5 Flamerule, 1372

Dear Master Zorthaster,

Darkness is falling, the shadows spread and cover all the world. I fear for all those who love the light. Lord Shadow's victory today was so overwhelming and dealt such a crushing blow to the the Halruaans, the Bedine and the Lords Alliance that I don't know if they will be able to hold together enough to continue the war against Shadow after the loss of this battle. I'm not sure there is even a war to continue. Our objectives changed suddenly and we now rush to save the Bedine from complete destruction. I fear that there is little we can do for them against all that faces us on this enormous battlefield. And, in the midst of all this, in response to a small, despairing prayer to Mystra, the Mother of all Magic spoke into my mind, filling me for the briefest instant with her glorious power and then leaving me empty, stunned and sobbing on the floor, an impossible task before me. She has asked me to be an instrument of her will, a part of her subtle plan, but I shudder at the implications of her request. She has asked me to sacrifice everything and it terrifies me. Yet I cannot refuse.

As you may have gathered, the battle against Shade enclave is not going well. Sadly, that is an understatement. Over the past couple of rides I have been working feverishly on preparing our fortress for its transference into the Plane of Shadow. We received word that Omen and the Halruaan fleet would arrive to engage the Shades on the 5th of Flamerule. It was a mad dash to get all of my work completed. With Primula's help we made a very fast expedition to the Plane of Shadow to collect the stone necessary for my work. We discovered that Master Wands had already set stone in place on that plane so that we could shift Shadowhold back to the prime. We also, for the first time, saw the spark from the Plane of Shadow. It is a blazing white light hanging in the air. We didn't stay long to see the sights, but rushed back to our prime to complete my project.

Shadowhold can now be transferred back and forth between the Plane of Shadow and our home prime material plane! This is without a doubt, the most impressive magical creation that I have ever completed. I cannot take full credit for the creation however. Kerith has been at my side almost continuously since the beginning of the weaving and has taken the lead in some areas where I had absolutely no idea how to procede. It is as much his creation as mine. What we have been able to do is nothing less than create a magical site that can carry an entire fortress back and forth across a planar boundary. I still have no real clue about why Master Wands thought that this was so critical, but we have accomplished the task he set before us. I believe that he must have thought that being able to move huge numbers of troops into the Plane of Shadow and across the landscape there was important. We know that movement there is much faster than here. This device will not be much use in bringing troops there marching them somewhere and bringing them out in another location on the prime because we have no way of bringing them back unless they return to Shadowhold. We could move an army onto the Plane of Shadow to fight there I suppose. I'm not sure what good that will do since the Shades are here and not there. We don't want to fight them for their territory in Shadow, we are fighting for our homeland. The only military objective I can see there that might have value is the Blinding Tower. It is possible, I suppose, that we will need an army to assault that place if and when that becomes important.

But enough of this speculation. I've been working hard at keeping the military leaders informed of every scrap of knowledge that comes to me. I just hope that they have better luck at developing an effective plan than they have heretofore done. It is clear that Lord Shadow has not been idle in his centuries of exile and there has been nothing weak nor ineffective with regard to his planning.

Omen picked us up several hours before sunrise. We boarded the Realmsmaster almost as soon as it appeared outside the walls of Shadowhold. Moments after that we teleported to the middle of Anauroch, just west of the Scimitar Spires. There was a giant armada already assembled. At least 500 Halruaan flying ships filled the air. There were thousands of Bedine massed on the ground near even more formations of the Lords Alliance. Across the field were several legions of enemy forces, in the fore were hordes of goblinoids and gnoll fighters, behind them were the more disciplined shadovar troops. It appeared that they numbered more than the entire population of the City of Shade, but there they were. That was one of the first clues that something terrible was amiss. Another clue was the absence of any dragon, the kadtanack, and Shade Enclave itself.

This morning's battle was much like our last big fight with the Shades, only at a far larger scale. Things started out well, with the Halruaan mages casting some powerful art that conjured great balls of piercing light in the sky. This light revealed several more shadovar legions and more than a dozen kadtanacks in the vanguard. The fight was on. I only got glimpses of the battle below after owl-winged fighters and troop-filled flying skiffs dove into the Halruaan fleet from out of nowhere. We were engaged by multiple skiffs several times in the next few minutes and most of my attention was devoted to keeping the enemy from boarding the Realmsmaster and killing the crew. For a few brief minutes, we were in the center of the fury, skiffs on all sides, javelins, arrows and spells flying in all directions.

We received word that the Bedine were in disarray with many of their leaders assassinated and vargouile running wild in their midst, creating chaos. I did see that two of the kadtanacks had fallen in the early stages of the battle, their heads blown open from the inside. I'll have to figure out how that was done. The globes of light had fallen out of the sky to strike the ground forces, blowing enormous holes in the shadovar legions below. Thousands must have died in each explosive burst of light and energy.

We had just cleared the area around the Realmsmaster of hostile ships when four figures appeared on our deck. One was Leevoth, the others included an arcanist, a priest of Shar, and one of the spooky shadar hadouk warriors. The arcanist and priest fell to Xan's arrows almost as soon as they stepped out of the shadows from whence they came. Oskar and the cat mauled the shadar hadouk in the next instant.

Leevoth ran to the ship's rail, out of sight of the skiff rapidly retreating from our starboard side. He lifted the visor of his dark helm and we saw that he was crying. "I'm sorry, I didn't know." was all he had the chance to say before the terrible truth of Lord Shadow's secret was revealed. As the sun rose behind the craggy, sharp peaks of the Scimitar Spires, we saw that several of those mountains, despite their appearance in the light, cast ominous shadows. The shadows of the mountains cast on across the desert floor were cut off. Flat-topped shadows. Twelve floating cities coalesced out of thin air from the Plane of Shadow. They were on top of, and all around us. Hundreds of blue dragons launched themselves into the air from the walls of those dark cities and sped into the Halruaan fleet or dove on the ground forces far below.

Lord Shadow and the Princes of Shade had created a dozen more Netherese Enclaves on the Plane of Shadow during their centuries-long absence and now they were all here. Our army was nothing to this overwhelming Netherese force. Netheril had returned and in that instant, conquered the world. Leevoth looked back to us, his pain-filled eyes told us that he had not betrayed us but had, himself been deceived.

I muttered a dispair-filled prayer to Mystra then. I couldn't believe that She had locked away the secrets of the past from us, banned Her followers from weaving art as powerful as that of the ancient Netherese, and then allowed them to return. Why, I asked, was She allowing this to happen? Why let Shar's minions crush Her faithful with such impunity while banning us from wielding similar power? I told her that I hoped that She had a more subtle plan at work than I, a mere mortal, could see and understand.

In that moment, for the briefest instant, Mystra filled my being with blue-white fire. Seven sparks of piercing light rushed into me. It was like staring into the sun. Her mind-voice, blue-white and gloriously bright in my mind cried out the presence of MYSTRA! It was a voice both gentle and thunderous and I seemed to float in a calm, glorious sea of Her power and love, yet my mind was on fire.

I was crying with despair for the loss of my world, the destruction of all I had known at the hands of Lord Shadow and the Netherese. It was a loss made piercingly clear and as sharp as a dagger to my heart in the bright light of Mystra's glory. Then She placed a memory in my mind. There was a pouty, hawk-nosed girl, slender, long-limbed and muscular, clad in tattered leathers with hacked-off dark hair and black-fire eyes in angry conversation with Elminster.

"And you worry about thousands, is that it?" she asked angrily.

He replied almost wearily, "Worry and do something -- lots of things, endlessly -- for them. Grieve for all those I failed and those the passing years have taken from me. Whole realms I loved are now gone." Then he added calmly, "boo hoo."

Then another memory, an old man whom I somehow knew to be Amundreth, Sage of Secomber said, "So it comes down to what it always does when men swagger and dragons fly: red war and much death, and lots of things ruined and cast down broken. Little decided, much lost, many left to weep."

"WILL YOU BE THE INSTRUMENT OF MY WILL?" She asked, and with her thunderous question, my mind filled with a terrible and frightening idea, a small part of her subtle plan. I wanted to run away from Her and Shadow and all things powerful and hide in terror. It was a task impossible to do and yet, She was asking me to do it. She didn't demand my service, didn't enslave my mind to her will and force me to be Her tool. She asked for my help.

"Yes", I said in a mind-voice of my own. A voice that seemed too small and too insignificant to matter.

Again Her glorious presence swelled within me and I felt my entire being burn away in the blue-white fire of her love and gratitude. I was filled to bursting and then, suddenly, She was gone. The seven winking blue-white stars sped away with impossible speed. I was left alone to collapse on the deck of Omen's ship, frightened, lonley, and sobbing; an empty husk of mortal flesh.

Meanwhile, the fury of red war continued around me. Hardly a breath had passed, though it seemed to me half a lifetime had come and gone. Mystra had come into me, filled me with Her glory and then left me to watch the ending of the world. We fly now to do that, and to do what little is in our power to help the Bedine and the people of the Lord's Alliance as the Netherese crush them and revel in the world they now control.

Sincerely,

Cedar

p.s. I realize that I failed to tell you why Leevoth had come onto the Realmsmaster in the heat of the battle. He was there for only a moment and left again quickly through the shadows, but before he left us, he relayed the important bit of information he had risked himself to convey. he told us that long ago, a mage by the name of Peraus Wands had given Lord Shadow a gift, a set of large, ornate mirrors. Leevoth did not know where the mirrors were now, but hoped that they would be useful to us. Then he stepped into the shadows and was gone.