The ground began to shake. Barely noticeable at first, but growing stronger by the moment, quickly getting to the point where even just walking was difficult. Those who had wings began to hover, the others tried their best to find some stability. The sound of crystal cracking and shattering coloured the air as the streets split and broke in places under the strain. After a few seconds, it all stopped. Everyone looked around, without moving, waiting to see if it was truly over. Some stared towards the direction they had come from, at the barely visible flashes of light in the distance where the central tower once had stood.
Suddenly, there was another sound. A loud, almost deafening crack. The ground began to split open again, and the wind grew much stronger than it had been just moments before. Much too strong for most ponies to stand against it.
It was like an explosion, but chaotic and directionless. Bodies were pushed on all sides, carried by the winds, falling over the shifting broken ground. Waves of energy spreading out at angles without order or logic scattered the ponies around farther and farther away from each other in smaller and smaller groups, and though some managed to resist their push they still found themselves equally isolated as those around them failed to do the same.
Ponies fell, tumbled, rolled, tried to stand. Knocked out of the air, over fallen buildings and broken streets, carried around. Ponies ran, yelled, pushed back against the waves. Hardly able to see as black and purple filled the air and the wind pushed in their eyes, as the light grew dim in the darkened sky. Some tried to hold on to others, some even succeeded in it. Then, as fast as it had begun, the commotion ended. Ponies found themselves separated in small groups more or less far apart from each other, at best hardly able to spot each other between the violet winds and the lack of light.
Part of it, and not an insignificante one, was the sheer distance they had been carried for as well, however. It appeared it had been no mere winds and regular forces pushing them around, nor had the streets and buildings broken merely because of those things either. The waves of magic that had come over them seemed to have teleported them around the city, and to have done much the same with random chunks of it itself in places. Sections of the ground had been shuffled around, the edges clear where they had broken.
That was not all, though. It had not been immediately apparent in the commotion following the blast, but they had not been the only ones shuffled around by it. As some soon began to discover, the same had happened to the enemy soldiers. To what was left still of them to be more precise. But that was not of immediate concern to all the ponies, most of them were more pressingly focused on simply finding each other and rejoining the main group, if one still did exist, not an easy task given the state of the town and the reduced visibility.
Their worries grew as they noticed a strange darkness spreading over the ground. Black and oily, it was like a thin layer of tar covering the street and spreading outwards, coming in waves from what they reasoned had to be the centre of town and rising from the cracks in the ground. Like sick and poisoned blood pouring from the wounded earth. Those who had wings once more hovered, and others placed themselves atop the rubble of the broken buildings littering the entire town, where the darkness didn't reach. They looked around, worried, hoping they would spot someone to head towards, and equally hoping nothing else would spot them first.