I had barely gotten in to work the next morning and sat down at my desk when I discovered that I wasn't alone in my discovery of the alternative perspective on Gareth's alleged actions. Kayla sidled up to me, asking, "hey Brad, guess what I discovered last night?"

"...a treasure map pointing to the Harp of Inspiration?"

She sighed and rolled her eyes. "Some guy over in Saint Kriaþ wrote on MySaga that he got jumped by a bunch of gang members who tried to mug him, and then out of nowhere Sir Zephyr was there, fighting the attackers off and saving him."

"Yeah, I think I heard about that," I said noncommittally, not wanting to get drawn into a political discussion with her.

"Do you realize what this means?" she asked, totally not picking up on my "don't wanna talk about this" attitude.

"Assuming it's real? That he's doing something different. He's never gone after street crime before, that we know of."

"No, no, not that. I mean the implications."

"What are the implications of him going after street crime?"

Kayla sighed. "It's not about what he did; it's the response. If the Archduke wants him arrested for fighting off a bunch of orcish muggers, doesn't that sound like he's aligning himself with the OSH?"

"It's a bit of a leap to go from 'he doesn't want vigilante justice being meted out on the streets' to 'he's in bed with the Separatists.' You know that, right?"

She shook her head. "There's more. Apparently there was a witness who's saying that after the victim ran off, but before Zephyr left, he healed the gang members he had just fought."

"OK, hadn't heard that part."

"No deaths, no wounds, no lingering injury of any type. None of them went to the hospital or even a clinic. If that's vigilante justice, it's about the mildest version ever seen in the history of ever. So literally the only thing he did that anyone would consider worth objecting to is preventing the criminals from successfully committing their crime."

"That and beating kith up," I pointed out. "That still hurts even if it gets healed afterwards."

She waved my objection away. "Not the point. Who is it that's spent the last few years asserting that the Empire has no valid legal jurisdiction over Orcs and no right to call their actions crimes? The Orcish freaking Separatist Horde. And now Archduke Stone is showing himself to be more concerned with someone stopping a crime in progress, committed by orcs, than about the fact that there was a freaking crime being committed in the first place. Doesn't that sound like OSH rhetoric to you?"

I shrugged. "Could be. Honestly I'm more worried about the implications of excusing lawbreaking than about the details of who benefits from it."

"So you are worried about this."

"Not sure yet. I was talking with Felicity last night, and this has her worried at least. She says this is just like what she used to see in Lutreron, where the local rulers would openly favor one group and selectively not enforce the laws against them, and how that's probably the biggest driver of all the endless strife over there."

"And now she feels like it's followed her home?"

"Pretty much. I don't know how much I buy into all that, but the picture she paints isn't a society I'd want to live in."

"Can't argue with that. I may not agree with that girl's outlook, but you can't help but admire someone willing to voluntarily put themselves through a mess like that and stick with it for three years!"

"'That girl?' You know, for a self-proclaimed bard you can be remarkably tactless at times."

She just laughed it off. "Brad, I got all the tact in the Prime Material when it matters. But with friends I'm open and honest. You know that."

"Yeah."

"I figure I like her about as well as you do. She's a decent one and good to have on your side. But, I know you see this too, there's something strange about her. What she did, it's worthy of respect but it's also kind of unnerving. Who ever heard of someone in their twenties being fifth level?"

"Yeah, it's kind of tricky to reconcile the sweet girl in the normal clothes with the overpowered holy warrior in the suit of armor. Because when she's not in paladin mode, she really does seem very... you know? Normal. Which I guess kind of makes sense. You don't go around being a bard most of the time. Chris isn't some sneaky thief when he's here at work."

"Apogee ends up using his summoning abilities whenever something goes wrong in the lab," Kayla countered. "And you studied elemental manipulation and enchanting, which is what you're doing here."

"What I'm doing here is mostly planning and analyzing enchantments. Not blowing things up or freezing them or whatever. The stuff we do in the dungeon, those are just roles we play, stuff we do for fun or for training. There's that, and there's the rest of our lives, even for Felicity; she's got a job at an accountant's office now. That's got nothing to do with being a paladin. So why should..." I trailed off as a thought struck me.

"Why should what?"

"I think I just realized something."

"About Felicity?"

"About Zephyr."

"Something you can't talk about?"

"I... don't know."

She nodded. "Bet I can guess. Whatever his deal is, that's his deal? He doesn't have a day job like we do? No career, no one he's dating, no family, no..." she waved her hand vaguely, "bonds, to keep him grounded?"

"More or less. How do you do that?"

She cocked her head to the side slightly and grinned. "Because I'm a bard," she said. "'Reading the room,' understanding what's going through the heads of the people I'm interacting with, that's not just something I do in the dungeon. It's a part of who I am and an important life skill. And it's not just me; I've heard you talking with Apogee and Kelamek, your whole theory about how being an enchanter influences your perceptions and the way you see the world. Even Felicity. I talked with her a while back, and it's not just any old bean-counters she's working for; the firm specializes in forensic accounting. She may not be out bashing heads but she's still pursuing justice and defending the innocent."

"So you don't think someone can truly have a range of distinct interests that aren't related to each other?"

"Well, yes and no. More like, different interests are different parts of who you are, but they're all parts of the same you. It would be kind of weird if they were completely unconnected, wouldn't it?"

"Could be. I never really thought about it that way, to be honest." Things turned to work after that point, but the conversation had given me an idea.

It was a really bad idea. But if I didn't want Meranas to do things that would either get him killed or end up tearing my home apart with civil strife, I would have to find him, and find some way to integrate him into a community of modern life.

I really did not want to do this, but it had occurred to me that I might be the only one who could. I'd never really thought about it, but I realized that I just might be the only kith with the necessary information to track him down.

* * *

It took a few days to get everything set up. Saturday afternoon, once our dungeon delve was done, found me and Felicity driving down a lonely road heading out of town, out into the forested lands that the Empire, for all its strength and high population, had never managed to truly tame. The roads themselves had enchantments that were pretty effective at repelling monsters and wild magic, but the warnings against doing what we were about to do were there for a reason.

Thankfully I had an overpowered holy warrior in the passenger seat, with her suit of armor sitting in the back.

"OK, looks like this is about as close as we're gonna get," I said as I pulled off the road. We got out of the car and Felicity began to don her armor. "Hard to believe he'd be way out here."

"Not really," she said. "Look how many times we see tales in the Codices of the faithful fleeing into the wilderness where they could follow the Path in peace. If he truly has some close connection to Meþas, this would be a perfectly natural place to establish a base of operations, even if he doesn't consciously understand why. Sometimes the dangers of wild beasts are simply easier to deal with than the dangers of hostile kith."

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Once she had her armor on, I glanced down at my phone to double-check, locked up my car, and pointed. "Off this way." We started making our way in past the tree line, her with a surprising degree of confidence, me looking about warily at every rustle or snap.

We'd barely gotten a quarter-mile in when a painfully loud screech echoed through the trees. I looked up and saw a horror charging at us, a shaggy four-legged monster with the body of a brown bear and the beaked face of an owl. I'd been through enough dungeon runs now that I didn't panic or freeze up; I raised a hand and started conjuring a bolt of ice. Felicity, surprisingly, didn't charge to meet it; she set her feet in a combat stance and yelled back at it, a wordless scream of challenge, banging her mace loudly on her shield. Then, quietly, "only one bolt, Brad."

As the owlbear charged, I loosed the ice bolt, which stabbed several inches into the monster's thick hide but didn't seem to do too much damage. It kept coming, and when it was maybe ten yards away, Felicity sprang forward, sidestepping slightly at the last instant and shield-bashing it from an angle, somehow sending the creature sprawling despite it being three times her size.

She yelled again and banged her shield twice, and this time when it picked itself up, it turned and ran off, leaving us in peace.

"You didn't want to fight it?" I asked her.

"We're not in a dungeon. That thing isn't a mana-born simulacrum; it's a fully real flesh-and-blood being like you and me. I'd prefer not to have to kill it if I can simply scare it off instead."

"Fair point."

I got my phone out again and glanced at it. "All right, this way." As we started walking, though, so did our target. "Huh. Looks like he's moving. Right toward us, actually. He must have heard you there."

Felicity took a deep breath. "I'm... not sure I'm ready for this."

I boggled at her. "You? Nervous?"

"What if I learn something about my god that I'm not prepared for?"

"Well... the Felicity I know would say something about keeping in mind what you know is true and letting your faith guide you through the rest of it. But you already know all that, so... here's the Brad answer: Investigate, find out the truth, accept it even if it sucks, and decide what you're going to do about it."

A soft, nervous laugh echoed from inside her helmet. "That's actually surprisingly comforting." And we kept walking towards the confrontation.

"He's coming closer," I said. Looking around, I didn't notice anybody, so I sighed and called out, "drop the spell, Gareth. We know you're here among us. You remember me, right?"

Suddenly I noticed him standing about ten feet away, his banded mail looking a bit less battered now than the last time we'd talked, longspear held warily in both hands. He took a step back, looking over at me, then drove his spear into the earth, point down. Felicity reciprocated the peaceful gesture by removing her helmet.

"Webb," Meranas said. Looking from me to Felicity, he said, "And I remember you. You were with his adventuring party, yes? How did you find me?"

I approached him slowly. "The GSP on your phone."

"The what?"

"Remember when I bought you the phone, and showed you how to use its mapping spell to find your way around?"

"Yes. It's been invaluable to me."

"Well, to give you a map of where you are, it needs two things: a map, and knowledge of where you are at any given moment. The map's easy. Determining your position, that's done by ætheric pulses that triangulate against a worldwide network of geomantic stelae, so they call it Geomantic Stelae Positioning."

He nodded. "Go on..."

"All I had to do was tell the phone merchant that I had lost the phone I had bought from them. They had a record of the purchase, and of the phone's signature, and I was able to get a schema from them to read your GSP signal and lock in on it."

He looked concerned. "And anybody can simply do this? The archduke who calls for my head?"

I shook my head. "I could because the merchant had no reason to believe I'm not its owner. In theory, yes, the archduke could. Not anybody, but the law can. In practice... there are hundreds of millions of phones out there, and unless you've been calling kith with it, I'm the only one who knows that this one is yours."

"If you could do this all along, why now?"

Felicity's helmet turned in my direction. "Yeah, why wait?"

I gave them my best sheepish, awkward smile. "In all honesty, I didn't think of it until just now. And, well, I haven't been looking for you. You went your own way, and that was it."

"And now it is not?" he asked.

"Now you're fighting kith. You hadn't done that before, and it's dangerous. You already said you're aware that you're being hunted because of it."

"What would you have had me do? Leave that young man to be robbed?"

"Plenty of crimes happen every day, and you've let them happen. Why not this one, Gareth? What changed?"

"Nothing has changed," he said. "That, indeed, is the great secret."

"What do you mean?"

"For all the changes in the society around me, the basic natures of kith remain remarkably consistent. With the phone you gave me, I have been researching, learning of the Empire and its ways. I have gone here and there, helping those in need as I encountered them, ensuring that I would be seen and known. It did not take long before I reached the point where they invented a name for me."

"You could have just given them yours," I pointed out.

"Yes, but I wished to be known for my deeds, not for my name."

"All of this was deliberate," Felicity practically whispered as it dawned on her.

Meranas nodded. "It was. You, I do not know. Might I have your name, Lady Knight?"

"Felicity Ellis. I'm a paladin of Meþas, who many people consider you to be, and you have done nothing to dissuade them from this belief. And now you are stirring up contention in the presumed name of the Builder," she accused.

"The contention was already there," he said. "Or do you not agree with your companion's words, that plenty of crimes happen every day?" When she didn't object, he nodded and simply said, "all that I did was expose them to scrutiny."

"Brad said that you wanted to raise an army, to fight against Evil and reshape our society," Felicity replied. Gareth just nodded wordlessly. "But nothing that you've been doing looks anything like your stated goal. You haven't been recruiting. You haven't been calling for a revolution or preaching social change or anything like that. How does this get you to your goal?"

"Did Brad tell you the other thing I told him, about how Good operates?"

Felicity looked at me and my mind chose that moment to completely draw a blank. "Uhhh, you said a lot of things," I said. "Mostly about how our ideas of Good and Evil have been corrupted since the Fifth Age."

Gareth sighed softly. "I said that direct action in pursuit of such a change is the way of Evil, that it is and always has been doomed to failure, and that the true way is to influence the hearts of kith."

Felicity and I shared a look as the audacity of Meranas's plan became clear. "You did something that would directly pit the values of the Good citizens against those of the Evil ones," she said. "You studied our society and looked for a thing that was sure to provoke a response from the government... why?"

"I think I know," I said. "You told me that we live in a society subjugated by Evil? You want to force Good kith to acknowledge this. To spontaneously demand change without you preaching of a need for it."

Gareth smiled. "You do understand. Lecture them, tell them their society is corrupt, and they will resist, as you did. But lead them to see a contradiction with their eyes wide open, and they will believe it was their idea, and it truly will be theirs even if it was mine first."

I wasn't sure what to say to that. The plan sounded like something you'd hear from a ranting movie villain monologuing about their nefarious scheme, but there was no ranting going on here. He didn't seem deranged or maniacal at all; he was simply explaining in a calm, matter-of-fact tone how to split a harmonious society down the middle.

After a few moments of stunned silence, Felicity asked a different question. "Brad tells me that you come from a... timeline, if you will, that does not match ours. You don't know our history, nor our gods. But he also tells me that you blessed him in Meþas' name."

Gareth frowned, looking over at me. "I did what?"

"At the hotel," I said. "You looked at me and your voice changed, like a Guidance. You invoked the Builder, by name, and blessed me, and somehow that caused my level to increase. Then you went back to normal and said that you had felt dizzy for a moment, before leaving."

His frown deepened into a scowl. "Are you certain?"

"It was a pretty memorable experience!"

"Swear to me, by your god and by your panþeon, that you are not deceiving me?"

"By Meþas and by the Twenty, I so swear. You may not know or understand our god, but you undeniably have some connection to him."

He looked unsettled, but after a moment he nodded, looking to Felicity. "And what do you desire, in telling me this?"

"Only that you consider a different way. Instead of hiding here, live among us. Learn what life is like in the Sixth Age, see its advantages as well as the downsides." She took a slow, calming breath. It was the first time I'd ever seen her actually look intimidated. "If you wish to know more of Meþas, you could even attend church with us."

An idea occurred to me. "Do you know who Dyralist is? Great Bronze Dragon? He claims that he remembers the Fifth Age, that he was there for the Chaos War."

He gave a slow nod. "We have never met, but the name is familiar."

"Well, these days he's become quite the businessman. Owns the company I work for, and when he heard what had happened in the dungeon, he spoke with me, told me about the war and how it ended. I bet if I asked, he would be able to arrange employment for you."

Gareth seemed to actually consider the idea for a few seconds. "Would that not be difficult given my legal concerns?"

"He has business interests all throughout the empire, not just in Chitothia. Send you off someplace beyond the Archduke's reach, change your look a little bit, maybe dyeing your hair and wearing more normal clothes, and nobody would think twice if they saw you."

He nodded as I spoke, considering it, but in the end he shook his head. "In all sincerity, I am grateful for your offer. The security and comfort are truly tempting, as is the possibility of understanding more of this Builder God and his connection to me. But the price of it, I am not ready to pay. My quest to help the oppressed Good folk of your empire is too important."

"Even though it's going to be harder and harder to get basic supplies as time goes by?"

"I am not of your Age, Brad. Supermarkets are a thing I know well how to survive without. There is game and forage to be had in these woods, a river of clean water, even a dungeon to test my strength against. I will be well, on this you have my word."

Felicity looked at him in puzzlement. "A dungeon? Out here?"

He nodded. "And a surprisingly large one at that. I must admit I am somewhat shocked that you know nothing of it; do your nobility care nothing for the breakouts?"

"The wilderness has always been a dangerous place," Felicity said, looking a bit bewildered. "We mostly keep the wandering monsters away with enchanted highways. If it's deep enough in, I suppose it could have evaded notice, but... that's pretty surprising."

Gareth gave her a nod. "Come and see. You invited me to your world, let me return the offer. The dungeon is a mile from here, I can show you its caverns in safety."

Felicity looked at me. "I'm all right with that if you are?"

I'd just been through one dungeon today, and now this. I really don't want to do this. "You said it's pretty big. Will it take long?"

"You have my word, I will have you safely back to the highway by nightfall."

Well, Felicity wanted to go. I didn't, but I didn't want to disappoint her by saying no. And to be honest, there was something compelling about Gareth's open earnestness. "All right."