InC: If destroying mummy hordes was quite easy, summarising the events that had transpired in the spheres of Heaven would prove to be a difficult, onerous task.
"If what must be said were told to its fullest extent, we shall be standing as we are until the coming of winter. When we are no longer in the Middle Plane upon a mandate, visit me in Heaven, and then we shall have as much time as we need for ourselves. For the present, know the following: upon news of your defeat, I was alarmed, and immediately departed with a team of veteran Swords to recuperate you; we scoured much of the Middle Plane, visiting many of its realms and asking for word, though discovering frustratingly little. After the passage of nine months, the Council deemed the search to be fruitless, and persuaded me to cease it, considering that ultimately, there were duties of far greater importance to dispatch the Swords to than an attempt to find one single Angel, whom to the extent of our knowledge, may already have died. So it was with sorrow and resignation that I set my attention to other things. At the time, the world believed that you had lost your life in that duel with the Fallen Druid, and never before has anything shocked and moved the Middle Plane and Heaven so greatly. Middle Plane inhabitants began to doubt whether we had the strength to continue to act in our capacity as their celestial guides, while Heaven began to question whether intervening in Middle Plane affairs was worth the sacrifices and potential risk to ourselves. Much to my dismay, it was the beginning of a series of events that would culminate in the adoption of an isolationist, indifferent attitude, thus beginning the Dark Age. In fact, the presence that we had established on the Middle Plane during the Second Golden Age has never been seen again. There is not much that merits mention during this period of darkness, except that Heaven also decayed, perhaps imperceptibly to most, but it declined with the Middle Plane. We had become almost decadent, and my occasional mandates scarcely compared with what we had managed to achieve on the Middle Plane during the Second Golden Age and before. As a result of this laxity, by the present, if we cannot intervene in massive force, it is not because we have not the will, but it is because we have not the actual strength. Lucius continued, however, to serve admirably, and restored Heaven some of its former pride and glory, and if we actually even experienced a Last Golden Age, he deserves a substantial amount of the credit. However, unlike the previous two periods of greatness when we held established military presences in every domain of the Earth, though we had recovered some of our power, we acted mostly through the Protectorate of Heaven, the former name for the Kingdom of Light, which served as our terrestrial proxy, and via which we dispensed our will. At that time, the Kingdom was not a completely autonomous state; though we had left responsibility for internal affairs to themselves, an administration of Angels of Heaven controlled their foreign policy and diplomacy. But in the present, we no longer even have a Protectorate; though our will remains binding for the Middle Plane, one can easily see in practice how not inclined the inhabitants are to observe and to respect it. There is not much more of significance which needs to be related urgently, other than the death of Lucius and his replacement, of whom I cannot say as much as I could for his predecessor. Finally, as for myself, as you may have noticed, not much has changed, and I still grieve for Altarael."
Then, upon the right, another luminous figure appeared; it was Falindael, smiling cheerfully as always.
Brightening in complexion again, Catyrael said, "Does your experience prove it to have been a "piece of cake", Falindael?"
"Even more so than that, Catyrael. But there is scarcely any suitable word in language to describe how blatantly easy that was!"
