Phaeren was the most-burned of Grandex's twelve, called the Burned for a reason older than the chronicle. He had been in fire long enough that the patterned air around him had the small unmistakable register of a being who had been in fire too long in some other century and had been made, by the fire, into a different category of presence. He did not move quickly. He did not smile. He did not, on any of his accounts, soften.
The witness on Kolonoth
He was the witness to Grandex's worst hours: the burning of Drexel's fortress on Kolonoth (the only living witness to his master kneeling beside the three); the nine-hour duel with the Infernal General Skulvath at the salt-flat at Tannakeel (where he persuaded Grandex, hours after the strike, that the town's survivors needed Skulvath's body for grief); the night his master burned the predecessor's shield to slag in the forge; and the morning Dremenus walked into the great red court of Kolonoth and Grandex could not, in twenty-four strikes, land one. Phaeren tried to physically hold Grandex back. He failed. He recorded everything.
On Celesterra
Sent to Celesterra in S14 against the chronicle's quiet pattern, he announced himself by burning the eastern downs without a cause Major Raven could trace. He found and destroyed Drexel's second laboratory north of Marrowport in S14c3 (Maelis evacuated the warlock by fifteen minutes). In S16c2 he gave Auren of Embers her one and only training session in the cathedral courtyard — short, brutal, honest about cost. The flame is the rent, Auren. You are the building. He told her what no other angel of any order had been honest enough to say. In S18c2 he argued with Vaelor on the ridge for permission to attack Drexel directly; the argument failed. In S19 he came down from the ridge during the cathedral's defence — when Maelis's grey horse passed him, the third turn of the courtyard was, for half a second, on a different plane. He did not strike Maelis. He turned to the second mortal rank and unwove Maelis's drilling with one breath.
At Auren's altar he stood at the foot, silent, when she said thank you for being honest. He had no answer. His order had not built him one. He returned to Kolonoth in person to deliver the news to Grandex; the news moved his master, at last, to walk to Celesterra.
What he loved and feared
He loved Grandex. He feared Grandex. He had, by the chronicler's reading, been the only angel of Grandex's order who had spent more time afraid of his master than the master himself had been afraid of anything. The fear was not cowardice. It was the long careful instrument of an angel who had served an Archangel of Fire for centuries and had learned that the worst hour of his master was always one decision away.
