We had all heard of the Hellwar in Eventide School. An endless conflict between demons of chaos and lawful devils, fought mostly on the empty, desolate plane of Iphora where none of the combatants, being Outsiders, could ever truly die. No one knew of its origins; þeologians claimed the war had been raging "since before the First Age," whatever that meant.

"What is this?" Charles asked. "It can't be the real Iphora, right?"

"No," Gareth said, "but it is a convincing recreation thereof. There seems to be an arbitrary line," he ran his hand right-to-left describing the edge of the battle, "running endlessly in both directions, behind which we are invisible to them. I have walked it for days, just to seek some alternative. There are many territories, held alternately by devils and demons, and the demons are at war with one another within the depths of their own lands, and the devils hunt down cowards from their own number and press-gang them into service on the front lines. The whole face of this land is one great cycle of murder and bloodshed, and no one knows any end to it."

"How is it even possible to get across?" I asked.

He waved the question off. "Another time. We are here to observe, not to pass this floor. Ah, there he is. Look."

He pointed off to the right, where a devil in gleaming armor was giving what appeared to be some sort of pep talk to rally a bunch of troops. "Anyone here speak Infernal?" I asked.

When no one said yes, Gareth said "you can tell much of what is going on without knowing the words. Gather around, my men. We go to fight, for glory, for strength, for conquest, for freedom, it is all the same, any soldier knows the meaning by heart no matter how different the words may be. That devil there is one of their captains, perhaps the strongest among their number that I have seen."

We watched as this devil captain's unit marched to the fore. I had no military experience, but they sure looked well-disciplined to me, marching in well-ordered ranks, their shields and spears all held exactly the same way.

Then they engaged the demons, and we got a good look at the literal meaning of "and then it all went to the abyss." Ravening demons swarmed over the devils' ranks in overwhelming numbers, howling, clawing, biting, some of them even managing to break their infernal opponents' spears or gouge rents in shields and armor. The devils fought with skill and training, killing hundreds of demons, but the horde just kept coming.

Their captain seemed to be everywhere, darting along the line, barking orders and rallying his men, stepping in to push back when the demons threatened to breach the line, slaying enemies left and right. They held admirably well for about half an hour, but all too soon the casualties among his unit mounted enough that the demons were able to swarm him. He was far more powerful than any of them, but against dozens at once? The devil captain was quickly torn apart. And then the next group of devils stepped in and slaughtered the demons that had done this, and the interminable conflict continued.

We watched the whole gruesome, pointless spectacle in silence, until Gareth finally spoke. "That is what you are asking me to become." Without another word, he turned and walked back up the staircase.

The three of us trudged up after him and used the archway to exit the tower. It was dark outside, but Gareth walked us back to the truck and apparently the inhabitants of the woods knew better than to tangle with him. Once we had reached it, Felicity finally spoke. "This isn't like the Hellwar," she said quietly.

"Wars are more alike than they are different, lass," Gareth replied. "And one horde is not so different from another. I spent my entire career as a soldier avoiding fights like that."

"Wait," I objected, "you told me you were a general."

"Yes, of irregulars. My men specialized in undermining and disrupting the enemy, not in confronting them on the battlefield. Sabotage, hitting supply lines, assassination of key enemy leaders, toppling walls and so on. That was our stock in trade." He gave a dark little laugh. "I do not know by what cosmic joke I came to resemble the god you call the Builder, because in truth I am and always have been a demolisher.

"The one you truly want is Deborah Talar, the greatest commander of armies of my day. Your artwork depicting Talaþ the Peacegiver bears a striking resemblance to her, so I cannot help but wonder if you might not find her imprisoned as you did me, in some forsaken dungeon near Bion, in Elia. That was where she was last I heard of her."

"Isn't there anything you can do?" Felicity asked.

"Me," he asked, "and what army? You look at me and you see a powerful, high-level warrior. And this is true, but it is also true that there is only one of me. My true strength has always been my companions, be it as an adventurer, a soldier, or a commander.

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"And besides, your Archduke has proclaimed me a wanted man. Even were I to walk up to the Imperial Army and volunteer, I would far more likely be killed or cast into prison than accepted as a colleague, let alone a leader."

"So what is your plan, then?" I asked.

"Knowing this? I am torn between continuing with my original plan, setting out for Bion myself, or taking seriously a frivolous thought that has crossed my mind a time or two: the assassination of Archduke Stone."

"Now don't go and do that," Charles said. "Out of everyone here, I know you the least, but I know Chitothia the best. Lived here almost my entire life. Stone's a despicable weasel of a man, but killing him would cause a bunch of chaos we really don't need right now of all times, in return for not much in the way of gains. His heir and his staff would simply continue his policies. To actually get any sort of real change by the sword, you'd have to assassinate half the court—a hundred different people minimum, spread across over a dozen cities—and then deal with all the mess it leaves behind. Wouldn't be worth it, especially with an invasion on the way."

Gareth nodded. "This is why I have not taken such action; it has always seemed that the problem is not one single individual, but rather that Imperial society itself is corrupt. Nevertheless, he remains a large enough problem that I keep coming back to the idea, but your objection has merit."

Charles bit his lip, thinking. "Where do you sleep?" he asked after a moment.

"I have a camp a ways from here," he replied. "It is not luxurious, but it suffices."

"Must be awfully lonely out here," Charles said as he began to remove his armor. "Some time among civilization would do you no end of good."

He gave him a sad smile. "So your daughter tells me, and she is probably correct. Still, in the end it is not my quest. I can be only that which I am."

"We're not giving up on you, Gareth," Felicity said. "That's our most basic doctrine, that no one is doomed to just be what they are. That through faith and effort, every kith can be built up into something greater."

"Perhaps," he said as he turned and walked back off into the woods.

"That man is not right in the head," Charles proclaimed once we were back on the highway. "Living out here all alone, with only a buncha owlbears and that creepy-as-anything tower for company? Even if he didn't start out a bit cracked, that'd knock anyone a few degrees off true north. But like, did you see how casually he talked about assassinating archdukes?"

"Him, Dad? What was that whole bit about, 'oh, no, that'll never work, you wanna do it right you need a big bloodbath, kill a hundred people at least'? You trying to give him ideas or something? Where did that come from?"

"Learned it on my mission," he said.

"What."

"What what? Didn't they teach you this stuff? When you're talking with someone who doesn't believe like we do, meet them on their own level. Try to relate to them, invite them to follow you on the Path, instead of trying to drag them onto it. So that's what I did. He doesn't believe in the Empire the way we do, so instead of telling him it'd be wrong to destroy the Empire, I took his idea serious and explained just why it wouldn't actually work out."

"Do you have any idea how crazy that sounds?"

"Sure do. Sounds exactly as crazy as he is, which is why it made sense to him. I mean it though, the man's a bit cracked. Did you see how fast he went from 'Deborah Talar's who you really need, maybe you should go find her,' to 'I oughtta take a trip all the way up to Elia and track her down myself?'"

"He might be," she agreed. "So now that you've met him, what do you think he is?"

"Combat vet," he said. "Special forces, some sort of commander, from a Mundus that ain't ours. Doesn't quite know how to adapt to a land at peace; I've seen that before and he's definitely got it."

"You think he's exactly what he says he is?"

"Doubt this and deny that, but in the end we can't ignore his otherwordly magic. We both know full well that metamagical abilities don't work in a Circle, but he just... did it anyway. Like it was nothing. And that stuff he said. You know that one FV show, where the heroes cast a spell that goes wrong, and they end up in a different Mundus where everything's backwards and the opposite of how it really is?"

"That's, like... twenty different shows, Dad."

"Well what if it's real?" he said. "What if there's some real Backwards Mundus plane out there, and he's from it, and that's who he really is, is Backwards Meþas? A mortal instead of a god, a wrecker instead of a builder, where Valaminaþ was the Great Tyrant instead of the hero who pulled him down. He said he knows Talaþ, except instead of being the Goddess of Peace she's a mortal warlord. They say reality was broken at the end of the Chaos War, right? What if what that means is the Chaotics somehow found Backwards Mundus and... crashed it into us?"

Felicity snickered a little. "Normally I'd say that's nuts, but that might be one of the least crazy theories we've got."

Charles nodded "You know how on magnets, the north side of one gets drawn to the south side of the other? So all the Backwards kith get drawn to all the normal kith and everyone thinks things are going crazy, because they are. Eventually Valaminaþ and his companions get everything sorted out and put the worlds back together, and they sent all the Backwards kith back to Backwards Mundus. Except they can't do that to the Backwards gods, because the real gods, they're the strongest magnets around and so they can't get them unstuck, ya know? So instead, they sealed them away."

"That's... definitely a possibility."

It was late, and I was kind of zoning out as their conversation flowed over me. I didn't know if he was mentally unstable like Charles said. I did know that he was dangerous, though, and slowly but surely edging his way towards taking some major, likely calamitous action. And I knew that a lot of it was my own fault.

If I'd had the faith to trust Terenaþ at the beginning... well, that would have actually been awful. His original plan was wrong and he had admitted it. But when he came back? I'd been pulled in different directions by conflicting loyalties and priorities, chosen not to act instead of making a difficult decision. And now this was the consequence.

Once I got home, I texted Terenaþ with a map marker of the house lot position.

You'll find him somewhere around

here. Be careful, he's powerful

and dangerous.