midday
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 .