Chapter 6

It was called the Mytre neighborhood, and it was perfect.

It was located close to the Core, in that area where mortal magic and the innate powers of Outer Planes beings no longer worked, but the innate powers of a Solar still functioned, as far as one could get from the Core and still feel those effects, where the pressing nature of the Core was minimal against one’s soul, and was a tolerable sensation. In fact, about one third of the Mytre nighborhood was on the other side of that mystical boundary, which would allow the powers of Deva and Demons and other Outer Planar beings to function. The architecture of the area was that of a dilapidated slum, with a maze of narrow, crooked streets piercing haphazard blocks of tightly packed, slightly run-down buildings that rose nearly four stories into the sky, with numerous side streets intersecting each twisting street many times in a short distance, creating a warped patchwork of streets and alleys that gave one a multitude of directions to run and the ability to quickly break line of sight with anyone even just a few paces behind. The result of this architecture was much like the badlands he remembered in the Desert of Swirling Sands, jagged canyons burrowed deep into the surrounding terrain, but in this case it was meandering alleys deep beneath buildings so close together they were like contiguous walls. From the air, it was almost impossible to see much more than a hundred spans of street before the twisting nature of the narrow avenues hid the street behind a building, and the narrow streets were not wide enough to allow a Deva to fly between the buildings.

This place was the ultimate place to hide. And Tarrin was not the first to come to understand this fact, for the Mytre neighborhood was populated—sparsely—with all manner of shady or suspicious beings, be them mortal or planar in origin. Mortals and Archons made up the vast majority of the population of this stretch of the City, but the occasional Demon was not an uncommon sight, no doubt engaging in nefarious deals with the less than savory residents of this section of Crossroads. It was a dark, dangerous place filled with dangerous people, a place where it was easy to hide and hard to be captured.

It would suit his needs perfectly.

In the three days since he had returned to Crossroads, Tarrin had been very busy. It had taken him nearly a day to find this place, and once he had, he had spent most of the rest of those two days carefully surveying the area, coming to know the knot of streets and alleys so that he would always know where he was within this warren of passages. Much as he had meticulously studied the arena and surrounding neighborhood of Mala Myrr in preparation for battling Jegojah, Tarrin carefully memorized the layout of the Mytre neighborhood in preparation for his upcoming campaign against the Deva, both the streets and the layouts of the buildings within this neighborhood.

Mytre would see no action from him until the very end. This was the place where he intended to confront a Solar, to exploit this neighborhood’s unique geography to his utmost advantage in keeping away from the Solar after he attacked it…provided that assault was a success. Up until that time, he would be out in other parts of the City, randomly attacking Demons, then attacking the Deva that showed up in response to the perpetration of violence within the plane. He had a laundry list of things he had to do already laid out in his mind, how many Demons and Deva he would have to kill, how many amulets he would have to take, before he had things prepared for the Solar. One thing that had to happen before he could confront the Solar, however, was that he had to locate and attack a balor and take its soul amulet. The balor were the mightiest of all the Demons, with tremendous power and formidable magical abilities, and he would need the threat of that power to draw out a Solar. The Deva now knew that he could use the powers of any Demon or Deva whose amulets he possessed…when he got his claws into a balor and took that power for his own, his threat to the Deva would increase by exponential degrees, and would set the stage for having a Solar arrive to deal with him.

Taking a balor would not be easy. They were very powerful creatures, and he had a healthy respect for them and their ability. Taking out a balor itself would require planning and preparation; that was not a fight he cared to engage in head-on. For such dangerous prey, ambush was the preferred method of attack.

Maybe he was getting soft, or maybe he was getting timid, but he’d come too far to risk losing now because he was thinking with the wrong brain. He had too many people depending on him.

Or maybe it was finally that the influence of the Cat was removed from his mind. Tarrin did tend to think like a Were-cat even now, despite no longer being one, but the influence of the Cat itself was no longer in his mind, no longer urging him into rash action without thinking things through, and it no longer prevented him from carefully weighing risks and taking a more prudent approach than what was normal for him. The mortal Tarrin probably would tackle a balor head-on, relying on luck and his own skills and abilities to carry him through to victory after throwing the together the barest framework of a plan and charging into it headlong without even a moment’s thought. The Mortal God Tarrin was much more cautious, because he had a hell of a lot more to lose than just his own life.

No matter what it was, right now, Tarrin understood that in his unique position, he was no match for some of the beings and creatures he now had to face, and no amount of bravado or Were arrogance was going to change those facts. The balor, the Solar, Spyder, the One, those were opponents that Tarrin dared not face head-on, else he would surely lose. Each of them were going to require a light touch, planning, subtlety, cunning, and above all else, prudence. Oh, to be sure, Tarrin was more than a match against some of them in a physical contest, but these fights were not going to be about who was best in a fight. These were going to be battles of magic and power, and those were weapons which Tarrin no longer possessed in the quantity he once did. Either he had to find a way to remove that magic from the playing field, or he had to strike in a manner such that his opponents could not bring that power to bear.

Removing magic from the playing field was definitely an option. There were twelve separate Wizard spells in his book that dealt with disrupting magic in operation or preventing magic from being used in the first place…and those spells would affect the innate powers of a Demon or a Deva. Despite them being natural powers, they were still magical effects, and as such were subject to the disrupting power of those spells. The spell he used most often was the Anti-Magic Shell, a spell placed over himself that totally rendered the area around him magic-dead. That was all well and good when they came to fight, but in the fights to come he needed to stop the magic of his prey to prevent easy escape, and the Anti-Magic Shell was a spell not well suited for this, due to its very limited range. He had to physically touch the recipient of the spell, and while that did have certain use, against the more powerful opponents, that wasn’t as attractive an option.

There was one spell in his book that was more suited, but it too had a drawback. It was a spell that totally nullified all magic in a very large area, about the length of a Suld city block, but the spell only lasted about ten seconds, and the caster had to be within the area of effect when it was cast. This spell Tarrin could see being useful for the upcoming hunts, for he only had to be within one block of his prey and on the same street. After casting, he’d have ten seconds to close on his prey before the spell ended and his quarry could teleport away.

Between that spell and the use of the Anti-Magic Shell, Tarrin felt that he had the magic issue under control. Once he took magic off the field, Tarrin was more than a match for a vast majority of Demons and Deva. They were good, but they weren’t as good as him.

There were also other ways to go about it, mainly by ambushing them in such a way that they never saw it coming. The soul amulet of the Agathinon he’d taken was going to be extremely handy, because Agathinon had the innate power to shapeshift, into any living form. Any living form. Tarrin had already tested it, and found that it was more than effective. The power of the Agathinon had allowed him to shapeshift into a Demon. He’d had the other powers of a Demon, even their telepathic ability, and had the scent of a Demon. It was a complete change, so complete, so effective that he’d walked right past a pair of Demons without them suspecting a thing. And of course, there were other ways to use the power to shapeshift. Tarrin had possessed that power himself when he was alive, he understood the versatility it could bring to someone…up to a point. No matter what form he took, his right arm always appeared as white, and his left arm always appeared as black. But, that wasn’t something that completely ruined it.

He just wouldn’t be using those swords again. After thinking back to that fight in the Happy Hunting Grounds, he’d realized that the swords hadn’t been a very good idea. Certainly they did help him, but he’d been looking for small weapons to use in a confined space, and he’d already had them. After thinking back through the fight, now that his mind wasn’t dominated by trying to find a Mortai, he realized that he’d already had those weapons available to him…himself. He had done harm to the Deva with his claws, while the swords had done absolutely nothing to them. With the bracers on his wrists to act like defensive shields, as he had used the manacles and the Cat’s Claws, he already had all the weapons he needed in his Demonic glaive, his staff, and his own paws.

The swords hadn’t been destroyed, though. Using magic, he had sent them on, sending them to Tsukatta. He used swords like that, odds are the warrior would either find use for them or just hang them up somewhere. He did take the amulets out of them first, however.

As far as holding the amulets went, the weapons had served a useful purpose, and Tarrin had had to come up with an alternate means of storing them. The Deva amulets still caused him distinct discomfort if he touched them with the wrong paws, so he solved that problem by shrinking the amulets and attaching them to the bracer on each wrist, Deva on his right bracer, Demon on the left. The amulets were the size of brass bits, and were attached to the underside of the bracers, so they couldn’t fall off or be knocked off, and also so they were in direct contact with his arms. That would allow him to call on their power if he needed it.

And he would probably need it. The ability to teleport away was going to save his life when the time came.

And that time was now close at hand. Tarrin now knew the Mytre neighborhood better than most of those who lived there. He could navigate its streets with his eyes closed, and when the time came to face a Solar, he would have the advantage. Now came the time to bring that Solar to him, and that meant that it was time for them to see the full power and fury of an Entropic.

For the first time in recorded history, the megalopolis of the City would know war.

And it was true war, in all its gory, ghastly, graphic ugliness. The rules were set in the very first attack, and that was there were no rules. The citizens of the City, the entire City, knew that something very wrong had happened, even those as far from the scene of the attack as could be.

It had happened in the Brezka neighborhood, a quiet place with many warehouses, that was known a center of financial activity for the denizens of the Lower Planes. The warehouses usually held larva, the slug-like manifestations of the souls of evil humans, which were traded and used as currency among Demons, Devils, and Daemons just as krin was used among those on Crossroads. It was in this place that the evil denizens of the dark planes traded souls, information, and evil plots to further their own individual power, or the power of their kind.

It was there, on a corner between two warehouses, that it began. A dog-headed glabrezu and a pig-headed nalfeshnee were concluding a deal out on that corner. They had no idea that they were being watched. They had no idea that they had been singled out. They had no idea.

It was said that Demons were possessed of such intelligence, senses, and telepathic awareness that they were impossible to surprise.

That was wrong.

They weren’t surprised enough to not understand what was happening, but that was not enough to save them, because they never dreamed that the Were-cat would do what he was about to do, and that disbelief created a split second of indecision that doomed them. Tarrin simply appeared behind the nalfeshnee and struck, physically attacking the Demons within the protected sanctuary of Crossroads, doing that one thing that was so unbelievable to them that both Demons were taken aback, and that instant of hesitation spelled doom for the boar Demon. They could have teleported away with the speed of thought, but Tarrin’s spell of haste allowed him to move with such blazing speed that he literally beat the Demon to the punch. Tarrin’s left arm drove into it, drove through the boundaries and into the Abyss itself, and then he tore free its soul amulet from the black-blooded flesh of its created form on Crossroads. The glabrezu gave him a shocked look as the body of his business partner dissolved between itself and Tarrin, its eyes locked on the gore-covered amulet in Tarrin’s left paw, gore that evaporated away.

“Surprise,” Tarrin hissed, then the magically shrunk glaive slid down from under the bracer and into his paw and quickly and magically grew to its full size, even as he lunged over the bubbling corpse of the Demon at his feet, still moving with such accelerated speed that he moved like a living blur.

The Demon raised its pincered outer arms and struck at the Were-cat, who did not try to protect himself, only reached at him with that deadly left arm, still holding the amulet. It struck with that pincered arm, drove the tips into the body of the attacker, but that body simply exploded into a sudden cloud of golden, glittering dust.

It understood the nature of this deception, but Tarrin’s magical speed advantage caused the Demon’s instinctive reaction to be an instant too late. Its body stiffened as Tarrin’s left paw drove into its back a split second before it could teleport itself to safety, and then those horrified eyes dissolved into hideous black ichor as Tarrin ripped the soul amulet from its body. Both bodies began to melt into acidic slime as Tarrin turned and chanted a simple spell to shrink down his two new prizes, then affixed them into their places on his bracer, taking up two new slots and opening more doorways. It was important to get as many different kinds of amulets as possible, for each Demon and Deva had its own unique powers and abilities. By taking amulets from many species of Demon and Deva, it gave him more and more powers to use.

The attack was sure to attract the attention of the Deva, but Tarrin didn’t want them to think that this was just some run-of-the-mill instance where two Demons lost their heads and attacked each other in a bout of pique. Raising his paws, he chanted the most powerful and destructive Wizard spell he knew, a spell of tremendous power, the Meteor Strike spell. It took several long seconds to cast, but when he completed it, he pointed at the two warehouses before him and finished the spell. Swarms of fiery orbs rained down from the sky, slamming into the buildings with thunderous crashes, and then explosions as the burning missles penetrated the roofs of the buildings and then detonated. The buildings immediately became burning pyres, raging conflagrations that sent red flames hundreds of spans into the sky.

That would get their attention.

Surging forward just as the spell of haste faded from him, returning his body to normal, Tarrin rushed directly into the raging inferno, and quickly vanished from sight.

And there he waited.

He didn’t have to wait long. Four winged Deva swooped in and landed, three males and a female, with shields and heavy maces in hand and ready. They investigated the two black, smoking piles of acidic ooze that was what was left of the Demons, looked at the fire, then looked at the corpses once more.

The female gave a shocked gasp and looked down at the head of a glaive, a nimbus of unholy darkness surrounding the blood-streaked head, that suddenly extruded from her chest. Then she tottered forward and fell upon the Demonic corpses.

Deva were impossible to surprise, but to do what they never dreamed would be done was just as effective. They’d sensed him just at the last second, but just like the Demons, they never dreamed that he would actively attack Deva within the boundaries of Crossroads, where their power was supreme. But that moment of surprise was now gone forever, for he knew that never again would the Deva feel so arrogantly confident that Tarrin would not attack them here, that he would run instead of fight. Now they knew that Tarrin Kael, the Mortal God, had no fear of the Deva, not here, not in the Happy Hunting Grounds, not anywhere.

The other three quickly looked back, but the male on the right didn’t react fast enough. Tarrin’s glaive struck him dead in the left eye, shearing off the top of his head, and he flopped bonelessly to the ground as the top half of his skull sailed into the fire. The other two hastily raised their shields and backed off, their glowing gold eyes wild and afraid as they gazed upon the Mortal God, a bloodstreaked glaive in his paws and his eyes glowing green, narrow slits of pure evil that glared upon them like they were insects, the air around him shimmering slightly from the effect of an Anti-Magic Shell. He crooked his paw at them them with his empty left paw. “Come enforce the peace of Crossroads,” he said in a sinister low hiss.

It was apparent that they believed that with the Anti-Magic Shell surrounding him, it was impossible for him to escape, so they advanced on him with surprising confidence. Tarrin knew that all they really wanted to do was keep him occupied for the moment it was going to take more Deva to arrive, and Tarrin was more than willing to play that game, since that was upon which he was depending. He wanted them to think that they were keeping his attention while more of their companions Teleported into the area and then swarmed all over him. The Deva were not fools, they knew after the fights he’d had with them that he was more than a match for a pair of Deva in armed combat, when the Anti-Magic Shell took the power of magic off the table and forced both them and him to use nothing but the mundane weapons of a mortal. So, they were only nursing his desire for hand to paw combat to lure him into a trap.

But the trap was his.

Tarrin surged forward as if his feet never touched the earth and crashed upon the two Deva like a tidal wave, both ends of his staff whistling in the air as he immediately put the two male Deva on a shocked defensive. The first blow had caught the taller one completely off guard, sliding under his shield and striking him on the upper left thigh, slicing deep into flesh and almost hitting the bone. He then parried the other’s mace, reversed his momentum even as he shifted into the end-grip, and weaved the tip of his glaive with blurring precision as he slapped the mace wide, struck the inside edge of the Deva’s shield, and then drove the tip of his glaive into the opening to punch it into his armored belly, punching through armor and driving about a finger’s length of blade into his midsection. The Deva’s armor was compromised, but it had saved him from death. Before the struck Deva could even stagger back, the Were-cat twisted and brought up a foot, then whipped it into the face of the first one, slamming his ankle and lower shin into the cheek of the lamed Deva, driving all his weight onto his injured leg and pushing him off his vertical base. Tarrin continued the spin, turning with his momentum as his glaive screamed around his body, then dipped low and slashed the second Deva’s feet right out from under him with the butt end even as he fell backwards from the impact of the weapon.

“Is this all the Deva have to offer?” Tarrin hissed scornfully as both Deva rolled quickly to their feet, both of them staggering backwards and away from each other with surprise showing in their eyes. He gave them a scathing look, then shivered his tail and gave them time to collect themselves, allowing them to think that he was just that arrogant, even giving both of them a chance to use their Deva innate abilities to heal their wounds, when all he really wanted was to keep these two alive long enough for their help to reach the scene. “I heard you knew how to fight. It’s so sad to see that reputation is nothing but hot air. Or is it just the Agathinon that do the fighting? At least they put up a good fight.”

One of them narrowed his golden eyes, and then both charged him at some unspoken cue, probably telepathic. Tarrin turned and drove towards one of them, not allowing them to reach him at the same time. He swiped the Deva’s mace out wide using his glaive’s advantage in reach, ducked under his arm, then hooked his claws into the Deva’s wrist as he went under his arm. He skidded to a stop behind the Deva, his claws pulling him into a jerky turn, then he torqued his shoulder and pushed off his planted foot, pulling the Deva along with him. The hooked Deva found himself pulled off his feet, and then hurtling through the air as the Were-cat used him as a living projectile, using an Ungardt hammer lock and flowing effortlessly into an arm throw, hurling the Deva over his bowed shoulder, hurling directly at his charging companion. To the Deva’s credit, he managed to slip around his hurtling compatriot, raising his mace and shield as he got into striking distance. The Deva’s mace was slapped aside by Tarrin’s open paw, and then the Were-cat found himself slithering aside as the Deva tried to slam his shield into his face. He took up his glaive in both paws and defended himself from a surprisingly aggressive series of heavy blows from the Deva’s mace, as the golden-eyed being swung that weapon with some impressive anger and control. This Deva acquitted himself quickly in Tarrin’s mind in that he certainly knew how to use his weapon. He was very good. Tarrin parried a series of fast yet heavy blows from the mace with both ends of his glaive, the weapon whirling before him to keep the mace at bay as Tarrin protected himself, backing up a couple of steps, and then melting away as the Deva went to club him in the leg. The Deva overswung by the tiniest of fractions, but that was an eternity for someone with the speed and reflexes of Tarrin Kael. He struck like a viper, slashing his glaive’s butt end into the inside forearm of the Deva, striking so hard that the mace was dislodged from his hand. It went spinning towards the growing fire as the Were-cat weaved to the side and whipped his glaive around and down in a tight circle, driving one of the Deva’s feet out from under him. The Deva didn’t even have time to cartwheel his arm or try to regain his balance, from the Were-cat’s foot planted itself directly in the Deva’s belly with so much force that the being was lifted off his feet. He unfurled his wings in a vain attempt to soften the impact with the ground, but he rolled over his wings and landed on the back of his neck, then rolled over onto his stomach. Tarrin wasted not an instant, turning and bending backwards at the waist deeply, catching the surprised Deva he’d thrown earlier off guard, who had regained his feet and rushed at them with his mace swinging for the back of Tarrin’s head the instant he got within reach. Tarrin put one paw on the ground an scissored his legs up, catching the Deva’s forearm between his shins, then he powered from that one-handed anchor to the side, pulling the Deva’s arm back across his own body. A deft flex and twist of the legs snapped both bones in the Deva’s arm in unison, then Tarrin’s tail whipped around his legs and slapped the Deva squarely in the face, with sufficient force to snap his head to the side. The Deva was pulled to the ground by Tarrin’s weight, and the Were-cat rolled over after releasing his broken arm and quickly regained his feet. The Deva tried to roll to his own feet, but Tarrin almost casually kicked him dead in the face, snapping his head back with so much force that one of the Deva’s teeth flew ten spans high into the air. The Deva rolled on the ground, coming to a rest on his back, blood oozing from his mouth and nose, and quite unconscious.

Tarrin could almost sense the arrival of other Deva nearby, and he knew it was time to end this. It was time to send the message. Tarrin let go of his glaive with his right paw, and before the other Deva could react, he knelt down and plunged that white-furred appendage into the chest of the senseless Deva before him.

Again, it was so much harder than it was with Demons. Tarrin had to fight for control of what was in his paw, pull against the sudden force that sought to pull him in, but this time there was less fear, less trepidation. He knew what to expect. Using his purchase on the ground as leverage, he literally stood up to pull his arm free of the Deva. His paw erupted from the Deva’s chest with the prize firmly gripped in blood-soaked fingers, blood that evaporated into fine dust even as the Were-cat returned to a vertical base. The other Deva looked upon him with outrage and fear, then recoiled from the deadness in Tarrin’s eyes, eyes that had not one shred of pity or remorse.

Without his mace, knowing that the Mortal God was invulnerable to any and all magical attacks so long as he was within the protection of the shell, seeing that the power of that Anti-Magic Shell did not stop Tarrin from using the innate divine powers imbued within his form, and seeing the amulet of his brother hanging from the Were-cat’s paw, the Deva’s form shimmered and vanished as it enacted its ability to teleport to remove itself from danger.

Clever fellow. He knew what was coming. It had been his intention to take his amulet, but he could work with only taking one…and besides, Tarrin had intended to take that amulet with an audience. Instead of displaying the amulet to the Deva who were now looking on as they rushed to the scene to assist, instead now the escaped Deva would spread word that Tarrin could take amulets while wrapped in the invulnerability of an Anti-Magic Shell, which was exactly what he wanted them to know. Either way, it worked for him.

Tarrin turned and walked back into the fire just as the shell around him winked out of existence; it was earlier than Tarrin thought, but then he realized he wasted more time than he’d planned fighting that one Deva, which caused the shell to expire earlier than he expected. He then cast a Wizard spell known as Fireflow, which was a spell that would allow him to control the flames in a limited manner. It was a weak shadow of the power he had once possessed as a divine being, a power now locked in the pieces of his sword back on Pyrosia, but it would be enough. In control of the flames, he directed them to jump over to the buildings on all four sides to set fire the the other buildings around them, and those fires took hold and began to burn with satisfactory enthusiasm. In just a couple of moments, before those Deva out there could ponder a suitable plan of attack to lure him out of the fire, the inferno was burning an entire city block, as Archons, mortals, Demons, Deva, and other beings scattered from the area, racing away from an aggressively expanding firestorm that leapt from building to building, structure to structure, quickly immolating a large swath of the neighborhood in an inferno.

The message had been sent. The City was at war, at war with the one being that the Deva could not easily stop. The message was about more than killing a few Deva and burning down a few buildings. It was a message that told the citizens of the City that they were now dealing with a being that the Deva could not stop, a being that actively hunted down and killed the very Deva that kept the peace within the confines of the City. They were dealing with a being that could systematically burn the City to the ground in a maniacal rampage of destruction, a being that the Deva had twice now failed to capture, kill, or stop. And the beings of Crossroads knew that there was only one force in the universe that the Deva couldn’t stop by themselves.

An Entropic.

The citizens of the City now knew the terrible, frightening truth.

There was an Entropic loose in Crossroads, and it had declared war.

The Brezka neighborhood was only the first area of the City to taste the bitter medicine of Tarrin Kael. Cycle after cycle, rumors and reports flew through the City, some of them true, some of them not. The attacks were not mindless rampages. They were well planned, well executed, and the very Demons and Deva they targeted could not help but appreciate the precision and cunning of the attacks. They were not the work of a mindless, rampaging beast. They were the work of an intelligent, cunning hunter stalking a dangerous prey, a prey that could fight back.

No attack happened the same way. Not every attack was perpetrated against Demons, some were strikes at the Deva directly. Some were ambushes in the true sense of the word, where the Mortal God would strike out of nowhere, then either melt away like the shadows before the sun or wreak random destruction and havoc through the neighborhood to lure in Deva, who were afraid to engage the Mortal God with numbers any less than ten. Some were daring frontal attacks, where the Mortal God would charge in with weapon in hand and attack his prey in a savage onslaught of offensive ferocity. Some were cunning acts of subterfuge or deception, where the Were-cat attacker would carefully maneuver himself into a position where he could strike at a target in such a way that the victim never saw it coming, or dismissed the Mortal God as a mortal or Archon or some other harmless creature.

Even the arrival of the Deva, in force, was an occurrence that would foster different reactions. Sometimes the Mortal God would run. Sometimes he would fight. Sometimes he would engage in wholesale destruction using powerful Wizard magic, leaving a neighborhood in ruins and forcing the Deva to either try to put out the fires or chase him down. Sometimes he would use Wizard magic to befuddle the senses, bringing down darkness or fog, sometimes cancelling all sound in a wide area, or creating a cacophony of magical noise that made it impossible to hear someone screaming right beside you. But the only true commonality that occurred after the Deva reached the scene of an attack was that the Mortal God managed to elude his Deva hunters, sometimes after killing a few of them before he made good his escape.

Not all attacks resulted in him taking an amulet. Quite a few of them were attacks designed simply to kill Demons, or kill Deva, or engage in destruction of buildings to frighten the citizenry and foment the spread of rumors. They were acts that seemed random, but were well planned and designed to conceal the true motives and patterns behind his attacks. The simple fact of the matter was, he didn’t have room to carry a horde of amulets. All he needed were amulets from different kinds of Demons and Deva, one from each type, which would grant him the powers of that type of creature. He wanted no more than fifteen Demon amulets and fifteen Deva amulets, so he was being very selective in which amulets to take, and he knew he had to make sure to count the amulets he intended to take.

And he had to be very careful to keep the Deva off balance. If the Deva managed to puzzle out what he was doing, it might jeopardize everything. The Deva were very intelligent, adapting to his attacks and forcing him to constantly change his tactics to keep ahead of them. He gave them the respect they were due in that regard, and he didn’t want them to work out his ultimate goal and move to deny it to him. Most of his random acts of destruction were nothing more than red herrings, to keep the Deva off balance and guessing, hiding his true intent behind a mask of wanton destruction.

After twenty days, after many attacks that took place all over the city, the citizens of the megalopolis were starting to look upon the Deva with new eyes, eyes that didn’t see them as omnipotent figures that meted out justice with a heavy hand, but as harried, beaten entities who were very much in fear for their own existence. And they knew their own fear, because they knew that the being out there dealing out such punishment to the City and to the Deva was an Entropic, a terrifying bringer of destruction, chaos, and disorder. It was a being that was not supposed to exist outside of the Astral, but nevertheless had somehow managed to invade Crossroads, either assume or possess the form of the Mortal God, and who now wreaked havoc across the entire plane, a havoc so absolute that even the godlike Deva were worn to their last coil of rope.

The fear and nervous activity of the residents only helped Tarrin, for it stirred them up, made them unpredictable and jumpy, and it helped the Were-cat blend in with the frightened masses that much more. And they too helped him conceal the master plan behind his attacks.

And one part of that plan was now complete. After twenty days of ceaseless, unrelenting pressure, of daily attacks that destabilized whole sections of the City, undermining the reputation of the Deva, demoralizing them, terrorizing the Demons, and making both sides afraid to move about the city without large numbers for mutual protection, the attacks simply stopped. A cycle went by, then another, then another, and there was no hint of what had happened. But people weren’t waiting around to find out, for a mass exodus from the City had begun, as throngs of archons, Demons, and mortals were fleeing for other planes, trying to get out of the battleground. Despite the unimaginable vastness of the City, everyone was just convinced that their neighborhood would be the next one to suffer an attack. Those that remained couldn’t help but talk, talk about the attacks, talk about Tarrin, and what mattered most, talk about the rumors and conjecture as to who Tarrin was after and who might be next.

The next phase of the plan involved a balor. For cycles, Tarrin skulked through the City, listening, searching, isolating Demons or their servants and grilling them for information using the shapeshifting powers of the Agathinon amulet as well as some spying spells in the spellbook to gather information. In that time, he isolated the balor that he would attack, a rather brash and arrogant one, even by Demonic standards, who was currently in the City because he had fallen out of favor in the Abyss. It was rumored that his actions had so infuriated the rest of Demon kind that it was here under exile, in person, and not just a projection or constructed body. This balor, who went by the name Krzak, was Tarrin’s chosen target.

It took Tarrin fifteen cycles to find Krzak, invade his compound on the southwestern side of the Core, in the Furaga neighorhood, and come to learn the strength of his retinue of servant Demons and the power of his bodyguards. This Krzak had come to Crossroads with a very large retinue of the Demons that personally served it, and those Demons included a marilith. This was a surprise to Tarrin, because marilith were even rarer than balor outside of the Abyss, even though there were more of them. Marilith were the generals and tacticians of the Demons, probably the most intelligent of them all, and because of that they tended to stay where they were needed. Those forays into Krzak’s compound taught Tarrin that the only way he was going to get at the balor was to lure him out, because his defenses were almost infallible within his walled fortress. This, no doubt, was because of his marilith subjugant and not because of his own brilliance. With that marilith supervising the defenses of her master, Krzak would be literally untouchable inside the black walls of his fortress compound.

That meant that it would have to be drawn out, separated from its bodyguards, and what was most important, removed from the protection of its marilith servant. Tarrin respected the marilith’s mind ten times more than he respected the balor’s raw power.

And now that he had a target, he needed a plan. This plan would have three goals. Firstly, Tarrin had to draw Krzak out of his fortress and onto a more favorable battleground. Secondly, he had to be separated from the marilith, else her tactical mind would devise a counter and foil Tarrin’s plot. Thirdly, he had to be isolated from his army of protectors long enough for Tarrin to engage him and take his amulet.

This would not be easy. Krzak clearly was in enough fear of his life to never leave his obsidian citadel, its black walls made of volcanic black glass, and almost pretty in a gothic, eerie kind of way. Digging that Demon out of his fortress was going to be required. So, if he never left, then he had to be made to leave willingly. That wouldn’t be accomplished by force, that was for sure…so Tarrin had to devise a means to cause Krzak to come out willingly. He had to accomplish this task in a manner that caused him to leave without his guards, and not to alert the marilith to his departure so as to cause her to follow. No, Krzak had to leave the citadel on his own, of his own free will, and not feel that he was in danger.

The problem was, no plan presented itself to Tarrin quickly, even after careful study of the citadel. So, Tarrin retreated back to the Mytre neighborhood to consider the problem further, go over the maps he’d drawn of the outer areas he could see, and ponder a way to make Krzak leave his safe citadel willingly. He hid there for four cycles, moving quietly and carefully, always keeping himself hidden, because now he was the enemy of the entire plane. The scoundrels and ne’er-do-wells that lurked the alleys and streets of the Mytre neighborhood that had once allowed him to pass in silence would now either run away, alert the Deva, or attack him outright themselves. Now he was the shadow lurking on the wall, observing those around him without making them aware of himself in return. He hid out in abandoned buildings and basements as he pored over his maps and racked his brain, trying to come up with some way to lure the Demon out of his citadel without raising any alarms, and take him on ground favorable to himself while offering Krzak the least chance to strike back.

That damned marilith. Without her, he could find a hole in their defenses, but there simply were none. Any attempt to lure the balor out would raise a big red flag with her. Tarrin respected and feared the Demoness’ great intellect much more than the naked power of her stronger cousin, and it was her presence in that citadel that caused him to throw away plan after plan after plan.

That meant that he was going to have to fall back on more Tarrin-esque plans…make something up on the spot and go with it before thinking it through…then scramble like a manic Faerie once the plan fizzled out halfway through and forced him to improvise.

He could do that. Before embarking on this madness, it was his standard operating procedure. It was only coming here and being in a position of weakness and with so much to lose that made him get cautious. But if pulling the master plan out required him to get crazy, well….

Sometimes crazy works.

Now, if he was the Tarrin of old, how would he go about it? Simple. The Tarrin of notorious legend in the realm of plan making back on Sennadar would invade the citadel by stealth. Once inside, his objective would be to find and eliminate Krzak’s marilith servant. Without her, Krzak would be a deer in the sights of a hunter. The marilith would not be as heavily guarded as Krzak, and would be an easier target to reach…but not necessarily an easier target to kill. Fighting her in her own lair, with its prepared defenses, would be the action of a maniac.

Tarrin had been known as somewhat maniacal back when he was a mortal, and to pull this off, the Mortal God needed to reach back into that mortal’s infamous history and resurrect that brashness. It was going to be the only way to do this.

So, now he had a plan…such as it was. Go back into the obsidian citadel, find the marilith, and kill her. That was it.

That was the whole plan.

It was a plan that would have made the mortal Tarrin proud in its slapdash simplicity. There were no annoying details, no frivilous backup plans, no distracting “what ifs”. Just invade the citadel by stealth, locate the marilith, and kill her. Everything else was going to be dealt with on the spot.

But if there was one thing the plan had going for it, it was sheer, unmitigated audacity. He had no doubt that Krzak and his minions would be flabbergasted that someone would actually try to invade their citadel and attack them directly.

Now that he had a plan, he had to carry it out. He emerged from a small void between two buildings that was covered by the roof of the taller one from above and blocked on the far side, a convenient hiding spot, and noticed immediately that something was amiss. The usual sparse crowd that would be visible along this stretch of crooked street was missing. Tarrin’s careful study of the neighborhood had been very thorough, and included an understanding of the patterns of activity of those who either lived in this place of frequented it. There should have been denizens moving about along that alleyway, as well as the solitary Demon that stood guard on a small balcony overlooking a door at the end of the alley to his left side, but that Demon was not there.

That immediately raised Tarrin’s hackles. The shady residents of this neighborhood were very wary, cautious creatures, much like the rogues and thieves back home, sensitive to danger and quick to run to ground when things were getting dicey. They wouldn’t vanish like that, not without a reason. Without thought, Tarrin beckoned to his staff, and caused it to appear in his hand, then took a single step back into his little cul-de-sac and watched.

It was just a flash, but it was enough. A lone Deva flitted into view for a split second between the rooftops overhead, mace and shield in hand as it flew past. It was flying low and slow. It was looking for something.

They knew he was here. And the scroundrels that inhabited this area knew better than to be anywhere near here. They knew what was coming.

For that matter, so did Tarrin. If they knew where he was, then that meant that they were going to appear and arrive in force, swarm the area to locate him, then converge and attack with large numbers, the only way they could take him. They’d already got a healthy dose of his fighting prowess, and would not come at him without numbers to make sure of it.

Tarrin cursed silently and backed into his hiding spot. It was too soon! Damn those Deva! Tarrin could have lived with being found and attacked anywhere but here, where he intended to make his final move! Now his entire plan was in jeopardy, because he doubted he would be able to find a place quite like this, with its perfect mixture of topography and magical aspects that made it the prime locale to handle a Solar.

He knew that this was a possibility. Tarrin’s unique nature made him nearly impossible to locate with magic, but the Deva were intelligent and they had eyes everywhere. It seemed that simple bad luck had revealed him to them, and now everything was out the window. He had to retreat from this place, back off and try to find another location to stage his confrontation with a Solar.

Tarrin shivered. Or was it?

That presence. He remembered feeling it once before…it was a Planetar. Just like in the Happy Hunting Grounds, he could sense the arrival of that powerful being. Just like before, there was a Planetar here, most likely to help them capture him. In this place, where mortal magic did not function yet the innate powers of extra-planar beings like Deva and Demons did, the Deva would feel that they would have a large advantage…it was one of the reasons he had selected this very spot, because they would know that he could not rely on his Wizard magic to escape from them. It had been his intention to use that very fact against them once he took what he needed from the Solar, baiting them into a false sense of his confinement to allow him to get away. That was why the Planetar was here, he realized, because the Deva knew where he was, and felt they had him at a disadvantage. They knew where he was, they had come in force, and one of their commanders, a Planetar, was on the scene to personally oversee the operation and direct the forces.

Tarrin’s original intent was to take the soul of a balor and use the threat of that power to draw out a Planetar, and then attack him and force that Planetar, on pain of destruction, to summon a Solar to come to him. But if there was a Planetar already here….

It could work.

Quickly, Tarrin formed a plan, one not much unlike his idea to use against the balor’s citadel. He had to isolate that Planetar, split him away from the other Deva, and get him into a position where Tarrin could attack him with minimal threat to himself, for the Planetar was even more powerful than a balor. Attacking a being like that head to head was not the wise course of action. All he had to do was force that Planetar to summon forth a Solar, and that was it. That was all he needed, a face to face meeting with a Solar on ground that favored Tarrin more than his adversary.

But how to get at that Planetar. He wouldn’t come down and engage Tarrin unless he felt that he was the one that had the advantage, that or Tarrin decimated his forces and forced him to take direct action. But since Deva could call other Deva, the idea that Tarrin could decimate the numbers of Deva and the Agathinon they would surely summon once they knew his location seemed remote. So, he had to trick the Planetar into a direct confrontation or find some way to strike at him from a position of utter surprise.

No, he wouldn’t fight. To bring the Planetar closer to him, he would run. For in this place, with its maze of alleys and streets, one could run in a straight line that would actually go in a circle. To lure the Planetar out, Tarrin had to scatter and misdirect his forces, spread them out, get them chasing their own tails. Once he had them all in disarray and out of position, he could double back easily and strike at the Planetar from surprise, for the Planetar’s sense of presence was something that was like a beacon to the Were-cat. Tarrin could point right at him, and use his sense of presence as an anchor from which to spread out his forces.

And his actions wouldn’t seem out of place, given they believed that he had no effective means of easy escape from this place.

It would work.

So, all he had to do was start spreading out the Deva. And to do that, all he had to do was let them find him.

And find him, and find him, and find him. After all, they couldn’t focus all their forces in one direction when he was going in four.

It was time, time to use the weak powers he’d manage to grant himself to their utmost, and cause the Deva to understand just how dangerous Tarrin Kael could be.

In the blink of an eye, there were four Tarrin Kaels occupying that narrow niche. Each of the simulacrums nodded in understanding of what needed to be done, and each one hefted its staff in a meaningful way as the three fakes and the real Tarrin prepared to leave the niche and commence the operation.

“Let’s go,” Tarrin whispered, and then they began.

The Deva knew they had him.

But catching him proved to be just as difficult.

The Planetar overseeing this operation learned that very quickly. They knew what the Entropic was capable of doing, but knowing that information and seeing it in action, and summarily being forced to counter it, was another matter entirely. Tarrin Kael’s ability to create duplicates of himelf that were utterly indiscernable from the real thing was a known ability. They knew that he could only create a small number of these replicas, and that they could not fight or otherwise engage in contact with living things, else the magic of their creation would be disrupted and they would vanish in a gentle explosion of glittering dust.

This was what was known.

But it was impossible to tell the fakes from the original when none of them would fight.

The four of them had been sighted on a narrow, crooked street only moments ago, and the Planetar had sent in his forces, even as he sent word to the Demons that had agreed to cooperate in this venture that their prey was sighted, and the Demons surged into the area to corner their mark.

When it came to Entropics, Demons and Deva fought on the same side. There would be no universe to conquer and rule for the Demons if they allowed an Entropic to carry out its task to unmake all.

And in this operation, there were both Demons and Deva down in that maze of narrow, twisting streets, hunting down the Entropic, the Mortal God, Tarrin Kael.

The initial sighting warned the Planetar that the Entropic knew they were there, knew that he was found, and the initial sighting of the four of them took on clarity of meaning when they reached an intersection, then split up. Each one went down a connecting street at that intersection while the fourth turned back and ran back the way it had come.

The Entropic was not going to fight. It was going to run.

This was what made the Planetar understand the nature of the game. They could not tell a fake from the real thing, and because of this, all of them had to be chased down, cornered, and engaged. And because they had no idea which was the real one, a sizable force had to be on hand to engage the Entropic once it was cornered. Each one of the four had to be treated like it was the real one, when there was actually only a one in four chance that they were dealing with the one that could fight back. The idea to use a bow from the air to destroy a duplicate and weed out the potential targets was an option that the Planetar had considered when he first saw them split up, but looking down at this overgrown warren of tall buildings and narrow, twisting streets, he understood the nature of the place and the Entropic’s selection of this place as a hiding space. The buildings were too close together for a Deva to fly between them, and a street didn’t go straight for more than a few hundred kelams before either turning or reaching an intersection. The buidings were so high that it would force an archer to be directly in line with the street below to have a shot, and the interconnected maze of uncountable side streets gave their quarry way too many ways to go to allow an archer to get ahead of him and try to shoot at him in a moment of opportunity. An archer that did manage to get into postion would have no clear shot against a target that could reach a side street and duck out of the line of fire before an arrow could reach him.

The Planetar had to admire the cunning of this adversary for a moment. In selecting this place to hide, it had ensured that the Planetar would have to bring an army to contain him and corner him, an army that would be powerless where the Entropic would retain a portion of his own power, and that included his fearsome ability to steal the very souls of those who opposed him. No wonder he would come to this place, where the nature of the layout of the neighborhood and the imposing difficulties involved in fighting the Entropic in this place balanced the loss of his mortal magic, which made escape by spellcraft impossible. The proximity of the Core also prevented the use of the powers he had stolen when he took the souls of both Demon and Deva alike, though the distance from the Core caused the boundary that prevented the use of those powers to cross through this area, an invisible line of which everyone had to be very aware. If the Mortal God took one step over that line, he could Teleport away using the captured powers of the souls he had taken, but at the current time, he was located in the region where those powers did not function. In this place, only the power of a Solar and the powers of a god would function. Even the Planetar himself was powerless in this place, relying on his wings for flight and his weapons for defense. Unfortunately for all involved, the Entropic’s unique background included powers which were divine in nature, and as such they would work in this place. That gave the Entropic a distinct advantage, and also required them to use caution. If someone chasing the real Entropic found himself alone, the Entropic might very well turn on him and try to take his soul. Down there, in that knot of intermeshed streets and alleys, the Entropic had an advantage, and the Planetar knew that he was smart enough to understand when to use that advantage.

The Planetar, M’Boh, fully respected the cunning of his opponent. This Mortal God, this Entropic, Tarrin Kael, he was not one to be taken lightly.

M’Boh’s course of action was clear. At the current time, the Entropic was in an area where he could not use his captured souls’ powers, and the Planetar had to make sure it stayed that way. The Planetar had already formed a picket at that boundary, a line of Agathinon that would stop the Entropic from getting into an area where he could exploit his captured powers and escape. The rest of his forces had been split into two groups. One group was sent down into that knot of streets to chase the images of the Entropic while the other half created a loose line that contained him in a certain area, a half-circle that would close inward inexorably as the chasers harried the four potentials and tried to flush them into a position where a large force could arrive quickly to engage them in combat. One by one, those Entropics would be pinned down and engaged, and when they found the real one, the Planetar himself would make sure to be there so his sword could mete out the sweet justice the Entropic had coming to him.

Minutes passed by as the Planetar watched from high above the air, as his semicircle closed itself and Demons and Deva both scrambled through those narrow, twisting streets below, directing the forces on the ground using telepathic communion, even the Demons. M’Boh did his best to get forces in place to cut off those Entropics, but the twisting nature of the place contributed to the fact that the Entropic seemed to have an uncanny knowledge of the place. Not once did any of the four of him turn into a dead end alley or turn up a street that did not offer a quick means of escape. M’Boh realized then that the Entropic had a detailed knowledge of the neighborhood, and any attempt to trap him in a dead end alley was going to be in vain. More than once, one of those Entropic forms weaved along streets and alleys with agile speed and ended up circling the very forces that were trying to box it in, ignoring more than one opportunity to attack a lone Demon or Deva that had become separated from the others. M’Boh knew that they would not attack, even if they had a chance to strike without any fear of counterattack, because that act of attack would single out the real one from the fake one and allow them to surround and engage without having to chase down the other three.

Then, much to the Planetar’s shock, the Entropic banished his three fake incarnations and revealed his true location. The lone Entropic form left, which was moving towards the Core, not towards the picket and freedom, then created three new duplicates, and those four incarnations again split up.

This puzzled M’Boh, until he understood the nature of the act. Now, all those Demons and Deva that had been pursuing his three false incarnations were woefully out of position, and the only forces M’Boh had in position to intercept the Entropic and his false images were the Deva forming the semicircular noose trying to trap him into a specific area and the forces that had been chasing that Entropic incarnation. Instead of having a sufficient force on hand to stop the Entropic from breaking through the line, now M’Boh had to sacrifice his picket to try to contain the four incarnations.

Damn clever!

And just how did the Entropic know what the Planetar was about? It was almost as if he could see all the Demons and Deva in the area, knew exactly where they all were, and was able to outmaneuver them with nearly ridiculous ease.

The amulets! Of course!

The Entropic had the souls of his brother Deva, and could use their powers…could that be allowing him to hear their telepathic communion? If he could, no wonder he knew exactly where all the Deva were…they were telling him!

The Planetar ordered telepathic silence at that point and descended so his shouted commands could be heard and relayed. The Entropic would not use the powers it had stolen against them.

The four of them zigzagged wildly for long moments, then mysteriously converged at a jagged intersection that was akin to the center of a spiderweb, a hub of nine streets that met at a single point, at the statue of Mytre which gave this region its name. Then, for some mysterious reason, they started crisscrossing the close-knit streets with their many interconnecting alleyways, doubling back on each other, twisting and weaving. Then all four entered a building that was close to the hub.

But only three came out.

M’Boh ordered a Deva lieutenant to take command of a unit of ten Deva to land and enter the building to find the fourth while he continued directing the effort to pin the three left to be engaged. The Planetar circled over the statue of Mytre in slow, lazy revolutions as he watched the three remaining basicly circle the hub of the streets radiating out from the statue, seemingly unwilling to get too distant from the statue. This behavior made little sense to the Planetar, for it would only behoove the Entropic to spread his three images out and away from himself to force the Deva and Demons to maximize the manpower needed to contain them. As it was, M’Boh had more than enough forces on hand to corner each of the three visible manifestations, even enough to re-establish the semicircular containment as he marched the Agathinon up from their position at the line, but not very far, only enough to seal the edges of the semicircle.

This had a purpose. The Entropic had proven one thing to M’Boh, and that was that he was not stupid. He wouldn’t make this kind of a basic error on purpose. For some reason, he wanted all the Deva bunched up in this area.

Maybe the other three were only a diversion, giving the fourth that had not left the building, the real one, a chance to escape the containment.

That had to be it.

M’Boh received the report from the Deva who had invaded the building. It was a large warehouse, and it was empty. There was no sign of the Entropic within.

The Planetar cursed. There was no way he could escape that building without being seen, which meant that one of the three remaining had to be the real one. But to what purpose? The Planetar could see no reason, no logic to that action. It only made things more difficult for the Entropic having so many Deva and Demons so close together, and now none of the three remaining had a hole or opening through which to escape. They were firmly withing the ring, and that ring was shrinking moment by moment.

Did he intend to fight? Would he now turn on the Deva and Demons stalking the streets of the spiderweb hub and abandon his game of deception using his manifestations?

Again, to what end? There would be no gain in such an action, not when the very act of attacking would reveal the true Entropic and allow the Planetar to concentrate his forces against him. No, there was something else going on here. The Planetar wasn’t going to fall into that trap. The Entropic had a trick waiting for them, he was sure of it.

That building…it had to be the central focus of this impending trick. The fourth Entropic form had entered that building and had not left. Either the Entropic had escaped using some hidden passage or tunnel or sheltered cove protected from aerial view, he had dismissed that fake image in order to be able to create another at a later time…or he truly had never left the building, and was keeping the other three images nearby and close to each other to give the Deva a false sense of impending victory, to get them so interested in those three that they forgot all about that building and the fourth Entropic incarnation.

The tactical bent of the Planetar decided that that was what it had to be. The other three were a diversion. The building was what mattered here.

M’Boh landed on a rooftop some distance from the building and ordered another thirty Deva and Demons to surround and invade the building, to take it apart stone by stone if needs be to either find the fourth incarnation or find the means by which the incarnation might have escaped that building without being seen. If they could truly find nothing, then the Planetar had been in error and one of the three remaining was indeed the real Entropic. But he lost nothing to make sure, not with the other three contained within the tightening ring. They had nowhere to go, and it was only a matter of time until they were pinned down and engaged. The eleven span tall being, with his golden skin, glowing blue eyes, and bald pate cut quite the figure on that rooftop, with his Deva scouts circling over his head, as he watched that building with narrowing eyes and waited for a report.

It was his Planetar senses that saved him from instant defeat. He became aware of a presence, and understood immediately that what he was sensing was unlike anything he had ever sensed before. And there was only one thing that could be.

The Entropic! He could sense him clearly, he was nearby, and he was getting closer and closer!

The Planetar raised his sword and looked around, but saw nothing. He looked up, but saw nothing, even as he sensed the Entropic close to him, very close…too close. Why could he not see him?

With widening eyes, the Planetar looked down, at the roof of the building upon which he stood.

Just as he understood, there was a sudden explosion of dust and flying chips of rock. The white-furred paw of the Entropic exploded through the roof just between the Planetar’s legs, and before the being could react, that paw grabbed hold of the Planetar’s armor-shod boot.

With a gasp, the Planetar was pulled through the roof in an explosion of dust and stone. He felt himself in freefall as the hand on his ankle yanked, and then the disappearing hole above suddenly covered over in strange fire. Fire was all around him, fire that did not burn. Then something kicked him in the back, hard, and the fire parted and vanished to reveal a small warehouse stacked with crate upon crate in neat rows. The Planetar landed on a stack of crates and whirled on his opponent, as the Entropic turned in the air and landed on another stack of boxes on both feet and a hand, the other hand holding a simple wooden staff.

He intended to, to fight! What foolishness! The Planetar cast out with his thoughts for his forces to converge on the building—

—and felt nothing from the others. Nothing at all!

The Planetar gave the Entropic a shocked look, then realized that there was no dust or stone falling from the hole in the roof. He glanced up and saw a whole, undamaged roof above.

How! How did the Entropic do it!? How did the Entropic move them to another place?

Amazing! The Planetar realized that everything up to that point had been nothing but a means by which to get the Planetar alone for a direct confrontation! The Entropic obviously meant to try to take his soul!

And the Planetar could feel that wherever they were now, it was a place on the other side of that line. In this place, the Planetar could use his innate powers.

A clever plan. It’s unfortunate that you made only one error. You wanted to get me alone, but you will find that I am the only Deva that needs to be here to kill you, the Planetar cast out his thought in grim amusement, hefting his huge two-handed sword in both hands and pulling it into a guard position. I am as far above the Agathinon and Deva as you are above the mortals. You are no match for me.

“Maybe if I intended to kill you, I’d be concerned,” the Entropic stated fearlessly, standing fully erect, his eyes glowing an evil green as they bored into the Planetar’s own. “But I don’t have to fight you, Planetar. I just have to touch you. And you can’t stop that. You’re not fast enough. I know you have an encyclopedic knowledge of me and my power, but think of only one thing, Deva. I got close enough to you to grab you before you could react. When I bring my simulacrum here and you find yourself trying to avoid being touched by a swarm of paws instead of just two, you’re not going to last long.”

The Planetar narrowed his glowing blue eyes and said nothing.

“But this is a fight we can both avoid. I’ll let you walk out of here untouched and unharmed. All you have to do is do one thing for me.”

I do not bargain with Entropics.

“Suit yourself,” Tarrin shrugged. “I would have rather avoided this fight. Trust me, sticking my paw into the place where your souls exist is not pleasant, and in your case, I’d have to leave my paw in there for quite a while. I don’t think either of us is going to enjoy that very much.”

With a blinking waver, three perfect replicas of Tarrin Kael appeared on each side of him. Instead of moving in perfect unison with the original, each one moved independently of the others. Each one did, however, set down its staff. “You don’t understand how my power works, Planetar,” the Entropic told him as the four moved to circle and surround the Planetar. “These simulacrum aren’t entirely fake.” Those words came from a different one. “They’re not real in the sense you and me are,” the words emanated from another one, “but at any time, I can shift my true self into one of the projections, effectively moving to another place. It’s how I brought you here. I surrounded you with myself, then moved myself to a projection. Since I completely encompassed you, you came along with me. That’s why we have all this nice time to ourselves and I don’t have to worry about any of your comrades crashing our party. Right now, we’re quite a distance away from where we were.”

The Planetar jumped backwards to another set of crates, then again, then again, and then abandoned dignity and rushed back to a wall, jumped down to the floor, then put his back to the wall. With crates near him on both sides, it narrowed the possible avenues to reach him to only one; a frontal attack. The images and the real Entropic appeared on the crate tops to each side of the Planetar, looking down. “You never really understood that power or how it works, did you? I’m sure you realize now just how hard it’d be to kill me for real. You’d have to simultaneously strike me and my projections, to prevent me from just moving to another one. And at any time, you have no idea which of these is the real me and which is a fake, even after I attack you.”

The Entropic was right. If he truly could simply move to an incarnation, then there was no way to really kill him unless one struck at every image of the Entropic at the same time. It was possible to kill the Entropic, but it would be very, very difficult. And the entire time they were trying, that Entropic was free to run around and do only who knew what kind of damage. But what insanity would possess the Entropic to reveal the one way to destroy it for good?

“Of course, you’re thinking that I’m a fool for revealing that,” the Entropic said with an evil little smile gracing all of those incarnations. “But I wanted you to fully appreciate just how hard it’s going to be to get rid of me. But you can end it all, right here and now, Planetar. You can stop the attacks, the destruction, and the losses of your Deva brothers and sisters.”

I do not bargain with Entropics, he repeated, raising his sword.

“We’re not going to bargain. I’m going to ask you to do something. If you refuse, I’m going to make you do it. But understand here and now, Planetar, you will do it. It’ll be a lot less painful for both of us if you do it willingly. And if you run away, if you call for help, or you cause such a display that it causes all the other Deva to come here, I’ll go on a rampage that makes what you’ve seen from me so far look like nothing but a spat between two toddlers. I’ll set the entire City on fire and fix it so the Deva can’t so much as appear anywhere in Crossroads without being immediately attacked. You’ll have to bring every Deva you have here to try to kill me, and now that you know how hard I am to kill, you understand that you’ll lose a lot of Deva in the attempt. I will bring ruination to your precious Crossroads and shatter what remains of the reputation of the Deva among the other Outer Planar beings.”

The Planetar suppressed a gasp when he realized that the Entropic was being totally serious…and what was more, the Entropic could make good on that threat.

“Now, I’m going to ask you to summon a Solar. I’m not insane enough to want to fight one, but I do need to talk to one. If you refuse, I’m going to make you summon a Solar. Because now you understand what’s going to happen if you run away from me or trick me, and you know what’s going to happen if you try to fight me with the limitations I put on you. You’ll lose. I’m sure you’ll put up a magnificent fight, and you may even wound me, but you can’t fight all of us. One of us is going to get a paw on you, and when I do, that’s it. I’ll put my paw inside you and grab hold of your soul, and force you to do what you could have done voluntarily. It’s your move, Planetar. You can do whatever you want. You can call a Solar because I asked, you can call one because we both know I couldn’t fight both you and a Solar at the same time without losing, you can try to fight me, or you can run away and unleash me on Crossroads. Decide.”

The Planetar thought furiously. Flight was not an option here. If he infuriated the Entropic and caused him to go on his promised rampage, then it would irrevocably harm the reputation of the Deva in the Outer Planes, a reputation that they actually depended upon for much of the enforcement of law within Crossroads. Just the reputation of the Deva was enough to curtail foolishness in this place. If he fought the Entropic, he understood that even with all his powers and strength and skill, the Entropic was again right. Who would win a fight between them with the rules that were on the table was up in the air. The Planetar had much more power than the Entropic, but the Entropic wasn’t trying to kill him, was only trying to touch him. And the Planetar, alone, could not simultaneously attack all of the Entropic’s incarnations in such a way to prevent the Entropic from simply moving to a projection to escape injury, not with the threat of him abandoning the fight and going on a rampage hanging over the Planetar’s head. The Planetar actually had several innate powers that would strike at everything in an area, but the Entropic’s threat to go on a rampage if he did anything that attracted attention to where they were took most of them off the table. The only power that the Planetar could think to use that would affect all of the incarnations and not attract attention was the power of Symbol, which created a glyph that enacted magic on whoever read it. But the Symbol wasn’t foolproof, and he couldn’t risk that the Entropic would evade its power.

But the balance here was that if the Planetar could use his innate powers, then so could the Entropic use the powers it had stolen. At any time, in an instant, it could teleport away from this place. If it recognized the use of the Planetar’s Symbol, it could teleport away without being affected by it.

No. There was too much at stake here. If the Planetar failed, then the Entropic would go on his promised rampage and destroy what the Deva had labored for eons to create. It was just too risky to try to fight the Entropic without causing it to do what it threatened to do…and besides, if the Planetar did summon a Solar, well, the victory was all but assured. The Entropic itself was smart enough to understand how insane it would be to attack one of the great Solars. Calling a Solar to kill the Entropic was probably more than was necessary, but the Planetar saw that it would be the most efficient way and with the least chance of causing any damage.

And they might not get another chance to get this close to the Entropic.

It took no effort. All the Planetar had to do was call to a Solar and entreat that it come to him. That was all it took.

And that was what the Planetar did.

Tarrin had seen that moment of indecision race across the face of the Planetar, but then Tarrin felt the presence of a being that could only be called a titan among the Deva. Clearly, the Planetar had assessed the risk of battling Tarrin against his own ego of believing he could win, and saw that the risk was just too great.

Tarrin just had to smile. The Planetar had summoned a Solar, and Tarrin didn’t have to risk his hide fighting it to make it do it.

The Solar appeared directly before the Planetar, and Tarrin had no doubt that the Solar already knew everything about what had happened here, and what the situation currently was. And he was a majestic creature! Twelve spans tall, golden skin, flowing golden hair, huge white feathered wings, wearing a loose fitting wrap-like red and yellow striped vest and a simple pair of baggy red pants that tied with straps around the ankles over a pair of bare feet. A bow and quiver were slung over one shoulder, and a large sword was in the Solar’s hand. The Solar turned and looked up at Tarrin, seemingly looking right at the real Tarrin and ignoring the images, and those glowing blue eyes were adamant and unwavering. The creature had an aura of power about him that was almost a palpable thing, but Tarrin’s exposure to his mother and the Goddess had steeled him against such things.

I am Sh’Keel, the Solar intoned mentally. Planetar M’Boh summoned me at your behest. A foolish, foolish action, Entropic. I am paramount among Deva. You have no hope against me.

“I’m not here to fight you, Solar,” he said, banishing his three simulacrum and dropping down to the floor. “I’m here to make a deal with you.”

The Deva do not bargain with Entropics.

“Ah, but you will bargain with me,” Tarrin said, “because I have something no other Entropic has ever had. The souls of your Deva comrades.”

He held up the bracer on his right wrist.

The Solar’s eyes narrowed dangerously, but it said nothing.

“First things first, though,” he said, putting his black furred paw over that bracer meaningfully. “To prevent any brilliant ideas, both of you, drop all your weapons. I want to talk, not fight. Put them all on the floor, and know that I’m ready to destroy what I have in my paw if either of you so much as twitch, or try to use your innate powers.”

The Planetar looked to the Solar, and the Solar nodded. Both of them set their swords on the floor, and the Solar placed his bow on the floor as well.

“The quiver too,” Tarrin called. “You’re not going to try to stab me with any arrows.”

The Solar unbuckled his quiver, then set it on the floor.

“Now then, I’ll give all the souls I’ve taken back to you, Solar, both Deva and Demon. I don’t really need them. Truth be told, I took them for no other reason than to get you where you are now. Everything I’ve done in Crossroads, all the fighting, all the destruction, it was all just for this.”

With deliberate slowness, Tarrin took the bracer off his right wrist, and then the one off his left. He then set them on the floor and took a step back. “The souls of your brothers and sisters, and the souls of the Demons. Yours.”

And what would you demand in return for them?

“Nothing. No conditions, no restrictions, no negotiations. You’ve already given me what I want. All I ask is that you return the souls of the Demons back to Abyss safely.”

But we have given you nothing.

“What I want from you is not something you give. All I want from you is five seconds. In those five seconds, you will do nothing. You will not call for help, you will not try to stop me, and i