Alexeara Cansellarion is in his study when he gets the vision from his Goddess, which means he must have fucked up quite badly.
Catherine takes it. Better to at least know which of the things bad enough that two archmages won't make a difference it is, before she goes somewhere far away from it.
They arrive in midair over the silent city, as the walls crumble. The quiet makes it oddly dreamlike.
The caster cannot be seen but judging by the destruction is moving systematically towards the seal, doing the Disintegrates in a Time Stop so they seem, from the outside, to happen four or five at once; when anyone inconveniences them they get a mythic fireball.
Iomedae appears in front of the doors of the castle. She's in her engineering workshop clothes. She's carrying a six-shot revolver that is only half-loaded, which she happened to be working on at the time.
She looks in the right place, even though the caster is of course invisible.
She clears her throat. She is audible, despite the silence. And then -
(Everyone for miles around can see, and hear; if She were to exempt anyone Arazni could choose to be among those exempted. She can still exempt herself, but only by leaving.)
Like a bird's eye view, or a scry, or a television camera panning, following a woman in glittering armor as she and her escort descend from the sky. She is instantly identifiable - intentionally so, the men ought to be able to recognize her. The shield has an eye of Aroden on it.
She takes off her helmet as she approaches the antimagic field at the door of the Magnificent Mansion the command is operating out of. It is recognizably the same face as the face of the woman now standing in front of the castle, but older, wiser, more tired. The face doesn't shift in the antimagic field; its caster nods and stands aside. She enters the mansion. "I need the room," she says, and everybody stands to leave except the astral deva sitting at the head of the table, watching half a dozen scries, her eyes flickering over to Iomedae's face to see if it's good news or bad news -
Do you remember?
Arazni does not remember this moment. Remembers the risky raids that Iomedae pushed for, that weren't worth it, pushed and pushed until she got what she wanted. Doesn't remember this one specifically -
Iomedae remembers all of them. Triumph after triumph after triumph after triumph, carefully planned, brilliantly executed, as they grew steadily more sure of themselves, not mistakes, that's the thing, victories that made them overconfident enough to make the mistake but every one checked out in its own right, look, the error was the delirious joy -
"Do you need a Heal," says Arazni.
"No," says Iomedae, only very slightly giddy with glee. "Why would I need a Heal? Have you been laboring under the impression that just because you are a god and a bit of a specialist with Fireballs you could hit me with a spell."
Arazni actually cracks a grin in response, at that. "If I'd thought it through, probably not, but in the moment I was sure I was going to roast you alive. Which would've been worth it, to be clear, for that headband."
"All right, what in the world is this headband. It looked perfectly normal to me."
"I think it's stronger than a greater headband," Mathriel says. "I've never seen anything like it before."
"All right, all right, I suppose it's worth roasting me alive for that. If you could, which you can't. - we have a decapitated army out there to go clean up. You'll have to tell me the rest of what we got later."
"Need any help with it?" says Arazni.
"Wait and see if Tar-Baphon shows, but I doubt he will, it wouldn't salvage this."
"Are we chasing them all the way to Vaishali Pass," says Cassidi.
"If we do that, Tar-Baphon probably will show. ..which is to say, yes, absolutely, but let's time that fight for dawn, when Arazni's fresh -"
"And when I've had time to confirm that the excessively good headband's safe to wear," says Arazni.
"I will try not to rout the enemy too fast."
"Wish me back," she says, in response to their Sending, and then she looks out on the assembled army on the plains of Abaddon and knows that she is going to die, and does the obvious thing to do in that situation, which is to commune with her god.
It's not that she has questions for him. It's that the asking can pause time.
"Do you see a way?" she asks Aroden, and flickers through a thousand futures - it's not that she dies in all of them, it's that she dies in most of them, and here Urgathoa has more power to steer which one they find themselves in than she does, or even than He does.
"No," he says.
She gets up to twenty questions. She's going to keep looking. "Do you see a way?" she asks Aroden again, and she can feel him concentrate more of his attention there, flick through futures himself, try to accumulate in this one place enough brilliance that if there is a brilliant solution they will see it - "No," he says.
"Do you see a way?" she asks him a third time, and now it is as if he is standing before her, as he looked when they were both of them mortal, handsome and clever and healthy and already haunted, and they can see a hundred thousand futures, it's just a matter of whether they can see any Urgathoa did not already see - "No," he says, and he's a god but that doesn't mean that his voice isn't shaking.
They hold each other, or do something that's more like that than it's like anything else. "Do you see a way?" she asks him, a fourth time.
"No."
Iomedae has been Disjoined; she has to scream, aloud, at the nearest person to tell Mathriel to cast the Wish, and it transpires Mathriel has also been disjoined. Alfirin has a scroll in her demiplane; she Plane Shifts out to get it. Mathriel gets the order by Sending from a person he's never met; he is comprehensibly suspicious. He asks Iomedae for confirmation. "DO IT," she screams at him.
It doesn't work.
Alfirin's back. "DO IT," she screams at her, too, though well aware that 'it's too late' is the likeliest explanation and that if so they'll need the Wish -
- no, says Aroden.
"- stop," she says to Alfirin.
And it's not a birds-eye view anymore, they aren't watching the Shining Crusade, they're just there, living it, the grief and horror is their grief and horror, beyond expression, beyond comprehension, and the only steadying thing in the world is the words Iomedae says without knowing if they're true. "We're going to need the diamond to get her back," she says, and the possibility steadies the world, for just a second, enough that they can organize the retreat.
A million futures planned together, crumbling like dust in the wind. All the conversations that she and Iomedae had been saving for after the war, all the indulgences there just wasn't any budget for. She tries to swat that away, and look for things that'd change the next five moments. "Do you see a way?"
No.
Iomedae is resplendent, handing out Heroism to a chubby-cheeked toddler.
"Still a no on trying Geb or Nidal, though?" says Marit. It was the one thing Iomedae had said she might stay a few years for.
"Still a no. We'll build civilization and get stronger and eventually possess the strength, or else we'll wait eight hundred years. I'm sorry. I'd hoped to achieve more here too, first." She says it, but she doesn't, visibly, feel it; it is a sorry of courtesy, not of felt regret. "There are places where triumph is more easily purchased."
It is the first time all evening he's felt like he knows this woman, understands her even when there's something she's not saying. Because in that, there is something she's not saying. He swallows. "You came back to see whether you could -"
"I can't. Aroden says I can't, I can see that I can't. But I came back to try, yes. One last human indulgence. Will you go with me?"
He will, of course. Arazni's body is kept in the highly-secure area under Castle Overwatch that they built shortly after her death. There is a very beautiful tomb, with words carved in the side. He doesn't remember who chose the words.
Iomedae pulls the six hundred pound solid stone top off the casket without the slightest difficulty. She casts Miracle, without a diamond, ten times in a row, to no effect at all.
And then she kneels, and bursts into tears, and sobs.
"Do you see a way?" she says.
"- yes, actually, but -"
She looks where He's pointing. "- holy fuck, that's not worth it."
"Absolutely not."
"If it happens anyway you had better fix it."
This isn't how Communes work. They're pushing the rules. But He finds that while He can leave her to die He cannot actually bear to leave her to die alone. "Whatever happens, I'll fix it," He says. "I promised -"
Iomedae brushes the Silence aside like it's the second-circle cleric spell. "I can break Geb's hold," She says. "Only if you want me to, and I don't, in fact, know - you don't want me to look -"
There's a long quiet. In the distance some small children are wailing.
"If I say no?"
"I'll try to kill you. I'll probably succeed. But it won't be for good. That is not in my power at any price she would have been willing for me to pay."
And Iomedae gestures, again, like she's swatting a fly, and Arazni is visible, midair above the wall (and Nefreti and Alfirin are visible, midair well above that).
It is visible where her wings stutter mid-flap and where her fly spell catches her. She breathes in, sharply, and Plane Shifts.
Iomedae turns to look at her, even though there's no way Iomedae could in any sense possibly need to turn to look at her. Sends - only to her - a continuation of one of the memories -
"It sure is a choice of last human indulgence," Marit says. "I feel like personally I'd -" No, he'd planned not to bring that up tonight.
"Get drunk and Sending my ex," Iomedae finishes the sentence for him, cheerfully. "I did also consider that. I - people have the right to walk away, the right to lives that aren't all about me."
A part of her - a large part - wants to flee. After this last year - this last century - it feels like there's nothing in the world she wants less than to have a conversation with the goddess Iomedae. But she knows herself well enough, now, to know that she'll regret it if she walks away. She'll probably regret it if she doesn't, but at least this way she'll know what she's regretting. She descends to the ground. "What."