---Griffon’s Watch---

They say that, if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.

For Doctor Haylock, work was a labor of love.

He stared down at the thrashing animal that had been brought to his private wing of the prison dungeons and licked his pale lips at the beauty of the specimen. She was a Hopla girl of approximately 16 years, her body young, supple, and still full of life as she sat on the medical slab, while Haylock’s flesh puppets clumsily swayed back the way they’d come.

He allowed the little ball of fluff a few moments of thrashing and screaming before he held up his hands, extended his fingers, and muttered a soft, gentle incantation.

And instantly the girl’s body lay still.

Her limbs, now quietened, had gone stiff as stone. Her twitching nose stopped, her teeth were silenced. Every part of her except her darling little ruby eyes was now at his mercy.

He liked to let them watch as he worked on their bodies.

His trade was a lucrative one. Around him, the fruits of his labor sat in silence – monsters and hybrids interred in vats or jars, some of them split open for parts or simply to satisfy his scientific curiosity. His mind was a purely scientific one, after all, and the Greycloaks had been most accommodating to his skills.

He still remembered when good, noble Carliah Argent had come to him demanding that he study their fallen enemies. This prison had once been his home – the ancestral resting place of a long line of medical professionals. Above his desk, set with his tools, hung a portrait of his mother, Lady Volumnia Spex – the greatest Alchemist in all of Argwyll.

She’d be proud of her son carrying on her legacy.

The world was full of such wondrous diversity that he had never once found himself unemployed. Especially when these Archons came along. He’d only ever heard about one of them – far before his time, of course – but she sounded like a real beauty. Nothing like this preposterous little hat that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

Still, there was some hope in his heart. The local monster populations had indeed grown rather more adventurous lately, and with the new Greycloak order installed in Lucent, he was blissfully free of any…annoying public interventions in his work. He would be sad to see the Lightborn’s victory over the newbie. As he understood it, they had it and its hybrid friends cornered in some Godforsaken Delve.

A pity. But, he had plenty to keep him occupied. He even had the good King Lysandus as his personal little toy. Fate did have a sense of humor, it seemed.

As he stretched his limbs and adjusted his monocle to get a better look at his newest specimen, he heard the sudden creaking of the dungeon door behind him. A rattling of chains accompanied the sound, and by the heavy thuds his approaching servant made on the blood-drenched floor, he knew this interruption must be an important one. The servants knew how he detested being bothered while he went about his work.

“Mhm?” he muttered, reaching for the Hopla’sthroat and feeling the blood bubbling in her veins.

The creature behind him – a thing composed of perfectly preserved corpses – opened one of the four mouths stitched onto its chest to breathe in a whiff of dank air before it began to compose speech. As it was, it could not clearly be identified as belonging to any genus of monster or human at all. It was a being that defied identification. A being whose biodiversity was matched only by its ferocity. Its six muscular limbs stuttered as it came to a halt, each one bearing a different Adamantine weapon grafted onto the stump at its end. The legs were an amalgamation of festering toes and soles – they resembled a slop of sludge dragging itself across the floor than anything that served the animals of Argwyll as a method of motion.

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Perfect in its depravity, and unrivaled in its hostility, Thaddeus the Flesh Golem stood before the Doctor and flapped its gumless mouth:

“He - comes,” it said simply.

The Doctor waited. He’d learned that his Flesh Golems couldn’t be hurried, no matter how much pain he visited upon them. And Thaddeus was one of his finest instruments.

“The – Archon.”

His browless face rose. That was indeed an interesting dilemma.

He’s alive. And that means…the Lightborn failed? Perhaps he’s dead. Perhaps not. But he’s not here, and that means the rumors those Fifth-Pillar ants have been spreading these last few months have been true...

“Hm,” he mused aloud. “Where is it, now?”

“The village – of – Triant – Doctor,” the beast grumbled. “Four hybrids – walk with it.”

So close. And with a whole team of Sanctum hybrids behind it, no less…

Doctor Haylock had lived longer than most. His Blood Magic had allowed him to pursue his studies without fear of mortality, or the frailty that came with death. As a child, he was able to control rats and other rodents without even a single movement of his limbs. In his teenage years, he moved on to adult specimens. By the time he was thiry, he’d perfected his craft. They said he was a prodigy. Well, those that dared mention his name at all did, anyway.

But a man who’d lived as long as he had needed a project. Something more than just work to keep him busy.

When he’d heard that the remnants of Gyko’s army, and all those hybrids who’d survived the Pogroms of Lysandus’ father, were all sequestered in a secret little location hidden from human eyes, he’d almost quivered in orgasmic bliss.

An entire Kingdom of specimens…ripe for the taking.

And yet he’d never found them.

Through his interrogations of their captured warriors, through his invasive surgeries, through every torment he inflicted on their kind, they just wouldn’t give up its location. Even their so-called Prophet had been less than useless. And he’d done things to her that had surprised even himself…

His failure to find the little hideout had gnawed at him. It was the one thing that really soured his work-life balance. It was like a little chittering demon that sat atop his brain and mocked him – telling him ‘you can’t get them! You can’t get them!’

But Doctor Haylock was a patient man. All the King’s search parties had failed him. All the Greycloaks with their divine providence had failed. All of them had failed, because Kaedmon had not decreed that they were the ones to succeed.

He'd watched, and waited for his moment. After all, it was what he was made for, wasn't it? Taking apart the enemies of the good lord piece by bloody piece, putting them back together as his imagination willed, and watching the results play out before his eyes. He'd done more service in Kaedmon's name than the ever-so pious Greycloaks and their belligerent leader ever had. He'd molded, he'd manipulated, and he'd created new life on this world.

Now, Doctor Haylock smiled. His patience was being rewarded. An Archon was going to be knocking on his door pretty soon - an Archon that he'd heard much about, and was very, very interested in meeting.

But before that fated moment, he'd have to administer some...field tests.

“I know what it is the Archon is coming for,” he told his servant. “Thaddeus? Awaken a detachment of your brethren. Let us see if we can welcome this Archon and its friends to our part of the world.”

The hulking golem bowed deeply as it exited the dungeon. “It – will be – done – my Lord.”

Alone again with his new specimen, the Doctor licked his lips again, savoring the look of fear in creature’s eyes.

“Do not fret, my dear,” he said as he stroked its paralyzed ears. “You’re going to be part of something momentous. You’ll be witnessing history being made, very soon.”

He then turned to the biggest vat in the room and smiled. It contained the strongest specimen he’d ever gotten his hands on. Strong. So strong. But even the strongest mind could be broken with time. The will was strong. But flesh was weak.

Though it no longer had eyes to see, he knew it was watching. Always watching. And he knew it could hear him.

“Isn’t that right, Jun’Ei?”