There was a metallic taste on the back of his tongue. The ground was sticky. It smelled like rotten meat and faeces.

John registered those things only distantly. His brain was more busy withstanding the implications of this man's presence.

He was standing at the entrance to the reception still, and there was enough old blood here it had to belong to dozens of people at least, maybe even hundreds. And it was all close enough together that he had to think they'd been grouped in one big bundle, at the end. Maybe they'd been huddling for some modicum of safety. Maybe it had been a natural result of everyone trying to get in or out through the hospital's doors at the same time there.

Or, John thought with narrowed eyes, they'd been herded there like animals to make them easier to slaughter.

All the glass of the reception's windows had been smashed out, littering the carpeted floor with shards. It was a fairly big waiting room, especially since it had been mostly cleared out by rampaging monster waves, all the chairs and tables that had previously sat there reduced to rubble. Only the reception desk stood, and the cloaked man stood before it.

He was maybe just under six feet tall, and so his leathery wings had to be twice that length each. They trailed on the ground behind him like midnight capes. His cloak was like that of one of those screechy guys from the Lord of the Rings who chased Frodo about for a bit in the first one, except more shabby, stained. The katana was undoubtedly the most impressive part of him, its handle an ornate thing as long as the man's forearm, while the obsidian blade glowing with a faint red aura was easily five feet long itself. It looked deadly.

This was the man they'd first seen PvPing on their approach to Watford. It was already near certain that the guy had killed people. From here, the only question was how much of a piece of shit he was. He hadn't made any hostile moves yet, but that didn't mean anything.

His face wasn't visible beneath the voluminous black hood, which made it much easier to meet the approximate area where his eyes would be. John gestured to the charnel house scene around them. "This you?" he asked, aiming for casual and sounding accusatory instead, only to find he didn't care.

There was a fair distance between them, and the man was silent for so long that John wondered if the guy hadn't heard him. Just as he was about to repeat himself, the man replied, voice raspy and hoarse like he'd just managed to pry someone's squeezing hands off his throat. "Do you want to join them?"

John's nostrils flared. "So this was you?"

"I did what I needed—"

That was all the confirmation John needed. For all the people who'd been butchered like livestock here, terrified and helpless in their final moments, he activated Accelerate and took vicious pleasure in watching the cloaked man lunge to the side to escape his onslaught of Ultimate Shots. He fired off ten in half as many heartbeats, spraying them across the reception room. Their telltale roars heralded destruction on the hospital. The walls weren't meant to handle the myriad elements his Spell could bring to bear, and they were blown apart in chunks of masonry and clouds of dust.

The cloaked man, unfortunately, was not blown apart. John couldn't decide whether he was happy about that or not, and he was given no time to figure it out, because the man finally found a gap to let off a counter-attack.

Lashing out with his katana in John's general direction, the aura that had been clinging to the blade like a smokeless flame suddenly separated itself and flew towards him in an expanding crescent. Unfortunately for his opponent, John had seen this move before, and he would've been a fool not to anticipate it. Frankly, he was sure he would've gotten away even if he hadn't.

Flash Step brought him to the far corner of the reception room, out of its line of fire, and another in quick succession bypassed it entirely, bringing him in close. Duellist kicked in, and he stabbed out with his Aurora Blade. The cloaked man was still slightly off balance from his slash, but his wings gave one mighty flap, propelling him back with surprising force. He crashed through the reception wall in a spray of brick and cement, and John followed him.

The corridor was dark, lit only by the windows at the far end; even then, all the light came from the burning sky, giving the place an eerie, hellish glow. He had to squint to make out any details: it was a typical corridor for a local hospital, with pale walls, a ceiling of square tiles, and a carpeted floor. He could just about make out health posters lining the walls. The nearest one was an advertisement for some local charity fundraiser thing for kids with cancer. He had to assume it wouldn't be going ahead any longer.

The cloaked man looked even shabbier now, covered in brick dust and clearly cringing in pain. Visceral satisfaction thrummed through John at the sight, and he lunged to keep up the attack.

On their next exchange, the man had surer footing, and he managed to get his blade up and parry despite John's vastly superior speed with Accelerate active. Sparks flew where their weapons made contact, and both stumbled a few steps away from each other. The cloaked man was speaking, but his voice was elongated to a low drone in John's time-dilated world. Didn't matter. He wasn't interested in what this fucker had to say now.

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You did what you needed to do, John thought. And now I'm doing what I need to do, you piece of shit.

At point-blank range, the man couldn't hope to dodge the storm of Ultimate Shots that John unleashed. Great beats of his mighty wings bore him backwards, and his blade blurred to try and deflect the attacks, but he was no headmaster, and all it took was one. It connected with his shoulder, sending him spinning through the air. By then he'd built up decent speed in his flight, and his spin slammed him through a door, splintering the wood as he passed out of sight.

John Flash Stepped to the doorway immediately, only to continue his momentum right past, throwing himself aside to dodge the streak of red that tore through the open door and into the wall on the other side of the corridor. It passed through the bricks like they weren't there and continued on, leaving an angry gash in the wall.

Feeling it was only fair to respond in kind, John chucked a few Lava Spheres into the room, keenly aware that Accelerate had only a handful of heartbeats to go. With that in mind, he Teleported to the outer wall on the other side of the room the cloaked man was hunkering down in.

There, he wasted no time in slamming his Iron Fist down into the ground, where he let Earthquake do its work.

The world rumbled and tilted. Cracks spider-webbed up the hospital wall in an instant, widening into fissures in the blink of an eye. The hospital looked neither old nor modern, but it didn't particularly matter; either way, it wasn't built for this kind of punishment, and large sections started to cave in. In the car park and in the streets around, lamp posts and electrical pylons swayed like they were made of rubber rather than metal. The trees pitched from side to side, shedding what few leaves they'd managed to accumulate at this time of year in a verdant tide.

The seismic force flowing through his arm and into the ground was incredible; it had been difficult to appreciate the sheer power at play back in the portal world, but here he could see that his newest Spell was truly worthy of the natural disaster for which it was named. The United Kingdom probably hadn't seen a quake of this magnitude in decades.

So he had to admit it took him a little by surprise when it only made the cloaked man fight harder. He was screaming as he erupted from the hospital wall, throwing up a massive spray of rubble. His hood had fallen, exposing his features: dark brown skin, a pudgy face with thin lips, a shaved head pocked with scars.

His most striking feature was his eyes. They weren't anything special in and of themselves. A dull brown colour.

It was the burning fury in them that drew his attention, combining with the clenched jaw, tense neck, veins popping on his forehead, and the bared teeth to form an image of utter apoplexy. His wings were spread like a giant bat.

The man threw himself at John without even taking the time to recharge the dark red aura effect on his sword. It seemed like a rather bad time for Accelerate to run out. In the last heartbeat before the man was on him, John couldn't help wondering if that was a coincidence or not.

The black katana lashed out so fast it blurred, but John's Aurora Blade was there to meet it. The katana bounced off with a shower of red and blue sparks, and the cloaked man turned with the momentum, spinning to aim a backhand slash right at John's head. A quick Flash Step pulled him a few metres back to dodge the blow, but the man followed, propelled by his wings, screaming with rage.

This time, John stepped forward to meet him. Instead of parrying with an Aurora Blade, though, he simply lifted his arm.

Please work, he thought as he watched the horribly sharp katana slash down towards his forearm. He almost wanted to close his eyes, but didn't dare.

The katana struck his metal skin with a clang, and a beam of light burst out from the point of impact. Rather than spurting off in the exact direction the blow had come from, it instead sought out its target, discharging a helix of lightning, plasma, and lava. Even at such close range, the cloaked man managed to mostly dodge away from the counterattack, pivoting his body to the side so the beam that would have hit him did in the chest only scored a burning line across his shoulder and upper arm.

But that left him unable to do anything about John's follow-up strike.

There were several things he could have done, right then. Aurora Blade could have sliced through the man's body like a hot knife through butter. An Ultimate Shot at this range would have reduced him to pulp. Lava Sphere, Meteor Strike, Tornado, Dragon Breath. All of them would have ended this battle quite decisively.

Instead, John punched the guy in the fucking face as hard as he could.

There were multiple reasons for this.

One: it was considerably more satisfying to get the tactile feedback of his knuckles colliding with the man's cheek.

Two: despite the righteous indignation coursing through his veins that all but demanded vengeance, the pragmatic side of him had pointed out that it would probably be worth actually questioning this guy.

And three: he had, at the last moment, faintly heard a childish voice scream, "Daddy!"

That on its own would have been bad enough. But he couldn't help registering the hoarse reediness of the voice, and he couldn't ignore the wet, chesty coughing fit that followed it, as if forcing out even that much volume from their little lungs had been too much.

The cloaked man fell hard and stayed there, groaning softly, but he didn't go still. He was still clinging to consciousness, but was clearly discombobulated, moving around aimlessly, as if trying to find something, like that voice had activated a parental instinct that demanded he make his way to its source, no matter the present circumstances.

Grimacing, John looked up and scanned the hospital windows. It didn't take him long to find what he was looking for. Sure enough, on one of the upper floors on the other side of the hospital's L shape, a small, bald, sickly pale and wide-eyed child was slumped against the window sill. Even from here, he could see the IV drip attached to the kid's arm.

John closed his eyes. "For fuck's sake," he whispered.

The cloaked man chose that moment to fall still, unconscious.

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