His time outside of District 19 was so starkly different that it felt like he had moved to another planet entirely. Alexander Vondeville expected the same towering treetops and vicious forest floor denizens but taking the trip from the metal tube to District 24 was likely the cut off from his old life to this new one.

And from the soreness he felt still laying on the side of the wall, he was in pain and surprisingly homesick.

Sure there was plenty to see in this district and learning the local customs came with close encounters of their own, but it didn’t feel organic. He chuckled at the thought, the organic feel from home was the result of his environment being nothing but thick stretches of vegetation surrounding the Emergence Tree. Compared to the untamed mystery that sat just beyond every thicket and every grove patch, the cold and meandering alleyways and obtuse paths of District 24 were as disorienting as they were unintelligible.

Where one alleyway would end, a road would begin, an inorganic sprawl with no rhyme or reason beyond the function of a concrete jungle. And the smell…

“Squawk!” Wilhelm cried, pressing his feathery forehead onto Alexander’s hand. He looked at his companion and relented, taking off his glove to scratch underneath the chin.

“This was supposed to be our big break but we sure blew it.” Alexander replied to his bird. Looking at the rest of the hired mercs in the gambling hall, it seemed everyone missed out on a worthwhile payment from their employer. The man was nowhere to be found amongst the rabble, licking his wounds in his office upstairs from the sounds of it. However muffled it was in there, Alexander could strain his modified ears to pick up bits and pieces of the distress that man was under.

“Sq-squawk.” Wilhelm leapt away from Alexander’s idle finger to perch onto his shoulder, nuzzling to the side of his cheek with a warmth uncharacteristic to the beasts in the Canopy. It was something of a curiosity of his to find out how the other Bloodhounds came upon their beasts, but judging by how some came back with newly acquired scars or never came back at all, they must have opted for a more violent alternative.

“Thanks buddy. Just a matter of getting it right the next time.” Alexander reassured his companion, reaching into his pouch of home grown midnight mulberries and handing a couple to Wilhelm. Wilhelm coiled his tail around a few, trying not to squeeze them with pressure while pecking at the remaining one in Alexander’s hand with trained precision. The first time he’d tried to get Wilhelm to feed from his hand, the bird had pierced into his palm and tore a bit of flesh from him. It was quite a laugh for his sisters but everyone grows out of their mistakes given the time to learn.

“There were thirty to forty remaining. Our course of action must be precise.” A muffled voice carried through the air, just barely a whisper for Alexander to grasp at, coming from the alleyway that led to the gambling entrance. Wilhelm’s feathers were in display now, sensing danger on an instinctual level. He could feel it too. It was washing over the area in a thick miasma, overpowering the smoke and perfume of the parlor inside.

Alexander scrambled to his feet, ignoring the pain in his sides, to grab at a few loose tables. Camouflage within his environment to survive impending danger. He started lining them at the wall, creating a barricade from which he could hide behind, with a crack large enough to peer into the main hall.

“Hey, what are you doing?” The singer of the establishment approached him, either confused by his actions or scared of what his actions implied.

“You’ve done nothing wrong, miss. Either hide behind me here or hide elsewhere in the building. Nothing good is going to happen in the next few minutes.” Alexander gave her a warning. Even here he’s emulating the chivalrous spirit of that nobles office. A shudder ran through him and bile crawled up his throat with the recollection. She considered her options and gave him a smile.

“I’ll take my chances with you then. Handling a jab from Itzhak is enough of a good mark on your record.” She held onto his arm and Alexander blushed, leading the way to his tiny barricade. He allowed himself to forget.

Suddenly, the door to the owners office bursted open, heavy footsteps causing the stairs to groan and ache with the weight.

“Don’t open the door!” Mr. Briggs yelled out to the security at the front. The security turned around, hand on the open eye slit. Pandemonium broke out with a dramatic entrance, a spray of blood and guts from the security woman violently impaled with a slender white blade. For a moment, it looked to Alexander like white marble.

The door flew open, revealing the assailant; a man in an oversized coat wielding a bloodied cudgel, standing over seven feet tall. He could see that something shifted underneath the coat, the gaps available showing living stone of black and white moving across his body. His eyes were piercing, cold, and unnerving.

“I have come to judge the actions of Mr. Briggs. Present yourself to me and be judged for your transgressions.” The voice hissed their statement in an alien way, the room falling silent in observance of Mr. Briggs’ response.

Laughter erupted from across the room.

“You think you can come into my house and judge me? I don’t know what kind of man you are but you’re about to be a dead man.” Mr. Briggs turned to face all of the remaining Fixers, mercenaries, and gladiatorial combatants, “I will secure a life for anyone here in the Nest for any son of a bitch that takes this mother fucker down!” The reward hung in the air with no one clinging to the cause. These people were wounded and disheartened with the last pair of escapees and although few casualties were suffered, their pride had taken a severe blow, Alexander’s included.

Mr. Briggs stared at everyone else and sighed, “Fine. Guess I have to do this the hard way.” His hand light up with a green fire and he snapped his fingers. “I invoke our Terms and Conditions.” Alexander watched in horror as numerous Fixers and other hired individuals became consumed in green flames, their charred corpses moving around until the heat became a perpetual smolder on their skin, a legion now facing the mysterious man. “Kill him.” Mr. Briggs gave the order and the husks ran at the mysterious man with staggered leaps, weapons tightly bound to their burnt fists to be swung at the gambling house owners behest.

“You will be judged.” Like truth, it was icy and absolute. Rapid shifts underneath the coat exploded with pillar of black and white stone jutting outward, spikes boring into the bodies of Mr. Briggs’ servants in brutal fashion. For Alexander it was like watching the match just a moment ago, two monsters confronting one another with a devil’s power.

Mr. Briggs reeled back, sending more and more of his minions to be impaled by the steady violence of the mystery monster. Those not impaled by the spikes served a more brutal end at the hands of the cudgel, the weapon snapping into their skulls with a sickening crack, the dull thuds of corpses dropping to the floor. Mr. Briggs was pressed up against the railing of his lobby, running his way down the stairs towards a space Alexander had not ventured to go to.

Alexander sat in silence behind his makeshift bunker, his hiding companion quaking in her boots and in his arms. The moment the mystery man turned to move down the stairs, Alexander motioned to the woman to crawl out and up from their hiding place. She looked at him with the fear of a trapped animal, unable to make a decision, paralyzed in her weakness. He lamented by made his motion out of the door.

This place would be a bloodbath and although she served good company for those few moments, Wilhelm and him were proper partners. They stepped over the corpses and walked out of the front door into the night, the howling of monsters and ticking of humanoid creatures making his hairs stand on end.

“Let’s find a place to hole up for the night, good buddy. It looks like it’s going to be a long night after all.” Alexander looked to Wilhelm for confirmation, receiving it with the bird jumping up from his shoulder perch into the skies.

If there were any saving graces to the night, one would be catching the faint glimmer of stars in the clouded sky.

The other was his homesickness subsiding in the presence of such strange and terrific monsters.