“I accept your challenge, puny mortal,” Gore said, unsheathing his sword.

“Now Gore, let’s not be too hasty,” Steve insisted, stepping between Gore and Ivan.

“I have waited long enough listening to this inferior specimen drivel on about his imitation battles and phony glory. Do you not even want his sandwich, Steve?”

“Is pretty amazing sandwich, if Ivan say so Ivanself,” Ivan noted.

“See!”

“No, Gore, put the sword away,” Steve said.

The light of Gore’s black-flamed sword cast shadows across the crest of the hill. Like the crackling discharges of lightning, the sword flared. This caught the attention of the reenactors below the hill, and suddenly hundreds of eyes turned that direction.

“Gore, you’re attracting too much attention,” Dawn noted as people began walking up the hill.

“I shall attract all the attention I desire in this mortal’s complete annihilation,” Gore declared, his shouts echoing down the hill and attracting even more curious reenactors. “We have quested for this sandwich, Steve. Harden your resolve and we shall finish the quest together.”

“You just want to kill him.”

“And Steve just wants a sandwich. Win-win.”

“True.”

“Then prepare yourself, table craftsman known as Ivan. Which vital organ would you like to be shown before your dying eyes fade of light?”

“He can’t make a sandwich if he’s dead, Gore.”

“Then I withdraw the question! And postpone it to be asked after you have made Steve a sandwich!”

“Ivan only make sandwich if Ivan what defeated. Not before,” Ivan noted, standing resolute with his war hammer-table-leg draped across his shoulder.

Several reenactors from all three time periods had already reached the hill. They stood watching from the edge of Ivan’s tables.

That was when Steve realized the open area in which he was standing was completely sealed off, flat ground. The tables and other implements walled-in the square-shaped area. Steve then understood that he was in the middle of a dueling arena, and that the gathering reenactors were watching Gore and Ivan like the audience at a boxing match.

“Then it’s a catch-22,” Steve said, almost relieved. “You can’t make a sandwich if you fight because Gore will rip your limbs off. And you won’t make a sandwich unless Gore fights you. Lose-lose. So let’s just go find a fast food restaurant or something.”

“Is not option,” Ivan countered.

“Excuse me?”

“Is no longer option for you what not fight this day.”

“As I have said from the beginning!” Gore said.

“You have entered Ivan reenactment battlefield. You must fight.”

Burney screamed.

“I don’t want to fight either, Burney,” Steve noted. “And I’m not going to.”

Ivan shrugged and said, “Is Ivan policy. Once enter battlefield, must either fight in battle or Ivan break legs and use make table. Sell break legs table for discount price to overzealous Axis powers World War Two reenactors.”

“Gore will not be threatened!” Gore shouted.

“Then you fight Ivan?”

“Will you make us a sandwich afterward?” Dawn asked.

“Dawn, Burney, people referring to themselves in the third person,” Steve said, once more stepping between the combatants. “Can we settle this without murdering each other?”

Burney screamed a question.

“No, Burney, we can’t just punch Ivan in the face and leave. He has my car and can make a, uh, what kind of meat do you have in that fridge?” Steve asked.

“Is venison,” Ivan noted.

“Venison sandwich. That might mean we could go home.”

Burney screamed another question.

“Yes, and start the apocalypse,” Steve added.

When Burney screamed again, Steve waved him off and said, “Stop distracting me, Burney. Look, you have rules to these sort of duels, right, Ivan?”

“Only rule is cannot use weapon actually can kill. Put fuzz tip on weapons, is good for health,” Ivan said, and patted the fuzzy tip of his table leg war hammer. “Must stop when hypothetical killing blow made.”

“Or I can crush your body with so many repeated blows that your useless frame is pulverized to nothing but dust that can be mixed with water and left to harden into a semi-circular frame that shall be placed upon a lovingly green plot thus ensuring you become your own tombstone. I shall even leave you daisies. Then I shall obliterate those daisies as well!” Gore threatened before letting out a bellowing laugh.

“Or you can play by the rules and we can get a sandwich,” Dawn noted.

“No. Tombstonification is something I have desired to perform since I invented the process thirty seconds ago.”

By now near the entire population of the three periods of reenactment camps had emptied. Hundreds of mock soldiers surrounded the arena-like hill. A low murmur of excitement grew as onlookers prepared for a worthwhile fight.

“Ivan think you is coward,” Ivan noted.

“What!” Gore shouted, silencing the crowd.

“Ivan thinking you coward for what not fight Ivan by rules.”

Gore let out a low growl while, staring through the narrowed slit in his helmet. Then he tossed his sword into the crowd. “Hold this for me.”

With a flaming sword of evil hurtling toward them, most of the spectators leapt out of the way. One unfortunate bystander, however, was not so quick. This reenactor bore a foam-covered plastic sword in his hands, and didn’t see Gore’s toss till it was too late. The hell knight’s blade struck flat-ended against the bystander’s chest and pinned him to the ground. At the same time, the bystander’s foam-covered sword flew out of his hands and into Gore’s.

“Prepare yourself for destruction!” Gore threatened, twirling the plastic sword.

“Rules, Gore,” Dawn reminded the hell knight.

“Prepare yourself for completely rules-appropriate, imitation destruction!” Gore twirled the sword again.

Ivan, standing with a fencer’s grace, readied his table leg war hammer and his round table shield. “Come at Ivan, bro,” Ivan declared.

With a roar that would have shaken the walls of Jericho to dust, Gore charged Ivan with his plastic sword held high. He reared back to deliver an unbreakable killing stroke. But the plastic sword was so light, so different than the colossal weapon that could topple the mightiest city, that the sword flew out of Gore’s hands. The sword broke the sound barrier, and with a sonic boom, struck Burney flat in the chest.

Burney screamed as the faster-than-sound plastic sword exploded against him and sent him flying back over Ivan’s tent like a football kicked between the uprights. One or two onlookers even gave the upraised hand signal that indicated this to be worth three points.

As Burney flew screaming into the distance, Gore laughed uncontrollably. He couldn’t help it, really. He had been living with Burney for years. Every time Gore shoved Burney off a cliff, tossed sticks of dynamite at him, or set him loose in a fireworks factory, Gore would instinctually laugh with the hilarity of it all.

Typically, the next thing to occur would be Dawn scolding Gore for these actions. On this occasion, however, Ivan was able to make use of Gore’s momentarily laughing, distracted state and swing his war hammer/table leg into Gore’s back.

The foam-tipped table leg made only a light dinging noise against Gore’s armor. In fact, the hell knight didn’t even realize he’d been struck until Ivan stood back and declared, “Ivan win.”

“What?” Gore asked, turning away from watching Burney crash into the wall of cedars on the opposite hill.

“You is now has critical wound. Ivan strike true and hard. Kettle man innards now spewing out of body. You is now dead.”

“Lies and slander! The innards of the Dark Lord Gore remain whole and intact!”

“Is rules. Ivan strike kettle man with killing blow. Ivan win.”

“I have not been defeated! Give me another weapon! I shall strike you with all the strength of—”

“Nope. Ivan is champion. Now Ivan go make table. New table with horns for legs, in honor Ivan victory.” Ivan sheathed his shield and war hammer. It was as if Ivan had done nothing more than scold a child and walked away from Gore with equivalent apathy.

“Kettle man must now bring Ivan a stick,” Ivan added as he picked up a hammer and set to work shaping a half-finished coffee table.

One re-enactor wearing the grey uniform of a Confederate soldier raised his rifle in salute and shouted, “Ivan wins!”

“Ivan wins!” went up the cry with the rest of the Civil War reenactors, then the World War Two reenactors, and finally the medieval mock soldiers all cheered and waved their weapons in triumph. But there was an emptiness to it. Their weapons were only held just above the spectators’ heads, the cheers just shy of true rejoicing. They’d seen the way Gore held his fiery sword, and how Ivan had stood unafraid before it. Sure, Ivan had won, but every reenactor knew it was just another fake victory against another fake foe who never really stood a chance of being hurt.

“Tis a lie! Ivan is not win! Gore is still standing!” Gore insisted, his fists clenched and shaking.

“Ivan! Ivan! Ivan!” continued the half-hearted cheer.

“No! No! Come back! I did not lose. I cannot lose!”

“Let it go, Gore,” Steve urged. “Let’s go find my car and get some fast food.”

“Yeah, his sandwiches are probably terrible anyway,” Dawn noted.

“Gore will not let it go,” Gore fumed, shrugging off his companions. “You there, table fool. Come and face me!”

“Gore, you need to chill,” Steve insisted.

“Why don’t we just raid the fridge real quick?” Dawn suggested. “Come on! We’ll get the deer meat and bread and grill it up on Burney’s head while Steve gets the car! I should go find Burney. Where’d he fly off to?”

“Good idea, Dawn. How about it, Gore? You love Burney-cooked sandwiches.”

“Burney-cooked sandwiches are a Tuesday night delicacy. It is not Tuesday! It is destroy all that Ivan knows and loves day!” Gore declared. “Face me, table man!”

“Ivan has beat you,” Ivan said, not looking away from his work. “Ivan making table now.”

“You shall face me. All of you shall face me!” Gore raised a black-armored fist to the assembled reenactors, silencing their waning cheers. “I shall have my vengeance for this indignity upon the defiled corpses of your entire dominion!”

Into Gore’s upraised hand flew his unholy sword. With the sword also came the bystander who’d been pinned underneath it. This unfortunate fellow flew into the air, still attached to the sword, and landed with a scream into Gore’s fist. Gore flicked the man away like a fly daring approach his personal space.

“Thank you for watching my sword,” Gore acknowledged to the now unconscious reenactor at his feet. “Now perish for your insolence!”

With his sword held high, Gore unleashed a torrent of power into the atmosphere. Lightning streaked forth from the tip of the weapon of ancient evil. Dark clouds swirled about the crackling bursts of destruction. The glowing eruption from the sword and clouds soon began to swirl in a terrible collection of maddening darkness that absorbed all remaining light from the setting sun.

“Oh, there’s Burney,” Dawn noted. The sudden darkness allowed her to more clearly see the burning man in the distance. Burney stood at the edge of the wall of cedar trees on the hill that mirrored where the reenactors were gathered.

Burney waved back at Dawn from the distant hill, just before the thundercloud forming about Gore’s head let loose a terrific lightning strike. The blinding power struck the ground beneath Burney’s feet.

The explosion deafened Burney’s scream of terror, and as the dusk-lit dust cleared and the hundreds of reenactors lowered their shielding hands from the blast, all froze in archaic fear for the terrible things that came from the hill.

Demons bled forth from the fiery chasm Gore had torn into the earth. Hell knights rode shadowy horses out of the flames. Hell hounds leapt forth from bursts of brimstone. Skeletal warriors with eternally grinning faces crawled from the burning wound with their dead eyes fixed on the reenactors.

“Table man, you will face me now,” Gore said as a burst of lightning lit up both he and the army of hell he’d summoned.