Henry’s calves burned as the party scrammed away from the feeding frenzy as quickly as possible. He was struggling to match the frantic pace Gordon had decided to set for them, which seemed… a bit excessive for the usually collected man, honestly. He hadn’t so much as flinched when he was taking on rearguard duties minutes earlier. What changed?

  The strangled cries of agony from the vampire Layla had incapacitated with her all-or-nothing strike cut through the air as he put distance between himself and the scene of the incident. It had a bone chilling echo to it, the kind that made his current pace feel justified. Partly driven on by irrational fear, partly because each of them was aware that the distraction would not last forever.

  It wasn’t like Henry didn’t perfectly understand why Gordon was running so fast, merely that it seemed out of character for him. They were running on borrowed time, and it was all they could do to pray that it would be enough.

  Fortunately, the number of intersections and adjoining rooms was beginning to thin out now. Fewer and further between were the vast arrays of artistic stonework, and more functional, almost militaristic constructions began to take their place.

  From small details like murderholes, chokepoints and clear lines of fire, to larger fortifications such as pillboxes and, seemingly impractical as they might be, stone blocks that looked suspiciously like the dragon’s teeth design from World War II. Over-preparation aside, it would have made this place a nightmare to attack directly had there been anyone here to man the positions.

  Snaking in between layer after layer of prepared defenses, it was slowly dawning on Henry that this whole mission would very likely have been suicide to attempt at any other time. Even a semi-competent tactician could use these redoubts to make an invader bleed for every inch. Had the leadership of this hidden bunker not been subverted from the inside already, these halls would probably have been choked with dozens of his corpses at the behest of his current overlord.

  A real blessing, then, that the current batch of usurpers was not worried about the presence of intruders overmuch. Vampires preferred to hunt lone targets or lure small groups of victims to them for the most part, and while thralls would be capable using these defenses to effect, they couldn’t act on their own initiative, not unlike the Harpy’s current mental blockers.

  Until the three- no, two arch-vampires down here grew wise and started looking to consolidate their holdings, these impressive preparations would likely go unused for quite some time.

  Though, before that happened, they’d likely be on the lookout to acquire fresh blood. As much as he hoped that there really wasn’t a secondary control panel that opened the bunker up to the subway levels around somewhere nearby, he seriously doubted that they’d be so fortunate. Redundancy was a common practice in military planning, and as mysterious as this… fortified historical stockpile… was, he’d bet his still-bloodied arm that at least some of that design philosophy leeched into the creation of this place.

  Eventually, someone would have to come back here and clean this place out. Or, more likely, siege the place until the vamps inside ran out of bloodbags and got desperate. Neither of which would be without casualties.

  Problems for someone else. He had enough on his plate already. Let the Landed Knights handle this one, when they got around to it. It’s what they were founded for, after all.

  As they approached closer and closer to the bunker’s access point, the strength of the defenses grew more and more pronounced. Corridors narrowed to single file, none of which were a perfect straight line. Where it wasn’t totally dark, Gordon sped ahead under the dim glow of red emergency lamps designed to protect one’s night vision. Preparing them for the world above, as permanently shrouded in darkness and fog as it was.

  It was all very… thorough. Henry almost wondered if they hadn’t missed a second artifact down below that could have made this place, but really it was more likely that the whole place was some sort of artifact region. They always seemed to pop up specifically where no one was looking, and, well… this had been about as far off the beaten path as he had seen before.

  Ironically, the attempts to hide it better were what had caused him to get it revealed in the first place.

  Eventually, they rounded the final corner in the labyrinthine network of defenses. Wheezing and nearly out of breath, Henry nearly ran headfirst into the back of the Harpy’s wings as the three ahead of him came to an abrupt stop. They’d made it.

  A singular red-tinted bulb glowed above the bulkhead door. It was held firmly closed; they’d shut it before they’d ventured further. Not that it had really mattered when there’d been a mountain of solid rock right behind it, but old habits died hard.

  Gordon was currently throwing the entirety of his weight into turning the door’s hand crank to disengage the lock. He dedicated himself to the task like a starving man who had just spotted food. It absolutely reeked of desperation, but it did leave the rest of them with a glorious few moments to catch their breath and recuperate.

  Henry felt absolutely beat.

  “Haah… shit…”, were the first two words that came to mind in between ragged breaths. “I thought we were done for…”

  Layla nodded, wiping the sweat from her brow beneath the obfuscation of her hood. She leaned against the wall as if she were absolutely exhausted, and her sleeveless trenchcoat which he could have sworn had fit her perfectly when they first met now looked loose and baggy.

  Were her arms… smaller? They looked less defined than he remembered, and now that he was paying attention, she might have lost a few centimeters in height, too. The light made it hard to tell for sure, but if he wasn’t going completely mad…

  …You know what, never mind. Exotic Domains are weird. I'm too tired to think. Let's just leave it there.

  If this was anything, it was likely just her looking for creative uses for her magic. He’d certainly spent his own fair share of time trying to find new ways to squeeze every last use case out of his own powers after he’d been granted them, after all. Despite the two of them being added to the Dozen at roughly the same time, he for sure didn’t know the extent of her limits just as she wasn’t fully clued in to his.

  Part of that was that they’d simply still been figuring those limits out for themselves. But mostly it had been due to their rather quick separation shortly after.

  Note to self. See if, once this whole situation resolves, it would be possible to touch base on that topic.

  Meanwhile, with a final heave, Gordon finally made the last revolution on the door’s wheel and swung it wide open. Only for a polished and slightly curved wall of obsidian-like stone to be on the other side waiting to greet them.

  Gordon let out a low, strangled noise of frustration that turned into a shout of anger. He buried his face in his hands at the sight of the stone wall behind the door.

  “Great…” he finally bemoaned, pacing the cramped quarters of the bunker gatehouse. His fist slammed against the black stone. “Great! We’re stuck in a dead end now, Henry. Was your plan secretly to take us all down with you? Because, if it was, you’ve likely gone and succeeded with it.”

  Well, that pretty much sealed it, then. Gordon was past done with him. Past angry entirely, and onto something else. He’d hit the ugly part of human nature that often surfaced in intense pressure situations such as these.

  He was, completely and utterly, afraid for his life. And looking for a scapegoat to calm him before he reached the breaking point.

  Henry responded, perhaps foolishly, but regardlessly sour at the lack of faith in him.

  “Oh, please. It takes a minute to get down to the tracks from the station entrance, no matter what we would have done. Add to the fact that they also have to get into the temple and find the altar on top of that, and this was going to take some time no matter what. So, we stay quiet, watch the doors, and give me a proper chance to succeed, yeah?”

  Henry felt like he’d been able to deliver a level-headed, logical solution to their predicament. Obviously, Gordon was feeling just a bit more motivated to get as far away from here as possible.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “We don’t have time for this!”, he shouted, snatching up the Magic 8-Ball from where he’d set it to open the door. “Those two freakish vamps are going to be here any minute-”

  “Oh, would you come off it already?!”

  Aside from maybe the Harpy for obvious reasons, Henry’s outburst surprised all of them. Himself included. Gordon, stunned, paused mid-sentence to stare at him incredulously.

  He surprised himself further by continuing to lay into the man who he was still the prisoner of, despite the hole he was gradually digging for himself.

  “For as much as you’re ready to complain about doing things my way, I don’t seem to remember you exactly being a shining beacon of operational efficiency, either! For one, at the start you were too busy playing office politics to keep us from following that idiot into the cursed region like a bunch of lemmings-”

  The Harpy shifted its attention slightly towards the path to the inside. Only Layla noticed, as the remaining two butted heads over leadership decisions.

  “Then,” Henry continued to berate, “Once you did decide you wanted to suddenly take charge, you had to literally mind-blend your operational superior first, apparently, and put us all under high security and force us to take risks by working fast! Real charismatic move of you, Gordie! Cry about me going over your head all you want, but the only reason we managed to find that magic trinket your boss wants so badly is because I trusted my gut feeling and previous experience enough to undermine you!”

  Air blades were summoned and placed on standby one by one as Layla nervously glanced between the unfolding argument and the approaching threat. The sound of two pairs of heavy footfalls could be heard echoing off the walls, provided you could hear past the animated shouts of the others in the room.

  Shouts which were then succeeded by a heavy smack as Gordon remembered he didn’t need to take this kind of lip from a prisoner, and pistol whipped him in the face.

  Henry reeled from the impact, back thrown against the wall of the room, just barely cushioning the impact of the back of his head immediately after.

  The hit was enough to addle him momentarily. And a moment was all Gordon needed to spin him around and hit him over the head with the very artifact they’d gone through the trouble of finding.

  His

  shield flared, the impact inadvertently knocking his forehead

  against the wall. Henry

  was able to feel

  his

  brain rattle inside his skull as his vision flashed white for a

  moment.

  He wasn’t shocked that it had come to this, just slightly disappointed and very much in pain. Also still very much tied up, forcing him to take the beating helplessly as Gordon finally gave into the anger issues that seemingly plagued any sufficiently ruthless member of the Gentleman’s Club.

  He went down to the ground, and the rain of blows followed shortly behind him.

  The first hit caused the reactive shield to raise again. The second chipped it, and swing by swing, it slowly crumbled under the assault until it finally shattered. Leaving him to take the brunt of Gordon’s fury head on.

  “Shut… the… hell… up!”, Gordon wailed, swinging the 8-Ball down onto Henry’s face in between each syllable. Smelling blood in the water.

  His nose broke to the side with a crack, as his own blood covered the lower half of the numeral on the back side of the artifact.

  If it weren't for the deep rumble of stone scraping against stone indicating that they weren’t doomed after all, he likely would have ended up bleeding a lot more. Gordon nearly dropped the artifact in his haste to run for the exit, he was so ecstatic to have a chance to live.

  But a noise from an object that big corkscrewing up into the air above was bound to be just as huge as the object itself. To the two vampires slowly honing in on their position, it was like ringing a dinner bell.

  Gordon barged through the door first, followed by the rest of them shortly after. Henry tried futilely to push himself to his feet, but only succeeded in coughing up a mouthful of blood onto the floor. Layla, seeing the condition he’d ended up in, audibly gasped in horror.

  He wanted to say something, anything in response to assure her he was alright. He could perfectly picture the words he wanted to say, even. But none of the sounds that came out of his mouth were anything close to coherent, in that moment.

  She grabbed him by the hands and pulled him to his feet, his head lolling slightly on the upswing as he stumbled along behind her. The moment they were both through, he vaguely noted the sound of wind hissing and high-pitched screeching in the corridor behind them before Layla slammed the bulkhead door shut herself.

  Pulling the quick release lever to seal the entrance in place, she successfully locked the vampires inside while leaving them free to escape.

  “Come on, stay with me, Henry!”

  “...ughlbl…”

  Gordon was climbing the steps to the surface as fast as they would emerge from the side of the wall. The Harpy, aerially inclined as it was, decided to forgo the walk entirely and simply launch itself up and out of the chasm. Wind buffeted the two of them at the bottom, lifting the hood from Layla’s head and revealing her face to the world, her hair fluttering in the gale.

  On her face was a tapestry of emotion. It was all that Henry could bring himself to focus on, as mushy as his head felt right now. Clear worry lines marred the surface, as well as a slight twitch in the corner of her lip like she was about to cry. There might have been the start of some tears in the corner of her eyes, but if there were, they hadn’t started the waterworks just yet. Otherwise, the eyeliner she was wearing would be smearing all over the place.

  She took the first step, and Henry attempted to follow. But even the first step proved too much for him to adjust to. Nearly tripping, it was only her support that kept him from faceplanting once again.

  Rolling clouds of mist rolled into the pit from above, shrouding them all in the nearly opaque blanket once again. Like a funnel, it began to gravitate toward Layla’s body as she tossed him over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

  Thinking was starting to hurt a bit, he felt. He hoped he wasn’t drooling just yet.

  The sound of deep impacts clanging against the solid steel of the bulkhead door reverberated up the entire way of the pit. Taking the spiral staircase up two at a time, Layla rushed to escape the danger with redoubled vigor, now that the comparative safety of the upper levels was so close at hand.

  Quite literally redoubled vigor, Henry belatedly realized. With his vision fading in and out and starting to blur, he was noticing that each time it ‘blinked’, the arm she wasn’t using to carry him looked just a bit thicker. Not to mention, each step she was taking seemed to have just that little bit more force than the last.

  ...is that how it works, then…? Mana… steroids…?

  And, with that final thought, Henry finally succumbed to dreamless sleep.

  < -|- -|- >

  It wasn’t until Gordon reached the top stair before he finally began to relax. Exhaustion hit the man like a ton of bricks, and he set the 8-Ball down and laughed weakly at their victory against the odds.

  “Hahaha… I can’t believe I made it! I thought for sure we would have died down there!”

  He watched as the fog began pouring into the opened cylindrical pit of despair he had just escaped. The Harpy was already waiting for him at the top, awaiting his next order silently and patiently.

  Like a good operative. Like he’d been trained was proper, back in his old organization.

  It was why Guillaume had valued his expertise so highly, despite his lack of magical talent. Ruthless efficiency was a skill that had to be learned, repeatedly. Those who worked under him could complain all they wanted, he would get results from them, even if he had to beat them out. Or remind them of their place, for that matter.

  But, now that he had … he might be soon on the receiving end of a promotion, actually.

  Idly, he withdrew the small bead of water from the canteen he’d taken off that idiot mage’s hands. It was, frankly, a little addicting seeing the liquid quite literally bend to his will. Sure, it wasn’t much now… but that could always be improved upon with proper diligence and practice, so he'd been told. He could be patient and diligent when he wanted to. Hitmen tended not to last long if they didn’t learn that at the bare minimum.

  Suppose it was time to finally wrap up the mission, though. All that was left was to put the Shroudwalker back under lock and key, and make sure he got a bead on whatever copies were lurking around nearby, maybe he should have The Harpy…

  Oh, that was right. Guillaume’s code phrases had a time limit on them before they became actually harmful to the mental recipient. Best not damage the man’s finest tool, not when he was due for a meteoric rise with the absolute bounty he was about to bring back.

  “Harpy. Enter rest mode and activate subroutine Quatre-Quatre Au Revoir. You’ll need to be in top shape for the journey back.”

  “Understood, sir,” it replied neutrally before slumping over standing upright.

  He wouldn’t admit it to anyone else, but that little quirk it had unnerved him somewhat. Felt like it was only pretending to sleep, but… well, whatever. Not like it was capable of killing him, anyways.

  Now all that remained was to round up the prisoners.

  Just as he rose back to his feet, though, the surface of the extra-dense fog in the hole began to stir. At first, he worried it was the vampires broken out, but no. A faint echo still confirmed that they were still banging away against the door down there. The true source, however, was quick to reveal itself. A tear in the fog’s coverage revealed a head climbing the spiral stairs up and out, carrying a familiar, very punchable face with her.

  “Speak of the Devil, and she will appear…” he snickered, realizing the pun in his own joke after he said it.

  The kid she was carrying looked absolutely done for, but then again, he only had himself to blame for that. Might have overdone it a bit on the beatings, though. The way he was slumped over her shoulder, he might actually have to put that one out of his misery and bring back one of the more coherent ones hiding around here somewhere.

  And speaking of her, damn. He hadn’t known the Shroudwalker looked that good. It was like watching the cover of a power metal album walk right off the CD case into the world. She even came with a built in fog machine, the way it was twisting and spinning around her as she set her charge down and jogged over to him.

  He took a step in her direction, ready to get this long and tedious mission done and over with. Fishing around in his pocket for a new set of zip-ties…

  He gasped in shock as her fist hooked around into his sternum, a face of unbridled rage flashing across her face in the brief moment he had before he tumbled back into the pit he’d just escaped from. Blood flew from his mouth as he careened over the edge, wind whipping at his body as he fell in, facing upward.

  The fall, while significant, did not kill him on impact. He wished it had. Being paralyzed from the eyes down as he was was definitely much worse.

  Between the vamps still wailing against the door and the pillar drilling down from above, his last thoughts were wondering whether or not one would be any worse than the other.

  There was a brief instant where he could feel himself being ground to paste, then nothing.