What was once a room filled only with horror and the certainty of death had suddenly been inexplicably transformed.

After all, that was what Ethan Hawke did best.

After a few tears, followed by more than a few slaps from his comrades, Ethan found himself laden with Hybrid bodies.

"You – idiot!" Tara yelped in his face. "You couldn't have come just a little bit sooner?"

"The Archon comes only when he needs to," Klax chuckled dryly, slapping a hard paw on Ethan's shoulder as he sagged beneath the weight of his wounds.

"Klax?"

Ethan edged forward with him, holding him upright while he choked out his lungs.

"I – cough – I'll be fine…"

"No time for heroics, big guy," Ethan told him. "We're stopping here and getting you healed up. Same to you, Tara."

The Minxit tried to squeak out a laugh of her own and then promptly collapsed, prompting Ethan to activate his Vine Whip to catch her and lay both of them together on a small intact slab of stone – one that had once been used in this very chamber with far more deadly intent.

"Faun, Lamphrey," Ethan said. "We're gonna need some healing over here."

Faun hadn't moved since Ethan had arrived. She'd simply stared forward, passively, as though she'd seen a ghost rise from the dead.

"Faun?"

She looked at his gnarled oaken Host, and then up at the crimson eye peeking down at her from his hat-form.

"It…it is you," she said. "It's really…you."

Ethan forced a smile from his Drytchling lips. "No one could ever imitate me, Faun. Not even Mr copycat down in the depths of this place."

She stifled a laugh, and then promptly fell to one knee.

"Faun!"

"I – I'm…you're…alive…"

She felt the heat of the vine that wrapped around her and turned into it, letting it wrap her like a lithe blanket.

"Faun?"

She'd already drifted off to sleep by the time he walked over to her.

He scratched his hatty form with one claw, shaking his head in confusion as he did so. He'd never seen the party this drained. This beleaguered.

"What the hell did he do to you guys?" he asked – more a question he was posing to himself than the one Hybrid who was still standing upright in the room.

Yet, it was that same Hybrid that answered.

"We are spent, Archon Ethan," she told him. "The Hopla and I must rest and meditate to recover our mana reserves. Everything we had left, we threw into defeating the abomination that barred out way."

Ethan bent down and brushed a stray hair out of Fauna's sleeping face.

"I came too late," he said, cursing himself under his breath. "I should've gotten here sooner."

I think we came just in time, to be honest! Sys barked. Though I'd rather not spend hours tumbling down through Duskmetal walls again, if we can help it.

"It speaks true," Lamphrey said. "Though the Hopla rose to the challenge, and the rest of us mounted a valiant effort, we would not be here now if you had not intervened when you had."

"Using power that shouldn't be mine, right Lamphrey?"

The Tialax stared at him with a sudden sense of shock, before realizing that he was thinking aloud, not throwing an accusation at her.

"Then we'll rest here," he said with a definitive nod. "As long as we have to."

Lamphrey coughed gruffly. She wasn't exactly in the best shape herself, Ethan noticed, but still, she had to protest:

"The Doctor shall be weakened, now," she said. "I have been tracking the psychic discharge given off with the expiry of each of these beasts. Each of their minds is connected inexorably to the Haylock via a synaptic link embedded in their pre-frontal cortex. After the severing of so many of his homunculi, he is sure to be in a vulnerable state."

"You're suggesting we press our advantage," Ethan said.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"I am suggesting that you go on where we cannot follow. Let me remain to guard our team."

"So logical," Ethan whispered. "You know, if I was still the person I was when I entered this world, I'd probably just agree with you, Lamphrey."

His three available eyes met hers.

"But I'm still part human, remember? I can't ask you or anyone else to suffer for my sake anymore than I already have. These guys have been through a lot. I owe them some respite before we go on. Together."

Lamphrey sighed, sagging under the weight of her own wounds.

"Besides," Ethan added. "You're not exactly fit to guard them. Could you honestly protect the team if the Doc sent another one of those beasts our way?"

"You have chosen what type of leader you are," Lamphrey sighed as she moved to begin applying her Oneiromancer skills to heal Fauna's mind. "I only hope you do not regret this choice."

"I ain't one for looking back," Ethan said. "Not anymore."

How marvelous! The voice of Haylock echoed from the surrounding walls that hadn't crumbled away. How truly, truly touching! The Archon does have a heart, after all? Here I was, thinking we'd reached the deneument already, when the main Act is nary even underway! I must congratulate you, Ethan Hawke, for convincing yourself so thoroughly that these animals are worth saving. Why don't you take a well deserved bo-"

A single flicker of light shot from Ethan's claw towards a small, dark corner of the room. The sound of a spectral bullet smashing through organic matter rung out from the corner, and a small, crushed eye flopped to the ground.

"He just loves to run his mouth," Ethan told Lamphrey as she looked to him in confusion. "You gotta know how to shut him up."

Then, for the first time ever, Ethan noticed the Tialax smile.

Ethan designated the chamber a [SAFE ZONE] for the next hour or so, during which time Lamphrey kept up her healing process, tapping into the minds of all three Hybrids to produce the small slivers of Mana she needed to repair their wounds.

"It's safe?" Ethan asked her as she worked.

"As safe as any spell is in this world," Lamphrey replied. "You cannot take something without giving something in return. The art of siphoning one's Dream Essence and converting it into Mana is…jarring. But not painful. There are no lasting side effects. Aside from a few nightmares."

Ethan watched Fauna twitch in her sleep with doubtful eyes.

"Compared to what they've been through…their minds probably can't conjure up anything worse than this place."

He then told Lamphrey everything he'd seen and fought in this place, confirming that the Doctor had managed to clone each of them in an attempt to mess with Ethan's head. Lamphrey told him the story of how she and Fauna had faced their own trials, and managed to pull through despite the odds stacked against them as two mages walking in the dark.

"I'd have never thought I'd seen the day when you two would actually work together," Ethan grinned as he listened. "All it took was literal nightmare fuel to force you to get along, huh?"

"Fear is a powerful motivator," Lamphrey shrugged.

"True. But you two have history, don't you? Fauna's never seemed so angry compared to when you're around."

Lamphrey sighed heavily, diverting her attention to her continued healing efforts. Ethan decided to let the matter drop.

He hadn't allocated any new Spirit Cores in some time, after all. And he had more than enough to play with:

Current Spirit Cores: 2450

All the skills at his disposal had only continued to grow. He had only continued to grow. And with each mind he touched, he felt himself constantly changing. It was beginning difficult indeed to see where he ended and the minds of his Hosts began. Sometimes, he could even feel little Theo scurrying about his mind these days.

You're telling me, Sys said. Schizophrenic Users are a nightmare for any System to keep track of. You are a minefield of Cogitative Dissonance, Mr Hawke.

Ethan listened to Sys' complaints absent-mindedly as he appraised his current skillset. If the power that was now behind a basic Skill like Skitter was anything to go by, acquiring S-ranked skills was a must. The surge of energy was more than anything he'd ever experienced.

And he'd been neglecting his favorite combo skills, recently:

Dive (Grade A)

Dive DMG: 200

Spirit Cores to increase: 1000

Upgrade confirmed!

Dive (Grade S)

[Unhindered Dive] Unlocked!

Dive can now break through any solid material (excluding sentient life). You do extra DMG to enemies based on your weight.

Wing Buffet (Grade B)

Spirit Cores to increase: 500

Upgrade Confirmed!

{Gale-Force-Gust} Disarm chance increased to 45%

Spirit Cores to Increase: 850

Current Spirit Cores: 950

He could almost hear his old Dark Raven squawking in his mind. He wondered if the bird was still petrified, down there, in the middle of Rachneros' old lair in the Festering Den.

He felt a rumble in his mind at that thought.

Don't worry, he assured his current Host. I won't be leaving you anywhere. I'm no callous Archon, anymore.

But the thought had sparked something in him. He had connections with his past Hosts, but not with his past selves. Not even Sys had knowledge of what the previous Archons had been like.

Though they probably had just an ounce more style than you. Just saying. I mean, unless you'll be possessing a dragon anytime soon, I don't think you can match up to old Karfanng himself.

There's still time yet, Ethan smirked.

But the thought wouldn't leave him. So, as the team was healing up, he decided it was time to ask Lamphrey a burning question.

"You knew them all," he said. "The Archons. You served them with your 'sisterhood', didn't you?"

Now the Tialax stopped abruptly. She fixed on him out the corner of her eye.

"I did," she said simply.

Ethan stepped forward massively, laying a claw on the slab beside her where Tara lay, her chest lightly rising and falling as the lizardwoman worked her magic.

"I've put my trust in you to be a guide," he said. "To tell me things I need to hear. To get a different perspective. And now, to heal the people I care about the most in this world."

"You believe I do not trust you," Lamphrey replied.

"I believe you think I'm not ready to hear certain things you know. That I'm still a fledgling Archon. But look at me, Lamphrey. Having gone through what I have, and seen what I've seen, and watched the choices I've made, can you still say I'm not ready to hear about my heritage?"

She turned fully to face him now, staring up at him with those cold, serious, and calculating eyes that she always wore when she had him alone. Out of anyone he'd ever met, she was the only person who could make him feel so strangely…small, in comparison to what he was.

"It may be a heritage that is worth forgetting," she told him.

"I'll make that choice," he replied. "After you've told me everything you know about them."

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