In A Hundred Doors, part two of The Crimson Bears, the young naive bears, Edgar and Alice, find themselves trapped and forced to serve in the civil war being fought out across the animal metropolis of Bargeton. Their many questions are all answered in ways they neither expected nor desired, as they watch enemies turn to allies and kin to strangers, and witness plots hatching and thickening into dreadful outcomes. A long contest of wills and voices -- rivalries to wear a shape, the confrontation of the Pretender Filbitto with the Mechanical Felip, the books Alice reads by the light of a pyre of household goods -- all culminate in the agon of Lord Skaling and Thoog and the Great Golden Bear in Mole Place. The victory is bitter.