"Any world," he says, teeth gritted, "with more Fiore DeRosas in it I would consider to be a worse one, yes. The one was too many. The realization of how closely I resembled him, frankly, was most unpleasant."

He pauses. "You're fighting over the genre of the next cycle," he says. "Whether it's an epic, a tragedy, a comedy." He tips his glass at Psyche at that last, using comedy in the traditional sense, a story that ends in a wedding. "With us as your knights - that part, I understood."

He thinks. "And how are these battles waged? One tale at a time?"