"Will you elaborate at all if I ask questions about what you just said, or is it a lost cause?"

Nefreti considers this. "You consider all of my elaborations a waste of your time."

"Alright. If I could count on teleportation circles for supply I'd want to hit the Archduke of Menador's army at Kantaria first, but since we can't… Corentyn, I guess. Four miles north."

"No, no, Kantaria's better," says Nefreti.

"I don't see how I can secure another supply line starting from Kantaria in the amount of time you've given me."

Nefreti closes her eyes and makes a pained face. "If ...when you need resupply for the third time ...you don't have anyone and all is not lost, I'll do your resupply, and also personally defeat Rovagug in a knife fight."

"...I find that implausible," on many levels, "But if you promise that advice comes from you being prophetic and not just a whim, I'll do Kantaria."

"The advice is because you are more likely to get what you want if you do Kantaria," Nefreti says. "That's how advice works."

"Okay. Six miles north of Kantaria, on the west side of the river. Can you do that end, if Morgethai gets the end near the army?"

"Yes."

Cansellarion returns to his troops and they spend the rest of the day retreating from the wall of Hellfire. He makes for the passes into Andoran; maybe Cheliax will imagine that, thwarted, he's taking the long way around and letting them consolidate their forces in the east.

Lilia doesn't particularly imagine this is the case. If Andoran too had been training its people on guns over the winter, and was ready to bet everything on this, they'd have joined the initial invasion; since they didn't, they're training their people now and/or waiting for a definitive sign the war has broken in their favor before they swoop in. She tells Abrogail that her bet is it's a ruse, and he's planning on a Miracle or a Teleportation Circle overnight. 

Abrogail smiles grimly in a way that suggests, to Lilia, that she would love to see the Glorious Reclamation try to match her for miracles. 

"We can ring all of Cheliax in Hellfire if we need to."

"But it is a greater service to Asmodeus to crush them without that. …I'd bet on the Teleportation Circle, anyway. You observed that the likeliest explanation of the last year's events is that they have an allied archmage who isn't Morgethai." 

"Yes," says Abrogail. "They do a Teleportation Circle. A few, even. Let them really commit themselves. And then we destroy Morgethai whatever it takes, and the army's stranded."

 "Yes, your Majesty." Lilia is genuinely unsure if Abrogail's confidence this can be achieved is because negotiations with Razmir went well or because negotiations with Arazni went well or because Abrogail is a blithering idiot. She's being kept out of the loop, on all of those. Abrogail isn't a trusting person, and Lilia has a lot of credibility to spend but Myrabelle has, on net, been distinctly spending it these last few months. There is no question in Lilia's mind that Myrabelle will, ultimately, gamble with Lilia until she loses, and that they're coming close now to losing. 

When dawn reaches Isger and slightly before it reaches Menador Nefreti does her end of a Teleportation Circle, six miles north of Kantaria, on the west side of the river.  The battle would go a little better if she did seven miles but explaining things like this to Cansellarion is exhausting.

Cansellarion's army marches through and to the south.

Menador's army is camped outside the city, not yet fully mustered to march east and join up with the main concentration of Chelish troops. A boat traveling downriver caught sight of the invaders, and Menador's men had enough warning to form squares and prepare for battle, if not quite enough warning to think to do something else.

Once observers have confirmed that, yes, Cansellarion seems to have teleported his entire army into central Mendaor, and yes, he's fighting Chelish armies on Chelish soil, and yes, he seems to be winning - once those things are established, the leadership of Rahadoum is convinced enough that this is the best opportunity they will get and the fighting around the southern end of the Arch of Aroden starts in earnest.

"This is Freedom Radio, and a lot of new developments here for you since yesterday's broadcast. The first and most important is that, three days ago at dawn, the Glorious Reclamation teleported their whole army to outside Kantaria, where they engaged and very easily defeated the army of the archduke of Menador. 

Now, you're probably thinking 'it's possible to Teleport whole armies? I didn't even know that could be done!' because that's what I was thinking when I first heard the news. Normal wizards can only take a few people with them in a Teleport. My experts on magic tell me that Teleportation Circle takes a bit of ground and magically links it to another bit of ground, and then for the next several hours, anyone stepping on the one bit of ground arrives on the other. You can use it to move tens of thousands of people, and wagons, and horses, and so on – and that appears to be precisely what the Glorious Reclamation did. 

Now, this is a tremendously useful spell, right? Why doesn't everyone do it? It is also one of the hardest-to-cast spells known to all of magic. That's because it requires two archmages capable of casting ninth circle spells, acting in perfect synchronization across the distance to cast the spell together. And it's not often that Avistan has two archmages who want to work together. For a cause like breaking Asmodeus's grip on Cheliax, though, we managed to see it done. This leaves House Thrune's last move, trying to curtain the country in hellfire, looking more than slightly stupid. First off, it's a stark reminder that that is their vision for Cheliax: a country too weak to defend itself against the rest of the world, blockaded by a wall of hellfire that keeps its own people in and civilization out, like Nidal.

And second off, hey, we just went around it. Abby, I really think you should see if you can get your infernal masters to use one of the diamonds on your wisdom. You can try convincing them that you'd use their resources less stupidly if you were wiser, maybe then they'll let you do it. 

But that's not all of the big news I have for you since yesterday's broadcast. Listeners in Rahadoum have been telling me that Rahadoum has now struck out to retake its northernmost territories from Cheliax. Under ordinary circumstances, Cheliax would probably be able to beat back the Rahadoumi - but right now, they can't afford to send any help south, and I'm not even sure they can afford for the navy and the forces stationed around Corentyn to be tied up dealing with this. Cheliax cries out for freedom from every corner, and now we can each hear all of the others, and know that we aren't alone, and know that soon we will all be free together."

Razmir was initially reluctant to help. He likes the radio. Thassilon had mass communications. 

They don't know what exactly Asmodeus offered him, but he's on board now. 

Abrogail's initial proposal is just that they try the Wishnapping again, at an unpredictable hour, with repeated tries if necessary. Morgethai is the most important target, and they probably won't get her, and they probably won't get Cansellarion either, but if they get enough other essential people Morgethai may attempt an ill-advised rescue, or at least burn diamonds in the back-and-forth. Abrogail can win a confrontation that comes down to who has more diamonds.

"Might work, might be worth trying," says Lilia. "Alternatively, can we get him to pick a fight with Lastwall? We know they're behind this, and they may not know we know that, and you weren't wrong to propose that it'd solve some of our problems if we burn them to the ground. And he's nearer to them than we are, and can't really imagine that if they're getting bold they won't go after him eventually."

"Maybe," says Abrogail. "Though not at the same time as something else we have planned."

She doesn't elaborate. Lilia doesn't ask. "I think," Lilia says instead, "the best way to avoid having a war on three fronts in another two weeks is to destroy Azir and Vellumis and Vigil, if one can, and Razmir has presumably thought about how to do it." He has burned cities to the ground with less provocation, really, though burning Vigil wouldn't really work.