The fundamental problem is that she does not understand why Aroden does anything. She keeps horrifying people with plans that rely on His personal intervention or assistance, and it's not actually that she thinks less of Him than they do, or imagines herself more entitled to His aid, it's that if she were a god she'd want to be a god who people could figure out how to use to accomplish her priorities.

If in fact the people at the front lines being devoted and virtuous and obedient will make it easier for Aroden to aid them, then she can probably make Canorate the most virtuous and devoted city that has ever endured.  She is followed by a small flock of people whenever she goes out. They linger in the aura of safety, and listen to her speak, and ask for her to pray for them. She just isn't sure why this is expected to be the best way to get Aroden to help. Is it bribery? Gods like being obeyed, so they come to the aid of obedient people? Is it easier for Aroden to alter their course, if they've wedded their wills to His? Does it directly give Him power?

She would ideally just directly ask these questions but the Crusade is not casual with Communes and she gets one question, maybe two, each month, if there is space going spare on the Commune. So she has to find the single question that alters her course the most, rather than use the Commune to rule out all the possibilities that have occurred to her. 

....or she has to convince Arnisant it's worth the cinnamon. After a great deal of reflection and three months and two questions ('is there attainable proof we can offer the Emperor that would change the course of the war', NO, 'is there aid outside the Empire we should be figuring out how to call on', YES') she's pretty sure she should do that, actually.

"Or I could feed and equip a hundred men."

"I know, sir. But feeding and equipping a hundred men will not save us and this might."

"Might it? How?"

"The thing I want to understand is why Aroden came Himself last time, and if He's going to have to do it this time, and what - makes that risky to him, or costly to him, or makes it compete with His other interests, and if there is some thing less than that which can lead us to victory - why He hasn't just told us of that, which has to touch on why He doesn't tell us things in general. If the only way in which we triumph is by being worthy of aid then I want to know what makes us worthy so that we can be as worthy as possible. If there is some other constraint I want to know it so that in Aroden's service I can address it. I have taken to heart the point you made to me, that Communes may be costly to the gods. If things are costly to the gods, then it is very important which are the least costly. We would serve the Emperor very poorly if we had no idea at all how much soldiers cost and how much horses cost and how much wizards cost and yet had to submit to him demands for so many horses and so many soldiers and so many wizards. In that fashion we presently serve Aroden. I need to straighten it out. 

I could instead with your permission write to the Church and ask the answers, if you think they know."

"If they do and haven't published it they probably haven't published it on the strength of considerations which would also inveigh against telling you. I am not sure if they have. Your attitudes are unorthodox."

"It is only with respect to divine intervention that there is this distaste for - communication, and planning. If we rely on a miracle then we should ensure we are equipped to make use of it, and to be worthy of it. When I understand what it pleases Aroden for me to understand of what moves the gods, I will set myself wholly to it. Maybe He desires that we set ourselves on some otherwise-suicidal course He'll salvage for us. I observe that He does not readily tell us unless we ask and one of my questions is whether that is because He does not wish us to know, or whether it is because the asking is itself important... we have both of us contemplated the possibility that He will arrive here to fight Himself and save us. Don't you want to be ready, if that might happen?"

"I do not think there is a meaningful account of what it is to be ready for that." 

"Well, I'd want a plan to verify that it's Him, and to communicate this situation immediately to the Church in Oppara in the expectation it inspires some changes of policy there -"

"He would have that. Because He's Aroden."

"If we would start obeying someone because he showed up and it was magically obvious to us that he was Aroden, and we would follow his own proposed verification procedures to test this, we are vulnerable to being hijacked by Tar-Baphon."

They are vulnerable to being hijacked by Tar-Baphon. He doesn't say it. You can build a command structure that checks for Dominates; you can't build a command structure that checks for all the things an archmage can do. The second army is probably already in the enemy's service; his army isn't, but only because you don't need to compromise the leadership to ensure Canorate falls soon. If Tar-Baphon shows up impersonating Aroden, he and the Knight-Commander will be Dominated; if Aroden shows up, they'll be - in the direct and immediate service of a god which is probably identical to being Dominated except that it is a righteous and not an evil use of you. 

The Knight Commander does not need to know any of that and he does not say it. "You may have the Commune with it understood that it, and obeying Aroden's instructions from it, are the last experiment I intend to entertain."

So figure it all out in nine questions or set the matter aside and prepare to die here. 

"Thank you, sir."

"May your steps be in Aroden's service."

The thing is that General Arnisant is right, and Aroden could just send a vision if the thing they need to do is 'talk to the Church of Sarenrae'. He's done things like that before. If this were a problem that could be solved with solutions of that character it would have been solved.

And it's not worth asking her way down a list of entities that might be worth talking to - the empires on other continents? The Churches of other gods? Other gods themselves? Empyreal lords? Arodenite saints? Evil enemies of Tar-Baphon?

- not with nine questions. 

....except they're not nine questions, right, because she can write for each question what she asks next in response to a 'yes', or in response to a 'no'. Two possibilities after the first question. Four after the second. Eight after the third. Sixteen after the fourth. Thirty two after the fifth. Sixty four after the sixth. One hundred twenty eight after the seventh. Two hundred fifty six after the eighth.

...that's probably enough. If she lists two hundred fifty six entities that might save them and none of them actually can then she isn't sure what more she could possibly do. So, one question for clarifying whether 'get the attention and aid of some entity' is the right approach at all. If it is, then learn which of the two hundred fifty six entities is worth talking to. If it's 'no', then she can ask her planned series of questions about how to make it less costly for Aroden to aid them.

Now there's just the research project of identifying two hundred and fifty six powers it might be worth contacting for aid.

"Every god we've ever heard of, every empyreal lord we've heard of, every empire that stands, every archmage known to history, if that doesn't fill out the list I'll think about what else we can ask."

"You're going to run twenty Communes?"

"No, I'm going to run one, but in a clever way that occurred to me when I was agonizing over what to put in the one. We have been told we only get the one shot so I expect we might as well be comprehensive with it."

"And say it says we should ask Nex for aid, how do we do that."

"I guess a Sending. - no, no, you're entirely right, the more specific my intentions the more usefully Aroden can evaluate the options and make sure that the course he's recommending is the one I'll actually do with the recommendation. ...for the empyreal lords and powers of the outer planes, the intention should be to call them through a Gate; for the archmages research while you're researching them what if any method of contact is suspected to work."

"Is the Church going to agree to call an empyreal lord through a Gate on your say-so? Aren't they mad at you?"

"I should probably confirm this hypothesis with someone more knowledgeable about the Church first but I believe that their major problem is that most things they can do in Oppara cost them credibility in Oppara. And 'Aroden has commanded that we call Ragathiel through a Gate to our aid'...doesn't. It gives them credibility. I think they will be enormously relieved...if they can be persuaded it's true at all. But I think I could have gotten a Commune, when I went to Oppara, if I'd been willing to pay for it and known what I was doing and if I'd wanted something that would make the Church's life easier instead of harder."

"Wouldn't we be calling Ragathiel away from the war on Hell, in which he recently slew the Lord of the First? Is that ...worth it?"

"I don't know. I trust Aroden to. And - it is a cost, that we are asking Aroden to bear for us, a cost He must pay if he wants to save the Empire. I wish we could save it without Him. But it is not a pure cost. It's about time for a third person to follow Him to godhood, and any power that leads us to triumph in the Shining Crusade would be in a good position to do it."

"Ragathiel being a full god would be good. Baba Yaga..."

"Aroden can account for the merits of the relevant powers when advising us."

"One imagines most of these powers could be gods anyway if they wanted."

"I am deeply confused about how that works and if I get to ask further Commune questions will certainly try to learn more about it. But I have for the time set aside my confusions not of immediate relevance to getting Aroden's help."

"Aroden says the Church should call the saint Arazni through a Gate to aid us in the war against Tar-Baphon."

"It makes sense. Tar-Baphon is an archmage; we need one of our own. I just wasn't sure who, so I asked after every archmage out of every legend, and every empyreal lord, and every Arodenite saint and every minor god."

"Sefistos heard this from Aroden? Call him in, please."

" - the thing is, sir, I don't know if that's what Aroden said or not. The Knight-Commander had some kind of scheme."

"It's just - instead of asking after people one at a time, I - with one question to confirm the method would work and be useful, and eight questions to narrow down from among the subjects, you can name wildly more than eight people. And the gods don't steer us by the words we're asking, they give the answers that put us on the right path, and they can look ahead and see the whole Commune. So the answers were 'yes yes no yes yes no no yes', which answer would move us to call Arazni, instead of someone else." She has a chart with all of the candidates. 

"Knight-Commander, I'm not going to ask Oppara for a Gate to call a demigod on the strength of a theological innovation no one understands but you."

" - well, you can just confirm it with a normal Commune."

"I told you you got one."

"And I used it to find you an allied demigod who'll answer a Gate! Sir."

If she were a man he would have beaten the insubordination out of her approximately three weeks after they met but he's not comfortable having women flogged.

"Explain your theological innovation again."

He very seriously considers only taking Sefistos on the trip to Oppara. It doesn't really matter who suggested the theological innovation; it matters that the priest who did the Commune (the followup commune, to confirm it in normal language) is in his right mind and is a priest of Aroden in good standing and of fifth circle, a loyal servant of the Empire. 

But. She's not a madwoman, apparently. And if she's not a madwoman then she's Aroden's instrument, because it was only ever one of the two.

He does not Send ahead to Oppara. This is a matter Tar-Baphon will interfere in, if he realizes he should, and they sorely cannot afford it. Instead he arrives by Teleport and requests an appointment once he's there. 

There are a few ways to get a prompt meeting with a powerful priest supportive of the war effort in Aroden's Church. Tar-Baphon is more likely to be surveilling the formal ones. They will instead drop in on a cousin of his who is a droungarios in the imperial army and who can, at need, seek an appointment for the General of the Third Army of the Crusade. They will impose while that's arranged on the cousin's hospitality. Iomedae has been told not to speak unless she is directly addressed and he nods approvingly. 


He has no particular fondness for Oppara; he is loyal to it but it is the loyalty of a man to a distant father, not a loving one. He is not a child wandering around the city in blind ignorance but its proceedings are not always predictable to him, even with no enemy in the mix, and this ask is an expensive one.

That the miracle for which they have long been in diligent prayer is here - well, he'll believe it when it happens. Or perhaps he won't. The account he has always heard is that it is in the gods' absence that men have will, and in their presence will is suspended. He is not sure if Arazni is enough of a god for that. He is not even sure if it is true. But it is hard to imagine calling a god forth and then - what, giving her a briefing? 

Iomedae feels fine, for the first time in more than a year. Aroden wanted something from her, and it was this. For some reason which she is desperate to understand but does not need to be told right away (or later, really) they had to think of it themselves, and not be ordered to do it until they had begged Aroden for this specific order. .She does not understand the constraint but she can live under it.

Oppara is beautiful. She appreciates it.

The droungarios can of course manage the General of the Third Army (a very important man!) an appointment with Hypatos Stelian, for should the General of the Third Army urgently need to see a person of great importance in the church Hypatos Stelian is well known as a friend of the army, to say nothing of his sister being married to a cousin of the droungarios in question.

"Hypatos Stelian." All appropriate compliments to the intervening relatives, all appropriate praises to the Emperor and the gods, all appropriate introductions of his subordinates with a brief indication they are present due to their knowledge of the situation and can be excluded as the Hypatos sees fit but needn't be for the secrecy of what he'll say. 

"I am grateful that you were able to make the time to meet with us. I have urgent news regarding the war, and as we are presently facing an enemy that has begun investment of Canorate and is disrupting our communications, it was necessary to bring it directly and in person."

The thing about the Church of Aroden in Oppara is that, while it might regularly seem that way, Oppara is not another planet. One can reach the high rank of Praipositos chiefly off of ability to understand Oppara politics and work capably within it, provided Aroden has given you enough power to shrug off most attempts to enchant you.

Hypatos is not one of those ranks. The Hypatoi are the people who, when His Supreme Eminence the Dishypatos of all Aroden dies, might be his successor. Most of them run the Church of Aroden in some province or another. When the Empire wants to suggest that the High Priest of a barbarian nation is really very high, he gets to go around calling himself Hypatos, provided Aroden is really extremely taken by him. You do not get to this rank until you have killed a lot of Evil things, or at least things that are opposed to the expansion and prosperity of the Empire, as is close enough for most purposes. Hypatos Stelian cannot personally cast the Gate to summon Arazni himself, but he can and does cast a significant fraction of the Communes Oppara casts, and he is cleared to know that the King of Ustalav is that same Tar-Baphon who caused Aroden Himself to personally smite him last time.

Hypatos Stelian will compliment the relatives and praise the Emperor and the gods and gracefully acknowledge the subordinates, because you also don't get to be a Hypatos of the church unless you are reasonably good at Oppara politics, before speaking. "The Church of Aroden commends you for your service against the enemies of civilization, and how can I aim to do less than my god? Tell me what must be said, general, so that I may help with all in my power."

"I come here to seek the Church's confirmation on a matter of great importance to the war. Aroden has by Commune conveyed to us his will that we invite, by a Gate, the saint Arazni to aid us in the Crusade." 

Hypatos Stelian does not hear that every day, and looks very calm and says nothing for several seconds while his hands flicker in a standard orison.

Not visibly enchanted. This could be a plot. This could be many plots. Also, General Arnisant is known for his heroism and piety, so this isn't deliberate...

"By Commune, general? What were His words?" 

"After an initial commune identified the possibility but in a confusing and ambiguous manner, I ordered a followup, the phrasing of which was, should your Church be immediately directed to call by Gate the archmage Arazni, spoken of in your histories, and ask Her aid in our war effort? The priest Sefistos conducted the Commune, and conveyed a 'yes'."

Right here, also not visibly enchanted.

Precise limits on Tar-Baphon's abilities are not really known, but it is generally believed that while he can use Suggestions in all sorts of clever ways, he cannot actually conceal a Dominate. Also, a Dominated cleric of Aroden would fall.

He nods. "I understand." Look at the other two to make sure they also don't seem to be deceived or anything?

The young woman paladin is not visibly enchanted, and Aroden has not withdrawn His blessings from her. 

Likewise.

"If it is the will of Aroden that She be called, what can we do but submit?" This is going to be a lot of work. Dishypatos Haralamb will need to be the one who summons Her, because if someone is summoning the Herald of Aroden it has to be His highest priest, but the Dishypatos absolutely cannot summon an archmage into the middle of Oppara without something at least resembling imperial permission unless he wants to look like he's pulling a coup. "Has He given other instruction in this matter?" They need to make sure the greens can't block this, even 'for the Emperor's consideration.' 

"It had been conveyed to us in a previous Commune that we ought to be trying to find more allies for the fight against Tar-Baphon." If the Church didn't already know that it's only because it was not a question whose answer would be useful to them, and for this reason he did not bother to convey it to them. 'find more allies' is the kind of thing that can play badly in Oppara, depending on things it's not his business to keep track of. "There was devised a means to ask between a great many possibilities, and the outcome of that was interpreted to mean Arazni. That inspired the question whose wording I have just spoken, and amounts to the whole of our instructions from Aroden." He spent the rest of that Commune checking that the priesthood in Oppara wasn't compromised such that they needed to go straight to the Dishypatos (or to Pharasma's high priest, who could technically also do it) but he won't mention that part. 

He is curious about the theoretical improvement in Commune but now is not the time. The important thing is that General Arnisant is a humble military man and is not giving any cover whatsoever for urgently doing this without checking with the Emperor, which means that he is going to need to get this to the Emperor very fast after casting Commune, himself, personally. (And if the Commune doesn't confirm that, he will have some very harsh words for General Arnisant.)

"I understand the urgency. If you would kindly wait, Simeon" bell ring to fetch servant! "will fetch whatever you need...."

"Thank you."

And they'll wait.

Do they understand the urgency, given that they do not have accurate reports on any features of the war at all.

It's great how the Knight-Commander can't talk. It's not that he doesn't appreciate her. The opposite, really. He appreciates her a great deal when she can't talk.

Hypatos Stelian will quietly go to his private chambers in no particular hurry, pour holy water, light a stick of incense, and cast Commune.

And Aroden Notices him.

Should your church immediately Call the archmage Arazni, spoken of in your histories, and ask Her aid in our war effort?

YES.

Is the casting of this commune the result of a plot by Tar-Baphon or his agents?

NO.

Is this a matter of great urgency?

YES.

So urgent that we dare not wait for the Imperial command?

YES.

Will the Emperor see the necessity of this?*

PROBABLY.

Well, that's concerning.

Should Dishypatos Haralambos himself immediately Call her?

YES.

Does he have time to Commune himself first?

YES.

Is the paladin Iomedae Your champion?** 

YES.

And then he can toss a few more questions into the mix and start running politely walking to assure Dishypatos Felician of the urgency of this.

(*: Trans: "will he refrain from having us killed and/or destroying the institutional Church of Aroden in revenge?")

(**: Trans: "Would she make a good figurehead for us to spin this story around?")

Twenty-seven minutes later a servant (not Simeon, a different and fancier servant) wishes to inform them that they are invited to attend on Dishypatos Haralambos at their earliest convenience.

They will of course come immediately.

Yes that is actual creditable urgency. She is relieved.

Dishypatos Haralamb is an extremely friendly-looking fat, balding old man, old enough that the fancy belt he wears is clearly helping him have the breath to speak far more than it is serving as a piece of combat equipment. He doesn't live in a mansion, but in a small house stuffed with overfull bookshelves and has no intention to stand on ceremony.

"General. Knight-Commander. Since you possess the urgent information for Arazni I have called you here as witnesses." He has not called Hypatos Stelian, who is doing damage control.

"Dishypatos. We are honored." He has a briefing ready, he was hardly going to Teleport to Oppara without a summary of the situation prepared, but feels a sort of primeval horror at the idea of delivering a briefing to a god, for most of the same reasons he'd be horrified to be instructed to brief the Emperor. He does not indicate this, of course. Aroden has conveyed His commands and they are all here to obey. 

This is the highest priest of the Church and he is not wasting everyone's time murmuring about the health of the emperor and Iomedae finds this deeply, profoundly reassuring. There can be all kinds of things broken by the necessities of war and politics but Aroden's highest priest should not be broken by those things. 

She does not speak and falls in quietly next to and slightly behind Arnisant.

And then he is going to light some saffron-infused candles, and, as the smell of tremendous amounts of money burns, he casts a spell very few people can cast.

He could cast Gate. He doesn't. Greater Planar Ally can call forth the herald of the summoner's god, and Arazni is the herald of Aroden, and he knows Aroden enough to know that, when provided a specialist tool, you should probably use it instead of throwing raw power at things.

And he thinks he would have gotten some questions answered differently if Tar-Baphon was about to murder him in his living room.

(Meanwhile, Hypatos Stelian is attempting to get an urgent appointment with the Emperor, something he expects to take half an hour, and quite a lot of people are very secretly fetching magic items.)

They'll kneel. It seems laughably inadequate but better than standing there.

Astral devas are only about a foot taller than humans. It's the wingspan - thirty feet or so - that makes them imposing. The wings of an angel are often depicted as white, in artwork, but they're really iridescent, and spectacularly so, the thing which opals and seashells approximate.

She's dressed, for the sake of minimizing expenses, in fabrics that Golarion has already invented. The beading and lace and embroidery was not done by diligent manual labor but it could have been.

She does not bring her weapons, and carries only the magic items that Taldor cannot replace for her. The forces of Good will pay a little less, this way, and while it might seem not to matter before the extraordinary expenditure that is her accepting this Calling at all, you never know when you'll need the value of 'sending the best possible rings and cloak and headband and robes to the Material' for something harder to replace. 

The form of Planar Ally is something Abadar felt very strongly about, that mortals and outsiders could barter and compact, and is absurd for these purposes. But she will wait for Aroden's high priest to make the offer that completes his spell.

"Arazni, Herald of Aroden," the old man says to his senior coworker, "I have called you here to request your help against Tar-Baphon, foe of Aroden, who threatens the Taldane Empire and the world, and request that you devote your presence and strength to work towards his final defeat until the Empire and Golarion are saved from him. In exchange, I offer the loan of six hundred and eighty thousand gold solidi of magic items for the duration of the war, to use as you see fit while you pursue this task."

"I accept," she says. "Tar-Baphon's trap around the second army will close the second he learns I am here, or in a week if he doesn't. As you have described you will equip me, and then we will depart to save it. I'll need someone of at least seventh circle with invisibility purge prepared, and will take a few observers."

What

Oh, no, it's obvious actually, you don't have to actually give a god a briefing because they can learn it out of your mind and then respond as if you'd given it. Should have anticipated that, really.

No one told Iomedae anything about the situation of the second army! This is startling enough to startle her right out of her awe at being in the presence of the Herald of Aroden!

No one told Iomedae anything about the situation with the second army because the second army has been gloriously conquering its way back across Moltuna province and everything's been going remarkably well, unless you're skeptical that the dwarfhold they're relying on soon reaching is still intact or paying a great deal of attention to how their lines of retreat have been sewn up behind them. It is a problem. It is half a political problem, because the general of the second army has lots of friends in Oppara. It is not a problem Iomedae could do anything about.

Here, have his belt, he can put on a new one. And have a new headband. And have two rings, a cloak, bracers, enchanted robes, other enchanted robes, the fancy shirt that makes you ungrappleable, gloves, an amulet, this bag of pearls, a hat that makes you look like a human so you don't alert the enemy, this bracelet, a mithril buckler...

(His anteroom has really been filling up with magic items.)

Arazni is not fond of Oppara. She saved it from the Tarrasque once but that does not require her to feel any endearment for a place. Aroden likes it, but on matters of taste they often find themselves in disagreement. 

She will grant them this: she's a wizard and likes magic items and they're doing great on that front on very short notice. 

He had, emotionally, written the second army off a month ago, which just goes to show that despair is a sin and one should trust the gods.

Well-equipped human-looking wizard. It's impossible to tell how outlandishly well-equipped, because she's Mind Blanked. "I expect to be able to return with good news for the meeting with the Emperor that your subordinates are arranging," she says to the Dishypatos, and gestures for the people who'll be joining her at the front to come take her hand for the Teleport.

The dishypatos is absolutely not one of those, he needs a pause to inhale after replacing his Greater Belt of Endurance with a regular one. "I trust that you will," he says. "May all the righteous gods bless your work." Also he will personally summon them a trumpet archon for backup and have the righteous gods bless their work via Greater Mass Spell Immunity and Bestow Grace of the Champion, the last of which will be useless on the Knight-Commander but he did prepare the spells, for some reason.

("Them" now includes a fairly senior priest of Aroden,  if not as senior as the dishypatos, who has been rounded up very very fast, plus three more junior people, all of whom are getting Greater Mass Spell Immunity and Bestow Grace of the Champion on general purposes.)

Being immune to fear does not usually matter to Arnisant - it's not as if one has feelings on the battlefield anyway - but it does, actually, make it easier to have thoughts that are complete sentences in the presence of a god. There is no chance that was Aroden's intended use of it so he'll be on the lookout for things to smite.

That's six people and a trumpet archon, which is not a problem for Arazni whose teleports can take sixteen.

With every passing second there is the chance the enemy is alerted that the Church in Oppara is up to something. 

Arazni casts an antimagic field that allows conjurations (so she can Teleport and take the trumpet archon along) and transmutations (so she can continue to resemble a human) and abjurations (to keep her Mind Blank in case he has an artifact scry, and to keep the Sanctuary she just had cast on her).

Teleport. 

It may come as a surprise to the majority of sensible, informed observers, but it actually happens that, while General Ieronim Albu of the Second Army may be a glory hound who got his appointment through political connections, and a gambler, and under about six Suggestion spells at all times, he is actually not an idiot. You don't have to be Arnisant to notice that the war is going badly. Tar-Baphon has demanded the destruction of the Lake Encarthan fleet and the whole of Imperial territory north of the Menador Mountains, and he can demand it because he's got most of it already. Canorate was one of the two anchors of their line of defense, and when Korholm fell it was obvious to anyone paying attention that Canorate wouldn't last and the Third Army would be cut off and annihilated.

Under these circumstances, you need to start taking risks. The fangwood tangles the enemy's wagons and packhorses just as much as it does Taldor's, and to get past it the orcish supply lines need to go through two points. One is Tamran, through which anything coming from Tar-Baphon's eastern territories (the vast majority of his nation) needs to pass, and one is Dajonir, upriver from Tamran. Both of these are major supply depots, where goods are constantly being loaded and unloaded between wagons and boats, and if both fall, the orcish army pillaging its way across Moltuna and outright besieging Canorate - the majority of Tar-Baphon's forces, just ask anyone - will be cut off and forced to retreat.

Taking Dajonir is obviously stupid. Just to get there you need to take Tamran with a naval assault, take it fast before the enemy notices because boarding ships while under attack is famously impossible, and then you have to march and sail upriver through a forest under enemy control, in fact in the middle of enemy-controlled territory, even though the Taldane army relies on cavalry and the orcs have hardly even heard of it, to attack an enemy-controlled fortress with only the supplies you can steal from the enemy. Even if you somehow win every battle to get to Dajonir, where do you go from there, cut off and trapped in the middle of hostile territory?

But they're out of plans that win the war that aren't stupid. And this (General Ieronim is persuaded) isn't quite as stupid as it looks. It has the perpetual advantage of the unexpected, to start with (the enemy won't see it coming), but that's not enough to make it good. They can't resupply, no, but the whole trip is by river, and riverboats can haul a lot of cargo... and just who already has enough riverboats in Tamran to supply a major army? Why, Tar-Baphon. Take Tamran using our naval superiority on Lake Encarthan (orcs and corpses are both very bad with ships), transport the entire living population and all the loot back home, minus what we need to eat, sail upriver through the Fangwood that the enemy doesn't control because nobody can control a forest, and then there's only a single battle at Dajonir. "And then what?" Why, and then we march west to the dwarfhold of Dar Garihm. The dwarves don't like necromancers any more than we do and have been our allies against Tar-Baphon practically since the war started, and Ieronim speaks excellent dwarven. With access to the major dwarven cities of western Moltuna, we can resupply, hold on, and work with the dwarves to strike against Tar-Baphon and his orcish allies.

It's not a stupid plan, if you happen to believe the right set of facts.

And, in the opinion of General Ieronim Alba, it has just about worked. General Ieronim had three goals, in this campaign. Take Tamran, take Dajonir, get to safety. He's done both of the first two. Tamran fell to his army, and he didn't think he could hold it but he could evacuate it, bar a rear-guard, and burn everything that would be of use to Tar-Baphon on the way out. There was a battle at Dajonir and it was hard-fought with his back to the river and Tamran already recaptured behind him, but he pulled it off.

There's an orcish army coming for him. He's not stupid. The orcs are already rushing up from southern Moltuna to do everything they can to stop his army from linking up with the dwarves, and the orcs have their own scouts, birds just like his wizards' familiars and incorporeal undead at night and all the horrors an archmage's imagination can concoct - but Tar-Baphon can't be everywhere. And as the Second Army leaves its night's fortifications and packs up to journey further into the low-lying foothills east of the Mindspin Mountains on foot and riverboat, the sun of dawn illuminating their work, he thinks he's actually going to get away with it.

That's when a woman Teleports into the commander's tent with six allies plus a trumpet archon, for one impossibility, while to all appearances in an antimagic field, for another impossibility, and if anyone has the reasonable instinctive reaction of trying to stab her they will find this is a third impossibility. (Unless they are very experienced in resisting powerful magic, in which case it'll merely seem like a very bad idea for purely mundane reasons, and also glance off her magical shields unless they're really good at stabbing people.)

General Ieronim Alba is no longer under six suggestions, and neither is anyone else nearby.

Two men crumple immediately to the ground once in the antimagic field, the entities that had possessed them having been temporarily suppressed. One clutches his head; the other vomits.

"They have been enslaved these last two months," the woman says. "The scouts have been turned and are lying; Dar Garihm fell years ago, and this was a trap all along.The enemy will attack as soon as he realizes that the bluff has expired."

General Arnisant is here for some reason! He looks not quite clear on that reason himself but his facial expression is expressive in the direction of 'she's not kidding, Alba'.

Also a very confused lady paladin. And some observers and a seventh circle priest from Oppara. And a trumpet archon.

"What in Aroden's name -" he roars, drawing his sword and then... not attacking her, for some reason.

(There is confusion outside the command tent!)

"I am not your enemy but you are under attack. Ready your men." She is dispelling the compulsions and possessions while she speaks; that'll keep even once they're out of her antimagic field. 

"Alba - we got a message from Aroden." He assumes Arazni has a reason for not identifying herself. "The army's in urgent danger."

Arazni needs three more minutes without the true hypothesis being whispered to Tar-Baphon, is what she needs. She turns and departs the command tent, firing Dispels off as she goes. Look at that, that man over there is actually dead, what a thing to not have noticed. Look at that, that one's suddenly gone ghost-white and is scrambling to flee. 

"Arrest him!" Ieronim isn't a wizard but he can spot a few common spells. When someone goes ghost-white after being dispelled, that is a very bad sign. 

"- Arnisant, what did I say to you the first time we met in Oppara?"

"That you recommended the red wine." How is Arazni deciding which people to - right, because she's a god.

He nods briskly and goes out of the tent to start yelling at his men to form up for battle, aides trailing behind him. Apparently half his officers were possessed, and so suddenly their seconds are going to be taking over much faster than expected.

No one has given Iomedae any orders or any explanation of what is going on so she's going to trail the general in Paladin's Sacrifice range and wait for trouble.

Not long now. She could have stopped all of Tar-Baphon's scouts and messengers from alerting him that the army's preparing for battle, but not without using Time Stops she does not want him to guess his enemies have, and not without making him wonder how in the world they had adequate intelligence. So any second now the fact of the battle preparations will be reported, and then the assault will begin in earnest.

She drops the antimagic field. Casts Greater Invisibility.

Aroden's Magic Army, to make every allied weapon for half a mile around into an extraordinarily powerful magic weapon. Haste, the good Haste that makes you wildly faster than normal Haste. Holy Aura, which she can do at will as she flies over the army. 

Below her, the horns sound and the army starts boiling like an anthill. The general is issuing orders - there's an attack coming - and soldiers pull on their lamellar coats, fasten helmets on their heads, archers string bows and grab quivers of arrows, cavalrymen pull their mail shirts on as their horses stand by for Mage Armor, formations shaking out as the infantry forms up around their standards, the heavy infantry with their great oval shields that bear the Eye or the lion or their own battalion's standards and their long stabbing spears whose shafts will shatter in the battle and their axes and knives that (Aroden willing) won't, the light bowmen with their simple wooden bows and the crossbowmen (the finest at siege archery, not much on the field) winding up their weapons, cavalrymen with their deadly bows of horn and killing lances and long straight swords, the hippogriff knights whose duty it is to slay dragons and all the mercenaries from Iobara and the west and the ten thousand allies of the Empire - the horsemen of the great steppe that taught Taldor archery and the dwarves with their long double-headed axes and great deadly glaives and the Kellid axemen now with axes of city-forged steel and scale coats of city-forged steel and the young elves older than any man with their darkwood bows and their magic older than Aroden's and desert nomads from Qadira who crossed the Sultan and would rather be north of the border - 

- and at the heart of the camp General Alba alerting officers who were thinking of themselves as second-in-commands and informing them that their superior officers were possessed by evil wizards and ghosts but most of the work of rallying is done by sergeants far too unimportant for any necromancer to impersonate - Alba offers horses to Iomedae and Arnisant, for his own bodyguard is forming up around him, knights drawn from his own holdings as every Taldane general has to keep him safe from his own subordinates as he is from the foe with swords and bows at the ready, trained by him and paid in their own prospects in the war -

Rank upon rank, the soldiers of Taldor form up for battle. There's no enemy they can see, but after the way they feasted when they took Dajonir, most of them trust their commander when he says there is one.

And below them, the low, low mist that covers the distant hills comes rolling in.

The commander of Tar-Baphon's forces in northern Moltuna province is a seventh circle lich who spent centuries contentedly ruling a small fiefdom in northern Ustalav, a few decades interrupted in that rule by some scheming mortals, a few decades after that in the vicious pursuit of revenge on them, their descendants, everyone who'd ever talked to them or their descendants, and everyone who objected to this, and then a few more centuries contentedly ruling again.

Then Tar-Baphon arose, and recognized his eternal right to the lands that he had long ruled, with it understood that Tar-Baphon was the Emperor of all of Avistan. So now he's here fighting a war for Tar-Baphon, and fighting it very competently, with the constraint that they are supposed to let the mortals believe they are winning. The Second Army has been induced into their risky plan, led deep into enemy territory, and thoroughly infiltrated. When he gets the word, he'll mop them up with vanishingly few survivors. It has involved no genius, just relentless patient execution. 




The first strike is a horrifying and incomprehensible monstrosity, plunging from the sky at the army's conveniently gathered leadership, inspiring utter terror in the hearts of all who witness it -

(Him, in the form of a gryphon, with a spell of his own devising cast upon it that creates eight twisted and horrific mirror images around it)

Shoot it -

Nothing that a seventh circle wizard couldn't do if they got a bit lucky, not until the real prize is on the field - 

He does not fear for himself, at any point in this. The mist conceals him until almost the last instant; a dozen invisible summoned bodyguards cover him even then; three of the twisted mirror images go down to lucky shots, and all three archers buckle, whimpering in horror, when they hit. He wasn't expecting any of them to hit. Between the magic in his bracers There is very little on this or any battlefield that can threaten him; fully prepared he simply has too much magic protecting him for most of the archers to stand a chance at hitting him. 

The enemy's wizards and angels will probably try something. He has deafened himself, on reports of the trumpet archon. He has a contingency if incapacitated or controlled, to remove him from the battlefield. He has a greater spell immunity up at a fairly insurmountable caster level, covering Holy Smite and Trap The Soul and Disintegrate and Heal and Holy Word and Undeath to Death. Some of the beads around his neck are of a special poison that is contained by magic and so, in an antimagic field, will explode into a cloud of fog that'll kill or at least incapacitate any living creature in the antimagic field with him, living creatures' defenses against poison being generally magical in nature.

 And if you defeat all that and destroy him, so what? His phylactery is in a secure demiplane where magic doesn't work except for a minor artifact that lets him escape it. There are threats to a lich all the same, but not many of them. Imprisonment? Tar-Baphon would free him, and it'd be inconvenient mostly because he'd then owe Tar-Baphon a favor. Trap the Soul? Even when he doesn't have the greater spell immunity up, his name is long lost to history, and his spell resistance is very good, and among the many many magic items he wears are those that allow him, in an emergency, to burn them for advantage at a crucial moment.

So the thing with the best odds that a seventh circle wizard could do is - Plane Shift. Lucky seventh-circle wizard, guessing something he didn't give himself immunity to today. (It is more likely to fail than to succeed.)

He aids himself with his lucky talismans; he ignores the spell; he reads a scroll, Wail of the Banshee, and a horrible inhuman screech echoes out where it can be heard across the whole army, and every man within forty feet of General Alba in any direction dies on the spot, without exceptional fortune. We'll see how the army fights with no head.

No, they're all fine.  (Two men crumble to dust, just outside the range of the power with which she's protecting them.)

- how - 

Plane Shift.

 The monstrous beast vanishes from the sky.

But there are, of course, others, dozens of them, striking at the heads of the army's many regiments, at its notable heroes, at its few flying cavalry -

- And the army is emerging from the mist.

Some soldiers see it. They point and yell and fire arrows at the mist that, instead of burning off, drifts unnaturally closer. Some yell it's a trick or can't you see them, but those are the minority, and have an odd tendency to die.

Some of the soldiers of Tar-Baphon are orcs of Belkzen. Some are Ustalavic men-at-arms and knights, other are sellswords of every race and nation, working for the person who pays them. The River Confederation maintains its own armies on the eastern side of Lake Encarthan, of course.

But the troops emerging from the fog? There are orcs among them, but those are few. At the head are the dead. Zombies shambling forwards to soak up arrows, wearing the clothes they wore in life, skeletons still wearing their old armor. Ghouls charge forwards with the axes and shields of the infantry raised and their own fangs bared, bone centipedes of a hundred corpses stitched together lashing out with their bony fangs - and in the midst of this are their officers, bone priests with skullfly amulets and raised scythes, spawn of vampires warded somehow against the sun's rays, hard-eyed men with slit throats who never speak, the daughters of Urgathoa screaming and howling above it all -

And from the fog come more, and more, and more. They are not men. They are the ocean.

And then there are others. A great skeleton with a horse's head taller than a giant, not bones but a whirlwind of bones making up the skeletal frame, roars above the confusion, and men die by the hundreds. An entire warship of bone and muscle appears above the battlefield, and boarders swarm out to drag every soldier near them onboard as missiles shred the cavalry around it. An animate siege tower formed of bone and flesh rumbles across the battlefield to smash a battalion flat beneath it, drawing their broken corpses into it as it charges onwards. A flayed giant erupts from the shell of an officer to tear the mortals around it to pieces barehanded, even as a skeletal stag and its laughing elf-corpse rider call thunder from the sky to smash horsemen flat.

In all this chaos, a man dressed like any other man save that his cloak bends oddly turning and fleeing from the host, brushing against dozens of others who are suddenly stricken stock-still with terror, is nothing unusual at all.

They are not all going to die here because if they were, Aroden wouldn't have sent Arazni. 

....a lot of them are going to die here, admittedly. But die winning, not die losing. It matters. 

Smite Evil boat. Go fly up and stab evil boat.

The Second Army does not lie down and die.

Skeletons and zombies are arrow-resistant. Ghouls are less so. The light bows of the archers normally do very little against armored enemies, but they have the blessing of Arazni, who while she is a little bit a god is much more importantly someone who can cast Aroden's Magic Army without needing a miracle. They go through undead flesh and bone like it wasn't even there.

And the cavalrymen's horn bows, the bows of Taldor's knights, the finest in the world, now with Arazni's blessing? There are paladins in every group of them, keeping their spirits fresh and them inspired. Some of these paladins are very, very good.

The siege engine dies. It dies because it is shot sixty times with arrows within six seconds of emerging from the fog, by enemies who dart out into the gap between the armies and empty their quivers without ever slowing down. Since it is made of bone they use target arrows, which when blessed by Arazni turn it into just a very grotesque monument. The dead elf dies. She is a thousand feet up in the air and protected by a really astonishing number of spells and she still dies because Taldane cataphracts can shoot straight up with no particular problems and anyone still alive after the first decade of war is really astonishingly good at being alive. 

And as the massive host of undead surge into their ranks, the spearmen hold. They hold with skill and they hold with honor and they hold with the blessings of the gods, dispensed by clerics prepared to channel as needed. Large shields and lamellar armor and lots of combat experience mean that the ghouls and the skeletons and the zombies don't actually last very long. They are meat for the chopper, and then they aren't.

The undead don't stop coming out of the mist.

Holy Word, Holy Word, Holy Word, Holy Word, clear of the ranks of the soldiers because she'll kill a bunch of them too if she gets near them. Any astral deva could be doing that.  A few more attempted Plane Shifts aimed at terrible things that did not bother to make themselves immune to that spell because the Crusade didn't to their knowledge actually have any demiplanes from which they couldn't be promptly retrieved. Holy Word, Holy Word, Holy Word, Holy Word.

Iomedae has her sword Flaming, the better to fight flying boats with, and Defending just in case the boat hits back, and she savages the boat's side until it manages to swing around and aim its guns at her particularly, at which it blows a hole clear through her and sends her flying through the air and into the mists of the undead. Her instinctive Lay On Hands as she dies picks her up again and now her only problem is being deep behind enemy ranks, but she can fly -

Iomedae can do what she likes. The fundamental problem the living face isn't one of heroism. It's not even one of archmages. The Taldan army did not have time to fully deploy for battle. The Taldan military doctrine is to use the infantry as a fortress around which the cavalry wheels and maneuvers, striking with lance or bow at the most vulnerable points.

The Taldan cavalry cannot wheel. The Taldan cavalry cannot maneuver. The Taldan army is surrounded from an army attacking on all sides, trapped by a riverside by an enemy it cannot see, and its knights cannot charge; all they can do is withdraw to the inside of the shelter of soldiers and shoot arrows. The Taldan army begins to make a D, as it bends under the pressure; one line against the river and the rest a half-circle pressing inwards further and further as men take one step back and then another, their formations jammed closer and closer together as the gaps in their line meet each other and the sergeants desperately try to restore order. 

And then, of course, the undead come out of the river.

There is, actually, a Wish wording to turn a whole river to holy water, but she's not here to show off, even if she is zipping around mowing down undead by the thousands with Holy Word after Holy Word after Holy Word. The thing that matters is to give her a shot at Tar-Baphon before he knows he needs to fear her.

Iomedae flies, and heals herself until all of her internal organs are wholly internal where they belong, and is barely faster at healing than they are at shooting her. Once she's hovering in the top layers of the fog the enemy mostly stops firing on her; they presumably can't see through it either. She can see them; most of the fog is illusion, and most of the illusions don't fool her.

 That is really and truly far too many undead. How many necromancers would you need to have that many undead. From above it's clear that the army's surrounded, and that they can't fight effectively surrounded, and that they mostly can't see through the illusions to see where the undead have been thinned out, where there's a break in the enemy lines -

- Aroden, reveal the whole truth to us -

Aroden has higher priorities, right now. The people working for the last fellow to go toe-to-toe with Aroden, on the other hand - 

- Iomedae is really not their priority. She's just some paladin. There's lots of paladins. They kill paladins all the time. The astral deva throwing Holy Word around like it's nothing, though, she needs to go. A black-cloaked skeleton surrounded by ghostly dancers whirling through the army's lines (and, around them, dragging men to join them until their life fades) ceases its work, turns to dart through the sky, sightless eyes searching. The dessicated corpses of great snakes surge out of the fog into the sky, seeking, life, life, ever life, and from the mirrored helmets of the hippogriff knights emerge gore-dripping bones to throw them to the ground and wrench on their horses reins, seeking the deva. Ghoul wizards fly invisibly through the air, Glitterdust spells at the ready, for they know the smell of an angel's flesh. There is always a reward to be had for destroying a great angel, one from Urgathoa as much as from Tar-Baphon, for those who can accomplish it. 

(And, seeing through the fog that they know is an illusion, the best archers of Tar-Baphon's army wait, bows at the ready, for a sign that their target can be seen.)

Which is not to say that they have it all their own way. The dwarves hack undead down by the dozen, axe and shield in accord behind their heavy armor. Web and Grease spells are simple and easy-to-cast and terribly, terribly effective against the armies, and all the most deadly undead that try to come near the battlefield will be brought down by rain after rain of arrows.

The enemy scouts' main problem is that Arazni's very very fast, and zigzagging unpredictably from each Holy Word to the next, and that few of the scouts can actually survive being near her, and that her protective aura functions as a lesser globe of invulnerability so they have to waste fourth circle spell slots if they want to throw out Glitterdusts. Or, those are the problems that they know they have; on top of those, there are some other barriers to their striking successfully at her, including actually a complete immunity to Glitterdust and Invisibility Purge and Dispel Magic and Greater Dispel Magic and Mage's Disjunction - but those she does not wish to be discovered.

Nor does she wish Tar-Baphon to arrive here intending to kill one particular stubborn astral deva; better if he assumes that already accomplished. And so, after a few more Holy Words have scoured Tar-Baphon's scouts further -

Time Stop. Summon Monster IX. Greater Invisibility, welcome to the team please take this shrunken prop I made with Minor Creation ten minutes ago -

And shortly after time resumes, a Glitterdust catches a summoned astral deva on the wing, and as that summoned astral deva dies before a barrage of specialized arrows from accomplished archers Arazni speaks the command word to unshrink the prop, and the battered body of an astral deva falls out of the sky and into the forest. 

(That's an opportunity for a couple of retaliatory Fireballs at the accomplished archers, of course, now that she knows where they are. Arazni's actually really good at Fireballs but these are normal Fireballs, what a shame.)

Arazni switches from Holy Words to Dispel Magics, at least momentarily. The cavalry needs to get out and start actually fighting, and it needs to do that promptly so that Tar-Baphon feels the need to get here in a hurry. On the other side of the river the illusions masking the undead are going to start falling one by one. 

It makes sense that someone started dispelling the illusions. The cavalry can't function with the illusions up, and as long as the cavalry's hemmed in Taldor fundamentally can't do any better than killing whatever comes at them. But they're doing it across the river. There's no magic Iomedae's ever heard of that can get a horse across the river without the horse having been specially trained to handle an Air Walk. 

- no, this is straightforward when you add the premise that the gods are with them. Someone (Arazni?) is dispelling the illusions; therefore there is a way to get the horses across the river. Probably Arazni has a spell to get the horses across the river. The poor cavalry commander whose forces are closest probably hasn't realized yet, because he doesn't know the gods are with them in any sense other than the sense in which the gods are always with them.

Iomedae flies down with her sword glowing brightly. Conveniently for her this cavalry commander is caught with a barbed arrow on the shoulder right as she approaches and she can tap him and heal him. "There's a wizard who can get the horses across the river," she says. "Get everyone ready to charge once it's cast."

Iomedae probably shouldn't use her tiny sparse sprinkling of godhood to save Arazni one message spell but who among us is responsible with the first sparse sprinkling of godhood, really. Anyway she is correct. When the land across the river is clear, one more Holy Word to take out the skeletons and zombies in the water, and a Wall of Stone to build a beautiful bridge across the river, and another Wall of Stone to make it wider.

The essential problem with having an escape route is that you have an escape route. When enough of the fog clears that there is a way across to the opposite bank, a way wide enough for the horses to ride across it, and the cavalry is gathered to cross it - that's when the battle might be lost then and there. It's so much safer, to be on the far side of a solid stone bridge from your enemies.

The entire army buckles.

Ah, this young officer has just made it to his commander, who's just gathering the cavalry. He'll whisper in his commander's ear, heedless of the young paladin who just healed the general's shoulder - "You must realize all is lost! Flee with all you can save!"

It does look like it, doesn't it? He gathers his horse -

Hang on that’’s kind of suspicious - 

Greater Dispel Magic.

The young officer is now a skeletal lich wearing a long descending cloak that falls like water over his shoulders, a cloak made entirely of mirrors, nearly all of which reflect the lich's form.

A very fast Mirror Image and a Teleport and fly straight up?

She’ll counterspell the Teleport.

Smite Evil. Die. If she fights with her eyes closed the illusions can’t trick her.

Plane Shift to Nirvana, Plane Shift to Nirvana-

Miss, miss, shouts of alarm, dodge, hit, dodge, hit, that's a soul lost, that's a soul lost - 

- The Mirrorgrave is now an elaborately carved statue of himself. His cloak is also an elaborately carved statue of his cloak.

Iomedae will cry out triumphantly on the assumption Arazni knows an undead affecting Flesh to Stone. “Attack!” she tells the cavalry commander. “They’re headless! We’re winning! Our wizards have given you a way to get in the fight!”

And then she’ll repeat “they’re headless, we’re winning, attack” over and over very loudly because communication on the battlefield is hard and you have to keep it simple.

(Arazni doesn't know an undead-affecting Flesh to Stone but in fact the commander of this army is in a carefully designed mostly-antimagic demiplane so it's not false, and Iomedae is very persuasive and should not be interrupted with clarifications.)

She'll keep dispelling illusions.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the battlefield, a fourth-circle wizard is having a bad day. The trap that anyone with any sense knew Second Army was walking into has been sprung; She lost her race against time and will be a casualty instead of a questionably-criminal deserter. Half her fourth-circle spells are reserved for scrying, one of the remaining two is confusion which is no good against the undead, so really for all practical purposes she's a third-circle wizard with one wall of fire.

After a herd of zombie elephants run through the lines of the formation she's attached to, she's just a third-circle wizard.

After ten minutes of fireballing and a few dispels, she's just a second-circle wizard.

And the cavalry will ride out across the river, shooting volley after volley of arrows into the tightest bands of the undead, focusing on living targets or particularly powerful champions. They feel a lot better now that they aren't trapped, which isn't to say they know what the next step is.

Meanwhile, the rest of the battle is ongoing. Gigantic dragons living and undead swoop over both armies, vast armies of reinforcements appear, entire adventure parties manifest in midair to make dramatic speeches, and in other words the illusion-duel that is the perpetual state of any major battle continues. Arrows go both ways, spears shatter and soldiers draw new weapons. Injured men stumble and fall and then there's a channel and they draw their daggers and cut off the feet of the undead over their bodies and pick up their axes and get to work. A dozen zombie giants smash their way through an infantry regiment and the undead armies follow in their wake, only to be tripped on Grease and ensnared in Webs and brought to crash down on their ghoulish servants before being picked off by the lowly foot archers. A vampire wizard with some kind of charm against the sun calls up swarm after swarm of spiders and scorpions to assail the soldiers, only to vanish in a sudden pop when whatever magic was keeping him sun-proof is suspended. A rotting winged horror ridden by a graveknight is brought down by a hippogriff-riding knight's charge, but the falling graveknight takes the hippogriff's head with him on his way down and they plummet together, dueling as they fall.

More and more of the soldiers of Second Army are starting to eye the bridge...

Iomedae knocks the statue of the lich over and smashes it to pieces with her shield, and then she stands in front of the bridge glaring down anyone who seems to be contemplating making a run for it. She does not want to kill soldiers trying to flee, but she will kill them, and because she will kill them they are all of them likelier to survive. It is one of those places where the concepts men speak in have the logic of the gods underlying them. 

Standing here making it clear they are absolutely not going to try retreating across the river doesn't actually take that much of her attention so she's spending the rest of it scanning the field, trying to figure out what's going on - where's Arazni -

Occasionally throwing out Dispels. Figuring out where to give the cavalry a way back across the river and actually into the fight. How about....here.

Eight hundred years in the future, armies will devise responses to the tactic "be charged by heavily-armored cavalry lancers." There will be good cheap bows, and pikemen trained to form square, and guns will be starting to come in that don't care how much armor you're wearing because they can put a bullet clean through plate, back and breast both.

Right now, the only response is close-packed heavy infantry with armor and shields and big spears with the morale to stand up to cavalry facing the right way, because it takes a genuinely exceptional horse to be willing to collide with a wall of spears. Normal horses who are not powerful adventurer horses look at that and go "nah, no thanks."

That is sort of what the undead are doing! They are closely packed and they have Being Completely Disposable as a substitute for armor and instead of morale

But they aren't facing the right way. Their backs are to the cavalry, and they are packed together to try to reach over each other's bodies to try to maul and devour the living, and they really aren't prepared to defend themselves from lancers..

As a result of this the cavalry do not leave line formation. They simply ride past in a narrow line, reach their lances out, skewer the nearest undead bodily off the ground, hurl them to the ground and then trample them before their hooves. Then they do it again further down the line before any of the people controlling the undead can realize anything at all is wrong. Their lances are fairly unlikely to break, because, you see, they are currently greater magic items.

This kills undead really, really fast.

There's undead cavalry out there. Rotten corpses on rotten horses, clad in the remnants of their old armor and wielding lances and shields, and their deathless captains will throw them at the knights of Taldor.

Being a knight is a skill, not a matter of equipment.

The undead horsemen go crunch.

There are plenty of free riders in Tar-Baphon's ranks, serving as sellswords for the King of Ustalav. Somehow they have very little desire to close with the best horse on the continent, in spite of their undead masters' threats.

As the fog clears (in sudden bursts, not an ordinary lifting) the Taldane troops can see the armies of Tar-Baphon.

They are, of course, outnumbered. They are greatly outnumbered. Mighty hosts lurk in reserve, great monstrosities larger than the eye can see, vast swarms of undead bats yet to descend on the battlefield, hilltops warded with palisades of bone and stone.

And yet the armies are finite. There are limits. There is a space beyond them, a space trampled by their march but that still has stubby grass growing out of it. They are not alone, isolated, in an ocean of the dead.

The liches have failed, thinks Urkemkhufu, and now it is time for me to do my work.

There was a man named Neithkhufu, once, a great archer and servant of the gods. In an age beyond ages, he played the games of hunt and war and politics and drank life's pleasures to their dregs. In the end, fearing that though his goddess had not abandoned him his acts of war and tyranny would see him damned, he accepted the fate of all leaders of Osirion in that age, and his lungs were removed and placed in jars, and he was wrapped in bandages, and rose again.

He did not count the millennia before the whispering servant in his cloak of mirrors appeared to him, and told him that his gods had not abandoned him, but the world, and there was a goddess who would accept him and restore him to the full power and glory that he truly deserved...

His bow is pale, not wood but metal, a substance found in the ruins of Belkzen by the great necromancer himself that strikes true against any armor, and his arrows are of bone and fletched with a black swan's feathers. A different rune is carved on each, the name of that which it is to kill.

He casts his spells.

He takes aim.

He looses.

The arrow falls out of a clear sky and buries itself in the heart of Ioan Bălan, master of cavalry of the Second Army.

Ioan Bălan has his own spells of protection. His bodyguard falls from his horse, his lance tumbling in the dust.

The second arrow goes through his chest as well, though it's hardly as lucky a shot.

Another paladin by his side falls.

And then the arrows fall thick and fast as rain, and each shot strikes true and each brings another man of his bodyguard tumbling down, until he and the last fall together and his banner sways and falls.

Another man will pick it up the moment that he can - but the banner is swaying.

And the archer, wrapped from head to toe in his shroud of silver mail, will set another arrow to his bow and pick another target.

How are they doing that, what's the counter - well, kill the archer, that's the counter, but Iomedae can neither do it nor order it. She takes off flying without a plan beyond reaching that banner; maybe she'll think of one on the way.

All the clerics who'd cast Shield Other on their commander are dead, but there's enough left that one of them can throw up a Wind Wall to stop the arrows coming from that archer's direction, something they hadn't been doing because they'd previously been winning the archery duel.

A necromancer brings it down with a single spell.

Is that so? Try taking this one down.

The necromancers will do their best!

They're really not sending their best.

(Soon. In the next few minutes, probably, unless he thinks to do the right divinations first, unless he knows one she doesn't know how to confound -)

Once again wizardry fails. Urkemkhufu takes off into the air, circling to a position to find better aim on one of his targets.

(Iomedae won't have any trouble leaving the bridge because there's now a company of dwarves holding it. The undead are still leaving it as a tempting opportunity to flee, but the dwarves have axes pointed in both directions and very no-nonsense opinions about people who rout instead of fighting. Dwarves may break, but they break last.)

Not all the cavalry are as weak as the zombies. The undead may have little worthwhile horse to turn against their foes, but with a wall of bones rising to block the free riders' flight and vicious words and spells of command to redirect them, they can be turned against the Taldane horse at their moment of disarray - and with them ride the true undead horse of graveknights and spectral riders and dread cavaliers riding skeletal wargs, and at the head is Racher Coronesti with the runescarred axe that he bore when he was mortal, Racher Coronesti the kingkiller with his cloak of fingerbones, one joint from one knuckle of every lord or marshal of Taldor he has killed, Racher Coronesti who prayed to every god to give him vengeance on Taldor and was finally granted undeath. He wears the armor of a hero and bears a blood-red shield, and his steed is a steel bull with only flames burning in its dead eyes. For the true knights of Tar-Baphon are few, but they are very, very strong.

And as the graveknights' charge gathers momentum, the Taldane horse are in disarray, because their commander and his second and half of his guard have just been shot down -

No.

Taldor still has vastly superior numbers, they just need to stay in formation and meet the damned thing at the head; flying in she can see it all clearly and it would be a winnable fight even if she did not have the perfect glowing certainty that they will win this battle or Arazni would not have been sent to aid them in it, that with them is not just hope but grand sweeping inevitability.

The person to charge right at Coronesti the kingkiller might die - probably will die, really - but the Empire will live, and the world will live, and the Age of Glory will come.

There's a horse still running with the banner, its rider dead. She lands on it. All the men nearby will abruptly share her absolute and blazing conviction. Sure, kingkiller, let's do this.

She likes speeches, usually, but under these circumstances - "CHARGE!"

It's tempting to protect Iomedae from her decisions but she won't get stronger, that way. 

Drawn by Iomedae's magnetic army, the cavalry swings to follow her, forming its own spearhead to break through the lines of the undead, firing last arrows as they do -

He can't get a bead on her, the wind wall is still in the way -

Another Taldane champion. What else is his axe for, if not for her? "DEATH TO TALDOR!" His own horse is forming its own speartip, but slower, more raggedly, the better undead are heroes not knights -

Iomedae has a sword, which is the wrong weapon to have for this fight, but also Aroden gave her an unfamiliar spell this morning, and when He does that He always has a reason. She casts it and - yep, a radiant beam of light materializes in her hand, afire but not in a way that burns her, and as her fingers instinctively tighten around it they find purchase, even if it's not clear what they're gripping. She raises it to the sky and it lights its way directly to the heavens, visible for miles around.

Then she steadies it and levels it at the enemy, because they're fast approaching. Smite Evil.

When two wedges of cavalry charge at each other, spurring their hoses on at canter or gallop and with lances readied, they don't normally collide. Horses are smart, they don't want to die and it's very hard to run them straight into a wall, and their riders are much the same, for it is very easy to be brave on the training ground and very hard to be brave when a lance is aimed at your shirt. The question is which horsemen don't break first.

Nonsentient undead have no sense of self-preservation. Everyone on the other side is bathed in the aura of an extremely powerful paladin, and more than that in the hands of a genuinely unusually charismatic general. The sellswords peel off, where they can, and everyone else braces for lances to collide and looks to put their horses alongside, instead of in front of, another.

Racher is used to lords who think that their lance outweighs his axe. He'll take one hit and deal out double, and roars defiance in the face of today's Taldane marshal!

Iomedae's not strong enough to kill a graveknight in one charge, so she doesn't actually try as they barrel at each other. Instead she just tries running the steel bull he rides right through; that'll break the charge, anyway, even if he has a backup Fly like she does.

The bull is undead and shows no fear of her lance, which is unwise of it. It's dead in an instant, and Racher takes off flying, smashing her own horse's head in with his axe before turning to swoop after her. He has a hero to kill.

But this is only the start of the bloodshed. The undead charge might have worked if the Second Army's cavalry had been leaderless, but with their momentum behind them they are incincible. The graveknights and other mighty dead at the head of the undead force can hack their way through the Taldane horse, but the troops they lead will be impaled, ridden down, trampled and otherwise destroyed, the living fleeing and the dead destroyed. A poet will eventually compare it to an autumn tree suddenly struck by a sudden wind, the heaviest leaves falling and the rest scattered by the winds.

She too is in the air and turning back around as her horse goes down, letting the lance dematerialize as it falls out of her hand, drawing her sword which Arazni made deadlier and which she can make holy besides. The impossible clarity and assurance is still about her; she does not believe in her own invincibility, but that the battle is won, that there is only mopping-up left, she believes unshakeably. 

Perhaps Coronesti can kill her. But Taldor will triumph; there are a thousand more of her.

No, there aren't.

A week ago Iomedae fought with the caution of someone who was reasonably sure that her death might mean the destruction of everything she cares about; but now she has solved the puzzle that was set her, now the Church knows the need and has called their aid, and it has not in fact occurred to her yet that she might still have any reasons to protect her life in any case where she would spend someone else's.

They can debate that later, because not unrelatedly she's busy in hand to hand combat with a terrible and powerful graveknight right now.

And she is busy too now, waiting for Tar-Baphon to witness in his scries an aggravating but wholly explainable military defeat, one he has no reason to think he can't reverse quite trivially -

Aroden's greatest weakness is that His slaves are men - weak, petty, disposable, selfish, short-sighted insects who can only manage to walk in a straight line the way real insects do on a particularly good day. 

But also they are unpredictable. He looked patiently ahead into the future, planning this battle, and he saw these men's ruin. Their commander would be slaughtered in the first few seconds, by men he trusted; their officers would betray them; the soldiers terrified and confused would turn and flee, and be hunted, and the Second Army of the Shining Crusade would rise again by nightfall, in vastly improved order, ready to serve in death.

Instead they have done something else. Called a miracle from Pharasma to strengthen their blades, and helpers from Heaven to die in their futile defense, and wizards and priests from the capitol. It is ill news, in that it means Oppara has in its blundering idiocy blundered into taking the threat seriously. And it is ill news in that they did it without his being alerted; the city is woved through with spies, and he really should have heard. 

He is uneasy. But that's all the more reason to slaughter this army very quickly, and then retreat to investigate how the error occurred. 

Time Stop. 

Gate, oriented horizontally and opening out of the ground in the middle of the Taldan infantry, to a demiplane full of hungry grasping horrors that yearn for the flesh of the living. A great many of the soldiers will fall into the Gate instantly when the Time Stop expires. 

Another Gate, somewhere else, to a different demiplane. 

Meteor Swarm has, among ninth circle wizard spells, a poor reputation. You can sink ships with it, but you can also sink ships just by dropping rocks on them from very high up.

That is because most ninth circle wizards can't actually master Meteor Swarm. It is one of those spells that doesn't really hang together properly until you are a bit more than a wizard, and is not employable in its full glory until you are to most approximations a god. 

The real spell cuts four burning blazing lines twelve hundred feet in length, killing everything in those four lines, and then explode at their destination into enormous explosions that bypass all protection against fire - they'd even kill devils, were there any in the Taldan lines - and leave only smoking craters behind.  

Extended Maximized Mythic Time Stop.

A seventh circle priest of Aroden and sixth circle priest of Aroden will find themselves still in motion, on a battlefield that is otherwise utterly silent and still. (And smouldering, from the Meteor Strikes, but a few thousand lives are not the stakes they're playing for, right now and right here.)

Mythic Haste. Mythic Fly.

"Invisibility Purge, and go find him," she instructs them. 

When archmages fight, what usually happens is that they don't fight. Their summons fight, their constructs fight, their minions fight, and they intervene occasionally with a decisive spell and then flee, and it is very nearly impossible to find them. Even if everyone involved has the heightened senses and heightened spellcraft to pinpoint from precisely where a spell was cast, that just implies a rapidly-expanding volume in which the caster could be anywhere presuming they didn't teleport. See Invisibility can do nothing against Mind Blank. Glitterdust is countered by a Lesser Globe of Invulnerability. (So is Invisibility Purge, ordinarily, unless one's god inexplicably handed it out at fourth circle today.) Nex threw around some very large-radius antimagic effects, in the early years of his war with Geb, and everyone knows how that worked out. 

Two mythic hasted flying clerics with an invisibility purge that bypasses a lesser globe of invulnerability are travelling faster than a charging horse, sweeping in each second a volume of five hundred thousand cubic feet, and the volume in which the caster can be found is not increasing, because there's a Time Stop. 

They find him. Frozen in midair, already a thousand feet upwards and northeast of where he fired the Meteor Swarm from, lining up another spell. 

Have a scroll of Mage's Disjunction, each of you. Most clerics of other gods couldn't do anything with it but Aroden offers the Magic domain and any priest with any sense takes it. 

"When the Time Stop expires, read it." Battlemind Link. And she takes off flying, because Disjunction won't work anywhere near her, and she gives them a countdown in dancing lights as the Time Stop ticks down. 

Mage's Disjunction.

He counterspells it. 

Mage's Disjunction. 

He cannot counterspell it twice in the same instant. 

The main reason this hasn't been tried before is because there's no useful followup. There is no power alive on Golarion that can land a spell on Tar-Baphon, is the thing. The most powerful person sworn to the cause of the Crusade is the high priest of Pharasma, and he is a dangerous man indeed, and no spell he casts would touch Tar-Baphon. It's not a matter of luck - it's not 'it won't usually work'. It can't work. 

Arazni is not a mortal, and the laws of mortal magic do not bind her, and she can land a spell on Tar-Baphon, more often than not, if she really needs to, if she is prepared to tell the universe to stop obeying all its ordinary laws and obey her instead. 

Nonetheless this does not usually work. She has played through this fight a thousand times, in the last year, tested every detail of her positioning and her allies, showed her hand sometimes and sometimes concealed it much more closely, and - fifteen percent, that's what she has. Fifteen percent of the time she raises the ruby clutched in her left hand and casts this spell and ends the war. The rest of the time it goes on for decades, and the ultimate result she cannot foresee.

For that fifteen percent they arranged all this; the doomed campaign of the Second Army, and its present peril; the siege of Canorate, the fertile desperation into which Iomedae's clever idea could be conceived and born, the death happening all around her, all to take a shot that likely won't work. 

Trap The Soul.

In some worlds, somewhere, her spell brushes aside Tar-Baphon's near-immunity to magic and gets its claws into his mangled soul, and the magic items he wears that are a contingency for this turn to powder, and aren't sufficient, and his constructs and minions and slaves move to intervene, and are too slow, and she Plane Shifts back to Nirvana, gem in hand, the matter settled.

But not in most worlds, and not in this one. In this world she overcomes his near-immunity to magic, and the spell gets its claws into his soul, but he can change the rules of the universe too, and does, and fate goes white-hot in the place where both their hands are outstretched to tug on it -

Aroden, he realizes at once, and then uses his boots to depart, as they can't be counterspelled, and then stops time and plane shifts to safety and by the time he's finished replacing all his protections he can identify what, specifically, Aroden has done - the coward -

All right, game's up, time to play it. Half a dozen of Tar-Baphon's minions teleported in with him and are scattered around the battlefield; a dozen more were here anyway, to fight. She does another Time Stop and pulls three of them into it with her just so the rest can't interfere.

Plane Shift to a custom demiplane where she'll deal with them in the next two minutes before Tar-Baphon thinks to Wish them out.  Imprisonment, for someone whose spell immunity included Plane Shift. Plane Shift. Plane Shift. Telekinetic rain of Aroden's Magic Army-enhanced daggers, for everything that just needs to die.

A minor tweak to the laws of magic to make all her spells Threnodic for a little while, and then - Mind Fog. Dominate Monster. Dominate Monster. Feeblemind. Feeblemind -

( - the Dominated enemies are set at once to killing their rivals among Tar-Baphon's troops, an order they don't even tend to resist, and then to stripping off their magic items and flinging them towards the enemy and shouting their true name, an order they do tend to resist but not usually with much success -)

And the most powerful undead in Tar-Baphon's army are broken like matchsticks. Tar-Baphon has invented a spell to allow undead to use Clones, but all this means is that she doesn't kill them, she feebleminds and dominates and plane shifts and occasionally petrifies, if she has to. Arazni can see the future, has seen the future, and she kills them one at a time. Sometimes they have the reflexes to Plane Shift out immediately and the most dangerous fall in an instant and the rest flee, sometimes they are a little slow to reach for it and so they are a little slow to fall, some can't escape on their own and those can die last -

- Beneath them, the undead army's morale breaks. Their cavalry is broken, even if its captain may still be fencing with a paladin, and the zombies and skeletons cannot break, but there are plenty of others who can survive and want to. Very few ghouls can Plane Shift; some of them push for the river, for its cover, others simply flee in whatever direction they can. Living wizards cast Mount and two Invisibilities if they have them, or Gaseous Form, or anything else that will let them escape, because anyone with a horse is riding for safety already. A few contingents stick together, because those are always the hardest targets to hit on a battlefield - 

And the Taldane army, seeing this, rallies. Arrows are spent and many of the spearmen have been injured again and again, but now they can press forwards and with them the humble archers of the infantry with dirk and hatchet eager because they've won, they've actually won, against all odds, and now the undead can die by the dozen and any few unspent arrows from those who had benefited from abundant ammunition spells can be spent taking down the wizards who raised the army in the first place -

Urkemkhufu has Plane Shift prepared. Time to leave.

Plane Shift, for another fleeing enemy. Flesh To Stone, for Urkemkhufu.

For someone without biological processes, he's really very good at resisting spells resisted by your body's internal fortitude.

In this particular case, it doesn't help. Urkemkhufu is now a statue in midair, bow still clutched in one rocky hand and quiver over his shoulder.

Feather Fall because if the statue breaks he'll respawn. One of the Dominated enemies should go shrink him and bring him to her, please. Flesh to Stone, Dominate Monster, and then the spells aren't threnodic any more and she's back to Plane Shift, Plane Shift -

Iomedae is out of healing and the next time the terrible graveknight's axe strikes true she's down and doesn't get back up -

Then she'll Plane Shift him too, though as a wizard rather than as an astral deva because her wizard spells are stronger -

His profane armor grants him immunity to the arcane power of nearly every wizard alive.

Whether or not Arazni is alive is sort of complicated, isn't it? He pops out of existence.

Heal.

This is not the first time Iomedae has felt a blade cleave through her chest and consciousness fade and then found herself lying on the ground in perfect health. She stands -

"With me." She takes her hand and Dimension Doors -

Arazni's still invisible but Iomedae isn't, and also didn't Teleport herself here. He blinks. 

"They've moved on Canorate." And she will take his hand, too, and Teleport again to drop them in the middle of that.

For the past two years, Canorate has not been under siege.

No, really, it hasn't. When a city is under siege, the besieging army marches up to the city, banners flying; out of bowshot range they dig a trench and with the earth from that build an earth wall all around the city, to cut off all reinforcement. They send someone under a white flag to demand the city's surrender, and the city's defender formally rejects this demand. 

Then the siege properly starts. All supplies of food from outside the city are cut off; any rivers that go under the city's walls are dammed. Engines of war throw incendiaries over the city walls, and wizards drop more from high in the sky above bowshot range. Then there are constant raids by both sides where they try to catch the other side napping, the attackers trying to get a gate open and the defenders to burn the supplies and equipment of the attackers; the besiegers have earth elementals dig tunnels under the city walls and then send in sappers to hack away at the walls of iron embedded underground to make the trick a little difficult, and then the defenders send their own elementals in to collapse the tunnels before they get anywhere. Every day the defenders cast Auguries or even Communes to determine if the attack will come today or if they can have their clerics spend their precious spells on Create Food and their wizards on teleporting bags of holding full of food and ammunition in, and occasionally these wizards will be attacked by swift and overwhelming force at one end of the teleport routes, but not, like, often.

And, of course, every once in a while the attackers will try a sudden rush on one of the gates backed by archers, or Disintegrate a hole in the wall and have troops ready to rush through, and then there will be a battle at that chokepoint and that battle the defenders will almost always win.

Canorate, meanwhile, has had none of those things happening. It's just that, through some odd coincidence, any time anyone gets out of bowshot range of the city without an army backing them up they will probably be attacked and murdered by orcish marauders. All the peasants who didn't die have given up and abandoned the land and fled into Canorate or further south and east into Menador or Isger or Druma, and as a result of that the ability to replenish the city's food supplies are almost as limited as if the city was under conventional siege.

It is, therefore, a new and startling thing that greets Canorate, at the moment that Arazni, Arnisant and Iomedae arrive.

Canorate is a city built on the south side of the Nosam river, where the Maw river flows into it to form a sort of inverted V shape, forming the north, east and west sides of the peninsula Canorate sits on. A land wall runs across the southern edge of the city, dotted with towers, with a much lower sea wall guarding against landings. It's not much of a city by the standards of a provincial capital - ten thousand citizens under good conditions, which these aren't; both rivers are unbridged, and only ferries connect it to the now-abandoned suburbs across the river and the fort on Tower Island. The ferry-boats are, of course, drawn up at the shipyards under the protection of a few towers with ballistae in them and the river-galleys that didn't disappear up- or down- river hunting orc boats. Its eyes, therefore, are the small forts across the rivers and the great towers on the southern wall, and what can be seen from these eyes is not something that was seen before.

It is an orcish army, fully deployed for the field. A very, very large orcish army. The clan standards for the Black Claws and the Tuskmen and the Boar Brothers, Death's Heads and Axebreakers can all be seen and a dozen more with them, and all the orcs swarm forwards, a black sea that advances with their drummers beating the call to action, pipers playing wildly, chieftains gesturing and making speeches to their followers, their great war machines - towers and catapults and rams, shielded by the distance but getting closer. Once the orcs of the north hated each other, once they were an eternal war that meant that nobody south of Ustalav had to care about them, but now they are unified and now they have a tremendous host, and with them swarm the dead who push their engines forward.

This is of interest because four hours ago nobody had any idea where the orcs were, other than "wherever they feel like, apparently." Also because it is believed to be impossible to make siege weapons appear out of nowhere and very, very difficult to conceal them from capable and energetic scouts.

So you kill all the capable and energetic scouts first. Fool.

(The governor of the southern half of Molthune province, incidentally also the once and future godsdamnit Emperor of Taldor, is possessing an orc, invisible, flying, in midair, Mind Blanked, has a contingency active, and is surrounded by invisible flying bodyguards with life sense, a superhuman sense of smell, or in one case magic armor found in an ancient tomb that grants the wielder the power to see without sight so long as he has no eyes. This is how you get to try to conquer the Taldane empire multiple times.)

Arazni's dropped them on the walls. He has a good view; he takes it in. 

So they are outnumbered, at least four to one, and there will be traitors within the city just like there were in the First Army, already trying to throw open the gates, and undead who can scale the walls with no effort. It would be hopeless, but for the fact that no righteous cause is hopeless.

"Can we tell the men you're here."

"Oh, I'll tell them."

The commander of the wall, who cannot see Arnisant's invisible flying mind blanked ride but would not be surprised to hear he had one, is glad to see that Arnisant's back! He'll salute until it's returned or dismissed, and then - "Welcome back, general! Didn't realize the Sending had finished -" he'll send a runner to alert his superiors before going back to explaining the situation! There's the obvious orcs out there, and then you can see (if you're a master archer) that another tribe, the Hollow Orcs, are crossing outside bowshot range on their little hide boats (the warden of the river wants to go smash them with his ships, but the lieutenant-general* said no), and the signal fire on Tower Island has been lit to warn of some situation there, though they don't know what. Any other crises nobody has told the commander of the wall about.

(*: We are well aware that the meaning of this, in modern English, has metamorphosed to be quite different from how we are using it here. Nonetheless it is an etymological fact that lieutenant-general comes from the term "the general's lieutenant," just as general comes from captain-general, "the overall captain." If modern English disagrees I wish to suggest, first, that this is a loose translation from elaborate Taldane structures of rank from which you should all be grateful for my saving you, and second, that my version makes more sense.)

"Oppara has sent us the forces to hold the city and do much more than that," he says. "Where will I find Palaiologos? - Knight-Commander, the gates."

Each of which have a couple of her people assigned to them because the paladins are the only ones who definitely will not betray them to the enemy. There is no question that the city is full of traitors, and no realistic prospect of being rid of them, but you can ensure that at no gate will they be uncontested. "Yes, sir."

And some of them have already Dominated or stabbed their assigned paladins but she knows which ones. Probably. You can't do this many operations and be perfectly confident in Foresight, and right now the immediate future is a blurry smear of possibilities because Tar-Baphon might try to respond to her being here (but probably will instead go hide until he's immune to every method he knows for her to destroy him).

"Southern gates," she tells Iomedae.

Okay, there first.

Outside bowshot range is generally also outside Fireball range, because bows actually have better range than Fireballs. But it depends a bit on who's casting the fireballs. How distant are these boats?

Two, three miles? If you aren't Arazni you have to be a master archer to spot them.

That is in fact at the edge of the range where she's using her ordinary senses located in her body more than her god-senses which are not. She thinks the boats are...not that important, and the fireballs should wait until the siege weapons are in range.

That means she has about ten minutes free to go talk to the Emperor of Taldor. 

Aroden's Magic Army. Teleport.

The leading cause of death for emperors is emperors.

Not always emperors of Taldor, though there's plenty of cases of that, his predecessors having just as little tolerance as he does for rivals. There was the veteran adventurer who contemplated replacing his eldest son as his heir and then tragically went out hunting, fell off his horse and was dragged by it over rocks for a mile, or the fellow who usurped the throne from a bookish child he kept around on the assumption that the boy would be no threat to anyone and was indeed fortunate enough that it was his son who stole his throne from him before the bookish boy had both pretenders killed and took it back, or the fellow who left the capital on campaign to discover a spare prince and his mercenary army standing between him and Oppara. Also other Emperors. Emperors of Qadira have had Grand Princes soul trapped, reanimated, used as footstools, imprisoned to be released when the throne was no longer vacant, or simply stabbed twenty-three times. The last self-proclaimed Lord Protector of the Ten Rivers managed to kill Kydonius's great-uncle with a bow, and the fourth Emperor of the Great Steppe made his presence known with a rain of demons on the imperial palace. And there's always failed pretenders, generals who expect to be executed if recalled or who just think a career that ends without the platinum diadem is one devoid of all value.

Really, the only way to last, if you're an Emperor and you have goals to accomplish - fixing the tax structure, breaking the magnates, conquering Qadira, getting the cities of the pirate coast to stop raiding or just having a son who can inherit - the only way - is to make sure that absolutely nobody else in the world has the power to stop you. Traditionally, one of the greatest supports of the Emperors in this goal has been the Church of Aroden, devoted as it is to the spread and the defense of civilization and recognizing that this requires and always had required a single, strong leader.

It is therefore an extremely uncomfortable feeling for Kydonius when the Church of Aroden arrives to tell him that they have called Arazni, archmage herald of Aroden. Not, they want to call. They already did it.

Should he have seen this coming? Marin had warned him that the Church was too invested in the war, too concerned with making sure he stuck to a northern orientation and ignored the latest Qadiran provocations, and calling an archmage certainly is. The last Hippodrome protest was only two weeks ago, and while the Eastcrown rebels were quickly snuffed out they were nonetheless a worrying reminder that there's only so long the Empire can keep fighting before its own internal dissent, not any foe, becomes its chief threat. Does the Church mean to have him replaced? They won't find a better Emperor anywhere in the court, but Aroden is all-knowing, and he can see more than simply the court. If there's a child somewhere in the Empire who will be a luckier monarch than any other, will Aroden break his pact with the imperial house, discarding them as quickly as he raised them up? Kydonius has always been a friend of the Church of Aroden, but can a god ever be friend to a man?

Hypatos Stelian is prostrate before the Emperor. It's the thing to do. When you do something that will seriously annoy the most powerful man in the world, you have to at least grovel for forgiveness.

Neither of them has been given permission to speak. Instead the Emperor is giving him a Look. It is not a pleasant Look. It is a Look that says: I am calculating the odds that only one of us is going to walk out of this palace alive, and do I have to make sure, right now, that it is me?

Dishypatos Haralamb (Haralambos when he's on duty) is also prostrate before the Emperor. The Dishypatos Of All Aroden has the right to merely bow very very deeply, but he sleeps on his stomach anyway and at this age it's easier than standing.

Silence stretches. Kydonius prefers to let the guilty stir in their own thoughts. This is an extremely effective technique against Taldane noblemen, but it works much less well against people who are three times his own age and have been running the Church of Aroden for a sizable portion of it.

"We recall," he says, "certain unfortunate words sadly spoken by the young preacher, Iancu of Mioveni."

Oh thank Aroden they're just being extorted.

"Your Imperial Majesty should be overjoyed," said Haralambos, "to learn that he has deeply repented of his unwise words and decided to devote himself to the high and holy cause of defending the Empire."

(This is false. But it's the kind of false that is not, by the standards of Taldane politics, a lie, in that it describes events reliably guaranteed to take place within the next twenty-four hours as if they took place in the last, which is to say it is a promise.)

"We are, of course, pleased to hear it." The Emperor does not particularly look less unhappy. "We further wish to draw the attention of the Church to the recent shortfalls in the Northern Purse." Because they can't deliver money to troops trapped behind enemy lines.

"Given the recent and unambiguous signs of devotion given by Aroden, how can we doubt it is His will that the Church support the campaign in any way we can? All that is absent, we will make up." Haralamb is going to die soon and then this won't be his job!

Ugh, they've already cut spending, where are they going to get the money? The Abadarans? The Church of Abadar will end up owning half the Empire if they do...

And yet, Kydonius does not feel reassured! "Given the urgency of the war and the necessity to overthrow the lich-tyrant of Ustalav, We yet observe that the hierophylakitai* yet remain in their churches, and we have no doubt but that the Church of Aroden has a fine justification for these excellent and holy warriors** remaining far from the front."

(*: Temple guards.)

(**: The legend that the imperial crown compels its bearer to tell the truth has now been conclusively falsified.***)

(***: As of the year 3803.)

"Your Majesty does us too much honor," says Haralambos, who is going to need to come up with a way to finish that sentence that doesn't leave the churches prey to casual looting by whoever the Emperor appoints to guard them but also doesn't leave the Emperor thinking they need the temple guards to restore order after a coup -

Arazni stops time outside the palace's outermost forbiddances, makes herself immune to Forbiddances in general, and floats ethereal through a great many walls, emerging just outside the Emperor's audience chamber. She goes visible as the Time Stop expires, and tweaks the spellbane so no one can follow her. (The Forbiddance she ignored then tries to fry her, because she's really not Lawful Neutral at all and did not bother to speak its passcode, but it doesn't work.)

Her wingspan is thirty feet, and she shimmers blindingly in the sunlight that streams in through the windows.

"I am Arazni, herald of Aroden," she tells the guards, in a voice that echoes like a choir of angels and will be perfectly audible inside the Emperor's audience chamber. "I bring great tidings of the war in the north for the Emperor Kydonius, long may he reign."

Kydonius recognizes that she is totally the herald of Aroden, but - 

The proper formalities absolutely must be observed!

- One of the key lessons he learned in his youth was that if you start by seizing your ground, you never have to retake it. He maintains a stoic and unawed expression, even though this is probably Arazni and if it isn't it's Tar-Baphon or Nex or Geb.

Meanwhile, a servant scurries up to him (prostrating himself twice on the way and only rising at the imperial nod) to whisper in his ear.

He will say something back out of the side of his mouth without changing his stoic and regal expression.

The servant will go back and talk to another servant!

(All of this is happening quite fast.)

And then the ornate doors can be pulled open by two servants (in very fancy clothes) and the herald will announce - 

"Her Most Radiant, Serene and August Divinity, Dispeller of Eclipse, Exalter of Equinox, and Pacifier of Solstice, Peerless Navigator of the Cosmic Meridian and Custodian of the Golden Astrolabe, Myrrophore of the Incorruptible Phoenix Feather, Vicereine-in-Spirit to the Celestial Pole and Praefecta of the Meridian Winds, Archontissa of All Archons, Despoina of the Ruby-Crowned Seraphim, Keeper of the Triple Chain of Aurelion, Paramount of the Ever-Loyal Eparchies, Exarch of the Amber Archipelago and Warden of the Thalassic Gates, Breaker of the Iron Clasp of the East, Vice-Regent of Absalom, High Alchemagistra of the Onyx Pact, The Holy Goddess Arazni, Herald of Aroden!" and she can be waved in to the prostrations of the various courtiers, who see an emperor every day and a goddess never.

Ah, politics. Once a long time ago when they were both mortals she and Aroden compared notes on why he wasn't more frustrated about Taldor, which she considered fairly disillusioning about the nature of civilization. After long discussion he asked her if she had ever met a tree she was disappointed in. She hadn't; if trees grew twisted and sideways they did that for reasons; if they were rotting from the inside  they were mounting a heroic but insufficient defense; there were trees you had better cut down, for one reason or another, but none at all which it made sense to hold in contempt. In fact she had never met a tree that did not quietly delight her.

This, said Aroden, was how he felt about civilizations. 

It is really not at all how Arazni feels about civilizations. About people, if she stretches it, but not about civilizations. It's like seeing double, looking at civilizations: you see the beauty and the slavery and the shining determination and the pointless slaughters into which it is directed. You stand about in waiting-rooms while armies march on better men.

Nonetheless she holds all her annoyance in abeyance, for this particular civilization has deep roots and may be the only thing on this world that can stand tall in the winds it does not yet know are coming, and because she is here for Aroden and he would not be annoyed. 

Also because she has played through this interaction a hundred times and got most of the annoyance out of the way on the first five.

(On none of the times she went through this in prophecy was it helpful to clarify that the archon command structure actually works differently than that title implies.)

The audience chamber is large enough to spread her wings in, so she does, even though it's blocking most of the courtiers' view. With the wings extended she can move them in a great sweeping motion that is visually satisfying to anyone but is not, actually, properly a bow, and importantly does not leave her flat-footed if Tar-Baphon shows up, though he almost never does.

"Your majesty," she says, and to the more distant observers her voice is now only a pleasant chiming of bells, with no words identifiable in it; angels can make themselves understood to all who hear them, but they are not actually required to. "Long ages have passed since my travels brought me last to your fair city. I see that the walls that I laid still stand, and rejoice to see that which has grown up around them." She did not found Oppara. But after the Tarrasque it required quite a lot of rebuilding.