Vorlan ventured to his sanctum in Ceuna to recover following his encounter with Omonrel. The Abyssal Aura that Omonrel had unleashed was unlike anything Vorlan experienced before, causing his mortal form to ache in agony. While it had swiftly recovered, the experience had so unnerved him that he was forced to contemplate what had happened. He heard mortals often refer to traumatic events or injuries they endured without understanding the concept himself. The Earth Angel no longer wanted for that experience.

He was left with an insatiable curiosity regarding the Abyssal Aura and repeatedly grasped at its tendrils himself. It was an entirely different creature from the other auras. Far from being ordered and comprehensible, it was wild and unpredictable. Attempts to harness it met as often with failure as success.

"What did you unleash here, Nethron?" he asked aloud in his sanctum.

It was unlike the Silver Aura, which Vorlan believed paved the way to abominations beyond comprehension. Mortality was not to be overturned at any cost. The Abyssal Aura, despite the name granted to it by Nethron, held a certain quality the Earth Angel could not ignore. While Omonrel had used it in a malicious manner, Vorlan explored its other possibilities.

For great lengths of time, he sat in his sanctum and focused his mind ever more intently on this most enigmatic of phenomena. When tracing its origins, he found that it, like the other Auras, did in fact originate from the Progenitor's realm, but that it found its way to the mortal world by an entirely different route, one that Vorlan could not grasp or understand. It was clearly not among the Auras Vorlan wielded when he created the mortal world.

"Where did you even find this?" Vorlan wondered aloud. "There is so much I would like to ask you, Nethron."

Before he could consider the matter any longer, Forynda's presence manifested behind him. He jolted and faced her. The High Angel looked only slightly more like her prior self. She reminded Vorlan of mortals he saw who would cease consuming food after the death of a loved one. Her color was still pale, with every part of her diminished in vibrancy, bringing with her the single oddest presence Vorlan had even encountered among either angel or mortal.

"I am pleased to see you again, Forynda," Vorlan said softly at once to greet her.

She stared toward the tree in the sanctum's center, her gaze averting him at all costs.

"I sensed you returned, Vorlan. How were you injured?" she asked despondently.

"Omonrel," Vorlan bemoaned, his mind calling back all innumerable memories of when the two had helped forge so many of the mortal world's greatest features. "He wielded a power I did not understand."

"The Abyssal Aura," Forynda muttered, her voice fading as she spoke. The High Angel then turned to face him more directly. "I have long known of its presence and it was something I chose to ignore, just as I ignored Nethron's dabbling with the Silver Aura."

"They have always been there, then? Since the beginning?"

"I had no name for either of them. We owe those to Nethron," she said, her tone changing to spite. "I merely knew that they were part of existence. There are so many things that I do not understand about even our realm, much less the mortal world."

Vorlan nodded in agreement on that point. For the Earth Angel, residing in the mortal world as long as he had only deepened its mysteries and those forces Nethron unleashed only worsened matters.

"Indeed, there have been times where I have glimpsed happenings beyond my own understanding in the past and I was content to ignore them and carry on without exploring them further," he said wistfully. "I fear now that many of our brethren were not so content to leave untouched such phenomena."

Forynda grimaced and closed her eyes.

"Regardless, you should not fear damage to your mortal form by Omonrel or any of the others. We both know that it will recover in time," the High Angel offered as an assurance. "Nethron taunted me, foolishly, on that very point."

"And when will you return to the mortal world?" Vorlan asked, not wishing to belabor any further discussion of the former Aura Keeper. "With our challenges greater than we ever feared, I cannot see a path to victory without you."

Her eyes opening with a dull yellow flash, the High Angel glared back at him.

"I only briefly ventured to the mortal world before, hoping that I could end the conflagration with swift strokes. My errors in doing so are why you and our allies now suffer," she lamented, her voice carrying both grief and rage.

"The fact that you realize that and have learned from what happened is exactly why you must return!" Vorlan pleaded.

Floating toward the tree at the center of Vorlan's sanctum, Forynda turned her back to the Earth Angel. She reached out and gently touched one of its lower branches.

"I spoke to Simel on this. The hour for my return has not yet come," she said meekly. "For the time being, you, Cyrona, and the others must carry on without me. I shall join you when my presence will matter most."

She disappeared in a whirring flash. Vorlan sensed her presence return deep into her own sanctum, where she could remain secluded beyond any angel's reach for as long as she desired. While he expected no other outcome from his request, her predictable refusal left him deeply isolated.

Had I only used Simel's warnings to brace myself, this entire calamity might not have devastated me so.

~~~

Rohmhelt reviewed the most recent reports from his commanders as the columns swung along the northeasterly road past the village of Gulnholn. He was braced for ill tidings. True to his fears, nearly every trace of news was devastatingly grim.

Defections continued, with his grand legions, once exceeding one million, now reduced to fewer than three hundred thousand. Swaths of lands from the north central empire declared for Duronaht a mere two months after supplying Rohmhelt with troops and supplies. Harassing attacks continued on the rear of his column, gradually bleeding his ranks. Chancellor Kivren and much of the Gadisian force were compelled to return to their capital to rally flagging support for the war. On top of everything, finances became strained with funds to pay new levies and their accompanying supplies and equipment running dangerously low.

Lohs rode alongside the Emperor as he read the litany of disaster, saying nothing. The old man had already read the reports himself and was well aware of what they said. When at last Rohmhelt finished, the Emperor tucked the stack of parchment into a pouch alongside his white and black horse.

"That's about as bad as it could be," Rohmhelt grumbled.

"Quite so," Lohs concurred. "Well, it could always be worse. We could be down more allies and more territory."

"Thank you for the optimistic assessment, Lohs," the Emperor sighed and laughed in a high pitched wheeze. "At some point this has to get better. I don't blame men who abandon us when we look like the losing side."

"I agree, of course," Lohs said with a pained smile. "Being that, by any sort of sober measure, we are indeed losing, we need to score some manner of victory for everyone's morale, including yours and mine. Being man who has lost more than I care to think about in my life, I always found after a setback that doing something constructive rights the mind almost immediately. It may sound strange to you, but after my wife died I weaved ten baskets. I'd never done it before and it felt good."

"Baskets?" Rohmhelt scoffed.

His advisor raised his eyebrows in condescension.

"First, you should try it or something of that nature. It'd do you some good," Lohs chided him. "Second, it's meant as a metaphor and you know that. Do me a favor and look back at the column behind us."

Obliging the old man, Rohmhelt did so. Ranks endlessly deep of pikemen and axemen with banners of varying hues and designs curved as far as he could see. He recognized only some of their heraldry, but he most readily recognized the white banners with three rivers from Eynond.

"I'm not sure exactly what point you're getting at, Lohs. That we still have a lot of men?" the Emperor asked.

"Ah, that is true, but that wasn't actually my emphasis," Lohs laughed. "By any standard, this is still one of the largest armies the world has ever seen. The thing I wanted you to notice is that we've dispensed with the weak links, those eastern and central troops whose loyalty was always a little suspect. These are men of the West with us now. Karmand, Eynond, Sendohern, and so on. You were right to get us out of south central Methrangia, especially near the capital, when you did. We'd have been swallowed up had we stayed. Now we're fighting near you men's homes."

"That was my theory," Rohmhelt grudgingly agreed. "Getting to this point has felt worse than I expected, though."

"I don't deny that. I hate to keep referring back to when my wife died, but it's what I always turn to in order to make things more sensible. The apothecary came to me about two weeks before it happened and explained everything about what I could expect. It was shockingly accurate. It didn't help me any in getting through it, though," Lohs said with a mournful tone before perking up. "The point is that we've gotten through the worst of it now. Hopefully now things will be more balanced between good and bad."

"That leaves plenty of room for bad," Rohmhelt said with a pained laugh.

"But good to offset it," Lohs scolded him. "This is a war for the entire mortal world. Did you think it would be easy?"

Rohmhelt sighed and looked back on his columns, loyally trudging forward in the chilly autumn winds, drums beating consistently to keep up a steady pace.

"No, I suppose not. I just thought something this important would have someone else to lead through it," he said, turning back toward Lohs. The old man's wrinkled face twisted with an amused grin. "Some of those I've read about, not someone like me."

"Oh, my dear Emperor. Surely you must realize by now that your idols' histories have been brushed up quite a bit," Lohs chuckled. "Think about how your typical subject thought about your father compared to how you knew him or how I knew him. We knew him as a man, with great and poor qualities together. They knew him as a statue, an icon, or an imprint on a coin."

"There were times I wished I only knew him as that," Rohmhelt laughed with regret.

"Point is, no one else is coming along. It's you, your wife, and, unfortunately, people like me," Lohs said with a strange cheer. "There's no point lamenting it. Just carry on."

Those words from Lohs echoed in Rohmhelt's head as he considered the next course of action. A victory of some sort, both meaningful and visible, was needed to stabilize the army's morale and his own. It was also vital for keeping the Gadisian Confederacy in the war on his side as well as hopefully attracting new allies, including the birdmen of Osilintis and the Kingdom of Bohruum, which had particular antipathy for Duronaht.

That night, he summoned both Marshal Agrehn and Cyrona to his command tent just before he prepared for bed. Agrehn, with some unease, stood beside the glimmering aquatic body of Cyrona as she floated in the air next to him. Rohmhelt could not tell if it was the close proximity to the Water Angel or if it was the fact that he was breaking under the strain of the grinding retreat. Regardless, the Emperor did not care.

"I want you both to prepare a strategy for striking at and defeating part of the enemy army pursuing us," Rohmhelt commanded. "While I intend to make our primary stand at Eynond, where we can fortify and replenish, I fear the army's morale won't last us that long. That's 250 miles away, or almost 15 days of marching at a brisk pace. We need something sooner. Something quick, something decisive."

"Your Imperial Majesty," Agrehn coughed into his hand to clear his throat, "as you know, there is a force of approximately ten thousand enemy cavalry that is harassing our rear positions. They have also been striking with their angelic allies."

"Omonrel and Myrvaness, especially," Cyrona seethed.

"Right. It will be difficult to have a clean victory against such foes," Agrehn said anxiously.

"I didn't say it had to be a clean victory, Marshal Agrehn," Rohmhelt curtly responded. "I will take a costly one at this point. Something to get us through."

Cyrona glared at Agrehn and then back to Rohmhelt, her strange eyes flickering.

"I understand what you want. Currently, Parlon is leading that force as Omonrel is apparently back in Methrangia building a new citadel for your vile brother," she announced. "Parlon is a dangerous foe, but also easily aggravated. I should have no trouble baiting him. Myrvaness will be there, too."

Agrehn sighed and turned toward the Water Angel.

"I assume that will involve part of our army?" he inquired.

"Certainly. A broken-down supply wagon blocking a bridge should create an inviting target," she offered with a hint of mischief. "Luring them to a river will make this quite easy for me."

That suggestion caused Agrehn to nod his head slowly and raise his thick eyebrows out of intrigue.

"There are quite a number of bends in the Keldras River and bridges over numerous tributaries and creeks as well on the path to Eynond. A great many choices for us to..."

"I know precisely where we should do this. You forget, Marshal, I made these waters," Cyrona gleefully quipped.

Rohmhelt forced a smile and motioned to both of them.

"I have the utmost faith that you will put together a perfectly fine plan. Explain it to me first thing tomorrow."