The cardinal shook her head at Tess's question.  "No, I can't think of anyone who would want to do this to our town.  We're peaceful here, there's nothing valuable enough to attack an entire town for, and nothing we've done to warrant anything like this."<br/><br/>"I do have a few suspicions of my own, though.  The monsters haven't attacked the town, at least not yet, and while their attacks on patrols have been successful, the attacks started out rare, only one every few days or so.  My fear is that, if someone is controlling them, we're less of a target and more of a field test.  The attacks have also been increasing in frequency, which leads me to believe that whatever is controlling them is building up to a larger assault."  The cardinal's tone remained even as she spoke, but her face started to lose color as she continued.  "This is just a guess, of course, but I think there's enough reason to be worried, and to try and find the source of all this before anything terrible happens."