Sam sat back on his haunches and watched the expressions of those around him as they struggled to come to grips with everything he’d just said.

He’d started at the beginning and held nothing back, not from these people. His friends, his family, men and women he had fought beside and bled with and slain foes with; all these deserved to know the truth, and by all the gods in their respective heavens did it feel good to tell them everything. Everything from the first moment he met Apollyon, to now when he could unload his thoughts and plans and opinions on the subject.

And it helped that Mar—Diana wasn’t in the audience either, so he could be even more blunt than he might have if she were here.

He felt a quiet twinge in his chest at that thought, but pushed it away. He was keeping secrets from she who had at one time been his best friend in the entire world. It was the world he lived in right now. He believed she wanted to be friends again, but he was also under no false assumptions. She had cast her lot in with one of the five most powerful beings in the entire world, and he had an agenda that went well beyond what he had admitted to Sam. What that agenda was, Sam didn’t know. But he didn’t trust the creature any farther than he could have thrown him, and that meant, hard as it was, he couldn’t trust mari—Diana either.

“Are you telling me,” Araxes was the first to break the contemplative silence, “that since the beginning of this world, we’ve all just been acting according to some kind of program?”

“That’s what Apollyon told me,” Sam said, nodding. “It’s the system that does it. And, the more I think about it, I think he was telling the truth. On that part, anyway. Think about it, when was the last time you met a gnome who wasn’t a mechanical genius in some way? When’s the last time you saw a dwarf who preferred opera to metal smithing? Or a goblin who didn’t want to construct overly-elaborate death traps in his or her basement?”

“Hey!” Tilly said. “Don’t you be callin’ my babies ‘overly’ elaborate. They’re just elaborate enough, thank you very much.”

Babe,” Bugruk said from his chair, looking over at the little goblin woman fondly, “I hate to tell you this, but most of them are overly elaborate. Twelve flaming saw blades and a repeating crossbow is overkill for a bug zapper.”

“Then you’ve never seen the size of the mosquitoes we have back home.”

“It makes sense.” Pop’s gruff mutter caused eyes to turn to him. “Damn me if it doesn’t make sense.”

“Of course it makes sense, peasant,” Bob the Mad God said amiably from his circle. “That’s how MacNeil envisioned it. Wanted everything just so. And to stay just so. Couldn’t let the little people do their own thing. Free thought within set boundaries, that was his schtick. Fascist prick. Should have killed him and eaten his soul when I had the chance.”

Eyes turned towards the madman. They’d moved as far away from him as they could, but this room was too small to get very far away, and he clearly could still hear what was being said.

“What do we do about him?” asked Pop.

“Nothing,” Sam said at once. He’d been giving the matter some thought. “There’s nothing we can do.”

“Killyouandyourdog!”

“It’s obviously not safe to try and let him out,” Sam continued like the crazy god hadn’t spoken. “And even if it was, do you really think we could break any of the enchantments or runes he’s got on him? Ninety percent of them are things I couldn’t even identify, much less figure out. And even if we could break them, it’s a sure bet that as soon as we started monkeying around, the Five would show up on our doorstep and then it’s game-over Charlie.”

“Which presents a question,” said Sheshek, who had come into the Gray Room with the second wave of entrants as Sam was explaining everything. “Why haven’t they attacked us? Why haven’t they merely stepped in, used their great powers to overwhelm and destroy us, and moved on to ruling this world without challenge?”

“Because I don’t think they can.” Sam took a deep breath, because here he was going into speculation rather than hard fact. It wasn’t like he could have come straight out and asked Apollyon ‘so, what’s your greatest weakness’, after all.

“Look at what we’ve seen so far. They act in the shadows, they keep out of sight of the common man. Until a few weeks ago, none of us even realized they existed at all, and its been like that for thousands and thousands of years. They use agents, they summon up armies, they pull people out of the system, yes, but we’ve never seen them actively work in the system. Not in a direct manner, anyway.

“I think that’s because they’re not able to. I don’t know if it’s because,” he waved at Bob, “like he said, they were designed as helpers and can’t take direct action on their own, or because they changed some kind of rule that prevents them from doing it, or if they just don’t have that kind of fine-control power to act directly against us. Otherwise… Yeah, why not just band together and stomp out Cora and her sisters when they showed up all those years ago?”

“Poor optimization,” Bob cackled. “Phenomenal cosmic powers, no fine-grain tuning control! Hah, teach them to screw with the humans!”

“Are we seriously considering going to war with these beings?” That was Araxes again.

“I don’t have a choice,” Sam said with a shrug. “And neither do you. We’re already in it, for as long as we stay tied to Cora. We were always fighting against them, it’s just that now we understand who them is, and we have the full picture.”

“A full picture,” Pop said, raising a finger. “Don’t assume that this Apollyon person is telling you the whole truth.”

“Way ahead of you, Pop,” Sam said with a grin.

“So what are our plans,” Bugruk asked, leaning forward in his wheelchair. “We’ve got an enemy, we’ve got a base of operations, we’re even building an army. Do we have an idea on how to fight them?”

“And let us not forget about my counterpart,” Araxes said, scowling with his eyes. “He still lurks out there, jealous of our existence and determined to end it, do not doubt.”

“As long as we’re stuck here in the mountain,” Sam said, “we’re vulnerable. Not only that, it severely limits any paths that might be open to us when it comes to keeping ourselves safe and waging a war against whoever feels like trying to kick our butts that particular day. But,” he added with a grin, remembering his conversation in the Admin Room with Apollyon, “I think I may have found a solution to that. It’ll require some research, but I think I can pull it off. We’ll need to—“

Before anyone could respond, there was a noise like the rushing of wind, and a flicker of light off in the corner. Everyone turned to see the portal back to the work room open up again, and Rashun’s wide-eyed young face stared through it.

“Hey, big bro! There’s something happening out here, you better come take a look!”

“What’s going on?” Sam clambered up from his sitting position and worked the crick out of his knee.

“I think the town is on fire, and the fire wants to talk to you!”

Everyone blinked.

“Well that’s a new one,” said Bugruk just as Sam started to run.