"We don't need to clear out this place now," says Nefreti, "but we are not particularly needed in Almas, either; Razmir has fled."

"Anywhere where the fight's not already won?"

"Vigil," says Nefreti. "But there, there's nothing you or I could do."

The first thing that comes to Vigil is magical silence, immediate and extensive, covering the whole city and the countryside a while past it. There are a few people in the world - none present in the city - who could recognize that the caster figured out how to do the same thing with silence that she could famously do with sleep.

The second thing that comes to Vigil is a series of Disintegrates that topple the walls that Arazni laid, that were specifically supposed to be impossible to Disintegrate.

Lastwall's emergency responders did not actually prepare for this one. They're coordinating with telepathic bonds, which is good because none of the ones still in Vigil would have been able to talk to each other normally - They split up. Some go to hold the keep, some go to guard the seal, some go to evacuate the leadership and the engineering staff. The efforts of the first two groups are almost certainly futile, but they are not the sorts of people who flee when all is lost. (They also pray, all of them, even though that's almost certainly futile too, because Iomedae surely has seen this already -)

She pauses in her work in the halfway reassembled new workshop and turns around and leaves, not speaking to anyone. The security is primarily designed for keeping people out, not keeping them in, but as she reaches four hundred paces from the doors of the Black Dome someone says, "you're not authorized to leave".

"Mm," she says, and then moves faster than should be possible and is outside the doors by the time they've drawn their weapons, and gone by the time they've called for help.

"I'm going to go and watch," says Nefreti, and extends her hand to invite Alfirin to share the Plane Shift. 

Catherine takes it. Better to at least know which of the things bad enough that two archmages won't make a difference it is, before she goes somewhere far away from it.

Nefreti's Plane Shifts land on target. (She isn't sure why other peoples' Plane Shifts don't.) 

They arrive in midair over the silent city, as the walls crumble. The quiet makes it oddly dreamlike.

The caster cannot be seen but judging by the destruction is moving systematically towards the seal, doing the Disintegrates in a Time Stop so they seem, from the outside, to happen four or five at once; when anyone inconveniences them they get a mythic fireball. 

Not the worst possible thing. It could've been Geb, or Mephistopheles.

Iomedae appears in front of the doors of the castle. She's in her engineering workshop clothes. She's carrying a six-shot revolver that is only half-loaded, which she happened to be working on at the time.

She looks in the right place, even though the caster is of course invisible. 

She clears her throat. She is audible, despite the silence. And then -

(Everyone for miles around can see, and hear; if She were to exempt anyone Arazni could choose to be among those exempted. She can still exempt herself, but only by leaving.)

         Like a bird's eye view, or a scry, or a television camera panning, following a woman in glittering armor as she and her escort descend from the sky. She is instantly identifiable - intentionally so, the men ought to be able to recognize her. The shield has an eye of Aroden on it. 

She takes off her helmet as she approaches the antimagic field at the door of the Magnificent Mansion the command is operating out of. It is recognizably the same face as the face of the woman now standing in front of the castle, but older, wiser, more tired. The face doesn't shift in the antimagic field; its caster nods and stands aside. She enters the mansion. "I need the room," she says, and everybody stands to leave except the astral deva sitting at the head of the table, watching half a dozen scries, her eyes flickering over to Iomedae's face to see if it's good news or bad news -

Do you remember?

Arazni does not remember this moment. Remembers the risky raids that Iomedae pushed for, that weren't worth it, pushed and pushed until she got what she wanted. Doesn't remember this one specifically -

Iomedae remembers all of them. Triumph after triumph after triumph after triumph, carefully planned, brilliantly executed, as they grew steadily more sure of themselves, not mistakes, that's the thing, victories that made them overconfident enough to make the mistake but every one checked out in its own right, look, the error was the delirious joy -

     "Do you need a Heal," says Arazni.

"No," says Iomedae, only very slightly giddy with glee. "Why would I need a Heal? Have you been laboring under the impression that just because you are a god and a bit of a specialist with Fireballs you could hit me with a spell."

      Arazni actually cracks a grin in response, at that. "If I'd thought it through, probably not, but in the moment I was sure I was going to roast you alive. Which would've been worth it, to be clear, for that headband."

"All right, what in the world is this headband. It looked perfectly normal to me."

       "I think it's stronger than a greater headband," Mathriel says. "I've never seen anything like it before."

"All right, all right, I suppose it's worth roasting me alive for that. If you could, which you can't. - we have a decapitated army out there to go clean up. You'll have to tell me the rest of what we got later."

       "Need any help with it?" says Arazni. 

"Wait and see if Tar-Baphon shows, but I doubt he will, it wouldn't salvage this."

      "Are we chasing them all the way to Vaishali Pass," says Cassidi.

"If we do that, Tar-Baphon probably will show. ..which is to say, yes, absolutely, but let's time that fight for dawn, when Arazni's fresh -"

      "And when I've had time to confirm that the excessively good headband's safe to wear," says Arazni. 

"I will try not to rout the enemy too fast."

"Wish me back," she says, in response to their Sending, and then she looks out on the assembled army on the plains of Abaddon and knows that she is going to die, and does the obvious thing to do in that situation, which is to commune with her god. 

It's not that she has questions for him. It's that the asking can pause time.

"Do you see a way?" she asks Aroden, and flickers through a thousand futures - it's not that she dies in all of them, it's that she dies in most of them, and here Urgathoa has more power to steer which one they find themselves in than she does, or even than He does. 

"No," he says.

She gets up to twenty questions. She's going to keep looking. "Do you see a way?" she asks Aroden again, and she can feel him concentrate more of his attention there, flick through futures himself, try to accumulate in this one place enough brilliance that if there is a brilliant solution they will see it - "No," he says. 

"Do you see a way?" she asks him a third time, and now it is as if he is standing before her, as he looked when they were both of them mortal, handsome and clever and healthy and already haunted, and they can see a hundred thousand futures, it's just a matter of whether they can see any Urgathoa did not already see - "No," he says, and he's a god but that doesn't mean that his voice isn't shaking.

They hold each other, or do something that's more like that than it's like anything else. "Do you see a way?" she asks him, a fourth time.

"No."

Iomedae has been Disjoined; she has to scream, aloud, at the nearest person to tell Mathriel to cast the Wish, and it transpires Mathriel has also been disjoined. Alfirin has a scroll in her demiplane; she Plane Shifts out to get it. Mathriel gets the order by Sending from a person he's never met; he is comprehensibly suspicious. He asks Iomedae for confirmation. "DO IT," she screams at him. 

It doesn't work.

Alfirin's back. "DO IT," she screams at her, too, though well aware that 'it's too late' is the likeliest explanation and that if so they'll need the Wish -

- no, says Aroden.

"- stop," she says to Alfirin.

And it's not a birds-eye view anymore, they aren't watching the Shining Crusade, they're just there, living it, the grief and horror is their grief and horror, beyond expression, beyond comprehension, and the only steadying thing in the world is the words Iomedae says without knowing if they're true. "We're going to need the diamond to get her back," she says, and the possibility steadies the world, for just a second, enough that they can organize the retreat. 

A million futures planned together, crumbling like dust in the wind. All the conversations that she and Iomedae had been saving for after the war, all the indulgences there just wasn't any budget for. She tries to swat that away, and look for things that'd change the next five moments. "Do you see a way?"

No.

Iomedae is resplendent, handing out Heroism to a chubby-cheeked toddler. 

       "Still a no on trying Geb or Nidal, though?" says Marit. It was the one thing Iomedae had said she might stay a few years for. 

"Still a no. We'll build civilization and get stronger and eventually possess the strength, or else we'll wait eight hundred years. I'm sorry. I'd hoped to achieve more here too, first." She says it, but she doesn't, visibly, feel it; it is a sorry of courtesy, not of felt regret. "There are places where triumph is more easily purchased." 

             It is the first time all evening he's felt like he knows this woman, understands her even when there's something she's not saying.  Because in that, there is something she's not saying. He swallows. "You came back to see whether you could -"

"I can't. Aroden says I can't, I can see that I can't. But I came back to try, yes. One last human indulgence. Will you go with me?"

He will, of course. Arazni's body is kept in the highly-secure area under Castle Overwatch that they built shortly after her death. There is a very beautiful tomb, with words carved in the side. He doesn't remember who chose the words. 

Iomedae pulls the six hundred pound solid stone top off the casket without the slightest difficulty. She casts Miracle, without a diamond, ten times in a row, to no effect at all.

And then she kneels, and bursts into tears, and sobs.

"Do you see a way?" she says.

        "- yes, actually, but -"

She looks where He's pointing. "- holy fuck, that's not worth it."

         "Absolutely not."

"If it happens anyway you had better fix it."

         This isn't how Communes work. They're pushing the rules. But He finds that while He can leave her to die He cannot actually bear to leave her to die alone. "Whatever happens, I'll fix it," He says. "I promised -"

Iomedae brushes the Silence aside like it's the second-circle cleric spell. "I can break Geb's hold," She says. "Only if you want me to, and I don't, in fact, know - you don't want me to look -"

"You'd do nothing else?"

"Nothing else. We'll still, in fact, be enemies. But you will be free."