Zombiedude101

Recollections: Under The Sycamore Tree Part. 1

Everyone ft. Layla Adora, Sully, Luca & Stormy@Atrophy@FernStone@Estylwen@Shin Ghost Note
House on the Hill

---

They watched him apprehensively. A feral creature. A monster in their midst.

He didn't blame them for the sour expression on their faces, lr even their readiness for a fight. This was what he was, beneath the facade of humanity that he'd been left with so long ago.

No breath, no heartbeat, no blood flow, no scent, you’re functionally a walking corpse.

The woman had been right, on all accounts, and that had somehow got to him. Made him stupid. And now he'd been hurt in a sense he hadn't understood for years, and dependent on these people to help him, if they could.

Assuming they were even willing to help him, or actually knew what to do.

The crystalline shard lodged in his chest - every second it bedded there was like a hot iron, except instead of searing away the nerves and sending him into shock it only amped up. Each pulse felt like an electrical surge seizing his body.

Getting across the block had been torturous enough. Doing it while damaged had only made it worse, the crystal's presence had made every movement a new agony, where every second spent under direct sunlight felt like a stream of acid and saltwater were being poured on the webwork of non-existent nerve endings that covered every inch of exposed self.

And now he was dependent on them to figure it out, and take a chance that he wasn't sure he'd have taken in their shoes.

The skinny latino approached, pushed the host-girl out of the way, then after a moment's... hesitation? Clancy couldn't be certain, save that he pressed on anyway.

"N-n..."ot you. The words wouldn't come, but he knew Luca was putting himself at risk by pulling it out, knew that if it was doing this to him it would do worse to someome who, as far as he could tell, was barely held together.

He felt the blinding agony recede as Luca's fingers and palm enclosed around the short length of crystal that jutted out from his body, the rotting overlapping and enveloping the shard's corrosive influence. Felt his self pushing back against whatever force it harboured, that had brought him to a low...

Unti it was gone - replaced by the poison that infected Luca and now leechijg into him as the boy nearly collapsed atop his tattered body - but nonetheless the pain had stopped.

The others intervened. Stormy produced something that didn't burn at him, while Sully moved Luca off to somewhere safe, then moved to try and help him, chalice in hand, despite the dying boy needing the help more-

"Help hrmh-"

Sully didn't hear him protest or flinch at him being cold to the touch, but he felt the elixir run down the half of his mouth that was still intact, while the rest dribbled down his cheek and into the shadowy, yawning chasm that encompassed his real face.

What was it supposed to taste of?

He wasn't sure.

It had been so long. Food and drink offered no joy for him, nor sustenance. Eating a chocolate bar tasted no different to eating a wet block of clay. A soda pop the same as oil, or muddy water.

Pointless.

And yet the elixir still tasted like something different, lingering at the edge of his memory, as though it should have worked, even if it hadn't.

That it didn't just taste of the sludgy, grainy nothingness he was used to bothered him, because it was a reminder of all that he was and would never be again. That, like the woman had said, he was functionally a corpse, a monster that had taken the face and memories of Clancy Patrick.

Moments later, he spewed up more of the shadow-bile, except this time when the black sludge dissipated it left behind a faint port-wine spatter courtesy of Sully's elixir, with hard specks of lead pellets scattered in the same mess.

After they'd cleared back to give him some space, he groggily pulled himself towards the same wall Luca was propped up against, his one remaining eye fixated on the person who'd taken the risk to help him.

"Thank you." It was an earnest acknowledgement of the sheer ordeal he'd gone through to help him, fully cogniscient of the risk. Clancy had realised at the cabin and ice cream parlour, just how bad his situation was, and that Ashley had tried to help him before.

Hopefully the others could fix him.

Slowly, his features were... prepared to reform. It wasn't an instant process by any means, and the crystal had wrought its work long enough that the damage almost felt lasting, even if the pain was gone. Instead, they'd be forced to

Stormy had asked him a question. Who did this to him?

"I don't know," Clancy answered, "It was some col-.. black woman, trenchcoat, body armour... armed heavy," he pointed two fingers at himself and made a swirling motion. "Tall, but... stronger than she should be. First time I've run into anything that could hurt me like that... and I've tried. Some of you know that already." Briefly, he shot the wary Adora an equally wary look, before moving on.

"She wanted to know why I went after the 'old man'. I think she was talking about someone I tailed... black, has a suit and cane, white hair, weird accent. Shayton. Worked with the bikers, then killed that asshole Judas, back at the club. For his bosses. Same creeps those bikers were working with, maybe, I don't... I thought maybe oneof them killed Ashley, and your friends too. Shayton said both he and his bosses had nothing to do with the murders, said he'd kill Father Wolf himself. 'Bad for business'. But he got away before I got real answers, back at that stupid Halloween thing where you were partying."

Clancy shifted his weight back, then turned his head to one side so as to spare the others seeing the damaged half of his face, and the black maw that had been exposed in its place. To hide it, because the experience had left him feeling more self-conscious than he should've been.

"She wanted me, didn't mention anyone else. I told her to get bent. Go figure."

And for now, the gnawing voice of hunger at the back of his mind had been quietened. The elixir had... dulled it for now.

That much was a relief, given present company. They were, for now, safe from that.

Recollections: Under The Sycamore Tree Part. 1

Strip Mall Outskirts

---

It was still a few blocks before he’d be able to cross and reach the bar, but at least he’d gained sight of it for a moment crossing the parking lot. Clancy took a detour, spotting an alleyway divided by a chainlink fence running between the two buildings that formed it. Easy enough. Planting one foot against the pipework, he pushed himself off a wall fung and leapt for the midsection of the chainlink, tearing a handhold in a weaker section of the mesh, then pulled his small frame further up still until he could vault over the top.

When he dropped down to the other side, she was there.

---

Body & Blood

---

Shaquita Walker.

Wearing a black trench coat, halfway unzipped to reveal a full body armor with several grenades and flashbangs and an ammo pouch hanging off the rig. She had on black cargo pants with some combat boots. In both of her hands was a frightening KS-23, and she stared at Clancy.

“... No breath, no heartbeat, no blood flow, no scent, you’re functionally a walking corpse,” Shaquita noted out loud. “Why are you harassing the old man? I know he’s annoying…” Shaquita menacingly racked the first shell…

To his credit, the kid threw up his arms, backing up against the chainlink, stuttering out an answer as best as he could.

”Lady, I don't know you or what you're talking about, b-but m-my dad's waiting around the corner for me.”

“Well, you can introduce me to him,” Shaquita snorted. “I’d love to meet the father of the corpse of the poor kid you’re parading around, Apparition.”

That provoked a scowl from the boy, ”Yeah, well he'd tell you to get bent too, lady. Still wanna meet him?”

“Confirmed. So…” Shaquita said, “... I have a nice car with some ice cream. You’re getting into it, and we’re rolling to one of our labs...”

”Is it a white van, too? I was taught not to walk off with strangers.”

Shaquita leveled the shotgun at him-

“... I wasn’t asking.”

-and pulled the trigger, losing a 6-gauge shell that sheared through Clancy's upper torso like tissue paper. The shot produced a thunderclap rippled through the alleyway, startling the pigeons nestled in the guttering overhead.

Shaquita didn't hesitate to work the action, racking another shell as her target crumpled into the fence behind him. Immediately, the damage was apparent: from shoulder to sternum, his shirt had been reduced to tattered shreds, the sections of pale white flesh beneath In equal ruin to expose an emaciated, skeletal shadow that seemed to form his inner anatomy.

That he wasn't twitching on the floor, dying of shock and blood loss, was all but the final confirmation she'd needed.

Clancy's fingers dug into the chainlink behind him, clenching hard enough that the links broke free and twisted, tearing away a section of the fencing and throwing it pulled hard, swinging the torn section of fencing in a curve towards the woman like a discuss.

However, the woman backpedaled as quickly as the kid could throw the fencing. Keeping a calm head, she braced the shotgun into her arm, squeezed off a second shell, racked another, fired, racked another, fired - a barrage which literally blew out the kid's footing dropped him to his hands and knees.

Shaquita used the window to stand her ground, tugging another trio of shells from the carrier, quickly feeding them into the shotgun's magazine, racking the last shell, then reaching back to draw another for good measure. Just as she was ready to insert the fourth, Clancy had haphazardly pulled himself back to moving on all fours, lashing out at her footing with gnarled, shadowy digits, only for her to gracefully backstep out of arm's reach before emptying a shell near-point into the boy's head.

The damage was enough that the facade that made up scalp, hairline, eye and cheekbone had been torn away in an instant. Half of Clancy's face gone, peeled back to expose the emaciated, featureless silhouette of a skull, marked only by the inhuman maw that crept outward from where the boy’s mouth had been.

That was enough to put him down, if only for a moment; she used it to load another shell as a husking growl slipped through his half-lips, ”Who sent.. not sent by Nazis… obviously..” The connection was half forming when he lashed out again, jabbing the black, angular shadow that constituted a foot into a nearby trash bin and kicking it into her path. Shaquita stepped forward and violently swung her fist at the trashcan and knocked it aside as the boy drove himself back to footing.

Clancy pressed towards with a feral persistence, this time driving a palm upwards into the underside of the shotgun and clamping his fingers around the barrel, steering it upwards as she tried to lose another shell into him. Narrowly, it missed the remaining half of his face and instead managed to ruin the side of a dumpster and part of the brickwork next to them.

”You'll tell me who-” Shaquita didn't mince words, leveraging her weight to bash Clancy with the other end of the gun, slamming the grip into the black, featureless shadow that made up half of his face with such force that he was surprised to find she could throw down strength for strength. They grappled, he again tugging at the barrel, on the backfoot at how strong she was for someone that seemed-

White hot agony. A blinding light.

-Clancy felt what could only be described as the worst pain he'd ever experienced in all memory, a hot knife that seared at his very being.

He looked down, and realised too late - she'd used the moment as a distraction, tuggee what looked like a pulsing, crystalline shard from her pouch and drove it deep into what should've been his sternum, enough that the tip was barely an inch out of him.

He did not breathe, but he felt his chest tightening, non-existent lungs clamouring for air. For the first time in years, he felt it, like the instinct of panic that set in when one was at the bottom of a lake and drowning.

Desperation.

Still he clutched at the shotgun… and this time, Shaquita's strength overpowered his own, enough to steer the bore of the weapon back towards him and empty a shell at point-blank range through the side of his head, this time tearing away more than just the facade of flesh and scalp. Pain, and a blinding disorientation washed over him as he felt his frame buckle out.

That was when Shaquita unloaded round after round into Clancy… Once the mag was dumped, Shaquita reached for another crystal…

Sirens wailed over in the distance. The cacophany of gunfire and trash being overturned had caught up to them. At the other side of the fence, or what remained of it, a pauchy man in SPPD uniform had shoen up, pistol pointed ahead at Shaquita, another uniform in tow.

”On the gr-!”

They couldn't even finish the sentence before both spontaneously seized up and collapsed, courtesy of a fatal heart attack. Shaquita walked over to their dead bodies, knelt down, and crushed their bodycams underfoot. Then she stood up, pivoting to Clancy…

… and the boy was gone.

---

The House on the Hill

---

Ambience

The door burst open.

The tattered form of Clancy Patrick, barely standing, staggered through, a half-feral expression on the remaining third of his face as he collapsed against the wall, barely propped up by a shadowy arm that bedded its sharp digits into the decor.

There was little doubt that he wasn't a normal child. Not anymore.

His face was half-gone, bearing only his right eye, the corner of his jaw and a portion of his scalp to betray his identity as the boy Clancy had claimed he was. The rest of his head could only be described as a third-dimensional shadow outlining a skull, featureless save for the angular impression of an inhumanly large mouth.

The rest of him was worse for wear; shoes, shirt and the lower half of his khaki pants were shredded, as though someone had run them through a blender, the skin beneath giving way to more of the skeletal shadow that outlined his body.

And buried in the center of his chest, a pulsating, crystalline shard. He briefly touched at it with the hand that still bore flesh, only for his fingers to spasm and seize up as his fingertips grazed its surface and another rumble of discomfort to escape out his lips, and then an almost viscious mass of oily shadow spewed forth as he coughed up something foreign.

The shadow withered on the floor and dissipated, leaving only a cluster of lead pellets behind. A parting gift from the hitwoman.

Whatever it was, the crystal was doubtless the cause of his troubles, every move eliciting an agonised murmur, until he again collapsed against the wall, slinking away from the loght bleeding in from the outside.

For all the inhumanity of his appearance, the voice that spoke - guttural and resonant as It was - was at a pleading desperation.

”I… help me.”

Recollections: Under The Sycamore Tree Part. 1

Midwestern Retirement Home

---

Ambience

Then. A while ago

The stench of history, mediocrity and fatigue struck him as he was led through the weaving corridors of the retirement home - until he came to a stop outside a half-opened door with the digits '404'

"Your grandson says he's here to see you, Mister Patrick." One of the aides had escorted him to a bedroom and knocked, unscheduled. The standards weren't so strict for the time.

"Grandson? I don't-..." a voice answered back, then paused, "Hruh... send 'em in, give us a little privacy and get yourself a coffee."

Clancy stepped inside the room, leaving the aide to wander off to other duties. The room was spartan, by the standards of the man he'd known. A battery operated radio sat on a table, playing some smooth R&B track from a local station in the background. On the dresser at the far side were a set of framed photos, all monochrome. One contained a woman that seemed familiar, albeit a good ways older than he'd remembered. Aunt Nora maybe, he guessed? Other photos ranged from a pose with other uniformed marines on some beach out where the weather was tropical compared to the midwest, to family photos containing facesthat were all too familiar to him.

Mom. Dad. Frank. Judy.

"C'mon, I don't bite. Judy dropped by with one of her kiddos, guessin' that's where the mixup is?" A gravelly voice erupted from the far side of the room once again, coming from the silhoeutte of an elderly man in a wheelchair, facing out towards the window as a constant rainfall drummed against the glass, "Cos' my girls only had daughters, but I dunno, I lose track sometimes-"

"Hi, Uncle Gerry." Clancy interceded. To spare the old man's effort in turning he stepped around the bed, until he was in full view.

"Sweet fuckin' jesus-.." he shook it off, "Sorry for the language, you just look the spitting image of my-"

"It's me," Clancy cut him off, before he could continue on the tangent. Like a ma, "You got me a Daisy 1894 for my tenth birthday, and Frank got your old bike for his sixteenth. Mom threatened to tan your hide when she found out. She'd have given us both the belt if she knew he made me ride that bike too."

She had, alongside uttering a few profanities in her native Polish, but Clancy had pretended not to understand. It was funny at the time, and a sadder memory still.

Hearing that, it took a moment for the old man to process. Compared to the robust fighting Irishman Clancy had known telling tall tales about his time in the marines when he was younger, Uncle Gerry was a frail husk of a man. Age and terminal illness wrought terrible things upon the human body, and it had struck him in spades. Confined to a wheelchair, his uncle was just about breathing with the aid of a nasal cannula, fed up into his nostrils from an oxygen tank fixed to the back of the chair.

"Sweet jesus... am I-... am I meetin' my maker?"

"No. Not yet." Clancy shook his head.

"Well, if it ain't that or the painkillers, you're pretty fucken' convincing for a ghost."

That forced something of a chortle out of the boy. "Guess I am."

"Not even going to give your favourite uncle a hug?"

"I... better not." The old man's heart seemed to sink at that, "Ghost, remember?"

"Harh," Gerry snorted, wrinkling his lips, "Why are you haunting me then, kid?"

"Mom and dad," he began, "Where are they? The house is empty."

He'd been out of state for less than a year, and come back to his childhood home being emptied of anything that was valuable, a 'FOR SALE' sign plastered in an overgrown front yard. Over time, he'd stopped by, but never where anyone could've recognised him, nor where he could've put someone he actually cared about at risk.

"You didn't read the papers?" Gerry's wrinkled brow scrunched, his head, "No, suppose not. I'm... sorry, kid," Gerry's eyes shot towards a family photo on the dresser, "Your Da's heart gave out last Christmas. Your Ma was on her own. Losing you an' your brother like that, broke her heart but she had your Da'. Without your old man, well there wasn't much left around for her, yer'know? Judy's outta state, and I wasn't much use to her like this..."

Silence followed, for what must've felt like hours at either end. An emptiness within him had simultaneously shrunken and grown more empty. Finally, he broke it with one question.

"Were they happy?"

"What?"

"After... losing us. Me, then Frank, were they still happy with each other?"

"I don't know what to say, kid. I never know what I'da done if I'd lost one of the girls, but... it's somethin that destroys a lot of folks out there. They missed you. But life... it had to move on, that's just how we was raised, y'know? Your da' specially came to me for a lot of it, wouldn't say it loud but I knew it was killin' him, and your ma'... you know what she went through, losin' her family and everything else back in her old country... she kept on going, for your da' and your sister, and the grandkids too, I guess."

"You mean... Judy's kids?" He'd almost forgotten that his sister had a family of her own, now. One he'd never meet. "Is she doing okay?"

"Yeah, you and Frank woulda been uncles yourselves by now, ya'know? Goddamn commies..." The thought made him feel.... empty. As though he should've felt sadness, happiness, or both, but there was nothing there. The absence felt wrong.

Instead, he chose to change the subject, back to hs uncle's.... situation.

"How are... you? What's with the..." Clancy's gaze shifted to the apparatus feeding oxygen through the tubes running up and into his uncle's nasal cavity.

"You tell me, you're the spirit." That spouted another sad, bitter chuckle between the two of them. Clancy threw his arms up and shrugged for emphasis

"Well, they didn't warn us grunts, but I guess them Lucky Strikes weren't so lucky, huh?" A wheezing cough erupted from the old man, and Gerry thumped a finger across his chest, circling inwards, then pointed to the tubes running into his nostrils.

"C-O-P-D. Asbestos and smoking, or so the doctor tells me. Could just be the spam and maggoty fucken' rice that did it for me back in the Corps though," Gerry chuckled his way into a half-wheezing splutter, grinning through a row of yellowed teeth as he raised one frail palm upwards, "Up to me' eyeballs in cancers. Had a double-whammy stroke last Christmas too, so I can't even walk straight to take a piss. Y'know how goddamn stupid that is, needing some little girl to help you get up every morning for a piss?"

"I'm sorry." Truthfully, Clancy had known his uncle's body was failing, could've smelled it a mile away. The hunger constantly gnawing at him gave him a sense for when he was around the dead and dying. Another reason he didn't want to take anymore of a risk than he already had. Self-control was a knife-edge, easy enough to end up on the other side of the coin....

"Doesn't matter," Gerry waved it off, "Knew more than a few kids who didn't make it in the war, I got my years with your Aunt Nora until the Lord smiled on her. I'm ready for the pearly gates, kid. But if you didn't know about your ma' or old man, how'd your find me?"

"Caught your name. Heard you weren't well."

He wanted to tell him. So much, he'd wanted to open up about everything he'd seen, been through, done. But this was not something he wanted to burden the old man with, the knowledge of the things that lay waiting in the dark. Not something a man needed to fear. Thinking he was just a ghost... that was easier than the alternative, the shame of it.

"Promise me you won't tell Judy about this?" It would've only confused her, drepening old wounds. Better she forget him.

"If you're really who you say you are.... where I'm going.... what should I expect?"

Cold. Darkness. Nothing.

"I.... don't know. I can't tell you."

"Figures."

"Uncle Gerry?"

"Yeah, kiddo?"

"I remember... good things, with you. That last camping trip... Frank's birthday, even Aunt Nora's burnt apple cake... you were a good uncle. I'm sorry I wasn't there for my parents. Wasn't there when they heard Frank was killed in service. If you can believe me... thank you for being there for them." All of it, he'd meant sincerely. "I didn't suffer", except that, his most egregious lie yet, "It was quick."

One meant to spare him the knowledge, but a lie nonetheless.

One that was accepted without question.

Gerry gave him a nod that seemed to betray a saddened acceptance of what was. It was his way, the way they were raised, they way they had to be when they'd been kids.

Clancy only wished he could've figured that out before they'd both suffered loss.

They talked for a little longer, until the old man finally drifted into sleep. Clancy took his exit, leaving him to wonder whether their conversation had been a dream all along.

At least it was closure.

---

Ambience

Strip Mall, near the House on the Hill
@Shin Ghost Note

---

Now

A sense of longing overwhelmed him for a moment as he pulled himself from the daydream that had broken through the orderly structure he'd established within his thoughts.

As he'd said to Luca, it was shitty. And as he'd said to Adora with even more conviction, there was no way out.

His family were gone. Save for the one moment with his sister, he hadn't even been there as they went. Mom. Dad. Frank. Judy. All of them, taken from him. Ashley. For a long time they'd been an anchor of sorts to him, a counterbalance to center himself and remember who he was, but they were all gone, and that had set him adrift.

Yet now he was less certain, for reasons that he couldn't quite understand. Maybe it was the fact he'd surrounded himself with people who weren't just meat to him, who weren't trying to use him for their own selfish needs or step over him like the dumb kid they thought he was.

The ex-coven people. Ashley's friends and otherwise. Some he felt an understanding with. Luca, the boy who was rotting inside. Adora. The quiet girl with her own problems. Linqian, the girl who lost her brother. The others, he was getting used to. Some he felt he could trust a little. Others, less so.

And 8th Street were still just meat as far as he was concerned, Seeing them at the Dairy Queen during his unannounced drop-in with Luca had done little to point his anger away from Emily Reed, that fucking prom queen.

Yet the memory of that stupid, selfish moment he'd taken with Uncle Gerry near the end of the man's life had been invoked by the sight of some old timer wearing a gold-embroided-on-blue U.S MARINE CORPS VETERAN cap as he crossed the strip mall. If he squinted, the old timer just barely passed for his Uncle, if for nothing else then because he was being pushed about in a wheelchair by a fourty-something year old woman whom he might've guessed could've been the man's daughter.

Why had that of all things been what came to mind?

Was it a need for something?

Family?

It didn't matter.

Despite the memory coming forth unbidden, the old man was long gone from this world, his body burned and the ashes scattered across the shores of Lake Michigan by his own daughters, the cousins that Clancy had never really got to know.

Once a marine, always a marine,

Clancy had once heard a phrase like that, though he'd never had the opportunity to really understand or make sense of it. One ship he supposed he was lucky to have sailed on without, although Frank wouldn't have said the same. You could apply the same logic to other places though.

Once a monster, always a monster.

A statement he could've spoken in the mirror, if he was being honest with himself.

As he refocused on where he actually wanted to go, he noticed that, if the map display on the not-so-new phone he'd borrowed was anything to go by, the disused bar that Adora had mentioned earlier in the day was still a little ways off. Clancy had taken the opportunity to get some shopping done, courtesy of some cash from a local benefactor that had now slipped beneath his consideration.

A new knapsack, new sneakers that actually fit him and wouldn't fall apart the moment he started moving, and a couple other things that cash could by. If it wasn't for the agitation that stirred among his base instincts whenever he moved among a crowd, he could've said it was the closest he'd been to a normal day. That is, if he neglected to remember he'd been tailing Adora.

At least she'd listened to him, which was more than what most would've done after dealing with a stalker that had proven they could disembowel a man in one swipe.

He crossed another block, cut through a small, narrow intersection where two buildings almost closed in together, and came out at the other side of a parking lot. He could see the meeting spot in question from here.

Definitely a big house. A little too obvious.

It just hadn't yet occurred to him that he wasn't the only one on the hunt in this side of town.

Recollections: The Compendium

The Shah's.Voice
| A conqueror's trinket | "Whatever it was, it might as well be scrap now." ORIGINS & CREATIONS: | The Voice's specific origins remain unknown, muddled by time and the gap between worlds. It is, by some measure, centuries old, and was forged under the watchful eye of scholars from another world where Indo-Persian and Mesoamerican cultures became the dominant economic and political force. While the details of this world have been lost to time, some have speculated that it was either depopulated in a global conflict that rampantly escalated before diplomacy could apply the brakes, or went into hiding after being devastated by a powerful apparition. | TYPE: | Channeler | LOCATION: | Unknown. It was last confirmed in the hands of Das Sonnenrad, prior to the organisation's destruction. Since then, nothing concrete. A rumour suggests it may have been stolen among other artifacts in the power vacuum left by Kaiser Draeger's death, and several cases of enthralled men have been cited across the Pacific Northwest, tied to various acts of violence and organised crime. | NOTABLE OWNERS: | Das Sonnenrad: For a few years, the ring remained in Das Sonnerad's hands, although they had little joy in getting it to work. Kaiser Draeger himself was unimpressed with the ring and vocally expressed his dissatisfaction in the cost of its acquisition. | ABSTRACTION-GRANTING: | Yes | .............................................................................	An unremarkable iron band with angular patterns wrought into its unpolished surface. Das Sonnenrad came to its possession at a not-insignificant cost in an expedition to acquire artifacts from a cache of explorers hailing from a world where Indo-Persian and Mesoamerican cultures had been the dominant force in contemporary politics. From various excerpts, the ring holds the power to enthrall the minds of men, living or dead, provided the ringbearer understands how to wield it. As stories tell, Kaiser Draeger was livid to learn that, at the cost of several agents and the cache's destruction, his organisation had acquired a "lump of mongrel scrap iron" and discarded the ring to the care of a subordinate after initial attempts at its use proved ineffective. Later, after Das Sonnenrad's destruction, rumours abounded that a former member had stolen it along with several other artifacts and had figured out some of the ring's functions.

Recollections: Under The Sycamore Tree Part. 1

@Atrophy Sully
Kari's Yard

---

Clancy had kept his silence as Britney had subtley rejected his offer on Linqian's behalf. He doubted she wanted him keeping tabs on her, given his expressed opinion. If she hadn't before, she likely knew his nature. They all did, most likely. He'd nearly torn out a man's entrails in response to being shot, and had doubtless left a few un-animated corpses after being punted into the water-logged crater, a sight not unlike something his grandad would've seen in the war, out past the snaking line of trenches, barbed wire and unexploded shells.

Or so he assumed. He'd never been there himself, and his family seldom spoke of such things while they were around to tell the tale.

Instead, he watched a bunch of them disappear down the road, filing into Britney's SUV and taking off. Elsewhere, they'd seen off a white-haired, almost fae-like girl by the name of Luna, a former spy. Spying for who he didn't know, nor did he care. She wasn't anyone of consequence to him. Yet.

The night was a bust, and the rest of the group were disappearing into their little silos. That left him with a newfound anger for 8th Street, given their antics...

... and the hunger was gnawing at him again, that biting agitation tugging at the seams of his consciousness.

He wouldn't find anything of substance here, not anything or anyone that he was willing to expend. Pacing away from the smouldering remains of the cabin, he caught Sully still marauding through a thicket of overgrwoth, and returned the favour offered earlier.

"Thanks."

By the time Sully had turned to hear where the voice had come from, the boy was gone. But the jacket had been folded and left just a few feet away.

---

On account of losing most of his worldly possessions, he had almost been out of luck save for a spare phone he'd left near his old stomping ground. It was no means top of its line, and while he didn't care to keep up with the latest innovations, he guessed it would've been worth less than the cost of a family meal even without the cracked screen and scratches across its lime green frame. But it worked for what he needed.

As it stood right now, he was out a place to stay. The RV had been trashed in a way that would've got him noticed, and he didn't want to surprise anyone doing a night patrol of the lot. There were a few underpriveleged projects, but they had people living there as-is, and not all of them needed to be bothered.

Instead, he'd lined something up with a local. Some lonely fourty-something holed up in an apartment not too far from the area that he'd come to view as his preferred stomping groun, with an interest in the welfare of young boys like himself. That much, he was certain about the man.

Clancy had taken steps to ensure there was no ambiguity about that.

With this, at least, he'd have a place to stay, a change of clothes, and a warm meal. The latter, he needed more than anything else.

A few characters cropped up across the phone's display, slightly distorted by the crack snaking across the center.

looking forward to seeing u bud ;)

Moments later, Clancy keyed the words back in a well-rehearsed motion, then hit send.

see u soon

By the time the night was done, he wouldn't be hungry anymore.

Recollections: Under The Sycamore Tree Part. 1

@FernStoneAnya, Luca, Linqian@Atrophy Sully @NoriWasHere Lila @Shin Ghost Note Britney
No Man's Land, aka Kari Wilson's (Wrecked) Yard

---

Things snapped back to an equilibrium. Someone - a girl - had made Sullysnap out of the stupor that seemed to have infected them all. The man had in turn come to his senses, intervened and taken responsibility for the half-digested Sloane as Clancy pried her away from the corrosive embrace, then shared that responsibility with Drake once she was in a better state...

Clancy took Sully's letterman without complaint, having barely made eye contact with the man save to offer a silent nod of appreciation when he refrained from touching him.

The truth was that the cold didn't bother him - in his world, it was always cold - but he suspected the others would not have wanted to see him in the state that he was. Body and clothing alike were tattered in every respect, with deep, bloodless gouges in his flesh that concealed a black, skeletal void beneath the surface, a constant reminder that he was less than what he once was.

Looking on as Sully passed around the chalice to share its 'heal juice', a certain longing tugged at him. Salt in the physical wounds he'd suffered, although the pain was was not of the body. It won't work, he knew, without having to ask.

Not that it was needed.

Slowly, he could see the damage knitting back together, like paint slowly spreading out from a flat canvas. The shadows bedded beneath the surface appeared to recede as pale flesh seemed to reform over the gaps. His torso was in the worst state, where the burst had torn an exit wound wide open from, with a gouge that ran through from navel to the small of his back.

That would take a little longer than the rest of him, so to spare the others staring he pulled the letterman on over his shoulders like a cloak. It was a little too big for him to wear without taking back the sleeves, and he doubted Sully would've appreciated such modifications to his favourite jacket.

Besides, he didn't look the part of a varsity athlete.

Clancy paced over towards where he'd taken the barrage from the two 8th Street assholes, or where he thought he'd taken them, as he could only measur by distance from the imprint in the ground where the mound of animated meat had been during the chaos. If anyone had bled here, he could've only guessed by that coppery tang hitting his senses. The storm had washed any viscera away, and not a single shred of evidence that either of the four assailants he'd seen there remained.

Nor did the other thing he was looking for. Not there, he noted, and paced off again, impatient, not here, either.

Eventually, after minutes of searching, it dawned on him.

The axe was gone. Stolen, most likely.

It shouldn't have bothered him. Nothing in his life had lasted, but he'd found a cerrtain permanence with its presence. Something about the weapon's unique properties, not unlike his own circumstances, had been strangely comforting.

The subtle hint of frustration and loss caused the hunger pang to gnaw at his consciousness again, accentuated by the coppery tang in the air. The meat here was worthless, moldering flesh and rotting bones which were so brittle that they broke like twigs.

Later, he reminded himself.

Focus.

It was difficult to shake those thoughts away, but this wasn't the time or place to lose that self-control. The others wouldn't have understood it, and they had enough to worry about without other things spooking them.

He saw the odd girl, Lila. Except it wasn't just Lila. The feathers and talons that bristled through her body, refusing to be willed away. The agonised expression she offered them as she asked for help, fo be fixed.

There was some small comfort to be found in the shared suffering of the others. To know they understood what it was to be fundamentally weighed down by something beyond their cintrol.

Her and the skinny boy with the Rot eating him away from within, along with anything else that came into contact with him. It made sense now - was this what Britney had done to them? Luca had all but confirmed what Ashley had suggested during their conversations.

For a moment, Clancy shot Britney a withering glare, although he was doubtful she'd noticed. They were all too busy trying to make a headcount and figure out what would happen next.

Linqian caught his eye next, stripped down at every level, he could tell she was grieving even now. A lingering sentiment of sympathy tugged at him as she speculated being alone. She'd been... decent to him, and he understood her loss better than some.

"I can-.. keep an eye out. If you want." Clancy offered, It's obvious.." he paused, gaze sweeping across them like a big cat sizing up a pack of hyenas trying to gnaw at the wilderbeast it just , ".. that Father Wolf can't hurt me."

As if to emphasise the point, the black opening across his gut remained on display, only barely concealed by the jacket.

"I just need to deal with something on the way back," he added, doing his best to cover up the guttural resonance barely echoing through the gouge in his throat, "Would be easier if you know where that Prom Queen or any of her pets live."

Recollections: Under The Sycamore Tree Part. 1

@Punished GNGeorge@AtomicEmperorEdict@FernStoneLuca@BlizzStormy@AtrophySloane
No Man's Land, aka Kari Wilson's (Wrecked) Yard

---

Clancy felt his fingers tear through the man's abdomen, leaving a few inches of small intestine exposed to the elements. He could smell it. Blood, meat, death. A gut wound was a nasty way to go, and he could see the panic setting into the man's eyss as his gaze turned downwards.

Before Clancy could make an end of it, there was a distant pop. A round punched through his sleeve and burst, tearing open his arm from wrist to elbow. A second later, he felt another round puncture through his back, and then-

Pop.

A hole ruptured through both sides of his midsection, back and belly both torn outwards into gaping wounds with a black void where blood and viscera should've been. The axe slipped from his fingers as he pivoted, looking for the shooter, ignoring the bolts that bedded into his flank like feathers, experiencing a certain hyperawareness, as though the world had turned its gaze on him.

Clancy didn't see the big man charging him, but he felt the weight of a boot slamming into him like a freight train, and he arced across the sodden yard like a ragdoll, into the range of the green sun.

For a single moment, that burning green light seared at him mid-air, worse than the real fire that had torn through the upper floor of the cabin, an agony which only ended once he skidded in the ground, tumbling into a deep, waterlogged crater formed by the fighting. Immersed in water, raging, he lashed out as what felt like a dozen arms tugged at his limbs, threatening to drag him to the dark depths beneath the earth.

Cold viscera squished between his finger tips, brittle bones caved under his feet. A head, blindly pulled from the mouldering neck which anchored it, worthless meat that served no purpose but to be crushed. More came at him, a dozen silent foes clamouring for whatever they could blindly grasp. He rolled and wrestled with bodies that held no warmth, that broke upon him like waves on a castle, useless flesh that tasted like mud as he kicked, smashed, gnawed his way through an agitated swarm of animate corpses that had piled into the gap.

He raged in the darkness.

---

Clancy finally emerged from the flooded crater, surrounded by the formerly reanimated carcasses of the finally dead, torn apart in a moment of instinct and rage.

8th Street were gone, or leaving. The others seemed in shock and awe, idly flailing about as a pink fog rolled over them like a noxious veil. It dispersed over him as he passed through, barely lingering in his peripheral vision.

For a moment, he caught the outline of two interlocked figures. One masculine, the other feminine and a little shorter.

They looked familiar.

Judy,, the name came forth unbidden, followed by another.

Frank?

"No."

They were hugging. That in itself was a little hard to believe.

Clancy blinked, and the silhouettes remained. But it wasn't either sibling. Not his big brother, or his sister. It was Sloane and Luca, and he was still in no man's land, surrounded by a landscape littered with mudholes and broken bodies. And he could see Sloane was in Lucas's arms, even as the skinny latino boy flailed away, trying to break away from her.

She was dying. The smell of rot emanating from the two with a potenacy beyond the formerly animate dead around him was telling enough. She was being eaten away fron the inside.

He looked half a corpse himself, a tattered child in charred rags, pockmarked with deep gouges in the flesh that should've killed the strongest men, a mortal abdominal wound that punched through his body, a dark emptiness where blood and innards should've been, more of the pink fog uselessly swirling at his feet as the storm scattered it far and wide.

It was now or never. Chase down 8th Street before they got away, and let her die.

His eyes harboured a feral expression, pale skin flecked with mud and viscera that clearly didn't belong to him. Ashley wouldn't want this. One foot lifted from the mud and traipsed forward, followed by the other.

Idiots or not. Assholes or not.

He didn't want to watch her die.

Clancy trudged through the sodden yard, pacing towards them. Sloane was barely on her feet at this point, half-slumped into the boy's legs, clutching at his calves..Kneeling over her, palms clasping around her wrists with an uncharacteristic gentleness, he felt it now, the corrosive presence, the Rot eating away at whatever it could.

If she was still conscious, she might've felt the cold iron grip prying her away. For.him, the Rot found another target. Patches of his damaged form further receded like burning paper, a dark, angular shadow outlining wherever flesh melted away. That feral expression in his gaze scowled back st the thing that hid within Luca.

It wouldn't find sustenance, not with him. There was no meal for this Rot, he'd denied it that. The feral child pulled the girl free, arms looped under her shoulders, fully cogniscient that she was still in a bad way, her flesh and innards equally eroded by the poison that infected the boy.

And the others were still stationary, drowning in fantasies of their own.

"What are you looking at?!" Clancy growled, an inhuman, guttural resonance overlapping his voice, "Help her!"

Recollections: Under The Sycamore Tree Part. 1

@Punished GN Aaron & Flora @Atrophy Sully @NoriWasHere Jasper
No Man's Land, aka Kari Wilson's (Wrecked) Yard

---

“Kid..”

"..SHOOT HIM!"

A cacophany of voices were upon him from all sides.

“...kid!”

"That thing's not a kid! TRUST ME!"

Clancy felt the ground giving way beneath him before he felt the impacts, one foot sinking further into the mud than he'd expected. Someone with a beard closed in his periphery, skidding in the mud too late - Sully.

Was the man trying to save him? His thoughts shifted back to the yard.

It was for all intents and purposes a No Man's Land. The descriptions of pockmarked, waterlogged muddy fields portrayed to him by history books and old neighbours who spoke of the war.

This wasn't a yard anymore; it was a war zone. And he was another casualty, it seemed. Half a magazine dumped into him, most punching through his mid-section if they didn't miss. One bolt caught him in the mid-section, bedded where his heart should've been. A second through his throat - like a medieval tracheotomy. The third lodged itself just below his cheekbone, and sank deep, the fletching just edging out in his peripheral vision.

something to fear

"Idiots," Clancy growled, his one free hand touching at his face as he crunched down on something with his teeth - and another round punching through the back of his wrist like a crucifixial as Aaron continued to dump the remaining contents of their magazine, "It. Doesn't. Work!"

The word was emphasised by an inhuman, guttural echo that overlapped his own voice.

Sully had been too late to stop either shooting, and truthfully, he was glad for it, because Ashley had referred to him as an old friend. Clancy stepped over the man, and his fingers tightened around the shaft of the bolt lodged in his face, twisted and broke most of it away with the fletching. A moment later, he spat out the remaining length of the bolt, the mangled tip sinking into into a growing puddle beneath him.

Overhead, the invoked cloud formations had caused the sky to darken enough that it was loathe to relinquish any form of light, natural or otherwise. The punctures to his smouldering hoodie were all too clear, but no blood stained his clothes, nor did he double over like he had that night at the club.

There was no need to put on the show anymore, because they knew. They'd see, soon enough.

"She's using you," Clancy warned, a guttural intonation in his voice. His attention had briefly shifted on the girl with the bat and hockey mask, the only one of the three who hadn't attacked him, "Leave-" he was interrupted by a crack sounding off behind them, followed by a second as he forced himself forward. It took a moment, to see the girl in the mask crumple, that he realised that it waasn't intended for him.

Truthfully, he didn't know the girl or her capabilites, but of the three, she was the only one who hadn't attacked him. Yet. And she was out of focus for now.

But the other two...

Fingernails parted, then the tips themselves peeled back, like a reptile shedding a portion of its dead skin. Sharper digits pushed through the gaps,thin stalactites formed of oily, black shadows in a third-dimensional representation, inches-long. Clancy's eyes were two flinty chips of ice, locked on Aaron as his claws snapped away the remaining two bolts lodged in his windpipe and torso like dead twigs.

The bolts hadn't hurt him, harmless splinters to be pulled out. Bullets were an annoyance, but far from the worst he'd taken. But the man who pulled the trigger had known he was a threat without having met him before.

Bypassing Sully, who was a few feet behind him at this point, Clancy lunged towards Aaron, slashing outwardly with those long black digits.

"Now you're just meat." The depth of his consciousness spoke outwardly, with a voice that wasn't entirely his own.

Recollections: Under The Sycamore Tree Part. 1

@Punished GN@Atrophy@FernStone@NoriWasHere@everyone
Kari Wilson's Yard

---

The gaunt latino was out of sight and mind for now, the rotting influence disconnected; Clancy barely noticed that the sleeve of his hoodie had withered for the moment he'd grabbed Luca.

The stench of smoke, rain, charred wood and rotting meat continued to wash over him like waves against rocks. The smoke was almost worse than the heat at this point, although neither bothered him. Like with the tear gas, the only effect it had on him was ruining his clothes and blinding them to - the torrential downpour had only amplified it by half-smothering the fire.

Overhead, he caught a glimpse of a familiar purple light, spearing through the flesh-beast's 'leg' and out the other side into the ground like an oversized magic bullet. The creature, for its part, seemed unbothered by the chunk of meat that had been removed apart from some loss of mass and balance, and remained steadfast.

Somehow, that didn't surprise him either. It wasn't as though the cane Shayton pushed through his eye socket and out the back of is skull had made any lasting damage, apart from drawing unnecessary attention at the festival.

Then, accentuating htis was the feminine silhouete overhead with an almost iridescent glow. The voice calling out confirmed his suspicions about the other girl, the one that had struck him as odd.

Everyone had their secrets, he recalled.

Pacing towards Lila, at a distance beyond his reach, was one of the 8th Street assholes - Vashti, enshrouded by a distorted weather-effect that he could only describe as harder rain than the torrent raging over them, barely obscuring her form.

A few paces behind her was Linqian's red-hot silhouette, sprawled nude in a literal mud-bath as steam rose from wherever the water made contact with her skin. Was she dead? Not yet, there was still warmth - too much of it for him, Much as he didn't want to see her hurt any further, she was beyond his ability help at this stage, and his focus was on the greater threat.

Assholes. The word sprung to mind, a phrase he'd inherited from his brother reading

Clancy had dropped down from the burning patio at this point, maneuvering apart from the others. Each footstep more waterlogged than the last; the wind and rain tugging at his senses like a swarm of insects buzzing in on ear.

His shoes were going to be ruined at this- no, his clothes were already ruined at this stage, he knew. The Donald Duck knock-off mascot now a distorted, faceless abomination from where the heat had destroyed the transfer on the hoodie, and his denim pants were more like uneven summer shorts at this stage, not unlike the fashion of the '80s.

Even the dufflebag had seen better days with the plastic clips twisted and shrunken by the heat, and halfway across the yard he was forced to withdraw its contents before it fell apart on him and dumped it into the mud.

In his hand was the Baldur Axe that had been the possession of the tattooed Victor Villarian of the Wolfpack, an unrepentant asshole through-and-through, who wielded it like an ogre with a club.

In the hands of most, it made them stronger, dangerous, but its last owner had learned the hard way that idealogical purity and performance enhancers meant nothing in the face of someone with common sense.

In his hands? A useful tool. He didn't need strength.

In front of him and partially obscured from the others by the flesh beast, he saw the greater collective of 8th Street clustering around and behind it. Their self-styled boss clung to the 'shoulder' of the now-hobbled flesh-beast as it pawed at a jacket like a cat with a toy.

Truth be told, he was tired of the facade. A part of him below the surface waiting to push beyond the self-imposed barriers he'd set for himself, kept in check only by estalished rules of self-control and sheer will.

These people? 8th Street? They fell outside those rules. They were the worst example of it, he knew. Ashley had told him. The vision had showed it too.

They were fair game.

His smouldering, hooded silhouette approached clutching the axe in one hand by the mid-section of its handle, maneuvering past the beast's flank.

"Not too old to be acting like high school assholes?" His voice was close enough it didn't matter that he'd been downwind of them, and only just managed to carry across in the cacophony of the brawl. "Are you so weak you need this fucking prom-queen to matter?"

There were three close enough for him to reach. Of them; the strawberry blonde wielding an ornate crossbow, the short-haired girl who was older than she looked, wielding a bat and hockey mask, and the lean, dark-haired man, it was the latter of the three was close enough for him to strike at.

To his credit, he was completely unaware this was Aaron Sawyer he was dealing with. And no doubt, Aaron could look back into the abyss at who and what he was.

Recollections: Under The Sycamore Tree Part. 1

@Punished GN@Atrophy@FernStone@Blizz@AtomicEmperor@NoriWasHere@everyone
Kari Wilson's House

---

Pretending that to understand everything that Kenshiro mentioned had also made sense to the rest of the group, let alone himself, was likely a waste of time. Or so Clancy guessed.

That Britney had earned her share of scorn made full sense to him now.

Of course.

If it had been her that played a part in turning him into what he was, he'd no doubts that he would've broken her in half. If she had made him...

”Is that a thr-”Britney cut herself off...

Britney

Britney had been ready to kick back, but the other girl had beat her to it.

”... Wait, what the fuck do you mean you were there?!” Adora seethed, one hand on her chest, the other on the wall. As she took deep breaths, it was probably evident that she was trying to hide that she was coming down from a full-on anxiety attack, but, again, she was just too arrogant to let anyone here think she was showing weakness. As she looked at the kid, something clicked in her head, and she got mad... It was enough to distract her from her trauma for just a moment. ”... I think I saw you at the grocery store the other day, too! Have you been following me?” She took a few deep breaths and couldn't hold it in any longer. Before, she continued. ”Kid... that is not fucking cute at all!” Adora said, ”That is sick. You're fucking sick. Stay the fuck away from me.”

Adora

The truth was, he had been watching her. And it wasn't entirely for selfless reasons - she was bait. Not that he needed to phrase it like that, but it was the honest rationale behind why he'd spent days following her boring routine, on the off chance that Father Wolf went after lone stragglers of Ashley's old circle.

"You're welcome. Are you done now?" was all Clancy had to say, sardonically tilting his head to one side.

He wanted to say more, like how if anyone was going to have been a target, it would've heen her. Or that she wouldn't have been screaming at him if he'd stopped her from catching a knife in the back. And that he'd clearly wasted time on some wheezy, weepy little girl while Ashley's killer still walked around this stupid town.

Gratitude wouldn't have killed her, if she'd known the truth of it. Father Wolf would've, though.

But it would've been a waste of time trying to explain, and that train of bitter thought was interrupted when yet another assault on what senses were left to him came in the form.of another waking vision - instantaneous as the last, but revealing.

It proved the point that 8th Street had been here. That they were sniffing around. That they knew something at the least, if they weren't already involved. That they were assholes who had stepped onto his internal measuring scale of people that needed to be dealt with.

And then, as if to accentuate that point;

”... Lynn is almost certain we are about to be attacked by the 8th Street Coven. Be prepared, in case she is right.”

Jack

The speaker had appeared and disappeared before Clancy had any chance to ask him question, but the dull thud running beneath their feet told him the about to be was actually right now. Exiting the basement at a pace, Clancy felt for the dufflebag clung to his back. Maybe later. Through a window, he caught a glimpse of what was waiting for them. A group of faces, vaguely familiar from their shared vision but not to him. Towering over them was a mass of... he could have described it as a cross between a venus flytrap, a skinned bear, and carrion thar had been smeared across the road by a convoy of truckers.

It was meat, animate and leaking fluids. Strangely familiar, in a twisted sense.

Finally, he could make out what they were saying; the voice wasn't dampened, strangely enough.

"... It's been a while, hasn't it, sluts!?" Emily shouted, her voice loud enough to be heard all over the property. "Missed the reunion... Well, I wasn't invited! Well, I wouldn't have come either way - that unfair treatment I received at the Halloween Festival told me I made the right choice, anyway!"

She looked around, grinning like a fool. As she threw the hood up, the rain fell on her hair. "So, I'm going to be quick and to the point; we're not here to fight you sluts. I'm here for one person, and one person only, Lila Blackwood..."

"... AND FUCKING BRITNEY! I'M GOING TO RIP HER FUCKING INTESTINES OUT, FEED 'IM TO CYNTHIA, FIX HER, JUST TO DO IT AGAIN AND AGAIN!"

Carol screamed, stepping from behind the undead monster's leg. Emily just rolled her eyes.

"... And Britney," Emily began, putting a hand on her hip. "So, just hand those two over, and we'll leave you sluts to rob a dead retard's house - do you sluts have any shame or dignity at all?"

girlswhopeakedinhighschool

The girl who'd screamed for Britney's guts - literally - seemed young. Not much older than he had been, if that. She stood out like a sore thumb, almost as much as he did. Why was she with them? Clancy thought back to what Kenshiro had said, something he'd only peripherally noted as the wheezy girl had lost her cool with him.

"She's a Pactmaker! And the whole reason Emily G. Reed is a bitter, wretched fucking cunt today? Is because of you, Britney Williams."

Right, the girl was probably another nightmare of her own creation.

Momentarily, he considered whether it was worth giving Britney to them. He couldn't say he felt any approval at what she'd done, and given his own situation had been inflicted upon him, some wilderness nightmare a long way from home, he felt he probably shared more background with these assholes than he would

But they were assholes, and they were in the way. Either they had a hand in the murders, or they were going to be a blocker to finding whoever did. And he was hungry.

Besides, he considered, what would Ashley have done?

The other girl, Lila? Something odd struck him about her, but he couldn't figure it out. He couldn't say she deserved to die, and he knew enough of Emily and 8th Street to know that they were unlikely to be moved by invoking the milk of human kindness.

Emily had mercilessly badgered Ashley. Asbley wouldn't have wanted him to let her friends die like this.

Britney got off, for now - but he wouldn't be shedding tears for her if anything happened.

Not that he could

The others were mobilising, rushing outside without regard. Given how well that had worked last time, Clancy reconsidered.

Looking to the stairs, Clancy paced up to find a better vantage, tugging his hood upwards over his head. Behind him, Luca's voice was in one ear, telling Britney to run and-

burning ambience

A wave of heat erupted over him, and the rest of the upper stairwell. A blinding light that struck him like a kick to the gut. Clancy staggered backwards, tumbled, and hit the ground floor on his hands and knees, needing a moment's pause to regain his composure as his now-burning clothes blackened under hellfire rained from above.

Luca was stood there in the doorway still, flames licking outwards from above and below. The memory of charred flesh in a condemned apartment block sprung to mind. Of panicked homeless and addicts pounding on the interior of boarded-up doors and windows, begging to be let out before the smoke inhalation got them.

It wasn't a kind way to die.

Ashley wouldn't want this.

Forcing himself to his feet, Clancy paced towards Luca, seized him by the lower half of his shirt, and then hesitated as though something corrosive had slapped him in the face, the boy's expression crinkling as icy-cold fingers twisted at the fabric and skin beneath.

"Run," he echoed, before shoving Luca out the quieter side of the porch, away from the burning timbers of the balcony above as the weight of the building threatened to give way under the additional pressure.

Leaving him stood there at the porch, in full view of whatever remained of 8th Street, charred clothes still smouldering.