A Knell from the Sky
A Knell from the Sky
The sky was loosely specked with puffs of white clouds that seemed so close to her that she almost felt they were within her reach. If she really wanted to touch them, however, she had to fly up for another several hundred meters.
The entire hot air balloon was colored in white and blue, perfectly fused with the sky from a distance. Like the "Easterly Wind No.1", Lightning was also in camouflage. Since His Highness had told them that the raid must be quick and unexpected, the First Army landed before the boat arrived at the pier of Silver City and marshaled toward the backside of the mountain ridge nearby on foot.
Thanks to Sylvie's monitoring, the army successfully reached the camp unnoticed. After tents were pitched, the "Cloud Gazer" slowly rose and was ready for bombing the following day.
It had taken them a week to commute, and now it was exactly the beginning of mid-autumn.
The white figure in front of the balloon was Maggie. As it was inconvenient to observe in the basket, she took over the guidance and scouting work. After turning herself into a goshawk with white tail feathers, Maggie was thus able to quickly capture various roads connecting cities and towns, as well as carriages running on these roads. It seemed that goshawk's eyes worked better than a telescope for scouting.
Lightning was happy to know that Maggie at least could not help adjust the landing spot of the bomb. Otherwise, she would truly become an idler.
"Are you tired?" Anna asked while leaning against the basket. "Get in to take a rest. There're no demons right now anyway."
The little girl shook her head. "I can fly at this speed for a whole day."
"Are you a bit nervous?" Wendy also joined the conversation.
"Certainly not." Lightning twitched her mouth. "I've practiced a lot of times. Plus, the palace is huge. There's no way I'll miss the target."
"Really?" Wendy smiled. "In any event, don't force yourself. His Highness has said safety is a top priority. Plus... you don't need to worry too much about what happened during the investigation of Devil's Town. It wasn't your fault."
"Well, I..."
Wendy continued in a gentle voice, "Everybody knows that you've been in low spirits for the past few days. You weren't afraid, but were simply not good at battling. If I were you, I wouldn't necessarily have done any better."
"Wendy's right. Most witches don't possess the combatting skills that Nightingale does." Anna comforted Lightning. "Come in and have a rest. You'll need a lot of magic power to adjust the landing spot of the bomb later."
Persuaded, Lightning let out an imperceptible snort and flew into the basket, head hanging. Before she completely landed, Wendy had pressed the little girl firmly into her chest. "Nobody will blame you, so you don't need to cast the blame on yourself, understand?"
"Yes..."
...
After flying for the whole morning, Maggie returned to the Cloud Gazer while flapping her wings and reported to the three people in the basket. "The king's city of the Kingdom of Graycastle is right at the front. We're almost there, choo."
Lightning left the basket and raised the telescope. Like Prince Roland had said, the magnificent city wall of the king's city, which wound like a blue thin thread that twisted and crooked along the whole city, could be easily detected from above. In the middle of the gray color block stood out a nail-sized white dot.
Based on the original plan, they should have first distributed pamphlets before dumping the "Easterly Wind No.1". After several trials, however, they had discovered it was impossible to have the flyers land at their designated spot, even with loadings. If they lowered the height, they would then be easily spotted by people on the ground. After all, the "Cloud Gazer" was not a tiny balloon. People would naturally look up when sheets drifted down and thereby see them flying in the sky.
As such, His Highness had at last asked Theo to spread the message, whereas they were only responsible for bombing the palace in the air.
Wendy manipulated air currents to let the basket hover above the king's city.
"Are you ready?"
Lightning gave an approving nod and said, "Open the valve."
With a clink, the heavy bomb was detached from the basket and plunged straight down to the ground. As the loading was abruptly discharged, the hot air balloon rose swiftly.
Lightning was too familiar with the steps coming next.
As the parachute at the end of the "Easterly Wind No.1" slowly opened, Lightning soon caught up with the bomb and started to adjust its trajectory little by little.
For witches of the Witch Cooperation Association, the king's city was familiar to them. During the time they had traveled to Barbarian Land to seek Holy Mountain, they had hidden in the slum of the city for a few months. The purpose of staying in the king's city was to collect food and recruit new members. In fact, Soraya and Echo had joined the Witch Cooperation Association during that time period. Although having not personally experienced herself, Lightning had heard witches were less tolerated in the king's city than in any other cities. Witches were executed almost every month at the square in the outer city. Therefore, their stay in the king's city had been the shortest among all others, for to linger one more days had meant more suffer from the loss of their sisters.
Lightning did not like this flourishing capital at all. If she could throw the bomb right above Timothy's head and end his regime, she would be very glad to do so. She believed that if Roland were the ruler of the Kingdom of Graycastle, there would have been no such tragedies.
Right now she just got an opportunity to correct the error.
Winds whistled in her ears. As Lightning flew lower, the landscape below started to become clearer. More details of the palace in the inner city were presented.
Compared with the low-rise residences where peasants lived, the palace was much larger. Its main architecture consisted of a dome temple, a reception building and a tower castle. There were also numerous complementary buildings such as barns, barracks and stables. In view of the fact that the castle was fortified and that its roof structure was complicated, Roland picked the temple as the bombing target because it was easier for them to ignite the fuze there.
With the bomb dropping rapidly, it was soon about time to detach the parachute. Lightning pulled the trigger to let the sleeve separate from the bomb while at the same time quickly flying upward with the sleeve.
Although she remembered His Highness had told her repeatedly to fly high enough to keep herself safe before the bomb landed and not to turn around to see the explosion, the little girl still lowered her head in curiosity.
A blinding flash lighted up the temple, and soon a fireball began to grow in size.
The white illumination immediately turned into a bright orange-red color and was then engulfed by the surrounding smoke and ashes that sprang up. The blast only took a few seconds. Next Lightning heard a deafening explosion that almost tipped her over in the air.
She had never seen a real battlefield full of bombards before, but she was totally shocked by the monstrous power of the "Easterly Wind No.1". The noise produced by the bomb was 10 times more than all the sounds produced by those terrifying weapons that discharged iron balls.
Smogs that ejected from windows enveloped the pillars surrounding the temple, permeating throughout the garden and the hallway outside. Presently, several cracks appeared around the dome where the bomb landed.
Lightning's attention was attracted to the explosion. She gazed at the last of the temple while holding her breath.
In a second, black cracks were all over the dome like spilled ink that streamed down. As the bombing continued, the dome finally failed to support itself and collapsed, kicking up an even thicker gust of ashes and crumbs.
The temple of the palace crumbled under the fierce attack of the "Easterly Wind No.1".