When he rose to his feet again and looked down, all he could see was a fine red mist falling down. It fell on the mimes and painted their faces crimson. A pool of shadow lay far down below, and as he watched it flowed, like water, down the street. The mimes looked up, wordlessly.

The hot air balloon rose up into the sky, far above the city.

They felt rather than heard the second explosion. Somewhere to the east of them, in what had until very recently been the back room of Jefferson & Norvell, Medici, of Asclepius Gardens, the fish had finally detonated.

It manifested first as the taste of purple. They felt it on their tongues, against their inner cheeks. It set their teeth on edge. The rooftops wobbled like cloth. In the avenues down below, the revellers stopped and stared. A man pushing a food cart looked briefly puzzled and then turned into a pink flamingo. He spread his wings experimentally and took to the air.

The towers of the city began to melt. A horse-drawn cart swerved sharply to avoid a swirl of tomatoes which had drawn together into a humanoid shape and ran down the street, leaving juicy footprints in its wake. The horse reared back and its legs turned to glass in the air and it remained there, suspended, only the eyes still alive and blinking.

Mimes spread through the city then, cradling weapons only they could see. Beyond the walls, there arose a terrible laughter, and the sound of giant stone feet treading. They came down on the walls and tore them to the ground. From high above the city, the Stranger could see it all. The rows of Colossi ranged against it, and the awful shadows that fled into the city from the north and west, a sea of dark. Each opponent reached within and animated people like puppets in its war. A water fountain burst and shot up multicoloured streamers. A man’s nose melted down his face and he wiped it clear off with a hand that was turning by degrees into a trumpet. The cats, who knew when things were going bad, slunk into the holes between the city and that other place and vanished. A woman’s head turned into a flower. The flower grew, extending roots deep inside her. It bloomed beautifully, rising as tall as a building. Men turned to ants and lay helplessly on their backs.

Civilian resistance was bloodied and ineffective.