Cyrona sat amidst the waters of the Keldras River and its tributaries as they flowed around the small pocket of land she had chosen as the site of her ambush. The Keldras River formed the area's western boundary while one of its smaller tributaries formed the eastern rim. Cutting through it was a single road and a bridge that offered the way northwest toward Eynond. It was generally flat terrain, which struck the Water Angel as being inviting for a cavalry assault.

The narrow black and white stone bridge spanning the Keldras River was, as per her plan, blocked off by a heavy broken-down wagon. The wagon's demise was, of course, intentional and its cargo of disassembled siege engines was valuable enough that enemy scouts would believe it to be worth the time to wait for. Marshal Agrehn had advised on that point, though he was skeptical of the overall plan, which now left a rear guard of some twenty thousand men with no plausible path for escape should the planned trap fail.

Fear of defeat was not Cyrona's principal concern as she sat submerged in the Keldras River. Rather, it was that she felt no clear sign from the southeast that the enemy approached. A failed attempt to draw out an attack would be nearly as dispiriting as a failed battle. She strained her senses to feel any vibration in the water clearly indicative of an advance, but it was all too unclear.

Simel traveled beneath the water to float alongside her as she waited. He was, as ever, difficult to gauge. His black hair drifted up and back with the currents and his shiny metallic eyes glinted hauntingly as he glanced at Cyrona.

"I have been in your waters many times, Cyrona, and I still find them wondrous," he commented.

"Much as I would love to absorb your praise, now is it not the right time," she bitingly replied.

"I understand," he sighed.

"Have you had any visions you find useful?" she mockingly asked.

A crushing pulse of dread emanated from Simel, making the Water Angel wish she had not asked.

"They have been far too numerous and cluttered for me to draw anything from them," the Mind Angel lamented. "There are events flashing through my mind that haunt me not with what I have seen, but rather what I have not."

His voice trailed off with a haunting quality as he spoke, leading Cyrona to feel a sickening sensation inside her.

"What do you mean?" she probed.

He looked away toward a school of bright blue fish swimming by and stayed silent for some moments.

"There are glimpses of happenings years from now where so many of us are no longer there. I have no explanation. It may be that our absence means nothing. Alternatively..." he mournfully muttered.

"Stop it. As bad as all of this has been, you do worry too much for your own good, Simel," Cyrona scolded him. "It is no wonder to me that mortals are as hopelessly maddening as they are given that you authored their minds. There are times I..."

Roiling through the waters to the southeast, she sensed the definite thudding of thousands of horse hooves. Simel, too, shifted his focus immediately.

"And Parlon is among them," Simel said.

"With what Rithys told me, I shall need you to thwart him," she conceded reluctantly. Admitting that Simel had some usefulness strained her, but it was inescapable. "Be ready."

~

Grand Marshal Vildrious rode with a small group of commanders off to the side of the main cavalry column, which thundered up the road toward the bridge and the force of around twenty thousand loyal to Emperor Rohmhelt. He had misgivings about the situation as there was a distinct lack of urgency in the reported movements of the enemy force. Myrvaness, traveling alongside him, expressed the same sentiment.

"This is such a clumsy attempt at a trap that I wonder if Vorlan came up with it," she spat after one of the reports Vildrious received. Her bright yellow skin seemed to flash in anger at hearing the news. "All of the grace of a rock."

"Right. Again, I've already determined that this is one of Agrehn's schemes," Vildrious tried to assure her. "The only question is what to do about it."

Once they came within range of the enemy force, Vildrious saw the disposition of Rohmhelt's army and it was more disorganized than he expected. If indeed it was a trap, the preparations undertaken were far from obvious. He surveyed the ground and saw that the main road and the land immediately on either side of it was the only reliably solid terrain leading up to the bridge. Everything else looked to be marsh and he shuddered even contemplating how his horses would struggle in that muck.

His column stopped about half a mile from the enemy lines, which now formed up in a wall of pikes arching alongside the south bank of the river. Vildrious's gaggle of junior commanders behind him offered no end of observations and unsolicited advice. The most unsolicited advice of all, however, came as the angel Parlon swept in from the left and made an exaggerated bow to Emperor Duronaht's chosen commander.

"Grand Marshal," he lyrically announced, his arms moving fluidly as he bowed and then pointed toward the enemy lines, "I heard you and Myrvaness say that you think this is a trap. I must say that if it is, we should spring it immediately. Nothing would dispirit those fools more than to see their precious plan fail."

His amethyst eyes flashed with a reddish hue as he reveled in the thought. Vildrious glanced toward Myrvaness, who folded her arms as she glared back at the Music Angel.

"You truly believe it wise to engage the enemy on their chosen ground and on their terms?" she queried mockingly.

"I say to you, my dear dear Myrvaness, that it is all quite immaterial," Parlon grinned and flicked his hand into the air. "I will lead the assault myself if you are not persuaded. Nothing would give me more pleasure."

Vildrious felt some measure of relief at Parlon's supreme confidence, but Myrvaness gave off the coldest of airs in response. Then she smiled, her green eyes narrowing.

"If you are so certain, then you can proceed. Of course, that is provided that the Grand Marshal agrees," she said, tilting her head toward Vildrious.

With both angels glaring at him and the assortment of junior commanders whispering behind him, he felt that he had no choice but to acquiesce. The words to give the order struggled to get out of his throat.

"Right. My Angelic Lord, you may lead this attack. Take care to keep the cavalry on firm ground, not those marshes. The horses don't float like you do," Vildrious commanded.

"Thank you, Grand Marshal. You will not regret this," Parlon whimsically twittered as he sped off to the front of the column, breaking out into a deafening roar of frenzied singing.

Vildrious winced as the column surged forward, the horses' hooves clashing with the stone road and rumbling the earth. Myrvaness, her arms still folded, merely floated next to him and watched, shaking her head.

~

Cyrona still sat in the river, waiting while she sensed the vibrations through the ground and water. She summoned hundreds and then thousands of her creations, relying particularly on the massive Swordtooth Fish that were abundant in the deeper portions of the Keldras River. They were so named for their unusually large teeth, each the size of a large dagger. Mortals, true to their tendency for exaggeration, originally claimed that the fish had teeth longer than a man's arm, leading to their overly-dramatized name. Even if that was an excessive description of their real power, the Water Angel knew they would be sufficient for what she intended.

Parlon's disturbed presence closed in her faster than the cavalry behind him. It was clear to Cyrona that Parlon did not want to be deprived of a chance to prove the terrifying effects of his own perverse powers. Rithys had told Cyrona what she saw the Music Angel do when she fought alongside Tathyk. Even though Tathyk succeeded in fending off Parlon, the losses among the mortals there had been severe.

"Simel, now," she commanded his departure. "I will join you soon."

Not wasting a moment, Simel sprang out of the river and closed in on Parlon, whose music greatly disturbed the waters around Cyrona. Beyond that, the fear from Emperor Rohmhelt's men weighed on her as she waited. It was a tight band, squeezing her. She wanted to act swiftly to quell their unease, but the enemy cavalry had not yet come close enough for what Cyrona intended.

"SIMEL!" Parlon sang in a voice so loud that it roiled the waters of the Keldras River. While mortals would complain that they could not hear much of anything while under the water, Cyrona had no such deficiency. Every word spoken near the river was as clear to her as if it was uttered next to her. "SO, IT IS A TRAP!"

Simel did not humor Parlon with a response. Instead, Cyrona sensed that he floated in front of the ranks of soldiers bracing for the oncoming cavalry charge. His demeanor was placid as always. Whether irritated by Simel's lack of reply or just eager to unleash his power, Parlon began singing a horrid and dissonant strand that flashed across Cyrona's vision in a streak of purple and black. Feeling a disturbed aura from many of the soldiers nearby, she realized in horror what he had done.

Just as Rithys had warned, some hundreds of the men turned against each other before either she or Simel could respond. They impaled one another with their pikes by the dozen while some turned their weapons against themselves, engaging in swift disembowelment. Agonized screams and clashing metal filled the air.

For reasons Cyrona initially found imponderable, Simel waited to respond for several seconds, until such time as the enemy cavalry had closed almost the full distance. At that point, he let out a sharp ringing pulse that flashed across Cyrona's vision with a bright white wave. It pushed back Parlon's sickening purple and black aura, though it was plain to Cyrona that this was an uneasy balance that could not be maintained for long. Parlon's powers seemed to swell the longer the contest went on. For the moment, however, the madness Parlon had inflicted on the men abated.

She swelled the river to breach its banks and wash over the marshlands bracketing the main road and commanded her legions of Swordtooths to ride the new currents toward their enemies. To her dismay, the cavalry mostly stayed clear of the surging tide of the Keldras River. Some dozens of horses and riders, however, had veered too far off the road and the horses soon lost their legs to the ferocious snapping bites of the Swordtooths. Riders, toppling from their mounts, fell right into the gaping maws of her creations.

While the road itself sat too high to sweep over with her waters, she could pinch the path of retreat for the enemy cavalry to no more than ten riders wide. It was there that she deployed her trusted hulking Urobas and Dolics to slam the path shut. While the weather had cooled enough that they were not at their peak energies, their very presence so frightened horses that they could not ride through.

She shot up into the sky on a pillar of water, drawing the dumbfounded attention of Rohmhelt's forces. Exasperated by their indecision, she jutted an arm toward the south where chaos and confusion took over the once imposing cavalry horde.

"You will have no better chance! Attack!" she shouted.

Horns blasted from the rear ranks and a great cheer went up. Parlon, clashing with Simel between Rohmhelt's and Duronaht's forces, let loose another twisted trill of song to try to command some portion the pikemen now charging forward on either side of him. Simel countered immediately with a heavy white pulse, deadening it. Enraged, Parlon no longer paid attention to the ranks of pikemen rushing past him or the disordered cavalry he had led that far, but rather focused entirely on Simel.

"Ha! You surprise me!" Parlon barked, his skin darkening into a sickly purple hue. "Forynda is broken and you, of all of them, step forward?"

He hurled a twisting coil of dark purple and black flame at Simel. The Mind Angel summoned a glossy shield that parried the blow easily, sending its remnants off into the rocky ground on either side. Just as this happened, the pikemen closed the distance with the vanguard of Duronaht's cavalry and began impaling the horses, gradually collapsing the ranks against Cyrona's wall of Urobas and Dolics. Her beasts were all too happy to lazily feed on any horses that came within range of their languid lunges.

"If you think she is broken, Parlon, you are a fool," Simel riposted.

Cyrona wanted to intervene as well, but was content to let Simel torture Parlon while she obliterated his forces from behind him.

"You are not the only one who has seen the future, Simel," Parlon guffawed, tossing strange blobs of darkened matter at Simel, who fended them off with a defensive bright blast of light. "I know what awaits you."

"Taunts are the refuge of the defeated, Parlon," Simel retorted. "If you knew how this day would proceed and did this anyway, you are a fool."

Parlon looked behind him just as he prepared to unleash another assault on Simel. At first he was silent while he observed the pikemen skewering his cavalry nearby while Cyrona's beasts ravaged their rear ranks. After a few moments, he tossed his hands skyward and mockingly bowed toward Simel. Up until that point, Cyrona divided her attention between the collapsing and panicking ranks of Duronaht's cavalry and the conflict between Simel and Parlon. With the battle almost over, she floated down to join Simel's clash with Parlon. The Music Angel flashed her a twisted grin and clapped his hands.

"Ah, Cyrona. As soon as I sensed your presence in the river, I knew this was your doing. This was certainly your style," he laughed, waving a finger in the air clumsily as though he were conducting a choir of children. "Crude, simple, brutal."

"Brutal?" Cyrona retorted in exasperation. "You, of all, to call anything brutal?"

"Just like the waters you made, you flow wherever one will dig a channel," he mocked her, making fluid motions with his hands. "I shall not forget this, Cyrona. Any of it."

"Parlon, it was you who decided to attack foolishly in the hopes of slaughtering the soldiers here," Simel admonished his foe.

Parlon then glowed with a deep dark purple radiance around him.

"I still mean to do that," he grinned.

At once, a devastating pulse burst from Parlon, causing Cyrona and Simel to droop in agony, despite having braced for it. It was a strange and roiling force and it left her confused and enfeebled for a few short moments. Parlon sprang from his position toward the ranks of Rohmhelt's pikemen behind him and again let out a deafening and dissonant song, this time so powerful that it seemed to warp the air itself. So terrible was the noise that an acute pain built within Cyrona's body, a crushing and horrible sensation she had never before felt.

Some of the pikemen again turned on each other while many others eerily marched toward the swollen waters and either dove straight in or waited for Cyrona's Swordtooths to grant them a swift and bloody end. Panicked, she withdrew the waters as soon as she could, but she still staggered to recover from Parlon's onslaught. The receded waters revealed hundreds of bloodied and mangled corpses of men from both sides as well as the remains of horses that had been pulled under.

Simel's serene demeanor gave way to a bout of rage that shocked Cyrona as she felt it radiating off him. The Mind Angel lunged forward at great speed and loosed a great white pulse to counter Parlon's malign influence. Their two opposing forces clashed above the battlefield, causing the world itself to ache under the strain. Cyrona detected a fraying of the Auras as both of them intensified their efforts. Uncertain, but afraid of what that struggle might do, Cyrona desperately hurled pillars of water at Parlon as he floated high in the air. He swiftly avoided them. That distraction, however, gave Simel the opening he needed. His swelling energies overpowered Parlon and sent the Music Angel flying back toward the southeast, far away from the battlefield.

The remaining pikemen cheered wildly. After the battle was over, they surrounded both Simel and Cyrona and sang their praises into the night. Cyrona reasoned that as many as a third of their number had perished during the battle, but it was not enough to diminish the thrill of victory. She at once understood why Emperor Rohmhelt had been so eager to achieve even a costly triumph.

~

Vildrious had watched the entire battle with horror. Commands he sent out were useless as the cavalry was entirely trapped between the water and the great beasts that crawled out of it. Myrvaness, despite his pleas, did not intervene. Indeed, until Parlon floated back to their position, she said nothing and did not respond to any efforts to engage her.

In all, only just over a hundred of the ten thousand cavalry managed to escape. The rest lay dead in mangled heaps where the pikemen had skewered them or where they had been pulled into the waters Cyrona washed over much of the battlefield. The shock of the defeat was so stunning he didn't even know what to say until well into the night when he confronted Myrvaness on their ride back toward the main army.

"You just stood by and let Parlon throw away ten thousand of our best cavalrymen and their horses just to prove a point?" the Grand Marshal breathlessly inquired.

"The point is that Parlon is a lunatic and you should never give him authority," Myrvaness growled. "He is, at best, a force of nature to be loosed on his own, but should never command so much as a color guard. Now you know that."

"Couldn't that have come more cheaply?!" he angrily protested.

She did not reply. Instead, Vildrious was left to wonder alone how he would explain this catastrophic embarrassment to Emperor Duronaht.