[Deep in the remains of Mount Glenn's subway system.]

"Wake up, it's your shift."

Heylel groaned as he heard those words. But feeling the tap of hard leather boots against his own he forced his eyes open.

Looking at the source of the voice he shot the man a flat look, "Harway. Good morning to you too."

The scrawny man, who looked completely out of place holding a shotgun scoffed as he took a knee beside Heylel, "Yes, yes. Now get up. You are hogging the bed."

Heylel nodded as he pushed himself off the ragged mattress Harway called bed, pulling his assault rifle off the side of it as he did.

It had been a month since he started keeping the gun on him, and he could proudly say that it had never left his side since then.

Standing next to the mattress he waited until Harway was on it, completely sprawled out on the thing that had been wedged against the collapsed end of the subway tunnel, "Where's my post?"

Harway shrugged with a smile, "No idea. But before that. Get something to eat. Your shift's in twenty minutes."

"You lied then?" Heylel rolled his eyes looking at the man who only winked in response.

Heylel felt tempted to lower the number of hungry mouths then and there but kept his arms from reaching the handle of his gun.

Because that would get him killed in relation or get him kicked out of their group—Neither were good outcomes. Not like it mattered, out of the eight hours he had to sleep, his nightmares wouldn't let him make it past the second.

So, he shifted off. The fire in the metal barrel standing by the subway wall was waiting. The barrel itself was kept underneath an open ventilation shaft making sure they didn't die of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Letting the fire bake his coldness away. He went over his gun with a cloth, making sure it was clean and loaded another magazine into the catch.

But that didn't take much time, soon he was just standing by the flames as they clung to the furniture wood they had salvaged from the surface.

It was then his attention shifted to footsteps walking up to him, he turned to see Moyra, a huntswoman. Of their group of four, she was the only one with Aura—a fact that you could see from how her fair skin had not a single blemish—and the one with the most sway, "Heylel, what are you doing here standing all alone?"

"Just woke up Moyra," He answered as he shifted a little to let the heat radiate to her too.

She smiled at him, the same smile she had when he had first met her, she was older than him by a bit, he was barely thirteen and she was eighteen. A fresh graduate of Beacon.

And she was here, same as his, clinging to the warmth of a small fire by the side of a subway wall.

"You look broody you know," She elbowed him a little which he brushed off.

"Just woke up Moyra."

"Aye," She said as she pulled out a ration bar from her side and handed it over to him, "Food," she said as she handed it over to him. He disagreed, this thing was a calorie-dense nutritious piece of cardboard you stuffed your face with to save yourself from starvation. It was most definitely not food.

But he still took it and tore the plastic vacuum-sealed wrapper, biting into the hard cookie, "It's good."

She shook her head, a smile still there, "Glad that you liked it. We have run out of almost all else."

But they didn't run out of these. To be fair it was hard to run out of ration bars. They were the size of a chocolate bar, dirt cheap and never spoiled and so they were stored in the tens of thousands in almost any government building that existed.

And though Heylel joked about it, he was glad that these existed. They were complete meals and they had saved him time than he could even count.

Still, if she was telling him about this then, "Time for another supply run?"

She nodded, "Yeah, been thinking about it. The water's good. So's the firewood. Just canned food and maybe ammo."

Well, if she said they had to go for one, they had to go for one. She was the de facto leader, no point in thinking about it, "So who's going?" The 'with her' part was left unsaid.

A slow whistle blew through her lips, "Don't know. The Grimm…they have been getting worse by the day. I didn't even meet the Mystra Station's huntsman this time."

"What happened?" I asked.

"He was supposed to show up at the bell tower, and exchange information. He didn't. I waited too."

He was probably dead, Heylel thought.

"Right. So, you think you can't take anyone?"

A sigh left her lips, "Not without Aura, no. It's becoming more and more dangerous."

He mimicked her sigh, "I wish we had our Aura too."

She put her hand on his head and rubbed it, "It's more trouble than it's worth really. Once you have it, it's just constant fighting. If you get close enough to unlock it, maybe I can even help pull it out."

Nodding he pulled out his canteen from his belt and downed half of the water it had, "I will go and stand watch with Witt."

Moyra rather he didn't, he was just a child after all, no older than her younger brother. And he reminded her of him a lot, the same black hair, the same white skin, heck even their haircuts were similar. The only thing that differentiated the two was that Heylel had ruby-red eyes. While her brother had brown ones, just like her.

Or maybe she was just remembering it wrong. After all, it had been a very long time since she had seen him. Five years was it?

Maybe she was transposing Heylel over her brother a bit…another sigh leaked from her lips.

She needed to spend more time with her brother if she ever made it out of this mess, lest she be refused the title of sister.

"Lay off now," His words brought her out of her thoughts, she complied and pulled her hands back, watching him walk off towards the open end of the tunnel. Where Witt was keeping watch.

The other end? Her eyes instinctively shifted to it. Collapsed. Sealed off by Vale. By the fucker who had left them to rot here.

And there at the base of the debris was Harway, twisting as low whimpers escaped his sleeping form.

The man was ill. Mentally speaking. Survivors' guilt. PTSD. But who was she to say? It wasn't like she was any better.

She was just glad she had found her bro—Heylel. She was just glad she had managed to save him.

It was then that she felt words escape her throat, "We need to get out soon don't we?" Otherwise, they all might just go insane.