Turns out, he hadn't quite seen everything just yet.

Though, perhaps it was more accurate to say that he heard them first before he saw them. Their garbled warcries were rather distinct, unlike anything else that might be found roaming the streets at night. Wolves had a distinct, animalistic bellow while vamps typically made a sound like they couldn't make up their mind between being snakes, sharks or keening bats.

This was pointedly neither of those.

The closest thing he could equate it to was something trying to mimic human speech, without ever being shown what a human was. Some part of him wanted to say those were, indeed, syllables he was hearing, but if he were to try and string them together in any meaningful way, it just fell completely flat. Any result he found was utterly incoherent, and matched the shambling monsters that bounded out of the rising inferno with uncanny precision.

"Bloody hell, you're an ugly bunch…"

Just looking at them threatened to make his skin crawl. Two heads, twisted in odd, unnatural directions, with a double-wide torso stitched together as much as it was melded. The limbs were all in the wrong places, too, arranged so that the creature resembled a two-headed crab more than it did the original constituents.

If he didn't need to keep his eyes open to aim, he would have squeezed both of them shut in a heartbeat. For the little good it would do to keep those abominations out of his nightmares.

I take it back, he amended. Ugly's far too kind of a word. How do I unsee a thing? I'm sure there's some sort of artifact that can manage it at this point. Just a matter of finding where…

Three or four of the misshapen amalgams leapt out of the flames, a few sparks still licking away at flesh-toned chitin. One feinted forward, then withdrew before he could line up a bead on it with his shotgun. Meanwhile, a second lunged in from his blind spot, around his left side and a bit behind.

They'd repositioned startlingly fast. Not enough time for him to turn around. Rather than waste time spinning on his heels, he blind-fired the shotgun over his shoulder and prepared the pipe in the other hand. A sound of what must have been pain reached his ear, from the far side of his body where he hadn't just momentarily deafened himself with the shot.

Their movements betrayed an unsettling amount of coordination. Whatever these things were, they weren't here for kills or blood. They were here to fight, and win.

Henry didn't like it one bit.

"No, no, this simply won't do." He started babbling aloud to ease his nerves as the battle unfolded, airing every grievance he could think of.

"Firstly, I think it's a bit insulting that I've been demoted to a threat not worth personal attention. Shouldn't exactly have to prove myself when my own existence is right here, plain as day to see. Aren't all my previous runs worth something to you?"

A quick flick of the pipe at the creature facing him directly forced it to break off from its charge. It gave him free rein to whip around and inspect the damage he'd incurred with the shotgun, and while it was certainly significant… it left much to be desired.

The one he'd shot had one of its heads thoroughly mangled by the incendiary shell, flecks of char speckling the pale torso of what must have once been a vampire stitched to a now very dead human. Despite the otherwise mortal wound, it was still apparently capable of moving around and being a nuisance, much to Henry's annoyance. He hit it once over the other head with the pipe, and the vamp face smashed directly into the pavement. The stone cracked slightly, but the head did more so, finally dropping it to the ground in a twitching heap.

"Well, maybe that will show you then," he griped. "Alright, who's next? I doubt any of you will put up much of a fight if that's the only gimmick you have."

None of them answered his taunt. They just backed away out of pipe range, apparently changing tactics.

Is that-?

Three more joined in, to replace the losses already incurred and bolster their numbers. They moved out in front, body-blocking the rest while they did something extremely strange.

They… they each twisted a limb off at the elbow.

Henry didn't understand until he saw what the self-mutilation achieved. Whatever was inside of them, it wasn't blood. It hissed and puffed some sort of smoke into the air as it made contact with oxygen, and where the viscous liquid made contact with the ground it solidified into more of the omnipresent sticky webbing that had only disappeared thanks to the flames from his shotgun.

"Right, well," he realized aloud. "If spiders were the intended result, then that's just a step in the wrong direction, that is. Now all I can think of is crab legs..."

A bead of sweat trickled down his face, betraying his dropping confidence in his ability to handle this alone.

"Well, at the very least this goes to show that the Mad Prince has been keeping himself busy with something. I'd been wondering what he'd been up to all this time, but in all seriousness I don't think I'd have expected something this demented even from him. I don't even know if any of you understand what I'm saying, but with how you showed up I'm going to go out on a limb and say… yes. So, uh… sorry it had to come to this."

If they comprehended his words, they made no sign of it. They just continued their creeping advance, rotating fighters through the front line based on their remaining defenses or webbing.

He saw the plan they were going for, and didn't like it. It was a small-scale version of what had likely been going on over in Kensington, where the wall of webs slowly encroached to contain him while the rest kept him fighting in a smaller and smaller environment. Slowly but surely, he was losing ground as more and more piled on to the forces arrayed against him, the wide mouth of the street being the only thing remaining keeping himself from being outmaneuvered and completely surrounded.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Another fell, and was precisely matched by two more taking their place. Rather clever little bastards, he thought, the way they were testing him to find the exact limit where his defenses crumbled. Almost two dozen now were contributing in some fashion to running him ragged with the minimum possible expenditure on their part.

Clever… but not prepared to expect the unexpected, like he'd learned to.

"Alright, that should be a good enough mob to cause a dent. Claire!"

Four heavy, trunk-like roots erupted from the ground beneath the creatures lines, skewering a small handful and thrashing the rest. In the time it took to snap someone's fingers, the road turned into a hurricane of wanton violence, directed entirely at the entire batch of man-made horrors.

The battlefield fell into utter silence. No signs of movement from deeper in the web just yet, though with how this was likely to proceed that was only a matter of time. He turned to the ruined clothing store that he had backed up to, just off to his right now that he'd succeeded in his role as bait.

"Was all that really necessary?"

Claire popped out from around a corner, a Flora crystal cracking in her palm slightly as she absorbed it faster than was safe. "Overkill is underrated," she replied flatly. "Did you get what you wanted out of that song and dance, or do we need to go back and do it all again?"

Henry gave a so-so gesture. "Goal was to figure out if he was really behind all this directly, and while we technically did that… This would've been a lot easier if it really was just him by his lonesome."

"So… we'll have to be thorough, then."

"Yyyup. Good thing we have the skeletons, I reckon."

Dee showed up just in time for that statement, coming out of hiding once he started hearing familiar voices talking casually. Thankfully, he was quick on the uptake for this one, and without a word the undead constructs he'd been busy preparing were parading out onto the street, forming ranks in record time.

"From the looks of it, we have the upper hand until the big guns get pulled out," Henry commented. "They seem to like picking off targets one by one, surrounding them until they can't fight back. Works well against us, but I can't see them not having problems once they realize this new batch isn't too bothered with dying a second time."

Dee gave him an odd look. "Aren't the numbers enough to win this by themselves?"

"Maybe," he conceded. "But counting solely on being able to drown the other guys in bodies is something the Mad Prince likely expects from me by now. Can't make it too easy on him, if we expect to put up any sort of fight."

< -|- -|- >

Elsewhere in Walworth

Another soldier from the Palatial Remnant schwipped into existence in front of Robb, and promptly started dry heaving.

That made it… roughly twenty trying to throw up in about a half hour. Almost one every minute, and they still hadn't even reached the halfway point on ferrying everyone across. Or even the halfway point of the halfway point. Deep down, he hoped that the soldiers acting as the rear guard on the far side of the river cold hold it in better than the casualties were.

"Ach! Scheiße!" Off to the side of the mirror, a stocky man with a thick German accent carefully extracted the fresh arrival from the landing zone, dressed in a suit jacket that had probably once been rather refined-looking, but was now in desperate need of repair.

"Don't be so fussy, you fool! How did you manage to join the army with such a weak stomach?!"

Robb suppressed a laugh. Dr. Helmut really was a dwarf, through and through.

Henry had told him a little bit about the man before they'd split, but none of that compared to the actual, face-to-face experience. Somehow he seemed to be surprised every time one of the veteran soldiers had a reaction even remotely approaching illness, and pounced on it like a rabid dog in every single case. Medicine was a bit of an odd profession for dwarves, but with the level of Domain talent the man clearly had it was easy to see why he'd chosen that path.

"Hey, hey, easy doc," Robb interjected placatingly. "I can take care of things from here. Just keep the rest from bleeding out, and ready to move once the cavalry arrives."

"Hmph. Haven't you ever heard of triage?" The dwarf huffed, but his heart wasn't really in his words and he was more just making a stink for the sake of it. "Bah. A little bitter-tasting medicine would do this one good anyways. Enjoy your vertigo!"

The good doctor shuffled off to attend to a few of the more critical cases at hand, with only a bit more grumbling under his breath. None of them were really at any risk of serious injury – they'd all been properly stabilized long before showing up – but some needed a closer eye than others.

Robb took a good, long look at the gathered members of the Palatial Remnant. One look was really all you needed. The name resonated extremely well with their appearance.

Nothing about any of them even remotely resembled pristine condition. The men were tired, their body armor worn down, their guns and other weapons weathered but zealously well-maintained, and a bunch of them likely didn't have two bullets to rub together by this point.

More than a handful were showing signs of skipping meals. It would seem that the loss of the incoming GC supplies really did a number on them.

Out in the distance, the occasional crack of gunfire made it across the river, as well as a muzzle flash or two every so often. Cecil and the rest were fighting something over there – likely vamps – but the buildings nearby were too dense to make anything out proper. That was by design. More upright walls meant less avenues to be ambushed from, provided you swept out the dregs inhabiting there first.

Needless to say, these soldiers were all well acquainted with clearing operations by now.

Another soldier appeared in front of the mirror, this one upright and remarkably better at keeping his discomfort under control. Stepping away from the landing zone on his own, he snapped off a quick salute and addressed Robb with a message.

"You must be the one Henry sent along. Sight for sore eyes, you lot are. It was looking to us like we were going to go out fighting until we got the message."

Robb wasn't quite sure how to address the newcomer, so he just nodded along and made some surface observations.

"Any more wounded coming through? And how many should we be expecting in total?"

"Just shy of 150, provided no surprises," came the succinct reply. "Unfortunately, these freakazoid bastards don't leave much in terms of casualties, so there aren't that many to go around. Whether that's good or bad is really just a matter of perspective, I suppose."

"Freakazoid?" He frowned, a hint of confusion layering his voice. "Isn't it just a bunch of vamps and wolves that were penned in with you by the webbing?"

"Not anymore. Or, um… damn, I don't really have a good way to describe it. You'll know 'em when you see 'em, though, I promise you that."

Well… that's unsettlingly cryptic…

More able-bodied soldiers started jumping through, stumbling out of the way in as organized a fashion as possible. Before long, a semi-orderly queue away from the mirror started forming, and all the while the first one – likely an officer of some sort, Robb realized – continued getting him up to speed as quick as possible.

"Old Crazy really had it out for us for a while there," he blathered semi-professionally. "And the timing of it is more than a little suspect. We'd been scavenging through a grid square we normally leave untouched, but everywhere else was running dry so we figured 'what the hell, it's either risk the wolves here or starve anyways,' so we gave it a second pass. Sure enough, there was a pack in the area, but what was more unnerving was this odd-looking, sorta stone monument that a building had fallen on."

"...Monument?" Robb wasn't quite sure how to respond to that. "Must be some weird artifact of some sort. Make any sense of it?"

"Not a lick. But it sure as shit brought the webs out of the woodwork, whatever we did to it. Real shame, because those wolves seemed to be avoiding it like the damn plague-"

As much as the officer would have liked to continue the story, it appeared that the cover of obscurity had finally popped like an overfilled balloon.

"Contact!" One of the other soldiers shouted aloud. Immediately, every soldier who could stand on two feet – and some who couldn't – reached for their weapons and prepared for the inevitable.

Cecil still hadn't crossed with the last soldiers. Apparently, they'd have to hold out on their own for a bit. Robb started forming shadows along his body in preparation. Hopefully, he could find out today just how much of a boon magic was compared to proper guns.

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