I woke up Sunday morning in a bit of a daze. Had I really gotten roped into raiding a dungeon, and then fallen into a second, hidden dungeon? Gotten slapped by one woman and cuddled another? (And in that order? You'd kind of expect it the other way around!) Betrayed an angel? Cheesed a dungeon boss? Met an ancient prisoner trapped in a Core? And then brought said prisoner home with me to crash on my couch?

Sometimes in movies, after too many crazy things happen to the hero, they'll just wake up the next day and discover it was all just a dream. Me? I woke up to the depressing realization that all of that had indeed happened. Life must have it in for me, because every last thing that happened the day before had thoroughly sucked! (With the exception of hugging Joanna. That part had only mostly sucked.)

And now I had a who-knows-what sleeping on my couch. I knew he was sleeping since I could hear him snoring. You'd think that if someone'd been out for centuries, the last thing they'd want to do is sleep, but apparently the passage of time was a weird soup in there and hadn't been capable of sleeping for the entire "at least a week" he'd experienced in there. Between that and the exertion in getting us out of there safely, he had been completely exhausted and even nodded off while still in the car. Once home, I'd shown him the basics and then he went right to sleep almost immediately afterwards.

And now it was the next day. I didn't really have anything to do, so I just lay there in bed for a while, moping. I'd earned a bit of a mope, hadn't I? Checked my æmail at least a dozen times for new messages that never came, half-heartedly played some games on my rune tablet that I couldn't really muster the energy to get into, even considered calling Vivian a few times, though thankfully I at least had enough good sense not to actually do it.

I did text Felicity: If you want to talk, I'm wide open today. No response.

Finally, sometime around 10 in the morning, I heard the sound of Gareth stirring out in the living room. I could hear him get up, go into the bathroom, and turn on the shower. He sure picked that up quickly enough!

I think that was what really made it real to me, after I brought him back home with me: he had no idea how plumbing worked. Like, he wasn't dumb or anything, and he picked up the concepts as quickly as I demonstrated them, but he hadn't known. You just can't live in the modern world and not know this stuff! So then the question remained, where, when, or what was he from?

He'd been too worn out to discuss things last night, saying we could talk in the morning. So while he was washing up I got dressed, then finally left my bedroom and had some late breakfast, finishing up right about as he was getting out. He emerged still wearing that beaten-up armor, since it was all he had. I would have offered to let him borrow some of my clothes, but I really had nothing that would fit him, being taller and more slender of build than Gareth.

He went over and sat down on the couch, while I was there at my little table finishing up breakfast, and turned to face me. "You wished to discuss matters?"

"I... yeah. I have no idea who you are or where you're from. I looked it up, and there's no record of a General Gareth Meranas, or of the 'War of Liberation,' in any historical records I could find."

He furrowed his brow. "You do not appear to have a library in this dwelling, nor the space for one."

I hand-waved his concern aside. "I'll explain later. For the moment, assume that I have the ability to access any factual information that exists so long as anyone anywhere is willing to write it down for the world to read."

"And yet you know nothing of me or my conflict."

"That's what makes your story so odd. It's clear that you exist, that you're a powerful warrior, and that you're quite unfamiliar with the world. Beyond that, I have very little to go on."

He gave a sigh. "I was born, from my perspective, forty-five years ago, in the year 2012 of the Fifth Age, in an inconsequential village in the Kingdom of Vom."

"All right, Vom exists. I actually drove through it on my way here to Chitothia."

"Chitothia is where I was fighting at the end, near the town of Sharliya."

"We're in Sharliya now. And Fifth Age 2057 is right around the time that the Chaos War ended, bringing a close to the Age. The year now is Sixth Age 236."

His expression darkened at my words. "The Great Tyrant would always slander our forces, calling us Chaotic simply because we fought against the dark and oppressive 'order' he sought to impose upon the face of the land."

"And what did you say the Tyrant's name was?"

"Valaminor."

I shook my head. "Valaminor is a revered figure, Saint Valaminaþ, the one who defeated the Great Tyrant and his chaotic hordes, who forged the Thirty Kingdoms into a mighty empire that still stands today."

"And I suppose the Tyrant in your story was named Perrak?" he asked with a scowl.

"No, though that's a common enough name among orcish males today. The Great Tyrant's name is rarely spoken aloud. Superstitious nonsense, but it's a pretty powerful taboo nonetheless. His name was Enotal."

Gareth's eyes widened at that. "Enotaþ is the Vigilant God."

"We don't have a Vigilant God. What was your panþeon like?"

"There are twenty-one gods. Nine for the alignments, four for the elements, six for the six races of kith, one for beasts and monsters, and Enotaþ, The One Who Watches."

"Wow! No, our panþeon is very different. We have twenty gods, each of whom represents some form of action a person can perform. I worship Meþas, the Builder."

"The one you said that I resemble. Why would you believe your own patron god was trapped in a dungeon?"

"I wasn't really thinking about it. But you look like Meþas, and he hasn't been seen since the Fifth Age, so it kind of made sense in the moment," I said, realizing as I spoke just how lame that explanation sounded.

Gareth scoffed. "He was certainly never seen in the Fifth Age either! I can only surmise that some terrible evil has befallen this land. We must raise an army to throw it down."

I shook my head at him. "That's... really not the way things work in the Sixth Age."

"Precisely," he said. "Your Age is a fallen one, overcome by the forces of Evil."

I squirmed in my chair at his words. "My age is a time of peace and prosperity, and we've learned to coexist harmoniously with Evil. You go around talking like that and people will think you're intolerant."

He gave me a look of confusion. "Of course I am intolerant of Evil! Who in their right mind would not be?"

I sighed and took a deep breath, speaking as patiently as I could. "Someone with the benefit of history, seeing that under the Imperial order, we've had over two centuries of uninterrupted peace. Evil hasn't tried to conquer us once since we've stopped trying to exterminate them, and now we've got hundreds of millions of people not being collateral damage in the wars that end up not happening. Even Chaos has faded in significance once we stopped treating it as an existential threat! It took a bit longer to come around to tolerating them, but today we have an official Chaotic faction in the government. They're kinda weird but they've never attempted to overthrow or oppress anybody." I looked him straight in the eyes. "We believe in tolerance because it works."

He listened impassively to my rant and then, still meeting my gaze, calmly stated, "the person who has caused you the greatest, most intense pain was Evil, were they not?"

I narrowed my eyes at him. "Stay. Out. Of. My. Head. It's considered completely unacceptable, and often criminal, to read or interfere with another person's mind without their explicit consent."

He shook his head at me. "I'm no psion; I simply have a great deal of experience. It was an informed guess, nothing more."

"You were messing with people's minds at the dungeon," I pointed out.

"That was a simple Unimportance spell. It does not touch on the mind, merely on the perceptions."

"We call that a distinction without a difference. I'm trying to tell you, if you get caught doing that, you'll get in trouble."

"Very well, I will keep that in mind. I thank you for your earnestness and sincerity. But still, your reaction does seem to confirm my conjecture?"

"There was a girl," I said. "I thought she was the one. Turns out she thought differently and never told me until the moment of truth came. And yes, it hurt. It hurt a lot. But I also got many good memories out of our time together, experiences I wouldn't want to undo no matter how badly it ended. What we've learned over the years is that alignments are just other, equally valid philosophical perspectives, different ways of expressing all the same basic desires and goals that Lawful and Good people have."

He looked puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"Everybody wants basically the same things. For example, freedom and safety. The two are somewhat in conflict, as freedom must necessarily include, to some degree or another, the freedom to violate another person's safety. A Chaotic is someone who values freedom more highly, and a Lawful cares more about safety, but both desires are present in everybody, and pushed to extremes in either direction, even a Chaotic will clamor for stronger laws to crack down on harmful acts, or a Lawful for the relaxation of oppressive restrictions. It's just a matter of finding the right balance point, which is different for different people.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Likewise Good and Evil alike care about prosperity and the ability to grow and progress, to improve one's lot in life. The largest difference is in scope: while Good people tend to focus largely on improving conditions for themselves and those closest to them, Evil looks towards all of society equally, seeking greater progress for all even if it comes at the expense of some of the most powerful individually."

His expression grew darker and darker the more I spoke. When I finished, his only response was to ask, "you say this as one who professes a Good alignment himself?"

"...yes? What's wrong?"

"Everything you just said is wrong!" he cried out in exasperation. "What you speak of today as well-understood facts are not new ideas that are unknown to me in my time; they are slanders and misrepresentations used by Evil to make Evil seem more appealing. And I will admit, the vision it presents is quite appealing indeed; if you believe these ideas to be true, why do you not accept Evil yourself?"

"Because I'm an enchanter," I said.

"I don't follow. There were plenty who willingly built enchantments for the forces of evil."

"Magic is probably the thing that's changed the most since the Fifth Age. We've made new discoveries that have revolutionized the entire practice of magic. Enchantment as it's practiced today is a rigorous discipline that operates under clearly-defined laws of ætherics. It must take careful note of the rules by which the system works, of the resources available and the constraints that the system operates under. It requires a whole different style of thinking that has to be learned and cultivated. The thing is, once you start thinking that way, in terms of hard facts about what is and is not possible, analyses and tradeoffs, you start to see other things through the same lens.

"You're right that Evil has appealing ideas, but I don't believe they're actually possible to accomplish, given the constraints of the real world we live in. Their hearts are in the right place, but every time they try to put their ideas into practice, the actual results don't seem to make things better for people. Half the time they just seem to make things worse, if you can even get any information about the results."

He gave me a quizzical look. "You said you can have any factual information."

"I said I have anything that people are willing to publish. It's kind of unfortunate, but Evil's had so much stigma attached to it over the Ages that today, when something Evil goes wrong, a lot of people aren't willing to talk about it openly, so as not to further perpetuate offensive stereotypes."

Meranas looked incredulous at this. "In my day, people feared to speak against powerful kings and nobles, for fear of their power. Today, you fear to speak against Evil, and you are told that it is for fear of their lack of power?" He shook his head. "No one, in any Age, ever fears speaking against the powerless. I say to you, Evil has conquered you so thoroughly that they have the power to forcibly change the people's perceptions, tampering with thoughts and minds on a scale far grander than anything my Unimportance spell could ever accomplish!"

"Well, I don't agree," I said as calmly as I could. "The simple fact is that the Imperial order works. Centuries of peace, prosperity, and progress speak for themselves, and if you go trying to stir up a war, it won't just be the Evil folks who oppose you. There are plenty of Good people whose lives simply have no room for that sort of disruption."

"And yet, I remain uncertain," he said. "What you have described to me... that is not Good."

"All right. What's the difference as you understand it?"

"There is a core of truth to what you describe," he said. "All kith, in their own way, seek their own benefit, and that of those close to them. The true difference is in methods."

"How much do methods really matter? As long as you're not committing crimes or violating the rights of others, of course?"

"You say that, as an enchanter, you are concerned with achieving desirable results within the bounds of that which is possible. And you have said that, by your observation, the goals of Evil are not truly possible." I nodded, and he continued. "But it is more than their goals that are flawed; it is the means by which they seek to achieve them. Tell me, is this not still the way of things, that Evil seeks to accomplish its desired results directly?"

"Doesn't everybody?"

He sighed. "On small and simple matters, yes. But on issues of a much larger scale, tell me if this is not the case in your Age, that when Evil sees a large problem to be fixed, they will look at the problem and say 'this is a thing to fix. This certain thing that people do is the cause of the problem, and anyone who does this thing must be punished, that the problem will go away.'"

"Yeah. That's the way you get things done. Cause and effect."

Gareth just closed his eyes and gave a slow, exasperated shake of his head.

"What? Is there a better way to achieve results than looking directly at cause and effect?"

He looked over at me. "Brad, did you not just say that, whenever you are even able to verify the results, when the truth is not suppressed for being too unfavorable, you find that the desired results are not achieved?"

He had been clearly wrong about pretty much everything so far, so I was all ready to explain the problems with this next bit, as patiently as I could, when I realized that I kinda had said something like that. "Not exactly--" I started before he cut me off.

"Yes, there is some minor difference in phrasing. But in the essence, is that not what you yourself said?"

"OK, so what does work better, then? You keep saying there's a better way. What is it?"

He closed his eyes and smiled faintly. "I was as impatient as you in my own youth. The better way is to not foolishly take up people's behavior as causes to pursue, because in truth they are not causes at all. They are effects! The true cause of people's deeds is within people's hearts, and it is only by changing the heart that lasting change in behavior can be brought about. Once people's hearts are righteous, they will produce good behavior because it is their own desire to, not because they are compelled to by some external overlord. This is what Evil has never been able to understand, and why it always fails in the end."

"Does it?" I asked. "Didn't you just say that, from your perspective, Evil has triumphed and conquered the Empire via its ideas?"

He nodded, a little concession to me. "I did, in the essence. And this is distressing, because it is a thing that, to my knowledge, has never happened before. Certainly not on such a grand scale as you speak of!"

"So you see this and say that there is a problem with the world? That the problem is not with your beliefs?"

He nodded. No hesitation. "You say that peace in the Empire proves the truth of your words. I say again, there is a mistake of cause and effect. People in comfort have a good reason to refrain from disturbing the source of their comfort. The Empire gives Evil kith an incentive not to show their claws and fangs. But simply because they are hidden does not mean they are not there! You will learn far more of the truth seeing how they respond to privation, hardship, and conflict. This is a thing I have seen again and again throughout my entire life, a knowledge that it would seem you have been spared, mercifully but also to your detriment: when Evil does not get its way, they become terrible destroyers, far worse than any monster. Always. This is why it must never be tolerated, and particularly must never be allowed to band together and grow in power!"

Before I could answer, my phone chimed.

"What is that?" he asked.

"Message. Hang on." I pulled it out and looked at it, and saw a text from my dad.

Haven't heard from you lately. Hope you're safe, with everything that's going on!

Huh? What's going on? I wrote back.

Guess you're fine then. You didn't hear about the wild magic? Or the whole voting mess?

No, been kind of incommunicado since yesterday. Work stuff. There's wild magic near Sharliya???

The news is saying it's all over northern Chitothia.

Nope, haven't seen it. And what's this about voting?

Look it up. Kinda complicated. You need to keep up with this stuff, kiddo. This is your future being screwed around with!

Thanks, I will. Love you guys.

Love you too, Brad.

Gareth watched as I texted back and forth with Dad. "You are writing to someone? That device is some sort of twinned book?"

"Not as simple as that, but... yeah. It can act as a twinned book for anybody, not just one book. It's my father. He says there's wild magic reported in the area and wanted to make sure I'm safe. That and something about the Succession voting, but no details."

"What good are his words then, if they tell you nothing?"

"He told me enough." I held up one finger as I got up from the table and headed back to my bedroom, retrieving my rune tablet. "Here, let me show you how I have so much knowledge available to me," I said as I sat down on the couch beside him. Channeling mana into the tablet, I accessed the æthernet and searched for news on the succession vote.

The results were a bit shocking. Apparently one of the Transformationists had nominated his own daughter as Empress, in direct violation of the rule against nominating oneself or any close family member. When he refused to retract his nomination, he was dismissed from the process, leaving the Council of High Lords with an even 140 members for this discussion. Among the two major factions, things played out exactly as expected, with all 65 Preservationists voting for their candidate, and all 60 Restorationists voting for theirs, strictly along faction lines. But then, among the Transformationists, ten sided with the Restorationist candidate, and five with the Preservationists, leaving the final vote tied, 70-70, a condition that was supposed to be prevented by maintaining an odd number of votes in the Council.

Gareth read through the information along with me, occasionally asking for a few points of clarification, but he picked up on the gist of it quickly enough. "What happens next in such a case? Surely this is not the first time a tied vote has ever occurred in two centuries."

"No, but it's the first time with such high stakes! A second vote is scheduled in three days. Until then, they debate to attempt to persuade each other to change their positions. Says here that a few more moderate Restorationists are willing to support the Preservationists, in the interest of unity and harmony, if they can produce the Fast Keys, and... wow. The Chancellor is flat-out refusing and calling them dishonorable liars and conspiracy theorists who have no right to make such a demand."

Gareth gave a slow nod. "Sounds as if they are indeed missing. What are these keys? Why are they important?"

"A relic from the founding of the Empire. When Saint Valaminaþ threw down the Great Tyrant and the demons who served him, he forged a powerful artifact, known as The Keys To Hold Fast The Gates Of The Outer Planes. It protects our realm against any significant Incursions. Trained Summoners or magical mishaps can sometimes pull some small thing through, but anything of real power will be shunted away by the Fast Keys."

He chewed on his lip as he thought this over. "There was definitely planar magic involved in my imprisonment," he mused. "If these Fast Keys were stolen from your previous emperor, is it possible that I was somehow 'unlocked,' by whoever now possesses them?"

And if so, what of the rest of the twenty "conspiracy dungeons" Joanna had mentioned? "Two days ago, I would have said no. Now... I'm not sure what's possible anymore." I made a mental note to ask her about it at work the next day.

"And these Transformationists, they are the Chaotic faction you spoke of earlier?"

I nodded.

"Can there be any doubt that the tied vote was deliberately crafted by their design?"

I shook my head. "Seems pretty clear."

"And even if some of the other High Lords change their votes, would there be enough Transformationists to force a second tie?"

"Probably," I said. "Politics isn't really my thing; I just know whatever stuff I pick up along the way. I don't think there are many on either side who would be willing to change their votes."

"Very well. In the event of a second tie...?"

"Not sure what happens then." I ran a few more searches and found the answer. "Looks like the High Decrees state that it will be resolved via a contest of champions. But that's a thing that has never happened in the Empire's history." I let out a low whistle at the implications. "Preservationists and Restorationists have been metaphorically at each other's throats for over a decade now. Literal combat, though... that's never happened. If it did, no matter who wins, it could spill over into the public all too easily."

Gareth's next words shook me to my core. "Seeing all this, knowing what you know, can you still believe that Chaotics are harmless and would never seek to overthrow the order of your Empire?"