Date: Twentieth of May, year 810 Post Seminal War (810 PSW)

Location: The Catacombs of the Temple of the Abyss, Armageddon Reef, Sapphire Bay, The Jeweled Republics.

Job Arseoth led the way through the catacombs, racing for the surface as the ground began to tremble beneath his feet. The roof was too low for true flight, but he used it in short bursts to traverse areas of rough footing. Job figured it was better to risk bashing his head on the ceiling then snapping an ankle or slowing down. Lady SiDiabolo used the same technique, but Blue did not. She turned ever so slightly translucent or insubstantial, and her stride changed form simply running to bounding forwards at a prodigious rate.

Job shoved the implications out of his head and kept moving forwards. Upwards, onward, desperately backtracking from memory and half-glimpsed marks. Walls cracked, bones tumbled from recesses, the roar or moving stone an endless echo in the catacombs. Job raced up a landslide towards a glimmer of light and burst onto the surface.

Ruined buildings vibrated dust into the high noon sun. Job slowed long enough for Lady SiDiabolo and Blue to catch up. The street were riven by cracks and riddled with sinkholes. Footing was treacherous, pathfinding would be difficult and running would be impossible.

“I can fly, and I noticed you doing the same Lady SiDiabolo. Do you think we could carry Blue?”

Lady SiDiabolo grimaced, “perhaps, but we're both wearing dresses...”

Job shrugged, “I'll fly in front then. We're not going for altitude, just high enough to not fall into any holes or break our ankles.”

Blue coughed dust form her lungs, “pass me your quarterstaff then: you take one end, Ilelahne the other, and I'll hang in the middle and concentrate on reducing my weight.”

Job extended the staff, “going to be tricky holding on for that long.”

Blue grinned, “face forward young man, this'll be as easy as riding a flying broom!”

. . . - - - . . .

Date: Twentieth of May, year 810 Post Seminal War (810 PSW)

Location: The Coastline, Armageddon Reef, Sapphire Bay, The Jeweled Republics.

Job Arseoth grabbed at the rope to haul the small boat down to the water then paused to consider.

“Girls, we're not bringing any cargo, are we?

“No...?”

“Nope!”

“Then why don't we fly instead? We'll fly faster then the steam engine on this thing will push us.”

Lady SiDiabolo pointed up at the thunderheads slowly spiraling into existence and blocking out the sun.

“Because we'd be flying in the dark with adverse weather conditions and an unstable 'cargo', sorry Blue, for four hours if we head for Sapphire.”

Job nodded, “that makes sense. Help me push the boat to the water. Follow-on thought though: if The Altair of Souls is undergoing a 'critical failure of existence', how big is the boom going to be? Is Sapphire going to be a safe destination? Should we go for Ruby or Opal instead?”

Blue grimaced, “at a guesstimate, blast radius is going to be between two and three miles, dampened somewhat by it's underground location. Said location is also below sea level, which will result in significant airborne debris. As for the weather effects... a violent storm seems likely.”

Lady SiDiabolo blanched, “Opal it is then. Sapphire has flooding problems as it is, and Ruby isn't much better.”

Job heaved on the boat, pushing it's blunt bow into the surf, “then we'd better get going. This thing doesn't have a turbine, so it'll be eight hours to Opal... weather permitting.”

Blue leaped nimbly aboard, “What is a turbine? And what sort of boat is this?”

Lady SiDiabolo followed with grace, “A Westmarch licensed-built version of the infamous 13 foot Varr'Barak 'Cox'n', the same 'alert' variation as is becoming used by coastal rescue...”

An ominous rumbling from further inland cut her off.

Job heaved on the flat stern of the boat, shoving it out into the slowly; growing surf. He swung aboard, headless of spraying the ladies with water from his booted feet. Job quickly dropped the propeller shaft into position and jump-started the boiler.

“Less talking, more hanging on. My Mark is already itching, this is going to be a big one.”

Job engaged the steam engine and headed away from the coast of Armageddon Reef at the best speed the little boat could manage. The back of his neck itched from the gathering magical energies. Lady SiDiabolo popped the built-in footlocker open and started rummaging inside, looking for something. Blue lounged in the prow, enjoying the bounce and sway of the boat in the small waves.

“I don't really need to see a reason to 'hold on', given how fast we're going. The ride isn't that rough...”

Job deliberately swerved a bit and took the next wave at an angle, drenching the angled bow in water. Blue sputtered and started to wring out her hair.

“Ok, that was a bit of a bump...”

Job grunted and peered ahead of the boat, deliberately ignoring Blue's sodden state.

“That was a two-foot wave. When the storms get bad near Altheim, we get twelve to fifteen foot waves. Down here in the Jeweled Republics, they get to twenty or so feet. The storm The Altair of Souls is brewing isn't gong to be just 'bad', it's going to be one of the really bad ones. We're all going top be wet and miserable before we make it to Opal.”

Blue spat seawater, “So why Opal instead of a closer city?”

“Timing, and storm surge. As much as being out on the water in a bad storm is going to suck, it's a lot better then being on the coast when a forty- or fifty- foot wave hits at a few dozen miles per hour – we're doing about the at the moment - and goes a mile or two inland. Which will happen when this storm hits the coastline. Out here, we're going to be wet and miserable, and we'll have to watch out for the really big storm waves trying to flip us over but that's about it. Getting hit by the storm surge, on land, on foot... well, 'chunky paste' springs to mind as an accurate summation of how they'd find our bodies.”

Blue hunkered down and looked suitable miserable.

“So why didn't we teleport out of Alexandria?”

Lady SiDiablo slammed the locker shut, “Anyone have any rope? We didn't teleport because we didn't have a Circle... or the time to find one. If We did, then my Tower near Opal would have been our first stop before we headed elsewhere. Althiem probably.”

Blue gazed at Lady SiDiabolo in confusion, “and you didn't think to set up a contingency plan?”

“I had one, but it went out the window after...” Lady SiDiabolo gestured to herself. “Now, did you manage to scrounge any rope in your wandering or not?”

Blue grimaced and drug a length of good silk rope out of her bag.

“If we need to tie ourselves up, at least we won't have bad rope burns.”

. . . - - - . . .

Date: Twentieth of May, year 810 Post Seminal War (810 PSW)

Location: Sapphire Bay, The Jeweled Republics.

Five hours later...

Job Arseoth spat water and shook sodden hair form his eyes. Mr. Nibbles was curled in Job's hood, squeaking loudly in protest every few minutes as another wave jolted the boat. Blue's dress was plastered to her frame as she huddled in the bow, drenched by endless sprays of saltwater. Lady SiDiabolo was even more miserable, despite her 'sheltered' position in the middle of the boat. The pouring rain soaked bother her fur and dress, leaving Lady SiDiabolo curled next to the boiler, leaching what drying heat she could from its warmth.

Job saw the explosion less then a heartbeat before he heard it. A pule of white light blinded him, followed by a wall of sound slamming into his back. For a long moment all Job could see was a blinding whiteness, all he could hear was his ears ringing in the wake of the concussive BOOM.

“The fuck was... that...?”

Job knew he has said the words only because he could feel his jaw move. Two fresh trickles of warm wetness ran down each side of his head. Blue lay with her hands clutched to the sides of her head, mouth open in a silent scream. Lady SiDiabolo grabbed Blue's shin and channeled some sort of light gray energy into her. Blue's mouth shut as she stopped screaming. Lady SiDaibolo turned to face Job. Her mouth moved, words spilling forth, but Job couldn't hear anything.

The boat shook as a small wave, no more than a foot high, overtook it from behind, imparting a corkscrew motion to the boat for a few moments. Job turned to look back at Armageddon Reef through the storm. It should not have been visible between the storm and the distance, even with its imposing cliffs. Right where job estimated that Armageddon Reef should be, Job could see an immense column of stuff stretching up to touch the clouds. It should have been hard to see between the storm-clouds blotting out the sun and the rain lashing Job's face, but it was lit from within by an endless chain of lightning bolts. It was a dirty, ashen gray struck through with broad streaks of red and yellow.

Job yelped as wet paws grasped the sides of his head. A warm flow of energy wrapped around and inside of his ears.

“...ob? Can you hear me now Job?”

“Yes, what is it?”

“You were bleeding heavily from your ears, the sound wave must have ruptured your eardrums.”

“Oh, so that's why everything was so quiet after the earth-shattering ka-boom?”

. . . - - - . . .

Date: Twentieth of May, year 810 Post Seminal War (810 PSW)

Location: Opal, The Jeweled Republics.

Job Arseoth stared at the utter devastation before the bow of the boat. Floodwaters lapped over the stumps of waterfront structures. Multi-thousand-ton cargo ships lay on their sides over half a mile inland. Bodies and parts of bodies clumped together as macabre floating islands.

“Gods above...”

“... nine Hells below.”

“...and watchers Beyond.”

Job cut his eyes at Blue's addition to the usual exclamatory oath. But kept to the pertinent topic at hand.

“What happened here?”

Blue pointed to the headland half a mile down the coast.

“What color was that a few days ago?”

Lady SiDiabolo squinted, “earth-brown, with some green plants, why?”

Blue dropped her arm. “It's now an off-white from sea to peak. I had hoped to judge the height of the storm surge or by how high the scour was, but it has over-topped the headland at least.”

Lady SiDiabolo gripped the edge of the boat hard enough to make audible crunching noises, “my Tower was atop that headland, fifty feet tall and five hundred feet above the sea. It's not there anymore.”

Job cut the throttle, leaving the boat to drift slowly towards the wreckage of Opal.

“Just what the hell is a 'harbor wave' anyway?”

Blue frowned, “ in simple terms, a storm surge form the 'dark side of hell', spawned from a volcanic eruption, earthquake, or other large movement of earth and sea. They usually reach no more than fifty feet, with very rare examples recorded as reaching three hundred and fifty feet.”

Job nodded at the headland, “this one was bigger.”

Lady SiDiabolo looked out across the city, “we need to go to my tower. There is nothing meaningful we can do here. Perhaps one in ten thousand survived. Sapphire and Ruby were closer, both to Armageddon Reef and to sea level. One in a hundred thousand may have survived, if that.”

Job throttled up and turned the boat, “and your tower?”

Lady SiDiabolo sucked air through her teeth, “Structural and dimensional collapse, there won't be much to salvage, but some of the relics and Artifacts stored there... I need to confirm their destruction. They should be safe, but I need to be sure.”

. . . - - - . . .

Date: Twenty-third of May, year 810 Post Seminal War (810 PSW)

Location: The Ruins of SiDiabolo Tower, The Jeweled Republics.

Job Arseoth, Lady SiDiabolo, and Blue sat about the small campfire in the ruins of the SiDiabolo tower. All that was left were a few scattered stones atop cracked brown earth; mud baked hard by three days of endless sun and heat.

Job tossed a scrap of wood into the fire, “anyone find anything new today?”

Blue shook her head, “nothing, the same as yesterday.”

Lady SiDiabolo nodded, “Agreed. I have found nothing excepting this.”

She held up the gilded scroll tube that they had found when they had arrived.

“I still do not recall this ever being in my possession before, and all else is long-gone, un-made along with their storage demi-dimensions and the collapse of my Tower.”

Job nodded, “So... now what?”