The Gathering Storm: Book One of The End of Days Series

Chapter 2: Friends in Low Places

Viranna was getting supremely frustrated with this stranger. She was absolutely certain that she could easily lead the group to their prize, yet the man treated her with nothing but dismissal.

"Absolutely not." Kirkwall asserted. "It's bad enough I have to take these dunces with me -- I'm not bringing along a child in addition to that. You'd just slow us down anyhow."

"I am not a child and I am most certainly not a liability. I can handle myself in a fight." Vi replied indignantly, gesturing towards the blade at her hip.

"I don't think you're comprehending. You are not coming along, regardless of what you say." He retorted while arranging his pistols and rapier. He did this hastily, beginning to move towards the door as his sword slid into place.

"Are you sure about that?" Interjected one of the Adder's men -- a young man, no older than seventeen. He was known as Tripp. "Vi's one of our best fighters. She doesn't have the raw strength of Mickey, but she can sure as the Beyond move fast. I'd feel a lot safer with her watching our backs." Like the other three goons embarking on the quest to retrieve the Eye, he was outfitted with cheap leather armor, a hide shield, and a one-handed weapon of choice. His was a worn hand axe. While this may not have seemed like high quality equipment to Kirkwall, Vi was aware that, with the exception of herself, such armaments were rare among the Adder's gang.

"Have you no spine? Are you such a coward that the only way you'll go forward is with a little girl in tow?" Kirkwall snapped at Tripp. "I genuinely could not care less how much praise you give her. She is not coming along."

Vi scowled. "Fine, suit yourself. There's a reason his majesty keeps me around, and it ain't for my stunnin' beauty -- though I do got that in spades. I'll track down the thief and bring back the Eye before you make it five feet." She proclaimed proudly, despite her private reservations of doubt about the matter.

As Kirkwall, Tripp, and the others made their way out the door, Vi began to consider her next move. In her time in the city of Dunpool, she had established numerous wallflowers, information dealers, and other denizens as contacts from whom she could glean the latest gossip. One of the numerous skills she had picked up in her limited years of experience was the ability to sort through the piles of misinformation to find the nuggets of truth hidden within.

She knew the most likely place the thief would have escaped to would be the Ratway. The Ratway was an underground complex of winding pathways, nauseating pipelines, and the occasional wide open chamber. The Tunnel Rats, to which the Ratway owed its name, had hideouts throughout the whole of the labyrinth, which spanned the entirety of the city. While the authorities were most certainly aware of the illicit activities going on below the surface, they dared not tread there for fear of the Rats.

A few years ago, Vi remembered, a contingent of the Imperial Legion had been tasked with purging the underground. They deemed the mission a failure after suffering casualty rates far beyond the amount of ground they were reclaiming. Vi, however, was not afraid to venture below, as she had done so dozens of times. The Legion's mistake, as she had come to realize, was that they had tried marching an army down there -- like using a hammer where surgical precision was needed.

She would slip in and out undetected, retrieving the Eye the same way the thief had; no blood spilled. The only problem with this plan was deciding which hideout to infiltrate. It could be any one of the dozen-and-a-half or so lairs, all of which were constantly moving their locations around in the underground. Vi had a solution: she would check all of her contacts in the local area for any sightings of large numbers of Tunnel Rats coming and going and follow the trail.

The closest contact, and hopefully the only one she would need, was a Nesuari by the name of Thuridian, a man who she knew would reluctantly help her despite her rather outstanding debts to him, monetary and otherwise. Despite his exile status amongst his own people, he was still supercilious enough to make others know just how low they were in comparison to himself, a trait that Vi found equal parts amusing and infuriating. What she truly valued in him, however, were his senses. Like all members of his race, Thuridian possessed inherently heightened sight and hearing -- far beyond what a human could hope to attain. She knew just where to find him. He frequented a gambling hall not too far from the Adder's Pit, although he didn't attend so much for entertainment as for employment. Unusually short for his race and wearing a hat, he passed as human and used this to rig the stakes in games of Smuggler's Folly, an activity usually reserved for humans due to its reliance on the senses.