A/N: DarkPaladin000, Scamandros is there! He's the Designated Exposition Sorcerer.
War. War never changes. That's why our hero was thrust into it.
After a bit of MORE exposition with a surprise cameo by Pravuil flaunting his new higher-than-a-hiphop-artist status, Arthur realized that serious chaos was beginning to erupt. One creepy-ass Nithling from two books back had sabotaged his already-withering plan of escape back to Earth, and his two former opponents had been killed ~*magically*~. Yes, that's right. Lazy Hot Guy and Tuesday were respectively stabbed and pushed into a pit of Nothing by an unknown assassin. However, since Arthur could probably care a little more about them, they were soon forgotten in favor of the aformentioned creepy-ass Nithling. Since Leaf seemed to have forgotten that she could go back right home there and then (albeit without Arthur), she became the new audience surrog- I mean, she decided to stay with Arthur as a secondary companion. A little while later, Arthur began to really freak out. In the past few books, he had been constantly bombarded with reminders that constantly using his Keys would slowly turn him into a Denizen. Luckily, Doctor Scamandros (the designated exposition sorcerer) had a MacGuffin just on hand. It showed Arthur exactly how close he was to becoming super tall and super hot, which at that moment was already a little too close for comfort. So our hero sucked it up, bit the bullet, and got to work. He allowed Leaf to somehow take down the Nithling, while he planned his modus operandi for Sir Thursday's poor little ass. Just as he was about to take off, he suddenly got a letter from Uncle Sam.
Yes, that's right.
Arthur was enlisted into the Army.
This is the point shit went down in what could possibly be the thickest book in the entire series.
Everything that transpired when the viewpoints split can only be briefly described. Leaf got stuck in the hospital and was infected by the mind-control spores of the Nithling. Arthur got trained, met a new party member, and had his memory wiped. Leaf ran to an kind old lady who patched her up. Arthur remembered some of himself. Kind old lady helped Leaf get to Arthur's House phone. Arthur got a threatening letter from Saturday. Leaf gave Suzy the Nithling's core. Arthur learned how to ride horses, was ordered to ride to army headquarters, and remembered more of himself. Suzy had a close call with some bishonen of Saturday's make whose identity was made extremely confusing via typos. Arthur completely remembered himself and got to Marshal Noon's fort, where he met up with Suzy and the plotlines finally converged.
Finally, our heroes got a glimpse of The Man himself. Sir Thursday was an angry little midget who whisked them all off to this huge-ass Nothing spike in the middle of nowh- the center of the entire f*cking Great Maze. Of course, it was inevitably all screwed up when Thursday got so angry in the midst of the operation that he killed 2 kids. Everybody made callout posts for him, and soon Arthur got the Key, freed the will, etc. However, nothing was particularly done yet. Arthur confronted the Piper and his sexy, sexy voice, but the Will ended the conversation early by spitting poison in the latter's face.
Afterwards, the whole series plunged into the deep abyss of darkness and edginess.