Falling.

It rains, it rains,
they said.
What, what does it rain?
he asked

Blood, they cried.

When the news had come in, the Captain of the Guard did not know how to react. The runner was out of breath, panting at the door with colour staining steadily across his cheekbones, and all the Captain could do was stare, and blink, and remain speechless.
It was as if he were dreaming, his eyes unseeing, but in fact he was lost in the realm of shock unable to function even enough to imagine what horrors must be awaiting them. He spoke finally, as if from a distant place, and startled the runner that had been sent for his reply in the first place.
"Icaryns?" He asked the man, his voice a faint echo. "Abnormals? What is it!?"
The runner blanched, not expecting such an outburst or demand at the last, and swallowed the lump in his throat.
"We don't know, sir," he replied. His voice cracked.
The Captain glared at him, as though blaming him for the misfortunes plaguing him, and strode past the man. His boots scuffed the worn rug insistently as he strode, passing doors both closed and open leading into opulent rooms, or officer's corridors, or down to the jail, but he didn't deviate from the main corridor and the well-worn rug that marked the passage of many men before him.
He approached a set of double doors paneled in stained wood, opened them both with a loud bang, and approached the railing of the deck with a cautiousness he hadn't shown when he so carelessly dented the wood of the doors.
He beheld it, the rain, and the lightning that forked from the sky as though the unholy magics of the Great Demons was upon them. There was silence, though, when those arcs of blue and green faded out of his mind's eye, and the lack of thunder, and screaming, chilled him to the bone.
"Master Diril," he shouted to a man about two metres down the deck. His voice sounded muted, even to him, but he spoke nonetheless. The officer there turned towards him, but the expression of confusion on his face told the Captain that he hadn't understood his words.
The Captain grunted with frustration and unsheathed his sword, gripping the hilt tightly, and approached the officer. The man paled as the runner had before him but held still.
The Captain didn't make it to the officer, and the officer never managed to see what had happened to him, for as he blinked his eyes and belatedly began to step back, sound returned and as it did, the two of them heard all the screaming and all the thunder they could ever want to hear and disappeared under a flurry of tawny feathers and scarlet rain.

***

The bells tolled until the very end, and the people screamed their voices hoarse as the storm beat down on their city, on their whole world, relentless in its drive to suck the hope and life out of everyone who suffered it. When the buildings began to crumble as though some magic unknown was chewing through the brick and mortar and wood and nails holding them up, final despair was given, and received.
The night descended upon the city with a suddenness that chewed through whatever last dregs of hope the inhabitants of the fairest Ocaloyan city had withheld. It was in that darkness that their assailants, unseen and unknown, came down in full and pulled the people from their crumbled homes and fallen churches. Shrill cries in the night, a nightmare of feathers and blood and hissing birds was all the people knew.
And then they were gone, too.
Dawn returned, illuminating the story of Odelas' fall mutely.