We almost took another city today, only to get there too late to rescue the civilians from being purged. Men, women, sick, healthy, all of them burned to death in with a single, massive spell. If they were able and willing to do this to a single small, relatively unimportant city then they can do this again, and likely will. The last time they purged a city was because the city was in an ideal shape for the methods they had available, and they wanted to deny us their population.

I don't think that we can take another city without the same thing happening to them. It would be easy enough for me to stop it from hurting my own people, my forest is fire-resistant enough to render an attack like this moot, but if they bomb their own civilians like this then there is nothing I can do. I simply don't have the time to put myself into a position where I can do something about it. Not without a month's worth of practice and preparation, and maybe not even then as the enemy would no doubt also strive to perfect this method.

The scholars are already referring to this as the bloodiest war in history. This isn't a war, not really, this is a brutal slaughter, a game of chicken where neither side can afford to be the first one to stop anymore. If this is how they treat their loyal citizens, I have no doubt that they would do much worse to their enemies.

I need to get my people out of their cities, now! I need to get their people out of their cities. They need to scatter into the hills, hide in hostile dungeons, dive into the ocean if necessary. It'll kill fewer people. And it needs to happen yesterday, they need to get out of there before the enemy purges them.

I need to calm down and think straight, rushing into this will only get more people killed. A coordinated mass exodus is the best solution, if everyone flees all at once then we should be able to get as many people as possible out. Fleeing for the hills is a bad idea, with that kind of magical might the vast majority of them will be slaughtered like livestock. I have no doubt that they can and would burn the hills themselves just to keep us from claiming them.

There are no dungeons that I would be able to bribe that could protect all of these people. The only ones that could do it don't care about any of the things that I have.

That isn't entirely true, there is one dungeon that might be capable of it, me. The only way to ensure that as many people as possible survive is to bring them directly here. City teleporters would do it. City teleporters are the only things that would do it, we never had any truly skilled teleporters. Even if we did, even a true immortal teleporter wouldn't be able to pull something like this off on their own.

Everyone agrees that this is risky. Everyone agrees that this is the only thing that might work. Everyone wants to save the civilians, though not all of us want to for purely selfless reasons. We need the population plain and simple, the war effort is unsustainable otherwise. It is easy enough to train a craftsman or a soldier, but we don't have anyone who isn't already either a craftsman or a soldier or contributing in some other specialized way.

It is very risky, if we mess this up then we will end up with an army in our borders. But we can't afford not to risk it.

Three days, that is how long this will take to set up. That is how long this has to take to set up, any more than that and there is no point. People better at this than me will organize everything, I just need to prepare the welcoming comity. Simple things, like leveling one of the countless empty cities we have around its teleporter and setting everything up to welcome a vast amount of refugees, and an army.

I should burn my Fate while preparing this.

Anyway, Good Night Diary.