Despite circumstances, Henry was feeling a pretty big turnaround in his outlook right now.

From an outside perspective looking in, it made absolutely no sense. He was saddled with the burden of several very important promises, for one. All of which had been bending at the seams well before he'd arrived in vampire country, and only gotten worse from there on out. His original expedition had, technically, almost entirely run out of food and manpower, and was only scraping by on handouts from their generous hosts. They'd been nearly wiped out in the last encounter with the more belligerent locals, and the only thing that might prevent them from finishing the job right now was paranoid secrecy and a few magic items with likely unknown depths to their application.

So why did he feel so… invigorated?

To him, it was quite obvious. He'd stopped trying to take on everything all at once on his own. And the burden of it all had lessened immediately.

Everyone present had chipped in to help, essentially the moment he had finally asked. If anything confused the hell out of him most, it was that part specifically. Enrico had offered to hold down the fort in Little Henwood in their stead, Robb had been the one to suggest they sneak the mirror over to the river during their planning session, Claire had volunteered to risk going toe to toe with the bloody Mad Prince… he was sure they all had their own reasons, but the fact that not one of them needed any extra encouragement on his part was… a bit baffling.

Almost makes me wonder if I've been relying on myself for too long… oh, who am I kidding. You don't build a habit of talking to yourself by being surrounded by friends, now, do you?

This was going to take some getting used to, he could already tell. But, not in an unwelcome way. Matter of fact, he hadn't realized just how much he'd really been holding out for this, deep down.

The four of them were continuing their hurried pace towards the webbed 'territory' at the edge of Walworth. For… varying definitions of the term hurry. He himself was holding the lead just fine, even with having to dodge potholes and tripping hazards on sheer intuition. Claire made for a surprisingly close second, but Dee and Giselle had thrown in the towel on the footrace entirely.

"Hah… you two… must get a lot of time in on the treadmill, huh…?" he panted from his perch beside his co-star.

Not two minutes into their run, he'd found himself falling behind and had opted to cheat. Naturally, this was simply impossible for him to do subtly. What had been summoned could only really be described as an undulating skeletal bench, a scuttling amalgamation made from two headless bodies joined together at the neck and running on all… fours? Eights?

Whatever it was, it was disgusting. The joints on the one in front were bending backwards, for God's sake.

Claire raised an eyebrow at Dee's antics.

"You serious? How much do you even walk around on your own, anyways?"

Giselle craned her neck over to butt in, a mischievous glint in her eyes. "Walk? Plenty of times. Anything faster, and he has dead people for that."

"Hey, that's not fair…" he defended weakly. "Tell me you wouldn't be using the Running Man to get around every chance you got, if you could."

With nothing better to do, it seemed that the two recent additions to their group were falling into roles familiar to them. Typical song and dance, no need to tune in all that intensely, Henry figured. He let them bicker in the background, keeping an eye out because there was no way this wasn't going to draw attention of some kind.

"I wouldn't," Giselle countered. "Because I bet I'd make something cooler."

"Wh-?! Something cooler?! You realize how long it took for me to get that thing functional, right?"

"Well, duh. I'm not saying it wouldn't take a while. But once it's done, it'd definitely be turning more heads, I'd think."

"Really?" Death Jr. didn't seem convinced, raising an eyebrow. "And what makes you so sure of that?"

She held up three fingers, counting one down with each word.

"Giant. Skeletal. Dragon."

There was a significant pause after that declaration, and the night went dead silent. Eerily so. It was the kind of quiet that put his instincts on edge, and start scanning his surroundings for anything even remotely out of place. His brain had to play catch-up with his eyes, while his ears were still distracted with the banter.

"...Hell, I can't lie to myself," Dee grumbled. "That does sound pretty wicked."

"I'm more surprised you haven't started on one yourself, honestly."

Not in the windows. Too many already broken, reflecting odd shafts of light inside to make for good hiding places.

"That… yeah, not sure why I haven't at least considered it either. Maybe something to do with the logistics of it all? I mean, how's it gonna fly with no membranes between the wings?"

Not in the alleys. Simple lack of space, and what was there was out in the open for anyone to see at even a half-decent angle.

"And that's before you get to the issue of weight. Cause, like… birds are able to fly because their bones are hollow, right. So would this thing also need hollow bones? I feel like that's just asking to have your pet dragon smashed to bits by a werewolf."

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"So what if it doesn't fly, then?"

"Well, that's just a dinosaur, innit? Oh… wait! That's a brilliant-"

There.

Henry interrupted their banter with a loud cough.

"Hey, as much as this is all very entertaining and everything… we've got company."

His eyes were glued to the surrounding rooftops. It wasn't obvious at first, but if you snuck a peek over your shoulder, every so often a shadowy blur would flit from one spot to the next. Very occasional stuff, only noticeable when looking at the picture as a whole. Tunnel vision in on any one spot, and you'd miss it.

Everyone else very quickly got the hint and formed a tight knot behind him. He counted eight… no, nine vampires scuttling around nearby. And those were just the ones he could keep track of at the moment, through the fog and the night sky.

"Looks like a fair-sized roving band," he muttered to the others under his breath. "Though it seems a bit light for our first appearance in a week. Perhaps we lucked out, and this is just some sort of probing attack for the main coven."

Several notes of minor apprehension met that assessment in return.

"If it is," Claire commented, "then we should probably give them a reason to think twice before we reach the webs. Wouldn't want to get caught between them and that mess. My kid would've never let me live it down if I went down like that."

"Uh, right… that reminds me… how are you dealing with… all that?"

"Unhealthily. Next question, please."

"...Fair enough."

Their movements slowed to a methodical crawl. Waiting for the storm to erupt, using the indeterminate amount of calm left to catch their breath. Henry's hand hovered around the electrical tape grip he'd wrapped around the pipe at his hip. A holdover from lessons he learned early on: not having a weapon at arm's reach lead to death much more often than having one did.

They waited. So did the vampires, likely to pad their numbers a bit more. What couldn't have been more than a minute felt like a full hour, to the point where it was almost a relief that everything erupted into chaos.

A sort of unspoken signal clicked into place. Nobody declared that it was time for the attack to begin, but both sides seemed to recognize it at the same moment, leaping into action simultaneously. The tops of the buildings erupted in inhuman screeching, and blurs of unlit motion barely distinguishable in the night sky emerged from their ambush points.

Finally, Henry breathed. It's always the anticipation that gets me the most.

He moved out in front, putting himself between the oncoming threats leaping in from above and everyone else. His knives were still on his person, just in case, but they'd had their fair share in the limelight for some time now. Tonight, he had something else he wanted to properly gauge the limits of.

The metal pipe slipped off the loop at his waist, glinting in the moonlight with a menacing shine from a metal that wasn't quite steel, or any other metal he'd seen in his life, really. Certainly looked like it at a distance, but very clearly wasn't when you got a proper look at it.

It slid into his hand seamlessly thanks to his itchy trigger finger, and the first unlucky sod to get into swinging distance found themselves cracked across the jaw. He felt the resistance of the impact, just for a moment, before the feeling reversed and it felt like his arm was being dragged into the direction of the blow. Before he could even blink, the vampire he was aiming at was sent flying away, with a… let's just call it disproportionate amount of force.

A crater the size of a kiddie pool spiderwebbed through the solid brick wall where the victim landed. All of a sudden, he felt very appreciative of the work his reactive shield put in to protect him when he'd first found out how this artifact behaved… the hard way.

Well, that's a pretty obvious vote of confidence from me, he thought. Wonder how some of the other artifacts are going to fare against… oh.

Turns out, everyone else had had the same idea as him. More importantly, where he'd stopped to assess the damage he'd dealt during the fight, everyone else very plainly hadn't.

Tonight, magic was taking a backseat for, well, even crazier magic. Dee and Claire's signature powers were relegated to the thankless task of pinning the vampires in place, whether that be through grasping roots or grasping hands. The less said about the arms and their many, many elbow joints, the better, but they did the trick perfectly. Despite being nowhere near the webs, the majority of the gathered vampires found themselves stuck to the ground, and some even were unfortunate enough to be pulled out from midair.

The various offensive Domains were all tied up in keeping that entanglement in place. In their stead, however… the artifacts came out to play.

Claire made heavy use of an old, British empire-era bayonet that floated on its own accord and punched through bodies effortlessly, despite the lazy speeds at which it traveled. Dee, now standing on top of the bench like he wanted to be wearing a cape that fluttered in the wind, was using his glove as a tool to bring vampires straight in front of an unassuming looking 9-volt battery.

Wait, what did that one do again?

"AHAHAHAHAHAH!"

With a maniacal laugh and a clap of thunder, another score of vampires fell to the ground charred coal black from the arcs of electricity that had completely engulfed them. Just a few more than 9 volts in that, it would seem.

The look of childlike giddiness off Dee's face was starting to become iconic, with how much excitement he got out of seeing the artifacts in action. "Now that is some proper wizard shit right there!" he exclaimed.

"You're not wrong," Giselle commented. "Maybe I have something that can match it…"

The necklace she'd started wearing this morning shimmered slightly in response. Henry kept a wary eye on both her and the few remaining vampires still out of arm's reach from him, but after seeing what the artifact did… he realized he really hadn't needed to be so alert.

That necklace she was wearing was something else entirely compared to the kid toys they all apparently had. He wouldn't call it powerful. Versatile, was the more apt descriptor. It lit up, generating a square blanket of shimmering force, about three meters across on each side. The effect was a dead reckoning for his own reactive shield, but this one appeared to sustain itself more cohesively.

With some effort, she was able to move it around like a sheet in the wind. It blocked the advances of the other vampires with a barely perceptible shift. Its clunky motions stymied lunge after lunge, allowing itself to be curled around claws like a soft cloth, before hardening and compressing down on the offending limbs. Twisting from shape to shape, it interposed itself in front of all four of them, leaving Henry at a loss of what to do.

I guess… good on her that she's getting the hang of it quickly…?

Already, there were some creative applications at work. By the time the bricks in the wall had stopped crumbling apart, the only one left was slowly having their head squeezed into mush by a gradually shrinking sphere.

Dee summarized it all best, he thought.

"Bloody hell… I didn't expect us to completely rinse 'em like that…"

Everyone nodded in silent agreement. None of them had even gotten injured in that encounter.

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