There was once upon a time a site... which had been on life support for more than one year. There had been three writers left, then us two, and a post at more than one month wasn't enough.

There had to be an end to the site sometime. I hoped my partner would do the last post, but ultimately I had to do it. And I just did it. The town the story was happening in went off in a blast. If there were any survivors by miracle, their story is not told. It's a follow up for anyone or no one to write. But I am happy that there is a closure, that there isn't an abandoned site, but an ended story.

Sigurd cared less about how strange the new room looked - but he had learnt that the electric lights shouldn't look like these were looking, and he silently wondered if they were going to flip out like in the power outages regularly happening in the refuge.

He saw the crystal and two beings working somewhere around it, and he looked questioningly at the other man. His pistol was ready to fire - and it looked like he had to. His teachings as a knight would have wanted him to shout: "Freeze in the name of the law, or I'm firing!" but in these circumstances, he gave up on these, thinking it would give an undue advantage to their adversaries.

He understood that he had to do something to shut the machine down. Therefore, he fired his pistol once at the man and once at the beast by its side.

A third was intended for the machine itself... and as soon as he fired it, he saw an outburst of light. Flames starting dancing from the infernal device, while a deafening sound made his heart rush for a couple more beats, while the pain encircled him. At the same time, he felt a sudden wave of heat hitting him. Then, he had a sensation of floating, before not feeling anything, anymore.

The explosion went soaring away in multicolour rags of fire, encircling the gem and making it blow up in thousands of little pieces, the whole town set ablaze in belching flames with it.

In the ashes of the town, a thick smoke rose, twisting, writhing, changing shape, covering the ruins of the town like a funeral shroud.