Robb very reluctantly went into the abyssal depths of the sewer ahead of Henry. Rather politely on his part, too, because he waited to resume the worried complaints until after he'd managed to screw the hatch back into place. It was awfully considerate of him, once you factored in the circumstances that led him into this fever dream to begin with.

"I'll have you know that this has ended up being a lot more… intense than I was originally led to believe. Sure, I get that you mentioned some extra scrutiny, but... I don't know, what is this, some sort of induction ceremony, now?"

The faint outline of the radio host was visible thanks to the light emanating from Henry, and while he couldn't quite make out his face in the darkness, the aloof posture, the crossed arms and the tone of frustration in Robb's voice did a pretty good job of filling in the blanks. He was right; he did absolutely deserve a better explanation at this point. And for quite some time before that, too. With the danger passed completely regardless, Henry could only sheepishly rub the back of his head with his hand.

"Yeah... sorry about that," Henry apologized. "When I was here before, I got sworn to secrecy on the important parts of the explanation. It all happened with the assistance of some artifact that I never got too good of a look at. Loyalties aside for the moment, there are some things I am just literally incapable of telling you right now."

"They… tied your tongue?"

"Well, I kind of willingly volunteered for it without knowing what was going to happen, but… yeah."

"...Whatever. Just tell me what you can about these next steps here."

Henry half-moved to speak, then winced, making a strangled noise as he opened his mouth. Just as he got close to speaking, he felt his throat almost seal shut. Similar to an allergic reaction, or more accurately that moment before where your body was threatening the onset of one. Pushing through it was no good, either. He even tried rephrasing his answer several different times to no avail. If he took a brief pause every so often, it made the feeling go away, but only until he made another attempt.

The message to him was clear. Insider knowledge was completely off the table.

Oh, he's going to hate this next part, then…

He sighed. "All I can say is… be ready for anything."

Robb growled angrily. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?!-"

A pair of gloved hands appeared over his shoulders and stuffed a cloth in his mouth. He managed to get a startled noise out before the gag went in, but that was it. Just a shout of alarm.

"It was supposed to mean that," was all Henry had time to say in response.

Henry felt another presence appear behind him, and a similar raggedy black piece of fabric was pushed into his jaw uncomfortably. Rather than ending up surprised or uncomfortable, however, he instead felt... familiar? That can't be good. If this trend continued, before long he might start to like it.

Now, this part was the worst bit, I thought... have they changed their process any…?

He watched on with mild curiosity. Though, his conclusion arrived pretty quickly, in that it didn't seem like it had. First move after gagging them both was restraining their arms, like it had been for him when he'd come here alone for the first time. Well, alone, with a pretty big asterisk. Clones tended to muddy those waters when they were active, but… not important. He didn't fight it this time. Robb did. His angry words were muffled by the gag as he struggled, right up until the point where he found himself face-down on the ground with his cheek planted against the flagstones.

Wow… Henry thought to himself. This is like watching an instant replay of my own experience. I'm getting some serious deja vu right now.

As much as he wanted to see if other details might line up, unfortunately that chance just wasn't in the cards. The next step was, naturally, blindfolding them both, followed afterwards by some sort of sleeping agent.

It was here that Henry finally managed to find a difference. They'd upped the dosage a significant amount, compared to the time they'd initiated him. Made sense. The panic attack they'd given him had nearly been enough to keep him lucid. They were barely twenty seconds in by the time his eyes started to roll back into his head.

Well... best of luck to him... on what... comes... next...

With little other option, Henry drifted off into deep, dreamless sleep.

< -|- -|- >

Unknown Location Unknown Time

The first sensation that returned to Robb after being effectively kidnapped… was the coarse feeling of sand beneath him.

He was lying on his side… somewhere. With sand, obviously, but he doubted it was anywhere remotely close to a shore. Everything was still dark, and the sound of running water rattling through aging pipes above his head indicated that he was still below the surface. The only thing he could really determine from that as he shook off the last dregs of chemically induced sleep was that must mean someone went through the trouble of carrying sand down here and pouring it out all over the floor. For... whatever reason.

It begged another, bigger question: where the bloody hell was here, anyway?

That particular answer came to him soon, in the form of a sudden, blinding white light. He was pulled to his feet unceremoniously at the first sign of him coming to, and the moment he was upright the cloth sack on his head was torn away by a strong yank from his captor.

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Robb only suffered it for a moment before squeezing his eyes shut. The flash stung his pupils something fierce. Even after he shut them, he could still make out green and purple spots dancing on his eyelids.

It took significantly longer than usual to adjust. A few false starts later, Robb was merely blinking dazed and confused instead of utterly blinded, and even after that he still had to take a good while to understand his surroundings completely. The room was circular and about 30 meters in diameter, with two grates on opposing sides and a bright fluorescent spotlight hanging directly overhead. It swayed back and forth ever so slightly, casting eerie shadows along the smooth walls from the…

Oh God, he realized in horror. Those are bodies propped up against the walls.

Pale skin in varying states of decay met him almost any way he turned. He wanted to scream, but the gag was still in his mouth. All he accomplished was a muffled whimpering.

...These people are absolute psychopaths!!

A head draped in heavy black cloth leaned in close to his ear, and Robb's blood ran snap-freeze cold in an instant.

"Be still," the voice of the guide that had spoken at the entrance muttered with a relaxed regard. "There are no human bodies laid to rest here. Only those of our common enemy. Look closely."

His tone was probably supposed to be soothing, but given the context he was having a hard time finding it anything remotely close to that. But, just because he found the words unsettling, didn't mean he could claim them to be incorrect. Closer inspection proved it. The torsos were just a hair too spindly and elongated, the legs a touch too lanky. A few of the rotting bodies still had intact ears tucked away in odd angles, and sure enough those were pointed. Unmistakably, these were all once vampires. As that realization dawned on him, he was able to calm himself down just enough to think straight, and take it all in.

What really surprised him was the smell. Or, more precisely, the lack of one. No rotting meat scent, just a faint whiff of… salt?

"Yes… Strange how they dessicate after death, is it not?" The guide questioned, as if reading his mind. "Not a drop of liquid remains to be seen. All that blood they claw from the innocent… and in the end all that remains is the impurities. Something that you will learn to understand very, very soon."

The gate behind them opened with a heavy repeating clank, and two more heavily garbed figures flowed out, hauling a covered sled over the sand behind them. The look of confusion on Robb's face must have been incredibly obvious, because the guide – Enrico, he remembered now – continued to monologue out an explanation.

"I must… apologize for the rude awakening and precautions taken, but many around us seek our heads merely because we persist outside of their neat little box. A grim reality for vampire hunters in a den of vampires, unfortunately, but here is where we are most needed. So, we adapt. And we leave trails for like-minded individuals to find us and prove themselves capable."

"Now," he declared, removing the tarp from the top of the sled, revealing it to be chock full of iron implements of every shape and size. "Choose the weapon you find yourself most comfortable with."

The gag came off, and his wrists were finally unbound. All of a sudden, he was able to move freely, ask freely, and maybe, finally, get a sense of what he was doing here.

"Weapon?" he asked hesitantly. "...I'm going to be fighting?"

"Indeed. A trophy of your own, to add to those you see lining the walls around you."

A million questions screamed for attention in the back of Robb's mind, but he only found himself able to lamely parrot the man's words.

"A... trophy..." he said with a slight shiver.

His stomach sank. Pieces of the puzzle began to fall neatly into place. Fight a vampire? Alone? If this were a trial by fire of some kind, there was no way they'd help him overcome the challenge. That would ruin the whole purpose, right? From an outside perspective, it made a twisted sort of sense, but...

But he'd never even come close to accomplishing anything like that! He always stayed in the back lines, throwing spells occasionally or more often just trying to stay out of they way! And now he had to figure out how to beat one in a fair fight?!

"Take your time. There is no rush."

Oh, he'd take his time, alright. He would take all the time they would give him.

He started by kicking a few random weapons loose. Blades of varying sharpness and quality, mostly, with a few nasty-looking flanged maces thrown in for good measure. Lots of nasty medieval motifs on them. None of them really screamed 'I can keep you safe while also being held in your untrained hands', though. Much to his distaste, he found himself discarding options far quicker that he'd hoped.

How am I supposed to get out of this one… he groaned internally. I'm barely even a mage, much less a fighter…

Ideas bounced back and forth as he continued to sift through the pile, discarding both thoughts and weapons just as quickly as he picked them up. It all boiled down to one problem. He had to fight, but couldn't. If he'd known he'd need to be anything more than a mid-level manager or a desk jockey in his life, maybe he'd have spent some time taking up a martial art as a hobby, but… ah, forget it. Nothing could have possibly prepared him for any of this.

Maybe I should have been a bit more of a risk taker... At least I'd have a better idea of what to do now...

Eventually, only three options were left in the whole pile. A barbed metal pole with a sharpened tip, an axe somewhere between needing both hands to swing and not, and a completely normal looking chain, with a few spikes sprinkled in every few links. None of them looked like some sort of silver bullet to his situation.

I'll just go with this spear-looking one… Hard to go wrong with a pointy bit on the end of a long stick…

"This one," he stated quickly and with a lot more feigned confidence than he felt at the moment.

The guide nodded at his choice. "Very well. There are two things I should inform you of before we begin. First, your opponent has been held in our captivity for some time without a victim. He will be weaker than most, but more rabid and unpredictable."

"Yeah, sure, like anything about this so far has been predictable…" Robb grumbled mostly about his own circumstances, but to his surprise the other man shrugged as if he heard the whole thing. He disregarded the subtle motion with a huff. "What's the other thing, then?"

"Second… your marking on your hand was made to serve a dual purpose. For you see, until you complete this trial…"

A ring on Enrico's gloved finger began to glow ominously, red runic lettering tracing over the circumference. Robb felt a splash of something trickle down his hand and onto the sand below, only to look down and see the cuts made there that had long since dried shut had opened up once more.

"…consider this encouragement to strive for the most in the fight to come, won't you?"

"Wh-?! Hey, wait! You've got the wrong idea!"

The guide began to walk off with his entourage, the two other faceless hunters trailing behind him with the sled in tow. Leaving Robb alone with a goddamn death sentence. He was going into a fight with a vampire bleeding. Even if they weren't half starved like he claimed, it was still well known just how deranged the creatures could get at the mere sight of it. The jangle of metal against metal followed the cloaked figures out, leaving him alone with the only porticullis that led to escape closing behind them. He clutched the haft of his spear extra tight, as the arena fell into suffocating silence around him.

The spotlight hung down from above like a noose in a gallows. From the other gate, a rabid, banshee-like wail cut through the air like a knife. Robb's breath caught. It was close, and getting closer fast.

A pair of bony hands wrapped around the grille and began to shake it vigorously. Screaming at the top of its lungs. A vampire, more skin and bones than he thought was possible at this point, using every ounce of manic strength against the gate in a desperate effort to feed. There was a rabid look in those beady black eyes, and it was practically foaming at the mouth with inky black, stained teeth.

It yearned to be free. And that was a wish it would soon get, as the gate itself had begun to be winched up out of the ground.

Robb immediately pointed the spear in its direction, arms trembling with frayed nerves as his brain rushed a mile a minute to maybe determine a winning strategy. He didn't know if he was holding it properly. Footwork was something important, he thought, but he had no idea if his was in any way correct, either. Right now, he was just another terrified survivor, trying to face the horrors the world had decided to throw at him.

Just another… survivor…

For some reason, that line of thinking stopped him dead in his tracks.

I'm not just another survivor anymore… am I…

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