He remembered how his body heat bled away into the concrete he lay on. The way the surface of the cracked, unevenly poured pavement dug at him through his threadbare clothes. How no matter how tightly he curled up the foul-smelling dumpster, he had been unable to stop shivering.

  Tonight, he was out in the alley behind some pub. The tall brick walls on either side blocked most of the wintry wind, but the cloudless night sky of January provided no warmth for the likes of him. His breath came shaky from blue lips, hands tucked closely beneath his chin hoping to make it through another night without them getting frostbitten.

  On one of the coldest nights London had seen in years, he found himself out in the elements. With nothing more to his name than the clothes on his back, hoping for nothing but making it through to another dawn.

  He couldn’t sleep. But he was having trouble keeping himself awake.

  < -|- -|- >

  Pain throbbed near the crown of Henry’s skull as he slowly drifted back to wakefulness. He’d fallen to the ground in a tangle of limbs after he’d passed out, evidently battered but through some miracle still alive.

  His mouth felt cracked and dry from dehydration. One arm was pinned below his sternum from where he landed, and his face was pressed against the crumpled steel below him, limiting his breathing down to a singular nostril. He came to with a groan, slowly rising to a sitting position as various cuts and bruises competed to make themselves known.

  Glass shards skittered off his back as he rose, and he hissed in pain from his besieged nerves. Henry massaged his forehead, feeling like he’d been shaken around the inside of a soda can to the point where he was a bit lightheaded.

  Actually, that might not be too far off from what happened. As the memories of his last minutes of consciousness began to emerge, the reality that his half-baked plan had nearly fallen apart began to sink in bone-deep.

  Had it not been for his own last-minute save, there might not have been anything left of him to look around with right now. Wherever here was, that is.

  That question could wait for a moment. Right now, he needed to triage himself to make sure he wasn’t about to die from whatever preventable injuries had transpired after he blacked out.

  He gave himself a quick once-over, rolling up sleeves and tattered pant legs as he went. For the most part, he was met with a myriad of superficial bruises. Even though the vast majority of them were beginning to turn a nasty shade of green, purple, or both… he’d be okay given time.

  What had almost given him a panic attack was the sight of the pool of blood he’d risen out of and the red stain on the front of his shirt. Frantically working to undo the buttons of the originally white article of clothing, he stopped confused when he found the area practically unblemished. It took him longer than he’d like to admit to discover the real cause behind the shallow puddle, but once he did he couldn’t help but wonder how he didn’t notice it sooner.

  There was still a hole in his forearm literally big enough to poke his finger through. Something he was almost tempted to try, but decided against at the last second in the hopes of not causing the bleeding to start up again.

  Semi-viscous globs of blood sealed up the interior, not quite threatening to burst but at the same time not looking stable enough for him to be willing to test his luck. It looked ugly as hell. Not completely sure why he couldn’t feel any pain from it, though.

  On the other hand, between every other injury scrabbling for his attention and the possibility of nerve damage, there were some likely candidates. At least he knew now where the dizziness was coming from.

  I don’t think I lost too much blood… I think…

  A jolt of head rush caused him to sway on his feet as he finally stood all the way up. His head felt like a jumbled mess. The back of his scalp twinged in pain whenever he tried to touch it, but at the very least his fingers weren’t coming back coated in blood.

  Which, frankly, was more than could be said for the other guy in the room. A dark crimson smear left a slick mark on a protruding metal corner, with the limp body of the gangster that had had it out for him folded just below. Didn’t take a doctor to properly diagnose that.

  For now, he seemed to be alone. With only his hazy thoughts and the even hazier fog to keep him company. An errant question nagged at him like a broken record.

  What was with that sudden dream about the year I spent on the streets, anyways?

  Parts of it were still a blur, but he vividly remembered thinking about the night he’d spent huddled out in the cold before he and Layla had first met the morning after. Why had it come back to him now, of all times? It wasn’t like anything had changed too drastically for him recently.

  As he padded through the belongings the dead thug held on his person, the question kept bouncing back to live rent free in his head. He didn’t even know the last time he’d given those days of his life more than lip service, much less gave them a full recall. Realistically, what was there to say about it?

  Sure, becoming a homeless street rat at age 13 was a terrible thing to have happened to a child, but he’d had plenty of time to put that well behind him already. Not to say things hadn’t been bad for him, far from it. But he’d pulled through in the end and came out the other side to see it get better. Open and shut. It simply had no bearing on his life anymore, he thought.

  Is that why it’s coming back to me now, though? Because the situations I find myself in today can be compared to then?

  If that was the case, it wasn’t like it changed his direction any. At least this time, he had a bit of a direction to work in, somewhat.

  For him right now, that was more than enough.

  He pocketed the last of the spare ammo from the body, tightening the thug’s holster to his own hip and finally reuniting himself with his erstwhile handgun. Recent acquisition of his or not, its presence felt familiar and left him with a sense of security that he’d lacked on this trip up until this point.

  “Told you I’d be taking it back…” he mumbled under his breath.

  With nothing else left for him in the wreckage of the train car, he took a deep breath and made for the door. Ducking low to avoid the sharp, low-hanging debris, he stepped out of the cabin onto the solid ground of the rail tunnel outside.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  But not before reaching his arm out to sift a handful of pea gravel through his fingers. Lesson learned from last time he stepped off this train purposefully; look before you leap.

  Satisfied with the solidity of the ground, he was finally able to get a good look at the exterior of the crash site. Cracking another disposable light talisman courteously donated by the dead man’s pockets, Henry could determine he was definitely somewhere back in the London Underground. Though, the absence of any landmarks made it hard to pinpoint the specifics of where here exactly was.

  The only noticeable detail was the mouth of the tunnel in the distance. Somewhere up ahead, it looked like the ceiling was widening outwards and upwards, raising his hopes on finding somewhere recognizable nearby.

  Looks like we ended up right outside one of the stations, Henry realized. That’s… really good actually. The Subway Wizards don’t trap those areas nearly as much as they do the tunnels proper.

  That being said, he was still highly cautious with his approach. Technically, he might be able to summon a copy if the previous one had died in the crash, as was highly likely. But, ultimately, he decided against it. He was feeling nowhere near the top of his game right now, and any clones he made would inherit those same issues. Not to mention a few bad experiences with mental feedback when he tried to go past his apparent four-man limit, both intentionally and not.

  Definitely don’t need a migraine on top of my already existing migraine… or a burst vessel in my eye, for that matter…

  Step by step, he worked his way towards the tunnel exit. Every so often, he stopped to toss a handful of gravel in front of him to see if he could catch some potential tripwires that were on more of a hair trigger than the rest. If there were any, none took the bait.

  Not that the gravel trick wasn’t fallible in its own right. If it wasn’t, he wouldn’t have needed to send a small army of clones to their deaths, after all.

  Eventually, however, his methodical approach paid off. It’d even took a shorter time span than he’d expected to reach the tunnel mouth, truth be told. And better yet, the eaves of the vaulted metal ceiling beyond, combined with the smooth stone pillars and slabs dotting the cavernous expanse told him exactly where they’d ended up.

  Liverpool Street Station. De facto meeting ground for the subsurface denizens of Hallow London.

  Though, perhaps more accurate was the term holy ground. One didn’t just build a replica Stonehenge in an abandoned subway landing because they were entirely rational, after all. Not to mention the fact that it hadn’t stopped at merely a simple replica.

  No, this was the heart of Subway Wizard society. Layers of concentric circles towered up towards the ceiling, faint outlines of the highest peaks only faintly visible through the misty darkness. Rough-hewn stone steps and a distinct lack of guardrails lent a brutalist nature to the entire construction, standing in direct contrast to the impossibly smooth and seamless rock faces of the rest of the architecture. Like the worshipers had come as an afterthought to the worship of the monument itself.

  And yet, not a single soul was in sight. Not even a single guttering stick of incense. The entire hall was deathly dark and quiet.

  Something’s wrong… this place should be crawling with mages, and yet-

  From the tunnel behind him, the echoing sound of automatic gunfire broke the silence in the air. Immediately, Henry was on high alert.

  That might either be the explanation for the abandonment of Liverpool Street… or that was what was left of his expedition team running up against it. Either way, he needed information.

  Spinning on his heels, he dashed back into the tunnel and ran alongside the length of the wrecked subway train. So long as he hugged the wall of the twisted pile of scrap metal, he would be safe, since its arrival would have triggered any tunnel spanning tripwires anyways. It allowed him to tear up the distance like he hadn’t been able to previously.

  The last train car loomed as the sounds of battle rang closer and closer in his ears. Pressing up against the lip of the final carriage, he cupped a hand in front of his light talisman to mask his presence until he could determine exactly what was going on up ahead.

  It didn’t take long to figure out what was happening. The loud whine of turbines spinning and servomotors engaging bounded off the tunnel walls from further in the fog. The noise of crumbling stonework came from somewhere just past that, and judging by the pneumatic hiss of the Harpy throwing a flurry of Air Domain magic downrange, there was currently a lot of collateral damage piling up.

  A deafening clang bounced back at him through the tunnel, forcing him to drop the talisman entirely and cover his ears on account of the reverberation. In the blink of an eye, the Harpy came back into view, skidding along the ground with both feet digging furrows in the gravel mounded beneath the rails.

  Its wings were wrapped in front of it defensively, weight split evenly between its two legs as it fought the momentum that had pushed it back at least 10 meters, practically placing it dead in front of the crashed train.

  Henry couldn’t say for sure how much further that distance extended. He was just counting the parts he’d seen in that calculation.

  A full second passed before it finally slid to a halt. The instant it did, both metallic wings swung up and around like a pair of slanted shields, as it adopted a modified martial arts stance that accounted for its deployed third arm. He caught a glimpse of the damage on the cybernetic fighter as it repositioned.

  For the first time ever, Henry was seeing fist-size dents in the filigree of the wings. With the tunnels vastly diminishing its maneuverability, something had been able to successfully land battle damage on it.

  Something… or someone.

  “I had been expecting the Nobles to interfere,” the Harpy warbled through its synthetic voicebox. “But I hadn’t realized they were desperate enough to send you out to face me, Shroudwalker.”

  No response came. For several seconds, nobody moved, Henry on account of not wanting to be spotted just yet and the Harpy on account of its focus being solely on the lookout for approaching movement. But, given enough time, the attacker made themselves known.

  Gravel crunched underfoot, bringing the sound of a pair of footsteps coming closer and closer. As the silhouette of the newcomer materialized, the ever-present mist literally parted to make way for their arrival. A tall, hooded figure wearing a sleeveless trenchcoat emerged.

  The hood covered their face entirely, bringing attention instead to their pale skin and the well-defined musculature on their arms. A few faded scars were visible from their previous battles, and slung over their shoulders was an oversized metal frame that they wore like a backpack. On the left-hand shoulder, the digits 0012 were just barely visible from Henry’s hidden position.

  A cold sweat brought Henry a dash of adrenaline that wiped away the last remnants of pain and wooziness. While he didn’t doubt the Harpy’s ability to identify fellow devils, he had hoped that – just this once – it had been mistaken.

  Unfortunately, his own eyes were not deceiving him.

  “The Nobles don’t even know I’m here,” the woman’s voice spat. “I’m here because the people I was charged with watching over died on account of some artifact the Morlocks scrounged up. Damn good scavengers, too, the lot of them.”

  “An artifact, you say?” The Harpy was intrigued by the development. “Isn’t that serendipitous.”

  An eddy of Air Domain magic swirled at its fingertips. “I will only say this once. Turn back now, or face the consequences of meddling in the business of the Gentleman’s Club.”

  “Bring it, lapdog.” The taunt was laced with a growl of frustration. “Like I’d let someone competent get a hold of something that strong.”

  The Shroudwalker adopted a fighting stance of her own. As her balance adjusted, a lock of blonde hair loosened just enough to dangle below the tip of the hood.

  This was bad. He couldn’t have the two of them fighting. An outcome where either one of them won was a worst-case scenario on his end. That left him with only one option remaining to him.

  Henry ducked out of cover, and began shouting.

  “WAIT!!” He made every effort to make his presence suddenly obvious, from waving his arms about, to jumping up and down. “Wait, stop both of you! Stop right this instant!”

  Both sets of eyes snapped to him immediately. He couldn’t stare back at either of them, on account of the various face coverings, but their dual gazes bore into him all the same. Heedlessly, he placed himself in between the two of them before one got the idea to ambush the other.

  He held out his hands, one facing each of them in a sign to break things up. The Harpy cocked its head to the side in confusion, while the Shroudwalker responded verbally with equal unsurety.

  “...Henry?”, she blurted out. “What the bloody hell are you doing here?”