When Ethan entered Klax’s chambers within the venerable Sanctum castle, he was instantly struck by the numinous beauty of the place.
In each corner, a censer burned with bright purple incense, sending a pungent aroma into the air. The walls of the room were decorated with more murals that matched those of the throne room—images of hybrids fighting alongside monsters against the humans of Argwyll for dominance, innumerable deaths on both sides, and at the end—the image of a blue-eyed, white-haired human chopping off the head of their leader.
“Is this a bedroom or a church?” Ethan asked the Lycae sitting cross-legged in the middle of the room, his eyes closed to his new visitor.
“It’s nothing more than a reminder of the past,” Klax said.
“Kinda sucky past.”
“Without knowing the past, one cannot move forward.”
“Is that what you want, Klax?” Ethan asked him. “To move forward?”
“Don’t you?”
The grim eyes of the grey wolf met the single piercing crimson of the hat’s, and they knew that this was a conversation a long time in the making.
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t,” Ethan answered.
“And you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t doubt what you did out there.”
Ethan grimaced as the thought took hold of him again with sudden, wild strength—the image of the boy, and his father’s blood on his scimitars.
“Where I come from, we’ve got plenty of stories about monsters ourselves,” he answered. “And plenty of young boys, me included, eat them up.”
Klax nodded. “Do they believe the things these stories say?”
“It depends on what you mean by ‘believe.’”
The old wolf rose and stretched his withered back, gesturing with a nostalgic sigh at the murals that surrounded them.
“In Argwyll, we are taught to believe what we see,” he said. “This history of our realm tells its own story: rising dark, descending light, bloodshed on both sides, and then a fleeting century of peace before we rinse and repeat.”
“In other words, a cycle.”
Klax nodded. “A cycle defined by one being and one being alone.”
Ethan narrowed his five eyes. “Kaedmon.”
“And his champions,” Klax scoffed as he pointed out the first of the Greycloaks descending from the parting clouds of the heavens, led by a woman with eyes that burned like fiery blue coals. “Those immortal warriors who are anointed with the burning, killing light that is supposed to cast us down. A single Greycloak can fell a thousand monsters in battle. But they are not indestructible. Against hybrids, their power is less potent—owing to the shared blood which they would never admit we hold within our veins. But they can still destroy us, Ethan. They have done so every time we have risen up against them.”
Something in the old wolf’s words struck Ethan, then. Staring into the ancient murals carved into the earthen walls of this underground kingdom, it suddenly became all too clear to him why the boy had looked at him the way he had. Why the humans of this realm wanted nothing more than the enslavement and eventual eradication of everything that didn’t look like them.
“They probably think they don’t have a choice.”
Klax raised an inquisitive, hairy eyebrow.
“I mean—Kaedmon’s Law, right?” Ethan continued. “‘We can only be what we’re supposed to be,’ which, quite frankly, is the dumbest fucking basis for a religion I’ve ever heard. Us humans, we’re meant to change, Klax. And if you guys really do share our blood, that means you’re supposed to change, too. Nobody wants to live a stagnant life. I should… well… I should know...”
Ethan wasn’t even seeing the altered expression that came over Klax in that moment. He was used to hearing that ranting online, waxing philosophical about the big problems in life, was either cringe or more appropriate for YouTube video essays—at least that way you’d make money off complaining.
But here in this new world… he got the feeling that these hybrids, and these humans for that matter, had never really thought about the actual chains that might have been keeping them all bound.
“…takes a slave to know one, I guess,” he chuckled. “It’s tough to fight against all the things that seem so much bigger than you. Take Tara, for example, she’s an angry (potentially crazy) gal, no judgment, but she’s not gonna change the world by killing all the humans in it. You hybrids that are left over would probably just end up finding other reasons to kill once they were gone. Nah, Klax, it seems to me that there’s a much more obvious solution to the problem here.”
Klax, whose furrowed brow of confusion had broken now into a fast smile, nodded along with Ethan’s train of thought.
“Kaedmon’s Law,” he said.
“Hell yeah. That shit’s gotta be re-written. Or scrapped entirely. Either way, it’s a Law that’s made to be broken.”
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
“And if anyone can do it,” Klax finished. “It would be you.”
Ethan looked up suddenly, almost as though he’d been talking in a state of trance for the past few minutes. He saw the sudden rush of exhilaration that had filled Klax’s face—it was like looking at a totally different wolfman.
“…sometimes, you sound so much like her.”
Ethan cocked three eyes.
“Huh?”
“Our old leader,” Klax said. “A prophet who sought to guide us to a different path. Her name was Jun'Ei, Ethan. She was important to me—to us all.”
Klax grasped the locket round his neck tightly, a low growl emanating from his throat.
“She said that when the time was right, she could set the next Archon on the right path—the path that leads to the end of Kaedmon’s rule over this earth. The path that leads to a new beginning for us all—a life where each one of us not only has the desire for self-determination but the right to it.”
“How?” Ethan asked, leaning forward with interest, momentarily forgetting he inhabited the body of a bulbous arachnid that practically filled the room already.
Klax, however, was not deterred.
“She would tell no one but you,” he said. “She waited for the day of your arrival, growing old, withered, but no less wise. She told me that when you came, the Delves would set you on the first steps of the path. After that...”
The wolfman’s grip on the locket pulsed with sudden anger, but Ethan could see nothing but sorrow in his old eyes.
“…she was captured,” Klax said. “Taken to a place where the humans… interrogate the sentient beasts they find.”
“Where?” Ethan whispered like a child wrapped up in a bedtime story’s twist. “Klax—tell me where she is and I can bust her out.”
The wolfman simply sighed again. “I do not know, Ethan. She was captured when we tried to fight back against the last great purge—the ‘Cleansing of Minathra’ led by Lightborn Artorious himself. It is there we first fought. It is there I saw just how powerful the Greycloaks are in battle. The killing sheen of their blades as they sliced through the fur and ripped the skin from my comrades… even though she begged me not to go.”
Klax’s shaking shoulders seemed totally incongruous with Ethan’s picture of who the wolfman was. He was watching him let down his leader’s guard here. He didn’t really know what to say. He didn’t know if there was anything he could say that would assuage a broken heart. So, he simply let Klax finish:
“She warned us not to fight them as they burned our cousins,” Klax said. “And yet still, we took to the field. I—I was a stupid pup back then, Ethan. Hungry for nothing but vengeance and unwilling to heed the counsel of my elder. I deserved nothing from Jun'Ei after I disobeyed her. And yet, even still, it was she who ended up sacrificing herself to give us room to retreat.”
In the old wolf’s eyes, he was back on the battlefield now—the snow-capped plains of the fields covered in hybrid and human blood at the base of the Ashfalls. He was looking in Jun’Ei's eyes as she ordered him to go, speeding him and his warriors away with a powerful spell of Haste and staring down the armies of the humans and their holy champion himself.
“Tail tucked between my legs, I ran,” Klax finished quietly. “I did it because, for the first time, I was listening to her.”
“You did it because you knew letting yourself die would have been pointless,” Ethan said, gingerly patting Klax’s shoulder with a scythe tip, being careful not to give the guy a good trim in the process. “I didn’t know her, but she sounds like a real leader. She probably knew there was no point in letting you guys all die.”
“She was a better leader than I’ll ever be. I can’t even keep my own team together. We fight among ourselves while she suffers in whatever pit the Greycloaks have tossed her into. What would she think of me now?”
"She’d probably think you’re a badass," Ethan replied, even as the downcast face and whispering voice of the normally bombastic wolf alarmed him. "Shit, Klax, you’ve carried on this fight for how long now? Years? Decades? And after all this time, you’ve finally found the person that can make a difference. I’ll bring her back to you, Klax. And together we’ll re-write the rules of this world."
Klax rose to see Ethan with new eyes then—the eyes not of a mentor or a guardian, but those of a warrior who was beginning to understand why this Archon had been chosen. And why, this time, they might actually have a chance...
"So come on," Ethan said, winking with all five eyes available to him. "I think we’ve got some delving to do."
----------------------------------------
"I see someone’s feeling better."
The next morning, the party had come together at Ethan’s behest. He’d found Tara slumped in her room, trying to pretend she hadn’t been stargazing all night, and Fauna... well, she’d had a rather rough slumber in Ethan’s bed.
Ethan Hawke was many things—and a gentleman wasn’t one of them. So, when he decided to bunk in the throne room instead of returning to the slumbering Hopla who had decided to flop down in his personal chambers—he had already proven Kaedmon’s Law wrong.
Fauna hid her face from him most of the day, blushing even brighter as Tara teased her all morning.
"P-please Tara!" she wailed. "I’m already embarrassed! Mr. Ethan is good enough to not kick me from the party, but... can we just forget about last night?"
"Mmmmm—nah," Tara chuckled, playing with Fauna’s floppy ears. "Girl, you literally can’t hold your drink. I’m gonna be remembering that for a long time."
As they bantered, they picked up supplies. Borlor had been good enough to work through the night—stating that a stout drink would grease up a blacksmith’s hammer better than anything. He’d made all new weapons for Ethan to transmogrify—hearing that he and the group were bound for the Twilight Sepulcher now.
"Ye’ll be goin’ up against Undead, then," the badger-hybrid said. "Silver’s what ye’ll be needin’."
He then bestowed on Ethan a dazzling set of blades and an indigo carapace that the Demon Hat managed to fit snugly around his host’s bulbous body with the aid of his Transmogrification skill.
Silver Talons (Grade D)
DMG: 25
Special: +100% DMG vs enemy type [UNDEAD]
Mithril Carapace (Grade D)
DMG Prot: 25
"Mithril?" Ethan asked.
"Mhmm. A gift from our new arrivals. Seemed like the mine you freed ‘em from was a human-owned Mithril deposit. Managed to clear off with a few ores and I went ta grab ‘em soon as I heard."
Ethan smiled. "Borlor, once again you do the work of the Gods themselves."
The badger man waved away the Archon’s praise. "Just give ‘em hell, Ethan," he said. "And remember, dead men don’t got no brains. Stick ‘em in the gut and watch ‘em burn."
Sadistic blacksmiths aside, the rest of their equipment shopping went off without a hitch. Klax and Tara kept some distance, but neither one looked like they were ready to attack the other anymore.
Progress, Ethan thought. Just call me the negotiator, eh, Sys?
...
Going up against Kaedmon’s Law.
You aren’t the first Archon to have such a fool notion.
Ethan ruminated on this thought as he and his companions once again faced the portal chamber, activating the exit to the Twilight Sepulcher Delve and exchanging brief nods of readiness.
I told you that I’d be the exception, Sys. And not just for me. But for you, too.
As he felt the brief gut-wrenching twist of teleportation take hold of him, Ethan could swear he heard something like laughter echo in his mind.
We’ll see, Ethan Hawke. We’ll see.