"Ah, Quincy. Once again, you have an excellent sense of timing."

The Mad Prince casually twirled the stem of his wine glass as he awaited his personal wretch's report. He knew that the ritual the two of them shared was somewhat anachronistic, but it simply didn't feel proper to rule his lands without some sort of advisor whispering in his ear. It lent an air of power to the chamber, an authority vested in him beyond his mere presence as a powerful individual. The crucial distinction between a king and a warlord, he felt, was that of presentation. Warlords were beneath him. They took what they wanted for themselves by force. He was a king.

And kings didn't need to take anything. It was already theirs by birthright, and anyone who thought otherwise was swept away.

"T-thank you, Master…" Quincy's words came out with their usual stutter. It was a fine line he had to walk; some fearful reverence was beaten into him, but he had to be careful not to overdo it and lower the conciseness he provided his reports with.

"I-I have ordered the arch-vampires to make their move, as you said."

"Excellent." He brought the wine glass to his lips, the bronze mask resting on the arm of his throne. "We'll see what progress they make in that regard soon, I'd reckon. In the meantime, that leaves us free to pursue our true goal."

With a snap of his fingers, the surface of the clock face rippled like a pond, the image outside of the tinted glass shifting into a bird's-eye view of a piece of territory near the river.

"It would seem those cockroaches of the old world order have abandoned their posts," he sneered with a wry grin. "They must not know the true value of the treasure they unearthed for me. A pity… for them."

His smile gradually twisted into deep, resonant laughter. "Two Hearts," he said to himself, amused. "Usurping control of one was enough to be able to perceive our jailers. Imagine what could be done with the aid of a second…"

Quincy wrung his hands uncomfortably, nervously laughing along with him.

"Ha… haha…"

It caused the Mad Prince to stop his train of thought dead in its tracks. "You know something I don't," he stated crossly, a matter of fact more than a question. "Speak, or I will stitch you to the next batch of conscripts that walks out the door."

A strangled noise of fear came first, as was appropriate of Quincy's station, but he explained himself not long after.

"I-it's the river bridge project, sir… It seems to be under attack by… by the Thirteenth, with the aid of the Eleventh. Our forces are being… p-p-pushed back…"

"...They're what?!"

His Exotic Domain flexed just a touch, like a great beast waking up from hibernation. The response was, regrettably, not entirely voluntary on his part, but at the very least he'd built his image in such a way to accommodate for it. And the cowering from Quincy it incited was, at least, a pleasant bonus.

"Please! Oh, lord, please spare me!!"

He ignored his cries as usual, mulling over the more important words with a slight frown and a thoughtful hum. Strange… he mused. That makes the second time that particular Devil has come to mind recently. Normally, he'd been rather forgettable.

"You're certain this is a concerted effort?" he asked. "Not some freak happenstance, or a consequence of a fight between the two?"

"N-no sir. They're working together, I'm sure of it. And what's more, the Second, Fifth and Tenth are nearby… waiting for something."

Interesting… Five Devils, all in roughly the same location…

It wasn't an unprecedented feat, but certainly rare overall. Doubly so with the number of living Devils now reduced to eleven. Not too long ago, they'd intercepted the soul of the Ammokhan being returned to the Interstice. Currently, it rested dormant in their subverted Heart, alongside the tatters of what remained of Guillaume's, but he had yet to do anything with either of them. Granted, there would be no saving the latter in even a thousand years of attempts, but the former…

That one had promise. More experiments were necessary. Hopefully once his foot soldiers were more secure in their position, he could dedicate more time to unraveling the systems their jailers had put in place.

Unfortunately, now was not the time for experiments. Now was the time for a response fit for a king.

"It would seem that I have to postpone my eradication of those palace-dwellers momentarily. This situation demands that I investigate this matter personally, seeing as those two upstarts were foolish enough to attack my sovereign territory. Quincy?"

"Y-yes, sire?"

"You are in charge of securing this new Heart in my absence. See to it that nothing untoward comes of your retrieval."

"O-of course, Master! I would never b-betray-!"

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He tuned the rest of the kowtowing out. The mask slipped back on with a flourish, and the Mad Prince made for the door with the highest attention to his image possible. On the outside, he was the spitting image of stately regalia, if leaning a bit more to the side of wanting to be feared than to be loved.

Underneath the veneer, however, he was livid.

I thought I'd been done with that weakling when he stopped showing up to get his teeth kicked in. Evidently, the lesson bears repeating a few dozen times more.

...Tenacious bastard. When will he learn to quit?

< -|- -|- >

Walworth

~1 week, 6 days remaining

The skeletons made for remarkably effective meatshields, despite not having a scrap of meat to share between them.

It mostly boiled down to their numbers and dumb-fire approach. Once they started moving, they just simply didn't stop until you made them. The monstrosities that they were arrayed against might be smarter overall, but they just didn't have the numbers to counter a push like this. They were forced to used their webbing offensively, rather than as a crowd control tool, rapidly draining their potential threat at basically no cost for Henry and the rest. And, as a knock-on effect, it gave the skeletons free reign over the battlefield, further draining their enemy's ability to defend against the push.

It was... basically the approach the arch-vampires had used against them at the warehouse. And as much as Henry hated them for what they did everyone, he could begrudgingly admit that their tactics were sound. Strolling through a horde of enemies was much more enjoyable than carving a way through.

The four of them were following behind at an appreciable distance from the front, and aside from Henry walking out on occasion to pepper the webs with more Fire Domain shrapnel, none of them really had to do much other than sit back and let the grinder do its thing.

"Bugger, there's an awful lot of them," Dee complained. "Whoever designed those things is… well, they just plain aren't right in the head."

It felt a little rich coming from the inventor of the Running Man, but… he did have a point. Dee's crazier skeletons felt a lot more tame after seeing these roam the streets freely. The key difference, he felt, was that while the skeletons could sometimes look unsettling, the monstrosities they were currently up against were far worse with just the mere fact that they could exist in the first place. And weren't definitionally dead.

"Good thing that we're clearing them out, then," Henry responded. "Imagine if they got a foothold… I don't know, literally anywhere."

"Blugh… truer words have never been spoken."

It seemed that everyone was in agreement. They all had to go.

"Speaking of footholds…" Giselle interrupted. "We're getting pretty close to the river already. Wasn't this Mad Prince guy supposed to show up by now? I thought we were doing this whole thing to try and piss him off and keep him distracted."

"Oh, we're pissing him off, all right," Henry paused his words to pop another shell downrange, catching a bit of web that had escaped the carnage ablaze. "Whether he knows it yet or not is up for debate, but rest assured once he finds out he will be fuming."

Claire decided to chime in, directing her attention to Giselle.

"What I want to know is, why do you want to be anywhere close enough to see him? Hell, you volunteered for this even before you knew that you were going to be a mage."

She scoffed in response, like the reason wasn't worth mentioning. "Hey, you're throwing stones in a glass house on that one. What makes you think you can take him on any better than I can? You got a death wish or something?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. I'm going to look at his ugly mug so that I can figure that out for myself, because at this point I legitimately have no idea. So, on that subject… do you?"

It became obvious that she wasn't going to let the topic drop. Truthfully, Henry was a bit interested in the answer, too, but wasn't about to push it out in the open as they were.

To his surprise – and everyone's surprise, for that matter – Giselle answered the question truthfully.

"No, I don't," she responded crossly, not a hint of doubt in her eyes. "I'm doing this specifically because I don't want to die. At least, for a sense of the word."

"Beg your pardon?" Claire blinked, confused.

"You ever get the feeling that every day is the same? That the way things are going, you're just going to end up in the exact same spot you're standing in when all is said and done?" The question was rhetorical, but Henry could see where she was going with this.

"That feeling could definitionally describe pretty much every day of my whole goddamn life. Even when magic made its way to my father's doorstep, and then later when the world went to shit and all manner of monsters started showing up, I was told to stay in my room and stay out of it. I know those four walls better than the back of my hand, at this point. He did literally anything he could to keep me cooped up there."

"Anything?"

"Anything. Who do you think invited the Gentleman's Club in to use the house as a hideout? Because I sure as hell didn't."

Her voice got elevated, almost heated in a way that she hadn't really gotten before. A touchy subject, then. Henry decided to let the subject drop, and change tack.

"Well, that's all over and done with at any rate. If it's excitement you're after, you'll certainly be getting your fill out here."

"Again, you sure? Because right now, we're just watching the world's slowest MMA fight."

"Oh, dead positive."

"Why?"

"Because that's him on the rooftop over there."

In the faint moonlight, a silhouette could just barely be made out in the distance. In most circumstances, survivors would have classified a figure such as that as likely to be a disguised vampire, steered clear and been on with their day.

Henry knew better. There was a way that his skin crawled like there were bugs underneath it, every time he so much as looked in the Mad Prince's general direction. And right now, he felt like a whole bloody beehive had been surgically implanted into him.

"You three should stay back and watch," he warned. "I've a feeling it's me he's after."

They all nodded in silent agreement, confident that Henry knew what he was doing and that he had some ace up his sleeve to get himself out of it. Normally, he would have. But, checking his power just to be sure… no. It was still locked away as squarely as it had been before. Still being sapped by that rogue copy roaming about somewhere.

He stepped forth, regardless. Just a few meters down the road was the river, the giant tapestry of silken threads spanning it was just barely hanging on. His shoes crunched against the charred, sooty remains of a few of the two-headed spider things, which really needed a better name at this point.

He'd barely made it ten steps when the Mad Prince leapt from the roof, straight into the center of the mob of skeletons. In a blatant, yet effective, show of force, the ranks of automatons who'd been the backbone of their push were decimated.

Then decimated again. And again. without so much as a glance in their direction, the mere presence of his Exotic Domain seemed enough to tear them limb from limb.

Henry swallowed the spark of fear that blossomed in the back of his head, and strode forward with feigned confidence.

"Well," he began. "It's been awhile, hasn't it? Do you want to start the fighting now, or would you rather spend some time catching up first?"

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