“This is totally not worth a sandwich,” Steve said, and smacked his face into his palm harder than he’d ever done in his life.

“Give it a sec,” Dawn noted. “Ivan might have pepper jack cheese.”

For the second time in as many seconds, Steve broke his own record for most painful face-palm.

“Reenactors! Assemble!” Ivan shouted with a wild sense of urgency. He set down his table making implements and once more wielded his table shield and table leg war hammer.

“Make what preparations you must, pathetic mortal of table-based obsession,” Gore threatened as his army assembled on the opposite hill. “The legion of death has arrived for your summary destruction.”

“Okay Gore, you made your point,” Steve said as the reenactors grouped into battle formation around Ivan. “You can easily destroy a bunch of people who use fake weapons. Point well made. Right Dawn?”

Dawn looked across the distant valley to the thousand-strong horde licking undead tongues against serrated weapons. “I think that’s a fair judgment,” Dawn agreed.

“Right. So all this can go away. Gore wins, yay. Now Ivan can help us get dinner and Gore can make the world-consuming battalion go away.”

“This is not the World-Consuming Battalion,” Gore corrected. “This is the First Regiment of the Bane of Mankind’s Hubris.”

“You should call it the Pokey Army. Quicker to say,” Dawn said.

“They are not the Pokey Army.”

“You could call them Pokeys!”

“They are not Pokeys, they are the final destruction of this pathetic mortal should he refuse to prepare Steve a sandwich!”

“Good luck putting that on a banner.”

“Ivan not make sandwich,” Ivan said with a defiance stiff as the table leg he bore.

“Ivan, come on. You gotta think for a second here,” Steve said.

“Ivan not need think. Ivan see battle. Ivan take battle.”

“I’m pretty confident you have a one in a million chance of living if they, wait, is that a dragon?” Dawn said, and peered through the coming darkness. A serpent-like, fire-breathing creature roared as it leapt out of the opened pit to hell. “Yup, that’s a dragon. Okay, you’re down to zero chance.”

“Is chance Ivan will take.”

“Gore! Stop this. Make them go away!” Steve demanded. The hell army was near fully assembled and ready. On Steve’s side of the hill, the reenactors were nearly fully assembled as well.

In a light panic, Steve realized that he was way too close to the slaughter that would inevitably occur if these idiots didn’t run away immediately. He was a little mad at himself for not being more concerned with saving their lives than his own, but only a little.

“I shall have my sandwich this night. Or I shall have the blood of the table man!” Gore declared.

“Blood sandwiches taste terrible — when will you learn this, Gore!” Steve shouted.

“Gore, we’re here to get a sandwich to knock the antichrist out of his video game trance and start the end of the world. You can’t get distracted by summoning armies to kill a man with a table on his head. Stay focused on the big picture, man!” Dawn insisted.

Gore looked down, and with a furious rumble, said, “I know what I’m doing.”

With that, the army of hell rose in salute to the Dark Lord Gore, ready and assembled, chomping at the bit to make a charge.

Ivan saw the evil hammer of vengeance that was readied just a quarter mile distant. He grunted, unafraid, scowling at the army of darkness. And with unwavering steps, Ivan strode out of the protection of his tent enclosure, toward the front lines of his reenactor army.

“Last chance, table man,” Gore challenged. “Declare a victory on my behalf, or die under the cleft hooves of a thousand demonic knights.”

Ivan, before turning his back to Gore, gave a gentlemanly bow. “Come at Ivan, bro,” was all he said before walking toward his bannermen. He apparently had bannermen, with delicately embroidered heraldry portraying images of colorful muffins waving in the breeze.

Steve would have been impressed by Ivan’s courage if he weren’t baffled by the man’s abject lunacy.

Gore saw no need for further communication. He struck the ground with his sword. A geyser of flame suddenly erupted beneath his feat. In an instant, the fires were gone and replaced by a black-skinned beast of a horse. It had no fur, blades attached to the tip of the bare bones of its tail, and reared with black smoke coming out of its blood red eyes as Gore mounted the unholy steed.

“I shall make this blood sandwich delicious,” Gore said. He kicked the horse. With a shrieking leap, the animal flew across the valley and toward his army.

“That’s what you said about those carnies you deep fried at last year’s state fair!” Steve shouted.

“Those were terrible,” Dawn said, remembering the terror-filled, cotton candy-laced event.

“Oh man. This is really happening, isn’t it?” Steve said, rubbing his hat and watching the soldiers form up around Ivan. Tanks and trucks, meek horses, and period artillery cannons were hastily coming together in a tight battleline around the table-armored fool.

“We’ve got to stop this!” Steve said.

Across the valley, Gore arrived at his own battlelines. Burney waved hello to his friend and was set upon a hell-horse to ride into battle, which promptly bucked Burney into a tree.

“Heaven’s definitely going to take notice of this,” Dawn said. “Slaughtering a thousand people is going to take at least a dozen miracles and a really good comic book movie to bring the balance of good and evil back in order. Oh well. Let’s get out of here. Should only take a couple minutes to be over. Wanna catch lightning bugs by those trees while we wait for everyone to die?”

“Forget the balance of good and evil. This whole thing is just wrong,” Steve said.

“Wrong is a subjective thing for a demon, Steve.”

“Subject me to your analysis later, Dawn.”

“We can still get a good sandwich. Let Gore have his fun. If we’re gone, maybe the angels will blame Gore and not bother us. I hear New Orleans has great sandwiches, let’s go there!”

“This isn’t just about a sandwich anymore, Dawn, people are going to be killed!”

“Isn’t that what will happen when you start the end of the world?”

“I’ll think about that later. Go after Gore and try to reason with him. I’ll see if I can get Ivan to back down — now go!”

Steve ran across the line of mock soldiers readying for real battle. A row of spearmen stood at attention with their foam-tipped spears braced and readied. Gray and blue uniformed men stood side by side with their blank cartridge-loaded Civil War rifles. Steve heard the clatter of blunted bayonets being put in place as he ran past.

Standing at the center of the line, with Ivan casually stopping to inspect their guns, was a collection of Nazi and American uniformed reenactors all making sure that their real rifles were properly loaded with fake ammunition. The last of the Sherman tanks had just entered the battleline beside the panzers, Civil War cannons, and hastily assembled trebuchets.

“Ivan, don’t do this!” Steve shouted, out of breath. He stood before Ivan at the center of the fake army’s line.

Before Steve could offer further words of wisdom, thinking over how best to say, “Don’t get yourself killed shooting a blank gun at a charging demon, you flipping idiot,” a battle cry roared from the army on the opposite hill. With Gore’s hand held in a fist, the forces of evil began their march forward.

“Ivan brother Dmitri,” Ivan said, looking at the approaching army with his hands braced at his hips. The chair-armored Dmitri hopped out of the reenactor battleline as if he’d been teleported there. “Fetch Ivan epic battle speech table!”

With a salute, Dmitri leapt back into the battleline.

“Gore’s coming, Ivan. You have to stop this. Put down your weapons. Put down your weapons, all of you!” Steve shouted to the harmless army.

Before the army could respond, Dmitri returned with an intricately carved table made out of one solid piece of cut oak. He placed it before Ivan, and Ivan stepped upon this platform to raise his hands to his fully assembled force.

“Fellow reenactors!” Ivan called out as the army of hell made its slow pace toward them. “Brothers. Soldiers. And weird strangers here what for cheap prostitutes in Civil War camp.”

The braying of hell knight battle steeds and the barking of hell hounds edged ever closer while Ivan’s words echoed across the hills.

“Army of hell stand before you,” Ivan continued, his face lit with the last shreds of daylight. “We fight battles day after day. For what? For fun? Is fun, dah.”

For a brief moment, Ivan’s face shone brightly with the warning fires of the evil dragon that marched with the approaching horde.

“But is only so much fun. Because is fake,” Ivan continued. “Is fake and fun, but without meaning. We search for thing what fight for, yet know will never find. Thousand fake battles and know will never find. Well, we has found thing what fight for after all. And there it is!”

The dragon roared, its fire heralding the end of all life on earth.

“Here is thing we what fight for,” Ivan roared back. “We fight all those battles together, fake battles, for today! Ivan say is for today! Ivan say is to fight! Is you is afraid of army what of hell?”

The reenactors braced themselves with tearful determination. Each fake weapon was held with a firm grip, each face stuck true with hardened purpose. Much to Steve’s horror and surprise, every man, woman, even the cross-dressing Civil War prostitutes in Ivan’s army, cheered a ferocious, “No!”

“Then prepare to charge! And fight with strength of Ivan!”

“Ivan, you idiot, you’re all going to die!” Steve shouted over the cheers.

“Yes. It will be glorious.”

With his fist raised skyward, Ivan looked down upon the slowly advancing army of hell. With a smile on his face, the table-armored man thrust his arm forward and shouted, “Charge!”

Blasting cannons and tanks joined the roar of a thousand mock soldiers shouting a battle cry as they tore down the hill. Semi-automatic rifles crackled a constant repetition as US army surplus-booted men and women ran toward their deaths. The clacking of single-shot black powder rifles joined in the volley as the greatest rebel yell since the battle of Pea Ridge in the actual Civil War, which was fought not far from this location, swelled in their ranks. Swords of plastic and foam clattered against football shoulder pads while the medieval soldiers ran toward their deaths faster than any of their fellow reenactors.

Why were they doing it? For the hell of it, that’s why.

Steve ran with the soldiers to try and stop them. “No, no, turn back! You’re going to die, you idiots!” he shouted in vain. “You’re going to… is that my car?”

Steve nearly tripped over himself when he saw a Japanese compact roaring down the hill alongside the tanks. All over the little car, layered and laurelled like the barding of a warhorse, were dozens of chairs. Chairs with their legs sticking out like spikes. Chairs on the roof, on the sides, and long-legged chairs making a battering ram of the car’s grill. Steve’s car looked like a chair-legged porcupine churning up dirt beside the armored turtles of the tanks surrounding it.

Dmitri drove the chair-armored car. Amidst the blasts from tanks and cannons, Dmitri honked the horn of the car of which Steve had thirteen monthly payments still owed.

As Steve continued to try and stop the running fools, Dawn was busy shouting at the hell knights. Shouting had been less than successful, however, as their stoic faces had barely acknowledged her presence. The evil army was advancing slowly, in thick and steady formation. It was less a charge and more the dark approach of an unstoppable machine.

As such, Dawn changed her tactics. She began summoning bunnies by the dozen and hurling them at Gore’s army. Typically, this was capable of reversing the imbalance of good and evil. The cute bunnies stood in lines, squinting their cute little noses up at the skeletal soldiers, and were stomped into pulp without further acknowledgement.

“The bunnies! They do nothing!” Dawn shouted as she continued to hurl the doomed, white-furred creatures at the uncaring army.

A hail of arrows with tennis ball tips landed at the feet of Gore’s army, just out of range of striking the skeleton foot soldiers and their razor-edged swords. The arrows did strike one of Dawn’s bunnies, however. This didn’t kill the poor creature. The stomping hoof of Gore’s hell-horse did that. Still, the arrow knocked the bunny unconscious so perhaps its death was somewhat less painful.

At the sound of the squishing of an unconscious bunny, Gore raised his sword and kicked his horse hard enough that flames of blood leapt out its sides. The horse reared and charged down the hill. The rest of the army remained at the slow march, but Gore galloped toward Ivan’s army as fast as the hooves of his hell-beast could carry him. Black patches of grass and soil burst into flame with every galloping step of the ferocious horse, making it look like Gore was flying toward Ivan with a rocket to power his speed.

Gore’s charge was so fast, in fact, that he began racing up the hill toward the still-running reenactors. Steve could see the hell knight coming, and realized with wide-eyed shock that Gore was making a beeline toward Ivan.

The table-armored man had only a moment to realize Gore was about to trample him. He braced himself with his table shield planted and his table leg war hammer readied, with the foam tip pointing at Gore’s approaching form. Seeing no reason to be trampled, the sword-wielding reenactors around Ivan leapt away from the charging horse and bared their weapons to encircle Gore once he passed.

Fire leapt from Gore’s roaring mouth. Blackness engulfed his upraised sword. Ivan stood resolute, alone to face the beast.

At the last instant, Gore turned his fiery steed away from Ivan and toward the encircling swordsmen. In one motion, Gore grabbed a foam-tipped sword out of the hands of a wide-eyed reenactor and leapt off his horse, landing behind Ivan and bringing the foam-tipped plastic sword down upon Ivan’s head hard enough that the table-armored man collapsed to the ground.

“Gore has struck you! That is a killing blow! Gore has won,” Gore proclaimed.