"Damn it, what in the world is going on?"
Magic Miss, now near the beach, stood in the alley between two adjacent warehouses, pressing herself against the wall as she peered out. She hadn't left, unwilling to accept failure after paying such a steep price for the Heart of the Ocean.
She had hoped to try her luck by the shore, but never imagined the situation would escalate to this degree.
"Magic Miss? Is that you?"
Suddenly, a voice called her na from above. She glanced up to see an unfamiliar young woman peering down from the rooftop.
"Skylark Miss?"
Hathaway had seen Magic Miss's true face, but Magic Miss had never seen Hathaway's. Still, she recognized the voice.
"It's . What are you doing here?"
Hathaway said, reaching down to pull Magic Miss up onto the roof. The view from here was much better, but the risk of being spotted was also far greater.
"Candle Mr and I were trying to accomplish sothing... that business... Forget it, we failed. What brings you here? Oh, my apologies. I've seen your face."
"It doesn't matter. This isn't the ti to worry about that. I was in the crowd, waiting to greet my father, and then... all of this happened."
She gazed anxiously at the dark, distant coastline. From their vantage point, they could just barely make out the kingdom's warships. She knew Earl Hersha was on one of them... assuming he hadn't sunk to the bottom of the sea with the first ship.
"What about Candle Mr? I noticed you ntioned him just now."
Hathaway asked again.
"He went chasing after a strange man,"
Magic Miss replied, observing her surroundings.
"So old enemy of his, it seems. Skylark Miss, what do you plan to do? Will you stay here, or leave with ? I've given up hope. I never could have predicted this, and even my backup plan is useless now."
"I have to get to that ship!"
Hathaway declared, pointing to the fleet's distant flagship. It had just taken a cannonball hit, but aside from a fire on deck, it seed to be holding up for now.
"To that ship? Are you insane? It's far too dangerous. In this chaos, just crossing the docks to reach the shore is a challenge. You can't possibly be thinking of swimming out to it, are you?"
"I have to at least try."
A light drizzle had begun to fall, but it ca on so suddenly that within seconds it was a steady shower, and before anyone could find cover, it had beco a deluge. Raindrops hamred the ground with a force that seed to make the very earth tremble. The spray from the roof tiles stung the two won's faces; they could actually feel the pain of the impacts.
The damp chill of the rain spread through the docklands with the sudden storm. The wind picked up, and Hathaway, her clothes soaked through, shivered involuntarily. She had a sinking feeling she would catch a cold after all this.
"Do you need my help?"
Magic Miss, who had been about to leave, heard herself ask. She was not sure why she had said it, but she did not regret the decision.
"Would you? I need to get to the beach over there right now. Magic Miss, when I make a run for it, all I need is for you to create a diversion—so noise to draw their attention."
Hathaway offered a strained smile, her eyes already scanning the area ahead, searching for a viable path to the beach.
Despite the downpour, the massive fire in the docklands still blazed. Neither Magic Miss nor Hathaway had seen how it started, but they could only surmise that so kind of hard-to-extinguish fuel was burning.
Beyond the gunfights raging among ordinary people, battles between Enchanters were also breaking out. The Orthodox Churches had sent representatives to attend the ceremony today, and when faced with a crisis like this, they were naturally compelled to intervene.
However, there were also plenty of unaffiliated Enchanters of dubious origin mixed in the crowd. Whatever their initial motives, as the fighting intensified, people stopped caring who their opponents were. Anyone unfamiliar was now considered an enemy, because there was no telling what their intentions were.
The torrential rain did little to disperse the dark clouds massed on the horizon. As the downpour intensified, the waves grew more aggressive, crashing against the sea wall. It was a scene typically reserved for sumr storms. Within half an hour, the sea level had already breached the warning line, saltwater spraying ever deeper inland.
"Are you ready?"
Magic Miss had already brought over a crate of the steam bombs Jenkins had acquired. She stood inside a small shop, sheltered from the rain, and called out to Hathaway. The shop's owner had fled at the first sign of trouble, leaving the interior in a ransacked ss. A bullet had pierced the display window, but instead of shattering, the glass just held a neat hole surrounded by a web of cracks.
"I'm ready."
Hathaway nodded. After thanking Magic Miss one last ti, she charged toward the warehouse district, where the sound of gunfire was thickest.
Magic Miss took a deep breath, traced a faintly glowing rune onto the surface of a bomb with her fingertip, and then hurled it with all her might toward the area with the densest gunfire.
She had no idea who was over there, nor did she care.
Since Hathaway had already disappeared from view, Magic Miss could not be sure if her friend had made it through the warehouse district. So, she kept throwing, not stopping until all eighteen bombs were gone.
By the ti she was done, the gunfire ahead had been silenced, leaving only the sound of the downpour drumming against rubble and ruins, and the distant, chaotic din.
"Skylark, this is all I can do for you. Good luck."
Magic Miss rinsed her hands in the rainwater before wiping her face with a drenched sleeve. She turned to leave, only to see a squad of figures in rain ponchos, rifles slung over their backs, rushing toward her.
Before Magic Miss could act to dispatch them, the man in the lead raised a hand and spoke.
"Apologies, miss. We're not looking for trouble. Were you the one who threw those bombs just now?"
"Do you have friends over there?"
Magic Miss demanded. She was in no mood to stand in the rain chatting with strangers.
"No, no, not at all. Who's over there is no concern of ours. The thing is, the bombs you were using are a special model. The explosion sounds different from a standard steam bomb—I can tell the difference. We provided that batch this morning to... to a gentleman of very high standing. We had our own mission, but after we relayed his request for assistance to our superiors, they ordered us to abandon everything and covertly ensure his safety. The problem is, we can't find him anywhere. Do you happen to know where he is?"
The man spoke in a rapid-fire rush, his accent pure Nolan dialect.
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