Winterhaven

  Brenna’s Safehouse, Lower Levels

  The second set of doors, iron-riveted and enchantment-warded, clicked shut behind the departing party. Their footsteps faded into the stone tunnels, leaving only a hush of cold air and the rustle of parchment.

  Brenna stood alone in the war room. Thoughts ran in her head of the battles ahead.

  Then, with the practiced grace of someone born in the alleys and raised by whispers, she moved.

  She threw off her traveling cloak, revealing the segmented leathers of a field operative beneath the neutral scholar’s robes. Her fingers swept across hidden panels in the walls — locking compartments clicked open, revealing stacks of pre-written ciphers, sealed scrolls, folded maps, and vials of ink infused with spell markers.

  A small bell chimed once above the stairwell.

  She didn’t turn. “You're late.”

  Three figures emerged — street runners and whisper thieves, young, nimble, and deadly quiet. Orphans once, like she had been, but now her most loyal agents.

  “You're up,” Brenna said. “We’re cutting the spider's threads.”

  She handed each of them marked parcels — instructions inked in invisible runes only readable by her network. “Deliver these to the east tower, the harbor watch captain, and Lady Vorna’s man at the glassworks. If they try to deny their debts, remind them I keep ledgers too.”

  The youngest — a boy no older than ten, soot still on his cheeks from chimney work — gave a crooked grin. “What if the guards see us?”

  “Then you weren’t fast enough,” Brenna said without warmth, but her hand briefly touched his shoulder before he darted away.

  When they were gone, she turned to her secondary desk — the one without maps, but filled with names.

  Every known member of the Black Ledger in Winterhaven. Every merchant who took their bribes. Every guard who turned their back. Every noble who paid for silence.

  Some names had been circled in red ink. Those were her pressure points.

  She dipped a quill, paused over a blank parchment, and wrote:

  To the Eyes of the Eastern Quarter:

  Ledger movement confirmed beneath Blackgate Row. Begin surveillance of known couriers. No contact with cell leaders unless provoked. Extract what you can, then vanish.

  — Skywing

  She sealed the note with black wax, stamped it with her sigil — a broken wing over an eye.

  A knock at her private door.

  She opened it to find an older man, heavy with years but sharp-eyed, wrapped in the armor of a former watch commander — Kellen, her oldest friend outside the trio.

  “They’ve entered the tunnels?” he asked.

  She nodded. “They’ll need time. I'm buying them hours.”

  “And what do you need of me?”

  “Begin arrests in the Bone Market,” she said. “Quiet, controlled, and theatrical. Let the Ledger scramble. Misdirection buys us more than blades.”

  Kellen raised a brow. “And if they come knocking here?”

  She drew a thin dagger and placed it neatly on the desk. “Then they’ll learn the difference between informants and insurgents.”

  Kellen laughed once. “Still dramatic.”

  “Still alive,” she replied.

  She moved to the shuttered windows above the streets. Below, Winterhaven stirred, thousands of lives unaware of the storm brewing beneath their feet.

  Brenna narrowed her eyes.

  “Mavikundi doesn’t know it yet,” she whispered, “but he’s already lost the city.”

  Underneath Winter Haven

  Random tunnels leading to The Hollow Quarter

  The stone passage yawned before them like the throat of some long-dead beast, walls lined with the moss of centuries and a dampness that crept into boots and bones. Dripping water echoed like whispered regrets. The Hollow Quarter was old — older than Winterhaven, older than the Empire — and it smelled of rot, rust, and forgotten things.

  “I loathe it here,” Loki muttered, brushing an invisible speck of filth off his emerald-and-black tunic. “The air is musty, the stones are grim, and I’ve seen corpses better preserved than these passage walls. I was sleeping on a mattress of lavender silk two weeks ago, but not this?"

  “Did the lavender silk complain as much as you?” Maevis asked, nudging him with an elbow as she ducked beneath a cracked archway.

  “Only when I set it on fire,” Loki replied smoothly. “Though I will admit, if I were hiding a blade that could freeze the stars themselves… this is exactly the kind of gods forsaken tomb I’d stash it in. Crumbling. Haunted. And most certainly filled with all manner of ghost and monsters. Waiting to pounce on a gang of four blundering fools like us.”

  “Fitting, then, that you feel at home,” Thor said, his voice echoing through the tunnel as he strode at the front. Mjolnir rested on his back like a boulder strapped with leather. "Admit it, Loki. You love seeking new ways to run into trouble."

  Maevis smirked and fell into pace beside him. “So, Prince of Thunder, you ever fight something in a place like this? Crypts and catacombs?”

  “I’ve slain draugr beneath many gates and trolls in the ash tunnels of FlameEarth. But I prefer the open sky and the clash of armies. This creeping, skulking nonsense—” he waved around, “—it is Loki’s trade.”

  Loki tilted his head with a grin. “You wound me, brother. I prefer velvet curtains and assassins, not dust and rats.”

  Tannis knelt near an old rusted symbol carved into the wall. “This sigil's part of the Old Builder’s Guild. Maevis, remember the ones under the library? This is the same structure. That means the catacombs below us were built over a thousand years ago — when the city was still a collection of warring districts.”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Maevis nodded, her tone shifting to professional. “And if that’s the case, the exit marked on Brenna’s map leads straight to the lost tunnels under the Cathedral of Cold Ash. They used to burn plague dead there. Later, it became a secret holding site for the city’s darker relics.”

  Thor, frowning at the crumbling parchment in his hand, grumbled, “And we are certain this map is accurate?”

  Tannis stood, brushing dust off his gloves. “Brenna’s information has never failed me. Trust her. She plans ten moves ahead.”

  “Then may her gambit see us through.” Thor rolled the map up and shouldered Mjolnir again. “Let us press on.”

  They walked in silence for a time, the only sound their boots scraping against timeworn stone. Then Maevis glanced over her shoulder at Loki and grinned.

  “You do know this loyalty and hard work deserves payment, right? I expect gold. Or something enchanted. Or both.”

  “Is this a robbery?” Loki asked, deadpan.

  “Not yet,” Tannis said. “But keep talking.”

  Loki sighed dramatically. “Fine. Once this is done, I’ll see you compensated. You’ve earned your coin… even if your company is alarmingly eager to discuss mugging their employer mid-quest.”

  “I don’t see you denying that you’re rich,” Maevis said sweetly.

  “I’m not rich,” Loki said. “I’m resourceful. It’s a crime to let all that coin rot in a vault when it can bribe city guards and fund assassination attempts.”

  “Touching,” Tannis muttered.

  Then the wind shifted.

  They froze.

  It wasn’t wind — it was breath. Rough. Wet. Bestial.

  A torch flared ahead. Shadows danced on the walls. Silhouettes emerged from the corridor ahead — four, six, then more.

  Minions in layered rags, their torches dripping fire onto the floor. At their center, towering and snarling, was a frost giant, skin the hue of old ice, with one milky eye and jagged iron plates welded into his flesh.

  By his side padded something unnatural — a hound with a man's face, lips curling back in a mockery of a grin, eyes full of hatred. It sniffed the air and growled.

  The frost giant raised a jagged axe the size of a cart.

  “Smelled you rats crawling through the dark,” he rumbled. “My master said you'd come this way. Mavikundi sends his regrets... and his hound.”

  The creature let out a terrible, humanlike shriek and bounded forward.

  Loki drew a pair of wicked-looking daggers. “I suppose there’s no chance of parley.”

  “No,” Thor growled, stepping forward. “Only justice.”

  Maevis cracked her knuckles. “And maybe a payday.”

  Tannis already had an arrow nocked, his voice low. “Then let’s earn it.”

  The torchlight flickered over blades and teeth. The frost giant loomed with breath steaming in the chill air. The man-faced hound twitched, eager to kill.

  Loki stepped forward, hands open in a rare show of diplomacy. “Now hold on, everyone. Let’s not be so hasty. I’m quite wealthy, remarkably generous, and not in the mood for bloodshed before lunch. How about a bribe?”

  The nearest torch-wielding thug looked uncertain. “A bribe?”

  “Yes. Coin. Gold. Gems. Perhaps a nice estate in the countryside? You could even retire.”

  Thor didn’t wait for the reply. With a thunderous war cry, he leapt into the fray, Mjolnir swinging like a falling star. He crashed into the front line, caving in a thug’s skull with one blow, spraying blood across the stone floor. Before the next attacker could react, Thor spun, his hammer cracking ribs like dry twigs.

  “So much for that idea,” Loki muttered.

  Tannis nocked an arrow and loosed it in one fluid motion, the shot burying itself in the throat of a torch-bearer who'd raised his blade toward Maevis. “We warned him,” he said, already preparing the next shot.

  Maevis flicked a throwing knife into the eye of a thug lunging for Loki. “See? That’s what you get for talking instead of stabbing.”

  “You’re all absolute lunatics,” Loki snapped — and then, with a shimmer of silver-blue magic, he morphed into a black-feathered crow. He took to the air with a shriek, wings beating rapidly through the narrow corridor.

  A thug screamed as Loki pecked his eyes out, talons slashing his scalp. He flailed and fell, torch clattering, as the crow cackled and vanished into the gloom.

  The frost giant bellowed, swinging his axe at Thor — who caught it on the haft of Mjolnir, sparks flying. “You are a poor imitation of your ancestors,” Thor grunted, then headbutted the giant, breaking its nose with a crunch.

  The hound-man leapt toward Maevis, jaws stretching wider than humanly possible — but she ducked low and rolled, slashing its underbelly with a twin pair of daggers.

  It howled, bleeding black ichor.

  Tannis leapt onto a low ledge and rained arrows down on the approaching minions. “They just keep coming!” he shouted. “How many did Mavikundi send?”

  “Too many!” Maevis shouted, ducking behind a stone pillar as a flurry of crossbow bolts rained past her.

  Loki, now back in elven form, landed beside her, slightly winded. “A pity, really. I liked that crow shape. Elegant. Understated. Bloodthirsty.”

  Maevis grinned. “You’ll have to settle for just bloodthirsty.”

  Behind them, Thor hurled Mjolnir, smashing into a wall and pulverizing two thugs mid-charge. The hammer rebounded and flew back into his hand as he marched forward, a one-man wall of destruction.

  “You men of the Black Ledger,” he bellowed, “you follow a coward and a schemer! Go back to your homes or die here under stone!”

  “No one's turning back!” one shouted—moments before a dagger from Tannis slit his throat from behind.

  “I love speeches,” Tannis muttered.

  The frost giant rallied, stomping toward the group, swinging wildly — but Maevis and Loki moved as one. Maevis ducked past its blow, slicing tendons in its leg while Loki shimmered behind it and drove a curved dagger up between its ribs.

  The beast bellowed and fell hard, its body shaking the ground.

  The last few minions, seeing their giant slain and their numbers broken, fled into the darkness — leaving blood, wreckage, and silence in their wake.

  Thor stood still for a long moment, breathing heavy, Mjolnir smoking in his hand. “Well struck,” he said to no one in particular.

  “Do all your negotiations end like this?” Loki asked, brushing blood from his sleeves.

  Tannis shrugged. “Most of ‘em.”

  Maevis bent down, checking a body. “We should keep moving. This was a scouting party. The rest of Mavikundi’s force can’t be far.”

  Tannis nodded and checked the map. “There’s a junction up ahead. We’ll need to reach it before they regroup.”

  Thor glanced at the bodies. “Take what you need. Then we move.”

  Loki sighed. “Looting corpses in a haunted crypt. This is my life now.”

  In a few but violent moments, all there foes were dead. Brought down by Thor's tenacity.

  The clamor of battle faded, leaving only the hiss of torches, the distant drip of condensation, and the labored breathing of four worn but alive figures.

  The party had retreated briefly into an old side chamber — a crumbled archive or ossuary by the look of the broken shelves and shattered urns. Ancient dust hung in the air, mingling with the stench of sweat and blood. They sat or stood in silence for a moment, letting the echoes of the fight settle into memory.

  Tannis leaned against a cracked pillar, wiping his blade with a torn bit of cloth from one of the dead. “That frost giant hit like a falling boulder.”

  Maevis crouched beside a small iron brazier, re-lighting a stub of a travel candle. “And you dodged like a leaf on the wind. Show-off.”

  Tannis offered a tired smirk. “You’re just jealous you don’t look this good when nearly dying.”

  “Children,” Loki sighed, perched atop an overturned urn like a roosting cat. “Please. Let’s focus on the important things. Like how we’re still underground, surrounded by enemies, and Thor smells like a butcher’s yard.”

  Thor, unbothered, sat cross-legged with Mjolnir across his lap. “Battle is clean. Cowardice is what stinks.”

  Maevis rolled her eyes. “So says the man coated in three kinds of blood.”

  “Four,” Tannis corrected.

  Loki flared a nostril, sniffing theatrically. “Yes, four. Definitely four. One of them smells like fermented troll bile. Splendid.”

  Maevis pulled her pack forward and unwrapped a small bundle of jerky. “Still better than anything Loki’s ever cooked.”

  “I don’t cook,” Loki sniffed. “I conjure. With flair.”

  Tannis glanced down at the map again, finger tracing the faint charcoal lines. “We’re close. Another quarter-mile should put us at the main vault entrance Brenna marked. After that, it’s anyone’s guess what we’ll find.”

  “Traps,” Loki said instantly. “Fangs. Ancient curses. Possibly very bored ghosts.”

  “Hopefully gold,” Maevis added, chewing.

  Thor stood, stretching his limbs. “Then we march. The vault awaits.”

  But then—

  A low bark echoed through the corridor. Then another.

  They all went still.

  From the dark ahead, torchlight flickered, casting shifting shadows on the far wall of the tunnel. There were footsteps, heavy boots on stone, and the unmistakable rattle of weapons.

  More of Mavikundi’s men. Not scouts this time. A war party.

  Tannis’s hand drifted to his quiver. “Well. That didn’t take long.”

  Loki stood, brushing ash from his coat. “I suppose talking is off the table again?”

  “Would it matter?” Maevis said, already palming two daggers.

  Thor grinned, raising Mjolnir. “Let them come.”