He climbed the hill and saw the beautiful, mangled ruins of the city before him. This time it would be his.

It had only taken him seventeen years to prepare for this moment. It would all be worth it; he’d have travelled seventeen more for what was to come. He’d tried before, long, foolish decades ago. But it hadn’t been his moment. He had not gathered exotic arms from all corners of the shattered earth then. He had not convinced whole armies of the peoples, squatting in their metal shacks in bog-mired wastelands, to squat in different metal shacks in different bog-mired wastelands. And most importantly, he had not acquired the sacred tiebreak blessing from the Administrators, high in their halls of the jagged mountains where oceans used to wallow.

But he was prepared now.

He moved forward, down the other side of the ridge, and seven hundred parched men and women wordlessly dragged their battered belongings behind him. They looked about them at the promised land and willed a better future ahead. Perhaps the reeds were a little greener on the other side. Just. It was too late to turn back anyway.

He saw dust rise amid the drunken towers of the town centre. There was a bit less glass than he remembered. It cracked every now and then, giving way under the subtle pressures of gravity as the buildings sank inch by inch into the mud of the estuary. He reckoned he’d still find an intact apartment away from the soulwinds.

But that was after, wasn’t it? The dust was billowing now; the furious trampling of many feet. And, as he drew closer, he saw the fury on the faces of his enemies too, heaving their wooden battlefields before them, beltfuls of weapons rippling in the breeze. They could be furious all they liked after his victory. The Administrators had deemed this a final judgement against the warlords of Avanon, and they’d sent a nice helpful fax over to the mayor’s office to prove it.

They were playing for keepsies.

He raised a hand and halted his troops. He was trembling with anticipation, the thrill of battle, the excitement of destiny within his grasp. Or perhaps he was just hungry.

“Margren, prepare.... the sausages!”

As the defenders of Avanon thundered onward, the warlord’s cooks scrabbled about making a fire. His gaze lay solely upon the charging rabble, their trash talk now jabbing at his ears, until the sizzling began.

He whirled round, plucked a butcher’s knife from its scabbard, and selected a banger.

“My lord!” Margren wailed. “The meat thermometer is still in the luggage. I need time!”

Silently, the warlord loomed over the flames, raised his knife, and plunged. Fat spluttered into the roaring pit. Fat dripped through the downy bum-fluff of his mighty beard. He munched quickly, and stabbed down again.

The enemy was very close.

“Friends!” he mumbled between mouthfuls. At least he had a powerful mumble. “Our city lies at hand.”

“Hardly a city,” one of the lead men muttered. Serven, Conqueror of the North, and the South, and a Modest Fraction of the East Which Shall Soon Become A Bigger Fraction, spun in a flurry of grease. His hand was out of his jacket before the poor dissident could react.

The dice that landed at his feet had an unimaginable number of dots on them. They hurt the eyes.

The man didn’t try to defend himself. He took one look, sighed, and slumped back the way he had come.

“As I was saying,” the warlord mumbled again. “The... settlement is almost in our grasp. How I, and therefore we, have longed for this moment. We have the weapons. We have the mana. We have the defence multipliers.” He cast a menacing eye about the crowd. “And I hope you read that chapter on linked spirit archers like I said, because that’s what these guys depend on.” He thrust a hand back at the charging mob, who were now just seconds away from engaging. “So get out there.... and win!”

With a roar, the attackers threw their blankets aside and rushed down the hill in a sea of fedoras. Wild eyes flicked between the oncoming warriors of Avanon, selecting a victim.

When the armies were about to bump shins, they dug their heels into the earth and rumbled to a polite stop. The defenders knelt, unbuckled the straps about their chests, and unfolded their tables. The horde from the South lurched forward, sweat running down their cheeks, and chose their opponents with a tap to the shoulder. Then, eyes locked, teeth gritted, they dished out their camp chairs, drew out their cards, and the battle began.

Serven stalked up and down the line, peering onto tabletops, twitching eyebrows at crafty manoeuvres, and taking great, anxious gobfuls of sausage from his knife. One of his champions went down to a shamefully obvious resurrection ploy and he scrambled from the field in a flurry of red life counters and red cheeks. Serven roared and took his place at the table, dismissing the insolent victor in just three moves with an unblockable shiny he had toiled for in the Caves of Bonus ten years back. He glanced along the row, watching as the rare tokens and awe-inspiring cards he had dedicated his life to obtaining took their toll on Avanon. A long line of flushed defenders were flipping tables, grunting obscenities, and slumping off to their hovels to pack up their lives' possessions and carry their children to unoccupied lands far away.

He smirked as a hard-won Ultimate Fire Slug cleared out a column of defence artifacts in two demi-phases. Roared with laughter as Armoured Battle Toads augmented with Greater Belly Plates stampeded through a pathetic sortie of Avanon gremlins. He stood at the heart of his horde, knocking chairs aside with his slender collector’s hands, urging on his followers as they pushed empty tables into the enemy’s reserve lines ever closer to the broken outskirts of his new capital.

Then, from within the tangled mass of retreating natives hoping to catch the 14:45 tram to Castleport, there came a familiar face. An acquaintance of old pushing his way forward to a splintered table at the flank of his struggling auxiliaries.

“Hello, boy,” he said to Serven above the victory jiggle of tiddlywinks next door.

“How dare you!” spluttered Serven. He’d almost choked on the last delicious end of mashed pork intestine, and he’d always savoured his last bite. “How dare you, Alan! You abandon me here in defeat, and now I find you mixing with this sorry lot? Surely you don’t mean to play?”

The wrinkled old man, who had once been Deputy Dice Lieutenant of the North, smiled warmly. “Indeed I do. For the freedom and and the glory of my new home.” He gestured at the table, picked up a fallen chair with agonising slowness, and sat down gratefully. “Do your worst.”

Serven did his worst. He shoved away his knife and selected a front line of the finest legends of his ceaseless travels, boosted by attack dice splotched with so many microscopic specks of ink that someone someday was going to make an appeal that it was all just one big ‘one’. But it wasn’t this day. Alan just sat there serenely as Serven arrayed his laminated forces. The warlord looked upon his formations with sudden, unexpected fondness. He had sacrificed many valuable duplicates for this power. Some of these cards had been prised from wailing hands in cruel tournaments far over the remaining seas, where defeat meant not only loss of arms but loss of your pudding too. Some were unique, inherited from the most vile of criminals in the most vile of prisons as they drew their final breaths. He’d sacrificed his innocence too; no longer could he look at the world with such optimistic eyes as those of his youth. He’d met a shoplifter once. He could only begin to piece together the seething hatred for humanity that could push someone to resolve their problems without a deck and a piece of paper.

But that dark path had led him here, and soon, he would unite the world in peace and harmony once again.

And so he began. In his first turn, he wiped the gnarled surface clean of Alan’s army and cut deep into his life force, and he hadn’t even had to think. Just one, tiny cardboard life gem clung to the opposite edge of the table. He looked up into Alan’s long-forgotten face, and where he’d expected to feel triumph, he felt only pity.

Serven waved at the beast-filled board, suddenly dreading the moments he would have to endure as he witnessed a once-noble man fumble for his place in a changing world.

Alan sighed. Selected a single card from his hand. Laid it before him. Stood.

Serven looked down. The card was called Settle For A Draw.

The Administrators had an embassy in every shell of civilisation that had survived the ancient purge of nuclear holocaust. Their role: to uphold the new, bloodless methods of transferring power from place to place in any way possible, to ensure humanity never again came close to wiping itself from existence. In their untouchable mountain halls, rules were compiled, assessed, and distributed to the scheming peoples of the earth; a little embassy like the one in Avanon was more a storage cupboard for a couple of encyclopaedias and an old table where the fair exchanges of the spoils of war could be supervised.

Serven never liked visiting the Administrators. They had always been kind to him, that was to be certain - many of his most precious boosts came from the golden filing cabinets of their most powerful masters of process. He had never asked to be chosen, yet chosen is what he seemed to be. He would never have taken so much beneath his wing without their unexplained aid. He had decided to take advantage with both hands.

Yet, there was something more behind them. Something wrong. When he looked into their eyes, there was an... otherness about them, as if they were seeing the universe in a fundamentally different way to that of his own senses. And then there were the guests to his many victories - mysterious, robed figures that gazed upon his tables with amusement in their eyes, and then disappeared, never to be seen again.

Yet, despite his misgivings, he knew when he needed them. And so that is why he had left his men enjoying plates of cheese sarnies with their remaining opponents to sit face to face with two of them across a battered old embassy desk, in the tallest tower at the heart of his almost-conquered prize.

Judging by the look upon the face of the elder, silver-robed Administrator as he studied Alan’s ace, it seemed their aid was far from over.

He saw an expression he had never seen upon such a being. The Administrator looked worried.

“This is... outrageous!” he blustered, shaking the card in Alan’s pale face. “A single action so powerful... who sanctioned its creation? Where did you acquire it?” He stared deeply into, beyond, Alan’s wobbling jaw.

“A blight upon the art of war!” Serven agreed. He waved frantically at the dusty archives on the shelves all around him. “It can’t be recorded there! It’s impossible! Have a look.”

That was when the second Administrator spoke. He was a fat, bald-headed vulture of a man without any of the usual dignity of his kind. Or without any of the special treatment. He pointed one enormous finger at the shelves, and squished his impressive rump as far back into his chair as he could. “Don’t even speak of it! Those books have been there so long that we’ll bring down the whole town getting them to the desk.”

“They have been deemed integral structure by the council”, the first admitted. They seemed to have forgotten all about Serven and Alan.

The fat one plucked up the card, held it close, sniffed at its top edge. “And what I say to you is this: the card is legitimate. In the old days, could a shop stop a naughty child paying for his sweets with a note stolen from his mother’s purse? If the money was genuine?”

“I-I don’t think...” the noble one mused.

“You know the principles,” the bald one pressed, his voice rising to a piercing jibe. “Or do you need to be retested?”

There was an agonising pause. The first Administrator glanced at Serven, but only briefly. “All authorised cards may be played by their owners in any battle.” He folded his arms, avoiding Serven’s eye.

The fat one wiggled, and a wave of podge rippled exquisitely up his belly. “So, we are agreed. The card has ended the battle for Avanon in a draw. We can investigate this... anomaly at a later time. But right now, we resolve the matter at hand.”

Alan was rising slowly from his defeated slump. Serven spoke up, his voice hoarse from the battlefield and ragged from anguish. “And how do we do that?”

The Administrators looked at each other. Shuffled closer, conferred behind hands. Finally, they drew apart and the bald one smiled. “We refer to paragraph 769 of the principles on this matter. Resolution by standard dice roll.”

Serven stirred at that. “I have been granted advantage in ties.”

“This isn’t a tie,” sneered the Administrator. “It is a draw.”

Serven dug deep into his pocket and brought forth the dice he had gathered upon his road. There were six in total, and all six were speckled like quail eggs.

Meekly, resigned, Alan drew his pair.

“For Avanon,” Serven said.

“For Avanon,” Alan croaked.

The dice clattered to a halt before the eager, hungry eyes of the Administrators.

There were precisely one hundred and twenty eight sides to each of Serven’s dice. They were polished in the nerdy workshops of a mighty empire long since crumbled to radioactive dust, and their like would not be made again. The combination of three blanks that Serven’s disbelieving gaze settled upon, unregistered in his mind for the first ten seconds, would not likely be made again in his lifetime either. It was a less than a one in two million chance.

When he looked up, slack-jawed, the fat Administrator was giggling.

Alan had managed a double one with his simple, layman’s cubes.

“That’s settled then,” the second Administrator bubbled. “The town remains in control of its current warlords. The offender shall withdraw with the loss of seventy-nine randomly selected cards, one each for the victims that he has displaced. They shall be dealt immediately to Alan within our presence for distribution to the defenders by five o’clock this afternoon.”

Alan looked at Serven, their faces mirrors of shock. Across the desk, someone was quietly enjoying the tableau. The other face was pale, pinched, and deep in thought.

“It is done. Distribute.” The master in the silver robe shook himself and hurried Serven on with a wave of his many-ringed hand. The defeated warlord took his hand from the desk and started to rake in his war-pouch, but not before he caught the Administrator’s sideways, assessing glance at his partner. The worry had not left his eyes since the card came out of Alan’s coat.

Serven found the first object in his pouch. His hand closed about the handle.

“Distribute!” boomed the Administrator. “Let’s get... whatever this is over with.”

But Serven was no longer looking for cards. He was looking at the fat one’s fingers.

They looked awfully like sausages.

He was making another connection in his mind as he unsheathed the breakfast blade. Another action, lost to the centuries. But if the tool exists, he could play it.

Three seconds later, the fat one stopped smiling.