Renkyk, Galdrehln, and Cetie opted to use the cover of winter to strike a path north toward the various barbarian tribal lands north of the Methrangian Empire. Their journey through the depths of the Ancehlt Forest was predominantly uneventful, save for Galdrehln stumbling on a patch of undergrowth obscured by the snows and requiring Cetie to mend a nasty gash on his right leg.

"Not a problem, when you know what you're doing," Cetie chided Galdrehln as she lay glowing hands on his deep bleeding wound. It closed entirely within seconds. Galdrehln's jaw stayed dropped open for nearly a minute. "When and only when you know what you're doing."

"Um, got it," he said, glancing up toward Renkyk, who opted to watch while propped against the nearest tree. "I've dabbled a bit in the Ceunan Aura, but it's never been my main focus."

"Ha! That's obvious," she guffawed, flicking her sandy hair back. "We all have our talents, I suppose."

"I'll have you know that I'm probably the best there is with the Water Aura in the whole world!" Galdrehln angrily protested, his cheeks jiggling. Renkyk muffled a laugh that still drew Galdrehln's attention. "Name a better one, Ren!"

Renkyk raised his hands as if to surrender.

"That's not why I was laughing," he said calmly. "It was the non sequitur, not your claim itself."

"What?" Galdrehln raised his eyebrows. "It was the... what?"

"Never mind," Renkyk laughed as he drew an equally quizzical glance from Cetie. "Shall we get going now?"

Galdrehln rose and grabbed his staff to push him through the snow. Renkyk patted him on the shoulder as he walked past and then turned to follow him. Now that Galdrehln was more aware of the risks of being clumsy, he was using the staff to feel out the ground before him. Cetie followed behind Renkyk and started humming a slow but pleasant melody as they walked. Renkyk wasn't bound to interrupt her as it was something he hadn't ever heard before. It oddly went very nicely with their trudging through the Ancehlt Forest toward the continent's northwestern barbarians.

At some point, when she had repeated it enough times, he called back toward her.

"Cetie, might I ask, what are you singing?" Renkyk queried.

"I'm not singing. I'm humming," she chirped back.

"Well, then that. What are you humm..." he started before she cut him off.

"Oh, it's a prayer we would sing in my village. A prayer to the world itself. You see, angels never really visited my part of the empire," she said, laughing. "Apparently, we just weren't worth the trouble. Tathyk was said to have visited us once a couple hundred years ago, I think."

"There's a reason the central region is richer than anyone else," Renkyk gritted his teeth. "They always got more attention. Isn't that right, Gald?"

"Hey, it's not my fault!" Galdrehln called back.

"So, anyway, we prayed to the soil, the trees, everything around us for bounties. I don't know if it worked, but it felt nice to think that it did," Cetie continued. "We got to a point where we didn't believe the angels would intervene, so, yeah, we had those prayer songs."

"And the one you were just singing?" Renkyk asked.

"Praying for the damn snow to melt," she grumbled. "It doesn't snow much where I'm from."

"Same here!" Galdrehln called back.

Renkyk shook his head and grabbed some snow off a nearby bush with his thick leather gloves. He packed it tight enough he couldn't see any of the individual flakes and tossed it over Galdrehln's head. Galdrehln spun around, his eyes bulging.

"What was that for?!" he shouted.

"Nothing at all," Renkyk laughed, drawing first ire and then a resigned look from Galdrehln. "Just reminding you, both of you, that I actually like this. I'm a man of the north. This, this isn't that bad at all. I've seen much worse."

"Don't tempt fate!" Galdrehln scolded him, his messy hair flopping forward as he gestured with his head. "And, fuck, we're heading even further north. It's going to get worse, isn't it, Ren?"

"We're late in the winter, so it should start getting better," Renkyk assured him and kissed him on his cheek as he came closer. "Don't worry."

Over the next several days, Renkyk's prediction came to pass. The previous piercing cold relented and the first signs of a thaw emerged. By the time they left the Ancehlt Forest, Renkyk noticed that Galdrehln had removed a full layer of his winter garments and now only wore an extra coat.

"Alright, where to from here?" Galdrehln asked Renkyk as they gathered atop a small hillock overlooking the rocky foothills to the north. A couple of walled small villages were in sight at the base of the rocky heights and a path cleaved through the foothills cutting to the northwest. "I assume there?" Galdrehln asked again, pointing to the path.

"Yes, somewhere up there we start hitting the tribal lands, beginning with the Thuunz tribe," Renkyk muttered.

Cetie came up alongside Renkyk and leaned forward with her hand above her eyes.

"Tribal lands, huh? Sounds dangerous," she said, kicking a couple of snow-covered stones in front of her down the hillock.

"Tribal is a misnomer, actually. Really just more unorganized lands unclaimed by any of the larger powers. Well, until you get very far northwest and then you start encountering some smaller powers. And if you go far enough west from there you hit the birdmen of Osilintis. That's its own thing, apparently," Renkyk rattled off from memory what he had read some years ago.

"I've always had a damned hard time believing the birdmen are real," Cetie chuckled. "I've never seen one."

Galdrehln puffed up and put a hand over his chest.

"I've seen them. One time in Methrangia a formal group of some kind..."

"A delegation?" Renkyk interjected.

Galdrehln scowled at him and shook his head.

"Thank you, Ren," he grumbled and then forced a smile. "Yes, a delegation was visiting the Emperor and I happened to be in the city at the time with my family. They're quite a sight. Reclusive bastards, though. Some people said they hadn't seen them in fifty years before that."

Much as Renkyk thought that sounded like an exaggeration, it was well known that the birdmen of Osilintis liked to keep to themselves. Even trade was rare, much less any other kind of interaction. No one had seen any committed to either side in the war, at least not that he knew of. Official policy by the various elders of Osilintis was for near complete removal from those who lived below their lofty peaks.

"Hopefully we'll see some at some point, but on friendly terms. We mean no harm, after all," Renkyk said. "Of course, if they do take a side, especially Forynda's, then..."

"Yes, they wouldn't be too thrilled about someone trying to continue Nethron's work, now would they?" Cetie chimed in. "Forynda was pretty clear how she thought about that."

Nethron's ethereal voice stirred in Renkyk's mind.

"She certainly was," the Aura Liberator loosed a pained laugh. "This blue shaman you have with you, she may have some uses. You should jointly try to raise a dead creature of some kind."

Renkyk nodded more to the exiled angel's comments than to Cetie's, but they both were correct.

"If we do this right, it won't matter what she thinks," Renkyk clenched his jaw. "Cetie, your ability to work with healing and to mend things makes me wonder..."

"Ren, I was trying to tell you this a week ago and you just ignored me," Galdrehln interjected.

"Oh, sorry. I must've been lost in thought on something else," Renkyk smiled and put his hand on Galdrehln's shoulder, shaking him playfully. Galdrehln shook his head, but with a smile. "I think bringing the dead back requires more than just the Silver Aura stuffing their soul back into a mangled corpse. I found I can mend things a little with the Silver Aura, but it's too volatile. Every time I've done it, the creature just falls apart."

"It's some strange blend of your soul, life, and death all in one as I've understood it," Cetie replied, drawing overlapping circles in the snow as she talked. "It's hard to understand, because all of those things are hard to understand even by themselves, much less together."

Again, Renkyk felt the wisps of Nethron's presence in the halls of his mind.

"She has the essence of it. I never fully grasped it myself because I did not have a properly mortal form, just an approximation of one. Forynda was always the one who shepherded spirits back to Ceuna for the Communion of Souls. Life... death... your soul, all very complicated," the Aura Liberator mused in Renkyk's mind. "My brethren can make new life forms, as I sense both Jagreth and Aberos are doing right now to bolster their allies, but neither of them ever pretended to understand why life is life and why death occurs in otherwise intact creatures. My own curiosity on that topic was what led me to isolate the Silver Aura and watch it so long ago. How I wish I had spent more time in your world to grasp it."

Nethron's ruminations caused Renkyk to ponder the matter in a different way than he had before. Perhaps he had been thinking about it all wrong and that a body had to be mended via other auras prior to guiding the lost soul and its spark of life back from the Communion of Souls and into its previous vessel. There was a sequencing, a very delicate balance that was somehow innate to the mortal world to the point angels themselves didn't know what they were working with, besides perhaps Forynda herself. When people would speak of the High Angel as the upholder of law or the keeper or order, they didn't necessarily mean law as enforced by a constable. No, something far more fundamental.

"Cetie and Gald, would you like to help me with something here? I'm eager to try out a new approach," he said. "Let me explain."

After the better part of an hour of talking back and forth, they decided to find either an already dead creature or something living on which he could test his new theory, informed by Nethron's suggestions. At last, they happened across a flagging Tagahn Strider, a flightless bird far smaller than the Kastorian Striders Renkyk was used to in his homeland. About half as tall as a man, it had a round body covered in black and white feathers and long featherless legs that allowed it to move swiftly across the ground. Its unusually long neck bobbed back and forth as it walked, carrying its small and irregularly shaped head along with it. The bird was clearly an older member of its species and struggled to fend off its hunters.

At last, Galdrehln pointed his staff toward the snow and raised from it an icy spear, almost perfectly shaped like an actual weapon. He hurled it toward the bird. With a horrible rip, the blade cut through its body, sending bloody feathers and pieces of viscera flying out the opposite end as it sailed through. It tumbled to the ground with a squawk and sank into the snow. Several of its brethren, circling some distance away, took the opportunity to flee just as Renkyk sensed its soul depart for the Communion of Souls.

Cetie and Galdrehln ran up to the body, while Renkyk lightly strolled. Cetie placed her hands on the ground, pushing them through the snow right onto the soil itself. With a light rumble, the gorund underneath and surrounding the deceased strider began to rise notably. Emerging from the snow was a perfectly circular chunk of frozen rock-filled soil that became an earthen table on which they could work.

Reaching out her bony right hand over the bird's body, Cetie drew out several strands of the Auras and held them in a tight ball of whirling colored loops. Galdrehln glanced at Renkyk, raising his eyebrows and then looked back at her display.

"Every animal. Every person. Everything that lives has the Auras all flowing within them in ways that're beyond our imagining. Once something's dead, I think it's just the case that it becomes harder to keep it balanced," she said. "This isn't like the ground below. That's not complicated at all, really. Oh no, this is wild. Watch as these strains even right now before us become paler. You see it?"

Indeed, as Renkyk looked, the Auras dimmed and lost luster. Cetie let them dissipate altogether with a swipe of her hand.

"I do. So, your point is, even if I try to use the Silver Aura to stitch life back together to house a soul, that essential spark of life, it's doomed to fail without understanding how it works with the rest?" Renkyk asked grimly, knowing her answer.

"Yes, definitely," she answered, her yellow eyes widening. "Life's the most complex thing there is. You're talking about trying to put mortar between rocks when the rocks themselves have crumbled and you wonder why you don't have a home that can stand."

Galdrehln furrowed his brow and stuck his tongue into his right cheek.

"If I'm getting this right, using that analogy, you have to get new stones. But then are you really rebuilding the same house or life or whatever?" he asked.

I don't like where you're going with that, Renkyk fretted.

"I don't know. I've got no idea," Cetie shrugged and rolled her head about to stretch her neck, causing a few loud pops as she did. "All I know is that the way these things hold together, it makes lots of sense that the Silver Aura, used wrong, causes a life form to completely fall apart but probably doesn't affect a piece of dead matter at all."

"I never even tried that, now that you mention it," Renkyk mumbled and reached for his amulet. He closed his eyes. "I'm not even going to try bringing back its soul right this moment. I just want to try this."

Sensing the residual trace of the Silver Aura from the bird's departed soul, Renkyk drew upon its power and unleashed a pulse on the creature. Tendrils of the Silver Aura swirled around it, but nothing happened.

"That certainly isn't what's happened on things we tried bringing back, soldiers, of whatever else," Galdrehln said, awestruck. "That's so strange."

After pondering it all for a moment, Renkyk decided to proceed.

"Cetie and Gald, I want both of you to try your best to work with the Auras comprising this poor thing while I use the Silver Aura to bring back its soul. I'm almost certain we're going to fail this time, but I just want to see what happens when it all flows together," he said dispassionately.

"I don't actually know what I'm supposed to be doing in what you're describing, Ren," Galdrehln sighed in exasperation. "You tried to tell us earlier and I still don't get it."

"I don't, either," Cetie said.

Renkyk let out a long breath and closed his eyes before looking at the lifeless bird and then to the two of them again.

"Just try it. That's what I did when I started learning about the Silver Aura. I just did things and now I now I know some things that make sense," he said before giving a frustrated laugh. "Humor me, at least?"

"Alright," Galdrehln mumbled and Cetie took up alongside him.

Cetie took to trying to close the bird's wound while Galdrehln began to try to gauge the different balances of the Auras still present in the bird. Satisfied, Renkyk closed his eyes and ventured across that whirling and imponderable domain traveled by the Silver Aura into the Communion of Souls. Staring at the great swirling mass of white, silver, and gold streaks comprising the mass of spirits housed within. He set about calling the bird's soul back just as he had when he tried with the vugwaz and other attempts previously. The formless argent glowing presence came along with him back across the space between the world of the dead and the living.

He guided it back into the bird as the other two worked to mend it. He opened his eyes just as the soul slipped back into the bird's body. The bird jolted and thrashed. Its eyes popped back open with that familiar iridescent silver glow. Cetie jumped back a step while Galdrehln stayed where he was.

"I wasn't exactly expecting that!" Cetie yelped as the bird let out an otherworldly screech. "Um..."

"Just keep trying!" Renkyk shouted. "I'll do what I can, too!"

Renkyk spent time trying to understand how the Silver Aura rested within the others in this bird. The other Auras were indeed both unsettled and dimming while the tendrils of the Silver Aura flailed about wildly trying to find their prior homes within the their host.

CAAAAWWWGHHHAAAHHHHCAWWWWGHHHHA! The bird screeched in an echoing and disorienting roar while it thrashed on its side. It tried to reach out and bite Renkyk with its beak, but fell short. Its legs swung ferociously at both Cetie and Galdrehln, but they backed up enough.

He saw the sharp threads of the Silver Aura tangle with the other Auras as they tried to stir back to life as it desperately grasped for harmony with them. He tried his utmost to restrain them, but where he could tame one tendril, another five broke free. He didn't have to focus or energy to keep up. With a sigh, he surrendered and let the inevitable come.

The bird's feathers and skin sloughed off its body, its bones turned to dust, and it melted into an indistinct pile of powder and goo.

"That... Is that what happened before?!" Cetie gasped.

"Basically," Galdrehln mumbled, dabbing some sweat from his head.

"But you did see some things you did not before," Nethron commented in his ethereal voice to all three of them.

Cetie jumped where she stood and looked around her.

"Who is that?!" she shouted.

"Nethron," Galdrehln said, coughing. "It'll take some time to explain that."

"That's right," Renkyk slowly added. "And he is correct. I understand how the Auras all work together now. It's just more work than I anticipated. Yet another problem to be solved, but we will solve it."