Leonie and Stefan witnessed the explosions just as they ran up the main street that departed from the market near the docks towards the upper town. It started as a series of distant, muffled detonations, and was then followed by six heavy blasts along the double wall, mostly concentrated on the center and northern part of it.

Barely controlling her anger, Leonie cursed loudly, and Stefan didn’t have to ask to know the town’s defenses had been sabotaged. Once the swarm arrived, they would likely find an easy way in. He looked back and saw people already boarding onto evacuation vessels. At least in that regard, the town seemed prepared, but there were still hundreds of people coming down from the upper part of the town.

He had to run to catch up with the guard, who was dashing towards the nearest gate on the wall between the lower and upper town. She stopped in front of a storage area attached to the uptown side the wall. Over the years, merchant booths and storage areas had been built adjacent to the wall, and the once tall barrier didn’t feel as imposing anymore. Still, in case of an attack, it could still give some time to the people fleeing the area.

Instead of walking in, however, Leonie looked at the tower and frowned.

“Where are the guards?” Leonie said in a low voice, her eyes fixated on the topmost level of the tower.

The windows on the tower were large enough from that side to get a good view of the area inside. No one seemed to be there.

“What’s happening?” Stefan asked.

“Keep going and find your sister. I’m staying here.”

He saw her approach the door at the bottom of the tower and find it locked, but then used a master key to open it and disappeared inside.

It took Stefan only a moment to decide he would follow the person who had just saved him from the cell in the basement. When he reached the top level of the tower, he found Leonie kneeling beside at a man in guard attire lying on the floor and cursing again. Stefan looked away and noticed the mechanism that raised and lowered the gates had been damaged.

The wall had five gates, and each gate had a tower from which each individual gate could be controlled. In addition, to prevent the possibility of a gate not being operated on time in the case of an attack, there was also a shared mechanism that closed all five gates at once. The heavy iron cogs that made said mechanisms work were now melted together, likely using a high-energy torch. Such tools were created as weapons against monsters and were likely only in possession by guards.

Screams from the street below distracted them and they went closer to the windows; they saw people pointing towards the northern end of the double wall, where large bipedal creatures could be seen climbing over the rubble where one of the explosions had destroyed the wall and its electrified fence. The evacuation, which had been rather calm and organized up to that point, quickly turned into chaos. People ran desperately, with some falling and being trampled over by others.

With her attention on the turmoil below, Leonie didn’t react on time when the fallen guard suddenly stood up and launched at her, attempting to throw her down the window. She managed to hold on to the pillars, pushing back with all her strength. Just as it seemed she would lose her ground, Stefan kicked the guard in the knee, making him stumble and giving Leonie a chance to escape from his grip. At the same time she regained her ground, the guard hit Stefan with the back of his fist; the hit landed on his temple and he lost sight for a moment.

This was enough for the teen to lose his balance; he heard Leonie’s scream as he tripped over the low window and fell over the wall. He managed to momentarily hold on to it, but was too stunned and his hand slipped. The fall would have been considerable if it wasn’t because of the merchant stalls below.

Dazed and confused, Stefan managed to get up. He hadn’t been injured, which he was glad, and as he took a step back towards the tower, he saw the storage room Leonie had intended to enter before and recognized her motorcycle. She had probably driven all the way down to this post, and then walked the rest towards the lower town. On the side of the bike, he noticed a long rod and recalled Fatima’s story about having crafted a spear made of purple needles for Leonie, and this spear had a retractable tip so to reduce Leonie’s exposure to crystals, because she was only partially resistant to them.

He picked up the spear and ran back inside the tower, this time to find Leonie wrestling with the other guard, who pressed his forearm over her neck, trying to suffocate her. When the attacker saw him holding the spear, he left Leonie and attempted to launch at Stefan, but was too slow to stop him.

Stefan aimed and threw the spear; it flied across the room and hit the welded mass of cogs, piercing through it as if it were made of butter. The metallic cable snapped, followed by the screeching of metal and a loud thud as the gates descended, blocking any access to the lower town.

In a quick move, Leonie recovered the spear and held it close to the guard, who began screaming and scratching at the back of his neck, and then finally passed out. Leonie’s skin was turning red as well, so she activated the mechanism that hid the purple blade of the spear back behind a protective cover.

She fell to the ground as well, exhausted, and Stefan followed her lead.

“That was a smart idea,” said Stefan. “You put the crystal blade near the parasite on his neck to kill it and save his life.”

Leonie repressed a confused expression. “Yes, of course.” She laughed. “It’s not like I hesitated before killing a man in front of a child.” Now it was Stefan’s turn to look confused. “I’m just joking, of course!”

On the ground below the tower, residents who were now trapped in the upper area of the town screamed and attempted to go over the wall by climbing over market stalls or piling up crates. Others ran back to find shelter inside the houses.

Stefan and Leonie found ropes and tied o the tower windows and descended into the upper town. People immediately began using the ropes to climb up, not paying attention when the two went inside the storage room.

Leonie placed a decay battery in the control panel and turned on the bike, inviting Stefan to join her. The two raced uphill, hoping to find a way to reach the wall before the monsters.

****

In the darkness of the cellar below the tower, Rosario thought she could hear bells at a distance. Unaware of what it meant, she focused again on removing the parasitic offshoots that crawled over Emilia and Noah. Unlike she initially thought, the crystalsmiths were alive and she could feel their regular breathing, as if they were only asleep. But no matter how much she tried, they wouldn’t wake up. She touched behind their necks, where she had seen the offshoot in the guard at the mansion, but she couldn’t distinguish if there was one already under their skin or not. Perhaps it was already too late and, just as the mayor had said, now they would only wake up when the parasite had finished the infestation process. She sat on the moldy pile of hay, feeling lost.

She tried to focus, to go back to the Convergence, to the place of the white sky or the one with the transparent version of reality, but only felt silly. She had no idea what to do, and even after all she had seen, she could feel her mind rejecting it, the same way one forgets a surreal dream soon after waking up.

The distant reverberation of explosions distracted her. What was happening? Had the swarm crawlers reached the town already? Losing her composure, she went to the closed door and banged at it until her fists hurt.

In a brief moment of clarity, she remembered the mayor’s words about not being distracted by the rules of the material world. Humans attuned with the convergence had power over other beings of the convergence, or something like that.

At that point, Rosario had walked around the dark cellar so many times already she made it to the back without having to sense the objects around, until she felt the monster artichoke.

This was a creature of the Convergence, just like the behemoths that Cornwell had created and destroyed at will. This monster was, therefore, something that she could control. At least in theory.

As she placed her hand over the hard scales of the monster, they felt like clay between her fingers.

 *****