"We are not entirely sure. That is part of what my research group is working on," she says. "Things like that are not normally such a big problem - if someone had created these ravening fiends a year ago, they would have been destroyed before they reached my town and I probably would never have heard of them. Accidents of that sort happen frequently in alchemy. But because of the recent changes to the climate, our alchemical gardens have been mostly wiped out, and then the fiends ate most of the rest, and now our essence reserves are very low and we cannot grow very many plants to replenish them, because no one can leave the citadel without risking being eaten by fiends."