Lucent, Castle Lysandus

Ethan stared down at the inert body of Viscount Mobius.

He'd just finished possessing his corpse and taking the main skills he wanted from the old man:

Arms of the Vigil (Grade A)

You summon the holy blades of Krea, creating up to 10 Spirit Swords with the [Tracking] property.

Each blade deals 300 pts of Spirit DMG and can target any foes within your line of sight.

Spirit DMG cannot be blocked

Cooldown: 5 minutes

Blade Barrier (Grade A)

You create up to 10 Spirit Swords that spin in a 15ft radius around you. Each blade can deflect up to 300 pts of DMG each.

This is the only Skill that may deflect SPIRIT DMG

*Note: This skill cannot be used at the same time as [Arms of the Vigil]

Cooldown: 5 minutes

Revok had snatched him back up the second he was finished. The possession was necessary not only for the useful skill acquisition, but to verify if the revelation from the old man had been true.

As Ethan looked through his memories, he found, to his horror, that not only were his words true…but the situation was worse than he imagined.

He saw a beam of light that struck castle Lysandus and heralded the arrival of the Angel. Artorious was back, and he was far, far stronger than ever. Putting two and two together wasn't hard: the old bastard had been biding his time, probably still stuck in the City of Illusions all this time, and with the death of Jun'Ei, he'd been set free.

But Ethan's expectation had always been that he'd have nowhere to go – that he'd await him here with all of his Greycloak minions and bide his time, maybe gather strength, maybe hope that Ethan would be worn down by the Greys as they threw their fleet and city defenses against him.

Yet it had been worse even than that. Everyone he'd killed – they were supposed to die. To the thing that old Arty had now become, and to the God who had housed all his divine power in him, all the Greycloaks, and all the regular humans who hadn't surrender against the Archon, were nothing but sacrifices. Just pawns, who's deaths had been foretold by the Law of Kaedmon long ago. The God was simply collecting his due.

That was why Mobius had been so ready to die. He'd seen his demise – and the demise of the city he was meant to watch over – well before Ethan had come along. All he'd been doing up here was distracting the Archon. He knew he couldn't win. And yet, he'd fought anyway.

That notion angered Ethan more than anything else he'd been through, and his three heads let out a bestial roar that rocked the foundations of the city, cracking the walls and battlements that still stood and sending them to the ground.

"Sanctum," he breathed. "I have to go back – now. If its not already too late."

He cursed himself for not being two steps ahead of his enemy. But he also acknowledged that he wasn't out of time yet. He flapped his wings, leaped into the air, and was about to make a mad dive for the Ashfall mountains –

Hold on a second.

Sys' voice pecked at his brain.

Sys, whatever you've got to say, you can tell me on the way to Sanctum.

That's just it, Sys replied, a hint of sorrow touching his normally apathetic voice. Is that where you're going, Ethan?

Obviously!

He hovered in the air, watching the burning city beneath him, smelling the scents of charred flesh wafting up from what buildings were still standing.

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…are you telling me I shouldn't go?

I'm telling you that there's a choice, here. Remember the mission Jun'Ei sent you on? With Westerweald collapsed, you could be halfway to Mistborne Isle by now with little opposition. Eastmarch won't be able to stop you. By the time you take Kaedmon's head, they won't even know you've done it.

Ethan shook his head.

I can't leave them.

Remember your predecessors, Ethan, Sys sighed. Moratavious thought as you did. His undoing was his desire to protect the hybrids who had come to see him as their only hope. His enemies knew that his compassion was his weakness. And they exploited it.

Ethan blinked. You're telling me this is a trap.

Of course it is.

And you are telling me to let them all die down there.

For a few moments, Sys made no reply.

…I can't force you to do anything, he finally said. I can only tell you that there's another option here. There's another path that doesn't lead you right into the arms of an enemy that we don't even know if we can beat. You're almost halfway to your goal. Who's to say that, when you take up the mantle of Kaedmon, you couldn't just resurrect anyone who you lost along the way?

Ethan couldn't believe what he was hearing. And yet, he also saw the logic in it.

If he was a hero in the kinds of stories he'd read back on earth, he'd always complain when the protagonist made a decision that wasn't directly beneficial to him. He'd always moan that the author wanted to push some kind of cliché 'friendship is true power' message. He'd given up on plenty of stories that did that.

…but now, here he was, in one.

And he wasn't living vicariously through a character that allowed him to fulfill his own desires for a truly meritocratic world that he knew, in the small of his mind, didn't exist. Now, it was just him and his own convictions.

And the people down there in Sanctum were no less solid or real than he was up here.

It's your call, Ethan, Sys told him as he wavered in the skies above Lucent. I'll back you whatever you decide. So, what's it gonna be?

Sanctum

Fauna's heart was in her ears as she sprinted forward with the others, propelling them with an enhanced spell of Fleetfoot down the winding stairwell of Sanctum towards the main entrance tunnel.

When they finally made it there, they couldn't believe their eyes.

The place had been transformed since their departure into a venerable fortress. The once vacant entrance tunnel was a killing field, lined with the bloodied bodies of Greycloaks and monsters alike. Few Hybrids themselves dotted the battlefield/

"Looks like they gave the Greys a run for their money," Tara commented.

The others agreed, though the sentiment rang hollow in Fauna's ears. Especially considering what was looming ahead of them.

"By the Archon…"

Klax was the first one to spot it – the long, dark trench that had been seared into the ground in the middle of the battlefield and ran right up to the palisade that the Hybrids had erected to protect their home.

The wall had been utterly torn apart.

Sprinting towards what remained of the ramparts, Fauna saw nothing but ashes and the skeletal remains of the Hybrids that had manned the walls.

"No…no…"

She clutched her staff tightly, trying to keep herself from falling onto the barren, ashen ground. The Hybrid defenders never stood a chance against whatever force had come against them and seared the fleshd from their bones.

"Who could have done..?"

Klax's question was answered by Tara slamming her fist into the broken wall. She grit her teeth, her mind filled with agony and sorrow in equal measure.

"You know who," she spat. "We all do. The old bastards here."

Fauna was frantically scanning the charred bones, looking for any that seemed smaller than the others…

And then, suddenly, she felt the scaled hand of Lamphrey on her shuddering shoulder.

"The battle is not lost yet," the Tialax said. "Look you towards the North tunnel."

The entire party did so, and noted the strange odour that was spilling out from the tunnel at the far end of the soldiers' camp. A strange, dense fog that tasted oddly of mustard was wafting out from the tunnel's depths.

"What is that?" Tara sniffed, finding the gas unpleasant but not at all harmful.

And Klax, with his canine eyes ever alert and focused, came forward.

"The Greys," he said. "Look – they're everywhere."

The party crept forward into the dark recesses of the North tunnel, their paws crunching down on bone marrow and dust. Amidst the strange, oddly smelling vapors of the gas, even Fauna's Magelight spell wouldn't afford them light. The gas was thick enough to expel it before she could even properly cast the spell.

"Shit!" Tara exclaimed as she stepped in something wet and viscous, looking down and thinking that she'd see the blood of her fallen comrades beneath her.

Instead, she saw that she'd just trodden on a Greycloak's body. Or, at least, what looked like a Greycloak's body.

"Faun," she whispered. "Get a look at this."

Fauna cast her dim light over the ground and, with a gasp, caught sight of the image of a hollowed-out human skull, its eyes and mouth totally vacant, and its limbs totally shriveled away to mere thimbles of flesh.

And this wasn't the only one. As the party advanced at pace down the tunnel, they saw that the ground was practically covered in Greycloak bodies, each of their silvery eyes seemingly plucked from their skulls by some life-devouring phantom.

"You think this gas – was one of our weapons?"

Fauna's question drew nothing but confusion from Klax. Tara, meanwhile, had been putting two-and-two together.

"There's only one person who'd come up with a weapon this deadly," she murmured.

Just as she said it the team came to another broken barricade halfway down the tunnel. The corpses of Hybrid magi lay beaten, bloody, and swollen, but at least twenty Greycloaks lay around them, their bodies in a far worse state than the hybrids they'd fought against.

"Rest well, Sisters," Tara said as she crouched down next to the Minxit Mages. "You gave those bastards hell. Made them see exactly what we're made of down here."

"We can avenge them," Klax told her. "If this tunnel is anything to go by, the Greys didn't get far."

"But was it enough to kill him?" Fauna asked, eyes dead-set on the darkness beyond. "I don't think a simple gas could take the Lightborn down so easily, Klax."

"…you would…be right."

The entire party turned abruptly, weapons raised and ready as a doorway opened to their left.

And a few familiar faces stepped out to meet them.

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