Within an hour after the fall of darkness we reached the outskirts of Nunami, or rather, its edge, for it was walled in with massive stone walls and battlements, with a sturdy gate of twenty foot width being placed at the northern, southern, eastern, and western ends. The trees hung right over the walls, and as such we were able to take positions from which we could descend into the city when the time to do so came. Yet we were still rendered invisible by the thick foliage. Night's zenith blew in slowly on the wind like the belabored breaths of a dying man, and after a period of worry, it came: midnight, the appointed hour. No sooner had the moon reached its utmost height, shrouding the lands in a shadowless vortex, than a great blaze erupted from the northern lands, and it rose almost instantly to its estimated height of five miles. It was a terrible sight to behold, for any flame is a captivating display of inorganic life, but a pillar of flame several miles high is more than just an enlarged specimen, for it plays host to a great horde of phantasmal apparitions that wrestle ferociously with one another. As the flame shot upwards it cast a great light down on everything that rivaled the illumination of midday. At first I feared lest the light should show our silhouettes to the Zards, as we were between them and it, but it did not, or at least they took no notice of it if it did, for we were quite undetected in our hiding place. Our worries were far from over though, for now came the crucial point in our plans: in order for our small force to infiltrate the city and place the atomic anionizers, the Zards must not only have been distracted and preoccupied with the blaze, but they had also to leave the city almost empty and go to the lake itself, for if a cry was raised, or any substantial resistance attempted, the complex procedures to detonate the anionizers properly, so as to level the city but not the surrounding country, may have been hindered. There were several factors on our side though, the element of surprise being the foremost, for in their excitement the Zardovian resistance would likely mistake us for a regular sized army and flee in fear at our supposed superiority, especially since the presence of me, the kinsman redeemer, was known to the Zards. Also, the Zards were known to be curious and careless and ruled by the desire for excitement, meaning that if an entertaining undertaking was possible, they would pursue it, no matter how dangerous or ill-advised.