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As he expected, the basement was dark. The first thing Soren took notice of were the dozens of cells that lined the first area along with the stench of death. Even though his eyes adjusted quickly enough, he decided to move things along by lighting up his path. Soren raised his hand allowing mist to form around his palm before the black mist began to let off a soft golden light having changed color. It was just one of the many tricks he had learned during his training.

He used the light to closely examine the area and stopped for a moment near one of the cells. A different scent came to him. It was the remnants of what he believed to have been an angel but he could not recognize who it belonged to. It wasn't Lu, Alistair, or even Regulus. He shook his head, knowing he was just wasting his time thinking about it. He could only imagine what kind of people or things were kept here but that wasn't what he was looking for. Someone else was down there and the further he walked the more he could hear the sounds of a fight.


Anna kicked aimlessly at the floor and took in a deep breath. Caius being with his father did not sound good. She knew the man was cruel and dangerous. She did her best to take her mind off what might already be happening as she could do nothing about it. Her thoughts wandered off to something her brother had likely never thought about. "When they come back, where will we go? I have a feeling that Soren wants us to get away from everyone and everything. But I don't think he even knows where that is...You've used the mirror room the most. Where do you think we should go?"


Echoes of a struggle went through the large cell room. Soren held his hand out towards the fight he heard to see Caius fighting off a hoard of demons that, from what he could see, Regulus had called forth. Soren ran through the path and rather than aid Caius against the demons, charged straight for Regulus, quickly cutting down the few demons that separated them. Mist condensed in Soren's other hand as he launched a powerful blast that ripped through a demon that got in the way and hurtled towards Caius's father. "That's enough!" Two blades of mist were called to Soren's hands. "Hurry up with the fodder, Caius! I'll finish things here." It was his responsibility to look after the others as he was the oldest. Even if just by minutes or seconds, even if it may not have been entirely true, he felt responsible for them.

Playstation Now, now in video form.

Soren turned around, only having gone down one step when Mali spoke to him. He tilted his head, staring at her and pointed in the direction of their room. Mali was never in a good mood, she always seemed to be condescending now, but Soren didn't have time to argue with her. "Go back and wait with Cal and Anna. I'll get Caius and then I'll get us all out of here."

He looked down towards the basement. "Caius isn't around. If he's down there I'll bring him back. Besides, it's not like you're actually worried about me. Soren glanced back at Mali. Her attitude did not phase him. She acted tough but he doubted the girl could do anything more than that. Still, even if he did not like her he was determined to stick to his word. They were all going to leave and that was final. "I'm more than strong enough to get us all out of here. Now unless you want to be left alone, go with the others. Soren began to descend the staircase without any other word to the girl.

"Where do you think Caius is?" Anna paused and stared at Cal. "Soren's probably out checking the basement." She stood up, knowing that even if Caius wasn't there, Soren would still go down there. He had always wanted to go to the basement. She was worried what he would find there would only hurt him.

"We could go after him..." Anna then shook her head, knowing that wasn't the best idea she ever had. If Soren showed up with Mali and Caius, it wouldn't do them any good if she and Cal weren't there. No, it was better to stay put. She was certain Cal felt the same anyways. "Never mind...but I don't like waiting."

"Stay with Cal, Anna." His eyes shifted towards Caius's once again empty bed. The boy couldn't have been in the training room, nor the mirror room, so there weren't many other places he needed to check. After telling both Cal and his sister he would be back once he found Caius and Mali, Soren left the room. He snapped his fingers, watching as mist wrapped around his fingers.

"No, I'm better than this." It was just his nerves that made him sloppier this morning. That's all. He knew he had better control than that. Once more Soren stopped in front of the training room. He nudged the doors open finding nothing inside as expected. He was almost going to miss that place. Almost. Soren took a deep breath and clenched his fists watching as the mist disappeared from his hands. He allowed himself to smile briefly. Finally, after all this time, he knew he had the strength to do more than just train and kill time until he was ready.

Soren checked the operating room. Nothing. He checked Lu's room. More nothing. The mirror room in case Caius or Mali had wandered in within the last minute. Nothing. Then Araquiel's room. Though he felt a strange attachment to it, there was still nothing to be found. Soren was beginning to lose his patience. He said they were going to stick together and he meant it. They weren't leaving without Caius and Mali.

"Caius! Mali!" Soren called out. He heard scratching coming from the stairway leading to the basement. His shouting had only called the attention of a demon. Soren sighed out, giving the beast a bored stare. If either of the two were in the upper floor, he had little to worry about. But if they were in the basement...

"I think Soren's having trouble finding them." Anna looked towards the doorway when she heard her brother shout which was only followed by a choked growl of a demon, likely killed by her brother. "Why would Mali leave? And Caius?"

​

'Well isn't this magical. I let you do all the work for a little while and we get kidnapped. This is humiliating.'

'There's a first for everything.'

'This wouldn't have happened if I started your training when you were still in your prime. But nope, I had to just let you go and get soft. A good seven years wasted if you ask me. Just had to let you get married and act all human. Ugh. All that potential wasted.'

'Would you stop complaining for a moment? Lu's scent is all over this.'

'You're lucky all you can do is smell her. I can taste when evil's that close. And it's gross. Like, leftover McDonald's that's been microwaved gross.'

Henrik sat up, having enough of Lei's smart remarks, rubbing his head. He opened his eyes only to find himself staring into the darkness. He tried to stand but found himself bound by the mist. Rather than struggle, he decided to save his strength until he knew he needed it. After shifting around in the dark, Henrik felt the same familiar weights in his coat pockets. His sword, the dagger, and his revolver. 'She must want to make a game out of this if she's gone through all this trouble of abducting us.'

Yet even more demons than the previous day littered the floor of the training room. Cleaning things up enough for himself to have enough room to put some more practice in took more time than he wanted. Soren gave it a running start, sprinting from one end of the room to the other. Just before he crashed into the wall Soren vanished in a swirl of mist that engulfed his body.

He landed hard on the other side, having to roll once he touched the ground to keep from hurting himself. Soren looked down at the crack in the ground where he had just reappeared. After regaining his composure and making an attempt to fix his ruffled hair with some help from his reflection, Soren stepped outside of the mirror room.

"We're not going to be running, are we?" Anna was already waiting outside.

Surprised that his sister was up, Soren scratched his cheek and stared at her. "No. Standing still is what I have in mind. But if we have to run I'll have trouble with...landing." He paused, he had never told his sister about having learned that ability. She had never seen him use it. No one had. The last thing he wanted was to get everyone's hopes up over a one-time fluke. Over the past week he had been doing his best to get better at it and while his first successful attempt had not done anything more than leave him drained, Soren was far from being confident about bringing anyone along with him, let alone traveling distances larger than one room to another. "How did you know?"

"You've been getting more serious about leaving. You wouldn't do that if you had no way out."

"Oh...well I haven't made any progress on it this morning. I'm as good as I'll ever get without actually trying to leave." Soren sighed and leaned against the wall, sliding down slowly to sit.

"Then there won't be a better time than now to try, will there?" Anna crouched in front of her brother, placing her hand on his shoulder.

"Are you serious? It could get you killed." Soren moved his head back to hit it against the wall in frustration. "I can't get better without going farther. I can't know if I'm able to bring anyone along with me unless I actually try. But we only get one shot at this..."

"I'm ready to leave. We can't take a ladder out of here anyways." Anna smiled. "If you're so worried, why don't you ask the others?"

Soren breathed out and nodded slowly. His sister was always right and he wished she wasn't. Greater than his desire to leave this place was a fear that he would hurt the others. After rising back to his feet Soren looked at his sister for a nod of approval before heading back to their room. "Cal." He nudged the sleeping blonde. "I have a way out but it might be dangerous. I...I need you to say you'll agree to it." As he spoke to her, Anna went over to Caius's bed to get the boy to wake up.

​

Henrik turned over towards Iris once more to make sure she was still close to him. Their eyes met once more he turned forward to cut down an approaching demon. Alone they could be slain without much thought but they weren't alone. Henrik gripped the neck of one of the possessed and threw it towards the mob with a telekinetically backed push. Henrik tossed his blade in the air and caught it as a spear before impaling the knocked down group of their enemies.

"Henrik!" Iris screamed behind him. He spun around just in time to decapitate another demon with an axe. In another instant it morphed back into a sword. Just before he could ask his wife if she was hurt yet one more demon lunged forth at the couple. A barrier of mist came between them, knocking the demon back down for Henrik to finish it off.

"God dammit Danel. After we're done with Lu you're next." Henrik looked around now that the demons' numbers had been diminishing to find the others. Lauren and Alice brought two people with them. One of which looked dead and the other didn't seem to be in a much better condition.

​

Of course trouble came along with Danel's appearance. Once more they were reunited with the familiar possessed and this time around they brought friends. Danel was the least of their concerns now. Henrik drew Nakah and turned towards Iris, watching as she stepped closer to him. "Stay near me. I'm not letting anything hurt you." She was all he had left now, if she died...

Henrik's eyes narrowed on the closest demon and stabbed his blade into the floor causing a rock spike to erupt from the ground and impale it. His other hand summoned the mist, Lei made no complaint to his using it. There was no voice to offer any advice anymore. He swung his sword in a wide arc, cutting off the head of one of the possessed and severing an arm of another. He thrust free hand outwards sending a wave of mist to slaughter several of the beasts before him. Henrik knew it would be a matter of time before they were overwhelmed. They were already outnumbered and even if they could kill everything that came their way it would not be worth their lives. "Come on!" He took Iris's hand and pulled her forward to run out of the mess before they were overwhelmed with Henrik cutting a path through out of the hotel.

"To be honest, I couldn't have controlled it on my own." Caius said he was different, but Soren thought otherwise. That bloodlust he was speaking of, Soren was born with it. Maybe it had a different source but he could relate to holding back something dark. "I'm stronger when I'm in control of it. I have my sister to take care of." He lowered his voice to a barely audible whisper adding in, "And Cal..."

Soren sighed out and stood upright, looking down at the younger boy. "I get scared too but I won't let that or my anger get in the way. I can't afford to be weak. Not when when we're so close to leaving." Mist swirled around Soren's hands for a brief moment before vanishing as quickly as it came. "You just need something to focus on. Something stronger than hate." He had his focus, two very important people to him, for overcoming his rage. Soren smirked and held out his hand down towards Caius.

"Come on. We need to stick together."

"Good." Anna nodded at Cal once she had been assured Cal had no intention of hurting her brother. She was right to trust Cal and was glad to have a friend like her. Anna's eyes followed Cal as she disappeared behind the folding wall to change. It was then she brought up her brother. Anna raised her eyebrow and Cal continued by saying they would all leave.
Mali seemed to take it as a joke. "If my brother says we're going to leave, then we're leaving." But Mali was right. Who would be waiting on the other side? Soren didn't like Alistair and she couldn't say she disagreed with her brother's opinions on the adults. This was a bad place filled with terrible things.

"We don't need anybody else." Anna stood up and walked over to Mali. "We have each other and we're going to stick together. Cal wants to leave. So does Soren and I'm sure Caius does too. I don't want to be here anymore. If you want to stay behind you're going to be alone." She glared at Mali. Cal's half-sister wasn't nice ever since she came back from that place, but it didn't mean she going to let her put down her brother's--their plan.

Iris followed behind Henrik as they headed out of their room to gather with the others. According to Leon, several of their number still didn't have their weapons. How many trips would they have to make to get them? Last time he checked, London was still overrun by all sorts of baddies. It wasn't a problem, but if he went back there it only meant leaving Iris behind again. "So we're splitting up again to gather the last of those weapons, right?"

Henrik crossed his arms, turning his head to try and get a peek at the compass to no avail. Why was Joslyn hiding it? Was she afraid someone would openly try to break it or did she want to make sure nobody knew exactly where it was pointing? Then again, they had not been led astray so far.


"And I wanted privacy when I spent days training here. Gone before anyone woke up and back when everyone was asleep. It helped me get my act together. Something tells me that you need something else." Soren continued to walk closer to Caius, stepping over the corpses as he looked over the changes the boy had been going through. It seemed like his powers were manifesting. It seemed a little late to Soren but then again, Anna had taken even longer. Once more, Soren forced himself to look beyond the violence and try to piece together what Caius might have been going through. Daddy issues? Maybe, but that didn't fit with what he was seeing.

Soren crouched in front of Caius and glanced back over at the fallen demons. He had no idea how to approach this so instead of asking Caius what was wrong, he went for a different approach. "I think I've spent my entire short life doing this kind of damage. I hate demons but at least they're where they belong. Even if Alistair, Lu, your father, and all the other angels around here hadn't done anything bad, I'd hate them too. This whole time I've been driven to kill them all." He sighed as a small blade of mist materialized in his hand. Soren tossed it at the nearest corpse. "As for us? I know we shouldn't exist and the darkest part inside of me wants to..." He trailed off. "I don't know how to make it go away but I manage it. If I didn't keep it under control I'd end up hurting the few people here I care about. We need to stick together. Especially if we're going to get out of here anytime soon." He didn't want to bring up any plans on leaving to Caius, but Soren knew that with everything that had happened to the boy with his father...

Anna smiled at Cal, sitting by the blonde as she put on the locket. She swung her legs out and placed her hands on her lap. "I'm happy you like it. I think Soren went to bring Caius back. You can thank him too." At the entrance of Mali she waved despite the girl's attitude problem.

Anna looked at the door where her brother had left from and back at Cal who was still covered in a blush from what Soren had said earlier. She took it to mean that Cal and her brother actually kis--Gross. She didn't want to imagine her brother kissing. Anna shook her head to get the image out. Still, she was curious about what was going on between the two. "Do you like my brother? I mean it's kind of obvious what he thinks. Soren's bad at subtlety." She lowered her voice so they wouldn't be bothered by Mali. "Like-like?" Anna scooted closer. "I won't tell but I want to know you aren't messing with him." She narrowed her eyes. Even if she trusted Cal and even if Soren was the one trying to keep them together, he was still her brother and she didn't want to see him hurt.

Soren smiled back at the girl, Anna already beginning to snicker as Cal blushed at him. "Hey..." He turned towards his sister and coughed, motioning towards Cal. "Anna has something to give you."​

"Actually, it's from Caius and I. It was his idea. I helped...a little." Anna stepped closer towards Cal and placed the small package with a white bow at the blonde's lap. "He wanted to thank you for looking out for him." She glanced over at Soren and poked at his side. "And I thought I should thank you for keeping Soren from becoming more of a jerk."

"Really? I'm not that bad."

"Not anymore. Especially since you two have been having fuuunnnn~" She teased in a sort of sing-song manner. Soren could only frown at his sister and shake his head. "Anyway, open it up Cal."

Soren rolled his eyes and patted Cal's shoulder, whispering that he would be back once he got something done. Caius's bed was already empty. Was it like that when he woke up? Maybe Anna had gone to sleep just before the boy had left. "Maybe I might not miss next time. Or not." Anna blinked at Soren only wondering what her brother meant but he knew Cal would understand what he said.

Seeing as how it was a two-person present, Soren felt as if he had little choice going out to look for Caius. If he didn't Anna and Cal would and he would much rather be the one roaming about than either of them. Even if Cal could take care of herself. He looked around in the hallway, wondering which way the boy could have gone. He doubted Caius would go back to his father given all that happened. He had never seen or heard of Caius going to the mirror room either...though he didn't exactly pay attention to all the details. Maybe that was his favorite spot.

The more his thoughts wandered away from Cal the more he was reminded of that burning hatred for everything, including himself. He swallowed it down, knowing nothing good would come if he could not keep it under control. Soren was born angry but he knew he was stronger when he wasn't letting anger guide him. He couldn't afford to be weak anymore.

Like a bad force of habit, Soren found himself staring at the entrance to the training room. He cursed under his breath. He was supposed to be looking for Caius, not looking for an excuse to train. There wasn't anything to be gained by fighting weak demons anymore. It wasn't enough. Still... "Might as well." He nudged the door open slowly expecting the room to be empty.

"Caius?" And that was the first thing he saw. Aside from several dead demons. He stepped towards the boy and stopped before getting any closer. This was his first time speaking directly to him. "It looks like I missed out on the fun." Soren hardly sounded excited with his joke. Caius was on the floor, bloodied and in tears, and all he could do was make a stupid joke. Once more, Soren cursed under his breath. "Are you alright?"

"Wakey wakey."

Soren sat up slowly and blinked several times as he stared at the figure sitting on his bed. He covered his mouth as he yawned and scratched his cheek, his drowsy mind finally piecing together that it was his sister who had disturbed him. "Mm?" He began to rub his eyes.

"What happened between you two yesterday?" She whispered.

He froze, lowering his hands to stare blankly at his sister. He knew she could not have seen and it wasn't as if Cal told Anna about it. He opened his mouth only to close it and think over what he would say. Would Cal be upset if he told his sister what they were doing last night? Or would she be offended if he tried covering it up? "Um..."

Anna grinned at her brother. He did not have to say anything for her to put the pieces together. "Cal and Soren sitting in a tr-"

Immediately he pressed his hand to Anna's mouth to keep her quiet. "Did you wake me up just to tease me?" He looked over at Cal glad that Anna had not woken her. "Don't bother her about it, okay?" Anna nodded and Soren lowered his hand. "What is it?"

Anna held up a small box that was wrapped neatly with a white bow though as Soren opened his mouth to ask her about it she answered the question forming in his head. "It's not for you. I want you to wake up Cal so I can give this to her. I think she'd be in a better mood if you woke her instead of someone else." Anna tried to wink but it only ended up looking like she had some kind of twitch. "Caius was making her something and I helped."

"What's it for?"

"To thank her. For taking care of Caius and you." Soren blinked in confusion. "No, I won't say it's from you too. Otherwise I'd have to lie and start saying everyone pitched in. Mali, Lu, Alistair, Regulus...the demons..." Soren continued to eye the box. Where did Anna get the materials for that? Let alone the stuff for Caius to make a locket. Without even asking, Anna knew what was on his mind. "I don't know about Caius but I can be resourceful when I want to. The bow's actually a bunch of thread I took from the surgery room. Threading it together to look nice took me forever. I wrapped it up when everyone else was asleep." Soren was about to speak up on his concerns of how Anna even went about that and that she should not have been going out at night when it was dangerous but the fact remained that she was unscathed from her little trip. He sighed and agreed to wake Cal much to his sister's delight.

Soren pushed himself off the bed and walked over towards Cal's with his sister trailing behind. He hesitated to wake the girl. Everything had gone so well last night that he was afraid Cal would suddenly start pushing him away. She was happy after they kissed but what was he supposed to do from then on? Did that make them more than friends? With his sister pushing him to wake her, he didn't have much time to think it over. "Hey, Cal." He gently nudged her shoulder. "Good morning, sleepy."

My first vote in what feels like years. Yay.