Ethan looked down as the open wounds he’d carved into the Lightborn began to close up, feeling the cold waters of the spectral tower’s top wash over his shoulders and frame his confused face.

Then, a spike of agony lanced up his torso. The Lightborn kicked out, grabbed the Onixia sword from his hand, and struck lashed his shin with its keen blade.

Ethan didn’t even have time to switch to his Ethereal guise. He took the pain, and felt his Host began to quiver as the energy was practically sapped from its body.

HP: 500/950

He was dying…there were no two ways about it.

Meanwhile, the Lightborn stood and raised his scarred head, walking through the waterfall as his body bled out across the pale light of the arena.

“You never understood, did you?” he asked. “You really thought you had a chance, all this time.”

Ethan grit his teeth as he watched the old bastard raise his blade for another strike. Only this time, Ethan was quicker. He combined a Roar and a Wing Buffet into one single attack, knocking the Lightborn back and lowering his speed just enough for Ethan to aim a snipe right at his forehead – right between his eyes where his brain was concealed.

He watched the sapphire dust trail of the bullet pierce the old man’s skull.

He watched the Lightborn stagger back.

And then, like a tiger being tickled by a mouse, Artorious simply regained his composure and charged.

What the actual fuck…

He met the Lightborn’s blade with his own, managing to keep him at bay while the Onixia metal cut through his scythe piece by piece. He felt the legs of his Host give way. And all the while, the silver-blue eyes of his enemy looked not at those of Valgraiva’s, but directly into the crimson eyeball of Ethan’s own eye.

“You know there is no victory for you here,” Artorious snarled. “Try all your tricks you’ve learned. Show me all the effort you’ve poured into improving yourself, and I’ll show you how little it all means.”

Ethan pushed back. He wasn’t out of the game yet.

“Fine, old man! You wanna see more, I’ve got plenty!”

From Ethan’s side, he drew the Mithril Katana he’d been keeping hidden since he’d first found it in the loot from the Dreamstrider gauntlet. His Ethereal Form activated in the next instant, and as Artorious disengaged, expecting a quick strike in the second after Ethan reappeared, he instead felt a creeping, virulent pain radiate up his side.

A glowering light of blue pierced the air as the Katana sliced clean through it, trailing a green ooze in its wake that instantly poisoned the Lightborn the moment it made contact with his armor. Ethan followed up with another slice that struck against the Onixia weapon and – to his amazement – he saw the dark, pulsing blade of the vicious thing begin to crack.

That’s the way! If I can’t break him, I can at least stop him doing damage. If Onixia is made from the blood of an Archon – and can destroy an Archon – then it stands to reason that a living Archon could do the same to it.

But in the next second Ethan summoned all of his strength – channeling it into a single blow using both of his blades – he saw the Lightborn do nothing but sigh.

“Pointless. So utterly…pointless.”

Artorious let the blade drop in the second Ethan would have split it apart. Instead, the Archon’s attack cleaved into his arm and almost cut through it entirely.

Ethan, unblinking in the ever-dusk of the City of Illusions, looked down to see the Lightborn’s arm pulse with energy.

And with a single spurt of brute force, his scythe was snapped apart.

His other blade went flying across the arena floor with his body – the Lightborn’s mailed fist had knocked the wind clean out of him. Even the Undead Lord that Valgraiva was – a creature composed of pure darkness – could not withstand the assault of the one-armed man…

Ethan gasped for breath, coughing up torrents of purple blood that ran down his armor.

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Armor that had barely even been scratched in this world so far.

He heard the metal of the katana being kicked across the ground by his foe, who quietly walked towards him.

“That’s it,” the old man says. “That’s the look – you’re finally starting to understand.”

Ethan rose on one knee, checking his HP and seeing that he would either have to find a new Host soon or…

HP: 250/950

…or he was done.

“This is a game to you?” Ethan growled. “Is that it?”

Artorious cocked his old eyebrows at him, kicking the katana towards his hand.

And Ethan, through his Appraisal, saw just how hopeless this whole damn fight was:

LIGHTBORN

HP: 2300/3000

Damn it…

“I thought so, once,” he said with another heavy sigh. “I think every Lightborn before me probably did, at some point.”

He angled his blade towards Ethan’s hat-form.

“But there is nothing in this world to believe in,” he snarled. “Nothing, except dying with a sword in your hand. So, pick it up, Archon. And die like a real man.”

Ethan gripped the hilt of the blade and met the downcast eyes of his foe with more fury than he’d ever exhibited in this world.

But that was tempered by the sudden yelps of his friends behind him.

He turned to see Fauna lying before the Commander of the Grey, her staff cast aside. Klax was ambling up to her, panting with exertion, his fur clipped away and blood trickling from his open wounds. Tara was the only one still standing, her arms wavering as she aimed another arrow at the Greycloak warrioress’ skull.

That woman…she’d barely broken a sweat.

“See how your friends suffer,” Artorius growled again. “See how all you’ve done is prolong their torment. That’s what your kind does, demonspawn. You’ve tormented this world and its people for far too long.”

Ethan met Tara’s eyes as she shook her head at him, silently begging him not to submit. Fauna looked up, almost unconscious, and reached a hand toward him. Klax slumped to the ground, his muscles shredded and torn. It was a picture of defeat, no matter how you looked at it.

And through the sorry sight, Sys suddenly whispered in Ethan’s mind:

I did tell you, you know.

Ethan barely registered the words. He was focused on Fauna. He was focused on…something. Anything he could do here…

I told you, and you never listened.

Just like all the rest.

Want me to show you the disparity in your HP values again?

Want to see all those shiny skills you've collected that have meant nothing after all this time?

Go on, Ethan Hawke, tell me what to do.

Ethan felt the teeth of his Host practically grind to paste.

…or do you want to listen to me, for once?

The glowering eyes of the Lightborn stared down at him as the old man simply groaned again and lifted his dark rapier.

Ethan watched it, and he laughed.

You know something Sys? I finally realize why you’ve sounded so familiar all this time.

Oh? Do tell. Before we both die, you might as well share some of your timeless wit.

You’re someone I knew back on Earth, Ethan thought, the Lightborn snarling down at him as he watched his fallen enemy begin to laugh. Or, well, something I guess. Yeah…you’re that little voice in my head – that tiny piece of me that was always there on the shittiest of days, telling me that the world ain’t gonna ever be any better. Telling me my shitty office job was all I had, and was all I was good for.

You’re that little piece of me that always doubts, aren’t you?

...

…I doubt that very much.

And you know what? Every day of my life, I became more and more willing to listen to you. Until one day - who the fuck knows why – I finally decided it was time for a change.

The Onixia blade arced down as Ethan’s wings unfurled behind him, and his skeletal hands felt the uneven brickwork of the Nerve Tower’s peak beneath him.

…and I discovered that if I wanted control of my life, all I had to do was reach out and take it.

The blade of the Lightborn came crashing down with a thunderous roar, bringing the full might of its bearer behind it. Ethan’s Katana flashed in the air, its edge passing clean through the Onixia meta and striking at the Lightborn’s shining eyes so that he fell off-balance at the final moment of impact. His strike pierced the ground, carving a crater into the arena and sending shockwaves through its surface as his target took to the skies above.

“Fauna!” Ethan shouted. “Now!”

The Hopla obliged, as did her comrades. Tara let her arrow fly at the confused face of the Greycloak who batted it away as she roared at her wounded soldier – not noticing that the three hybrids had suddenly converged on a single location: where the Hopla had stretched out her paw to summon a bubble of protective magic.

Carliah Argent, for the first time in a very long career, cursed herself for her hubris.

Because those weaklings had them both exactly where they wanted them…

Looking to the skies where the Archon had soared, and feeling the tower surface begin to crumble under her feet, she already knew what was about to happen next.

“IDIOT!” she roared at Artorious. “FUCK HONOR! KILL THE BASTARD NOW!”

But her call to action came too late.

In the moment she rushed to cleave the hybrids apart, the Archon came barreling down into the center of the arena, lengthening the cracks that the battle had already bore into the living flesh of the tower’s top.

DIVE: SUCCESS!

The tower cracked apart, and its foundations disappeared in a plume of milk-white smoke and sapphire, alerting every Dreamstrider in the illusory city to something they’d never seen happen before. Not even the programming of Kaedmon’s Law had equipped them to deal with the indisputable fact that the Nerve Tower was collapsing, layer by layer – a lolling giant about to smash into the city.

And Ethan flashed a bloody smile in the face of the Lightborn as the entire arena broke apart under them.