A blue-white flash of lightning forked across the sky and split into shreds of thunder, as the storm burst over the city. The trees that skirted the fields in a thin fringe bent like tassels in the wind. Lightning flashed in swift, stabbing spasms, ripping the clouds apart, while the noise of thunder deafened Raphael with the weight of crackling, tumbling sound. Although the clouds hid the sun, the whole plain was lit by the shivering glare of lightning. Rain fell in slanting, driven sheets.
But the Sorcerer had not planned idly. At the first thunderbolt the whole city awoke to swarming activity. The skyscrapers suddenly bristled with metal spines. From where he stood, Raphael could make out armies of mechanicos swarming like black ants over the roofs, covering them with twisted metal nets, which caught the lightning and wove it into baskets of fire. Lightning crackled up and down the sides of the great buildings in great loops and whorls, while molten metal splashed through the air in white-hot showers as it fell hissing to the ground below.
The wind howled in angry gusts, sweeping the great skyscrapers clean of their mechanical men, uprooting trees, tearing down steel sign-boards like scraps of paper, while the river rose and swept foaming and yellow across the plain, bearing on its surface trees and stumps and broken branches.
The whole city will be swept away, thought Raphael, and the Sorcerer will surrender. I hope Cassie is safe. But he was frightened for all that and shivered where he stood. Would the river wash away the garden walls? So be it.
Then Raphael saw an army of mechanicos appear upon the banks of the river, followed by tractors towing strange engines. Plows and steam shovels seemed to rise out of the tortured earth in companies. To Raphael watching on the hill, ditches and canals formed as though dug by magic. Through the rain, the boy could see a huge wall rising slowly, pushing back the river from the city, which loomed up like a craggy island in a yellow sea.
The sound of mighty conflict came as the mechanicos labored. The roar of steam engines and beating hammers offset the throaty growl of the river. Fast though the water flooded down upon them, the city walls rose faster. Great ditches drained off the river. The mechanicos would save Mechana.
Raphael was appalled. The Sorcerer would win. He would never save Cassandra. The Sorcerer would destroy the living world. It was no use, he would go down to the plain and surrender, he would beg Mechanus for the life of his sister, he would exchange, give himself up. But what use would that be? The Sorcerer could now take them both. Raphael commanded the storm to cease. ‘I won’t give up! I won’t give up! I’ll make other plans.’ Raphael walked desperately up and down. ‘Gæa, Gæa,’ he muttered; ‘help me.’
Then an idea came to him. He would call upon the earthquake and the volcano, and so overturn the city.
Raphael raised his right hand fiercely and called once more upon Gæa.
Almost instantly plumes of smoke rose from the hills which circled the city of the Sorcerer and the whole earth shuddered. A light haze drifted lazily up from the city. Then with a sudden roar the top of the highest hill of all burst in a cloud of black smoke, and ashes began to fall silently, carried by the light breeze. They shrouded the sun, and twilight deepened into a thicker darkness. In the gloom, Raphael could see the mountain pouring out fire and smoke like a huge blast furnace.