms and legs, with an unceasing tremor. Fear gripped them with its heavy chains, as if they had become Its puppets, dolls. And now only It decides their fate.

They were staring at the opposite side of the avenue at a small alley - now half, or even more, littered with debris - they were trying to either feel or overcome themselves in order to reach the target with the speed of a crossbow shot, when suddenly there was a sound, as if the windows of the windshields began to crack, only in reality it was the air cracking and trembling. A deafening roar echoed down the street and everyone, as one, felt the increased gravity that chained them to the ground. Can't move, can't turn around.

For a moment there was a heavy vacuum of silence, followed by another crackling sound. The inquisitors' heart-rending screams were heard. Sirens sounded from all sides, so loud that they had to cover their ears with their palms. The acoustic vibrations pulsed like the heart of a capital city dying of a serious illness. They were immobilized, helpless, a man in a black raincoat and a red sign fell from the corner of the house in front of them. His entire face was severely burned. He bled profusely, then wheezed something and crumbled to dust.

"Fucking shit!"

"What the fuck is going on here?"

"Some deep shit."

Gravity has returned to its normal state. The screams of the battle inquisitors stopped. And in the northern part of the city, another powerful explosion thundered, the ground shook under their feet, one of them looked at the sky and saw black smoke pouring up, and a fiery geyser breaking through it. The second one looked around the corner and on the right hand in the center of the avenue, half a kilometer away, saw a hundred dead inquisitors and three figures in blue cloaks. The one who was taller than the other two by a head, a dark blue substance with white spots escaped from his hands, it enveloped a small factory, and after that, the building began to disintegrate into dust and evaporate, a minute later it seemed to have never existed in this place. The second figure in a blue raincoat, the one who was shorter than all the others, noticed a young man at the corner of the house who was watching them and fired a fireball in his direction, which covered the required distance in a second and exploded ten meters away, like a warning shot. The walls of the gray brick building they were hiding behind began to fall apart. The tiles that made up the roof fell on them in a cement-sand rain.

They ran back, leaning forward and waving their arms above their heads, as if scaring away a flock of hungry locusts. They jumped over bricks that had flown off the facades of buildings, construction debris that had been lying there for a dozen years and metal beams that had fallen from above from a railway bridge damaged by an explosion. Broken, rusty screws and bolts strewn all over the road, miraculously did not dig into their legs. The sounds of sirens, explosions - nothing stopped for a second. The thick smoke of the blown-up factories spread through the city. It became difficult not only to see objects fifty meters in front, but there also wasn’t enough oxygen at all. They felt how their breathing was disturbed, became frequent, jerky, and a cough appeared, their eyes watered. They all covered their mouths with the cotton collar of their clothes, and squinted.