The Eternal Dance of Light and Dark

by The King of Ravens

Having just survived a nine year long civil war, those of Lucael would be forgiven for entertaining the notion of peace. However, new threats are rising, and as the son of the king, it is Caiellis's job to combat them, despite his youth. But as the leaders of a rival nation declare war and mysterious figures pull strings in the shadows, Cai will be drawn into the fate of the world.

25. Blood on the Sands

The boy scampered up the branches of one of the many trees in the Deep Forest, listening to the flow of life around him and the thousands of sounds it encompassed: the sound of buzzing insects, the rustle of the leaves in the warm and humid wind, the scurrying of tiny animals far below as they fled a sprinting predatory cat that panted in its exertions, the occasional and barely discernible plod of the gargantuan behemoths and the even rarer thunderous below that echoed throughout the forest.

A butterfly with scintillating violet wings lazily wafted by the child, who watched its progress with wide eyes as it drifted through the forest, a perfect target for predators – such as a camouflaged brown lizard that crawled up the bark of the tree the boy was on, momentarily hissing in warning at him, exposing its viscous and cautionary spines, before turning its attention back to its prey. Despite having seen the cycle of life thousands of times, the Erian watched intently, his youthful features etched in anticipation.

The lizard then attacked, opening its scaled mouth wide and extending its elastic tongue, the pink and moist fleshy head firing out towards the butterfly, which made no motions to avoid the incoming assault. The second the tongue touched the insect it released a burst of venomous pheromones that spread out in a cloud of pink gas, dissolving the flesh of the tongue that fell away. The lizard shrieked in anguish, but the decay spread along the pink muscle at a rapid rate, corroding the creature as it died in a frantic tumble of dissipating limbs.

He remembered when he was younger, still a child – as his physical age of thirteen meant that he was treated as an adult in Erian society – one of his friends, a happy and ecstatic girl that he couldn't remember the name of had been climbing up a tree just before him, and had pointed excitedly to the butterfly, which was a significantly different and more attractive colour than the usual variety, declaring to him that she would capture it for him, and the second she touched it the insect had effused its deadly cargo onto the poor girl, who had died screaming as she fell off the tree, her limbs burnt to mush as she hit the forest floor with a wet splat.

Evolution and adaptation in the Deep Forest was heightened to such a degree that changes could be observed within a short lifetime of the humans that inhabited it – it was said that those shamans who worshipped the Great Shaper Vorinclex, the Unbound Sancturia creature that supposedly governed the cycles of life and prevented ecological stagnation by devouring entire species, deliberately introduced new forms of life they developed through the application of magic, though whether or not they were aiding or hindering the plan of Vorinclex was unknown.

The Yentarians of the League of Thrazek had taken a great interest in the augmented evolution of the forest, often attempting to gain access, though if they had ever succeeded or not was a mystery to the boy – in fact, the only Erians that only knew about it were the soft ones living in "civilised" Geansse, as they were the only ones in the nation (as if the unfettered cycle of life itself could ever been confined into so human a term as "nation") that actually knew the world outside of the Deep Forest existed, not that the boy had ever cared about that.

At any rate, the poison butterfly had developed, and claimed one of its victims right before the boy's eyes, and the village had soon learnt to teach the children to stay far away from them.

Was that in this life? Or another? He thought. They all blended together, they all seemed the same. The other members of the Confederacy had professed to be able to separate the different lives their hosts had lived to obtain information from any of them, but to Epsilon it was more like an endless cycle, where he (Epsilon assumed it should refer to itself in that way, as its current form – and if all went to plan, its last – was male) inhabited a form for a short while before returning back to the immaterium and inevitably finding another body again.

He had lived in the lush lower jungles, the underground and dark undergrowth unpentrated by sunlight, and the inner forest itself – once Epsilon had even lived in Geansse, though had abandoned the city as it failed his already low expectations and once his duty had been completed. He had been raised within many different tribes, abandoned as a babe by parents who couldn't care for him and left to fend for himself in an uncaring and primal forest, or been brought up as one of the mysterious and secretive shamans.

Unlike the other Confederates, Epsilon was not just a mask, another personality made up of past experience that could be taken off at will and coexisted with the current bearer of the role – he existed within his chosen child ever since birth, and the other personality never developed. They all thought that nothing changed, that they were eternal, but Epsilon could see the difference every time the body of those that assumed the role died and a new human inherited it – they acted noticeably changed, but maybe it was a sign of them developing with every one who wore the mask. If he was inclined to think of human things like poetry, Epsilon would have found it ironic that he was the only one that never changed mentally (as they all altered physically), considering how he appeared.

He briefly recalled that when he first encountered the poison butterflies, he had been a slender girl with silken brown hair, but he couldn't discern whether that had been his previous form or a hundred forms ago, nor did it matter.

The beautiful poison butterfly drifted through the air, as it nothing had happened and it hadn't just caused the brutal death of another living organism, just as the one that had killed Epsilon's friend had languidly fluttered away before he (or she) had smashed it out of the air with his (or her) stick in vengeance.

The one that had just killed its predator elegantly extended its glistening black proboscis, flitting down to a nearby plant and landing on the outstretched ruby red petals, intending to feed upon the golden nectar that glinted in the shafts of sunlight that cut through the canopy.

The plant reacted instantly, clamping shut around the butterfly and shearing off its head before it could release its corrosive pheromones, the petals turning inwards and revealing sharp botanical fangs that it stabbed into the writhing creature, as though the butterfly's brain functions had been eliminated its body still reflexively thrashed. If the boy looked closely, he could see the vital fluids of the deadly poison butterfly being drained from it, and he walked along the think branch with the grace and confidence of someone who had lived in the Deep Forest for an eternity.

Despite that, Epsilon would be lying if he said that he had come even slightly close to exploring the entirety of the jungle – it was vast, and defied all mortal measurements, with many different self-sufficient biomes that one could easily get lost in. He recalled that one of his many brothers (or had it been a sister? Or did I have two different ones that did the same thing?) had wandered off from his group and become lost, and Epsilon remembered his parents at the time crying and hugging him close, despite the fact that the mortality rate among children was immensely high.

They had attributed the boy's lack of a response to their six year old's immense sadness and not truly understanding that his big brother would never come back, but in truth Epsilon had never cared. The older brother of that incarnation had simply been part of the great, endless cycle of life and death, and he would have fed some predatory creature or his corpse would have provided sustenance for a plant, that would in turn be eaten by a herbivore, which would be hunted by humans and used to keep them alive before another reckless child wandered into the woods and died.

He briefly wondered if the parents of that form would have survived their second son dying at the age of fourteen, as that was when Epsilon could no longer sustain himself and walked into the forest to die. It happened at around the same age in each of his many lives, although he still three to four months left in this one – more than enough time to complete the Confederacy's plan. It was because of the Confederacy's plan that he was here now, away from the village in which the current him – Talek Sajai, nicknamed Tal by his friends and two older siblings – had left the village and was walking a winding path through the forest, a seemingly random route that outwardly led to no known destination mapped by the village elders.

Talek/Epsilon stalked across the branch towards the plant that hung off it, greedily devouring its prize, and grabbed the plant with his slender hand, crushing it to a pulp and running revitalising Green mana through his arm and into his fingers to nullify the effects of the substance present in the carnivorous plant's sap that was inimical to mammal life. The plant automatically released hundreds of tiny seeds that spread through the air in a final effort to propagate its species further, though many of the plants would be in dire competition with each other for food and only the best adapted would survive.

Talek shot out his other arm and caught one of the seeds, pocketing it inside of the leather sash his present mother had lovingly made for him and was strung over his tanned skin.

Epsilon had noticed that despite living in hundreds of different bodies, he always looked similar, but assumed that was due to his lifestyle – willowy and thin, with some lean muscle developing at the end of his lives when he breached his teenage years, and tanned skin because of the hot sunlight, though once he had been a deathly pale girl living in the darkest regions of the Deep Forest that had apparently been similar to Lucael, according to his Confederates, who treated their child member with a mixture of patronising fondness and irritated scorn. He preferred his hair to be medium length – not long enough to get in the way, but enough that it attributed a sense of mystery, and adopted this hairstyle no matter what gender or hair type he was given in his different lives.

Despite inheriting various different eye colours, and sizes, they always had an intensity that made him looked focussed and intelligent, as stated on numerous occasions by thousands of peers, most of whom would be dead now anyway. Epsilon had been selected to become a shaman, the group of magic users that was venerated above all and directed the forest, forming its ruling body in the eyes of other nations despite simply following the whimsical or enigmatic commands of the elementals and behemoths that took an interest in the forest's human inhabitants. He always evaluated whether or not he needed to demonstrate his magic and be taken from his village and trained in the mystical ways (in spite of the fact he probably knew more than the ones "teaching" him), and if they didn't need manipulating further then he would not.

The boy had only left Eria on three occasions (not counting his visits to the Eternal Realm), and found that the nations he visited were even more short-sighted and narcissistic than the humans in the forest; life did not bloom as it did in the Deep Forest. The most recent had been roughly two lives ago, when he had visited the New Empire of Welkas just after revolution had occurred – not that he would know without the Confederacy informing him.

Why Alpha had been incapable of eliminating the woman and her two daughters was a mystery to him, though it had been explained to him. He paid little attention in the meeting to things of human concern – Epsilon was perfectly content to simply follow orders, and couldn't care less what happened to the rest of the world so long as the Deep Forest, and by extension Sancturia, survived. He vaguely recalled something about a "Jarred Redhand" and that this person's family had been his target, in order to "change Welkas in preparation for the future". Furthermore, the fact that he had been required to complete the killings just as the man arrived back at his villa from whatever he had been doing and laugh in a haunting manner was also beyond him, but evidently it had been of great import to his fellow Confederates.

That was the main problem with them. Beta's worries about the misery and death they would cause had emphasised that – Epsilon didn't care that humans would die – does anyone complain that there is constant death all around them? When his fellow Confederates wanted "the world" to live on, by "the world" they meant humanity and didn't care at all about the thousands of other organisms they shared "the world" with, from the lowliest flea that's only purpose was to suck blood and breed to the largest gargantuan that could shake the forest with its monstrous mating cries.

Epsilon would like to say that he didn't dislike humans, simply viewed them as equals to every other living creature, but that would be a lie. The fact that humanity thought that it was superior to the rest of life seriously grated on the everchild's nerves – did the fly think it necessary to raise itself on a plinth above all other species, simply because it was capable of thinking in a unique way? No, all the fly cared about was survival.

He wished that he could see the world through a hawk's eyes, prowl the forest like a deadly and dangerous predatory cat, swim the roaring rivers as a fish or bask in the glory of the sun and raise his branches ever higher as a soaring oak, but the fact was he was a human, the species with its only defining feature being a dissatisfaction at how life was for them as individuals, blind to the greater whole and beauty of life and ignorant to the eternal cycle constantly occurring around them. The eternal cycle that would soon end without the Confederacy's plan.

Talek's brief introspection had allowed those that he had been tracking with his magical sense to get closer to his location, and he intended to intercept their path soon, and felt no remorse for what was to come. He began to climb down the tree, his bare feet touching the bark with a strange sensation – some Erian villages had originally pondered wearing shoes, as it would provide greater protection from the undergrowth and the insects that could attack from there, but it had been decided against for numerous reasons.

Firstly, there were not enough raw resources to construct a pair for all, they restricted graceful movement and made noise, caused the feet to sweat even more in the sweltering heat – the fact that most Erians only wore what he was currently (although they often wore other things for rituals or ceremonies, or if they were of a high rank): a sash of leather and woven fabric shorts, and it still felt boiling was a testament to the heat. The final reason was because that were clumsy enough to stand on venomous spines or other such hazards probably wouldn't have been useful anyway, and the village could only provide for those that could bring things back into it.

Despite being the son of the chieftain, Ruruc Sajai, the rules still applied to Talek, and his family would only briefly mourn his loss if he got himself killed, as there were two older siblings that could inherit the role anyway. The tribe of the Oak's Blessing would live on without him.

He slid down the tree and landed gracefully on the ground, rising to his full and unimpressive height – Talek was a small thirteen year old, to the delight of his five years older brother Jalek, (in the imaginative tradition of their mother's family, his two year older sister was named Salek). The older boy had often bullied him, and Epsilon had considered killing the quite frankly irritating eighteen year old, but that was before Jalek had proved that he loved Talek by saving him from raiders of another tribe.

Despite the fact that death normally wouldn't matter and Epsilon would simply find another foetus to become, his demise now and the reality that he would have to grow again could have been detrimental to the Confederacy, forcing another one of his Confederates to prosecute their plans within the Deep Forest, and none of them knew it as well as he did.

Many of his missions – including this one – he undertook himself, without the knowledge of his allies, as he knew how to carefully control the Erian Conclave so that it would not intervene with the other nations. Throughout history, those who had bayed for war and to expand the Erian territory outside of the jungle had been swiftly silenced, to a degree of efficiency and accuracy that even the strongest warriors could not survive.

A few centuries ago, when the greatest general of one of the major tribes had been assassinated when advocating that they should attack the nations outside, shamans had invented a myth that spoke of one of the forest spirits being displeased by the talk of leaving the Deep Forest, and so if one didn't wanted to die then they should stop. Though he knew that the shamans had done that to further their own agendas, Epsilon hadn't cared – it was less work for him.

He could feel his target's presence, as they made no effort to conceal it, and could vaguely hear them talking tersely to each other, although Talek couldn't discern what.

Talek walked forward, using just enough stealth that his presence would be hard to perceive but not as much as he was capable of to completely mask his passing – he wanted his targets, soldiers from a rival tribe that were guarding a fugitive shaman that was disrupting the natural balance of things and ruining the delicate order that he had attempted to create over the centuries.

The shaman council's own assailants had failed to kill her, and so now Talek was taking it upon himself to eliminate her – she was spreading warnings of a coming shadow, scaring the tribes that she passed through and rousing some of the chieftains to action – such as the one of the warriors that guarded her. They were on the way to visit the home of the person Epsilon presently was, one of the four Great Tribes that had stood the test of the ages and were more permanent that the smaller ones, who were either destroyed by creatures of the forest or opportunistic raiders.

Talek stalked towards them, ready to meet them but making sure that he looked like he had only just become aware of their presence through sound alone. He used the amount of caution and stealth a furtive, scared and lost teenager would, watching impassively as the party walked round a sea of tall bushes and vines, each one of the warriors' expert eyes scanning the forest around for potential threats. He knew that the tribe they had come from – the Zhurac – wasn't an enemy of his father's, but nor was it an ally and their visit would be unprecedented as both tended to avoid each other.

The boy hid himself within a thicket of plants that cut at his skin, ignoring the pain as he was aware that this species wasn't poisonous, and needed to look like he had spontaneously hidden himself the second he heard the men. His blood dripped onto the ground, the slow sound of it eclipsed by the footsteps of the warriors, and he saw them emerge into the avenue of trees he had been in.

There were five of the tribesmen, tanned and muscled brutes that still possessed some of the leanness present in all Erians due to their harsh lifestyle, and carried metal sickles and axes they had at the ready. The quality of their weaponry, and the fact that the little armour they were was emblazoned proudly with an intricately designed sigil of their tribe, meant that they were elites. That wouldn't stop Epsilon, as one of the men wiped sweat from his brow and signalled that the area was clear.

A slender and perfectly formed woman walked into the clearing, obviously a shaman just from the way she walked – she made no effort to conceal herself, as the creatures of the forest would not touch her, and she was at one with the earth so made no sound. He could sense the magical potency inside of her, and assumed that she could conjure up a powerful Sancturia creature.

The shaman needed to die before one of the tribes chose to take action, and Epsilon knew that Talek's father was quite an impressionable man – which had made it easier to manipulate him in the past. It wasn't like she was spreading false rumours, far from it, in fact, but none in Eria should know of the coming darkness. If they tried to intervene, ruin the fragile and careful plots of the Confederacy, then the darkness could end up consuming them all. Humans should just stay out of our way, he thought, despite the irony of the statement as the Confederacy was a representation of all the facets of humanity.

"I think there is someone here," a woman's voice murmured just after the soldiers had been less perceptive than Epsilon had anticipated and failed to notice him, and Talek took that chance to meekly enter plain sight, holding up his hands in surrender when the soldiers raised their weapons and walked menacingly towards the thin youth, holding onto his hunting blade and dropping it on the ground.

"Who are you? Why are you here?" one of them asked, and Talek shakily pointed to the symbol of the oak leaf on his leather sash, pretending that he was too scared to speak.

"Be at ease, men," the largest warrior, clearly the leader because of his tattoos and piercings, walked towards the boy, sheathing his weapon and almost bending down to his height, "So you are from the Oak's Blessing, correct? You are quite far from home."

"I … I got lost," he stuttered, breathing heavily in feigned fear and intently watching the expressions on all of their faces out of the corner of his eye, and trembling, added, "I … I was j-just chasing a deer … a-and … then they weren't there anymore. I didn't … know where they went," he violently brushed a tear from his face, ensuring that he appeared determined not to cry because of the fact that he was supposed to be an adult, but the fact remained that those older than the still-children continued to treat them in that way until they actually looked like adults, despite the greater independence and the expectation to hunt or carry out other adult duties. "I-I want my big brother … or my big sister …"

"Lucky for you that we aren't part of an enemy tribe, otherwise we would have killed you," the man sighed, sharing a glance with the shaman, who nodded, " We were on our way to Oak's Blessing anyway, so you can tag along. What's your name then, lad?"

"Talek Sajai," he answered quietly, sniffling softly, and the man looked shocked, "What, the youngest son of Chieftain Sajai, Scourge of the Panther's Fang?"

That was one of the tribes that had opposed his own in the past, one that Epsilon had faint memories of being a part of at one point, and Talek nodded, making a visible effort to steel himself, "Even better for your father that were are not foes."

"Thank you," he said, softly, infusing a tremendous amount of gratitude back into the word, and then began his attack. Although Talek had been born with quite weak magic, not able to call upon a Sancturia creature (much to the disappointment of the chieftain), Epsilon could still tap into the well of mana locked inside of his mind. The benefit to having it this way meant that the shaman had no warning of the mana channelling, as she couldn't detect the thirteen year old before hand and had assumed rightly that Talek didn't have access to mana.

Rotted tendrils of vegetation burst out of the ground around them, one of them slamming into the face of the warriors' leader and exploding his head in a spray of splintered bone and brain matter, as the others cried out in dismay. Epsilon harnessed both Green and Black mana to infuse the dead plants with decaying energy, and as they swung into the warriors they made the undergrowth curl up around them – although only the weakest plants would die, Epsilon made sure of that, and those that did added to the swaying stalks of rotted matter.

One Zhuraci brute hacked apart a vine of dead plants with his axe and charged at the boy, who hadn't yet moved, as the rest of the warriors battled to protect their lives and the shaman began to cats her own spells.

Epsilon turned towards him, augmenting his originally weak strength with Green mana and dodging the first blow, wrapping his arm around the haft of the axe and bending the head off, using the wooden handle to leap at the man and bury the metal axehead in his chest. He gasped, and tried to bring Talek into a bear hug and crush the thin boy so that the other warriors could kill him and so he would acquit himself favourably in death, but Talek grabbed him, twisted him around and used the dying man to intercept a blow intended for him from another Zhuraci, who snarled as his sword hacked into the man, who shouted in pain as the life left him.

Talek ignored the man, who pulled out his sword and readied for another strike as more tendrils of animated plants wrapped around his limbs and pulled them off one by one in a sickening mixture of screams and a horrible tearing sound. He turned his attention to the shaman, who was just about to finish her ritual, the warriors all around her being torn apart by the vines of necrotic plant matter, holding her hands together as an orb of Green mana began to form.

"I will not let you harm the forest, agent of death," she stated, her voice suffused with a mana-born resonance, and if Epsilon had been so inclined he could have given her a speech about why she was inadvertently doing the darkness's work for it – besides, death in itself was nothing to be feared so long as it led to more life and in turn more death. Life could not exist without death – that why he used Black mana, as the colour in itself wasn't inherently evil, it just represented the cessation of life.

One might think it paradoxical that someone who loved life in all its forms as much as Epsilon did would use Black mana as well as Green, but that was when the person in question was possessed of the belief that the mana of the dark was automatically immoral just because those usually attracted to it were already just that. It was not death that Epsilon wanted to stop, but subjugation and enslavement to the darkness – the Confederacy wanted to prevent the abyss from feeding upon the world for an eternity of suffering.

He sprang at the woman, just as she was about to plunge the orb into the hand, changing his body to be more like a snake's and shooting across the ground with the magic that emulated animals, then flipping into the air and kicking her in the head with his improved strength. Startled, she was flung backwards, just as the last other warrior died a horrible death as the plants suffocated his thrashing body, and crashed into a tree. She shrieked in pain as Epsilon pointed his hand towards her, and a wave of purple death magic drifted towards her, instantly killing any of the plants she tried to conjure up to protect herself, but was dispelled when she bellowed and emitted a pulse of Green mana.

However, centuries of quickening the cycle of death had not taught Epsilon nothing, and he had fought and killed many shamans before so knew how to deal with them – kill them before they can cast their spells. To that end, he scooped up a nearby spear from the ground and launched it at the woman, who summoned a vine to bat it aside. Epsilon infused the spearhead with Black mana, and it corroded the vine and went straight through it, impaling the shaman in the chest. Before she could recover, the boy was already in front of her, his eyes shining with dark green energy, and put his hands on each side of her head, pulsing death magic through her and killing the woman as she thrashed. Once he had done so, he took out the spear, tossing it aside and letting the shaman's corpse fall to the ground. Then, he fished out the seed of the carnivorous plant he had killed earlier, and planted it in the whole in her chest. The woman's body would provide ample sustenance and nutrients for the growing plant.

And the cycle would begin again

.*.*.*.

Day Eleven

.*.*.*.

The battle was fought under the baleful crimson eye of the Welkalite sun that hung high in the morning sky, its intensity much less than that of the midday one Caiellis had already experienced. He wiped sweat from his brow, but otherwise paid no attention to it, staring with undivided focus on the battle playing out below him. Instead of placing himself at the foremost cohort of troops, Cai was stood on rocky outcrop allowing him to orchestrate the troops, his stained glass wings already pre emptively activated so that he could descend upon the part of the battle that needed the most help.

As he expected, the enemy force that they had assaulted wasn't very large and wasn't currently putting up a huge amount of resistance, although of course the Lucaelians were still taking casualties and every time Cai spied an armoured figure lying in the sands and dust of the waste and covered in blood he felt his stomach churn, though at least he had managed to stop himself from thinking that if he had employed a different strategy then they might still have survived – there would be enough time for that later.

Some of the dead he saw he knew by name, though knew nothing more than that, but worse were the nameless that he hadn't had the time to memorise because of the sheer size of his army, although Cai was sure that their faces would stay with him for a long while, maybe even the rest of his life as his photographic and exceptional memory wouldn't let them leave.

The almost city Jeksaan had a relatively large garrison, though it was massively outnumbered by nearly the full strength of his entire army numbering just over ten thousand, though Scientia Mos had the smallest number of soldiers barring Gol Secondus, which in its prime had possessed more. Instead of simply battering his army into the city, which had a selection of defences although it was not nearly as fortified as a Lucaelian metropolis, he had lured out the defending soldiers inside by only having part of his elite vanguard (led by Ciaran) harry the city.

Had he been the enemy general, he would have been content to stay in the city despite not having nearly enough resources for a protracted siege (the course of action Caiellis would have taken if he hadn't been following his father's fast paced strategy), and wait for the Lucaelians to come to him and create as much a delay as possible before fleeing and conserving his forces, but the Welkalite marshal was quite obviously a prominent member of the Order of Violence, a lackey of Arendus Draal that could have killed Cai, and quickly mobilised their army to try and catch Ciaran's cavalry division, using the speed and aggression the Red mana aligned Empire of Welkas was famed for.

This happened after several hours of raiding and hit and run assaults that Cai and his generals had designed to deliberately draw the Welkalites out of their city, and despite his father ordering him to complete the battle as quickly as possible beforehand so that they could meet up with the main forces of the four other metropolises under the command of the king (although Alexander would be arriving with more soldiers from Civitas Sol and Cassida Principia, in spite of Caiellis's protestations that he should stay in bed) as soon as was feasible, Cai much preferred this course of action, and the Welkalites had taken the bait and surged out of Jeksaan.

However, Cai's army had been ready to counter attack – one technique that was exclusive to the mages of Scientia Mos was the Wargate, an advanced and large scale teleportation spell that had allowed Caiellis to deploy the less manoeuvrable cohorts of his army in a flash. Nevertheless, Guardian Weiss and the more powerful mages – a group of aged Ǽthermages who had insisted they join the army that Cai could never have declined because of their usefulness - that wouldn't be of much use on the battlefield due to their age, were exhausted, as the Light-bearer had been forced to Summon in order to use his Empyrial Archangel as a focal point for the gathering of mana.

That had caught the Welkalites completely by surprise, as Caiellis then charged the rest of his army towards the second opposing one exiting the city to come to the aid of the first, splitting them off from each other and letting him fight two simultaneous battles at once, though he had confidence in General Rateis's ability to lead the second force to victory.

The prince was still surrounded by his bodyguard – at first he had objected, as they wouldn't be able to enter and leave the battle at will like him and so should be in the fray, but Drax had informed him that they possessed a spell that would allow them to lock onto his Lucerna birthmark and use that to teleport to aid him. He could tell that Ruthia and Drax itched for battle, while Aymer was more reserved about it and Lancalo was less enthusiastic for violence, despite prosecuting it admirably.

Jenna had taken his offer to stay behind with the logistical supply officers and quartermasters that took command of the army's supplies and were not suited for battle, as although she had performed well in her first (well, Cai assumed it was her first, but he actually didn't know that much about the Yentarian so couldn't be sure), telling him that she wasn't suited for combat (despite satirically reacting in a way that Mysos would if Cai told him that he wasn't fighting at first – though that would come soon enough).

Cai could see Decia of Division One duelling against a geomancer that split the ground with his fists and impaled a nearby Lucaelian standard bearer, one of the women next to the man hoisting the banner up herself as the captain attacked the mage. Her griffin shimmered with a large amount of golden and starry auras, screeching as it tore into a lumbering earth elemental that swung its stony fists through the air.

The archers deployed behind him launched another bombardment of shining golden arrows, the Lucaelian wisps aiding the aim of every soldier that was their Summoner and reaping a swathe of casualties from the lightly armoured Welkalite warriors, a group of whom tore into the flank of a platoon of legionaries, led by a electromancer wielding arcs of crackling lightning that he coruscated through the soldiers, charring them within their armour as the electricity bounced between the metal plates.

A fizzing elemental belonging to the lightning mage hissed as it killed, and Cai had to restrain himself to prevent the emotional part of his mind forcing him to leap to the defence of the soldiers – a group of hierophants trained in the academy and part of the Mage Corps were intervening, suppressing the chaotic Red mana of the Welkalite captain and Summoning several spirits shrouded in peaceful and healing White and Blue mana and saving the lives of some of the legionaries, although Cai was certain that if he had intervened then more would have lived.

And if you had intervened then the fact there is a prince – with access to a First Sisterhood angel – leading the army would become plainly obvious, and the element of surprise that you have now would have been lost, potentially risking many more lives. Stay focussed! He mentally chastised, although it was extremely tempting to just Summon Orzhova now and lead from the front. But Caiellis knew that he wouldn't be able to sustain her for the entirety of the battle, and preferred to keep his assets in reserve until he needed them instead of instantly expending them in some vain attempt to gain an early advantage.

At least his soldiers understood his plan, as he had highlighted it to the captains who would have passed it down the chain of command and into the sergeants of individual squads, and he had no censure to fear, as this was how his father had fought in the civil war (although Marik usually had his command squad at the front of the battle instead of ready to react to threats) and how every Lucerna carried out battles, leaving their extremely mana-intensive angels in the Mind Realm until they were needed.

Caiellis scanned the battle once again, figuring that if the Welkalites didn't reveal any significant dangers soon then he may as well go to where the fighting was thickest. Having analysed many battles in the past, he knew that his army was winning the struggle for victory because of the Wargate ambush and the sheer power of the legion in a pitched battle – the Welkalites were much more suited to insane aggression, overrunning their foes before they had a chance to react and winning battles with an absurd speed, and now that the tables had turned and they were being battered down from all sides things were drastically less favourable than them.

Despite the success he had seen so far (though this battle was a far cry from his flawless first, and on a much grander scale) Cai still wished that his army was simply an extension of his will, or that he led solely Sancturia creatures or even commanded a reanimated host of necromantic soldiers, as then he wouldn't have to worry about casualties and deaths and could orchestrate the battle in a symphony of harmonious strategy with him as the conductor, instead of having to direct living and breathing soldiers with their own lives, families, friends, and hopes and dreams that could lose morale and flee just as easily as exceed expectations.

Then he could use some as bait for ambushes (well, technically he still did but had to make sure it was safe enough for them to not be exterminated and couldn't pull off the more hazardous plans without consigning them to their deaths), or throw them into situations they had no hope of succeeding in to buy time for the rest of his army without having to think about the lives he would be tossing away. That currently is unimportant, he harshly reminded himself, although it was only a tiny part of his mind stuck in debate with itself and the rest was utterly concentrated on the unfolding engagement.

Heavily armoured elephant humanoids known as loxodon fought side by side with their Summoners against a tide of ferociously roaring berserker gladiators pumped full of hallucinogenics and spinning their ignited and fire weapons in a psychotic frenzy as insanity inducing wisps that shone with a scarlet light orbited in a wild dance around them. Nope, Division Three of Cohort Two would be able to handle itself without his help, and Cai idly wondered whether the Order of Violence berserkers would survive the amount of drugs coursing through their bloodstream.

Cai snapped his head to the side as he sensed a large rise in brutal Red mana near where Ciaran and his elite troops were fighting, as a brawny man wearing a few pieces of armour covered in brutal spikes and a chained gladiator's mask raised his hands, the dust of the wasteland around him billowing into the air as the ground began to thrum with a malignant and … hungry? … heat, and glowed a deep crimson. The prince shot into the air, already in the process of conjuring up his emotions concerning holy justice and the desire to protect as golden light swirled around his left side and made the wing on his right begin to shine with an incandescent light as the eye became suffused with White also.

The man who must have been the marshal of the Welkalite force erupted in a pillar of flames that incinerated both allied Welkas and enemy Lucaelian soldiers around him and puzzlingly sputtered out as soon as it did so, like a spontaneous and violent release of rage that died down the second it forced its owner to lash out, but Caiellis could sense a both ravenous and spiteful presence entering reality. Huge amounts of smoke and ash belched from the man's outstretched hands, flickering with the occasional fiery orange ember, though it didn't obstruct Cai's vision as he had activated the Lens of Guilt, darkness pooling in his left eye and around the other side of his body.

He wanted to try something slightly different in this Summoning ritual, something that he had discussed and verified with Orzhova but hadn't yet had chance to practise. From his aerial vantage point, the smallest Lucerna could see a mass of frenetically throbbing red pulsating in the vision granted to him by the Angel of the Black Sun, and heard a malicious and quite insane laugh that made him suddenly feel sorry for the regular Welkalite soldiers forced to fight under this madman that had led them all to their deaths.

Cai almost had to divert his course away from the enemy general when a pall of smoke surrounded him and the youngest prince was forced to cough violently, nearly causing him to fall to the ground when his body was wracked by savage hacking as the cloying smoke entered his lungs. It reminded him of the vampire's curse that his older brother had been afflicted with that had forced Alexander to vomit up his own black and corrupt blood, but nowhere near as serious as that. He felt as force from within him diverting a little of its mana around him, a golden respirator that purified the air and let him breathe again forming around his mouth, and the boy silently nodded his thanks to Orzhova as he continued on his descent.

The ash began to coalesce into a solid form, and Cai heard a sound in between a shriek and a bellowing roar as a creature shot out of the smoke and grabbed one of Ciaran's crusaders and her horse in one soot black hand and stuffed it into its gaping maw, the gleaming white teeth chomping into the woman and her mount in a spray of blood.

It was a huge, misshapen thing, with a gargantuan head that lolled forward from its slumped shoulders and greedy glinting eyes roving between ash-blackened soldiers in search of new prey. It's flopping upper body was connected to a distended belly that made Cai think of the Order of Gluttony, and its now dead Master Ershun, and stalked towards the soldiers on an irregular seven spindly legs that should never have been able to hold its weight. A large but whip-thin tail snaked out of its back, and it swished it around, impaling another soldier that had attempted to flank it and tossing the man into its gaping maw.

The most terrifying thing about it was its sheer size coupled with the fact that it was coloured a dark soot colour (although it periodically burped out flecks of orange flame), but Caiellis was in firm agreement with size not necessarily determining power, and was confident that with Orzhova at his side he could bring it down.

It is like a monster of ash … an Ashen Monstrosity? It doesn't matter. It's going to die irrespective of what it is called. Cai thought, knowing that the beast was one of the stranger denizens of Sancturia that he had seen before – a creature that had similar properties to both elementals, but were not manifestations of elements (though this creature could be an avatar of ash), and souls, although they were neither and were not derived from dead humans. He vaguely recalled some ancient mythology he had read naming them as kami, which was as good a title as any.

The Ashen Monstrosity split the air with a keening wail mixed with a screaming roar and launched a large fireball that trailed an obscene amount of smoke through the already dark air, and Cai dodged out of its path – the beast must have sensed the large mana pool of the descending prince, and correctly identified him as the greatest threat.

He placed his hand on his right cheek and felt the combined powers of light and darkness coursing through his veins, compelling him to slay the abomination in front of him and the familiar sphere of darklight was pulled out of his Lucerna birthmark that was the physical representation of Orzhova's sigil. This time, instead of tossing it into the air and then channelling massive quantities of his mana into it, he still did the latter but held onto the dark star, pouring huge amounts of both White and Black through both his palms whilst keeping it gripped with both small hands, feeling it expanding in his grip.

The beast swung one long clawed arm towards him, but then a golden-wreathed angel streaked past it, her elegant and simple but still hugely potent sword slicing into the limb as Iridis dragged her blade along it, severing the arm in a burst of light just as another exploded from the stump and made to swat the Seraph of the Sword out of the air.

A shield of holy flame surrounded the Daughter of Wrath as she was hit, the angel slamming into the ground in an explosion of dust and sand but remaining unharmed. Caiellis felt his praetorians using the spell they had mentioned earlier and teleporting next to him, though they landed amidst the brutal melee that had erupted around the marshal and his beast that had humans and residents of the other plane tearing into each other left and right. Iridis nodded her thanks to Ethé, as Ruthia waved to Mysos before hacking into a Welkalite Violence berserker with her flaming blade and immolating the man.

The boy locked eyes with his champion, who looked as if he was about to hurl himself at the monster kami still rampaging through the ranks of Ciaran's crusaders, who were leading the beast away from the rest of the army through noble amounts of self-sacrifice, Luncindia the Baneslayer angel performing diving attacks on a chasing fire-cat that was very similar to Kaled's Regata. Mysos nodded his head in a combination of submission and agreement, and turned to fight against a woman conjuring up waves of sparking flame with Iridis at his side.

Caiellis heard the haunting hymnals from the abandoned cathedral in his mind projected across the whole battlefield, instilling the Lucaelians with vigour both because of the inspiring qualities of a First Sisterhood angel's Summoning ritual and the fact that the sad notes reminded them of what could be lost if they faltered in this war, what could happen to the families left at home if they failed to defeat the Welkalite foes. He mentally concentrated on compressing the Black Sun's rapid expansion, focussing the titanic sum of mana he had channelled into a relatively small sphere around the size of his own head, feeling the unstable form of the dark star trembling with as yet unreleased magical power and itching to detonate.

He poured even more mana into it, hearing the eerie choir rise to a crescendo of sound that drowned out even the noise of the battle below, and rays of unlight began to pour out of the Black Sun, annihilating those Welkalites that they touched below and turning their bodies into what at first looked like dust but were actually minuscule particles of crystalline glass, but leaving the Lucaelians that they passed over unharmed and blessed with a healing pulse that repaired any damage they had sustained. Amethyst and white lightning crackled around the boy, mixing with the maelstrom of alternating White and Black mana that coated shadows in gold and luminosity in gloom and becoming a tempest of twilight forces.

A purple glow swept across the entire battlefield from the Black Sun, this light affecting every soldier and not just ones in close proximity like the pulse from earlier, and Cai smiled ascendantly as he saw the strength being sapped from the Welkalite forces and infusing his own warriors with power, before silently hoping that they wouldn't find the application of Black mana to aid them abhorrent, although at least it was predominantly White that was empowering them – and those few that had fought alongside him against Garod Morr's ambush would know how beneficial the blessings were, despite their origin. Additionally, one of Cai's objectives was to improve Orzhova's reputation in the eyes of the people, and the more battles he won with her then the more respect she would receive.

Cai forced the sun to stop expanding any more, the hymnals reaching a pinnacle of sound, and then dove at the Ashen Monstrosity, the soot beast screeching in panic and rage and growing black spines out of its back that ignited and were flung at the prince. However, the concentration of the mana that saturated the air around the youngest Lucerna forced the spikes to stop moving, disintegrating them the moment they came close to the prince. One of a much larger was suffused with a greater amount of Red mana than the rest, and nicked Cai's left cheek, sending a trickle of crimson towards the ground before the Black Sun absorbed life from those enemies below and utilised it to repair its master.

The youngster shot towards the ground with his palms pointing the dark sun to the earth, his descent almost instantaneous because of the potency of his mana enhancing the speed the wings gifted him with, and Cai smashed the shining orb into the ground and released his hold on the mana.

There was an explosion of White and Black mana that forced Caiellis to close his eyes despite viewing the world through his Lenses, shockwaves of alternating malevolent purple, shadowy darkness and blinding gold pulsing through the surrounding area, heralding the entrance of Orzhova, who opened her wings wide and slammed the haft of her scythe into the ground, adding her own twilight world-shaking magic to Caiellis's as she raised the medallion version of the sigil of light and darkness. Equal amounts of each poured out of the emblem, sending more cataclysmic reverberations through the air that swept over the Ashen Monstrosity.

"Well done, Cai! Now we can truly finish this!" his dark angel congratulated, smiling in a fusion of vindication and pride in her Summoner, who felt his power levels rising in the wake of the Angel of the Black Sun. The fact that Orzhova was commending him in the middle of the battle like he was training in the Mind Realm with her (as he had began to do despite her protestations, though they both knew it was helping him) brought a small smile to his lips that was quickly replaced by utter focus.

The creature shrieked and leapt at Caiellis, rings of fire and ash circulating over its arms as it reached towards the boy, but Orzhova shot at the beast first and infused her scythe with blinding golden energy, swiftly tearing into its chest and swooping away as more of the magic on the ground began to bleed into the golden wound. Amethyst lightning fulminated through the ground, draining the life from those foes it blasted through and turning their bodies into fragile sculptures of glass locked in their final moments of life.

Cai cried out in pain when a hammer crashed into his back, cracking his bones and sending him sprawling, tumbling across the ground and painfully scraping his face on it. Orzhova shot out a ray of extracting purple from her scythe and used it to sap the life from the kami, the dark energies running through the blade of her weapon and then converted into warm gold by the sun-shaped heel. If flowed through her and into her left hand, and she directed it at her stricken Summoner, repairing the damage that could have potentially paralysed him although the fact that he was in his ascendant state due to having Summoned was already regenerating the damaged tissue and bone.

Cai sprang to his feet, somersaulting back from an overhead strike that sent dust, sand and sparks flying in all directions, as the brute of a Welkalite general from the Order of Violence grinned maniacally, his gladiator's mask torn off and exposing a tanned and bloody face with insane eyes that was clearly revelling in the brutal engagement despite the fact that his force was being smashed apart by the force of Lucael.

Caiellis grinned back, his smile suffused with arrogance despite himself, before forcing his face to become impassive and serious, as if above favouring his foes with a display of emotion. His thoughts were filled with stratagems for defeating this current foes, referencing what he knew about Red mana with his admittedly lacking knowledge of the Order of Violence and their bloodsport arenas, and comparing it with what he had seen demonstrated today. He focussed on the fight between leaders, silencing the haughty and self-assured thoughts that rose unbidden in his mind due to the power he had currently.

The boy had grown used to being a detached fighter – apart from occasional displays of hatred and sadness in his battles against the forces of the abyss, both during and after the civil war – but whenever he Summoned Orzhova it seemed like unless he was feeling intense detestation of his foe, which was amplified by his Black mana, he suddenly became more conceited and superior, which was strangely escalated by his White mana. However, neither had occurred when he had called upon Orzhova in the presence of his big brother, which was peculiar.

Cai pushed the distraction of that and his uncharacteristically egotistic thoughts to the back of his mind, figuring that it was just another thing to ask Orzhova about (he had also forgotten to inquire about the way his ominous Lucerna birthmark reacted to tears).

In spite of the fact that the mental introspection had taken less than a split second, Cai still harshly admonished himself for it, though it was quite taxing to suppress the thoughts of divinity and hubris that appeared in his mind and he could see why others had fallen to them – the boy reminded himself that if he couldn't control the emotions and see from an utterly objective viewpoint, then he would meet the same fate that had befallen the narcissistic and contemptuous Xarius.

He charged White and Black mana through his hands, having not yet drawn the Sword of Glass, and an orb of shining luminosity – pure light, not coloured by imperious gold – began to form in front of his left palm, just as a counterpart sphere of absolute darkness coalesced below his right.

The boy launched the two orbs – since he metaphorically referred to the Black Sun as a star, he was inclined to think of these as moons, the names of the three smaller celestial bodies orbiting the world that had been observed by the Yentarian astronomers who had written the treaty he had read. But then again everyone in the world apart from those in Lucael had seen the lunar light of the moons, and so the name which was rather alien to Caiellis would be familiar to every non-Lucaelian. Cai longed to live in a place where the days were sunny – though not to the sweltering intensity it was in Welkas – and the nights were full of twinkling stars and the moons, instead of a perpetual, cloying and claustrophobic gloom full of evil intent. He wanted to live in a nation that had nothing to fear from the dark.

The spheres shot towards the man, criss-crossing their paths and forming a helix shape with the contrails of residual alternate energies left in their wake, as if attracted to each other but repulsed in the same moment, like they were orbiting a common centre of gravity. Cai drew his artefact armament, seeing the blade light up in the combined vision of the Lenses of Innocence and Guilt, and immediately began lancing a barrage of incandescent beams at the marshal.

He leapt to the side, continuing his assault from the air, shockwaves of light and darkness still resonating out from his angel although the rays of darklight had ended for now, as an ashen and clawed fist scraped apart the ground on which he had been stood. As if it couldn't see the angel, the kami was still focussing all its attacks on the Lucerna heir. Caiellis's bolts impacted on the marshal's hastily erected shield of flame, splitting through the fire with their intensity reduced and crashing into him, just as the moons of gloaming and radiance surrounded him, circling the man for a second before slamming into him.

The marshal roared and crashed his hammer into the ground, and Cai felt a rush of heat and Red mana as a wall of flame flared up around the Welkalite, expanding outwards at a deadly rate and threatening to immolated the boy if he wasn't careful, although Caiellis was confident he could weather the tempest of fire and survive unscathed due to his life-draining magic. Then, the ground underneath him (that he wasn't actually touching) grew hot and burst open, a pillar of lava erupting into the air and clipping Cai as he frantically tried to dodge, melting his wings to slag and causing him to fall on the ground hard.

Perfect, the boy thought, as the gladiator general immediately charged towards him from one angel and the Ashen Monstrosity hurtled towards his prone form from another, as he was forced to roll out of the way of another eruption of magma and landed on his back. Orzhova didn't even turn her head around as a berserker screaming a fanatical war cry full of spittle and hatred leapt off a rocky outcropping towards the dark angel, an extremely foolhardy move that must have been heavily influenced by the narcotics surging through her veins. She held up her hand and a wave of vertical midnight sliced into the gladiator, the blade of void darkness from Sancturia instantly killing the woman, disintegrating her body a moment afterwards, and then flapped her wings and launched into the air.

Orzhova, Cai reached out with his mind voice, knowing that the dark seraph should hear him, Shall we end this? Is the Culling Sun appropriate?

No. I have something else in mind, her own mental voice, much more potent and loud than his own, responded, and Cai could hear the smile in her words. He could feel more energy pouring out of him, one part of his mind dispassionately informing him that he would almost definitely be exhausted after this battle, but first we need to get rid of the kami, or Ashen Monstrosity as you so eloquently put it. Then we can defeat every other Welkalite at once.

Cai mentally nodded his agreement, reasoning that the creature – and by addition, its Summoner – would be far too disruptive to any protracted ritual they might seek to enact. He sidestepped another burst of molten lava just as the Welkalite rushed him, swinging the hammer in a wide arc that burnt the air as it passed through it, blocking the blow on a shield of protective and ultimately delaying enchantments Cai conjured up, and though they shattered underneath the powerful hammer blow they had served their purpose.

He recreated his stained glass wings and jumped into the air, using the marshal to propel himself further upwards and then instantly turning in mid air, descending at a rapid rate with his sword pointed straight at the main. As expected, the Ashen Monstrosity charged towards him, ignoring Orzhova even more than usual with its Summoner in danger, so the angel flung her scythe at the beast as the twin orbs of light and dark were recalled to Caiellis and were absorbed by his blade, the combination of the large quantities of the opposite forces being fused together releasing a potent blast of energy that Cai channelled through his sword.

He dodged a hammer blow that was meant to stop the prince from targeting the marshal – but this strike wasn't intended for the Welkalite anyway, Caiellis having anticipated this course of action and had already made plans to render it useless. He twisted, and fired the bolt of golden-coated shadow into Orzhova's spinning scythe, which shone with the energy of Summoner and Summoning channelled through it, and hacked into the Ashen Monstrosity's misshapen chest, the blade embedding in the wounds that the dark seraph had already torn open and then pulsing with light and shadow.

Orzhova's gloved hands began to shine with alternate forces, as now that her right was free of holding her ornate weapon she could weave even more potent magic, mirroring Caiellis's actions (though the boy still held onto his crystal relic blade) and pushed her hands together, her young Summoner tightly grasping onto the hilt of the Sword of Glass and using that to amplify his magic. The beast and the gladiator marshal both roared, as a wave of mana pulsated from Orzhova and infused the scythe with power. The kami's soot-blackened skin was becoming lighter, but then turned a midnight black far darker than its original colour, and the turned more translucent. Cai could see his magic coursing through it, as the Monstrosity charged towards him, its flesh slowly vitrifying in a similar manner to the way that Garod Morr had done due to the prince's spells, though instead of cracking and shattering into shards of glass the kami was being turned into a huge sculpture as Orzhova snuffed out its spirit-life, killing it in a way that would prevent it from returning to Sancturia and forcing it to die permanently.

That suddenly frightened Cai, who thought it was perhaps wrong that the Ashen Monstrosity would have its existence erased, as it was just a weapon of the Welkalite general and maybe didn't deserve true death – which was what would happen if it was killed in Sancturia. He then remembered that Orzhova, in her life in the other plane, would probably have eliminated many other denizens of Sancturia, both in the war against demons with her sisters and in her own travels as a renegade, so this wouldn't be of any concern to the angel. He quickly assured himself that he and Orzhova were bringing the beast to justice, as it had ended many lives in the material realm, lives that would never come back, so wasn't worthy of just returning to the other realm like nothing had happened.

The Ashen Monstrosity screeched one last time, smoke and fire billowing out from its mouth and nostrils, raising its arm to crush the upstart human child, before the vitrification completed and it fell silent – it had become frozen in scintillating glass that refracted the light of the battle around it, and it was an extremely evocative sight. Cai felt a gloved hand bleeding mana yank him just as a furious fireball obliterated his former position, and felt himself being dragged into the air.

He looked up, seeing Orzhova's twinkling onyx eyes firmly fixed on something ahead of them, as the dark angel conjured up a circular pattern/sigil of golden luminosity and etched it onto the air, nullifying the bombardment of Red spells – both from the stricken marshal and other Welkalites that saw the opportunity to attack the seemingly most formidable member of the Lucaelian army, maybe recognising him as the prince if Tradax or Arendus had ever briefed the Jeksaan military on the storm of righteous steel that was to come.

The fire, lightning and rocks pattered off the golden shield, and Cai was quickly but still gently dragged round and deposited on a large plinth in the centre of the battlefield, which he recognised as the head of the crystallised Ashen Monstrosity. Cai briefly wondered what would happen if a geomancer or some other wielder of the facet of Red mana that related to the earth caused a tectonic shift and shattered the huge sculpture, but assumed that Orzhova already had contingency plans in place for such an action.

"You wanted to end the battle, and I can sense that you can't sustain me for much longer," Orzhova stated in a way of explanation, and Cai turned to look up at the angel, who was still gently beating her midnight wings and keeping herself aloft beside her Summoner. She smiled down at him, though her eyes were still deadly serious, and Caiellis found himself thinking that before meeting her he had never realised how much like humans angels actually were – he had always just assumed that they were infallible paragons of justice, especially those in the First Sisterhood, of which before passing his trial he had met two.

Despite the emotion and warmth Aurelia showed (which Caiellis was certain was a by product of her Red mana), she was still perfect in every way, which had made it at first hard to stomach that he had received the only disgraced angel in the heavenly Sisterhoods (though it was the fact that she had been the servant of Xarius that had almost driven him to kill himself, an act he would have undertaken without his big brother stopping him), but now he knew that Orzhova was in no way inferior to any of her sisters, and was actually just as powerful – only that power had been misused in Xarius's reign. No, that wasn't true. Cai had always known that she was formidable, but before now he could never have seriously entertained the concept of Orzhova acting on the side of the good (the side of Lucael, at any rate. I'm not sure that our nation is exactly good), in spite of the fact that Xarius had used her to protect the citizenry before his ascension to the holy throne.

"Cai, all I need from you is to supply me with more mana," Orzhova uttered, her honeyed voice coloured with an excited undertone that was also mixed in with a tinge of melancholy and seriousness, echoing her Summoner who hated violence despite being a prince and having to lead the armies of Lucael to victory, "And I'll do the rest. Watch and learn, my young Summoner."

Cai smirked despite himself, as yet more projectiles aimed at the prince bounced off the golden enchantments, and focussed exclusively on the generation of mana to provide Orzhova with more – something that was strangely paradoxical, if one was to think of it, as the dark angel technically had notably more magical potency than him, a human – albeit a Lucerna with Matalis's blood running through his veins – but Cai concluded that because he had Summoned her, Orzhova's power directly correlated with his own. He wondered how mighty Orzhova would be without the limitations he placed on her, however then again that was one of the reasons the First Sisterhood only appeared to those of the Lucerna line – they were powerful enough to actually conjure the beings into existence in the material plane, which meant that in reality there were significantly less constraints on their power levels.

The ground shook with tectonic activity, but Cai forced himself to ignore it and trust in Orzhova completely, knowing that she wouldn't allow him to get hurt if she could prevent it and continuing to infuse her with more of his mana, contrails of light and shadow seeping out of his skin as a tempest of White and Black began to swirl around him, abyssal darkness and consecrated luminosity avoiding and mingling with one another in an eternal dance of opposite forces.

Orzhova raised her palms to the sky, and then traced a symmetrical arc with each arm, words of a language Caiellis couldn't understand etching themselves onto the air, imprinting themselves on the world through smoking gloaming or dazzling phosphorescence. She sliced her straight hands, one glowing with ruthless purple light whilst the other shone with imperious gold, through the exact centre of the circle of sigils she had created, connecting the four most prominent symbols – two of White and two of Black – together, forming a single character in the centre as the words of magic began to spin around it.

"I'm sorry, Caiellis, but I require more mana," the angel suddenly blurted out, which took Cai by surprise, as he was pouring all he had into her, "Your White is more than enough, as it is powered by your need to have justice, to protect Lucael, the citizens of Welkas, and your army, but your Black is insufficient. I hate to ask you to do this, but focus on what you want to achieve, and then combine it with the emotions you experienced the night your mother died."

Cai nodded swiftly, though the confident gesture was inflected with apprehension, as he knew that to increase his output of Black mana to facilitate the evidently immensely potent and magic-hungry spell his angel was casting, he would have to delve far into the horror of that fateful night, more than he had ever willingly done before. It adversely scared him even more that this wouldn't be a nightmare, that he would be perfectly conscious while doing so, though he couldn't explain why it frightened him more than the dream rendition.

What do I want? Cai asked himself, feeling time slow down as he looked deep inside, already sensing the deep sadness inside beginning to break out of its barriers that were still in place despite having called upon it earlier, when he Summoned, I want victory, but I want victory so that those under my command don't die or get hurt.

-Cai gazed up at his mother's face, as the comforting and loving expression quickly changed into one of concern, and she held up her hand-

I want to free Welkas from the tyrannical Orders of Passion, so that the citizenry no longer has to suffer under their despotic reign.

- "Mum, what's wrong?" Alex asked, instinctively grabbing hold of his little brother when he sensed the change in their mother-

I want to win this war so that Lucael is safe.

- "Haldren? Jack? Is there a problem?" the queen asked, standing up off of the nursery floor and moving in front of her children, as the two bodyguards that had been dutifully stood in the doorway were pacing slowly towards them with a menacing stride-

I want to prove to myself, and others, that I am capable of being a prince.

- "Yes, there is," the muscular giant of a man sneered, and added mockingly, "My queen."-

"Excellent!" Orzhova cried exultantly, as the enchantments woven around her right hand spontaneously became as potent as the others, and Cai stopped falling into his memories, forcing himself not to go any further and supplying Orzhova with the Black mana generated from that – he decided that he would reserve the rest for the upcoming siege of Usnaan, which would be one of the final battles in this incredibly short war if the Welkalites didn't change their tactics (they seemed perfectly happy to decide everything then as well), and would undoubtedly be an extremely brutal affair that would leave both armies decimated irrespective of the victor. He could already feel tears cascading freely down his cheeks, the Black Sun releasing coruscating energy in response to his emotions that added even more energy to that he was giving the Angel of the Black Sun.

Orzhova clasped her hands together as if in prayer, the light instantly overwhelming the darkness and making them shine with brilliance, and she drew a line that perfectly bisected the circle of etchings. As her hands approached the centre, where the largest sigil spun, they slowly lost their luminosity, becoming suffused with tenebrosity that increased in intensity the further towards the bottom of the magic circle her hands got.

"With the final addition of Light and Darkness," Orzhova spoke, her words imbued with an otherworldly sonority, and sounding like a hymn or song rather than a proclamation. Cai realised with an abrupt jolt that what the Angel of the Black Sun was singing was not in the language of Magnus-Primae, nor in any other tongue known to mankind, the words lyrical and enigmatic, but the boy could still understand her, still knew what she was saying despite not knowing individual words. She continued in her alien language, shutting her eyes, her voice becoming more steely rather than haunting, "The Circle is complete. Prosperity. Justice. Ambition. Hatred. And now Light and Darkness. All will combine. All will become one, and become expressed in the needs of the Summoner."

Cai watched, open mouthed in awe, as the spinning characters began to be sucked into the middle one, that pulsated with an energy born of twin powers. The symbol was a mixture of jagged lines and magisterial elegance, something possessed of far more excellence of the sum of its parts, and Cai blinked in shock when he registered that he could read what the emblem said in the combined vision of the Lenses of Guilt and Innocence.

"Judgement," he gasped in synchronisation with Orzhova's fateful pronouncement, his whispered voice coupling with the dark seraph's commanding and powerful words, and the symbol made a loud humming noise, like a thousand deep voices murmuring simultaneously – Cai noted that it was to the same tune as the haunting song inside the abandoned cathedral in his Mind Realm, just at a slightly faster tempo and a much lower pitch. The sigil began to shine with darklight as the other words poured into it, and Orzhova wrapped her hands around it. She turned towards Caiellis, and gracefully released it like one would a captive butterfly or Goldenglow Moth. It shot towards the boy, who opened his eyes in shock as the ideogram shot towards him.

It hit him on his right cheek, imprinting itself on the Black Sun that seemed to expand in diameter to accommodate this new glyph, forming onto his cheek as a titanic amount of magic power poured through him. Cai found that he knew exactly what to do, in spite of the fact that he had never seen this ritual before, and wondered if Orzhova was subconsciously providing him with the instructions. Mana swirled around the sigil on his birthmark, and Caiellis looked down on his Lucaelian soldiers still embroiled in battle with their Welkalite nemeses, although many on both sides were gazing up at him.

In the merged visions of both Lenses, showing pure intent mixed with evil will, he could clearly identify who was of Welkas and who was of Lucael. Silver energy passed into his eyes from the sigil of Judgement, and it passed over the expanse of gold and black underneath him, wrapping around those that appeared in the Lens of Guilt like how he would imagine that a Yentarian targeting reticule would highlight the foes detected, and he placed his hand in front of his birthmark. He wanted freedom for the people of Welkas, and that would start with the liberation of Jeksaan.

In order for that to happen, those that kept them oppressed, the members of the Orders of Passion that were presently killing his own troops (including the marshal that he had left on the ground instead of finishing the duel with him – that just showed how little Caiellis cared about, in his opinion, pointless matters like deadly contests of strength and honour), needed to die.

They had been judged unworthy of another chance, and had fallen too far into depravity – Cai swiftly reminded himself that the only reason he was doing this so that less would die in the long run, not because of any perceived notions of justice, virtuosity or morality. He was ending this battle so that more Welkalites could be saved, not because he thought those that he was about to kill deserving of death. He had no right to kill this many people simply because he thought it was the correct course of action, he was only doing this because he needed to save others.

Just like what would happen at the beginning of the Summoning ritual, the spherical Black Sun began to form over the birthmark representation of it, but this time it was stamped with the hieroglyph that depicted Judgement, and he saw Orzhova raising her hands. The boy heard a mass shattering of glass, just as he tossed the darklight orb into the air and began to infuse it with mana. Orzhova's scythe, the golden blade shining with shadow and light, shot through the air towards its wielder, and she caught it, gripping the haft of solid tenebrosity tightly as Cai was assaulted by the sound of titanic amounts of smashing glass, just as millions of tiny shards spread across the battlefield, stabbing into those circled in Caiellis's eyes.

Orzhova pointed her scythe towards the dark star, a twofold beam of gold and gloom shooting out of it and impacting into the Black Sun, which greedily absorbed the energy as it shone with a malignant light and made an eerie choir spring up into the air around it – although this time it was accompanied by the impossibly deep humming tune of the sigil of Judgement.

"Caiellis. Shall we begin the Merciless Eviction?" Orzhova asked, and Cai nodded, despite the ominous name. Normally, the angels didn't name their own techniques, and left that to the awed humans they left in their wake, but besides the spells she had demonstrated under the Emperor of Light's reign much of the Angel of the Black Sun's powers were a mystery to the citizens of Lucael. Caiellis assumed that she had either named them herself or been taught them by someone else, but each of the names had a poetic pleasantry that appealed to Caiellis, rather than something that over-glorified the angel (though really, the First Sisterhood angels deserved all the glory they received in his opinion, just not the worship).

Cai looked down, registering that he was stood on a circular disk of stained glass that Orzhova must have been levitating, as the crystalline sculpture of the Ashen Monstrosity had been used to fuel the projectile onslaught of glass that was just the start of the ritual.

Cai raised his hands towards the malevolently twirling orb of unlight, feeling power singing through him, and sombrely looked down at the battlefield one last time before pouring all he had into the spell.

There was a loud noise, a sound that was a combination of arrogant yet still sinister laughter, a haunting, sad and lonely song, a determined war shout, and a small child crying, and Caiellis felt the world around him shaking as the Black Sun branded with the sigil of Judgement rose to an obscene size, shining its light upon those that had been stabbed by the shards of glass, the remnants of their leader's Summoning, as a spray of perfectly straight spears of blinding light shot out into the masses, coils of shadow wrapping around them.

The Black Sun rumbled, cracking with golden energy, and Caiellis saw the Welkalites beginning to be disintegrated into millions of tiny particles and being pulled through the air towards the Sun. Some tried to flee, augmenting their speed with hasty Red auras and trying to retreat, but those that Cai had identified as guilty could not escape the malevolent gravity of the star of darkness and light and screamed in pain as their forms dissolved into tiny molecules of glass and were greedily assimilated by the terrifying orb. One by one, the silver lines in Caiellis's vision slowly faded away as their targets were killed, and when the last died the Black Sun blinked out of existence in an explosion of amethyst and golden luminescence, the emblem of Judgement on his right cheek vanishing and the birthmark shrinking down to its normal size.

Cai rocked back as a sudden wave of tiredness hit him, but Orzhova's steadying grip prevented him from tumbling off the disc of stained glass he was stood on. He felt vindicated, self-confident but also solemn in the same instance, knowing that while he had won the battle he had exterminated a huge number of lives – admittedly those lives hadn't deserved to exist any longer, but it still didn't erase the regret and remorse he felt.

The Lenses of Guilt and Innocence dwindle in intensity, and then dissipated completely, restoring his original and material sight and returning his eyes to their original mysterious yet expressive green lustre. He narrowed his eyes when he saw that some of his soldiers were swarming around several seemingly random areas, but when Cai caught a glimpse of crimson armour his heart soared slightly. While he hadn't noticed it when he had been casting the spell, some of the Jeksaan warriors had been spared death – they must have been those that were forcefully conscripted into the military and made to fight against the Lucaelian force to delay.

Luckily, his legionaries had interpreted their survival as that the prince had intentionally left them unharmed, and so instead of executing the survivors the Lucaelians were busy simply detaining them – it seemed like there wasn't much resistance, as after seeing the death of the entire army the remaining Welkalites knew that by fighting back they would die. Cai felt a hand grasp onto his upper arm, and Orzhova grinned proudly and enthusiastically down at her exhausted Summoner, descending slowly towards the ground and placing the littlest Lucerna gently down, the circle of crystal they had been stood on peacefully dematerialising.

"As usual, you did really well," Orzhova commented, patting the boy on the head and then giggling at the bemused frown that etched onto his features, "Sorry, sorry. I'll never do that again. I just wanted to see your reaction."

"Ok," Cai responded distractedly, and the angel smiled and departed in a brief flash of purple, another pulse of weariness threatening to overcome him in the wake of the battle-deciding spell.

"That was … amazing," a woman's voice breathed, and Cai got to his feet from where he had been kneeling and turned around, presented by the awed and tired face of Ruthia, who must have already dismissed Ethé. The red head stood in front of him, over a head taller than her prince, which gave him an unparalleled view of her magnificent assets. He gulped nervously, hoping that she didn't notice the fact that his cheeks would be undoubtedly starting to tinge cherry. He hadn't quite seen it before, but Ruthia really was attractive and beautiful, but he quickly pushed the uncharacteristic and inappropriate thoughts that had sprung out of nowhere down. It seems I am related to Alex after all. Weird.

"Hey..." he greeted uncertainly, before cursing himself. In no way was that how a prince should respond; he should have been confident and serious, asking for casualty reports and giving his army commands, but he felt exhausted and his mind had frozen up for some reason.

"I'm impressed. At first I wanted to be seconded to Alex, because … um..." Ruthia started, blushing herself but much more obviously than the five years younger boy, "Anyway, that was really cool. Do those hurt?" she asked, motioning to the bruises on his face that he had entirely forgotten about, and then pointing to his back where he had taken a painful hammer blow.

Now that the battle had ended, and he had stopped generating ridiculous amounts of mana and feeling like some sort of divine being, his bruises were throbbing painfully, but he wasn't about to reveal that to the youngest praetorian and knew he would have been permanently paralysed if Orzhova hadn't been there – the Angel of the Black Sun had healed the most significant damage, but it still hurt, and Cai was certain he would have several purple bruises forming if they hadn't already.

"I know they look bad," he began, stammering nervously as he tried to remove these random thoughts of attraction and kissing that had entered his mind, wishing he had paid more attention when Alex had been trying to advise him on how to deal with girls – despite the fact that it would be completely unfitting for him to be dating an adult, and personally didn't feel attracted to Ruthia's personality, it was just that his subconscious insisted that she was beautiful. "But they don't hurt … and, you know … they aren't permanent. Which is good."

She laughed, the sound rich and melodic, "It's a bruise, Prince Caiellis. I should certainly hope not. I get them all the time when I'm sparring, though the only wounds I suffered in this battle were scratches on my armour," she smirked, and then muttered under her breath, "That Drax is going to kill me for if I don't get them repaired."

Cai was save from further embarrassment by the appearance of Mysos, the rest of his bodyguard and some of the lieutenants (including Ciaran and Decia) and generals, who were congratulating each other.

"Casualty report?" he asked, turning from Ruthia and making his tone turn more professional and clipped, and each of the commanders relayed their Division's losses.

It hit Cai hard, despite the fact that there should have been many more against an enemy force of that size, and that his army was still at pretty much optimum strength. The thirteen year old swallowed, the saliva feeling bitter and burning his throat as it went down. He forced himself to remain calm, but knew that later he would go into the mobile administrative headquarters that was catered to by non-combatants and was situated behind the army and etch the names of all of the fallen into his mind so that he could personally write a message to each of their families informing them of their deaths before the official announcements.

"Who are they?" Ciaran suddenly inquired, pointing to a group of figures wearing black coming out of the almost-city of Jeksaan. Cai nodded slowly, realising quickly the identity of the Welkalites, "Tell your men to stand down. These are those that would have commanded Jeksaan before the war started, or those that have been chosen to represent the citizenry."

He pulled up some mana from the last vestiges, knowing that he needed to rest and meditate and regenerate the stores in his mind, and conjured up his stained glass wings for one final time this day, leaping into the air and flying towards the sombre figures in the distance that were slowly pacing towards the Lucaelian army. Belatedly, he hoped that they weren't there to try and kill more of Lucael, as if he landed in their ranks and declared his identity as one of the potential heirs to the Lucerna throne they might try to kill him, and he didn't have access to enough mana to fight back. He sensed no threat from them, and noticed that the six were all aged men and women, venerable elders that were too old to fight without magic. And then again, his Lucerna Guard would be able to teleport to his side if he was in danger, so there was that.

He descended in front of them, dispelling his wings, trying to appear confident and imperial without seeming haughty, conceited or arrogant, although there was no chance of them thinking that he was the sort of commander that stayed at the back of the army and then claimed glory in victory. Cai wondered if they knew about the Lucerna monarchy, but concluded that they probably did, so knew that he would be a powerful warrior-prince.

"I am Caiellis Noctis Lucerna, prince of Lucael and commander of the legion of Scientia Mos," he announced, his voice solemn but also infused with a solidity of purpose that Cai was aware that he actually lacked – it hadn't stopped him from convincing others though. Although he wouldn't like to admit, especially in front of him, Caiellis was endeavouring to impersonate his father's kingly proclamation voice as much as possible, using cues and mental notes that he had taken from watching dad address his subjects and those from other nations. Despite the truth that he presently disliked his father, he wasn't that blinded by the enmity between them that he was ignorant of Marik's methods working, and knew that because his father said that he was like Caiellis that this would be the best way for him to do it, "I assume that you have come to discuss the terms of the surrender of Jeksaan?"

"So does this mean that Jeksaan will become part of the glorious Kingdom of Light, my lord?" one of the elders, an old woman with a sarcastic and bitter tone, spat, and the others glared at her, "Thrisa! Watch your words!"

"We have no interest in making your city part of our territory," Cai responded evenly, to which the woman who was evidently Thrisa snorted, "What, then, boy? You came here to just kill the army?"

"Please excuse Thrisa," an aged man quickly placated, his voice full of fear, "The past few years have been hard for us all, what with the takeover of Warlord Farcez, and now with the -" he gulped, and Caiellis was sure he was carefully considering his words - "defeat (what had first sprung to mind was "slaughter") of our army, Jeksaan is the weakest it has ever been. We are the original city council of Jeksaan, and we speak for the people. We will not resist you any further, just please spare the city. The civilians are innocent."

"I am aware," Cai replied, "I'm not sure if you know this or not, but me and my brother – Alexander Ensis Lucerna – were abducted by Master Tradax and taken to Usnaan, and we only escaped because of the help of the Ja'an Guard. I am well versed with the corruption that has grown at the heart of Welkas, and that the civilians are being tyrannised by the Orders of Passion. The Lucaelian armies are not fighting a war against Welkas. We are fighting to liberate you from your leaders, who consort with demons."

"Grandma!" there was a cry, and someone ran towards the prince and the elders, who turned around in shock. Caiellis's eyes locked with those of Guardian Weiss, who had evidently entered the battlefield, and smirked when he saw what he had done. The soldiers that had taken the remaining Welkalites as prisoners were in the process of releasing them, and they were running back towards the city and the part of elders.

"Redan! I thought … I thought you had been killed!" Thrisa yelled back, her voice filled with relief, and the man who had spoken turned in shock to the prince, "These are the conscripts forced into the army from the Jeksaan populace, and those that were in the military before the Orders arrived. That means the ones you killed were those from the Order of Violence under Warlord Farcez! How did you know?"

"I can sense guilt," Cai admitted, not telling the entire truth but not lying either, "And knew those to be innocent. In exchange for the return of your prisoners, I want there to be peace between us, and for my army to rest outside of Jeksaan until the march to Usnaan begins. I want you to tear down the structures of the Orders of Passion still left in your city, and create a free and equal governing system. Several other cities will soon be liberated, and so I suggest that you try to get in contact with them and establish the first step on a fresh start for your nation."

"We will, Lord Caiellis. We will," the man nodded soberly, though his eyes were excited, "Do your soldiers need food, or medical equipment?"

"We have our own supplies. But I'm sure it won't hurt," Cai smiled tiredly, wanting nothing more than to just lie down and sleep, but glad that these elders were no longer terrified of him after seeing the Merciless Eviction.

.*.*.*.

Cai sat cross-legged in his personal command tent on his fold-able bed, having retreated to their after the camp was established on the outskirts of Jeksaan, and the city had been opened up to his soldiers. Mysos and Ruthia had wanted to go for a celebratory meal in the markets that were being held in Jeksaan, but Cai had respectfully declined, knowing that if he spent any more time on his feet then he would probably faint.

His army had definitely needed a rest – at first he had been against it, knowing that Marik wanted the two armies to meet up as swiftly as possible, and that he had already delayed because of his prior tactics (that had made him suffer far less casualties than if he had charged his force at the city), but the men deserved and needed recuperation. He figured that his dad would rather have the legion of Scientia Mos at maximum fighting capacity but taking longer to get there, rather than being presented by an exhausted army that would definitely under-perform in the next battles. He had called his father on the mana communicator, but it was Uncle Tristram who had responded, and informed the Guardian on the situation. The man had said that he would tell Marik, and that he agreed with Caiellis's assessment.

He found it slightly ludicrous that his large and comfortable tent that was connected to the main strategium was a large as – no, quite a bit bigger than – one made for a squad of ten soldiers, but had grown to expect that sort of privilege now. After a rest, he was intending to go to the Ordo Medella pavilion to speak to those wounded but not dead, but for now he just wanted rest. He laid down on the comfortable sheets, amused that this tent was more pleasant than some of the places he and his brother had been forced to stay during the civil war despite being a temporary residence.

Caiellis didn't know exactly when he had shut his eyes and gone to sleep, but after a while he felt himself being pulled out of his dreams, a sensation that never got any less surreal despite having undergone it numerous times, but it ended when he opened his eyes and was greeted by the lonely sight of the interior of the abandoned cathedral that shone with purple light. He could hear the distant choir without a mouth, but as usual couldn't focus on it, and turned to Orzhova, who glanced down at him excitedly, as if eager to talk.

"This is strange. I thought you said that I should stop coming here when I'm trying to sleep," he commented, and the angel snorted, so he added, "What?"

"You've been asleep for two hours already," she snickered, "And anyway, I want to talk to you about something. But first, let me tell you a story."

O … k?" he replied, thoroughly taken aback by the odd statement.

"You know of Queen Tidisa, correct?" Orzhova asked, and Caiellis nodded. Few didn't know of the youngest daughter of the First King Matalis, the second monarch that had ascended to the Lucerna throne after her father's death in his duel with the dark mastermind Xero, Tzar of Grafnica, and Cai wondered what the dark seraph had to say about his ancestor. He could recite her history (well, the history that was present in the books at any rate, which could have easily been distorted by the passage of time or left out events that the ancient Lucaelians didn't want others knowing about) off by heart, and mentally brought up a list of her achievements or other significant things in her long reign.

"She was "blessed" by the presence of my puritanical and cold sister Akroma, your father's angel," Orzhova began, "And although she certainly achieved a lot, there was one thing in particular I wanted to talk about. You know about the Yalgauri, yes?"

"The nation of necromancers that used the dead as soldiers, workers and slaves?" Cai replied, shuddering internally at the thought, and Orzhova nodded thoughtfully, "And you think they deserved what happened to them?"

"It is hardly an exclusive fate," Cai countered, thinking of all the other civilisations in the abyss that used Black mana and had been gradually wiped out by the Kingdom of Light and its angelic benefactors. "And yes, I do. They broke one of the laws of reality, and made the dead awaken from the eternal slumber they deserve and fight for them."

"What if I told you that the re-animating magic of the Yalgauri had nothing to do with dragging souls back from beyond the veil, or from the heavens, or whatever you want to call it, and simply infused the corpses with a dominating will that didn't give them consciousness or awareness, and made them more like Uverian constructs than zombified dead," Orzhova challenged, and waited patiently for Cai's return, "Was the annihilation of their nation still justified?"

"They still made use of the dead..." Cai murmured, starting to see that what Orzhova was saying was actually correct, and the angel continued, "Yes, but they didn't consort with demons, and their society was fair and just. They never provoked or in any way threatened Lucael, and actually appealed for an alliance before Tidisa had the emissaries all killed because of the fact they appeared with dead soldiers as bodyguards."

"Why are you telling me this?" Cai questioned, and Orzhova's eyes were tinted with melancholy and wistfulness. She replied softly, "Just food for thought."

"There's nothing I can do about the Yalgauri. And if you want to know whether or not I would have acted in the same way as Tidisa, I can't tell you. Maybe they didn't deserve the destruction of their civilisation, but the usage of the dead is abhorrent in my honest opinion – not that that justifies genocide," Cai voiced, and the angel repeated, "Just food for thought. And that brings us onto the second topic that I wanted to talk about."

"Which is?" Caiellis asked expectantly, after a pregnant silence had descended and Orzhova began to look distracted, letting her angelic gaze wander the interior of the Mind Realm. She snapped back into focus, looking down at her Summoner, and sighed, "Cai. You need to be more confident with your Black mana."

"I do try," Cai protested glumly, already used to this conversation with Orzhova. His White mana usage was nothing less than exemplary, but constantly he failed when trying to harness the magic of darkness to its truest extent. Orzhova smiled, "I know you do. And I'm not trying to insult you about it, as I know full well how difficult it is to use the magic of light and shadows simultaneously, especially for someone as young as you. Additionally, it's not like you aren't powerful. You executed the Merciless Eviction perfectly, so don't think I'm saying this because I'm in any way disappointed in you. You are brilliant with White mana, and using White and Black at the same time is also something you are on the way to mastering, but using Black on its own is something you struggle with – not because you can't do it, but because you are reluctant to. Whether it is deliberate or not, you are inhibiting your own power."

"Wouldn't you be reluctant to use it in my position?" Cai asked sullenly, not liking the topic of this discussion but knowing it would eventually come it. He only felt confident using the magic of the abyss when he had the fortifying and inspiring magic of light reinforcing his will, otherwise he was scared he would lose himself to corruption. At only one point in his life he had utilised Black without White, and that had been the night his mother had died, "I mean, look at what it did to Johnias, what it has done to many civilisations and people. If I start using it without White, I could easily get lost in it."

"I know that you hate it because it was the thing that killed your mother," Orzhova stated calmly, wincing when she saw Cai stiffening and his expression becoming more stony, "But consider this: If Emili had been stabbed to death by a sword, would you hate swords, and refuse to ever use a sword?"

"That's not fair," Cai muttered, "It's not the same thing. Has a sword ever corrupted its wielder before, and turned them against family and friends in the pursuit of more power?"

"Yes. But that's not the point," Orzhova quickly added at Cai's look of confusion, "The Mad Blade of Detheroc is irrelevant. Black mana is just a tool, just like White, just like any other colour of mana. Just like a sword. Simply because it is the tool that those who want power automatically gravitate towards and become trapped within doesn't change the fact that it is a means to an end. I already know that you would never be corrupted by it – and if you did, I would stop supplying you with my aid and extra mana. You aren't evil, Cai, nor are you ambitious or want supreme power. You just want to protect others and yourself, and Black mana is simply another weapon you can use to that end."

"Why then, are the creatures in Sancturia made from mana so much more evil than those made from White?" Cai demanded, "No offence, I didn't mean you. I meant the clear difference between demons and angels."

"Demons are evil, I'll give you that," Orzhova conceded that point, "But they represent Black's arrogance, and lust for power, two things that you don't possess. Furthermore, only a select few humans have ever been born with a demonic Summoning, with the vast majority of cases of them appearing in reality happening after an Infernal Bargain. But although they are less frequent, there are Black beings that aren't evil, just as there exists White creatures that are," she coughed very loudly and deliberately, and Cai was sure he heard "Akroma" somewhere within the hacking.

"Examples?" Cai asked, more because of the fact that he was legitimately intrigued than any desire to disprove Orzhova's point, and the angel smirked.

"Well, there are creatures that are just that, like bats, rats, insects, that have a sentience but aren't evil or good."

"Amazing," Cai muttered, and the angel laughed. The boy added, "But you still haven't told me any Black creatures that fight for good, nor White creatures that are evil."

"I will admit that both are rare," Orzhova confessed, "But in the first category, there is me, obviously, Eidolons, Lampads, some kami and other spirits. And there are plenty of evil White creatures – some archons, spirits and kami. I wouldn't exactly describe some of my sisters as "good" (she coughed very loudly again, and Cai was certain this time he had heard the name of the Angel of Wrath) – sorry, I must have caught something from the battlefield – despite what you humans think of them. On a more serious note, my point still stands. If you want to become stronger, then you need to focus more on Black mana generation. Your arsenal of spells will be expanded, and your White mana will become more powerful in response, as well as any combined spells."

"Maybe," Cai acknowledged her points, but still couldn't quite shake the instinctual feeling that Black mana was evil, and that he should only use in it combination with White.

"Put it this way: It is definitely not wholly your fault for what happened to big brother Alexander, (Cai frowned at her odd choice of words – is she just trying to make me feel more open to the idea of practising with death magic?) but maybe if you had used the magic of the abyss more effectively, then Aksua would have been killed much earlier and Alex wouldn't have been hurt as much," Orzhova offered, knowing that she was treading on a dangerous topic and knew that if Cai blamed himself any more for Alexander's wounding then he wouldn't be able to live with himself, but the persuasion was working – appealing to Cai's desire to protect those he loved would help motivate him to use Black mana.

None of them talked for a while, but Orzhova realised that Cai had accepted her points when he changed the conversation to something else, "Orzhova?"

"Yes, Cai?" she answered encouragingly, eager to know what the youth was going to ask her.

"You mentioned different types of reanimation when we were talking about the Yalgauri earlier, when you said that their form of necromancy didn't involve using the corpse's soul – is there a type that solely revives the soul of the target?"

"Yes, there are. Black and White can be combined to do so," she replied.

"How long does a person have to be dead for before their soul is no longer accessible?" the boy inquired, and what he was really asking then clicked in Orzhova's mind.

"No, Cai. Only souls that haven't yet fully entered the Third Realm, or the afterlife, can be retrieved. Your mother will have left a long time ago," she said, sternly, and Cai's face fell. Any chance of speaking to his mother, particularly now that he was grown up and understood the world much better than when he was four, was a chance he was going to take. The Angel of the Black Sun then added, musing, "There no knowledge about what is on the other side, whether it is different for denizens of Sancturia or this world. I doubt even she knows."

"Who knows?" Cai asked, and Orzhova quietly cursed. She hadn't meant to say that, and obviously her extremely perceptive Summoner would pick up on her slip of the tongue, "No one, Caiellis. Forget I said anything."

"Who doesn't know? Were you talking about the First Angel, Serra? Your mother?" Cai fired the questions one by one, and Orzhova turned him around, "I wasn't talking about anyone. I've said too much. You'd better go now. Reality is calling."

---

New Summonings in this chapter:

Warlord Farcez: Ashen Monstrosity

Electromancer: Lightning Elemental

Geomancer: Earth Servant

Hieromancers: Azorius Herald

Lucaelian Soldiers: Loxodon Partisan

Welkalite Warriors: Blistering Firecat