I Am The Truth II

Chapter XXXVIII: Part I: Breaching the Floodgates

3 Days Ago

The first that came was a great rush of refugees, pouring with force out of the tunnels in their bid to escape. The Ataraxian border force had no time to process before they were confronted by thousands of these Magnorites, all of them panicking.

"Everyone calm down!" An officer yelled over the din. "You need to show identification of some sort to be let in."

Everyone tried forming a line, but the border security was overwhelmed by the numbers. Thousands more were pouring in, the pressure from the solid wall of rocky creatures so great that one of the guards was forced to fire a warning shot.

"Everyone stay back!" An Ardoni yelled. "We will all be able to let you in if you let us do our job-"

But the sea of Magnorites had grown too big, too fast. The rising clamor drowned out the voices of the desperate guards, eventually resulting in the wall of rocky beasts crashing through the gates. A stampede was forming, with hundreds breaking through the mere steel fences as they tried to get to safety. 

"Sound the alarm!" He yelled, and the sirens immediately began screaming.

The noise did nothing to slow the stampede however, and combined with the frantic yells of the Magnorites, the commotion was enough to probably wake up anyone within a three-mile radius.

The Ardoni was staying well away from the entrance now, doing his best not to be trampled by hundreds of rocky beasts, each of whom the weight of two full-sized cars. Hundreds more were still coming, but a different noise was filling the atmosphere. The senior officer could see much larger silhouettes appearing in the far end of the tunnel, and he realized these weren't people. These were vehicles. The Ardoni knew now why the Magnorites were so desperate to flee.

"RUN!" He roared, suddenly switching to running with the others.

Because seconds later, the entrance was hit by a shower of Aggressium blasts.

Hubris was awoken by the loud raid sirens, their ear-piercing noise so haunting that he was snapped out of his sleep in less than a second. The time was hardly three hours past midnight, yet the sky wasn't fully black for some reason. He hobbled towards the window, seeing many of his neighbors already outside, facing down the hill towards the distant south of Ataraxia.

He was out of his house within minutes, looking down the street. Others on the street had also come out, worried murmurs filling the air as people heard the incessant booming. He saw a few kids hide behind their parents, the horrible sound of the sirens scaring them to the core. In the distance towards the south beyond the Ataraxian metropolitan, there was a red haze that he recognized to be from Songfire.

"What is going on over there, Ky' Hubris?" One of his neighbors called from the house directly north of his.

"I do not-" Hubris began, but was interrupted by his phone.

It was buzzing loudly, and he immediately answered the call, not taking his eyes off what he was seeing.

"Onyx!" He said immediately. "What is happening over there-?"

"THEY ARE EVERYWHERE!" A voice shrieked, so loudly that Hubris had to check his phone wasn't on speak mode. 

"Onyx-?"

"Tanks rolling across the Kings district!" Onyx yelled. "The border forces cannot hold them off any longer than an hour-"

What Onyx said next was drowned out by the loudest blast Hubris had ever heard, both from the phone and in-person. In the distance, the red haze had sudden brightened, and Hubris saw a massive fireball rise into the sky. The smoke was being illuminated by the red Aggressium light, making part of the sky take on multiple shades between red and black. The far north of Ataraxia was on the slopes of a mountain, from which Hubris and the other locals could see the rest of the city.