“I should really do something,” says the Lady Darchana, contemplatively, to her familiar, a specialty pug named Tiffany. “Why, the girl implies a threat to the whole city exists, and I can’t imagine the Primarch competent to handle it alone!”

  “And yet,” Tiffany says, “one imagines he will hesitate to ask the Arcanamirium for the help he so obviously requires of it.”

“Well, he’s going to have to bestir himself to request our aid sooner, rather than later.” She fixes her hat in her reflection in her bedroom window. Through it there’s a courtyard visible. The wizards of the Arcanamirium are, well, Teleporting. Out. It’s not that they won’t come to Absalom’s defense if necessary, but one can come to Absalom’s defense just as well from several hundred miles away, and, well, there is the prophecy, and even if one puts no store in the prophecy there are panicked people who do and will suddenly pay very well for a ride out. “I heard he’s out of town.”

  “He has that house in the country,” Tiffany agrees cheerfully.

“You know, I think it speaks very poorly of him, that he didn’t delegate the defense of the city to me in his absence, in light of recent events.”

A servant timidly sticks her head around a corner. “Yes?” says the Lady, graciously.

    “My lady, are we - leaving?”

“Us? Why, no. The Primarch may leave the city to incompetents while he vacations in the country, but the Arcanamirium remembers its duties, and doesn’t fear them. Why, I’m going to go apprehend that troublemaking Sala myself, as soon as the Primarch asks it of me.

There’s a demiplane we evacuate to in the case of threats to the city, with an access point under the wine cellars. You can get your family, if you’d like, so long as it’s clear you’re being very silly and that I’m not perturbed in the slightest. ”

    “Yes, my lady.”

“And so long as you are sure to repeat everything you overheard about the Primarch.”

    “ - yes, my lady.”

Cassdra presses her paperwork on the process-server for Public Interest, once the carrier pigeon has taken wing. “Do go and serve her notice at once, if she’s still in the city. I’ve raised the fine to three hundred thousand pounds, on the grounds that she caused mass panic and probably dozens of deaths of trampling down by the docks.”

  “You can take the Asmodeanism out of them, but not the Evil,” Mesich says gravely.

He shouldn’t’ve said it in front of the notice-server, who is blinking very rapidly now. “She’s not a murderer,” Cassdra says impatiently. “She’s not even a renowned adventurer. She’s a self-important vandal with one sixth-circle scroll. A dime a dozen, really. By the time the Primarch sees her she’ll be very apologetic, I don’t doubt, and in any event all you’ve got to do is serve the notice.”

Ione Sala can be located readily enough, if Office of Public Interest has magic that can do that, or if they correctly guess Iona Sala would be near the Ascendant Court and ask around if anyone's seen her.

The young woman in question can be found grimly vanishing away whole bookshelves of books from a library in Iomedae's Temple in the Ascendant Court near the Starstone Cathedral.  Ione Sala reads Neutral Good, and she's sworn an oath to Nethys to give back all the books that she's now taking into her protection.

Acolytes are rushing about her, in the way of people who are trying to get everything valuable out of a temple.  Priests and paladins are nowhere to be seen.

Ione Sala will accept the fine notice without blinking, fish a correspondingly large diamond out of her pocket, hand it over, and tell this minor functionary that she's extremely busy and he needs to get out of everyone's way NOW.

He departs as rapidly as possible, thinking uncomplimentary but not false things about wizards, Nethysians, and Chelish people, desperately trying not to lose the diamond or be observably in possession of the diamond.

"I think we ought to give due consideration to the theory this has something to do with the prophecy," Afsel Kellaris says, in the emergency meeting convened to discuss Ione Sala's actions.

"I was worried someone was going to waste our time with that," Jepata Eres, his immediate superior, says. "Of course it's related. Sala made it up for attention a while ago, and is escalating now. But the first wasn't true prophecy, which every schoolchild knows is broken, and the new one isn't either."

"It could still be, you know. Not prophecy. Prediction."

"But why, I ask, didn't you say 'prediction'? Because it doesn't sound as dramatic as prophecy. Ione Sala predicted and then caused panic and mass death in our city. That's the problem we're facing, and if it were up to me she'd hang for it four or five times."

"The thing I was trying to say was, maybe she knows of, I don't know, some unsealed ancient horror -"

"If she knew anything real and were actually interested in helping us prevent it she'd tell us what she knew. She's an adversary; she doesn't care about this city; nothing she says is trustworthy; nothing she claims merits consideration." Jepata's tone is one of finality. "The thing killing people out there isn't prophecy, it's panic. We need to get the city guard into the streets, impose a curfew, keep people home, or we'll have another trampling incident worse than the Steertrack Races -"

"With all due respect," a man objects from across the room, "you're not going to like desertion rates if you order the guard to their posts right now."

"What's your suggestion, I overlook the desertion and hope they sheepishly return to their posts tomorrow, and let the people trample each other into the bloody mud?"

"No, but you've got to reassure them first! People need to know that we looked into Sala's claims and there's nothing to worry about! We need to get our own counter-message out there, telling people that we've stepped up monitoring of threats to the city and there are no signs of any problems -"

"Oh, are there not?" someone else interjects, relieved -

" - well, I haven't heard of any, and I'm sure it'd have been shouted to the rooftops if there were -"

"You can't ask the Guard to go back to their posts while they're terrified for the lives of their loved ones. You've got to assure them that there's nothing to worry about."

"Yes," Jepata snaps, "someone already said that. I'm working on it. A message to all city watch - the rumors have been examined, they are false, there are no risks to the city, no one in city leadership is departing -"

"Departing is dangerous!" offers Afsel, reorienting to the new priorities. "The ships might be sunk, Sala might be feeding people into the mouths of pirates -"

"Excellent, yes," Jepata agrees. "Departing puts your family in grave danger, what's safe is keeping them home, Sala's claims have been decisively refuted - yes?"

"Yes," everyone agrees.

"The best way for the populace to be safe from the panic is to remain in their homes.  We'll send more of the city guard to the Ascendant Court -"

"I'd say it's the Docks district that needs 'em," offers somebody who is not at all suspicious and is totally supposed to be inside this room.  "Some people are fleeing the Ascendant Court, but that's their own foolishness and it'd serve them right to return and find their homes robbed.  It's the docks where there's fighting, fighting that might spread -"

It takes them half an hour to draft and authorize an announcement using Mage's Decree, to counter Sala's absurd misbehavior and assure the people of the city that all is well. Most of that time is spent quibbling over wording. They don't get many words, and a number of people want a say in what they are. By then, the city guard has been largely deployed to the docks to manage the masses of people desperately trying to board boats; the rumors that are flying assert that everything from Zon-Kuthon to returning Aroden will be showing up, or maybe that the island will be swallowed into Hell.

But that's not to say that it's too late for the announcement. There are many homes whose residents are bitterly fighting over whether to flee or to stay, many people trying to persuade an entrenched relative or agonizing over whether to spend their entire fortune on a Teleport, many people nervously peeking out into the streets and taking the temperature of things. Many people who want to hear from their city government and know what they should do.

The statement eventually agreed upon is, "Remain in your homes. Sala's claims have been examined and disproven. No danger exists. All deaths have come from panic. Protect your families: stay home."

The minute it is approved, it is passed on to a wizard who was able to prepare the Mage's Decree spell in the last half-hour.

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.