The Mad Prince was not used to being played for a fool.

He immediately decided that he hated it. As he watched the collection of Devils and mages speed off out of reach of his webs, a simmering fury began to boil in his veins. Frustration. Not a new feeling, but one he was unused to in this context. One was not meant to escape his wrath unless he wished for them to do so.

And yet, escape they did, despite his desires for the contrary. Once they disappeared into the mist and he was left alone once more, that rage slowly boiled higher and higher. For several moments, he twitched not a muscle.

Action from anger comes slowly, after all. But when it does, it crashes down all at once.

"FUUUUUUUCK!!!!!"

In a destructive flash of fury, he demolished half of the ground floor of a nearby building in fruitless retaliation. It groaned in protest, leaning dangerously to one side as the sound of his beyond frustrated breaths mixed with with the sound of newly formed rubble.

The pointless destruction was exactly that, pointless, but it allowed for him to crush that anger down into something colder. His breathing, slowly but surely, returned to steadiness. His composure recollected itself. Cold rage was useful, he reminded. Deadly, even, in the right hands. Wielded properly, that calculating side to anger was the mark of all the greatest monarchs in history.

And he intended to be the best.

"…"

"…Well."

His words came slowly. Simply, even. But because they were chosen so deliberately, they held the weight of a thousand truths behind them.

"They're dead," he declared. "Everyone who called that little sewer in Walworth home is dead."

A werewolf howled in the distance, confirming his judgement before the heavens as something more than a passing decree. His will and the will of nature were one and the same. To go up against it would be futile.

"I do hate it when senseless violence becomes necessary," he muttered offhandedly. "But, unfortunately, it seems razing Buckingham Palace to the ground just wasn't enough for some people."

A reminder of his dominance was called for, he decided. He may have been slighted by those gutter rats today, but tomorrow would repay that slight a thousandfold.

He turned eastwards, towards the Westminster bridge.

"Such a shame. The poor fools didn't know what I'd given them until I found need to take it away."

Without another word, the Mad Prince trundled off into the distance, disappearing into the foggy depths of the night.

Several minutes passed in silence, with only the flow of the river being bold enough to stay in motion. But, slowly, as the aftereffects of the Mad Prince's presence began to dissipate, signs of life did return to a nearby building...

Just above the damage and still trembling from the impact against the building's structure, Bentley turned to the yet unnamed Devil tasked with guarding him. They had watched it all play out in stunned silence, and while the child couldn't stop shaking, the other stood still as a statue.

It was likely due to the differences in what they knew. Bentley had seen everything that had happened, as well as everything that had yet to happen..

He felt… numb.

So much blood, he shivered to himself. Why will there be so much blood?

The sight almost burned into his eyes, even when he closed them. To say that it sickened him wouldn't even come close to doing it justice. He wanted to do anything he could to escape it.

So, he began to desperately imagine variations. Slight choices he could make that might impact the outcome of things. His first thought was to find the Constable and convince him to go, but that was tossed out pretty quickly. Even in the instances where he did convince him, the fight was always in favor of the giant spider. All that changed was that they all were killed alongside those he wanted to save.

Intercepting him before he arrived was a similar story. The best they could manage their was to destroy the nearest bridge, but even that was only a delay that, again, cost them everything. And was still not enough.

Getting a warning into Walworth in time, not possible. Forcing their way inside and making them listen, again, just ended in a fight that the Mad Prince would break up violently. Was it truly possible that they were all fated to-?

Without warning, the door behind them slammed open, causing the building to shake ominously and for Bentley to jump back in shock. He'd been so caught up in his thoughts, he hadn't realized that the time for his guardian's arrival had come already.

"Relax. Th' building can't fall fer another ten minutes." the Constable strained, clutching his side with a pained grunt. "Get your things. We're on the move once I patch meself up."

A small red stain marred the surface of his uniform, peeking out from around the edges of his gloved hand. Considering the hit he had taken, he was lucky that was all he had to show for it.

"W-where are we going?" Bentley stammered out. "I thought you-"

"Read the future and see what I'm about to say, kid." The Constable sat down on an old wooden chair, the frame of it creaking in protest as he shifted his weight onto the seat. From a pocket, he withdrew a small crystal that held lingering traces of Fauna magic and pressed it firmly against the wound.

Bentley did as told. Then stopped, frowning as he realized his prior narrow focus had missed something.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

As it turns out, his desire for action had made him overlook what would happen if he did nothing in the short term. The result of which… it was a bit hazy still, and the parts he could make out were nowhere near perfect, but… they were workable.

"Following the river east?" He said aloud, puzzled at why the Constable would decide to go there, of all places. "W-why change your mind to fight vampires, and not this Henry guy you're chasing?"

His words were chosen carefully, guiding the officer along the path he wanted to unfold. Perhaps the Constable knew what he was trying to pull. Perhaps he didn't. He followed along all the same.

"Aye, it's a bit roundabout," he admitted to him, "But we missed out on this chance due to rotten luck, and by the looks of things this is a good way to avoid that next time. Either that or he's lying, but… bah, who cares. We save lives in th' meantime, and if he is, s'not like he can get far before we find him again."

Their silent companion nodded in agreement, finding the logic sound. Bentley said nothing, but knew that if he had, they might have thought twice about tagging along.

At least he'll die a hero, Bentley thought quietly to himself.

…I think.

< -|- -|- >

Henry slowly awoke to a monster of a headache, as well as a general dull pain in the rest of his body. As far as side effects went for almost being magically crushed like a grape… he supposed there could be worse ways to be feeling right now.

"Ugh…" he groaned, wind whipping at his face as his eyelids slowly drifted open. "Where am I- WOAH!!"

He'd been lying flat on his stomach, and looking down made his head reel with dizzyness. They were moving at speed, well above the streets of London. Or, wait, maybe he wasn't moving at all – in fact, his arms and shoulders caught against some sort of stiff rope that was holding him in place – but the landscape whipped past his face fast enough for the illusion of flight to settle in.

His senses were in conflict with one another. It made him feel a bit sick to his stomach for a while.

Then his mind caught up to the reality of the situation. Taking a closer look around him, he was flying… suspended on the almost intangible force field from Giselle's amulet, alongside the rest of the group that had worked to distract the Mad Prince.

"Oh, good, you're up," Claire remarked flatly, dismissing the cordlike roots that held him in place once she noticed his thrashing about. "Try not to move too much. There's only so much space left with you on board."

"Wha- where are we?!"

"On our way back to the evacuation right now," Giselle commented. "Dee's idea, since you were out cold. Thought it might be best to swing by for a quick check-up."

Henry, still a bit clammy from the fright of thinking he was being dropped from the sky, nodded silently. "Yeah…" he muttered. "Good thinking, uh… Any news on that front, by the way?"

Dee shrugged. "No news one way or another. Which, normally I'd consider no news to be good news, but now…"

He trailed off, but the implication was clear.

"...Let's hurry back, then," Henry agreed.

They continued the flight in silence for a little while longer, giving Henry time to unpack exactly what had gone down.

He'd… he'd managed to escape an encounter with the unstoppable force that was the Mad Prince. Without a single loss on his part. That was something that was, quite literally, unprecedented for him up to this point.

Sure, him retreating wasn't anything new, and he'd been this close to dying anyways up until the very last moment… but this was the first time that the spider attempting to outright kill him had ended in abject failure. Considering that this fight was also arguably one of his worst-equipped to date, it was making him wonder how things might have gone if he'd had his powers back up and running.

Probably not a victory on my part, he admitted. But maybe a deep strike of some sort is possible, soon?

He did still need to get his original body back. After he dealt with all the other issues he was currently contending with, of course. If only his to-do list wasn't always getting bigger-

Dee's cell began ringing in his pocket the moment he thought those words.

...Well, damn. Looks like I just jinxed myself.

Confused, Dee pulled the phone out of his pocket and put it up to his ear. His confusion only deepened when the voice on the other end was not only nobody he recognized, but was practically shouting at him the moment he answered back.

"Hello?" he asked, before having to quickly pull the speaker away from his ear.

...Now loud noises bother him?

Henry didn't get much of a chance to hang on that odd detail. The cell was switched to speaker mode, and the person on the other end became all too apparent.

"-and you better get your sorry arse over here Henry, or so help me! If I end up dying because of your crazy idea-"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, Cecil. Calm down." Henry took control of the conversation, trying to figure out exactly what he was stumbling into the middle of.

"Calm down?! You really think saying that -haah- is going to get the vamps chasing us to back off? Oh, sure!" Cecil responded half mockingly, feigning a dopey persona. "It's not the blood they're after, just the high blood pressure!"

Henry groaned. "Okay, fine then. Don't calm down. Just tell me what the bloody hell is going on and tell me what you want me to do about it."

"It's those damn Walworth vamps," Cecil elaborated. "One of their bigwigs decided to crash our little party and separated us from the exfiltration point. We're being herded in towards Kensington again, and those of us who can't keep up are -ngh! Dropping like flies! We need an exit plan, now!"

The four of them reeled in shock at his words.

The warehouse, Henry realized. They're trying to repeat the warehouse all over again.

Fears of inadequacy he thought he'd gotten over reared their ugly head like a freshly beheaded hydra. Henry had to forcibly stop himself from shaking, which turned out to be not as easy as he had hoped. Everyone saw him get visibly tremble at needing to face an arch-vampire again, which only fed the little doubt on his shoulder that he was not at all built for leading people out of crises like this.

Or… maybe he was. Because his next move was to take a deep breath, and try to face it despite his worries.

Get over yourself. People are counting on you to deliver. You want to go back to losing constantly?

He exhaled deeply, the shaking dying down, but not completely disappearing.

"Where are you headed now?"

"Northeast of the river crossing!" Cecil's response came back loud and clear, with a definite hint of recognition at Henry's demeanor. "There's a route we're taking that skirts around a trapped wolfpack, we're hoping we can get them to fight each other for a bit while we make it back to the point of interest."

"Point of interest?" Henry repeated. "First I've ever heard of it."

"Yeah, well, you never asked. If you must know, it's this huge, ominous-looking stone pillar that's poking out from under the rubble of a building. Not sure what it is or how it got there, but the monsters seem to hate it, so we're going to see if we can use it as cover."

"Wait, a giant stone pillar? What color is it?"

"Is that really important right- you know what, whatever. It's a really dark black, like its sucking in all the… shit!"

Something interrupted Cecil on the other end, and the line went dark. An unsettling sense of deja vu crept up into the back of Henry's mind.

"Something wrong?" Dee asked. "Should we try and help him escape, or…?"

Henry had a bad feeling. One of the ones you knew you had to trust with every fiber of your being, despite not knowing exactly where it would take you when everything was said and done.

"Rescue's not an option this time," he decided. "But we do need to get to him as soon as possible. I just hope we're not already too late to save him."

He finally stood up, pointing out a direction off in the distance to Giselle.

"Take us that way. With any luck, we can spot the vamps from the air before they notice us, and take a few of them out from range."

"Wait, wait a minute." Dee finished putting the phone in his pocket, holding a hand out in front of Henry in response to his order. "Are you seriously planning on diving straight into contested territory right after facing down the Mad Prince, all to pick another fight with an extremely powerful individual?"

"Yes, why?"

His fellow Devil facepalmed.

"At least get some of those injuries looked at first," he carefully reminded. "Seriously, you look like you dunked your head in a bowl of crushed raspberries."

"...That bad, huh?"

"Worse. Don't overdo it again, if you can avoid it."

The four of them looked toward Kensington, and Henry sighed.

"That's always the question, isn't it…"

Regardless, he let himself be checked over in preparation for a revenge rematch he had no intention of losing.

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