Kensington

~1 week, 6 days until transmission

Brother Noapte carefully observed the battlefield, etching every last detail of the tattered warzone into his memories. Like a sculptor carving his magnum opus, he did not want to leave a stone unturned, or leave a fault in his recollection, for doing so even mistakenly felt to him a graver sin than any of the countless he had already committed. Both those in his own name, and those in the name of others.

None of those transgressions truly mattered before the road to perfection. Allowing for his memory of this place to be less than perfect, on the other hand… he simply could not allow it. So, he let his eyes drink deep of his surroundings.

The moon cast the landscape into stark relief, granting it an almost transcendent quality. This place where men made their final stands, where they were forced to pass the torch one by one against overwhelming odds. Trenches, small craters from mortar fire, berms and embankments and pillboxes and parapets… entrenchments of all shapes and sizes, in varying states of repair and disrepair. In each of those foxholes, a soldier had once stood. A soldier had once died.

He nodded to them solemnly, respecting their resolve. Nonbelievers they may have been… they were worthy adversaries nonetheless.

Now, the only stations still manned by soldiers lie within the very building these fortifications were once designed to protect. They, the vampires, the true children of the night… they had come and taken control of everything else that surrounded it. Both of their prizes could be found inside. One could even be seen from where Noapte stood.

And it… was beautiful.

The monument that Adjutant Quincy called a Heart loomed in front, drinking up every last drop of light that touched its magnanimous presence. It was much more than just a stone, he knew. Strange instincts, ones that he had thought long buried to himself, threatened to bubble back to the surface every time he laid eyes upon its towering presence.

It had taken him longer than he would like to admit to recognize exactly what the sensation was, but a look toward the subordinate vampires who heralded his arrival showed the reaction much more plainly.

Fear.

They were all afraid. Like prey before predators, each one of his kin looked ready to bolt at a moment's notice, predators though they may be. He tried to place what, or why they all felt this way about the Heart, but came short on both counts.

The only thing he could determine for certain… was that such a sign proved he and his kin had chosen the right path. After all, why should one expect to witness the godhead without some sort of trial to test their resolve first? Truly, the Master was as much a teacher as he was a prophet.

"Tell your Lord that I thank him for this undertaking," he told Adjutant Quincy, who stood beside him looking down at the edge of the trench lines. Together, they watched as small bands of his kin crept through the craters, hills and clinging fog of the lowlands at a measured pace.

"Oh, h-haha…" the hunched man tugged at the folds of his robe, affecting nervousness despite the safety of their position. "Th-think nothing of it. I'm j-j-just following the Grand Design, a-as you are."

Noapte preened. "Indeed." He scratched the edge of the thin facial scar that ran along the length of his cheek, an unfortunate reminder of his previous shortcomings in battle. "Once we are finished here, I would very much like to meet your master. I believe such a success would make me more than deserving of the honor."

Quincy let out a noise somewhere between a choke and a cough. "I-I'm sure we can come to some k-k-kind of arrangement," he stammered hurriedly, "B-but such talks will have to wait until a-after my work here is done, I'm afraid."

...Troublesome. Noapte let out a sound of reluctant acknowledgment, but let the matter rest for the time being. Insisting would accomplish nothing other than make him appear faithless, and the Grand Design had no real place for undevoted followers. Proving oneself was a road to be constantly followed, and though those who did were rewarded well and often, it required both capability…

-CHAKCHAKCHAKCHAKCHAKCHAKCHAK-

…and sacrifice.

A heavy machine gun emplacement on the second story, angled downwards towards a small pocket of incoming kin, opened fire into the innermost trenches. Each one of them either lay dead within seconds, or was bleeding out quick enough that they might as well be. The two of them watched on silently as the one left alive longest, arm torn off completely, tried to cannibalize his dead brothers in order to save his own skin.

CHAK.

Pitiable fool. He would have been better served accepting his death.

Noapte sighed. "The closer we get, the harder it will be to stay clear of those guns for long. My brothers are stretched thin as they are, and while I have no doubt our victory is inevitable, costliness does need to be considered with such a small force. Even I don't know how long I could withstand such an attack, though I'm sure neither of us would like it to come to that."

"O-oh!" Quincy seemed shocked, like he hadn't considered that such an outcome was on the table. "W-well, I'm not the m-most well versed in l-l-live combat, so… what would you suggest be done?"

"Hmm…"

He mulled it over, but lacking any military background himself he could only go off of his own recollections of what worked and what didn't. "If we can get just one or a few of those guns out of the picture, we can rush through the opening in their coverage and be upon them in less than a minute. Unfortunately, we lack the means to pressure them from range, nor do we have access to a distraction suitable enough to mask our approach. If only those wolves hadn't thinned our numbers so…"

"W-well…"

Quincy withdrew a bony hand into the folds of his robe, pawing around for something inside an inner pocket before withdrawing it with a slight tremble.

It was what looked to be two flags on a two-meter pole. One flag was a simple white banner, a sign of surrender or peaceful communication. The other seemed to carry the iconography of some old military brigade or another. How the pole had been able to be hidden by the cloak to begin with was anyone's guess.

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How interesting… the arch-vampire thought to himself. Our benefactor is full of surprises, tonight…

"I-if it's a distraction you need," Quincy stuttered. "I-I might be able to provide assistance."

< -|- -|- >

Henry and everyone else had caught up to Cecil's location, and not a moment too soon.

On a clear night like tonight, it was almost impossible not to see the dire straits that they were in. A thin ring of vampires had already encircled their final holdout, slowly encroaching and tightening the noose bit by bit around their necks. Only the Remnant's last few vestiges of firepower kept them at bay now, a sparse network of heavy machine guns originally designed to repel wolf attacks. They were effective, undoubtedly – and against vampires they were complete overkill – but such a mismatch worked against the soldiers more than it really helped.

Higher calibers meant lower overall ammo counts. So, unless they were dealing collateral damage with each shot, they were losing out with each bullet fired.

Even a blind man could've seen that things were not looking great for them. Having a high-altitude magic platform and a clear night sky basically just underlined that message several times over. As soon as the vampires found an opportunity to rush out of the man-made lowlands in force, it would all be over. The four of them needed to make sure that the vampires didn't get a chance for that to happen.

However, for the moment, Henry found himself a bit distracted. what bothered him the most right now wasn't the situation, or the bad odds that came with it, or even the fact that he could just about make out the silhouette of one of the arch-vampires overseeing the entire affair in the distance. No. None of that. What was bothering him was the fact that…

"Cecil couldn't have mentioned that this 'point of interest' of his was the bloody Kensington Palace?!"

He squinted at the building where the sounds of sporadic gunfire were coming from. Its once impressive grounds were marred with upturned dirt and dead grass, while the building itself had fallen prone to giant hole in the roof syndrome. Through that hole, the massive pillar of black stone jutted up towards the Shroud, absorbing all light around it and leaving an inky black spot in his vision.

It looked… almost exactly like the one buried in the underground temple. The dimensions were slightly different, but while the other might have this one beat in height… volume was a whole different measure.

"What's it matter where they ended up?" Claire replied. "We're here to bail them out, and even if that whole building is cursed that's not going to change anything for us."

Henry pinched his nose bridge in mild frustration. "True," he admitted. "But sometimes things are nice to know beforehand. I was expecting, like… a city block's worth of footprint, tops. Now the four of us might end up having to cover twice that amount."

"Mm." Giselle hummed noncommittally. "Doesn't sound very doable for us. Maybe we're looking at this the wrong way?"

He frowned, lost in thought momentarily at the suggestion. If they didn't assist directly in the defense, what could they do…?

Fighting the vampires directly might work, at least for a while, but they'd proven able to give a pack of werewolves the slip with only superficial losses to show for it. He had no doubt that if they decided to land and fight the circling vampires where they stood, eventually they'd only end up being avoided.

Add in the fact of how thick the fog was down in those trenches, and there was a very real chance that one of them might be caught unaware at a fatal moment if they tried to touch down and fight. He was fine with dying, but when it came to others losing their lives at his side, he was still fiercely overprotective. Risking another outcome like the one in the warehouse just… didn't sit well with him.

"We might be able to defend a tighter perimeter," he thought aloud. "Or at least give the impression that we can. If we put up a flashy enough show on arrival, I bet we can mix things up just enough that they'll have to delay just long enough to figure out the sort of danger we present. That'll buy some time, at least. Any thoughts?"

"I can set up a few basic skeletons for the defense part," Dee offered. "It'd be loud, though, so any hope of not giving us away is gone once we do that."

"I could… either try healing any wounded with the Remnant, or I could keep playing taxi out here with this," Giselle chimed in. "Not really sure which one of those would really be helpful, though."

"Eh, worth mentioning anyways. Never know what might come in handy if you don't cover everything. Claire?"

"That toxic gas thing I tried on the Mad Prince seemed pretty effective," she responded with a shrug. "Could always drop a few of those in the trenches, and see what crawls out."

"Okay… just for, uh, reference, how costly is that spell in terms of Domain mana?"

"About a full tank each one right now. Shouldn't be much of a problem, though, I've still got another five or so crystals to pull from."

"...Limit yourself to three, if we decide to go that route. You've been dancing around overdraw for a while now, and the last thing I'd want is for you to-"

"-Pass out from overexertion?" Claire interjected, finishing the sentence for him. "That's awfully rich coming from you, you realize."

"Yeah, I do. I'm also a partially suicidal idiot who likes to get in over his head more often than he should. Your point?"

"My point," she emphasized, with a hint of exasperation. "Is that that makes two of us. Are you really going to get hung up on this now?"

"Not really, I was just-"

He was about to finish by saying making sure you knew, or something to that effect, when a mental spike stabbed into the back of his mind from a familiar, yet unexpected source. Henry lurched forward, nearly falling off the platform to his death from the shock before the rest managed to grab hold of him just in time.

A vision flashed before his eyes. One moment, he was looking down at Kensington Palace, the next on street level, fighting the Constable with a body more torn than he'd known to even be possible yet persisting nonetheless. The death itself wasn't much new to him; he was just being shot, though the target being hit by the bullets and the orange glow it was giving off were suspect. No, that was just the surface level of what was happening.

Past that, there was something like a… package of half-scrambled thoughts that came with it. The feeling of suddenly being given memories retroactively, on such a scale, was both unprecedented for him and extremely disorienting in the short term. Even after the visual faded and his sight returned to Kensington again, he needed a fair bit of time just to process.

"Ugh… OH SHI-!"

He realized he'd nearly fallen off the edge, currently tilted at a 45 degree angle and only still aboard because Dee had used his artifact glove to grab him out of the air before he fell completely. The other Devil pulled him back to safety with a heave, and immediately began peppering him with questions.

"Henry? The hell was that?"

He took one last moment to catch his breath, sorting the last jumbles of thoughts into their own mental compartment. "Death vision," he panted breathlessly. "Last clone just died."

"Wait, what?! I thought you said you hadn't made any copies since last week!"

Henry nodded, gulping for air. "Yup, that's right. This one was… a bit of an oddball. And I'm pretty sure got enthralled somewhere along the line."

"That…That's possible?!?!"

"Seems so. But, for the most part, this is actually good news for us right now. He was preventing me from making copies, so… that block is cleared now."

Dee looked like he wanted to question several things in that moment, but ultimately let all of them slide. He ultimately decided to ask something much more practical to the here and now.

"So… that means we have a few extra numbers to work with for this rescue?"

"It does," Henry confirmed. "But… there might be a bit more to it, too."

There were… hints of things in the mental package, he was noticing. Bits that weren't complete nonsense. Nothing in direct words, but… more instinctual. Tied to how he made copies, in a sense. A better understanding of the mechanisms underneath, maybe?

Not much that he could test out in the short term without some serious de-cluttering. But… there were a few items of interest.

"Let's put that scare aside for the moment," Henry decided. "Here's what I think we should do…"

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