[quote]"Let's get out of here." Emma turned for the door, making a mad dash for the city's interior. She stopped momentarily to collect the boy and Meryn, grabbing their hands and pulling them along with her.

"Who in the hell are you? Who is this, and what the hell were those!?" Scarlet shouted as he tried to keep himself from collapsing as he kept up with the woman's pace.

"We're... we're Travelers," Emma was reluctant to apply the title to herself, not really feeling she fit the part, "The rest can wait till we're out of this mess!"

Ronken ran to Meryn and tightly grabbed her arm. He yelled, "Special delivery!!" before he shoved the crumpled letter into her chest. And then he ran like hell with his new friend.

"Come on!" Lily shouted into Emma's ear to be heard over the crowd and gunfire, tugging her by the arm towards the ascending road. "Follow me, I have an idea!" What better place to escape tree demons than in the deep dark stone tunnels of a sewer?

Emma turned towards Lily, letting her tug her towards the sloping street. "I lost Meryn! Someone grabbed her!"

Finally getting her bearings, Meryn dug her heels into the ground and wrenched her wrist from the stranger's grip.

Ronken was glaring at her as he reached down to curl his hand around a piece of paper. Meryn's eyes widened when she saw the intricate lines of a rune peeking out from under his fingers.[/quote]

Explosions outside the wall filled the sky with flashing smoke. Mechs slammed their way through the streets and launched over the walls to join the fight against the dark onslaught. The screech of dying tree demons split the air; some of them that scaled the wall had caught fire from the explosions, and they stood hissing through the flames before they died in burning ash.

Alarms howled. Throughout the city, voices bellowed on loudspeakers and from the top of the wall, calling for flamethrowers and torches -- barely audible over the screaming and rushing and looting and crashing and people being trampled underfoot.

As guns were being traded for flamethrowers, more of the tree demons that rushed over the wall were set on fire as they ran. Bright streaks of nimble, screeching light darted in the streets. A cart of hay caught fire -- then a trash dump, then a house, long after the offending demon had burned to death.

But the city, in its eagerness to control the attacking flood, would only seal its own fate. As Spook had [url=http://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/3291993]warned[/url] the Travelers only hours before:

[quote]"When the body dies, the crystals dissolve in the air and infect anyone and anything that surrounds it. Even if the host is killed before the crystals form -- even if the body is burned -- the chance is still too great that the remains will cause further infection."[/quote]

In the shadow of an alley, Ronken grabbed the sigil that Spook had entrusted to Meryn.

A flash of bright blue light blinded them both for a moment. The paper disintegrated. Ronken would suddenly feel drained of energy, like he'd just run twenty miles uphill. Meryn would see, through Spook's mask, how Ronken's dreams shriveled and weakened as their power was sucked away in an instant by the sigil.

When their eyes readjusted to the smoke-dimmed sunlight, a shimmering fairy buzzed like a dragonfly in front of Ronken's face. The fairy's golden skin gleamed; it had blue hair, tiny green clothes, and wings that reflected all the colors of a rainbow. Its eyes were open wide in shock at suddenly finding itself in a war zone, staring at the ugly stubbled face of a human.

[b]"What is this!"[/b] the fairy yelled in a tiny, high-speed voice. [b]"Whaddaya want- Who're you- Where am I? You can't just summon a fairy for no reason this is against the rules I don't see an immediate emergency you can fend for yourself thank you very much and who the hell are you what are you looking at?"[/b] The fairy whirled around and shot accusations at Meryn as well, pointing accusing fingers at both of them -- but the mask on Meryn's face gave the little fairy pause. As the fairy stared at the mask its anger faltered, and it set its mouth in a grim line. [b]"Spook is dead, isn't he?"[/b]

Another explosion ripped through the air -- this one sounded much closer. A nearby house caught fire, and the wind that swirled through the streets smelled like smoke and sulfur.

The fairy shot straight up into the air, leaving a dim trail of gold shimmer, and it hovered there for a moment, scanning the area. [b]"They do know that killing the Crystalline-infested monsters is gonna infect the city, right? You've got ten minutes before breathing is a bad idea."[/b]

Outside the walls, at the edge of the forest where they had left Spook, the sigil he'd created finally activated. A beam of bright light shot up into the sky like a beacon, visible from everywhere within the city. So far, it seemed to be doing little good.

Meanwhile, Lily led Emma and Scarlet among the fleeing crowds, dodging clockwork robots and thieves running off with armfuls of valuables. Somewhere on the next street, a boiler exploded in a spray of boiling water and a billow of white searing steam -- but their attention was on the manhole cover in the road.

It would take both Lily and Emma to pry it up, and the well below it was a sheer drop into black nothingness, with only a thin metal ladder to lead the way down. It smelled like damp cabbage and rotting fish.

A tree demon skittered into the road, followed by two more, riddled with sharp black crystals, their eyes glowing red.

At the bottom of the ladder, the floor was wet with pools of standing putrid water, illuminated only by the light that filtered down from the hole they'd come in through. The brick walls were coated in a goopy growth.

To the left, far in the distance of the sewer corridor, a few shards of dim sunlight illuminated something dusty and metal.

To the right, deep at the other end of the corridor, firelight flickered -- like torches or lamps -- playing moving shadows on the walls.