"...You should probably not make any plans that actively rely on me being immune to a blasphemy. And I'd rather you didn't leave me out of any blasphemy-related contingency plans."

She wants to make a joke about how Alfirin could always just go quickly do some terribly evil necromancy in advance of their raids but under the circumstances it doesn't feel like it'd be funny. "I have no confident guess what Pharasma thinks of you and I don't think it matters that much. If we fight an archdevil you will just have to cope with being a little less strong for a couple of moments; there's not an easy way around that. The rest you can resist, or have Freedom of Movement up...I want to fight an archdevil but I expect Asmodeus doesn't care that much about Cheliax and will pull his truly important resources home, or maybe have them take shots at us through a Gate."

"Well, if we acquire enough reason to expect it that other people are getting it for their spell immunities we should at least check.

...Thank you. For explaining things to Cansellarion in an order where he trusts me, this would've been a lot harder if he didn't."

"Of course. I - deeply regret hurting you, obviously, and especially regret having managed to do it in a way that makes it harder for you to access the trust that you warrant. Do you want to come look over our raid plans so far? Also am I right you can do something about Aspexia in less than three ninth circle spells, if she's not forewarned?"

"Yes. Riskier if I have to do it without the normal level of backup - if backup is available non-paladin fighters would be unusually useful."

"Backup should be available. I think that's our single highest priority target, really, so you can have whoever you want. - we should have this conversation with Cansellarion present, aside from one question, which is how you want the spy handled. She's on our list of targets."

"If we can petrify her - or baleful polymorph, or a dominate that would be best. Or take her prisoner more conventionally but that involves more guarding her - She's our ally, even if she doesn't know it and wouldn't believe us if we told her yet - I want her kept out of Hell, more than I do everyone else we're going to be fighting."

"Why don't we have you get her, once we've soul-trapped Rugatonn. You can Dominate her, this is a reasonable strategic priority because interrogating her can inform the rest of our response, you can make sure it goes cleanly." Iomedae is not accustomed to Alfirin feeling that strongly about people but they don't usually have human enemies. "I can't say she won't have a very bad day but we can keep her safe."

"Thank you.

...If something goes wrong and she's killed before I can get around to that, limited wish can imitate a raise dead. I should do it, she'll be more likely to accept than if it came from an Iomedan cleric."

This is really not characteristic Alfirin behavior. 

"- sure, makes sense."

"I think that's all that I wanted to discuss away from Cansellarion."

"We should head back, then, and figure out who you want with you."

Marit does his shopping before he exchanges some papers for an astounding sum of money from the Church of Abadar. Someone has invented a kind of metamagic rod for overcoming spell resistance. He wants it, but not for Korva, so he does not buy it. He does commission a seventh circle pearl of power and buy a bunch of books that look interesting and a bunch of minor magic items that didn't exist in his original time.

Then he gets the astounding sum of money and Tanat Greater Teleports them immediately back. 

All right. Showtime. Probably. She should double check whether this is actually a terrible idea and she's forgetting something obvious, as horrible as it feels to keep stopping and starting and getting stuck in logistical mud.

"Okay. Stop me if this sounds idiotic. We have Irabeth standing by to distribute backpay to people using Dorgelinda and Harmattan's records, since she's one of the very few people around here who's both trustworthy with this much money and generally going to be believed to be trustworthy. We've got - part of a newly hammered out legal code, I think it'll be good enough to get along with in somewhere between twenty-four and thirty-six hours, and then we can make copies and distribute them to officers who can fill people in on the specifics. Lodvig's got unit deployments figured out, and we have - most, I think, though not all, of the supplies we're going to need distributed."

"I want to announce all of this today, this afternoon. I want to gather everyone together, and explain to them clearly, about Dorgelinda and about us being serious about supplying them and about punishing rule-breaking in the future, and about the backpay, and about the mansion deployments, so they can hear it all from me personally. Then I want to get everyone their money in time for them to buy stuff tonight, and then get everyone stationed in the mansions over the course of tomorrow and the day after and probably the day after that."

"I know we don't have everything perfectly hammered out yet, and that it would be better if we did. I know it means not waiting on the Queen to tell us what we can and can't do first. She's not responding to anything I send her, and if she's not going to get back to us then I'm not just going to leave the border undefended until she decides we're worth her time. I know it's three different things and that one of them might get tangled up or lost in the shuffle. But we're taking worse and worse losses the longer we wait, and I want to get everything that needs to be said out, while everyone's in one place, before they're too spread out for me to talk to them all at once."

"If there are any other reasons why this is a bad idea and I should wait a couple days, now's your chance to point them out."

"I think it's a good plan. And while something will probably go wrong, men who're getting paid are in a good mood." And they have both Alfirin and Iomedae temporarily in this world. While they won't reveal themselves it means some extra seventh circle spellcasting is probably available in a pinch and that if Deskari tries any auguries they'll return "bad idea to try something". ...if that still works these days. He should ask someone who has done comprehensive testing and then do it himself and see if they lied to him. 

"Your biggest problem is going to be that you have more men than can all hear you even if you're shouting. Do you have magic for that?"

"I'm a skald. - which is to say, no, other than magic to announce to everyone in Drezen that a speech is going to occur, but all of my combat magic relies on the ability to project my voice the normal way. I can handle two thousand people in the courtyard in front of the command center. You'll see."

He grins at her. "I'll look forward to it."

Well. She won't tell him not to. She is going to go up to the roof to pace a little more, though. There is, mercifully, no one else up here this time, not even Sosiel painting.

It's really not so hard a set of things to communicate, however nervous she is about fitting it all together. It doesn't need to be long. It shouldn't be long. These aren't Thanelands warriors, each of them mysteriously half a poet. The demons and the deployment are the biggest thing, the thing she needs to hook them with. Start with the demons, lead into the rot, talk about their new resources, circle back to the demons. There. That's simple, it follows, she can make it flow together.

If part of her wants to scream about how tired and frayed and off-balance she is, and if part of her is scared of that coming out in her speaking - that is not the part she needs to be, right now. She needs to bury everything beneath the knight commander. Knight commanders who make war on the Abyss do not throw stupid fits about what is expected of them. They do not need to rest. They do not buckle under stress. They are mortal only insofar as it makes for better symbolism.

She casts Mage's Decree.

The Knight Commander will make an announcement in ten minutes. Everyone not on duty, gather in the central courtyard to hear it.

When the crowd has gathered, she jumps up onto the guardrail and speaks - projecting from her diaphragm, loud and clear in the biting winter air, lacing just a breath of magic into her first words, her whole body steadying itself in service to her voice.

"Crusaders! A new threat has emerged. The demons who attack the barrier have grown more powerful, and the patrols we have are not enough. Most of you were told you would be fielded in the spring, but the crusade needs your heroism now. Our wizards have devised a way to shelter you from the elements, in way-stations that will keep you warm, fed, and safe. Tomorrow, we will begin deploying crusaders along the border, in numbers which will allow you to engage these new demons and win."

"But there are wrongs to be righted, before you leave Drezen. It has come to my attention that Dorgelinda Stranglehold, our head logistics officer, has been embezzling crusade resources for several months. I believe that she intended to divert these resources for the good of the crusade. Even so, she sold off essential equipment, which was sent here with the goal of keeping you safe."

"The law says that the penalty for such a crime is death. But were I to hand such a sentence down, I would need to hand it down for  half the men in this army, because half the men in this army have broken such laws. I know that I have turned a blind eye to corruption in the past. I led you to believe that criminal offenses were accepted, even encouraged. In doing so, I wronged you. It is my fault, more than anyone else's, that so many of you have gone without essential equipment. It would be cruel to execute men for my mistakes, and it would be stupid to do the demons' work for them. For that reason, I declare amnesty for all previous instances of theft and corruption while on crusade, for all members of the crusade and all residents of Drezen."

"But I also have no interest in becoming cheap imitations of the very monsters we fight. If we fight the Abyss on its own terms, disorganized and dishonorable, willing to cheat each other for the sake of ourselves, then the demons will crush us utterly. We can only defeat them by working together, and by seeing that every man among us has everything he needs to win."

"I send with your officers a new code of conduct, a simple set of rules that I expect you all to follow going forward. Unlike the old set, it will be enforced. And I ask your forgiveness, for failing to give each of you everything that you were promised. It is a mistake that I intend to correct. After this, all crusaders are to see Irabeth Tirabade, who will give you the pay you are owed with interest. Buy what you wish with it tonight, and prepare for deployment tomorrow."

A cheer goes up, and there's some scattered clapping. She's heard louder, but it's something. She cheats, here, unsheathing Lariel's sword and lifting it above her head. She whispers a word, and it glows more brightly, more warmly, than any other magic weapon she's ever seen. It's the light that made the neathers believe they were called to the surface. It's the light that made Hulrun break off chasing Ramien.

"Crusaders!" The crowd falls not-quite-silent. "This sword is the final gift of an angel who died by the hand of Deskari himself. In his dying moments, he was proud, defiant, and hopeful. He believed that mortals were capable of victory, even victory over the Abyss. Even now - despite our failings, despite our weakness, despite our fear - the angels who died for our cause still believe that we are capable of victory. Let us prove them right! Let us finish what they started, and drive back the Abyss!"

The second cheer is louder. She feels - sort of euphoric and numb, all at once.

Well, she just told everyone that she'd be sending the crusade's new legal code with them tomorrow, because she's very fucking smart. She'd better have one by then.

She goes to her room and locks the door, even though there are probably, like, thirty people who want to talk to her right now. She gets the drafts out and looks them over. It's - three or four minutes, before she realizes that her eyes are gliding over the pages without reading them, and that she's instead spending all of her mental energy on thinking about everything that's probably about to go wrong and everyone who's probably going to be mad at her for not giving them more time to prepare. She sighs, and tries again, and focusing on the words is so painful that she can't recall the meaning after reading them anyway. Great.

She wants to kill something. Killing things is simple. She wants to be useful in a way that doesn't require her to think about anything or talk to anyone. That's - not what the crusade is going to need from her, right now, but the crusade also doesn't need her to scream at her friends or her staff, or for her to sit in this room pretending to work, and not getting anything done.

She doesn't really know how to stop wanting to do those things. She doesn't really know how to go kill things in a remotely responsible manner without having to talk to anyone. She doesn't even know of anything specific that needs killing, and isn't itself hiding in the Abyss. 

She bites her hand, hard. She's aiming for hard enough to bleed, but she's tougher than she used to be, and not all that much better at biting people. It still hurts, which is most of the point. 

She leaves her room, and heads back to the command center, ten paces away. 

"Hey Regill, in a couple minutes when everyone comes by to yell at me, tell them I'm guarding the barrier, and we can have a meeting to discuss any final logistics matters at dawn tomorrow. You can also invite anyone you think should be there who doesn't come by to yell at me, just be sure to extend an invitation to everyone who does, too. If they say there are any supplies we still need, you can tell people to send another shopping list with Ember to Kalsgard tonight."

And she alter selfs herself, and walks out wearing some other person's face, and grabs Arushalae and Greybor and Nenio, as the people least likely to needle her about any of the decisions she's just made. She perversely misses Camellia; Camellia wouldn't have cared. She lets Aivu come when Aivu inevitably shows up, and makes some steeds for them to patrol with. She runs her horse at breakneck pace without an endure elements, letting the wind leave her dangerously numb. They run into a few demons, fast enough that it isn't much of a fight.

She gets back around dinner. She reminds Nenio to prepare as many mansions as she can, tomorrow. She invisibles herself to get past the streets full of lively shopping and drinking soldiers, past the courtyard, past whoever is waiting in the command center, and tries once again to read the stupid laws.

She still can't.


She's not in the command center at dawn.

- in the context he's familiar with operating in, this is a maximum priority emergency, the sort of situation where you order a Commune simultaneous with the almost-certainly-futile Discern Location and the even-more-certainly-futile scries and tell all your officers to presume the Knight-Commander compromised and to report but not act on any orders from her they receive. 

It's ...also possible she overslept. 

He does not visibly panic because that'd panic other people. He asks Regill a couple of bland questions about the troop deployments, quietly, tracking who is even trying to listen in, and then asks if the Knight-Commander's location is known. 

Regill Derenge has been working with the Fifth Mendevian Crusade for long enough to know that when someone important is missing, four times out of five, it is because they are completely fine, and didn't see the point in letting anyone know where they were. Of course, the rest of the time, they were blood sacrificed by an insane witch, or were murdered by demons, or deserted their post, or were whisked off to another timeline unexpectedly.

In this case, he also noticed Korva come in last night, invisible or not.

"In her quarters, I believe, but it's been long enough to warrant confirming it."

Most of the time when someone is missing, it is because they are worse than dead and giving all your secrets to the enemy. ...this is probably a more reliable heuristic when the enemy is a competently organized force under an immortal lich than when the enemy is 'demons, like, a lot of them'.

"Do let me know if you find her; otherwise I can ask some friends for favors."

He will excuse himself, walk down the hallway, and knock on Korva's door.

"Knight Commander. This is Paralictor Derenge. Are you there?"

"Yeah," she says, not very loud.