01.12.2016
((This feels like it could be the story to explain a diease that starts in a town and then spread through people fleeing the town, but they end up spreading it and infecting others.))
Word spread through Harsenth of the attacks. Chustal, Fonlal, and Harsenth put their small joint army on guard through the day and into the night. The original group of people who had fled Founsel had passed through here the day before (right?) and tried to spread word to the cities in their town squares and bars, but they were taken for lunatics and rapidly dismissed.
The caravan continued on and passed out of Harsenth on the way for Bansuth. The thousand people living between Chustal, Fonlal, and Harsenth filled the streets in a clamor to stand on ground high enough to see the wreckage of Toupil and Soulsil. They dared not go much nearer. When no smoke could be seen from the cities in the distance, some waved off the story as rumor. But when asked if they’d go to the cities and verify their claim, none rose to the occasion.
A group of young kids showed up clad in outfits and armor two sizes too large, but were eager. They vowed to tramp over and see the towns for themselves and report back. The crowd was split on whether they approved, but the kids proceeded regardless. And the rumors sprung up now.
Fantasizing at what happened as is so common when the truth is unknown. Anything and everything seems most likely then. And when the kids returned with their tale of the total destruction of Toupil and Soulsil, they were at once believed and disbelieved. One of the group had foreseen the difficulty in believing without proof, so he had drug the cornerstone from Soulsil on a makeshift stretcher. The cornerstone belonged to the town hall and served as proof of its destruction, and, as extrapolated, of that of the rest of the town.
The children said when asked that it seemed eerily quiet, but not much else was to be said. The Mayor of Harsenth made a rare appearance and declared an emergency, stating that all people not in the army were ordered to be in their homes until he had a chance to investigate the disaster as had befallen their neighbors and how it might impact them.