Tara, Klax, and a Fauna slept soundlessly in the foreboding dark of Griffon's Watch. In the small expanse of time that had elapsed since the destruction of the Hoplax Wildmancer, Ethan had explored the adjacent room and found nothing but a ruby-lit elevator that no doubt led further into the depths.

To where the Doctor was waiting for them.

No doubt weakened and binded to their actions, Ethan fancied that he must be getting anxious. Yet he also doubted that the sadistic human even felt that emotion. If anything, it seemed the crazy bastard wanted Ethan to make it to him. Maybe he wanted to have his life end at the claws of the Archon. He was the kind of guy who'd probably derive some sick pleasure from that.

So, you're going to afford Haylock the benefit of mercy? Sys asked as he returned to his friends and Lamphrey in the inner chamber.

Ethan shook his head.

"Mercy's for those who aren't so far gone that they can't make a change," Ethan said aloud. "Carliah Argent couldn't. She wanted this world to be hers, or a crumbling ruin at her feet. Haylock – well – as far as I know he just wants to make us suffer. I'm thinking the world would be better off without him."

Well said, Sys told him. It's your call to make, after all.

Something about the way Sys said this – aloud- made Lamphrey turn to meet Ethan as he entered the room. She'd been taking the time between her Oneiromancy healing sessions to meditate and conserve her own energy. Now, her Mana essence was almost fully charged. Ethan could feel it – the intensity behind her piercing gaze was back again.

I get the feeling she doesn't like me…Sys murmured.

"No," Ethan chuckled. "You? How could someone detest such a little charmer."

He sat cross-legged along from Lamphrey on a bloody slab that had once contained the bones of one of Haylock's experiments.

"How are they looking?" he asked her.

Lamphrey nodded calmly and set down her stave.

"They shall awaken within the hour. My magicks have worked overcharged for the last few minutes. I predict that the Hopla will be the first to rise. She is strong in the ways of spellcraft and willpower. She will be able to speed up the healing process for the rest."

Ethan brushed a stray hair out of Fauna's fringe, watching her little open mouth inhale and exhale as though she wasn't in the middle of a torture chamber.

"You're telling me," Ethan grinned. "This Hopla's proven herself time and time again to be the strongest among us."

"Her flame burns bright, my Archon. It will burn brighter still, and win you many victories, until the End."

Ethan sighed and shook his oaken head at her. "You really just see people's value as based on their usefulness, don't you?"

"I have learned that emotional attachment tends to cloud one's judgement. My Sisterhood has always practiced – as you humans call it – 'professional distance'."

"Very human. And which Archon did you learn that from?"

The Tialax fixed him with her burning eyes again. She'd been cagey ever since he'd commanded that she tell him about the others – about the heritage that she seemed to wish him to forget about.

"I know what you want to know," she told him. "I have known for some time. It is your right. Perhaps even your birthright in this world. But I thought that, perhaps, it would be from the Prophet Jun'Ei that you would see the things you wish to know…"

She trailed off, her brow furrowing as the thought of Jun'Ei seemed to take her over.

"Lamphrey…"

"She was our greatest benefactor," the lizardwoman explained. "Strong, wise, and yet also compassionate. Naturally, it is the latter trait that led to her capture."

"And the same trait that made those she left behind want to rescue her."

Lamphrey breathed deeply, coughing in the dark, dry expanse of the castle chamber.

"So be it," she said. "I shall show you all that which I know. But be warned that my memories themselves are clouded by time, and my own woes."

"I'm surprised to hear that you have any ounce of guilt in you at all. You've been nothing but the consummate professional mage so far."

"Even the strongest creatures in this world have our failings," she said as she positioned herself before him, kneeling and placing a scaled hand on his. "It is itself a part of Kaedmon's Law. Every being has a weakness. Every being bleeds. Every being suffers. And we feel it. It is the greatest curse the old God gave us: the curse of conscious experience."

Ethan felt her hand radiate a green cloud of energy. His own gnarled claws thrummed with power as her Mana flowed through him, running through his oaken arteries to enter his brain.

"To know the things you wish to know, you must not hear them, but feel them. You will look through my eyes, and you shall see your brothers and sisters. You will understand them as we did. Perhaps, in the act of Seeing, you will even understand them as they understood themselves. Are you prepared?"

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He didn't have to think twice about it.

"Do it."

In the next second, he saw her eyes roll back in her head. He looked into the black voids and entered them, his consciousness melding with her own. It was far, far stronger than the last time she entered his mind. For this time, it was she that was letting him in. Not the other way around.

He heard her draw a full, deep breath, activating a potent Mana shield in case any abominations of the Doctor came their way.

Then she exhaled, and he felt his mind tumble into her own. Through reality. Through time. Through everything he'd ever felt.

"See," she said.

…

He saw a world that was nothing but black ashen wastes, filled with jutting mountains that looked more like onyx spikes than actual natural landscapes. The air was stale, poisonous to most life. Around him there was only darkness and smog, and the sounds of feet pitter-pattering around the ruined looking land.

His mind lurched to a small cave dwelling where his green arms reached out to a Tialex that was swaddling him, feeling a mixture of happiness and fear. He could breathe in the smog and stay strong. But his Sisters were not all the same.

"Our live expectancy was low in those times," Lamphrey's distant voice told him. "Many hatchlings did not survive."

A piercing roar suddenly ripped through the sky, and his mother drew him close, running through the tunnel system to a small vantage point where a whole group of Tialax were praying together. A single, simple fire burned in the center of their cave, and their eyes watched the dark, clouded skies above.

The roars became a chorus of power, and Ethan wished to shield his ears. Yet he could do nothing. Somehow, the action seemed heretical.

Suddenly, high above, a group of five dragons passed by, each of them breathing a torrent on flame upon the earth, cleansing it of all life that was still out there.

"The First Days belonged to the Scaled Ones," Lamphrey explained. "They – the winged Gods we worshipped – and we, the inferior species born to praise them."

He saw Tialex emerging after the show of power from the dragons. They threw themselves upon the craggy rocks of the land and wept openly as their Gods past them by above.

And then, Ethan saw him.

In the sky, a set of jagged black wings unfurled and revealed a dragon greater than all the rest. He sped through the skies with a speed that seemed impossible considering his size. He was like a great dark moon set free of gravity, hurtling towards the earth that he orbited. From his onyx snout, tendrils of black smoke seeped into the air, and Ethan felt himself breath it in, feeling…power clutch at his breath.

The great black dragon ended his descent right before him. It's clawed feet matched the size of the jagged mountains themselves.

His lips trembled in the world of the dream, and though he knew he couldn't really speak in Lamphrey's form, he still managed to push out an utterance:

"Karfangg…"

The black dragon lowered its neck, fixing him with his crimson eyes – eyes that shone like two lambent suns against the dark horizon.

"Another child rises from the dust," the dragon said – his voice old, aged, and like a wizened magi's. Not at all what Ethan expected.

He suddenly realized why the dragon was here. It was for him. For – her.

"I sense the dream magic of Oneiromancy has manifested in your child, Mikolah," Karfangg said. "Let her name be…Lamphrey."

His mother nodded, kneeling before the great horned dragon in reverence.

"We saw him as the Guardian of this world," she explained. "He was born from the dark, and wore it like a badge of honor. He did not fear it. And so we learned to love it, and him."

Ethan felt himself shake his head in disbelief.

"He cared for you all…"

"More than any of the legends say. Humans know dragons only as the ancient enemy of their kind. They did not See as we did. They did not enter the minds of the old ones as we were shown to."

Ethan saw that the elder Tialax came forward to touch the scaled heads of the other dragons that came to stand before them, and he saw the massive eyes of the beasts close as they let the small Lizardpeople touch them.

He realized what was happening: they were using Oneiromancy on the dragons.

"The oldest magic of all, and the most misunderstood," Lamphrey told him. "We used it only to calm the minds of the old ones, for their dreams often pained them far more than the weapons of those who struck their scales. In the early days, humans crawled around the dark world, and their mages were their best warriors. They would attack the minds of the scaled ones, bringing them down with evil suggestions and traumatic visions."

Ethan's vision switched to the view of a battle raging in the skies. Time had passed, and the humans of Argwyll had gathered together an army to fight against the scaled monsters that plagued the land. They came for the Tialax first, burning their caves and slitting their scaled throats, then skinning their hides to use for armor.

But the weapons of man were nothing against those who ruled the skies. One after another, the humans and their settlements were burned to a crisp as retribution for their attacks.

"No one knows which side struck first," Lamphrey said. "I was but a swaddled hatchling during the First Era. But we came to understand war as he did. It was no foreign concept to him."

Ethan watched Karfangg sail through the skies and dodge fireballs, bolts of lightning, and even mechanical ballistae that threw great spear-like bolts at him. His movements were graceful, unmatched by his peers. He broke apart the humans' weapons and brought ash back to the land.

His movements were so curious, and so clearly executed, that Ethan thought he saw something familiar in them. Barrel rolls and quick turns told him that the human this dragon once was had executed such moves in the air before. He was accustomed to aerial combat.

As the world flashed and he witnessed another memory, he saw how right he was:

He – in the child-body of Lamphrey – extended a small claw towards great Karfangg's face.

"Take care, little one," his great voice boomed. "What you may see shall seep into your mind, too…"

"I don't care," Ethan heard himself say in a small, yet confident voice. "I don't want you to be sad, anymore."

He felt power pulse through his arm. He felt the dragon open its mind to him and he saw something which took him by surprise: pain.

Pain that was far more…real than anything he'd experienced on earth.

He saw cities being torn apart by bombs. He saw people being led into death-camps. He saw the skies of the world bleeding as he shot down the planes of the enemy.

And he saw his girlfriend cry out in agony as she received a letter from the local Bishop telling her he'd been shot down.

He felt his heart sink with his plane as he drowned over the Pacific Ocean, thinking about how pointless all this conflict was…knowing that, if he got another chance, he'd dedicate himself to making the world a place where everyone could live.

Ethan's eyes widened as he realized exactly what this meant.

"He was a fighter pilot," he breathed. "And he got his dying wish…"

His eyes switched once again to a scene of Karfangg burning human ballistae and roasting their cloaked mages across the West of Argwyll. But, importantly, it looked like he didn't pursue them to the ends of the earth. He drew his claw in the soil and designated a clear boundary point, which he then set ablaze – creating a great wall of fire that ran from the polar North of Argwyll all the way to the Southern coastline."

"Karfangg's wall," Lamphrey explained. "He cut the land, and dictated that the humans must not cross the boundary of flame. Only the Scaled Ones could pass unperturbed. Thus did he create, what we believed, was the First Law of Argwyll."

Ethan sagged in the dream-realm. "But it wasn't the First Law, was it?"

Ethan felt the dream-world melt away to show him something else.

"I already know what happens next…" he groaned. "You don't have to-"

He braced himself, feeling his mind jerk through the darkness towards a burning light that shone in the distance.

The light of a blade being held by an angel…

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