Una:A few people definitely tense up when Una comes down near the fires, but that doesn’t last long once it becomes obvious what she’s doing.
Being able to ignore the heat helps. She can get right up to places the villagers are having trouble reaching, moving debris and checking around the damaged buildings without having to worry about the flames the way everyone else does.
At one point she catches movement under part of a collapsed roof and finds a man pinned beneath a beam. He’s hurt and half-conscious, but alive. With Una holding the wreckage up, a couple of villagers are able to drag him clear.
After that, people stop watching her quite so nervously. A few even start pointing her toward places they haven’t been able to check yet.
Her magical senses are a little less dramatic.
There’s magic around, but not anything that seems tied directly to the attack. Vitré has the usual little things here and there, charms, enchanted gear, and the general feel of a place where magic is part of life, but the fires and the broken wall don’t give her any obvious magical residue.
From the air she does get a better look at the damage, though. Most of it seems concentrated around the breach and the streets leading away from it. There are tracks outside the wall as well, leading off toward the woods.
Whoever hit the town didn’t stay long.
Captain Steiner: Steiner’s voice carries well enough, and for a minute people actually do start moving where he points them.
It just doesn’t hold together.
These aren’t troops waiting for somebody to take charge. They’re people trying to put out fires, find family, and figure out who’s still missing. One man Steiner sends toward the wounded turns around when somebody calls his name from a damaged house. A couple of others start on the bucket line, then peel away when they hear someone shouting about a child.
The more Steiner tries to sort people into groups, the more the town keeps pulling them back apart.
What does help is when he stops trying to organize the whole place at once and starts dealing with whatever is right in front of him. Moving a cart out of the way. Getting two people focused on one injured villager. Showing somebody how to brace a damaged doorway instead of just yelling over the noise.
An older man covered in soot eventually gives him a tired look.
"Captain, they’ll listen. Just not all at once."
He glances toward the street, where somebody has started calling out names of the missing.
"Too much happened too fast."
Steiner can see what he means. People are trying to help, but half the town is still waiting to find out who made it through the attack.
Aliouna:The change is immediate enough that the nearest villagers notice, even if they don’t understand exactly what Aliouna just did.
Once they see what she can lift, though, nobody worries much about the details.
A man near one of the worst collapses points her toward a house where part of the upper floor has come down into the street.
"There. Two inside, maybe three. We couldn’t shift it."
With the extra strength behind her, Aliouna can.
She gets enough of the weight off the wreckage for the others to pull one person free, then another. By the time they’re working on the third, a few more townsfolk have started following her lead without being asked twice.
Her question about the attackers gets answers almost as soon as people realize she isn’t going to stop helping while they talk.
"Soldiers. Looked NGR."
Another voice cuts in from behind her.
"Or wanted us to think they were."
A woman helping with the wounded shakes her head.
"There was an explosion first. Then they came through the breach. Fast. Took people when they left."
Somebody nearby adds, quieter,
"Children too."
That changes the mood around the group more than anything else. People stop talking about the damage for a moment and start naming the missing instead.
Sid:Sid takes his time and lets the noise around him sort itself out.
Shouting. Fire. Falling timber. People moving through the streets.
Under all of that, his senses pick up something else.
A heartbeat.
Faint, but steady.
It’s coming from beneath what used to be the front of a house, most of it buried under roof timbers and broken stone. Nobody is working there. From the looks of it, they must have already assumed anyone inside was dead.
Sid points toward the rubble.
"There’s someone alive under there."
One of the villagers looks at him, then at the wreckage.
"You’re sure?"
Another breath. Another heartbeat.
"Yes."
That gets people moving.
As they start clearing debris, Sid catches a second sign of life nearby. Much weaker this time, someone buried farther back under the same collapse. He’s able to guide the rescuers toward both of them instead of having them tear the whole pile apart blindly.
It takes a while, but they eventually pull out a badly injured woman and a boy who can’t be more than ten or eleven. Both are alive.
Once they’re clear, Sid checks the area again. There are plenty of people moving around nearby, but nothing else beneath the rubble that his senses can pick out.
One of the men who helped with the rescue gives him a long look.
"We’d given up on that house."
He glances toward the two survivors.
"Good thing you didn’t."
Jax:Jax’s sensors don’t pick up anything that looks like an immediate threat. Whatever happened here, the attackers are gone.
At the breach, though, there’s plenty left to look at.
The wall didn’t come down from simple impact. The stone is blown outward and inward in places, with blackening and shattered masonry around the center of the break. Whatever made the hole looks a lot more like explosives than something simply smashing its way through.
There’s no clear sign of an armored vehicle coming through it either. No deep tread marks, no gouging from tracks or wheels.
There are footprints, though. A lot of them.
Most are booted, and some are heavy enough that even Jax notices the difference. There are smaller prints mixed in as well, along with the mess left by people moving in a hurry. The trail leads away from Vitré and toward the woods beyond town.
It’s not old.
By the time Jax reaches the collapsed doorway, the people there are still trying to figure out how they’re going to move the beam without bringing more of the structure down.
Mandy makes that part easier.
"Stand aside, people."
They do.
Once Jax has a grip on it, the beam shifts with considerably less drama than the villagers were expecting. A few of them hurry in as soon as there’s room to get through.
His question gets an answer from one of the men nearby.
"Explosion first. Then soldiers came through."
Another villager, still breathing hard from the work, adds,
"Looked NGR."
He glances toward the breach.
"They didn’t stay. Took people when they left."
Someone farther back says,
"Some of the children too."
