Rather than returning to Karmand to raise his armies, Rohmhelt elected to base his command at Eynond, a small yet vital fortress city in the central province of his kingdom. Sitting between two rivers, the mighty Walsan flowing west to east and ultimately into the capital of Methrangia itself as it merged into the Keldras, and the minor Tilset River, bringing a briny brew from the northern lakes just above Mount Ceuna in the north. It represented probably the single best location to muster troops in the whole kingdom, or at least that was what Evinda and Lohs told him.

Not only did troops come, but so did nobles in great numbers, and, of course, a healthy contingent of the clergy to bless their noble pursuit. As Lohs continually reminded Rohmhelt, no event in history had held such an importance for the priests as this had. The High Angel had cryptically warned countless centuries before that a moment would come when the faithful would be counted against the treacherous. Never in his life until the prior year had Rohmhelt considered that moment might be before his very eyes. While he intended to ignore the presence of the bulk of the eccentric priests who had gathered at Eynond, the arrival of one especially esteemed cleric was something he would be forced to attend.

Yldrina, Matriarch of Karmand, had not been seen outside the temple grounds for the better part of two years before the day she chose to arrive at Rohmhelt's camp just south of the Walsan River. Indeed, in his entire time as king, Rohmhelt had only seen the aged prelate on a few ceremonial occasions at the temple itself, but even then she made only the most modest of appearances.

Looking upon her as she exited her small and plain carriage, Rohmhelt felt as though he didn't even recognize her. So short that she barely came up to Rohmhelt’s chest and so thin that she looked as though she would blow away in the wind, few would ever notice her in a crowd. Fitting of her order, her robes were a simple plain white, without any embroidery or gems. Lohs had told Rohmhelt that their order believed that their garments should represent the simple and certain purity of Forynda’s laws.

She stepped forward on the smoothed cobblestones with an awkward, wide gait and craned her wrinkled face up at the King. Her lips had sunken into her mouth and her eyes bulged out in seemingly divergent directions. Before he could welcome her, she reached up with her hand and grasped his face by the right cheek. He was so shocked by this that he could barely respond.

“You’re troubled, my king,” she said in a crackling voice, tilting her head back and forth as she examined him. “Very troubled.”

Gathered behind him, his ministers, Lohs, and his queen all glanced at each other, confused by the impudent display by the Matriarch.

Rohmhelt grasped her thin, bony arm and lowered it gradually. Her bulging green eyes stayed locked on his.

“It’s a stressful thing, mustering my armies against my brother,” Rohmhelt tried to laugh it off. “But…”

“No, there’s something more,” she interrupted, turning a single eye upon him. “You’ve seen something, something truly terrifying. Something that has not happened yet.”

How…? Rohmhelt’s thoughts vanished into a void. He could not summon any response to that.

“Step away from the King, Your Eminence,” a Solnahtern guardsman yelled from the king’s right.

Yldrina shot an angered glance at the guardsman, but complied with the order regardless.

“We must speak about it, Your Majesty,” she said, bowing her head ever so slightly. “May the High Angel protect you.”

She waddled off amidst the crushing silence of Rohmhelt and his retinue.

“Has she always been that odd?” Evinda at last interjected to uneasy laughter.

“Not quite like that,” Lohs said, his voice trailing off. Rohmhelt turned toward his old advisor, who shook his head before regaining his composure. “In any case, Your Majesty, First Marshal Agrehn would like to speak with you.”

“Again?” Rohmhelt asked, still shaking after the encounter with Matriarch Yldrina.

“He’s very thorough, but that’s better than the alternative,” Lohs said with raised eyebrows as if to scold the King’s question.

The King nodded and waved off the rest of his court. Except for Lohs and Queen Evinda, they seemed happy to depart. He wished he could join them rather than endure yet another one of these reports by Agrehn.

War itself would probably be less of a burden.

In the fortress’s southwestern tower, First Marshal Agrehn had made a cramped slick black stone chamber his headquarters. Rohmhelt struggled to even determine what purpose such a room would have had. Perhaps it was meant to be impervious to fire in the event of a siege, but as high off the ground as it was that made little sense. Then again, the First Marshal himself was far more absurd than the chamber he called home.

He wasn’t a tall man, perhaps a full head shorter than Rohmhelt and wiry. Over his small frame, he wore a tight vibrant red and blue vest adorned with the better part of two dozen medals, all precisely aligned. His greying hair was accordingly short so that it would always be in place. This pattern was oddly broken on his beard, which was black, puffy, and somewhat uneven.

“Your Majesty,” he acknowledged as the king stepped into the room. “I have several new dispatches relating to our troop movements if you will permit me.”

The First Marshal pointed toward the sprawling map laid out on the table in the room’s center. Reluctantly, Rohmhelt approached it with Queen Evinda at his right and Lohs at his left. An absence of other officers heightened Rohmhelt’s suspicions that the summons was unimportant.

“Please proceed,” Rohmhelt said, only barely fighting off a sigh.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Agrehn clicked his boots together and began pointing to figurines on the map representing various units.

“First, the northern generals have finally responded. The 23rd and 34th divisions are marching with all haste and should arrive here in four days,” he said in a rapid, nigh indecipherable clip.

“And how many…” Lohs began asking, but Agrehn interrupted.

“Twenty-one thousand, mostly light infantry,” the First Marshal responded without even raising his eyes from the table. “Not terribly useful against the easterners, but they’ll have their purposes.”

Rohmhelt and Evinda glanced at each other and both rolled their eyes. Agrehn’s dismissive treatment of the quality of the king’s army was hardly new to them. In fact, Rohmhelt couldn’t recall a time the First Marshal had avoided the topic. As such, it was tedious.

“Two smaller divisions of heavy cavalry and a contingent of archers will be here in two days from the southeast. Nine-thousand five-hundred men, if memory serves,” he swelled with apparent pride in his mastery over the disposition of the army. “Combine that with the column of seven divisions camped just west of here and the forty-one divisions we have camped here, we should have just over five-hundred thousand men.”

He stopped speaking and took to examining the dispositions of his representative figurines. Consulting a scroll, he carefully repositioned two of the figurines. He smiled broadly after that adjustment.

“Was that all?” Rohmhelt asked, eliciting a slight laugh from Evinda.

“Not quite, Your Majesty,” Agrehn grumbled and looked up from his map. “I’d be negligent if I didn’t inform you that this is not nearly enough to defeat King Duronaht’s armies, should it come to that.”

“Why? How many does he have?” Evinda asked.

Agrehn pointed eastward on the map toward the swarm of figurines assembled near Zarmand and on the board with the central territories controlled directly by the Emperor.

“My reports put it at eight-hundred forty-one thousand, perhaps a bit more,” he stated.

Rohmhelt sighed as he was aware of the general magnitude of the disparity.

“Yes, but with fathe… the Emperor’s armies joined with ours, we should have him by a wide margin.”

Agrehn blinked back at his king with blinding condescension. Rohmhelt felt his neck become tense at the apparent silent insult.

“Quite so, Your Majesty, but there is the issue of quality,” the First Marshal said.

“Quality?” Rohmhelt replied, annoyed.

“Indeed. Our armies haven’t fought a major war in the west since far before you were born, Your Majesty. Our tradition simply isn’t as strong as in the east. They’ve had wars with their northern and eastern neighbors every decade for all relevant memory. Then there’s simply their equipment. It’s superior in nearly every respect,” Agrehn explained in a customary rapid pace. “In a battle, I would expect we would need two of ours for every one of theirs.”

Conclusions of this sort weren’t alien to Rohmhelt. This had been the conventional wisdom for years among those with knowledge of military affairs. Though he had often ignored the more arcane details, the basic narrative had not eluded him.

“But this isn’t all we have,” Rohmhelt riposted.

“Quite so, Your Majesty,” Agrehn parried with another suffocating dose of condescension. “The issue there is time. Time’s grinding march is nonetheless faster than many of our armies. We’ll have to venture out with far fewer men than we have summoned, especially those from the northwestern frontier. Were I in direct command of those forces, I could make them march faster, but, alas, I am not.”

Pushing through Agrehn’s suffocating pomposity, Rohmhelt decided to steer the conversation to something more fruitful.

“I have received assurances from the Gadisian Chancellor that he will be dispatching his armies within the week,” Rohmhelt declared. He felt Queen Evinda’s gratitude that he acknowledged the fruits of her labors on that account.

The First Marshal, however, needn’t have said anything to indicate his own skepticism on that development. Of course, that he needn’t have said anything did not stop him.

“Should he actually honor his commitment, I’m sure his men will be a suitable distraction on the battlefield,” Agrehn said with a dismissive flick of his hand.

Before King Rohmhelt’s frustrations with his commander could boil over, Lohs stepped forward.

“Pardon me, Your Majesty, but there are other engagements we have to be attending to. Forgive me, First Marshal,” Lohs said.

The ruse was slightly absurd as Agrehn smirked to acknowledge the lie put forward by Lohs, but the protocols had to be followed. Impudent though he was, he would not dare call out the king’s most trusted minister.

“Of course. Your Majesty. My Queen,” the First Marshal said, bowing. “I will have more tomorrow morning, as is to be expected.”

That man has the ability to say everything in the most annoying manner possible, Rohmhelt grumbled to himself.

Compounding his irritation, Lohs insisted that he meet with the Matriarch again before the night was finished. When he protested to Lohs, his minister simply replied, “I know that you won’t go to sleep until you understand just what it was she was talking about.” Queen Evinda heartily agreed with Lohs. “My dear, if I hear but a single question about what the Matriarch meant, I’ll toss you out of the bedchamber.”

Damned impudence on the part of everyone, he fumed while walking to the cramped chamber where he intended to receive the Matriarch alone.

It was a fine enough room, complete with glorious stained glass windows on all sides that were decorated with heraldic imagery from the Trundov Imperial family. However, as he waited, he became perturbed by the imbalance in the old wooden chair provided to him, which wobbled back and forth each time he shifted his weight.

At last, the door opened and Yldrina stood before him with the same dour countenance she had some hours before. A Solnahtern guard behind her stepped forward a few steps to announce her entrance.

“Your Majesty, the Matriarch of Karmand,” he declared, his voice muffled within his thick ceremonial helmet.

“Very good. Leave us,” Rohmhelt motioned toward the guardsman.

The door closed behind Yldrina and she stepped forward at a slow pace in austere silence. As much as he wanted to begin the conversation, he could not determine a proper way of doing so. In the intervening silence, she grasped for his face and pinched the skin under his right eye.

“You have seen something terrible, my king,” she said in a low rumble. “You have seen Karmand burn, haven’t you?”

Chills cascaded down his spine and sweat broke out over his brow. His lip quivered. How did she know such a thing?

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you speak of, Your Eminence,” he said in a weak and squeaky voice.

She scowled and pinched his skin harder, her bulging eyes converging.

“The lines etched in your skin betray that lie,” her voice grew mysterious. “Only one who has seen what I have would carry such troubles.”

“Dreams only, I’m sure,” he said, attempting to laugh the matter off.

“And yet you were awake when you saw it,” she scolded.

This is far too much.

“Your Eminence, I demand to know the purpose of what you’re asking me,” he said in a voice wreathed in exasperation and desperation.

She released his face and backed away a single step. Her eyes closed and she placed her hands together, one over the other in a sign of prayer common in her order.

“You are proceeding as though you have no knowledge of the calamities that will befall this world. Yet you have that knowledge. The High Angel has given it to you as she has given it to me. We must treasure this gift and use it for the benefit of our people,” she implored in a smoother voice, her eyes still closed. After a brief pause, Yldrina opened her eyes again. “Your current and future thrones are the least of the world’s worries now. Those will be forgotten. None of us who are alive today will see the end of all of this. What matters is that you hear Forynda’s call and stay true to her.”

Rohmhelt was perplexed by the Matriarch’s proclamation. Her words seemed at once to be both nonsense that he could ignore and the hard truth he continued to try to evade. In the pit of his soul, he knew that he faced the latter.

“Supposing that’s all true, what would you have me do?” he asked.

“For now, you must steel your soul and prepare for the trials we both know are coming. You must be a strong and resolute king in the face of these catastrophes, or the world will crumble,” she said with a mystical air to her voice. “Find the strength Forynda has given you. You haven’t wielded it yet in your life, but you will need it.”

“I… don’t understand,” he murmured, deeply perplexed by Yldrina’s words.

The Matriarch reached out her hand and clutched his forehead.

“I will teach you,” she said, her voice turning wispy and distant. “You will learn the strength the High Angel gives to her devoted children.”