Adrenaline was a fickle thing. The immediacy of getting himself involved in the situation had flooded his bloodstream with the stuff, only to cause a crash not even a minute after once that threat had vanished. Left him all shaky, and needing a moment to properly collect himself.

  At least, that was the excuse Henry was using as to why he didn’t answer The Shroudwalker immediately. It certainly was backed up by the shortness of breath he was feeling right now, panting as he was.

  The time he used to catch his breath, however, was being used more as a way to collect his thoughts for what he imagined was about to be a rather eventful conversation.

  But, that wasn’t to say that he was faking his current bout of anxiety, either. This turn of events left him with plenty to be nervous about. After all, a lot could happen when you stayed away from each other for a month.

  Best if I try to ease into this, right?

  Tentatively, he attempted to address her question.

  “Uh, hey…” he began as his breathing slowly returned to normal. “Long time no see, huh? That… is that a new outfit? Been, ah, working out a bit, have you?”

  She continued to stand impassively.

  Henry tsked silently to himself. Hard to make a conversation happen when the dialogue was a one way street.

  “Come on, work with me here a little?”, he pleaded.

  Still no answer. Instead, from his left, the Harpy was the first to speak up.

  “You know this Devil personally?”, it questioned.

  With a sigh, he realized this might take longer to deescalate than he had first hoped. Henry craned his neck in the opposite direction to respond, keeping his feet planted firmly where they were between them.

  “I’ve met most of them by now, actually. To… varying degrees of success. You must know a few of them yourself, right? Not many people risk going outside the walls of established settlements anymore.”

  “Generally correct,” it agreed. “With several notable exceptions.”

  He snorted in amusement. “Don’t I know it. Usually, I’ll run into someone or another while I’m drifting from place to place.”

  “Are you two done?”, The Shroudwalker interjected heatedly. “Or do you want me to keep standing here waiting for an answer to my question?”

  Wincing, he turned back around to reply. “H-hey now, sorry about that… this situation is rather precarious for me to balance, yeah?”

  She crossed her arms, unsatisfied with the wishy-washy response. “Well? I’m waiting…”

  Deep breath in. And out. Try to keep the nerves under control.

  “Of course, sorry. As you may have noticed already, there’s a bit of an artifact hunt going on down here, and all of us want it for different reasons.”

  “It would seem so,” the Harpy agreed tersely.

  He gave it a pointed glare.

  Hey, come on now, give me a minute to say my piece over here.

  “…Anyways, it seems to me a little counterproductive to be squabbling over it here –” he pointed to the ground as he said this to emphasize his point. “– when the object in question isn’t even here to begin with. Just, uh, thinking out loud here, but maybe we could… you know… put our differences aside for the moment and work this out later?”

  She stared at him blankly from underneath the hood. Her mouth expressions were visible, but the entirety of her upper face remained obscured in total darkness from his point of view. It must have been an artifact in and of itself, for it to pull a trick like that. Or at the very least, some very skillfully made enchantments, if it was sewn into the fabric itself.

  “Our differences?”, she repeated with a slight edge to her tone.

  “Well, considering we worked together in the past-”

  “Don’t mention the past.”

  “I wasn’t going to-”

  “I’m being serious. Don’t.”

  For a moment, Henry confused on why she was harping on that particular aspect of his comment. He made a disgruntled and slightly confused face at her, to which he got a subtle head tilt aimed over his shoulder in response. Glancing behind him out of the corner of his eye, it finally clicked.

  Oh… I get it now… he realized belatedly. They’ve never met before, so she’s keeping her cards close to her chest.

  Message received loud and clear. He could play along when he needed to.

  He twisted his arm and gave her a mock, upside-down salute. “Righty ho, then, miss Shroudwalker. No more talk about any history we might have it is.”

  She nodded, satisfied. “Good. Now explain to me why on Earth I shouldn’t just teach that GC lackey behind you a lesson like I’m still considering doing.”

  “You’re really going to get caught up on that?” Henry’s shoulders slumped as he sighed, mentally taking a step back in mild frustration. “Is it this new look you’ve got going on? Feeling the need to put an edgy antihero twist on your night job, are we?”

  With a single, snappy motion, she uncrossed one arm and extended her pointer finger. The mist around her swirled in a vortex and condensed rapidly to a point just above the fingertip, expanding slowly as surrounding fog thinned.

  Her Exotic Domain magic came to life in full force, lips pressed into a thin line of disappointment from beneath the hood as she prepared an attack casually.

  “Wait, wait, okay!” waving both hands in front of her, he quickly blurted out an answer. “I’m tagging along with them because I never found out where it was! Can we please stop clawing at each others throats for a moment?”

  “You’re working with that thing?” She didn’t dispel the menacing-looking orb of mist, but for the moment she wasn’t expanding it, either. “And you expect me to be happy about that?”

  “It’s a… nuanced agreement, I’ll admit,” he replied. “But this isn’t exactly a partnership, and I’m only here at this point because my options are limited. Honest.”

  “Wouldn’t be so limited if you and Cecil hadn’t ran off from the Landed Nobles with half the remaining fighting force, now, would they?”

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “So now it’s okay to talk about the past, then?”

  He could practically envision her rolling her eyes under that hood from that statement. He definitely heard her snort derisively about it.

  Well, wasn’t that just a hard line he had to stand behind.

  “We had our reasons, then,” he countered resolutely. “Reasons which, given the same choice again, would still have me walking out to this day.”

  “So you both decided to risk the lives of everyone left over ideals?”

  “It’s like I said back then. I’m done trading lives.”

  She exhaled sharply in displeasure at his statement. “That is, unless they’re your own, you hypocrite.”

  “Oh, like you aren’t just as hesitant to see people die as I am! Correct me if I’m wrong, but that thug back there that must’ve dumped a whole magazine in your direction? I can’t imagine he’s more than knocked out right now.”

  She didn’t answer, but the limited parts of her expression he could see told him he’d hit close to home with that remark.

  “On a bit of a high horse there, aren’t you, Shroudwalker?”

  “Get out of my way,” she repeated eventually. “I’ve got a job to do. On behalf of the ones you left behind.”

  “Do you even know what this artifact is supposed to be?” Ignoring the repetitive argument entirely, Henry folded his arms together before extending a hand in a questioning gesture. “Because I have absolutely no idea. I’m being held a bit in the dark here.”

  “Don’t know, don’t care,” she shot back curtly. “I just want it gone. Destroyed, so no one else has to die because of it.”

  He cleared his throat, interrupting that particular train of thought before it could gain too much steam. “Right. Sorry. No, that doesn’t work for me, either. At the very least, there’s someone I – well, the rest of these intrepid explorers here – need to, bare minimum, hand it off to first.”

  “And why is that?” Henry imagined that beneath the hood, she was narrowing her eyes at that remark.

  Alright, Henry, play it cool… just need to broach this carefully-

  At the worst possible moment, the Harpy decided to interject. “He gets to live and walk off with a significant portion of our war chest, provided he helps put this artifact directly in Guillaume’s hands.”

  -aaaaannnnnd now she’s absolutely livid.

  “YOU WHAT?!?!”

  In an instant, she was right back to condensing that mist orb. You could actually see the tendrils of it being dragged through the air into it, it was happening so fast. The air around her was rapidly depleted of moisture, an area that was slowly but surely expanding.

  And that was even after accounting for the fact that the underground was absolutely loaded with it. All in all, it had to equate to a considerable boost in power output.

  “GUILLAUME DUFRESNE?!?! YOU STRUCK A DEAL WITH GUILLAUME DUFRESNE?!?!”

  “H-h-h-hey, d-don’t get it twisted like that! It’s not like this deal went through on the best of terms to begin with, and b-besides, there’s no way he’s not going to go for a double-cross anyways, r-right? I’m already planning on making sure I’m the one who does that part first-”

  “Oh, how kind of you to say that quiet part out loud, Henry.” It’s robotic voice was enough to send a chill down his spine as it spoke.

  The Harpy took note of his words, advancing step by step towards him from the other side of the tunnel. “While I do find this outcome regrettable, that just saved me another several hours of struggling to complete Guillaume’s contradictory orders. I must thank you, really.”

  Its shoulder-mounted servo arm extended to its full length and opened the clamp in anticipation. “You know where I stand when it comes to disobeying him, don’t you?”

  To the left, a recently discovered partner in crime whose loyalties to a bastard were – if not completely their own – totally unshakable. On the right was another person he shared the majority of his fond memories with, who was now close to absolutely disgusted with him on account of his many past mistakes and a few answers he still felt to have been the right call. In both cases, there was one common fact that was abundantly clear.

  I’m boned, Henry realized.

  She continued to shout, while it continued to encroach further. Too much. It was too much to deal with at once.

  “Stop…”

  So this is where it was all going to catch up to him.

  He’d tried this time. He really had. Every last card he’d been given, every dirty trick he gathered to keep him just barely ahead of the curve for one day more, and despite him knowing it wouldn’t be enough to get him through this, he’d done everything he could to give himself a chance. But now, it decided it would all come down at once.

  “Both of you, please…”

  His words fell on deaf ears. Why wouldn’t they? His word hadn’t been worth much for some time now, anyway. He’d written it off as the price to pay for staying in the game.

  The Harpy stood a bare few paces away now. As much as he liked to bluff about it before, there was no way he stood a chance against it in a one-on-one fight, even considering the handicap to its movement.

  What was there for a guy like him to do? Part of the Devil’s Dozen though he might be, his Exotic Domain was something he barely understood and lay on the weak end of the scale to begin with. He was stuck between the worst of both worlds. Weak enough to be pushed around by Hallow London’s most powerful, but strong enough that the life that came with those searching for a stronger foothold was inescapable for him.

  It was too much, unbearably so. He just wanted it to be over with. So that everyone could go home and return to the way things were, instead of being forced to adapt to the new normal.

  He turned away from the Harpy, a sad smile on his face as he looked at the friend he’d once known, who changed with the world around her in order to thrive.

  She’d come so far from that first wolf attack, he realized.

  No matter what… at least she’ll do fine.

  “See you next time,” he spoke softly.

  For a moment, her obscured expression remained stoic. But, he could tell that she was hesitating a bit. The flow of mist into the orb had begun to slow down, and the empty zone around her began shrinking once again.

  But, he hadn’t said that to get out of what was coming for him. He just wanted to take the path that hurt the least.

  A hand with an iron grip clamped down on his shoulder from behind, forcefully spinning him around. The Harpy’s servo arm reared back, winding up to strike cleanly and decisively as its hand pulled back in close to stay clear of the machinery.

  Strange, he mused idly. Strange how the hands aren't metal like the rest.

  Funny what you noticed when you had nothing left to worry about.

  He was ready. He had other copies still alive. The oldest of them would take his place. Slipping into his old role like a glove, the same way he had.

  Through them, he still had a chance to fix everything. Someday. Despite everything, he felt it necessary to have faith in himself.

  The Harpy’s extended hand brushed across the surface of the crystal jutting out of his chest. It was a small detail, barely more than a slight miscalculation on its part. One that could mainly be attributed to chance.

  But the chain of events it resulted in made all the difference.

  Suddenly, the glow in the crystal flashed from its regular dull blue to bright white, momentarily blinding him and causing them both to stagger back. A moment too late, he tried to block the light from his eyes, but in the end he found himself blinded nonetheless. To him, however, it was just a temporary dazzling.

  To the Harpy, on the other hand, it was significantly more substantial.

  Cybernetic parts twitching and jerking randomly, it slumped to the ground like a sack of potatoes. Labored breathing still rattled out from the rebreather mask it wore, but while it might still have been breathing – somehow – it appeared to be entirely incapacitated. Its wings lay splayed out behind it on the ground, laying mostly flat on its back as it trembled under the effects of some sort of malfunction.

  It was a sudden turn of fortunes he was totally unprepared for. His thoughts came to a screeching halt as they unsuccessfully tried to pivot to the new set of circumstances.

  His body took the wheel in their place. As it tended to do when he found himself at a loss.

  “Oh my God!”, Henry exclaimed. “Layla! Come help! Come help me figure out what’s wrong with them! It knows where the artifact can be found!”

  It was a sad, overly pragmatic excuse, in his mind. Deep down, he knew the real reason he wanted to stop whatever this was was because he still had a debt to repay to it for ruining its life more than he had his own.

  But hey, so long as it worked, right?

  Sensing the urgency, she sprinted in close to assist, the hood finally dropping into the frame of the backpack behind her as she ran. Wavy blonde hair that had been hidden beneath cascaded out onto her shoulders, bouncing in tandem with the backpack as she got as close as she could without being at risk of slashed by any sharp points on the Harpy’s body.

  “What the hell happened, Henry?!”

  “I don’t know! My magic did something to it that it’s never done before! I-I don’t even know how it activated in the first place!”

  “Well, then what are we supposed to do about it?!”

  “I, um, uh… oh! Do that mist diagnosis spell thing you did that one time!”

  “You sure? Last time I tried that it-”

  All of a sudden, the Harpy went limp. Henry couldn’t help but stare down in shock.

  “Is it…” Layla intoned quietly. “Is it dead?”

  Henry opened his mouth to answer.

  “Not quite.”

  The voice that spoke first, however, was not his. Despite some apparent static and audio glitching, the words came from the Harpy. More shockingly still, it was able to sit up on its own accord.

  “I will help the both of you in your plan,” it continued with a hurried voice. “On one condition.”

  They both listened intently. Henry’s jaw felt like it was about to drop to the floor.