As the wizard is in the middle of casting, his spell is disrupted by a pineapple pie being smushed into his face.

The Arcanimirium has a higher percentage of fifth circle and above wizards of any wizarding school on the face of Golarion, but that's still only around ten percent; with all of them out selling Teleports or fleeing the country it barely feels less crowded.

No one has dared asked the Lady Darchana what she plans, but people are hovering lest she happen to say it offhandedly.

She's not an idiot. Nethys is playing at something, and Nethys likes big explosions, so whatever Nethys is playing at is plausibly catastrophic. Warning everyone and then doing a big explosion would be in character. The assurances she's heard from the city government are meaningless.

Of course, reacting strongly to warnings of catastrophe is a great way to be easy to manipulate, and to be on the wrong foot for catastrophes coming in from an unexpected direction.

     "My lady?"

"You fear that our deaths are coming and want me to order an evacuation but are perfectly aware it is as likely as not to serve our enemies," she responds without even looking who spoke. "You can stop asking. I don't know what I'll do, but none of you have useful input."

      "Pineda's been spotted. Interfering with the city in their efforts to reduce panic and get everyone to stay home."

"The whole nation of Cheliax should have long since been burned off the face of this benighted world," Lady Darchana says with feeling.

       "Does that mean we're not evacuating? Since they want us to?"

"Would you shut up?"

She is surprised, and dismayed, and even disappointed, when Her priests in Her temple in Absalom ask Her for guidance about the Nethysian demanding that the temple be evacuated. She makes the obvious inferences: Some persons adjacent to Keltham, and maybe Keltham himself, are going to go for the Starstone.

This is good news, because the Starstone isn’t Rovagug. It’s bad news, in that the Starstone also is not ‘Keltham goes to Lastwall, and meets people whose convictions are like his but have settled around them into a shape humans can endure’, and in that Keltham is reasonably likely to die attempting this.  She alone would not be capable of saving him, even if She would, nor does it seem likely that Cayden would be sufficient - but perhaps She’s underestimating Him, or underestimating Keltham. She has seen Keltham in vision; whatever Keltham is doing here, he expects it to succeed despite all obstacles that he knows about. It may still be hugely ill-advised, or worse, intelligently contrary to Her purposes. But Her fragment's guess is that Keltham's purpose is unlikely to be worth expending Her very scarce resources to prevent.

She tells Her people to evacuate civilians, since they’ve gone and conveniently made this a single bit of information to transmit to them and they can probably save enough lives to make it worth it.

And She pays the situation more attention, and watches over it for a time; but in the end She decides not to draw together enough of Herself to participate in a fight when someone touches the Starstone -

And that's the last important decision that Iomedae needed to prove She would make.

Iomedae!  Emergency situation that the fully-informed fragment of You has been apprised about!  This information is given to You under the condition that -

...And so when the time for Ione's second set of instructions comes, Absalom's citizenry is braced for possible panic and significantly pre-fled; while having not really panicked yet, in the way of people who are hoping for news which isn't too bad.

The first time Ione Sala tries to cast again from a sixth-circle wizard scroll, she cannot do it, for her fingers tremble and the spellform is not unfolding well and it takes all her dexterity to avoid wasting the scroll.

This possibility has also been foreseen, by common sense more than by divine intervention.  There are other scrolls to hand, money being of no object at all anymore, and Ione Sala casts a Heroism upon herself before she continues.  It's not ordinarily what you think of as an aid to casting from scroll, but it helps if you are frightened.

And then Ione Sala speaks again.

"Magewar in ten minutes.  Enormous lethal radius around Starstone.  Start running NOW.  Avoid mage-works.  Dismiss outsiders.  Don't go ethereal.  Don't look back."

And then there's panic in the streets.

...At least among the sort of person who did not correctly foresee that they'd probably hear something roughly this alarming, update early on the evidence they'd predictably get later, and start moving away from the Starstone before the actual announcement was made.

In fact, something like four-fifths of the people managed to make that update, got their valuables and their family, shared the news with friends who didn't speak Taldan, locked up their things, and evacuated with the genuinely cautious public order of people who don't want to look stupid if in fact nothing happens.

And now there's panic in the streets, but those streets can mostly hold the least Wise seventh of the local subpopulation running around screaming.

Though even then you've got the one in twenty persons who are staying in place, or maybe even heading off to try looting a home; because they're even less Wise than that, or prouder, or just plain stupid -

"Hiiii everyyyyyone!  It's Pilar Pineda!  Sorry we had to hold the fight here, but everyone needs to run away now!  Abscond!  FLEE!"  The voice cries that command, flee, in one language after another, with a blood-freezing cheery note that is impossible to ignore.

"I, Carissa Sevar, wish to avoid deaths so numerous that the River of Souls overflows and loses some forever.  You can help by not being among them."

"I'm Keltham.  What you're about to see is a warning explosion one thousandth as powerful as the lesser forces to be unleashed here."

One ton of fuel-air explosive ignites in the air over the Starstone Cathedral, creating an enormous CRACK and a vast billow of fire.  There isn't actually any standard spell, even Meteor Shower, that creates an explosion quite that large; it looks like ninth-circle wizards getting ready to fight.

And there are, still, people so incredibly smart and skeptical that they'll stay around and try to loot a house or two.  But not enough of them to overflow the River of Souls and get eaten by astradaemons if they all die simultaneously, which is the part that matters.

Others do pray to their gods about the affair, and divine attention now gathers toward Absalom.  But there is no ancient god who decides to collect more of Themselves and focus a truly vast attention on the Starstone Cathedral and surrounding planar spaces, while nothing has yet begun for real; and that is the only choice those gods make that ends up mattering.

And then it begins.

He is about to cast a spell, from scroll, that is considerably beyond what he ought to be able to cast, even at INT 29; and it is very important that this spell go off correctly.

He draws on his familiar gloves of Use Magic Device, now improved to +7 and specialized for scrolls.

He casts from scroll upon himself, Bestow Insight:  Use Magic Device.

And he casts Prayer upon himself, from a scroll bought of a Demon Lord's worshippers.

And then so fortified, he casts Greater Heroism -

So fortified, casts Moment of Greatness -