“Well, someone’s lookin’ a lot…stiffer than usual.”

  The group had met up in the quarters Malak and the druids provided them on the topmost balcony of the Grove. The room was simple, five beds set with vines and twisting branches, as though they had been grown from the bowels of the Albion tree itself. Their soft mattresses were, however, strangely soft to the touch.

  Everyone was here except Lamphrey, who had been sighted walking the Grove with some druid guides. Ethan was fine with that. The lizardwoman was in her own little world, most of the time. Let her learn what she could about this place, maybe her eyes could find out things they couldn’t.

  But he’d have to talk to her soon. There were too many questions eating at him about that old gal…

  In the meantime, he winked at Tara with his new oaken eyes.

  “You could say I’m a stickler for power. Eh?”

  “What the Archon lacks in humor, he makes up for in strength,” Klax chuckled from his bed.

  “Lucky us he don’t need dad jokes to kick ass, especially against our new enemies.”

  Ethan bristled against the assault on his sense of humor, even as Tara’s allusion to the Doctor filled everyone with a collective shiver.

  “It felt…awful,” Fauna said, busy playing with one of the Drytchling infants in her bed. “That magic – his magic – it’s old, and forbidden. I can’t believe the Greycloaks let him be the guardian of their prison.”

  “Can’t you?” Tara asked. “Way I see it, those bastards don’t care about the means. It’s all about ends. Now that that bitch Argent’s dead, though, the old Doctor’s on his own.”

  “Which means he is vulnerable,” Klax nodded. “But we must proceed with caution. Any wrong move, and he could slay the prisoners before we make it to the island.”

  An awkward silence descended. It was clear that Tara still wasn’t sure Jun’Ei was even alive.

  “I’m not sure about that,” Ethan said. Then, as Klax’s eyes widened: “He’s…a certain type of guy, this Doctor. I can’t explain it but as he worked his magic on me, I could feel it. The sick sense of satisfaction he gets from playing with his enemies. He sees them as toys. He’s like a cat, torturing its prey. He wants us to come to him. He wants the chase, and the thrill of being hunter and hunted all at once. He enjoys it.”

  The party stared at him, questioning the strange anger that had come over his eyes.

  “I can see it in the head of this Host,” Ethan explained. “This ‘Doctor’ has been around here for years – for the past century at least. He doesn’t care if he lives or dies. He doesn’t care if anybody lives or dies. All he wants is…control…”

  Ethan stopped, came back to his senses.

  “You know what? I think I’m gonna stick to making inappropriate jokes.”

  “Rather get some shut eye,” Klax yawned. “We have a big day of training tomorrow before we’re ready to take the fight to the Blood Mage.”

  Everyone agreed.

  “Faun?” Klax asked before lights out. “Faun – come on, you have to get rid of that thing…”

  “His name is Sir Woodward,” Fauna huffed, feigning a pout. “And he wants to stay here with us…”

  While they bickered like a father and his wayward daughter, Tara took Ethan aside.

  “Listen,” she said. “About earlier…”

  But the oak-skinned Archon held up a sharp claw.

  “It’s forgotten about, Tara,” he said with a wooden grin. “You could say, I’ve grown past it.”

  …

  Ethan spent most of his remaining time in the Grove adjusting to his new form. The Drytchling was another humanoid, sure, but its slim form was deceptively cumbersome to move.

  His old form, meanwhile, had been given the choice. He’d looked down at the little Salamandrike when he’d assumed control of the Drytchling Prime, and the little critter had seemed rather bemused by all accounts. It cocked its head at him as he told it that it now had a choice, stay and fight with them, or [Skitter] off back to the surface.

  It had chosen the latter, and he’d allowed it to leave the Grove in peace. Who knows? Maybe like Theo the Undead Slaying Rat, the little guy would become some almighty hero to his people one day.

  In any case, with the Salamandrike gone, he turned his efforts to training – to mastering his new body and its plethora of skills.

  With Tara and Fauna as his cheerleaders, he mastered the Root March skill first, attuning his body to the roots of the grand Albion tree and using it to move around the Grove freely (albeit with a few mishaps…let’s just say he’d ended up in a few rooms he hadn’t meant to the first few times around…and seen some very old, very naked Druid ass that he hadn’t bargained for…)

  He sparred with the girls to practice his new Vine Boom – an intricate series of quick attacks that compensated for his relative lack of AOE attacks besides the aftereffects of Dive. The whip-like splinters that he launched with the attack proved to be more than effective at keeping numerous foes at bay – but an unintended side-effect of the skill was the fact the vines could intercept projectiles – including magical ones. Tara’s enchanted knives were batted away, and Fauna’s spectral missiles were dissipated as soon as his vines touched them. So, really, Vine Boom doubled as both an offensive and defensive tool to be added to his arsenal. Thorn Hail, meanwhile, added a new spread attack to his arsenal. Using it, he produced a series of blistering thorns from his wooden skin that could cause [Bleeding] damage over time. Combined with Poison Coating, these could put a big dent in even the most heavily armored creature.

  Stolen story; please report.

  As Ethan trained, Klax meditated with Malak and the Druid circle, seemingly more at peace than he’d ever been in a long while. Ethan could sense the change in him, these days. The prospect of Jun’Ei being in the clutches of that Blood Mage Doctor had chilled him, but it hadn’t managed to quieten his resolve. He’d said the night before that she was alive. And he was right. He had to be. So, he gave his Archon all the time he needed to prepare for the assault to come.

  And it would be an assault – of that, old Malak was certain. Ethan would have to break through the Doctor’s defenses at Sentinel. And, if what the old codger said was true, they were extensive.

  Then there was the matter of protecting his companions.

  “We can bestow each one of you with a piece of the Albion bark,” Malak told them when they stubbornly refused to let Ethan go to the town alone. “It will provide temporary protection against the Red One’s Blood Magic. But the effects will only last for, at best, nine hours. I strongly recommend you remain with us, here in the Grove, and await the Archon’s wo-“

  Ethan held up a barkskin hand. “No point arguing with these guys,” he explained. “Afraid they’ve made their minds up. Where I go, they go.”

  “Damn right,” Tara hissed.

  Preparations were already underway. They’d attack at night – in about 5 hours. That’s when the Spectator unit’s visibility would be low. And it’s when most of the humans would be out of commission. Even if they were slaves to that lunatic, they still needed rest like any other beings.

  Ethan thought of Malak’s words when he’d voiced his desire to convert the humans to their cause. They were words that seemed all too familiar – words he’d heard time and time again in his capacity as the new Archon of Argwyll:

  They are already too far down the path of wretchedness. Fear has taught them to obey. Fear will teach them to fight you every step of the way. And, in a way, it is that fear that shall kill them.

  He didn’t know why, but it was those words that made him wander tonight, away from his friends at the base of the Albion tree, and look for the one person who didn’t seem to be joining in on the fun.

  He found her at the highest balcony overlooking the Grove, silently observing everyone from above, apart and aloof.

  “Nice evening for a stroll, ain’t it?”

  She barely turned as she replied, “The moon of Argwyll is down, Archon. This hour is that most favored by our kind.”

  By ‘our kind’, he didn’t really know what she meant.

  He came to stand beside her, Drychling fingers synthesizing with the wooden beams of the balcony, feeling the brimming, blooming life of the great tree they were connected to.

  “There’s a reason you decided to come with me,” he told her. “And it’s not out of the goodness of your heart.”

  He didn’t know what made him speak those words. They were neither an accusation, nor a question.

  She sighed, a smile picking at the corners of her scaled mouth.

  “I do not deny that I am here for my own reasons, my Archon.”

  “But you won’t tell me what they are?”

  “I cannot answer a question I do not yet know the answer to.”

  Ethan fought against the desire to roll his three available eyes – just a tad. He didn’t know why he expected anything more than a philosophical answer from the old snake.

  He was beginning to regret starting this conversation at all. And yet, somehow, he couldn’t doubt that bringing her with him had been the right decision.

  “So…you know you’re here for yourself, but you don’t know…exactly…what you’ll get out of this.”

  She smiled. “A more succinct summary of life I could not make, my Archon.”

  He couldn’t say he shared her humor. In fact, every word that dripped from her mouth was chilling him. But more pertinent was Fauna’s warning, echoing in his mind, coupled with his own suspicions.

  “Malak said that I called him to us in the forest,” he said. “But that’s not true, is it? The fact is, you called him to us.”

  Her smile didn’t falter. “The mind is my weapon, Archon Ethan. I wield it just as you wield the powers your System bestows on you. As the Blood fiend twisted my body, my mind reached out. It found those nearby who were convenient for us. And they have given us what we need.”

  “You’re talking about these guys like they’re nothing but pawns, Lamphrey,” Ethan replied, staring down at Fauna playing with the baby Drytchlings below, then laughing as they nipped at Tara’s tail.

  “Aren’t they?”

  The chill in her voice was unmistakable, now. He looked at her, through her veil, and saw there was no humor in her eyes.

  “What do you want, Lamphrey?” he asked. It was the only question on his mind.

  And she answered him with far more bluntness than he’d come to expect from her: “I want only what I chose to want a long time ago – to be a guide to the Archon, no matter who wears that mantle.”

  Ethan’s eyes narrowed. “And where is it you want to guide me, exactly?”

  “Towards the truth, which you are so close to, and yet lack the proper eyes to see,” she said, perhaps more vehemently than she’d meant to. When Ethan’s eyes held firm, questioning her in silence, she explained:

  “Kaedmon’s Law can be broken, but it is a symptom of a greater problem: the problem of duality. Of good and evil.”

  She looked up into the tallest branches of the Albion tree, her old eyes seeming to twist round its every branch and twig as they moved forwards its center.

  “Evil rises, is defeated by Good, and on and on it goes ad-infinitum. Every century, a new Archon, a new Lightborn, and all the while the people of the world suffer unimaginable cruelties, their civilizations devastated and rebuilt over and over again. One may overturn Kaedmon’s Law, but replacing it with another divine mandate would be like plugging a hole in the ocean with sandpaper.”

  Ethan nodded, understanding. “You’re telling me that trying to re-write the Law is pointless, then?”

  Her neutral gaze betrayed nothing out of the ordinary. And yet, he got the sense that this was some pivotal junction – that the question he’d just asked was far more important than he thought it was.

  “Control,” she said. “Over your destiny, and over your self. That is why you came here, Ethan, is it not?”

  He nodded again, slowly. He couldn’t lie. Not to her.

  “You wish for control, Ethan, because it has been denied to you your entire life. But if that is so, then why do you help these humans and their Grove? Because it furthers your goal of finding the Prophet Jun’Ei? Of saving these Hybrids? The notion is cyclical. All these goals were given to you. Bestowed on you on a whim, just like they were on every Archon before you. You have had no more say in coming here than any of us had when we were born, crying out in pain and confusion, into this world of constant strife.”

  He couldn’t fault her logic. But his mind raged against her conclusion.

  “I’ve been given power, and the means to attain more. Are you asking me to just stop?”

  Her face changed as he asked that question. She wore the kind of expression that made you feel like an idiot for saying something that was so obviously ludicrous.

  And yet, even as she whispered softly to him her reply, he still couldn’t understand what she meant:

  “True power cannot be given,” she said.“It comes from the self, or it does not come at all.”

  He double-blinked, thinking of all the times he’d been there to talk his party members out of some mental blockade, or quiet the resurgence of a traumatic memory. As she walked away from him with a slight bow, he stood at the balcony dumbfounded, his new lambent eyes glowing with confusion.

  Had he just been psychoanalyzed?

  “You don’t want me to take Kaedmon’s place, do you?” he asked.

  She stopped, shifting her veil slightly, her tail arching up her back in silent admission.

  “When you asked me back in Triant if I wanted to become a God…was that a test?”

  He saw the side of her head tilt towards him, and the corners of her mouth shift ever so slightly in a smile before she walked away, leaving the Archon to his thoughts.

  But there was one person in the Grove who had been listening to the whole conversation. Keen-eared and sharp-eyed, Fauna the Hopla unsummoned her Mage Eye at the base of the balcony and kept up her charade of playing with the Drytchling infants at the foot of the Albion tree, not letting her inner distress be known to those around her.