A deluge of murky water from the Thames burst up over the bank and onto the streets. Most shot straight upward, following the path of the Mad Prince, but there was enough sheer volume pushed around that Henry felt the stray droplets hit his back and side as he scrambled to get up off the ground.

He didn't even need to look up to understand that both he and the Constable were directly in the path of the oncoming Devil. The rapid spike in irrational arachnophobia the Mad Prince exuded was warning enough. With a deafening crash of crumbling stonework, the road where the two of them had stood not moments ago was crushed to powder, the giant tarantula's powerful limbs absorbing the shock far better than the street.

It turned to them, chittering in frustration and balefully staring the Constable down with four of its eight eyes.

"Out of my way," it growled towards him dismissively. "You're interrupting my hunt."

The bulky officer frowned, taking a moment to consider his position and giving Henry just that little bit more distance between them all. Probably weighing his options in terms of how to best go about dealing with the notoriously unstable man-spider. Which, in all fairness, was generally the right move for those not wanting trouble…

Operative word being generally.

"How about we-"

An irritated flick from its foreleg sent him sprawling bodily through the air and through the side of a building long before he could finish that sentence. Solid concrete turned to dust in the blink of an eye. Maybe some rebar in there, too, but it was hard to be sure. But there definitely should have been enough structural integrity for it to offer at least some resistance to the Constable's flight path.

...It did not.

His impact and subsequent crash landing sounded like a bomb going off.

The Mad Prince scoffed. "I didn't ask for a counteroffer." Chunks of rubble broke off from the perimeter of the hole, punctuating his words with clouds of dust. A pained groan from inside the building answered them back, too muted to give any proper feedback.

That was... a good sign, maybe? It meant the hit hadn't hurt him too badly, since he was apparently still conscious. But, in terms of the here in now, it was definitely on the higher end of the pain threshold and likely meant neither of them would be seeing him for a while.

Just went to show the kind of punishment the stronger Devils could both dish out and take.

Though, I wouldn't want to test my luck with a hit like that myself…

Henry involuntarily winced. That sort of damage would definitely shred him to tissue paper if it ever ended up connecting. And the longer this hit-and-run fight wore on, the more likely that outcome would end up being. He already felt like he'd been rug-burned pretty much everywhere on his body, so the thought that he could be in for much worse in very short order was not a pleasant one.

Sucked for him that a clash was pretty much inevitable; he was beat four times over if a footrace with the Mad Prince broke out.

Best not run from it, then, he surmised. Can always try that later, if I'm still alive. Emphasis on try...

He took hold of the pipe once again, the weight of the improvised artifact weapon feeling comfortable in one hand. Not too heavy, but not too light as to feel flimsy, either. The makeshift shotgun was already in his other hand, aimed squarely at the spider's face now that the short-lived escape was over.

He stared straight into the eyes of the beast. It stared back, matching his gaze and then some. A wet, raspy laugh escaped the spider's mandibles.

"You must truly be desperate," it sneered at him. How it managed to do that without an even remotely human face, he had no idea. But it wasn't like he was about to get an explanation.

"How many times have we done this little song and dance already, Henry? A dozen? Two? More, maybe? Truthfully, I stopped keeping track after the first month. And yet, here you are, still trying to be a thorn in my side, armed with nothing but a crude firearm and an even cruder blunt instrument."

The Mad Prince advanced slowly, trying to intimidate him a bit before finally going in for the kill. Arrogant as ever, even when he'd been fooled a few times already. The worst part was he could get away with it, too. His Exotic Domain had so much raw power behind it that any opponent he decided to face really couldn't stay out ahead of him for long.

That it offered a chance to monologue was just a bonus for the madman.

"What makes you decide to keep trying with this nonsense?" it taunted. "Some sense of justice? Escape? Or perhaps just a lack of anything better to do? If you tell me now, I promise your death will be quick and painless."

Henry let out a dry chuckle. "I don't know if you'd get it, even if I did tell you."

"Really?" the spider bristled at the challenge, but held off from smiting him just a moment longer. "Humor me anyways."

Henry cursed mentally. That was his bluff called, then.

If he'd had words to describe it, he'd have definitely tried to explain it himself already. It would have bought him time at basically no expense, if he'd understood it fully. Perhaps if he had some time to introspect on it a bit, he might get a passable answer.

Yeah, and maybe this is all just a bad dream, he thought drily.

The Mad Prince was absolutely right to question his dedication. Dying hurt. No matter what people said about quick and painless deaths, in his experience there really was no such thing. The only reason people seemed to believe that was because nobody was ever around to describe their experience before him. So was he really just a masochist in disguise?

It sounded plausible, but Henry didn't fully believe it himself. There was something more to it. Just hadn't built up fully yet, he felt. Best he could say was that, while past experience told him this would end poorly for him, he also had a sense that… it might not.

Matter of fact, he felt absolutely certain that he stood a chance of accomplishing something now, despite the odds.

"Nah," he decided. "You'll have to figure that one out yourself."

He fired the first shot of the battle, a strange sense of confidence washing over him.

< -|- -|- >

"Dee, make a bridge or something, already! We need to get over there now!!"

"Are you crazy?! That thing managed to pimp-slap the Constable out of the fight! The hell are we supposed to be able to do?!"

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On the south side of the river, the supporting members of Henry's strike group were having an argument amongst themselves. They watched the fight unfold along the riverside, with Dee and Claire split between making an effort to pull him out of the fire, and the very reasonable assessment that none of them stood a chance of getting close. The sounds of gunfire rang out in the distance, both from the makeshift shotgun Henry was using as well as further west, where the real action was taking place.

"If we don't do something, he's going to wind up a stain on the floor! Who do you think the Mad Prince is going to end up chasing after he finishes up with him, huh?"

"Us, obviously!" Dee half-shouted in exasperation. "Which is why we should have made a break for it the moment we cut the bridge, like I said we should!"

Claire pulled a sour expression. "Nobody said anything about you needing to stick around," she snarled, jabbing a finger into Dee's chest. "But you had a chance to leave and decided not to take it, which says to me that you don't want to leave him hanging either."

Giselle barely paid them any mind. Her rapt attention was solely placed on the fight happening on the far bank.

A life or death fight between Devils. This was the stuff of the local legends that had been passed around the old GC hideout she'd been confined to. And now here she was, seeing one in the flesh.

It was everything she had hoped to see and more. Like something out of a movie, where the hero was fighting desperately for what they thought was right against all odds.

The much smaller blot that was Henry moved in quick, jerky motions, barely dodging here, shooting webbing aimed at him out of the sky there. The Mad Prince made an attempt to skewer him on one of its forelimbs, but he managed to use that metal pipe artifact of his to parry at just the last moment. Calling it blocking wouldn't be entirely truthful, as it knocked him back as much as it did the giant spider, but… it kept him from meeting an untimely end, that was for certain.

He even stayed standing as the blow pushed him back several meters. The sound of the shockwave hit her ears just a split second after.

It was… probably the single most exciting thing she'd seen in her entire life. And she wanted to be part of it.

"Okay, assuming I try to help, then what?" Dee continued to argue with Claire, getting increasingly more frustrated. "Any bridge I make will require time to set up, and I mean a significant amount of time. At the rate the skeletons could manage to make anything stable, the fight would have been long over and we'd probably have been dead hours before that point. My kit just doesn't have anything that can be of use!"

"Mine does," Giselle interrupted, causing the other two to whip their heads around at her. Dee looked at her like she'd just turned into an alien.

"You can't be serious," he said disbelievingly. "You want to go over there and try something, too?"

"A little," she admitted. "Just to see what would happen."

"That- that's crazy! You're going to get yourself killed-!"

She wasn't listening. With a flick of mental intent, she laid out the force field in her artifact necklace flat like a carpet. A quick test proved that the intangible barrier would, indeed, support her weight, and once she was satisfied with the result and dimensions of her new portable walkway, she turned to face the other two again.

"So who's coming?" she asked innocently. "Just so I know how much space I need to make here."

Claire stepped on the platform almost immediately. And, despite a few stammered protests from Dee, he did eventually relent and take up the last available spot.

"What am I getting myself into…" he bemoaned.

"A good time, that's what." Satisfied that everyone was settled in, Giselle gave the command for the platform to cross.

"How is this going to be a good time?!"

"I dunno," she replied with a shrug. "Just have a good feeling about it, is all."

"Can't say I fully understand the sentiment," Claire added, "But I can definitely get behind it. Try going in low and slow, and get us as close as you can. I have a new trick I want to try that I think might be a bit useful."

< -|- -|- >

"You're putting up a much better fight than I'd have expected!"

Henry's body itched with the feeling of phantom bug bites as the Mad Prince pounced forward. That was all the warning he got; a moment of unnatural unpleasantness. Near instantly, the overgrown arachnid closed the distance between them, forcing Henry so close to it's ugly face that he caught a whiff of rotten meat on its breath.

Mandibles snapped centimeters from his face, the half-second of anticipation he'd been given only just saving his head from being crushed in the spider's maw. It was almost impressive… but this was the third close shave in as many minutes and he was really starting to get tired of them.

Two more follow-up bites came immediately after, pushing Henry even closer to the breaking point. One of them was so close to connecting, it tore the sleeve clean off the left side of his shirt. His limits were being pushed. Hard. So hard, in fact, that forming a coherent thought was all but impossible whenever the monologuing paused.

The Mad Prince's boasts were the only times he caught a break. They were also, unfortunately, absolutely true; no other encounter had lasted to almost five minutes like this one had. Unless you counted the few where he'd copied mid-fight to extend the encounter, but… historically, such opportunities had been few and far between. The most a single copy could expect to live on average was maybe two minutes, if the stars aligned.

Typically, they did not.

Until now. He was obviously still being toyed with, but then again that was always the case in these fights. Yet, something was undeniably… different. For one, he apparently ranked as a semi-serious threat, in the Prince's eyes.

"Well, this has been enlightening for me, despite your best efforts to the contrary." it took a half step back, beady black eyes staring directly into his soul. "But my time is very limited, and this is all starting to get a bit stale, I'm afraid. Any last words?"

Huh, Henry managed to piece together in the moments in between. He's never tried to end a fight early before-

His thoughts cut short. The invisible mental pressure that had been assailing him magnified. Doubling, tripling, then tripling again on top of that, becoming an actual, physical force that threatened to crush the life out of him.

His reactive shield failed almost instantly, weakened from the hoverboard crash as it was. Once that was gone, Henry's chest started feeling tight. Then his everything started feeling tight. The weight that followed, he realized, was too much to bear.

He fell to the ground with a strangled gasp, blood trickling from his nose. There was nothing on top of him, but it felt like half a sedan had just been dropped on his back. One where all the wheels had fallen off, specifically to remove the hope of him ever getting unstuck from under what felt like a ton or more of pure crush force.

One second passed. He realized that he just beat his previous record for withstanding the Prince's strongest attack.

Best… ngh- enjoy it while I can…

Two seconds. Despite the imminent death awaiting him, he found he wasn't afraid of it, this time. If you wiped away all the blood that was continuing to pour from his face and looked deep into his eyes, you might even say the expression looked almost… calm.

True, he did put on the act of being scared for his life., That was more a force of habit than anything. He'd always been this scared before, when his copies were being stacked like cordwood. His body went through the motions, but his heart just wasn't in it this time.

It showed, he felt. Nobody else might have known, but he did. Though he still wasn't quite sure why.

Three seconds. With the side of his head pressed flat against the ground as it was, he couldn't even look up to stare the monster in the eyes.

Maybe that's why he noticed the arrivals from the riverbank first.

"NOW!!!"

Just before the fourth second could break him entirely, the tide of battle shifted. From deep in the earth, sharpened ivory talons erupted through the stony ground, raking the spider from every angle and leaving hairline tears in the monster's flesh. The wounds were small, but alloweda thin, slightly tinted mist to be applied directly to its bloodstream while currents of electricity wreaked havoc elsewhere. The damage was deceptively intense, turning the spider's movements sluggish and off-balance.

A triple threat, from a very familiar combination of Domains and artifacts. With so much external stimuli competing for his attention at once, the Mad Prince's concentration slipped, freeing Henry from his final moments just in time to see who had saved him.

An invisible floating platform swooped in like a guardian angel. Atop it, Claire, Dee and Giselle stood ready, going above and beyond what he'd expected of them in their hail mary. The giant spider screeched in agony, momentarily stunned that not only would anyone dare to backstab him, but actually be successful for a certain definition of the term.

Dee's voice cut through the din, as he sent another deterring blast of lightning at their opponent.

"Get him up here! Quickly!"

The fabric of the platform rippled slightly, dipping low to scoop him up off the ground as he coughed the last of the blood out of his bruised windpipe. The moment he was aboard, cords of woody roots held him tight against the surface, wrapping around his body and the platform before tying themselves off. Claire nodded, satisfied with the handiwork, and motioned for to the others that it was time to get the hell out.

They peeled away back across the river to safety, climbing high into the air to evade the return fire from the Mad Prince's webbing.

…Well, that decides it, then, Henry realized as his thoughts grew foggy. Evelyn had been right to say he should trust them.

He passed out moments after, finally understanding why he hadn't been truly afraid.

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