"You know, of all the unusual things that have happened since I arrived here, three separate armies – all of whom I might have expected to be mortal enemies - arriving at the gates of my village at the same time and then choosing to just sit out there waiting is... a trip."

I was standing on the top of our freshly constructed wall, hand shielding my eyes from the sun, gazing out over the sea of tents, banners, and siege equipment that had, without any to do at all, popped up around our territory.

"Honestly, it's like they've coordinated with each other or something. Are there, like, medieval group chats for this sort of thing?"

"Are you seriously trying to joke right now?" Scar said, "Because in case you hadn't noticed, we've got a bit of a siege brewing."

"Oh, I noticed." I said, "I'm just looking forward to the dawn of the fifth day when reinforcements come riding in from the east." By the lack of hysterical laughter from my stalwart allies, it didn't seem now was the time for a bit of 'Two Towers' related humour.

Scar, in particular, didn't seem impressed. "First of all, who exactly out there do you think is coming to save us? At this moment in time, Anchorfall is the redheaded stepchild of the realm – equally despised by the Empire and the Rebellion and now, apparently, you've managed to wind off the religious police! Kudos. No one is crazy enough to get into the middle of this and come to help us. Secondly, the fifth day? We'll be lucky to last five minutes once these guys start rolling in."

Okay. So that brought my mood down some.

There was an awkward silence as we both looked back at the various armies.

To the north, the Empire's army had set up with the precision of a well-oiled Total War AI faction. Their camp was rows upon rows of gleaming banners fluttering in perfect symmetry, each bearing the Empire's symbol—yay for all those skulls and snakes. Loving the look.

Behind the banners, units were arranged with... military precision. Who would have guessed? It was as if someone had clicked through a catalogue of "Advanced Military Units" and shelled out for all the premium options.

I thought it was very considerate that all of these guys had labels floating over their heads. It made it much easier to be able to lose my mind.

A host of Imperial Knights in resplendent silver-and-blue armour held the frontline. Each, according to Lia, was bearing an enchanted lance that sounded like it would work something like a bazooka. Which I am sure wouldn't be utterly terminally destructive or anything.

Behind them, a line of War Priests in dark robes chanted buffs and blessings under their breath, occasionally waving censers that sent clouds of incense wafting over the rest of the troops, granting them an eerie calm. I found if I concentrated, I could make out their aura effects hovering around them—+10% morale, +15% resistance to fear. Awesome. These guys were specced perfectly to avoid psychological warfare.

Further back – because, apparently, that still wasn't enough yet to squash us into the dust – was an array of ranged units. An absolute shedload of Imperial Crossbowmen and Arcane Marksmen. The Arcane Marksmen, in particular, caught my attention: according to Dema, they each carried crossbows capable of launching bolts that shattered on impact, dealing AoE damage. I truly wasn't looking forward to seeing what one volley could do to our makeshift defences.

And of course, there was nothing more than that, was there? There would be no need for the Empire to send anything else to this little party, would there be?

Wah, wah.

Because, in a carefully guarded area near the back of the formation, siege engines stood poised and ready, the label above them said 'Trebuchets of the Violated Skull'. I'm going to be honest, if I had any doubts about whether I'd made the right call in not throwing my lot in with these guys, their naming conventions were helping me out some.

However, I didn't think that judgment call was going to help me out much once the epic fireballs started flying. Even from here, I could see all the Engineers and Mechanics running final checks on the weapons of mass destruction, tightening gears and prepping ammunition.

The Empire hadn't come to play; they'd come prepared to reduce Anchorfall to rubble.

Because all of that was getting me down, I turned around to have a look at what was coming from the other direction. What can I say? I'm a completist.

To the south, the Rebel formations were a chaotic tangle of colour and movement, which was an absolute contrast to the Empire's nicely organised formations. Their camp was a sprawling mess of mismatched tents, clearly slapped together from whatever fabrics were on hand. some a riot of colours and patterns, others patched so many times they looked like quilts that had gone feral.

Campfires dotted the area in random clusters, each with its own lively crowd gathered around, presumably exchanging war stories, brawling, or laughing like they'd come for a festival as much as a battle. It looked like the Rebels had scoured the entire countryside for anyone with a desire for travel and a willingness to swing something sharp.

Unlike the Empire's carefully polished ranks, the Rebel soldiers were a haphazard mix of all shapes, sizes, and armour states, from leather-clad brigands with crossbows to burly axemen in scraps of salvaged plate. I couldn't easily make out different unit types, although those I saw didn't exactly fill me full of confidence that we could take them.

Towards the very edge of their formation, there was a ragtag assortment of mounted units that looked more like a travelling circus than a legitimate army. Some rode on half-starved horses, others on mules or, in one surreal case, a massive shaggy yak. Awesome.

And in the middle of it all stood a rickety command tent, its mismatched canvas patched and flapping in the wind, like the entire structure might collapse if someone so much as sneezed too hard. Inside, I caught sight of a grizzled commander, a woman wearing a beaten-up breastplate and an eyepatch, surrounded by maps and scrolls. She was flanked by her lieutenants, each one as ragged and stubborn-looking as the next, gesturing wildly as they argued about tactics, or maybe just arguing for the sake of it.

"Oh dear," Scar said.

"What?" I asked, wondering what fresh horror I'd missed.

"That's Yvette the Cruel."

"Okay," I said, focusing in on the middle-aged woman tearing one of the guys in front of her a new one. After a few moments of bawling, she drew a hand axe and went to town on the guy, chopping into him long after all life had fled. "She seems nice."

"Nice, yes," Scar said, colour draining from his face. "Let's just say, when this all goes horribly wrong, we don't really want to be taken alive. She has... proclivities."

"Awesome. I always wanted to be in a battle where our rallying cry was 'Don't Let Them Take You Alive!" Upbeat. Positive. Loving the motivational vibe."

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Just for something to do with the last moments of my life, and just in case I had any semblance of hope for the future left, I thought I better check out the Crusade of the Eternal Flame.

Up until now, I had been doing my best to pretend these guys weren't there. Because looking at them made my skin crawl. It was impossible not to stare, though, because they were just standing there like statues brought to life, if "life" could describe a collection of figures who looked like they'd given up all of their personal agency long ago.

Each one's head was slightly bowed, chanting in a drone that felt like it could drag the world into a single, flattened line. There was a meticulousness to them, especially after looking at the Rebels, that felt unnatural. Like something about them was repressed. All of their vitality drained away.

Scar noticed my expression. "Those guys won't want to just beat you, you know," he said. "They need to erase you."

I raised an eyebrow. "Erase me? What did I do?"

"They won't see a place like Anchorfall as something to conquer. They view it as a mistake in the pattern," Scar said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "Like we're smudges on a painting, something that mars their Maker's design."

I glanced back at them, trying to imagine what it would be like to live with that worldview, to look at everything around you and see not a world of possibilities but a series of imperfections begging to be straightened, removed, or purified. "It's not about us, then. It's about... what, creating some perfect version of reality?"

"To them, yeah," Scar said. "Perfection's everything. They think the Maker has this grand plan for how things should look, right down to the shape of the land and the lives we lead. And if something, or more importantly right now someone, doesn't fit, they just shave it off, sand it down, burn it out if they have to. They'll burn everything if it means reaching that 'purified' world of theirs."

That was disturbing on a level I couldn't quite put into words.

It wasn't the fanaticism that got to me; I'd seen plenty of zealots in my time, and they usually had the same frenzied look in their eyes. Religious nuts. Smack addicts. Even Blues fans. They all shared a similar ferocity. But I didn't think the Crusade had that. There was no bloodlust. No spark.

Just an unshakable certainty that they were doing exactly what the world needed, one eradicated imperfection at a time.

"Can you imagine," I said, "walking through life and seeing everything around you as... flawed? And not just flawed, but wrong, something that needs fixing?"

Scar shook his head. "I'd go mad. But then, I think most of them already have. They think they're cleaning up the mess, bringing everything into some… ultimate harmony. Like they're tuning the world itself, and anything that's off-key has to go."

I thought back to my disagreement with the Maker in the Well of Ascension Dungeon. "Anchorfall is nothing more than discord to them, isn't it? Not just messy, though, it's a direct insult to everything they stand for."

I looked out at them, at those perfectly arranged lines, at the blank faces hidden behind iron masks, at the dull red banners flapping in sync like a ghastly metronome.

"Scar, you think they actually care about any of this?" I asked, gesturing at the town, the walls, the imperfect reality of Anchorfall.

Scar's gaze didn't waver. "They don't care about us, mate. They don't even see us. They just see something broken. And their answer to anything broken is to burn it away. Dust. Mud. Rot. Call it what you like. They're here to wipe it clean."

"Well, isn't that lovely?" I said, turning in a circle and taking in all three armies. "I've felt more upbeat about my chances in my time. What do you reckon, should I invite them all in for tea?"

"They're not here for tea, Elijah," Lia had climbed up to join us. Dema, still looking like absolute hell, was with her. "They're here because they think we're all either heretics, traitors, or conveniently located corpses."

"Right, well, let's start with the obvious question," I said, turning to address my small, impromptu war council. "Do we have any way of persuading them to go away?"

"Unless you've got a magic potion to make three armies hate each other more than they hate us, I don't think diplomacy is on the table," Scar said.

"Okay, well, I'll take that under advisement," I said, turning to Dema, who, despite looking like Casper's less well-tanned cousin, was still giving off a 'might-punch-soldier-or-two-in-the-face vibe. "Got any bright ideas, Dema?"

"I've got one. But it involves a lot of fire and possibly burning Anchorfall to the ground and offering you as tribute."

"So, not exactly the kind of solution we're looking for."

"Given a choice of that and letting Yvette the Cruel get hold of me..."

Scar took over. "The way I see it, we've got two options. We sit tight and hope they get bored and leave, which is unlikely, given the Crusade is involved, or we try to pick them off before they get to the walls."

"Pick them off?" I asked. "Scar, there are three armies out there, each one of them with more soldiers in one unit than we've got people in the entire town."

"Hey, I said we had two options. I didn't say either of them was good."

"Or we could try sowing a bit of confusion between them," Lia suggested. "If we can get the Empire to think the Rebels are preparing an ambush, or make the Crusade think the Rebels are a heretical threat, or, you know, make the most out of just how many of them there are out there in close proximity, we might be able to turn them against each other."

"Right," I said, "because a bit of paranoia is exactly what you want in a siege. Enemy of my enemy and all that."

Scar and Lia looked at each other, alarmed. "Eli," Lia said, "we've been over that..."

"Hush a second," I quietened her down with a fanning gesture. "Let me think."

Because the truth was, this wasn't a million miles away from the kind of thing I used to do for a living. It didn't look the same, there were fewer burner phones and no one had yet offered me a duffel bag of unmarked twenties as of yet, but the principle was identical to a job I'd run in Manchester, three years ago.

I'd been inserted into a turf war between three charmingly violent drug-running families, all of whom hated each other just enough to keep business slow and blood flowing. My job, though, hadn't been to take sides. It had been to stir the pot. Tip a shipment here, sabotage a safehouse there, whisper the right name in the wrong ear at just the right moment. I'd once doctored a street mural to make it look like one gang was mocking the dead brother of another. The next day, a nightclub exploded. Look, I didn't say I was a nice guy. I said I got results. The point was, though, you didn't have to kill anyone yourself if you could make them want to kill each other.

This, I reckoned, was the same playbook, just with more siege engines and fewer machetes.

"Actually," I said, "Lia's plan is not the worst idea. The Crusade already thinks everyone outside their Order's a heretic. That's their brand. If we can seed something that makes them think the Rebels are planning something sacrilegious—ritual desecration, forbidden rites, bad hymn choices—I reckon we can get them frothing and rampaging."

My life in Bayteran might not be exactly spycraft anymore. But sabotage, innuendo and controlled chaos? That was just muscle memory.

"Interesting!" Lia's eyes were suddenly alive with mischief. "Likewise, if we can make the Empire think the Rebels are preparing to storm their camp, they might decide they were more of an immediate threat than our tiny little village."

Scar grunted. "I've heard worse ideas. It might buy us some time."

"Good, because 'buying time' is about all we've got left in the budget," I said. "So, we're going to need to play puppet masters here and get these armies at each other's throats before they tear out ours."

I looked over at the encampments again, my mind racing through the mechanics of what we'd need to pull this off. The Crusade was fanatical, that much was clear; their devotion to the Maker's was practically etched onto their iron-masked faces.

"All right," I said, turning to the others. "Let's divvy up the tasks. Think you can come up with something suitably blasphemous about the Rebels that the Crusade will find utterly objectionable?"

Dema managed a tired smile. "Oh, I've got a few ideas. Yvette the Cruel's not known for her slavish devotion to the Maker's Code."

"Perfect. Scar, you're on wind-up duty. You need to get the Rebels thinking the Empire's about to pull a fast one."

"I'll get it done," he said, already disappearing down the wall's side.

"Lia," I said, "you're in charge of the Empire angle. We need rumours of a forthcoming Rebel ambush. Find some way to make it look like the Rebels are about to launch a surprise attack and get that paranoia ticking."

She gave a determined nod. "Consider it done. I'll make sure they're too busy looking over their shoulders to even think about coming for us."

"Strikes me the best kind of defence is making sure those guys never make it to our walls. Let's make it so. Because if it doesn't... well, I suppose I'll just have to break out the twirly moustache and hope for the best."

Lia rolled her eyes. "Let's save the moustache for after we're not surrounded by three armies."

I gave her a mock salute. "Yes, ma'am. Twirly moustache on hold."

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