He barked out a peal of cynical laughter, broken intermittently by another coughing fit. "You expect fire control after what you saw on the ether?" He bellowed, his voice echoing hollowly in the flame-strewn silence. "Maybe you should fire me now!"
Despite the flames that licked ravenously at his protective barrier, Tescadji felt strangely cold after his tirade. But another strange thing, he realized, was the fact that he could hear no ambulance or fire fighter sirens on approach.
Something was terribly wrong. He could feel it. With this much devastation, there was no way that there could not be a response from local authorities.
"It's unbelievable what a little knowledge can do," a voice said out of nowhere. Tescadji's training prevented him from being easily startled, but there being no source for the voice left him unnerved at the least. It sounded far away and almost garbled, as if some unearthly creature had been speaking it from the bowels of a deep, invisible cave.
"Who's there?" Tescadji said to the nothingness. "Who are you? Show yourself!"
"I'll be more than happy to, if you'll only give me a moment," The voice replied, this time closer and clearer than before. "I hate to travel this way, but it being an emergency …"
"Chief?" Tescadji said, now recognizing the voice.
The world in front of him bent and warped, as if it were a reflection set upon recently troubled water. The oscillating ripples then bent into a slender, human-like shape that congealed in its center, transforming as it came ever forward, into Jenius.
"I told HQ that one man wouldn't be able to stop this," Jenius said, dismally scanning the ruin. "I'm sorry that you had to be here to see this, Tescadji; I really am."
"Do you feel any signs of life?" Tescadji said, steadfastly holding onto the possibility, however faint, that there could be somebody -anybody- still alive. Elves, after all, could sense life, and so if anyone could tell for certain, Jenius would.
But the elf put finality on that hope's extinguishment. After briefly closing his eyes and concentrating, Jenius sadly shook his head.
"I'm sorry."
"Bloody hell!" Tescadji spat out, and kicked at a nearby slab of concrete rubble. "All of them, dead!"
"I'm afraid so."
"And I couldn't do a thing about it!" Tescadji snarled bitterly, pacing back and forth across the concrete and marble strewn walkway. "It's not like I didn't try, chief, I …"