“Never do things halfway. Either see through the job to the end, or never take it in the first place.” - Saying attributed to Caradeen Molock, Founder of the Adventurer’s Guild.

As the flames had been quenched by the rain for over an hour by then, there was no real worry about burning themselves on the embers and hot ashes left behind by the conflagration. While the cavalry rode past the area where the main bulk of remains lay, the force of five thousand – including several platoons from the Free Lances – approached the earthen dome, as if there were any survivors from the blaze, it was most likely there.

Burnt corpses in various degrees of damage were scattered all over the plains. The ones with least damage were the people who had gathered their courage and attempted to rush through the wall of fire that surrounded them. Out of these people, maybe one in ten made it through the conflagration with their lives, but for most of them, only temporarily.

The large scale of the conflagration meant that any attempt to rush through the flames was near suicidal. Out of the few that made it out through the flames, four out of five succumbed to their injuries shortly afterwards, with only a handful of lucky survivors who survived long enough to be taken into custody by the Levain troops, where they received medical treatment. Even then, they sported horrible burns all over their bodies, and it was doubtful whether they’d survive the week or not.

Those who had been trapped and fallen to the blaze had far more tragic ends.

More often than not, the only thing they left behind were blackened skeletons as well as the metal parts of their armor and weapons. The heat had burnt away everything else without mercy. The sight of tens of thousands of skeletons – both people as well as various mounts – proved to be too much for some of the younger militiamen, as Reinhardt heard some retching noises from their direction.

Not that he blamed them, for many of the youngsters in Alycea’s Platoon – who he’d brought along on purpose – also looked pale and on the verge of regurgitating their breakfasts. To their credit though, they held it in and managed to continue the march stoically. He felt a touch of pride over that, considering how young most of those kids were.

With the noise of bones being broken accompanying their footsteps, the group of five thousand soldiers encircled the earthen dome where the nobles and elites had tried to shelter themselves during the blaze. The dome was fully enclosed from all sides, with a moat roughly half a meter wide and roughly as deep around it, full of ash-sodden rainwater.

Despite the fighting where the second-class soldiers tried to force their way into the shelter, those inside managed to push them away before the flame completely engulfed the area and the dome was sealed. That only left the question of whether those inside the dome survived the blaze or not, which was honestly doubtful, even with all the effort they put up.

Several tall and strong militiamen stepped towards the dome with wooden mauls in their hands as they started to break it. The earthen dome had been baked by the heat, which made it hard and brittle, and it was clearly going to take a while to create an opening through it. Even so, other groups of militiamen pointed their spears towards the dome in case those inside were still conscious and decided to make a final attempt at resistance.

There was no such thing, though, and the work continued unimpeded until finally one of the mauls broke through the thick earthen layer.

Almost immediately, the militia soldier who broke through the dome recoiled away and took several steps backwards, followed by the others. An unpleasant stench, one that made people wonder if some lunatic had been boiling vomit, piss and shit until it was concentrated, wafted out from the opening, and made many of the soldiers nearby cringe at the smell. Some of them vomited on the spot.

Fortunately Ze’phane and several other wind mages conjured a breeze to blow the stench away before it could nauseate too many people. After the breeze blew for a while, the stench lessened, and the soldiers continued their work. It was not too long before their wooden mauls created a larger opening, one large enough for several people to walk through side by side, and that was when the fate of those nobles and elites inside the dome was revealed.

After the stench had wafted out, nobody had expected to find those people alive, but neither had they expected to discover over a thousand – the high nobles had attempted to shelter themselves together with their officers and trusted knights – thoroughly cooked corpses within. From what little expression that could be identified off their bloated features, the people inside clearly died in great agony.

It took a while more before several investigators finally pieced together the clues they found and realized what had happened. Apparently, after the earthen dome was sealed, the water mages within kept conjuring water to wet the inside walls of the dome in the hope of staving off the flames. The heat was too intense, however, and despite their best efforts, that water ended up boiling instead.

Their attempts to add more water to cool things down only resulted in an increase of steam being produced by the heat. The steam had nowhere to go in the enclosed dome, which ended up filling the dome with pressurized steam. Many of the people in the dome had already died or fallen unconscious from the heat by then, and those were the lucky ones.

The rest had been cooked alive inside their own shelter, as their desperate attempt to create an outlet for the steam at the top was too little, too late. Not a single person survived, out of those who sheltered themselves inside the dome. Every single one died a tragic death with their corpses barely identifiable as they were so bloated and disfigured.

In fact, Estelle and the other commanders only managed to identify the late High Lord by his armor, as his face had bloated beyond recognition.