Her beloved moons truly did appear more splendid when viewed from the surface of the mortal world. Cyrona had insisted to Rithys that this was the case for years, but Rithys had dismissed that assertion.
That night, they both stood on one of Tathyk’s fields, staring upward into the moonlit sky, watching the flocks of nocturnal birds and strange glowing insects fly about. Rithys found the array of strange sounds that moved through the night to be a pleasing melody. Not having been involved in their creation, she had no notion of what they were. The trickle of the river before her she knew from Cyrona. The rest, however, were a mystery. What’s more, she felt it best to keep them mysterious. Knowledge would only serve to make them a banality.
“I understand why the others wish to stay,” Rithys said softly.
Cyrona gave her a cutting glance.
“I had better not have to worry about you as well,” she said bitterly.
Rithys smiled, though she knew that Cyrona’s venom was only partly in jest. At times, Rithys wondered if she had appreciated the full gravity of the situation before them. When she tried to grasp it, her mind wished immediately to other matters, the more mundane the better. Cyrona, however, serving as Forynda’s right hand, had no such luxury. Rithys adjusted her tone to match that.
“You need not worry,” she said, putting her left hand on Cyrona’s shoulder. Her hand dipped slightly into Cyrona’s watery body. “I shall return to my sanctum after this venture.”
Cyrona’s roiling waters settled slightly. She pointed toward the river before them without looking back at Rithys.
“This was the fourth river I ever crafted. Rehgat, the mortals call it, named after one of their princelings who died heroically in battle fought on its banks. Before that it bore some eleven other names. Wevam, Qynilith, and the rest. Some lasted centuries, others mere decades. Watching these events transpire all of these millennia has been both a pleasure and an annoyance,” Cyrona fumed. “Theirs is an existence full of joys and pains, both in equal measure. Turmoil is their very nature, inescapable and inherent to their lives. Forynda recognized this since the very beginning.”
Rithys only weakly acknowledged what Cyrona said. There was nothing to add. Shortly afterwards, Tathyk at last approached, gently gliding toward them atop the grass. The soil that comprised his skin and seed-like eyes appeared anguished. Rithys surmised that the burden he faced in surrendering his farms must have been terrible.
“Have you enjoyed your visit, Rithys?” Tathyk said in his wheezing voice, which was shadowed by a note of deep despair.
“Yes,” Rithys responded tersely.
“Are you faring well, Tathyk?” Cyrona followed immediately. “You were gone quite a long time.”
His eyes twisted in his face and he looked back upon his fields.
“I have done what I can to speed the coming harvest. If war approaches, they will need every additional bushel of wheat to stave off starvation. Wars create such heartache,” he droned mournfully. “You have never seen tragedy until you have seen one of their young starving to death in their mother’s arms.”
Silence fell upon the three of them.
“Yes, well, Nethron has been tasked with trying to avoid that tragedy,” Cyrona said, plainly unconvinced. “Elaous seems to have more faith than I do that Nethron can do some good.”
“Nethron has an unconventional mind,” Tathyk replied, a touch of hope on his words. His seed-like eyes turned upward happily. “Perhaps he will think of a solution that has eluded the rest of us.”
Cyrona shot a wrathful gaze at the Patron of the Harvest, as the mortals called him. She did the same to Rithys when Rithys dared even motion agreement with Tathyk.
“We should have some hope,” Rithys meekly suggested.
Cyrona shook her head.
“When the flame of hope is snuffed, the mortals find that crueler than accepting doom from the outset. So it will be with us if you place your hopes in Nethron.”
~~~
After several hours of politely following Duronaht around his castle, the Aura Keeper wondered what the young King of Zarmand could possibly be attempting to argue. Was it his enthusiasm for his realm? Was it his throngs of loyal servants? The point eluded Nethron as they ventured from chamber to chamber and even had walked about the castle gardens. Lovely though they were, all of it lacked a cohesive narrative. Still, Nethron tolerated the exercise as he had the time to spare for it and reasoned that the entire episode would soon be over.
Once they came to the opulent throne room itself, Duronaht explained the history behind each painting, tapestry, and carved marble statue. The King took obvious immense pride in the fact that he now governed from his family’s ancestral seat of power, before the capital was moved to Methrangia some centuries earlier. Parts of the story were new to Nethron, who had never bothered to learn the intricacies of the mortals’ kingdoms. All of it reminded him of why he had not done so before. It was terribly dull and uninteresting. He considered it a curse that he lacked the ability to forget what he had heard.
The mortals do have that one advantage over us, Nethron thought to himself while Duronaht continued.
“But, my Angelic Lord, great and powerful though this all is, it’s all worthless next to what I will show you now,” the king said, breaking his didactic litany. “If you will follow me.”
At last there seemed to be something interesting instead of puffery about abstract senses of glory or the banalities of opulent possessions. Curiosity piqued, the Aura Keeper glided up the staircases behind the king and a pair of guards that accompanied Duronaht wherever he went. Their path took them to a large chamber on the castle’s third level facing westward. Duronaht motioned toward the bed at the chamber’s rear and intimated that they should proceed quietly.
“My queen rests here,” the king whispered faintly to the Aura Keeper. “My beloved, Torhess.”
Duronaht went ahead of Nethron and sat beside his wife, who Nethron could determine was unconscious due to some potion she had been given for her evident malady. Duronaht held her hand, which shook even as she slept. Her legs, too, were beset by tremors. Were she awake, Nethron reasoned that she would have been in some manner of agony.
“She suffers from a sickness through no fault of hers,” Duronaht lamented quietly, his voice becoming tender. “She never did a thing to bring this upon herself. Ever. But there isn’t a person living in the entire world who knows how to cure her. I’ve brought in everyone who I can find. None of them have answers.”
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Nethron floated near the other side of the bed, sensing the disturbed auras within Torhess’s body. Every mortal being had their own balance of auras for their fluids, flesh, muscles, bones, and organs. In the healthy mortals, they rested in harmony. Queen Torhess’s auras, however, felt as though they had been maliciously torn asunder by a rampaging beast. Indeed, they made war upon one another.
“Everything I’ve shown you today? None of it means a thing if I can’t continue to share it with her,” Duronaht said, tears forming in his eyes. “I once asked Parlon if it was possible for me to trade ten years of my life so that she wouldn’t suffer so. You already know the answer to that.”
Indeed Nethron did. Powerful though Parlon, Omonrel, and the others were, they did not possess the mastery over the auras necessary to correct such a malady. Even if they had the power at their disposal, Forynda had so strictly forbidden their intervention in trying to aid the mortals in conquering their inevitable deaths that they dared not disobey. Reluctant as she had been about allowing her angelic brethren to live on Vorlanys at all, she had certain deeper reluctances.
Still, he found Duronaht’s tender and devoted care for his beloved queen to be admirable. Nothing approaching that bond could be seen in Ceuna, certainly nothing Nethron experienced for himself. From Forynda, he always sensed derision and annoyance. From Vorlan, complete ambivalence. Elaous at least appeared to offer some manner of affection in his own distant way.
The Aura Keeper knew that he had the potential to reverse the trend in the auras within Torhess’s body, but he contemplated the consequences of such a thing. Forynda’s wrath would follow nearly immediately and, even if it did not, the whole of the mortal world would ask for the same favors. If they did not receive those favors, jealousy and resentment would cause a cascade of death and torment.
“You are asking me to heal her,” Nethron mumbled.
The king turned his head slowly toward the angel.
“I didn’t say that,” Duronaht said.
“You did and we both know it. We also both know that is a thing I will not do.”
“Will not? But you could?” the king asked desperately.
“This is a path we had best not travel,” Nethron weakly protested.
Nethron floated out of the royal bedchamber swiftly, but Duronaht immediately followed after him.
“My Angelic Lord,” Duronaht protested, “where are you going?”
“You were not the primary reason I came here, Your Majesty,” Nethron sighed. “I came to treat with my brethren to seek an accommodation and so I must see them now.”
“Your brethren’s wishes are tied to my own!” Duronaht riposted.
Nethron shrugged.
“Then this may be a long visit for me.”
~~~
Omonrel, Jagreth, and Parlon met with Nethron just outside the city on the following morning. The Aura Keeper’s brethren chose a hillock that overlooked much of the surrounding terrain, which was marked by farms to the horizon on both sides of the river. Nethron examined these demonstrations of mortal ingenuity with approval while Jagreth and Parlon appeared disinterested. Omonrel, however, took Nethron at his side away from the others.
“You met with King Duronaht?” Omonrel asked.
“I did.” Nethron sighed.
“You sound as though you were not impressed.”
“Impressed… No, it is hard to be impressed by any of the mortals, even a king,” Nethron quipped. “Looking upon the land, I understand your affection for it. I always have. The mortals, however, that is something entirely different.”
Omonrel smirked, and motioned toward the city.
“There is something I would like you to see,” the Sculptor said. “A beautiful and terrible thing, both joined together.”
“Beautiful… Terrible, no those do not go together,” Nethron quipped.
“My friend, you have much to see.”
Omonrel led Nethron to a cemetery on Zarmand’s periphery. Surrounded by glorious yellow and red leafed trees, the cemetery was filled with lovingly crafted dark crimson stone markers over some thousands of graves. Upon each of them, the names of the deceased and the dates of the births and demises were inscribed.
Seven new graves had been dug for recently deceased citizens, laborers who had died in an accident as Omonrel explained it to Nethron. By the cruel and arbitrary nature of the world, they have trusted carpenters to build a platform that could hold the weight of the stone they worked with. Instead, the platform collapsed and all seven were crushed and killed before they knew whose error had condemned them to die. By all accounts, they were skilled stone workers. The same could not be said for the carpenters on whom they relied.
Nethron and Omonrel watched from the rooftop of a mausoleum while the families, comrades, and friends of the deceased clustered around the sacks containing the remains of the stone workers. Priests blessed the dead and offered prayers to the High Angel that their souls would be received warmly in Ceuna. Nethron wanted to scoff at the notion that each soul would be tended after by the High Angel herself, but there was something far too pitiable, even commendable, about their hopes.
After the priests concluded their rites, wails and lamentations poured forth from the families and associates of the dead. Nethron felt a chill reverberate in his own soul as he watched their bodies committed to the earth. Omonrel glanced curiously at the Aura Keeper, nodding lightly.
“This is your first time observing this. I have borne witness to some tens of thousands of these rituals and they never cease to wound me. Some forty generations of my adopted family lie buried in the crypts of Kedholn Manor, almost all of them sealed there by me,” Omonrel said. “Were I able to stop that cycle, I would. As it is, I simply try to give unto them a better life than they could possibly hope to have without my aid.”
Witnessing the pains of the nameless mortals before him, Nethron thought of how the souls of the dead traveled into Ceuna and his knowledge of the Silver Aura. He imagined the unrestrained elation that would grasp the mortals should they see their beloved family returned to them. A thought gnawed at him. What laws of Ceuna could be so important as to deny the mortals that joy?
But that was a question he preferred not to answer this day.
“Will that be all?” Nethron asked, eager to leave before any other turbulent thoughts tumbled across his mind.
“Many more will fill graves across these grounds in the coming days, weeks, and months. You should see how many countless ailing reside in an infirmary, many on the cusp of death, calling out for loved ones that themselves have long since gone,” Omonrel lamented.
“I should see that?” Nethron queried, annoyed. “And how will that help in achieving the mission for which I came to this place? Forynda and Vorlan entrusted me to bring peace. What use could come from me seeing scores of the sick and dying?”
“My dear Nethron,” Omonrel sighed in condescension, “the plight of the mortals is precisely why Parlon, Jagreth, and I refuse to leave. I beseech you to understand it.”
Such reasoning echoed Duronaht’s own plea. Much as he wished to refuse, he could not return to Ceuna without a useful achievement or at least a firm answer. With the greatest reluctance, he accompanied Omonrel to the nearest hospital in southeastern Zarmand.
Squalid even compared to the squalor surrounding it, the hospital was teeming to the brim with some hundreds of disease-stricken mortals. Most suffered from plagues that ran through the city. Others were simply elderly and succumbing to the inevitable frailties mortals faced. Many had been left to die on their own, not because they had been forgotten, but for the reason that their beloved could not bear to see them in such a state.
So great was their suffering that the ailing seemed to ignore the presence of two of Ceuna’s angels in their midst. Nethron could sense that their attentions were focused on their own worries alone. Those who could open their eyes chose not to, preferring to be with their thoughts.
“If this could be ended by your hand, would you not choose to end it? How cruel would one have to be to set such things in motion and simply abandon these wretches to their fate?” Omonrel asked.
Nethron tried to ignore the Sculptor’s pleadings. He suspected that were he to speak with Cyrona and King Rohmhelt he would hear similarly impassioned pleas. However, what he could not ignore was the grasp of a dying child, blinded by disease and choking on fluids that had built in her throat.
“Father?” the child asked as she clutched Nethron’s hand.
The Aura Keeper sensed her delirium. She would not have known her own father even if he had been present. A portion of his mind wanted to speak honestly with her and not allow her to live in the delusion that her father had come back to be with her in her last moments. Forynda would likely have done that. However, an imperceptible force held him there, grasping the girl’s hand.
“I am here,” Nethron said, shocked that the words escaped his mouth. “Be at peace.”
Moments later, she passed, her eyes closing and mouth drooping open. The auras within her body settled and her soul transitioned from the mortal world to the realm awaiting her in Ceuna. Nethron stood silently as he witnessed her soul’s passage into the angelic realm.
After departing the hospital, Omonrel and Nethron stood quietly outside the city gates with Nethron gazing off into the sky.
“Do you better understand me now, Nethron?” the Sculptor asked.
Nethron looked back at his brother angel and said nothing.