Hallow London [Apocalyptic Urban Fantasy]

Talk about something to get you sidetracked.

By the time he got inside the palace, Henry was still trying to work out exactly what she meant by that. Skirting around the edge of a pile of sandbags, he let his body run on autopilot for a moment as he tried to figure out exactly how she knew what she knew. Despite still needing to find Cecil and confer the situation with him, those words kept bouncing around in his head like a broken record.

Where could Giselle have possibly met the both of them where she could have made that connection? Back in the Kennel, maybe, before it got overrun…? No, that didn't quite line up. She'd said before her life was basically one big house arrest.

So either she was lying about that, or there was something he was missing. Of the two he was leaning towards the latter; her original story still felt a little too solid for him to believe it was completely fabricated. This felt more like she was withholding information, rather than giving out complete falsehoods.

Ironically, that meant her own track record was already better than his own. He'd been lying through his teeth basically every chance he had for quite a while now, at least when it came to anyone outside his slowly growing circle of friends.

Her knowing is a bit concerning, he admitted to himself, but I don't think it's quite something to mistrust her about… well, for now, at least. I definitely want to get to the bottom of this once I get the chance, but she's already had plenty of ways to see me dead if she wanted that.

All he could do was mentally shrug at it all, and circle back to it later in private. He still didn't quite know what to make of the whole thing, and he didn't have nearly enough information to fix that. The only thing he knew for sure, now, was that the company he kept was stranger than he'd originally thought.

Maybe a dash of relative normalcy would do me some good…

He walked past a few soldiers passing around a cigarette while they manned their post, keeping their eyes shifting towards the perimeter on a regular basis. Realizing that he wasn't quite sure where he was going, Henry quick stopped by them to ask for directions, and was pointed toward a hall that led deeper into the ruined palace with instructions for a few turns to take once he reached the end of it. Simple enough to navigate, compared to what he'd grown accustomed to. He started walking.

Then continued walking. And… the hallway went on for a lot longer than he'd first anticipated.

Definitely more ground to cover on foot here, he soon discovered. He'd never really taken the time to appreciate that fact before – any time he'd previously shown up, he'd basically limited his exposure to the gates, just for the times he rearmed himself for another run into Westminster.

Now that he was going deeper in, though… he was beginning to realize exactly how much he had been truly missing out on.

It must have been a sight to behold, before the Witching Hours. Right now he could only get a rough idea of what it might have looked like. Lots of marble. Intricate carvings all over the walls, many now lost to damage and disrepair. Arches and pillars basically anywhere they could be fit. Enough oil on canvas portraits to cover every surface in his old flat at least five times, probably with some left over at the end.

It was nicer than any place he'd ever lived, and it accomplished that while being a dilapidated wreck. Aside from the few gaudy outliers he passed on occasion, there was an underlying sense of… subtle flourishes tying everything together.

Was this sort of thing… normal? He had absolutely no frame of reference to go off of here, when it came to high society. All the leaders still alive were either strictly practical, or reclusive and… not really royalty, either.

None of them would have thought to put this much work into a building like this. Why would they? There was a distinct lack of defensible positions and anti-wolf weapons present where he stood.

Still, he couldn't shake the notion that there was a sort of presence to this approach. Nothing magical or Domain related… just a sense of the architect's intent, he supposed. Like even in this battered, bruised and disheveled state, the spirit of what it meant to lead Britain still lived on in these halls, through the arches, pillars and paintings that yet endured.

…Easy to get lost in your thoughts, wandering the premises like this. Made it awfully fortunate that he found his destination just before he got too far off track.

A pair of hardwood double doors loomed in front of him, withstanding the terrors of the night outside as stoutly as it had anything else. Henry knocked on them as loudly as he could. Three loud thuds echoed down the hallway, only to be met with deafening silence.

No response from the other side. But this was definitely the place those soldiers had been talking about.

He sighed. "Mate, I know you're in there…"

Again, no response was forthcoming. One would come eventually. Cecil just liked to take his sweet time with those who were on thin ice with him.

Considering how often he'd leaned on the man for 'assistance' and basically offered nothing in return, it wouldn't be surprising if he was left hanging for a considerable while.

Cecil could be petty like that. If he had a problem with someone, he made sure they knew it loud and clear. Brutal honesty was the double-edged sword that made him the leader he was today. Not many people got along with him because of it.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

But when the time came where the choice was action or death… he could be relied on to do everything he could until the very end. A trait more admirable than this place deserved, Henry felt. Certainly more admirable than the likes of Cavendish and his sycophants in the Nobles deserved, however important their protection might be. And yet, even after the schism, Cecil had continued to offer them military support when he could, from a distance.

...Waiting was liable to take a while, he realized. They'd only really covered the broad strokes of Henry's own situation over the phone, so if he was expecting the same whiny layabout-

The lock on the doors clicked open, and the heavy oak doors groaned inwards.

"Yeah, yeah…" Cecil griped from just out of view. "Get in here already. We've got a lot to talk about."

Henry hesitated for just a moment, before nodding to himself and stepping in.

The doors creaked back shut behind him, giving him a chance to finally get a better look at the dim interior of the Remnant's attempt to make a home away from home. Once a ballroom, or some other large hall with minimal furnishings, the space was easily enough to fit the entirety of their fighting force in the same place at the same time. Most of the original artwork appeared to be still intact, or if there had been any damage to begin with replacements from elsewhere inside the palace had been acquired to plug the gaps. On the ceiling, an ornate chandelier hung slightly askew, trails of a few priceless crystals dangling from the ends of it like glittering streamers.

After shutting the doors completely and locking them once more, Cecil turned around and motioned Henry to follow. It had clearly been a while since he'd last bothered to shave or otherwise uphold military grooming standards, though truth be told those had probably been slipping long before they'd taken up residence in Kensington. His once short-cropped hair hung in a loose bun, and while elves typically didn't ever have much in the way of facial hair, he'd managed to get his own to a point just a bit past what could be called stubble.

"Those two clones of yours got me caught up with everything that you've been up to before today," he clarified gruffly, "But that's the least of our worries right now, isn't it? I take it you're here to figure out a way we actually make it out of this one alive."

Henry nodded in confirmation. "Pretty much, yeah. Though, where are those two others, now that you mention them?"

"Next room over, and down a few flights through a servant's entrance." Cecil made a dismissive gesture, before summoning an orb of light in his palm and casting it up towards the chandelier's remains. "They did a good job capturing Quincy, so I thought I'd put them to task of watching over him and preventing any funny business after I took a chance to get some… questions… off my plate."

"And… did he have anything important to say?"

A bark of laughter. "Not anything that would get us out of here in one piece," he replied. "Even as a hostage he's worthless, because the vamps seem to think that they can clear us all out without us even getting a chance to use him as leverage. Which, if they manage to punch through anywhere in that ring of defenses your new Devil friend whipped up, is probably dead accurate."

Cecil pulled out a near empty pack of cigarettes. There was only one left, crumpled nearly as much as the carton itself, a slight zigzag obvious in its shape. He didn't seem to care about the less than perfect condition, instead holding it up between two fingers in one hand while shading his eyes with the other. The orb of light bobbed to the side ever so slightly, ducking behind a slightly concave part of the crystalline structure. The light concentrated into a thin beam aimed at the cigarette's tip, and a few moments of patience later, it had begun to char at the end.

"There we go," the elf sighed, biting down on the filter and inhaling deeply. "Took me ages to get that trick to work properly… but it was more than worth it some days."

He turned to Henry once again. "Now, I bet you came here expecting me to have answers, or solutions, or perhaps even just some other options you might not have considered yet. Some sort of way that we all make it out of here alive, right?"

"Well, I can't say I'd be opposed to that," Henry replied. "But we have some ideas of our own floating around already. I just wanted to get your opinion on them, before I came to a decision."

"Yeah, well too bad, because I haven't got-" Cecil paused mid-drag, suddenly realizing that the response he'd expected hadn't come. "Wait," he paused, staring intently at him with an eyebrow raised and clearly confused. "You mean to tell me you have a plan in the works?"

"More like the starts of two different plans." A whiff of smoke finally reached him, causing Henry to rub his nose subconsciously. "Option A, we dig in here and wait for their numbers to dwindle more than they already have, or B, we try some counterattacks of our own and try to pin down where they're weakest, then punch our way out there."

"And you believe that there's merit in both of these ideas?" Cecil asked. For once, he wasn't being sarcastic or rhetorical. Just… running the ideas through their paces, if albeit being slightly bewildered while doing so.

Guess he's not used to someone else holding potential answers… especially after he accurately predicted something would go wrong with the evacuation…

"Upsides and downsides to both," Henry agreed. "Though, I'm not as up to date on your situation as you are on mine. Figured you would have the best idea of how bad things were, so while we're waiting on the next wave, I thought I'd ask."

"Well, it's a good thing you did…"

Cecil quick finished the puff he'd stopped partway through, before elaborating further. "Because both of those are going to be a recipe for disaster as they are. First one simply because we've already burnt through nearly all the provisions here, and the stuff we didn't bring was just what we couldn't reasonably carry with us. As for the second… didn't really have the firepower for it before, but now that we do the next tossup is whether or not we have enough to make a clean break, which I'm still a bit hesitant to sign off on."

"But it would be possible?"

"Maybe. We'd definitely end up using everything we have in the process no matter what, meaning if we got caught with our pants down on the way out, we'd be screwed. The two of us might be fine, as well as your new friends or whoever they are since they have Domain magic to fall back on, but the rest…"

He slid his thumb across his neck, mimicking an executioner's axe. "They're good soldiers, but they're not one man armies. Based on what we've got right now, at best we're able to push forward without losses up until we try to break out. Crossing that line is liable to get most of us killed."

Henry groaned. "So we're damned if we do, and damned if we don't, then…"

"At least with those ones, yeah. Got an Option C we can work on?"

He wished he did, honestly. He also wished some part of the other two ideas was salvageable, but… apparently not. They'd seemed like at least one of them could have made for a decent foundation-

Actually, hold that thought. Maybe he'd been looking at this wrong the whole time. Could there be a way he could make both of them work together?

…Not if the objective was just to break the encirclement. But that was just the most obvious solution. The default, as it were. They had one other, bigger way of causing the disruption they needed: knocking over the enemy's house of cards before their own fell.

Vampires weren't typically ones to express any emotions other than ones that scared others, but he'd noticed that more than a few had been… unsettled before they'd arrived for a fight with them. And it definitely wasn't because Henry and the rest were uniquely intimidating, mind. Either the black pillar pushing through the center of the palace made them just as uneasy as the wolves apparently got around it, or their own master was threatening them with something worse.

Could be a bit of both. But an arch-vampire was definitely powerful enough to keep them here, and if they were removed from the board…

"How good are you on the front lines?" Henry asked out of the blue.

Cecil looked up from where he was finishing his smoke break, more than a little confused. "Don't tell me you still want to go for the hail mary after everything," he complained.

"No, no, we're not doing that," Henry assured. "Instead, what if we make it look like we're doing that, and pretend to make a crucial mistake at the worst possible moment."

"...And why would we do that?"

"Because then we can underplay our hand and drag the big fish out of position. Pull everyone you can around to the southwestern side of the palace, and have them bring the machine guns with," he finished. "And make sure everyone has a chance to use this before we start. We're going to set up the ambush of a lifetime."

He tossed an unassuming artifact over to his fellow Greenwich survivor, who stared at it like Henry had gone insane.

"This is a Magic 8-Ball," Cecil responded flatly. "You better not be pulling my leg here."

"Oh, not at all. Shake it yourself, and you'll see what I mean. Though… do make sure you're sitting down for it. Dizziness and passing out are super common side effects."