Henry allowed himself a sigh of relief.

The flames began to die down, and the body that had once been Noapte the arch-vampire continued to lay unmoving. No grievous wounds were miraculously healing. No indication that it was anything more than a grey-skinned monster corpse cropped up. It just sat there, a lump of grey meat and the world was probably better off for it.

He realized a little bit late that… the worst of it had come and gone.

If only their collective nerves could hurry up and take the hint.

"You okay?" he asked Giselle. She still seemed a little out of it, sitting alone on the overturned wood pile as she was, so it was probably best to check up on her first.

A short pause, then an even shorter, fainter nod in the affirmative came back. "I, uh… yeah, I think so…"

Henry seriously doubted that she was as put together as she let on, but the fact that she was outwardly responding at all was a good sign. Meant she wasn't caught up playing it over and over in her head, which was… something he'd found was very easy to do, unfortunately.

She swallowed nervously, staring down at the ground. "That was… um… that was more than I bargained for…"

"Too much excitement for one day?"

Letting out a frustrated sigh, she halfheartedly kicked a piece of burnt wood in his general direction.

"You know what I mean."

Henry nodded. Indeed he did.

"It wasn't a bad idea," he admitted. "And it certainly worked well enough, with how things turned out. It was your idea, right?"

"You mean Grimm? I mean, yeah, but…"

"But nothing. You not only made something that worked, but you jumped in the deep end on your first try and came out without a scratch. That's an accomplishment most people can only dream of. I mean, look at me." He held up his broken arm as safely as he could, to prove a point. "Even I had a rough time of it."

The swollen break shifted a bit. He winced.

"Don't take this as me downplaying things, but working through the aftermath of this sort of experience is a process. Anyone who's been that close to death has had to go through it, and it's not really something that gets easier over time. You just start noticing it less."

"…Speaking from experience?" she asked sullenly.

"More than you know."

Things went quiet. There he went again, killing the mood by dumping his baggage on others. Hastily, he tried to change the subject so they could move past it.

"How about we go check in with everyone else and see what they think?" he suggested.

"...okay…"

They stretched, dusted themselves off a bit, and went and did exactly that. The walk was boring and completely silent.

Exactly what the sort of thing they needed.

< -|- -|- >

Arriving at the trench proved that excitement followed Henry wherever he went for some reason.

Though, this time, it was of a more pleasant variety. Their first sight upon arriving at the inner trench was Dee splashing Claire awake with a bucket of cold water. Where he had managed to get the bucket, the water or the fresh ice from was anyone's guess, but the sight of her sopping wet and spluttering on the ground was enough to get the soldiers gathered round laughing uproariously. Even Cecil cracked a faint smile, despite being the supposed officer on duty.

Claire practically bolted upright, coughing up a storm and wasting no time on the complaints.

"What the-?! Blgh! The hell you go and do that for?!"

"Wake up, sleepyhead! You missed the whole thing!"

"Missed the whole- I passed out practically building the whole damn thing, you moron!"

"Mmmm… I dunno about that… Werewolf bones are hard to come by…"

"That was barely a challenge for you and you know it!"

Giselle couldn't help but giggle a bit at their antics. "Well, good to see that both of you are getting along just fine…" she said, a bit of her old demeanor returning.

Their attention snapped to her in perfect sync. "What's THAT supposed to mean?!" they both said at the same time.

And just like that, the last dregs of tension in the air seemed to just… float away.

The gathering became a quiet celebration of sorts. A quick round of congratulations for surviving impossible odds together. Soldiers shot the shit, jokes were passed around like they were going out of style, and everyone finally started to unwind in their own little ways.

Dee pulled the guitar out after a bit, playing a simple soft melody and humming along, rather than his typical frantic style. He gave Giselle a shoulder to lean on. She needed it. She appreciated it, but didn't say anything. Dee knew regardless.

Claire, barely awake for ten minutes and not in a sappy state of mind like the other two, started going shot for shot against Cecil. Small bets started to pile up the moment it was obvious what was happening. That, and extra flasks of whatever alcohol was left on hand, because it seemed that the two of them were in it for the long haul.

Preparations for departure were put on hold. Right now, they were all so very, very alive. And reminders of that were hard to come by in Hallow London.

Damn, I should write that down, or something, Henry thought to himself. This morphine or whatever it was they gave for my arm has me feeling poetic.

He looked down at the hasty splint one of the more medically oriented soldiers dressed him up with. Really looked at it. All prim and proper, this one. No shoddiness in the wrap, no almost-but-not-quite-straight sticks used for the brace. It beat the living daylights out of his own handiwork, and he thought he'd gotten practice by now.

Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

Though, in his defense, he'd been basically making his own one-handed when needed. Not really a fair comparison, that.

For now, it would heal. Or he'd find Dr. Helmut again, get shouted at for his recklessness, and then have it healed fully. He wasn't quite sure which one he wanted to put up with more yet: the wait, or the lecture.

"One! More! Shot! One! More! Shot!" the soldiers had formed a full-on ring around the drinking contest now, and the betting pool seemed to be getting pretty sizable. Henry tuned in on it just in time to see Cecil's cheeks starting to show a bit of a rosy flush, swaying a bit but nowhere near out for the count. Most of the cheers were for him to keep going, but a few who had bet on the dark horse of tonight's activities were giving Claire subtle nods of encouragement.

Not that she seemed to be needing them right now. She barely even looked tipsy.

"One! More! Shot!"

The appointed referee popped open the next canteen, pouring equal measures of the contents into two glasses. Already, a backpack normally used for carrying ammo had been repurposed as an alcohol shelf, and the empty container was returned to the bottom where it belonged. The two contestants toasted each other before going down to the bottom of their glasses.

"Come on, Cecil! Lucky number seven! You can do it, mate!"

He gave it a fair shake. No one would disagree on the fact that he almost made it. But at the end of the day, close only counts with horseshoes and hand grenades. He only made it about halfway through the drink before he had to hurriedly set it back down and rush away to… admit defeat.

The poor skeleton who'd been faithfully manning the line a few paces down had seen better days, once it was done falling victim to the splash zone.

Cheers, jeers and groans came from the pool, the smug winners raking in whatever trinkets had been on offer. Cecil wiped the last bit of vomit from his mouth, and paid up his own addition to the game: His fancy officer's cap, and an allowance for the winner to wear it a full day without court martial. Claire grabbed it quick and put it on slightly tilted, letting out a single hiccup and walking off the undisputed champion.

"Quite the impressive showing," Henry admitted to her as the four of them sat back down together. "You going to need a bit before we start preparing for the move? That was a lot of liquor."

"Nah," she said, handwaving his concern. "I cheated. Still tasted like shit, but I was basically turning it to water while they weren't looking."

"…Huh. Good to know. Now I can bet on the right person, next time."

"Attaboy." She gave him a slap on the back, then kicked up both feet and leaned against the trench wall.

"So… now what? Go back to Little Henwood, settle in and… just wait things out there? Maybe swing by the old GC base and finally get that radio back?"

"I mean… probably?" Henry stretched, careful not to put too much pressure on the splint while doing so. "Can't see us not at least making an effort to do those two, but… I mean, there's still twelve days before we have to do that last one. A day or two to rest up sounds earned, at least."

"Hear, hear!" Dee chimed in. "This has been enough excitement to last me a good long while. Bring me back to the good old days of being a nuisance, knocking over lampposts and playing noise rock!"

"Dee, you weren't even close to the fighting most of the time."

"Oh, I'm aware! That was by design!" he said it with such a shameless, happy grin on his face, Henry found it hard to really hold the admission against him.

"I like punching down more! I know that sounds bad, but at least I'm honest, and don't take it too far, right?"

"...You've electrocuted vampires to death on multiple occasions."

"Henry, Henry, my bro… do those really count?"

He groaned. "I know what you mean," he replied, "But that's some thin ice thinking, that is."

"Hey, so long as I don't-"

THUMP.

Henry never heard the end of that sentence.

A flash of somewhere inside the palace interrupted their conversation. Suddenly, he was choking on the coppery taste of blood, a short length of a blade lodged in his throat and the malformed, bony hand of their prisoner on its hilt. His fourth clone – the one tasked with guarding Quincy during all of this – had just been killed off.

He lurched. Everyone around him saw and moved to react, but the world around them started shifting first.

THUMP.

A near subsonic reverberation, seemingly coming from everywhere and nowhere, stopped the festivities dead in their tracks. It didn't feel like a monster, magic, or any other sort of artifact. This felt like a force. Something primordial, something… underlying. A cornerstone of the fabric of reality.

THUMP.

It pulsed again, like a heartbeat. A few confused heads poked up above the parapet, only to turn into frantic points and shouts in the direction of the palace.

THUMP.

Nobody knew what was going on. Henry didn't know what was going on. He didn't like that one bit. Before he could get caught flat-footed trying to put the pieces together, instincts took over and he leapt to his feet.

A dull ache in his broken arm throbbed as he used it to pull himself over the parapet. Getting one leg up over the lip, he saw exactly what the source of the feeling was.

The pillar speared through the center of the palace, for lack of a better term… was awake.

THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.

He'd thought looking at it had been pitch black before. How foolish. How naive. Whatever this was, it was clearly much darker. Even with the tantalizingly small motes of light floating within the surface of the pillar like stars in an empty sky, it was far, far darker than he could have ever dreamed of before.

That wasn't what was important right now. What was, was the fact that the darkness was expanding outward with each pulse.

THUMP.

The entire palace was subsumed in a heartbeat. The next, it had made it halfway across the palace grounds to them, and it only seemed like it would be accelerating. Whatever it was, they could hide, but… they couldn't run.

He made a snap decision.

THUMP.

His clone sprang into existence at the far edge of the battlefield, just in time to see the himself and everyone else get swallowed up. No sound of alarm, no cries for help. No time for any of that. Just… there one moment, gone the next. And in short order, he would be, too.

THUMP.

Another beat, another clone swallowed whole by the abyss. The third copy spawned on a high rooftop, even further away from the palace than the first had been. The way the world seemed to hold its breath in anticipation, he knew that it would have no trouble catching up to him, despite the distance.

THUMP.

The world shifted. Henry's fourth and final duplicate woke up, overlooking the River Thames. At his back, a wall of inky blackness so deep, one could spend an entire lifetime lost in it and not realize that there ever was anything else. Trying to summon a new copy across the river made him realize that… he couldn't. Wherever everyone else was… they hadn't been killed immediately, at least.

THUMP.

He braced for an impact that never came. Instead, the abyssal dome he had just barely avoided simply vanished. Like it had never even existed in the first place.

There was a moment of stunned silence, where he just watched the spot it had disappeared from. Past it, in the streets of Kensington beyond, not a living soul moved, monster or otherwise.

The only one who escaped… was him.

< -|- -|- >

???

…

…

…

Henry felt like he fell for a bloody century, before something resembling reality came back to him.

The direction of the fall was hard to determine. He had no way of telling up from down, whether or not those terms were really applicable… or if there were even words that had been invented to describe the direction he was falling. All he could say for certain was that it was toward one of the small pinpricks of light within the abyss. Slowly, gradually, black turned to dark gray turned to light gray turned to bright white.

Reality asserted itself once more when the light reached its brightest. In probably the worst, most phobia-inducing way possible.

There was a split second of realization that he was falling down again, before he plunged into the icy depths of a lake. What felt like a lake, at least. Could have been an ocean, or a pond, but it was certainly big enough that he was fully submerged. His eyes didn't want to open under the water, for some reason, either. The mental signal just wasn't translating to a physical movement. That was more than enough justification to leave for him.

Up and up, against the subtle pull of whatever lie below. He'd never been a great swimmer, but he was good enough for now, especially since it seemed like wherever he was, he didn't need to breathe. He just needed to keep pressing upward, keep pushing forward until his head finally breached the surface.

His mind felt almost completely exhausted by the time he returned to the bright white above. Gasping involuntarily, he pulled himself up above the water line as soon as his arms broke clear. The surface of the water was cool to the touch, and – miraculously – just solid enough for him to gain leverage and pull the rest of himself out.

Coughing and wheezing, he took a moment to lie down on the water's surface and slowly pull himself back together. A task easier said than done, he found. Even with the barren, flat expanse of water that stretched on as far as the eye can see, everything suddenly felt jumbled and mismatched in his head. He needed some time to sort it out, with his eyes closed so that no distractions could pull him back under.

It could have taken centuries or seconds, but eventually he managed just that.

He opened his eyes once more. Around him, he could see the familiar faces of everyone else doing much the same as he was.

As well as…

"...When did those two get here?"

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.