The endless pitter patter of heavy rains on the stone roof of his adopted command post began to drive Grand Marshal Vildrious to madness. Two days in a row where the ground was just completely soaked by the ceaseless downpour. Moving anything other than light infantry was out of the question. Heavier troops would sink into the mud, as would horses, siege engines, and so on. When conditions permitted, however, he was well-prepared for a full offensive toward the Cersomin River and then across the west toward Karmand.

He listened to a recounting of recent minutiae from Marshal Ventov and a couple of other subordinates. He kept glancing at Ventov, his pristine uniform and full blue green coif contrasting against Vildrious's frumpy garments and almost absent hair.

"Right, again, are we ready to begin the offensive when the rain lets up?" he finally interjected over Ventov's interminable babbling.

"Why, yes. That's the upshot of our reports to..." Ventov tried to get in a response, but Vildrious wasn't in the mood.

"Good. Good. Right, the point is to be ready the instant the Emperor orders the attack. It sounds like you're all ready to me," Vildrious commented, his voice clawing to break above the clamor of the rains that morning.

Ventov brushed his right hand's thumb over his fingernails and then glanced back casually at Vildrious.

"When His Imperial Majesty commands it, we'll follow his orders to the letter," Ventov said quietly.

"That might be as soon as tomorrow, if what I received here is right," Vildrious said, holding a message from a scout about the approach of Emperor Duronaht. "Be sure that we're ready, or that we at least look like it. Dismissed."

He paced around the room by himself once the others were gone, examining the maps of the western third of the Empire and how the various little fronts along it had developed. He tried to avoid spending too much time on every single little incident. There were so many raids by mercenaries, spies, and so on that both sides couldn't possibly track it all. The long-suspected fracturing of the war was happening swiftly.

"This is going to be such a fucking mess," he fumed to himself.

Especially galling to him was that Rohmhelt's armies had far better spies that he did. The infamous Dastov's rings of informants, assassins, and other assorted filth made sure not only that those loyal to Rohmhelt had much more useful information than he did, but also interfered with the creation of Duronaht's own equivalent spy network. Vildrious pictured the now-Grand Marshal Agrehn sitting confidently with his endless streams of messages while Vildrious felt blind.

It was of no consequence, however. Vildrious had Agrehn on numbers, especially after the winter draft across the lands controlled by Duronaht. Even these supposed interventions by Osilintis, the Varanians, and Bohruum were unlikely to change much. The basic contours of the war still favored him, no matter what his opponents thought.

In the middle of his ruminations, he felt Myrvaness's presence just outside the back door to the command post. It was as expected as it was unwelcome. She had been pressing for an early series of attacks on the main enemy force, but Vildrious kept rejecting the idea without approval from the Emperor himself. With Emperor Duronaht likely arriving the following day, he saw no problem with letting her lobby him again.

"Come i..." he started, but the door opened before he finished. There he saw Myrvaness, fully restored as she had been for some weeks now, including two crackling swords, imbued with the powers of lightning, strapped to her back.

"I see I am not intruding," she smirked, her bright green eyes flashing as she flicked her bright red hair back. "So, did you ultimately decide to attack, finally?"

"Again, we've got the plans drawn up for the coming campaign, straight to Karmand with offensives elsewhere to keep them off balance," he sighed. "We've been over this."

"And you still wait for the word of your, erm, Emperor to set this in motion?" Myrvaness laughed as she more fully entered the room. "You do know that one of my brethren, Aberos, has brought not only Bohruum, but also Osilintis and Nitandra in against you while you have dithered, correct?"

"I'm aware of that," he said in frustration, turning to face her, but she had already leaned in within inches of his face. "It'll still take time for them to do anything meaningful. In the meantime, he will take Karmand by the end of the summer and, at that point, what does Rohmhelt have?"

Myrvaness tilted her head back and forth and rolled her eyes about.

"Oh, I suppose nothing but the support of the High Angel, the Earth Angel, several others, a great many people who find Emperor Duronaht to be a crude usurper, and, of course, these new entrants into the war," she dripped with sarcasm, her icy breath wrapping around him. For once, she hadn't grasped him to pump that freezing pulse into his body directly, but this wasn't much better. "You cannot possibly think that taking Karmand will end the war any more than Forynda's destruction of Zarmand, I never will know why they named these cities the way they did, ended our side's motivation."

Vildrious knew she was right and he hadn't the wits to match her, a fact he was also keenly aware of. The one moment he felt he had the upper hand on her was when she lost most of her mortal form to her battle with Simel near Eynond. That was fleeting. Now, he felt much as he did when he was an ordinary Marshal facing the Bohruumite invasion to the northeast.

"Right, again, what exactly is it that you propose? Hm? Just attack, attack, attack, and attack again?" he shouted in frustration. "Our men can only march so many miles, incur so many casualties, endure so much terrible weather, and so on. They're mortal men. You can't take more out of them than they've got!"

"A pity. The design was not very good, a fact I would take up with Vorlan if we still spoke to one another," the Tempest Angel laughed. "I can solve the weather problem, if that makes you happy."

He felt his cheeks burning with rage at the flippant suggestion that everything they'd suffered the past several days could've been avoided if they just simply knuckled under to Myrvaness. And yet, that was almost certainly true. Whether by her deliberate design to make him subservient or because of a random stroke of luck, that was certainly the case.

"If you could.... Could just give us a nice clear dry stretch," Vildrious started saying, feeling ridiculous he needed to plead with her in this way. "That would be enough to get everything moving. But, I have to say with Emperor Duronaht arriving here tomorrow it's just..."

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"I understand," Myrvaness laughed and nearly winked at him. "Fair weather is guaranteed. I promise you that. None of the other angels know how to control it, save Vorlan, and he will not. But..."

And this was the part Vildrious dreaded. The inevitable request from Myrvaness, whether on her own behalf or the whole of the rebelling angels. He and the Emperor had speculated for some time about what they would want in exchange for their assistance. What they wanted in the long-term always eluded him.

"Go on, say it. Say it! Say it!" he shouted, begging her to just stop the nonsense and put it out there.

She smiled, eyes flashing and an air of nauseating satisfaction pouring forth.

"I will only say it in the presence of your Emperor, but I can tell you this much: Much of what you intend to conquer will become ours," Myrvaness said. "I want far less than some of my comrades. I think they ask too much or at least they value the wrong things."

Vildrious raised his eyebrows and then squinted, as though somehow focusing his vision would cause the words to make more sense to him.

"Right. Well, don't torment me with this if you're going to wait until Emperor Duronaht arrives," he mumbled. "I'm sure he'll give you what you want, though. Again, he wants this war over as soon as I do. If you want lands as payment, well, that's only fair."

"I am glad you see it that way," she smirked. "Regarding your inclement weather, I believe that you will find this all resolving shortly. When the storms of spring first strike, it will not be on your lines, I assure you."

~

Rohmhelt continued his tour of the front line positions almost exactly in between the city of Bendhelt and the ruins of what had once been Eynond. Grand Marshal Agrehn and Marshal Kordov traveled with him, along with a contingent of other top commanders and a heavy guard. He'd been warned that the new strategy being employed by his brother would be far more reliant on Jagreth's beasts, who could strike at any time virtually anywhere.

There was no sign of them, however, that day as the continuous rainfall kept everything subdued. Most of his soldiers were clustered in their barracks or in sheltered positions.

"Well, at least it's not cold anymore," the Emperor forced a laugh as the rains dripped down his face. His new horse, a white and black spotted mare, stank of wet fur in a way no horse he had before ever had.

"Indeed not," chirped Marshal Kordov, "though the cold would make the ground more amenable to horses. As it is, I'm scared to get much off the road here. That mud looks bottomless, and I don't want to break my ride's legs."

Looking to either side of the stone road, Rohmhelt observed that rocks had been sinking into the ground they lay upon. Little ponds formed all over the earth as there was no place for the water to go below the ground anymore. Just to the east, he pointed to a group of the hulking gray and black mottled beasts Aberos had created to aid the Emperor's armies in the coming campaign.

"What are those called, again?" he queried.

"The angel Aberos calls them 'Bronts', Your Imperial Majesty," Grand Marshal Agrehn gruffly replied. "I've no idea where he got the name, but it fits their appearance."

Agrehn was right about that. With legs as thick as a man, a body the size of a modest carriage, and great leathery bald heads, they were as strong as they were monstrous. Their hands, while resembling a gray and bumpy version of a person's hand, were at least five times the size. Rohmhelt imagined what would happen if they gripped a man's skull and squeezed. Some carried improvised huge pole arms while others were just as Aberos had made them. Most impressively, they seemed to be strong enough to push through the mud despite their immense size.

"We don't have to talk to them, do we?" Rohmhelt joked. "I can only imagine what Jagreth has waiting for us on the other side there. Though it would be hard to be worse than the Bladewings."

"I wouldn't tempt fate on that point," Kordov said, indulging the Emperor's humor with a light chuckle. "We've heard reports. There's something that has been referred to as the Slohknoa by one of our Vedous informants. I don't know the translation, but..."

"'Doom Beast', roughly," Agrehn interjected. Both Rohmhelt and Kordov glanced at him in surprise. "I was stationed in Vedous territory when I was a sergeant so many years ago now. I remember some of the language. It isn't spoken much anymore, though."

"What does this thing have that's so special about it?" Rohmhelt asked Kordov, returning to the matter at hand. "After everything I've seen, I wouldn't find anything shocking."

"A mouth apparently six or seven feet wide, if the reports are to be believed," Kordov sighed and audibly ground his teeth. "And apparently quite fast. Six legs, I believe, carrying that mouth across the ground right at you."

Rohmhelt tried to picture what such a thing would even look like. He shuddered as soon as he did and continued examining the horizon to take his mind off it. Luckily, all he saw were formations of his brother's regular troops and nothing more. A handful of great birds circled above Duronaht's lines, but not enough to suggest an imminent assault.

"Thank you, gentlemen," the Emperor said happily, turning his horse around to the officers gathered behind him. "I'm satisfied that we're ready for the campaign ahead. Now..."

"The clouds! Look!" one of the lesser commanders further back in the column shouted, pointing behind Emperor Rohmhelt. "They're parting over there."

The hairs on the back of his neck prickling, Rohmhelt spun his head back toward the enemy front. The clouds, in fact, had all cleared over his brother's lines as though they had been sheared away by a red-hot blade. Meanwhile, the horrible thunder rumbled just to the north where he saw a new mass of clouds building. These were black and billowing formations, unnaturally tumultuous. The deafening rumbles only escalated in the following seconds and fierce winds swept across the field.

Next to Rohmhelt, Cyrona's presence manifested, her glistening watery body reflecting the frequent flashes of lightning. Her eyes flashed a bright turquoise light at the Emperor.

"Myrvaness's influence," the Water Angel murmured. "The rest of them will not be far off, I am afraid to say. However, I am far more ready for them this time."

~

Duronaht arrived from Methrangia to see the glorious torrential storm pelting his brother's lines while his men were able to prepare for two days in dry weather. Near his command staff, including Vildrious and Ventov, gathered the angels Omonrel, Parlon, and Gorondos. Parlon and Gorondos had fully recovered from their injuries in the prior campaign, which Duronaht found somewhat discouraging in Parlon's case. The Music Angel's mortal form had been utterly destroyed and yet here he was again as though nothing had happened.

It wasn't going to be that easy, was it? the Emperor ruminated while he approached, a detachment of 50 Solnahtern marching behind him. I guess it's not time to worry about that, yet. We have more pressing concerns.

Omonrel turned and bowed graciously toward Duronaht, the Sculptor Angel's glorious maroon robes flapping in the wind and his sparkling crystal blue eyes flashing warmly.

"Your Imperial Majesty," his smooth voice announced, "I am pleased, as always, to be in your presence again."

"I'd be slightly more pleased to see Jagreth, if I'm honest," Duronaht joked, triggering a smirk from Omonrel. "After everything we've discussed about his efforts, where is he?"

"You will find that he takes his labors so seriously that he could not be bothered to greet you," Omonrel sighed and smiled at the same time. "He never has been one for perfunctory courtesies, but I assure you that he has delivered on his promises. This will become quite apparent very soon."

"Mmmm, I have seen what he has done," Parlon lyrically added while he pivoted to greet the Emperor with an exaggerated bow. His luxurious glossy white hair flicked forward and back as he returned to his ordinary stance. "Brutish for my tastes, though I must say I understand the appeal after a certain fashion."

"And those new creations will be joining us... when?" Duronaht asked, his eyebrows raised.

The very next second, a symphony of countless unrecognizable bestial roars rumbled to the east beyond the horizon. Duronaht and his commanders all froze in place.

"Erm, soon," Parlon laughed, his amethyst eyes narrowing. "Quite soon."