"Do you see now, Archon?"

Ethan's gaze was hidden from the sight of his friends as they looked down on him. The air was being slowly drained from them as Haylock's electrified vines crushed their esophageal tracts.

"Well?" the mad doctor yelled from within his Chimera. "Do you see?"

Revok's three heads charged a triadic blast of magical energy – each one's maw open and bunring with a lambent red, green and blue. Enough power to fell an entire city.

"Well?!" Haylock demanded. "DO YOU SEE!?"

Ethan looked up at his creation and met all of its eyes with those of his Host.

No, Sys said. It's not your Host that's here, now. Right now, it's you. The real you, Ethan.

Haylock edged his beast forward, his voice giddy as his excitement reached a crescendo.

"DO YOU S-"

The sudden flux of power that radiated from Ethan cut him off completely. His demon-eye was glowing with a shade of crimson that far outshined the light show of the Chimera.

"Yes," he said. "I see."

[Thorn Hail]

[Ice Barrage]

A scattering storm of thorns flew from his every pore, each one crystalizing in the air into ice-encrusted missiles that shot right through the Chimera's fleshy appendages. Each hybrid instantly fell from its grip, and the beast roared as it fired its blast directly at Ethan's rising body.

But the Demon Hat was faster, this time. With a reactive activation of [Ethereal Form] he flew right into the fire and emerged in the face of the Chimer's lion maw.

He creature tried to bite down on him, but instead met the full fury of his sword:

[Twilight Edge]

[Petrification Coating]

Greybane surged with power as shadow wrapped itself along its blade and it was thrust right between the great lion-head's eyes. Then, with a twisting of the blade, Ethan injected it full of his Petrification coating, watching as the creature's maw slowly became engulfed by stone like a cancer creeping across its flesh.

The goat and snake heads flew to glamp their jaws down on him, but each met the searing strike that shot forth from Ethan's legs:

[Spectral Snipe] x2

Right through his oaken toes, Ethan sent two threads of power between the eyes of the Chimera's heads and heard them cry out in pain, purple and green blood spurting from the double headshot. He shimmied himself on his sword and used the momentum of his strikes to jump right on top of the creature, bringing Greybane, coated with the crimson blood of the lion-head, with him.

"M-miraculous!" Haylock screamed beneath him. "Simply miraculous! Oh, my dear sweet Archon. You really have shown up for this fight after all!"

Ethan ignored the mad bastard's cries. He lifted his blade high and roared as he stabbed it into the shoulder of the heaving, shuddering Chimera. He'd dig Haylock's head out even if he had to rip this creature apart piece by bloody piece.

Suddenly, he felt the beast lurch beneath him.

"Ah, ah ahhh!" Haylock taunted. "We won't be making things that easy for you!"

Revok's fleshy vines sprung from its back again, each one grabbing Ethan by his torso and pinning him to the creature's back.

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"Come, Archon. Let us see just how much you can ta-"

Once again, the Doctor's taunting died in his throat. Ethan gripped the vine prison with his mouth and channeled [Winterbreath], instantly freezing the once-strong binds and letting him simply break through them like they were meagre lengths of rope.

He squared himself, dug his claws into the Chimera's back, and drove his blade into its back again.

Revok let out a cry of pain that tore through the castle courtyard, destroying the grand gateway to Griffon's watch and smashing apart the stained-glass windows that depicted the might of Krea across the castle towers. The beast tried to shake him off, bashing into the already crumbling walls of the towers to no avail, and eventually it did the only other thing it could do: took to the air.

With a flap of its demonic wings, it leaped into the night sky, trailing blood and viscera across the moonlit night with it. Ethan held firm, slashing with wild abandon, ignoring the screams of the beast, watching as its HP continuously dropped with every slash, every stab, every arc of pain he drew across its bulging back.

1900/2500

1820/2500

1745/2500

All the while, he watched it's Willpower drop, too. Slowly, but surely – no doubt slowed down by Revok's pure joy every time Ethan slashed through another portion of his mutant's muscles.

"THAT'S IT, ARCHON!" he wailed in orgasmic bliss. "THAT IS HOW WE END OUR DANCE! Oh, the way you move…the way you scream…let us make this a night that the world shall remember, Ethan! Let us die as we were meant to, my dear, misguided mortal…together!"

And with a scream of fury on his lips, Ethan was carried off into the night.

…

Tara was the first to regain consciousness in the courtyard.

Her head stung like a bitch, but the pain was nothing knew. Her body had taken on far worse before.

She blinked through the blurred reality of the world to see her comrades spread around her, each one a bloody, bruised mess.

Someone touched her arm firmly, and she twisted, ready to jam her dagger into the monster's throat.

Instead, she saw Fauna staring down at her.

"Don't move," she said. "I've got you, sis."

Tara lowered her weapon only after touching Fauna's cheek – just to tell herself that the person in front of her really was her companion and not some other doppleganger.

She'd had enough of them, recently.

She winced as Fauna applied her healing magic on her arm.

"I…I think it's broken," Tara groaned.

The Hopla shook her head. "No. Nothing's broken. Not…for long. We'll have you up in a few moments. Then, we'll get right back in the game."

Tara looked at the sweat that was beading across the Hopla's furry, bloodsoaked brow.

"Faun, you gotta sit down."

Fauna shook her head. "No. No – we – we need to get back up. We need to get up and help Ethan. He – he needs us."

Tara looked to the cloud-covered skies above, and saw the monster that Haylock had created flying erratically beneath the moon. It slammed into the castle turrets, twirled like some macabre dancer around the battlements, and crashed through entire sections of the walls, throwing stone and Duskmetal into the seabed beneath.

He's gonna bring this whole place down…and us with it. That's his game. Old bastard never wanted to win this fight. He wanted to die here…with us.

Tara caught Fauna's hand as she attempted to fix up her bloody leg.

"Faun," she said. "We came here to find a prisoner. We found her. Now, we gotta get her out."

"But – but Eth-"

"He's got his own fight," Tara told her. "This one's ours. We can't take that monster down. But we can make sure that we didn't come here in vain. All this…shit."

For a moment, Tara could swear that she could see her old sisters in Fauna's eyes. Like little ghosts, her slavemates danced before her.

"…it's gotta be worth it, somehow."

Amidst the roars of Ethan and the Chimera, a sudden, guttural grunt emanated from the rubble behind them. From beneath a section of cracked courtyard wall, Klax emerged, holding his bloody ribcage with both his paws.

"Klax…"

He didn't even act like he heard Fauna say his name. The old dog limped forward, not looking at anyone but the dark doorway that led back up to the central tower of the dungeon.

"Klax!" Fauna shouted louder. "Klax – wait. You need healing!"

The dogman didn't stop. He simply gave her a sidelong look, and limped away.

"Klax!"

"I'm going to her," he said – in a voice that was far darkly, and dryer, than they'd ever heard him use before. "I – she needs me."

Fauna looked aghast as the old dog pushed her attempts to heal him away. She then looked to Tara, who rose, cracked her back with a groan, and then sighed.

"Dogbrain…C'mon, Faun. You can heal us on the way."

The Hopla hesitated. She looked from Tara, to the departing Klax, and then up at the moon of Argwyll and the creatures locked in battle beneath it.

And then suddenly, Lamphrey was beside her. Her scales were cracked, her staff was gone. And her tattered robes barely clung to her body any more.

"The Minxit speaks true," she said. "This fight is meant for the Archon. It was always meant for the Archon. We must see to the Prophet. Only through her guidance will Argwyll have a future. And this chaos shall have purpose."

Tara limped forward to take Fauna by the shoulder.

"Even half dead, you're still a spooky bitch…but she's right, Faun. We gotta go."

Fauna nodded tentatively, and, though she followed Klax back into the nightmare den, she kept her eyes on her Archon for as long as she could.

Because in the moment when he'd risen from the courtyard, she'd seen something in him that she'd seen before, back in Sentinel.

Only this time it seemed far more powerful than it had back then.

Ethan, she thought. Please don't lose yourself…

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