Lyfress and her father, Cisord, had spent almost the entire evening arguing yet again about what had become of her brother during the destruction of Zarmand. As many times as she tried to accept her brother's demise, closure had not truly come to her. Ulford's malignant foolishness couldn't have deserved such a punishment. That it was so terribly unjust stuck in her consciousness night and day, rattling about in her dreams and idle waking moments alike.

Her father leaned back against the thick-trunked tree in the grove where they had made their camp. It was on the western periphery of the 19th Division, with which they had traveled for weeks and had followed it just to the north of Eynond. While they were not firmly within the guard outposts, it seemed a safe enough place to have their argument while they awaited Duronaht's inevitable full-scale assault.

Cisord wearily rubbed his eyes and yawned. Her last restatement of her anger over what happened to Ulford had likely gone too far.

"My dear daughter," he began in a tone that accompanied any number of admonishments in the past, "if Ulford had not been in Zarmand when the calamity struck, what would we think about it?"

"It would've still been an unspeakable tragedy!" Lyfress protested.

"That's not what I asked," he said, raising a bony and wrinkled finger into the air. "I asked what would we think about it? We have no natural love of Zarmand nor, before Ulford, did we know anyone who lived there. It would have been just another abstraction, much like how we responded when Emperor Covifaht was murdered by his younger son and the angel Parlon. We would have considered that to be some interesting shocking tragedy in a distant land and we would've thought they deserved it."

"Father, that's not right. I would never have thought such a thing!" she protested.

"Oh no?" he asked, eyebrows raised. "I remember you getting fairly angry at those who rejected Forynda early on in all of this."

"You're making too much of that," Lyfress grumbled.

"Perhaps so, but my point is that you are taking a personal loss and letting it dominate your thoughts in a way you wouldn't have if Ulford had been a nameless stranger. This war has killed hundreds of thousands on the battlefield. How many of them do you know?" he probed. She had no response. It was times like these that she understood how it was he had been mayor of Gulnholn all those years. "Ulford was my son. In many ways he still is as his memory is always with me, but I do see the greater forces at work here."

"I don't know that you understand the core of what I'm really trying to say, father," Lyfress said, her voice weakening. "I wonder if we've been right about this, ever since I learned about Ulford."

Cisord smiled, his loose wrinkled skin rising high on his bony cheekbones.

"I know that's what you mean to say," he leaned forward and touched his hand to hers. "We're all growing through this. All of us, even the angels. They all have their flaws, even the High Angel. I'd be lying to you if I said that I didn't have my doubts after what happened to Zarmand, but in my dreams and in prayer it's been so clear to me. And Simel helped me to understand."

Lyfress's ears perked up at that mention.

"What did Simel tell you?" she inquired, recalling the discussion she had with the Mind Angel some weeks earlier. "When I said the same things to him that I say to you now, he said he hadn't seen the end of this war."

Cisord nodded.

"He said much the same to me, but that he'd seen enough to know one important thing. The angels are like us. They change and adapt over time. Experience shapes their minds and character just as it does with us. For some of them, it changes for the better and others it changes for the worse," her father said, his hands making ascending and descending motions with his hands. "Forynda has learned a lesson and she will be different going forward, wiser and more charitable. Her foes are changing for the worse and that'll be clear to all of us. It already is to me."

Despite the acrimony earlier in the evening, her father's words carried such a certainty of truth to them that she found comfort. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply before looking again at her father's aged and sagging face.

"Forget I mentioned any of this," she mumbled weakly.

"Lyfress, you're my favorite child and you always have been. I know we're supposed to say that we don't have favorites, but every parent who's ever said that is a liar," he laughed.

"You used to say that," she forced through with a chuckle.

"Alas, I lied. You've always been my favorite precisely because we can have these discussions. More than once you've shamed me into changing my mind. I've never had that with the others," he said wistfully. "Well, we should try to get some sleep before..."

Shouts rose from the camp, first only a few and then a deluge.

"TO ARMS, MEN!" a captain screamed near the camp's western edge near where they had camped.

Not exchanging a word, both Lyfress and Cisord scurried toward the east, following just behind a company of archers trotting in surprisingly good order given that they had just awakened. Navigating the maze of tents and torches was dizzying. Lyfress more than once lost her balance, in part because she tried to listen on what the soldiers were saying about the looming threat.

Once they arrived on the eastern periphery, it became clear what had alerted the guards. First, on the opposite riverbank, elements of Duronaht's army had formed up with torches lit, revealing their vast numbers. Exactly how many there were was unclear, but certainly enough for a full assault. Much more peculiar, however, were the glistening shapes moving in the sky above them. Large bird-like silhouettes obscured the portions of the two moons, the fronts of their wings glinting as they circled.

"What are those? Cojis?" one of the archers asked their captain while Lyfress and Cisord stood just behind them.

"No, everything's all wrong for Cojis. Shape, size, flight pattern," the captain mumbled. "Can't get a good look at them from here."

The forward ranks clanked and churned as they formed up along a broad front. Though the 19th Division had suffered steep losses during its retreat, it still fielded the better part of three thousand men and seeing them fall into formation was still an impressive sight for Lyfress.

"Archers! Form three ranks! Keep your eyes on the sky," a voice that sounded like Commander Qalenet roared from some distance away.

"You heard him!" a tall and lanky captain behind Lyfress shouted in his raspy voice. "Form up. Three ranks. No dawdling. Eyes sharp, arrows nocked."

The captain then tapped on Cisord's shoulder.

"Mayor, you and your daughter best step back a bit. Don't want to get mixed up in this in case it gets messy," he said.

"I appreciate that," Cisord nodded anxiously. His worried face turned toward his daughter, its crevasses accentuated in the moonlight. "Lyfress, lets stand aside."

She was fully inclined to agree with him and they stepped back at least thirty paces from the rear ranks of archers.

Just as they did, rattling screeches called out from the birds circling high in the sky above the opposite bank. Each one of the birds began a descent, taking places across a broad front that stretched across the entire line. A deep whistling ripped across the air, their wings cutting through the sky itself. Some of the captains ordered their men to get down. Others held firm.

"Pikes, to the front! Jab them!" one called out. "Jab them when they come down!"

"Archers! Draw and hold! Wait for my command!" another captain ordered.

Lyfress stood with her jaw dangling as she got a better look at the beasts as they approached. Their wings stretched as wide as the arms of 10 men and where there should have been feathers it was metallic, like looking at the cutting edge of a sword across the whole wing. Augmenting their terrifying appearance, their eyes flashed a dull, but haunting, green light.

CRAHHHHHHHHHHHH! they all cried in a blood curdling barrage. CRAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!

The noise was so terrible it pierced into the center of Lyfress's head. She panicked as she looked back and forth between her father, who stood in paralyzed astonishment, and the threat that swept down upon them. Without even thinking a moment more, she grabbed him and pulled him to the ground. Her fear that she might break his old and brittle bones was nothing compared to the fear if she allowed him to continue standing.

"LOOSE!" the order went out to the archers.

The twangs of their bows was soon met by a noise Lyfress never heard before, at least not like that. It was like a cleaver cutting through meat, a wet and ripping sound. Short agonized screams accompanied it, along with calls to get down, but many of them were cut short. Dull thuds sounded out all over the line, sometimes a heavy thud and other times a light one. One such light thud rolled toward her before stopping.

A heavy gust sailed right over her and her father. Along with it was the eerie sensation of a thick, bumpy claw brushing along her back, but blessedly not making impact beyond that.

"BACK, TWISTED FIENDS!" Simel's voice echoed all around her as a brilliant light, so bright that she saw it through her closed eyes, radiated all around.

CRAAAAAHHHHHHH! the beasts screeched and flew back over the formation.

Archers, those that seemed to remain, loosed another volley. One of the lagging monstrosities cried in agony and soon fell out of the sky, crashing into the ground. Muffled cheers and sighs of relief sounded out across the line, but the voices were far fewer than Lyress expected.

At last, still laying on the ground, she had the courage to open her eyes.

A head, with its lifeless eyes, stared back at her not five feet away. It had been severed cleanly from its body some dozen yards away, tossed with such force that it tumbled all that way to haunt her.

She feared to look to her left. She couldn't bear to see that anything had happened to her father. She prayed that he was unharmed. Cisord coughed to clear his throat and began to stand, bringing her immense relief. At last, she felt she could rise as well, though her legs were terrorized to the point of being numb. The ground was distant and unsteady as she stood upon it.

"You saved me," he said, placing his right hand on her shoulder. After the briefest of glances to the east, began crying. "I can't look at it. I haven't the courage."

Lyfress, still staggered and disoriented from the horrors that had just visited them, decided she must see what happened. After taking a deep breath, she turned her head and looked out at what had been the thick ranks of the 19th Division just some minutes before. Now, piles of bisected or decapitated bodies rested where proud soldiers had once stood. Those still living had either plunged to the ground or were fortunate enough not to be in the path of the bladed wings of those beasts that had descended upon them. In that pale light, where the nature of the mortal blows looked ambiguous, her mind filled in the ghastly bits she couldn't immediately see.

"This was Jagreth's doing," Simel murmured as he floated near them. "He altered his own creations in this horrible way. That much is clear. This will have happened elsewhere."

Just as the angel finished speaking, the survivors from the attack gasped and shouted about a mage's beacon shooting into the sky to the south. Lyfress and her father shot their heads toward the southern sky to glimpse it. A single iridescent blue and green spire of light sailed into the clouds before it dimmed and fell dark.

"This battle has started," Simel listlessly declared. "Find what strength you can. This will be horrid."