[ @hopeandharmonizing // for salem ]
Bleak.
The ruptured pavement sings underfoot with acute unease. Salem slows to trace the husk of a gutted aircraft. Her fingertips pulp, streaking darkly down until bone scrapes the frosted metal; and there are bodies in the cockpit, still. A cloying miasma of pain and terror. They had not died quickly.
She lids her eyes, exhaling, and steps away. This part of the city, nestled against the flank of the academy, bore the brunt of her assault on the fleet: shattered battleships lie amid the rubble of buildings crushed by falling debris. Even the school, well-fortified as it is, had not emerged unscathed, although most of the campus is still standing. Her lips purse.
The Atlesian military never did impress; but even judged by its own standard, it had risen to the occasion of defending its city with dire incompetence.
Absently, she sets the wreckage beside her ablaze. For a moment, the only sound is the greedy roar of unnatural fire; Salem watches it burn in unmoving silence, thoughtful.
Life simmers beneath her feet, but nothing stirs on the surface. The stillness—the unrelenting fear is confounding. Her forces are gone: eradicated in an instant by the hand of a child. From a flock of almost a quarter million, less than a thousand remain, and yet…
Gnawing dread still chokes the city.
Bleak. Bleaker, if anything.
Slowly, she turns away from the makeshift pyre, gaze finding the academy once more. Her eyes narrow. The staff is still in the vault, if the unaltered presence of its crisp power in the foundations of Atlas is any indication, which perhaps rules out Cinder as the one responsible; and if not her—
Salem stills, lips parting as she inhales sharply. A breath of change. The thinnest trace of aura limns one of the drafts churned by the fire, clear as new ice in all the smoke and terror. She glances sideways and finds nothing but lifeless rubble. Desolation.
But oh, yes, now that she’s paying attention to it the whisper of aura in the air is unmistakable, and the cold implication of a smile touches her lips. “Let’s not be shy,” she says, low and venomous. Then, flatly: “…Come into the open, or leave. I don’t care either way. But I will be unpleasant if you persist in skulking.”
