[color=gray][quote]Meryn brought her hand down and pointed to her nametag, still pinned to her shirt. She parted her lips and tried to mimic the shapes mouths made when they said her name.

"She can't speak, [i]sir[/i], but I am so glad that your first reaction to someone who seems to be just as frightened as you are is to threaten them with death," Lily snapped.

"Get away from the door this instant!"

Ronken just nodded, uttered a hearty "Deal" and grabbed for the paper and bag of money.

"Sirs, if you will believe nothing else, if we had intended to bring harm to your city, why would we sequester ourselves inside? If our goal is destruction, why allow ourselves to be destroyed with you? The answer is simple—that's not our goal. We Travelers were caught up in this without warning just like you—and your walls, so well-defended and secure, were and are our best hope."[/quote][/color]

In a single moment, the scene was this:

The first guard sneered and raised the butt of his musket against Lily, enraged by the insolence of a female stranger who dared raise her head, let alone her voice.

The second guard lowered his bayonet to stare at Lily, and for this brief moment Meryn was left unsupervised beside the scalding boiler and the riot-muffled door to the city.

The throng of dirty, angry citizens crowded close as the sharp points of bayonets drew closer to Scarlet, clutching his stolen coins, his back against the very same door.

The hooded woman dropped a bag of coins into Ronken's outstretched hand and trusted him with the wax-sealed letter.

The clockwork mech dropped to the ground outside the wall, its guns at the ready.

The cannons atop the wall were raised.

Spook rose to his feet, a wide and intricate sigil carved into the barren ground.

All along the perimeter of the wasteland, the wood demons emerged from the forest; they swarmed toward the city, a teeming black mass with thousands of glowing white eyes.

[i]RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT[/i]

The mecha's guns sparked and recoiled, bullet casings flying.

[i]BANG! BANG! BANGBANG! [B]BOOM! BOOMBOOM! BOOM![/b][/i]

Cannonfire echoed throughout the city, deafening to the crowd gathered at the door. Explosive cannonballs thundered throughout the wasteland, filling the air with bright fiery billows of dirt while crystallized wood-demons darted around the wreckage.

Thousands of the little monsters darted across the wastes, barely slowed down by the barrage of thunderous explosions and the rain of gunfire. Within moments the wood-demons had reached the wall and raced up its vertical surface like it was nothing at all.

We return to the Travelers inside the interrogation room, where the wooden door through which they had come was now being overgrown, cracked and broken by slithering roots. There were seconds before the door would be completely destroyed.

The first guard stopped just before he might have slammed the butt of his gun into Lily's head, and instead he stared in horror at how quickly the wood-demons were decimating the door to the outside. He backed up toward the wall, and instead pointed his bayonet at whatever might come through that door.

The second guard was not so cool with this arrangement.

[b]"Oh [i]shit[/i],"[/b] he sputtered, tripping over himself as the outside door gave a tremendous [i]CRACK[/i] and shards of sunlight and the [i]KA-BOOM[/i] of cannonfire filled the room.

The second guard, in a panic, shoved past Meryn, flung open the door, grabbed Scarlet by the collar and tossed the boy into Meryn to get him out of his way. [i]"RUN,"[/i] he screamed at the surprised crowd on the other side of the door, and he shoved his way through the rioters while gunfire and screeching rose up behind him.

The first wood demons -- covered in black crystalline, their eyes glowing white and red -- perched atop the wall among slaughtered guards, and hissed down at the city.

Many of those in the crowd heeded the guard's advice. The streets throughout Cogswall were filled with people running from the walls.

The hooded woman dropped from the ledge and disappeared among the fleeing crowd.