A gust of wind buffeted through the interior as the Harpy’s landing echoed through the hall. It touched down just outside the temple’s main entrance, not quite out of view from where they stood but close enough to make it difficult. As it approached, its footsteps rang out in a syncopated rhythm, first the metallic sole of its robotic leg followed by the heavy boot on the other. Idly, Henry wondered if it had to contend with a slight height mismatch whenever it walked. Perhaps that was part of why it preferred flying everywhere.

  While it navigated between the stone pews, Gordie – Gordon? – waited for it to get close enough to be able to make it out in clearer detail. Once it had made it past the darker than obsidian pillar, he swiped two fingers off his forehead in a casual salute and got straight to business.

  “Glad you could make it.”, he greeted in a deep, articulate voice. “We’ve found a damaged enchantment, and these two here that they can repair it within a half hour.”

  The Harpy nodded, as well as took note of the change in demeanor his subordinate had underwent. “I see that you’ve decided to drop the act at last.”

  “If I’m being honest, it put me on the spot a little. The silent approach was effective when there were others to carry the conversation, but with the rest of them dead the rushed persona proved… counter-productive. Serves me right for not preparing for that eventuality.”

  He talked callously, regarding his colleagues in about the same fashion as his mannerisms – easily replaceable. Henry was quite familiar with the concept of putting on an act for others – utilizing it often himself, of course – but this was a bridge further than even he was willing to go.

  The idea of scrubbing every last part of his personality from one of his charades not only unsettled him, he flat out wasn’t sure if he’d even be capable of it.

  This guy had no such inhibitions. One moment he acted the fool, and the next the calculating operative. Seamless. Without a single trace that the former had even existed to begin with. The thought that this man could potentially have done this multiple times in the past caused Henry’s grip on the edges of the stone altar to tighten.

  “The new prisoner has suggested we allow her to direct, while he,” Gordon continued, gesturing in Henry’s direction. “performs the actions necessary for the repair. Through these means, she claims we can get results without compromising security.”

  “The Shroudwalker put forth this course of action?”, it asked.

  “Correct, sir.”

  “...Very well. Stay vigilant, but let him squander his remaining lifetime if he so chooses.”

  Gordon paused.

  “You’re certain about that decision?”, he questioned icily.

  The Harpy’s wings bristled slightly from the accusation. “Is there a , capo?”

  Gordon narrowed his eyes at the Harpy in turn. Idly, he pulled the magazine from the well of his gun and inspected the level of ammo remaining.

  “That depends,” he elaborated, speaking slowly and deliberately. “Are they prisoners or not? Because in theory, there’s only one very obvious answer Guillaume would accept in person.”

  A standoff occurred between the two gang members. The Harpy stood silent, waiting like a coiled spring, and contrasted directly by the relaxed regard of the other, stopping to count ammunition round by round.

  Henry was confused. Wasn’t this guy just a regular human? What gave him the confidence to try to antagonize one of the most combat effective Devils this side of the Thames?

  Gordon finished counting, placing the final low-caliber round back into the magazine and slamming it back home into the submachine gun.

  “It seems to me,” he continued in that strange, clipped accent, “That you appear perfectly content to let the prisoners do as they please, provided they remain in your sight.”

  “Because I have the confidence that between the two of us, they wouldn’t get far,” the Harpy seethed.

  “I disagree. From my perspective, it’s because your approach is sloppy. The fact that the three accompanying members are dead and gone – one of which was killed by your hand – should leave you tightening control, not loosening it. Being honest, to me this volumes on your capacity to lead this expedition in the first place.”

  “And yet, Guillaume chose to lead this operation. Not you.”

  “Unfortunately for you, that is only partially correct.”

  “Wh-”

  Before it could even get out a syllable in protest, Gordon listed off a string of seemingly random gibberish.

  “Single-activation. 7-3-8-8-1, , Stratford protocol. Begin override.”

  Without even an errant twitch, the Harpy seized up and returned to a more neutral posture. Unmoving, like the time Guillaume had manually wrested control over it in the interrogation room back at Club headquarters. It stood as still as the ruined statues that ringed the altar.

  Gordon, apparently satisfied with the result, continued to monologue, taking slow steps towards the immobilized cyborg.

  “Perhaps you need a reminder of your role in our organization. You. Are. A. Tool.”

  The Harpy didn’t respond. Likely couldn’t, if this was at all similar to what Henry thought it might be. The hypothesis only rang truer when Gordon didn’t even hesitate in his little speech.

  “A highly tool, yes, but at the end of the day, best utilized by the hands of another. Guillaume thought it worthwhile to experiment with exactly far your own initiative could be harnessed to further our goals…”

  He stood practically inches from the Harpy’s face, staring it down with a cold, uncaring expression.

  “I will be sorry to report that it has been, once again, a resounding failure. Until that time, however, operational command falls to me. Respond if you understand.”

  “You rat-!”

  “Stop talking.”

  The Harpy shut up immediately at the request of the direct order.

  “Apologies. I should have been more specific in my wording.”

  Gordon about-faced, apparently satisfied to be in control of the situation once more. With his authority now completely uncontested, he once again returned his attention to the two prisoners.

  He seemed to focus on Henry most of all. The aloof confidence in the man’s expression was even more unnerving when directed at him. As Henry got stared down, he found himself glancing rapidly around the rest of the room looking for some way to salvage his rapidly dwindling position.

  “Follow along.” Gordon commanded to his apparent thrall before approaching them both. “You two have fifteen minutes to get this done before I move this operation along.” He strode with the absolute certainty of a man used to being in charge, the Harpy walking in lockstep a few paces behind him.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Layla protested almost immediately. “That’s not nearly enough time-!”

  “You will it enough time. Try to delay me a second longer and I will personally gouge one of your eyes out. Try to dawdle once the time begins, and I’ll take a hand. Do something worse, and I will get .”

  He didn’t speak those words as if they were meant to be a threat. They came as nonchalantly as someone discussing the weather, or quoting a fun fact they found on the internet. It simply was what would happen. A promise.

  Henry reacted without thinking, and did something stupid. He reached for his gun.

  He barely had time to blink before Gordon had his grip around his wrist. With a vicious twist, pain flared through his whole arm as it was bent near to the point of breaking. Grimacing, Henry was forced to drop the revolver to the floor with a deafening clatter.

  “That was your last warning,” Gordon breathed into his ear as he held his arm in a deadlock grip. “And this-”

  He dug two fingers into the bullet wound through Henry’s forearm, to which he cried out in much greater pain this time. They scraped around inside, tearing open the barely-closed scabs until blood started flowing freely once again.

  Then, to add insult to injury, Gordon shoved him stomach-first into the edge of the altar, knocking the wind out of him as the hard corner pressed into his sternum. Blood smeared the damaged etchings as Henry reeled from the impact.

  The whole maneuver had barely taken him a few short seconds to complete. As he sputtered for air, he got the distinct impression that the man had spent a long part of his life learning how to most efficiently incapacitate others.

  “This is just a taste of what you’re in for if you keep trying your luck.”

  Henry slowly rose to his feet, still retching. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the mist swirling near Layla’s feet agitatedly.

  Ever so subtly, he shook his head towards her. She didn’t overtly react, but thankfully, it seemed she received the message. The fog settle down once again, but he could tell that she wasn’t happy about the turn of events in the slightest.

  Gordon picked up Henry’s gun off the ground, pointing a weapon at each of them as he stepped back.

  “Now, get to work.”

  And they did.

  < -|- -|- >

  “Five minutes,” Gordon intoned casually.

  “We’re almost finished! Quickly, take the container from my pack labeled ‘Earth powder’ and fill that channel near the top that looks like a sideways… um…”

  “This one?”

  “Y-yeah, that one!”

  Sweat poured from Henry’s forehead as he scrabbled around for the requested ingredient. His hands were visibly shaking as the time on the clock ticked down further and further, causing him to nearly drop the container as he finally found it. With every heartbeat, another drop of blood fell from the hole in his forearm. He had to be careful not to contaminate the workspace. careful, and on borrowed time, to boot. Every neuron, every synapse of his felt like it was standing at attention, ready to react on a hair trigger if the need arose.

  He could only imagine how Layla felt, still bound as she was. Wholly dependent on her ability to teach him a crash-course on enchanting, and his ability to keep up. On his ability to power through the pain and grasp what she was saying.

  Was she worried? Was everything going to plan? What was on her mind, just this moment? With her hood still down, it was hard to tell. It was a question he couldn’t even bother to answer, he had that little attention to spare.

  “Got it! Now what?”

  “How’s the Fire Domain crystal in the blowtorch holding up?”

  He bent over and picked up the handheld canister from where it had been discarded haphazardly to the floor. Below the pipe from which the flames exited, there was a small access hatch which he hadn’t bothered to properly shut from when he’d had to replace it earlier. Flicking the crystalline structure within, the faint orange glow from inside momentarily spiked as a spark flew from where he struck it.

  “Good enough, looks like!”, he replied.

  “Better hope so! Apply the flame to the powder evenly, until it starts to melt together into a single thin river, then just a little longer than the others!”

  Didn’t have to tell him twice. Sparks flew from the pilot light as the torch flared to life. Magic flames licked at the edges of the stone channel, charring the already weakened stone but simultaneously forming a thin, glasslike beam of brownish material in its wake.

  From what he could gather from the brief anecdotes Layla mentioned in passing, these were… rudimentary leylines. The easiest and quickest type to make, as well as being the most shoddy. It was crude, wasteful, and liable to break with repeated use… but they had no such luxuries under Gordon’s hawkish watch.

  “Four minutes,” he announced, the tension in the room ratcheting up yet another notch.

  Henry tried to ignore him, and instead focus on the task at hand. He felt almost queasy as he melted the last of the powderized crystal, but regardless was able to get the job done with only a little more blood loss.

  “Okay! What’s next?”

  He’d been responding in as short of a sentence as possible since they started working. Every moment counted, and every second he was waiting on the next step was one wasted. It was a natural procession.

  “Try it!”

  He yanked the fire crystal out of the blowtorch and slotted it into the recess at the bottom left corner of the altar’s surface. The remaining light within faded until it, too, looked like nothing more than a fancy glass bauble, and the altar began to hum in a low tone as the energy worked its way through the system.

  “Is that it?!”, Henry asked excitedly.

  “Give it a minute! It needs time for the base engravings to convert the Fire Domain back into raw mana!”

  They both stepped a bit closer as they maintained nervous vigil over their handiwork. The hum began to change in pitch, undulating up and down like a slow heartbeat as the magic struggled to form within the slapdash set of mediums and focuses they had assembled.

  “It- it’s working!”

  Henry was excited. Sure, he’d had to be walked pretty much the entire way through the process, but something he’d made with his own two hands was kind of, sort of functional! It was enough to make him shout in excitement-

  “Shit!”, Layla cursed.

  The reason became immediately apparent. At specific points, the web-like crystalline structure began glowing white-hot where it normally should have remained the color of the respective crystal. Multiple points of failure began overheating in this fashion, from spots where multiple threads joined together to seemingly innocuous stretches of framework that might have been just a hair too thin to handle the throughput.

  There was probably a good reason he’d never seen this method used in modern technology. A lot of necessary precision for not a whole lot of utility in turn.

  Layla sprang into action immediately. “We need to cool those points down until the activation finishes! I think I still have a spare Water crystal-”

  “Two minutes,” Gordon interrupted.

  Henry frantically began searching through the oversized frame backpack as she growled back at their captor. “Not helpful, dickhead!”

  The stress was getting to her. It took a bit of effort to get her swearing, but once she started she could keep going until sailors blushed in embarrassment.

  Not that he was particularly cool as a cucumber, either. Heedless of the harm he was doing to himself, he scrabbled through every nook and cranny of her ridiculously large backpack that was more scrap metal than it was a storage device.

  It looked like someone had taken a shelf from someone’s garage, strapped as much extra storage as they could to it, and gave it the bare minimum padding needed to carry it around. Sharp ends of wire mesh scratched his hands as he continued frantically checking each and every sprawling compartment.

  With no luck.

  “I’m… I’m not seeing one!”

  Layla didn’t even respond with words, just a roar of frustration.

  “One minute,” Gordon forewarned.

  They were out of options. With nothing left to lose, Layla decided to take matters into her own hands.

  “This would have gone a lot smoother if you could have just given us the time we needed!”

  Her angry words fell on deaf ears, but her actions were sighted in on almost immediately. Mist began forming into coiling streams in the air, wrapping themselves around the critical junctions in the magic circuit and rapidly condensing. Cool water pressed down on the structure before rapidly evaporating into steam, only to be circulated back into Layla’s control to repeat the process all over again.

  Gordon very much did like that she was using her Exotic Domain. And he was very much in a ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ sort of mood.

  “No!”

  Henry exclaimed as he saw the muzzle of the submachine gun come up. Two to the center, one to the head. Layla was wholly preoccupied with keeping the myriad crystal threads stable. There was no way she would have reacted in time.

  He acted so she wouldn’t have to. The crystal in his chest flashed as he subconsciously tried to put himself in the line of fire before it was too late.

  Even with his advance warning, he would have been too slow without his powers. In the bare nick of time, his copy materialized just in front of the path of the bullet, reactive shield flaring to life as the three round burst collided.

  The shield held. The three pistol-grade bullets, deprived of their forward momentum, fell to the ground in a heap. While the distraction was still in play, Henry pulled Layla down to the ground in anticipation of what he imagined would happen next.

  His guess, unfortunately, was correct. A gaping exit wound blossomed in the back of his simulacrum’s mouth as the deafening report of the revolver rang out through the empty hall. As it fell to the ground in a boneless heap, he saw Gordon adjust his sights to them next.

  The pulsing of the altar let out a rumbling groan, interrupting their scuffle as the central pillar moved.

  Spinning slowly counterclockwise, the onyx-like megalith rose upward, like a drill press moving in reverse. The entire hall shook as it ascended into the ceiling, revealing a passage below roughly big enough to fit a procession of mages.

  Henry panted heavily as he stared down the barrel of his own gun. He didn’t even turn to look at the chasm opening right in front of them. The only thing saving him right now was Gordon hesitating to assess the new development. A single twitch too far in the wrong direction now might be enough to get him killed.

  He decided now would be the best time to play the peacemaker. Despite how dry his mouth felt, he swallowed before addressing the man in charge.

  “Okay… you can put the gun down now… Turns out I was right, see?”