The tunnel tightened as they went, the air growing colder and older, like the sewer had been holding its breath for a century. Lantern-light slid over brickwork that hadn’t seen a proper scrub in generations, catching on algae-slick mortar and the occasional half-buried bit of bone.

  Jim trailed them at a safe distance, hugging the high edge where the wall’s shadow was deepest. He was nothing but a smear of fur and grime that moved only when the light wasn’t looking. Every time the party paused, he paused. Every time they advanced, he advanced—always far enough back that if someone suddenly decided “rats are suspicious,” he could vanish into a crack.

  Ahead, the tunnel ended in the same heavy cross-grate Jim had seen earlier.

  Old iron bolted deep into stone, its bars thick and rusted, with a locked access gate built into the center. Water hissed through the gaps, tugging at bits of trash caught in the iron teeth. The bars were still smeared with dark, matted fur in places.

  The party slowed instinctively, unaware they were standing at the exact spot where Jim had frozen hours earlier, whiskers rigid, while something pale and hungry rose from the depths and tore a body apart with casual indifference.

  The warrior stepped up first, sword out—blade held low but ready, shield angled to cover the rogue if something reached through. The mail on his arms gave a soft whisper each time he shifted.

  The cleric held back half a step, holy symbol visible, eyes fixed on the grate like it might suddenly attack.

  The sorcerer stayed just behind them, lantern-light steady, free hand half-raised, prepared to cast if needed.

  And the rogue slid forward like a shadow.

  He knelt by the lock.

  His hood tilted, hiding most of his face, but Jim could see the posture: shoulders relaxed, hands precise, breathing controlled.

  A small roll of tools appeared in the rogue’s fingers: oils, picks, tension bar, something thin and wickedly shaped. He touched the lock with the same gentleness a priest touches a relic.

  Click.

  The first test. Listening. Feeling for tumblers with fingertips.

  Jim watched from the wall’s edge, whiskers twitching.

  Humans doing delicate work down here looked absurd from rat height—giant fingers coaxing a tiny mechanism while standing ankle-deep in filth. But the rogue moved like the sewer was just another hallway.

  Behind him, the warrior shifted his sword-hand slightly, ready to intercept whatever might surge out once the lock gave. The cleric murmured something under his breath. The sorcerer’s eyes tracked the bars, watching the water and the dark beyond for movement.

  Jim’s mind, traitor that it was, supplied a running commentary: Okay. Classic “rogue picks the lock while the party covers him.” The real danger is always the thing that comes after the gate.

  The lock resisted. The rogue’s fingers adjusted. The pick rotated a fraction. A soft scrape echoed in the iron housing.

  Click.

  Another tumbler.

  The party held still, everyone listening to the tiniest sounds in the world.

  The rogue gave one last tiny twist, held his breath, and the lock finally gave with a soft, satisfying click.

  He oiled the hinges and eased the access gate open. The warrior went first, sword angled low, edge catching lantern-light. The cleric followed close. The sorcerer brought the lantern pole through carefully so it didn’t clang and announce them to whatever lived ahead.

  Jim waited until their boots and voices were swallowed by the tunnel beyond, then scurried up and slipped through the bars after them.

  Past the grate, the sewer changed character immediately.

  This wasn’t the usual brick-and-slime maintenance run. The channel here was carved into much older work, broad gray flagstones. In places, the original surfacing still survived—patches of old white and gray tile, worn smooth, some cracked like dry riverbeds. The tiles glinted faintly under the lantern, ghost-pale under the filth, as if the place was trying to remember when it was last clean.

  But age and water had taken their due.

  Sections of floor had washed out and collapsed, leaving deep pools that spanned most of the tunnel in places. The water in them was black and still, swallowing the lantern’s reflection and giving nothing back. Where the floor remained intact, the stone edges were undercut and treacherous—one wrong step and you dropped into whatever the sewer had been collecting for decades.

  The party slowed, spacing out automatically.

  The sorcerer held the lantern pole forward to probe the ground and throw light into the nearest voids. The warrior tested footing at the pool edges with a boot, sword kept ready in case “pool” turned out to be “something that lives in pools.” The rogue moved ahead a few paces, eyes on the stones, checking for the subtle wrongness of traps or fresh disturbances.

  Jim stuck to the wall, paws finding the roughest stone for grip. He didn’t like the look of the pools.

  That is exactly where I would put a monster.

  They were only a few minutes past the nearest pool when a small vent in the floor coughed up wet heat and four creatures boiled out of it in a burst of hissing vapor. They were small—no taller than a halfling’s chest—but broad in the torso, with limbs like knotted cords of wet clay and skin the color of old ash. Their heads were ugly, grinning things with jagged teeth and slit-black eyes that gleamed through the steam. Wisps of vapor leaked constantly from their mouths, nostrils, and the seams of their bodies, as if they were only barely being held together. Thin, bat-like wings beat furiously at their backs, half membrane and half rolling mist, and every movement made them crackle, hiss, and shriek with the high, mad laughter of boiling kettles.

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  “Alright. steam mephits,” Jim thought, pressed flat to the stone. “Four fliers, tight corridor, bad footing, cleric is VIP. This is going to be spicy.”

  The fight exploded in a blur of steam and wings.

  The lead mephit shrieked—a high, kettle-whistle laugh—and opened its jagged maw. A cone of scalding vapor roared out, white-hot and hissing, slamming into the warrior and cleric like a furnace door flung wide. The warrior grunted, turning his face away as the heat seared across his cheeks and neck; skin reddened instantly, blistering in angry patches. The cleric staggered back a step, cloak steaming, one hand instinctively raised to shield his eyes.

  And the lead mephit opens with the ol’ face-melter special! Warrior eats it full-on, cleric’s cloak is basically a sauna now. Crowd’s awake.

  The rogue reacted fastest. He snapped his shortbow up and loosed in the same motion; the arrow sliced through the steam trail and vanished into the mist with a disappointed whistle—clean miss.

  Before anyone could curse, the second mephit darted upward, wings blurring, and exhaled a thick, churning cloud of fog. It rolled outward in seconds, swallowing the corridor in damp gray murk. Lantern-light turned milky and useless; shapes blurred into silhouettes. Jim’s whiskers twitched hard. Visibility died.

  Fog rolls in like the promoter just turned on the smoke machine. Visibility drops to zero. Going to make it tricky to hit.

  Through the haze the sorcerer thrust his free hand forward. Two darts of force—pure white light—shot from his fingertips, punching straight through the fog like arrows of moonlight. They struck the lead mephit square in the chest; the creature screeched, wings faltering as smoking holes appeared in its vaporous hide.

  Magic missiles right to the chest, classic and clean. No ref needed. Sorcerer’s got the reach advantage tonight.

  One of its companions lunged low and fast, claws raking across the sorcerer’s ribs. Fabric tore; blood welled dark against his tunic. Another mephit slammed into the warrior’s shield with a wet smack, talons scraping metal. The fighter swung his longsword in a wide, furious arc—blade whistling—but the creature twisted mid-air and the steel cut only fog.

  The cleric’s voice rose above the chaos, steady and urgent. A single word of prayer rolled out, and a faint golden warmth spread over the group like sunlight breaking through storm clouds. Every swing became surer and every breath deeper.

  Buffs are on, Jim noted from his perch on the wall. We’re officially in a real fight. Betting window now open.

  The rogue pivoted on one heel, yanked a small clay vial from his belt, and hurled it. The tanglefoot bag burst against the nearest mephit’s wings in a spray of sticky amber goo. The creature thrashed, wings glued half-folded, movements turning slow and comical. It still managed to open its mouth and breathe another gout of steam—the vapor scalded the warrior’s arm and the rogue’s shoulder, but both twisted away in time to take only glancing burns.

  The sorcerer leveled his wand again, muttering the words for a scorching ray. A line of fire lanced out and vanished into the fog, the spell’s heat failing to connect instead hitting the wall near Jim.

  Taking friendly fire here, mind the announcer’s booth. He thinks as he skitters aside.

  The mephits pressed their advantage. Claws flashed in the murk; the warrior and cleric took more strikes, blood mixing with sweat and condensation on their skin. The cleric answered with raised hands: a shimmering barrier of faith snapped into place around him, translucent and faintly glowing, turning aside the next swipe. At the same moment a translucent hammer of force materialized beside him—a spiritual weapon that swung wildly through the mist, missing its target but forcing the mephits to scatter.

  Jim’s mental announcer voice stayed calm: Fog turns every clean spell into a coin flip. Nobody’s dead yet, but the sorcerer is in the danger zone.

  Then the warrior roared and lunged. His longsword sheared through the air, caught one mephit’s wing on the upswing, and tore it free in a spray of scalding mist. The creature plummeted, wings ruined, and hit the filthy water with a hiss and a plume of vapor.

  There it is! Fighter with the walk-off KO! One mephit down, water’s steaming where it hit. The front line just reminded everyone who owns the center of the cage.

  The sorcerer thrust his hand forward again. Two more darts of force streaked out, slamming into the wounded leader and staggering it mid-flight. The rogue nocked another arrow, drew, and released in one fluid motion. The shaft punched through the fog and buried itself in the mephit’s chest. The creature gave one last bubbling shriek and dissolved into greasy steam.

  Two down.

  The remaining pair redoubled their fury on the sorcerer. Claws found flesh again and again—across his arm, his side, his shoulder. He stumbled back, lantern pole trembling in his grip, breath coming in short, pained gasps. Blood soaked his tunic dark; he was down to the thinnest thread of endurance.

  Sorcerer’s in the pocket getting mauled. This is the part where the commentary team starts whispering ‘he might be done.’ Hang in there, candle-boy.

  The fighter stepped between them, longsword flashing in a tight arc. The blade caught the third mephit square in the torso and flung it sideways into the wall. It crumpled, wings folding, and evaporated in a final hiss.

  The cleric surged forward, hand outstretched. Divine light—soft, steady, almost gentle—flowed from his palm into the sorcerer’s wounds. Torn skin knit, bruises faded, blood flow slowed to nothing. The sorcerer straightened, drawing a ragged breath, color returning to his face.

  And the cornerman steps in! Divine light flows. Cleric with the clutch save. Sorcerer lives to cast another day. Huge moment.

  The last mephit hovered a heartbeat longer, wings beating furiously, then hissed something obscene in a language of boiling kettles and dove back toward the vent in a burst of vapor. It vanished into the vent before the fighter could line up a parting swing.

  The fog thinned slowly, as if the tunnel itself were exhaling.

  Water dripped from the ceiling in the newly warmed air. Condensation beaded on armor and cloaks. The lantern light steadied into something normal again, no longer refracted into ghost shapes by steam.

  The fight was over—for now.

  The warrior kept his sword up for a few extra breaths, eyes on the vent, waiting for round two. When nothing came, he lowered the blade.

  The rogue did a quick, quiet circuit of the immediate area, checking the edges of the collapsed pools and the side branches. He knelt, touched the stone near the vent with two fingers, then pulled back with a faint grimace. Hot. Wet. Unpleasant. Not actively murderous anymore.

  The cleric stepped in close to the sorcerer, who was leaning a shoulder against the wall, breathing through his mouth like he was trying not to taste the sewer.

  “You’re still hurt, Selise,” the cleric said, not accusing, just factual. “Let me see.”

  The sorcerer wiped at his face with the back of his sleeve. “I noticed,” he replied. “I hate fighting in fog.”

  The cleric’s hand was still on his holy symbol. The glow of divine magic was subtle—more like warmth than light—but it was there. He spoke a short prayer under his breath, and the last of the bruised, stinging pain drained out of the sorcerer’s posture.

  The sorcerer exhaled, shoulders dropping. “Thank you, Brother Halden. That was… close.”

  Jim’s whiskers twitched. Two names in one breath.

  Brother Halden. Selise.

  Halden gave a small nod, the way someone does when they’re trying not to show how scared they were that the contract clause might fail in the first real fight. “Stay behind the sword next time.

  The sorcerer gave a tired half-smile. “Yes, yes. I’ll be a good little candle-holder.”

  Halden’s mouth tightened—not quite a smile, but almost. “Your lantern is doing fine. Your positioning was not.”

  The sorcerer straightened a little—pride and irritation mixing in equal parts. “It’s hard to position when something’s trying to claw your face off.”

  The party reformed their order without further words—because they hadn’t died, and that meant they kept moving.

  Jim stayed in the shadows and followed, just far enough back to be ignored, so he can stay alive long enough to see what happened next.