There was a dull, throbbing ache in the back of his skull, a cardiac drumbeat that pulsed with nausea and vertigo. He coughed, heavily, a wheezing hack that produced a glob of congealed blood that slurped and slithered its way out of his throat like a dark red, copper-flavored slug. A thin, high-pitched whine filled his ears, like the singing of a crystal glass in the otherwise fragile quiet.

He blinked, looking around at the dark tunnel, trying to see more than blurred shapes and shadows in the tones of gray cast by his nightvision. Steam filled the space. He couldn't quite see it, but he could feel the slick moistness of dew on his riverstone blue skin, the sweltering heat. So hot… it was so hot in here.

He rolled over onto his side, feeling like his brain lagged behind his head by around three seconds, like a child's balloon on a string. He grunted, feeling saliva flood his mouth, bittersweet bile rising up in his throat. He froze, blinking, willing himself not to puke. He breathed in the swirling dampness of the air in that tunnel, his sense of smell completely overridden by the taste of his own blood in his mouth.

The collapse. Oh god, he had brought down the wall!

He tried to stand, too dizzy and unsteady on his talons to do anything but struggle on his claws and knees, his wings limp as a heavy wet blanket around his shoulders. Injuries. He had to see what damage he'd…

He couldn't keep the thought in his mind before it erupted out of his mouth, along with the last several hot dogs from the stadium. He felt unsteady tears running down his cheeks as he swayed, trying desperately to remember how to use his tail to balance.

His brother… his brother, where was he?

"Hullo?" He rasped. "Is… is anyone there?" He crawled away from the puddle of sick, claws trying to dig into the concrete, trying to get some kind of purchase. But he was too weak.

There was only silence. "Brother? Brother?" He rasped, his voice like a saw blade in his throat, drawing pain and a ragged line of coughs out of his chest as he called for help. "Please, can anyone hear me?!"

His innards seemed to freeze, like stone in the dawn. He was alone.

He'd never been alone before.

Dazed, he dragged his claws up the wall. His feet dragged through the slime of the tunnel's floor, each sucking squelch like wading through a swamp. He reached the concrete embankment on his hands and knees, trying to find someone, anyone, anyone who could hear him. His eyes fell on a shape. A navy blue blob with red arms and legs and a skull-white face. This was… someone. Someone important, but he struggled to think through the fog. Injured… they were both injured. The steam burned his face and lungs, seared and dampened the air. It made it so hard to breathe. So very very hard to breathe.

Couldn't leave him here. Had to protect. Had to…

His claws closed around the figure's torso, lifting him to his neck like an infant monkey to its mother. He crawled on his knees, supporting his gait with one wing as he cradled the body of the other person against his chest with one arm. His tail dragged a deep furrow through the sludge.

His vision started to clear, with time. The air grew colder, but still humid and unpleasant. He found himself taking deeper gulps of air as he traveled further down the tunnel, away from the wreckage. His thoughts started to reorganize, slowly shifting back into place along fuzzy lines. His arms burned, his chest burned, his whole body burned. But most especially, the inside of his head felt like it was lined with cinders from a forge fire, so hot that it seemed to distort the air.

He finally collapsed again, rolling over onto his back to avoid crushing the rescued survivor.

He wheezed lungfuls of cool air, and slowly the fogginess started to dissipate. But his ears still rang and his head still spun.

"Headache." He forced out. He didn't know who he was talking to. Cinders spun, flickering and sparking at the edge of his eyes. The ringing in his ears was all he could hear.

But a voice did reply. "You… saved me?"

"Had to."

"... why?" The voice rasped. "Monsters don't…"

"Not a monster." He wheezed. "Never… was."

"Were you… a human?"

"No. Gargoyle." He breathed. "We protect…"

Finally, the cinders in his brain burned out his eyesight, leaving only darkness.

"Ugghh…"

Face buried in his wing, curled into himself like a woodlouse, he tried not to move too much. That was the first thing that the Mentor had taught him, was to not move if you thought you were injured. Silently, rapidly, he sorted through the situation. The pain in his body rang through his nervous system, like the din of a waterfall in a tunnel. It echoed and echoed in his brain, even as he pleaded for it to be quiet so he could think.

His brain was the only good thing he had. If he couldn't have that, he was totally useless.

He took slow, shallow breaths of cold air. In and out. His ribs. Okay, his ribs hurt. A lot. Tail and wings were fine, surprisingly. His face burned and he could feel his eyes swelling shut. A serious bruise or maybe even a broken nose, probably from the boot he'd taken to the face. He hadn't opened his eyes yet. They burned and itched so badly as he rubbed them out, trying to clear out the tar-like mud.

The memory of what happened was perfectly clear to him. The fight, the steps, all the way up to the human grabbing the stick from the pile. The tide of the battle had shifted as soon as the human had a weapon.

Typical. Humans attacking first. He hadn't even tried to talk. A thousand years, and still nothing had changed.

He continued dissecting his own memories. The metal in the wall. That human knew that pipe would explode, and he'd been goaded right into attacking it. God, he was such an idiot! He furiously cursed himself, berating and abusing himself for being so easily tricked, so easily manipulated. All he had to do was keep his temper, and now his brother–

Oh god. His brother! He was under the rubble!

He stood up, one hand clutching his nose. His claws came away, tinged in darkness. He grimaced painfully. Oh, that was a good one. He hadn't taken a hit like that in a very long time. Definitely something to brag to his brothers about, if he made it out of this.

"Blǽwen heofonan." He swore, rushing over to the enormous pile of rocks. He gulped, heart quivering. These chunks of concrete and brick were easily as big as he was. Tears of frustration and anger on his cheeks, he dug his claws into the stone, and he tried to heave.

It didn't budge.

"NO!" He howled, his pathetic thrice-damned arms not even nearly strong enough to move even one boulder. Desperately driving his shoulder into the rock, he dug his talons into the ground and pushed with all the strength he had. Rock crumbled under his razor-sharp grip, the stone shifted slightly under his force. But he may as well have been trying to move a mountain.

"No, no, no!" He sobbed. "Brother! Brother!"

His claws dug heavy furrows into the stone, chunks of rock flying off with each enraged swipe. He desperately swung over, and over, and over again, tears making his eyes burn. He'd lost his whole clan, his whole family, his country, his whole entire world! He couldn't lose his brother too!

He brought down his claws one more time in the stone, and this time he sobbed with pain–physical pain–as one of his claws bent sideways into the brick. He yanked his hand back and into his chest. He looked fearfully at his injured claw. Blood. He'd dug so hard he'd drawn his own blood.

This wasn't working. He needed to go get help!

He bounded back down the tunnel on all fours, breathing hard as he ran, ignoring the pain in his face and his twisted claw. He had to find his older brother, had to find Goliath and their mentor. And he had to find them fast!

He veered around the corner of the tunnel, trying desperately to remember which one to take. In his memory, his past self raced down the corridor following the human through the deep pitch blackness. This tunnel had three branching paths. The metal that occasionally dinged against his claws, and the shape of the place was familiar. Humans built these tunnels for their trains, just like on TV! Meaning that they had to have access to the surface somewhere! He could find his brother, they could both dig through the rubble, and–

He skittered to a halt, sliding in the muck, as he barrelled down the curve and almost into the arms of his brother. "Whoa!" He yelped, digging in his talons to brake.

His brother looked up, eyes watery and bloodshot. He was bleeding from a nasty looking gash on his forehead, looking about as miserable as a waterlogged alley cat. But his eyes–figuratively–lit up as soon as he saw him. "You're back!"

"I need your help, our brother he–" The small one squeezed his eyes shut. He clawed his hands over his ears. No. He couldn't lie. Not about this. "I… I messed up. He's in trouble, and I'm not…"

He looked down at his feet, the tears coming back. But his brother stooped down, fumbling to put a hand on his shoulder. "Slow down, gimme a minute. I took a nasty hit to the head, I can't see straight."

"We don't have a minute! The tunnel collapsed, and I think he's buried under the rubble!"

His brother's cinnabar face paled. Then, his eyes hardened, glowing white. A furious growl rose in his throat. "Show me." He snarled.

"This way, let's go!" They sprinted down the tunnels, galloping as fast as they could dare. The smallest one's limbs were starting to tire, his breath starting to burn. But he couldn't stop or slow down, not while his brother might be dying.

Especially not when it was his fault.

They veered around the corner, his brother begging him to slow down. But he didn't listen. He couldn't, not when they were so close. He was always faster on the ground than his brothers, and usually he was kind enough to be slower. But today was not the day for it.

They reached the collapse, and his brother gasped. "What have you done?!"

"I didn't mean to! The human attacked us, and he made me hit some part of the wall. It exploded, and our brother tried to stop it. The wall came down on top of us!"

"Then we've gotta get this wall off of him. Help me move this!" His brother ordered.

Together, they actually made some progress. The small one was relieved. Even in the panic of the moment, he felt safer with his bigger, stronger brother close by. Less vulnerable. The scrambling moment of fear when he was alone had faded slightly. Now, it was driven only by a very special kind of rage.

If that human had hurt his brother, he would make him pay dearly.

It was his big brother who did most of the heavy moving. He wedged his back against the rubble and pushed while he pulled. The boulders cleared, and occasionally they had to dance out of the way as more rocks fell. But they'd cleared a crawlspace, just large enough for him to make it through. A thick gout of boiling steam greeted them as soon as they'd cleared a point of ingress. Gritting his teeth, letting his eyes burn white, he peered into the space too small for the oldest to fit.

"What do you see?"

"He's not under here." He breathed, a note of hope in his voice. "I think I can make it to the other side!" With a wriggle of his tail, he vanished underneath.

"Please, be careful!" The oldest whimpered. But the web-winged gargoyle only tucked his digits close to his chest, and continued to squirm through the crevice. With a grunt of effort, he popped out on the other side.

He was immediately blasted by the wave of heat that he felt on this side of the wall. It was absolutely broiling! Hot steam drew pinprick-like speckles of pain across his skin, his eyes squeezing shut against the impenetrable fog bank of boiling air.

"Brother?!" He called. "Brother, where are you?"

There was no reply. Not yet. Desperate to get away from the heat, he ducked down to all fours again, keeping low to the ground. He couldn't be gone, he couldn't! He was so strong, the strongest of all of them! No way would all that rock have been able to hold him for long. Unless…

No. No, he didn't want to think about it. His brother needed him, no matter what had happened to him. He wasn't going to let him down. Boxing up that horrible question and forcefully shoving it deep into the dark labyrinth of his brain, he kept up his desperate search.

Then, he found it. The stink of blood, somewhere near where the pipe had burst. Grimacing as he fought his way closer, he looked down at it. There was a splatter of blood on the ground here. Following it, he found more evidence; claw marks in the rock where a gargoyle tried to pull himself to standing. Huge bodyprints in the ground that could not have belonged to anyone else. Dragging tracks, as if he'd been crawling on hands and knees.

"He got out! But he's really hurt!" He cried out, heart relieved.

"What?! No way!" The tall one was revived almost immediately by this news. Finally, some good luck!

The small one wriggled back through the wall of rock, squeezing himself between tiny crevices and rocks until, with a squirm of his spine and a push from his tail, he slithered out of the collapse. He stood up, dusting himself off and checking his wing membranes for scrapes. He looked up at his brother, looking triumphant. "Guess what we have with us?"

"It better be a–"

"A map!" The small one proudly produced the map that, an hour ago, had been so useless. Now, like a sheet of solid gold, its plasticized sheen glinted in the faint glow of their eyes. He unfolded it, searching the line-etched street map, he followed a single green line. "I think we're right about here. At least, the sign up above us before we followed them down here said it was the Port Authority bus terminal. It looks like it's still here, just a few feet further…" He hummed thoughtfully. "That way. That feels like north, right?"

His older brother closed his eyes in concentration, tapping into his airborne instincts. "Yeah, you're right. North feels that way."

"This green line represents one of these tunnels. This one we're in is abandoned, so it's not on the map. But look! The street right above us is called 'Broadway'. And right next to it?"

The taller one squinted at the sheet. "Lexington Avenue!" He said, finally catching up to his brother's deduction.

"Just like the sign we passed! We can come up through the tunnel that hasn't collapsed, get up to a building, and glide down to another tunnel entrance, and we can find him!"

The tall one let a small, grateful smile curve his beak. "Man, am I glad you're a genius. Let's go!" The tall one dropped to his hands again, and took a few steps forward before his brother called out.

"Wait, what about that steam pipe?!" He bounded to catch up to him.

"We don't know how to fix it, and I think we've done a good enough job breaking it. Let the humans take care of it, someone's bound to notice it sometime."

The small one seemed to hesitate. But in the end, he relented. Their brother was bleeding, dragging himself along the ground, somewhere up that tunnel. There was no way they could move all that rock, and crossing it would be dangerous for both of them. They had priorities to consider.

Within maybe two minutes, they had returned to the abandoned subway station and peered up at the maintenance hatch where they'd entered. The rhythmic, frequent rumble of the neighboring station was the only sign that the underground was occupied by any other living thing. The red gargoyle readjusted his hair tie, a determined set to his jaw. "Ready?"

"Ready."