Chapter 8

Steam hung low in the air, thick with meat and vinegar.

The counter stretched across the room like a church altar—scarred, stained, eternal.

Sunlight slanted in from a grimy skylight, catching the drift of heat rising from the kitchen vents.

The counter was warm from the sun that slanted through the high window—dust catching in the beam, slow and soft.

The girls stood at the counter like they'd been poured into place—Liza hunched low, Mabel listing forward with her chin resting on the wood.

Mabel had to do the talking—Liza was too busy keeping the whole machine from collapsing.

Behind the counter, Estes Kelpie was already in motion.

The knife sank into the first pie with a clean crunch—golden crust flaking as Estes split it wide.

Steam surged up, thick with the smell of slow-cooked beef and marrow-rich gravy.

She cupped the tin, flipped it one-handed, and let the minced beef pie drop with a soft thud onto the plate.

A scoop of mash followed—silky, ridged from the spoon.

Then came the liquor: pale green, parsley-sharp, glossy enough to catch the candlelight as it spilled in a lazy spiral across the mash. Mabel’s plate.

Next, the lamb.

Estes turned, broke the crust open—minted steam rising like a breath from the earth.

The filling glistened, dark and tender. She plated it clean, centered with a second scoop of mash.

A tangle of buttered cabbage joined the side—leaves wilted just right, glossy, peppered.

The trays landed with a practiced thump—pie, mash, cabbage, all piping hot and properly spaced.

Two stoneware cups followed, set down with just enough force to clink against the wood—frothy, dark, and cold.

Estes grinned, sleeves still dusted with flour.

“The usual for the sweet one— "

She was already halfway back to the stove.

"and a lamb and mint pie with buttered cabbage for her sister! Enjoy!”

The mash hit first—hot, starchy, sharp with parsley.

Then the vinegar, bright enough to cut through fog.

Liza blinked. Once. Then again.

Her spine straightened a little. Hands unclenched.

The smell had reached her.

And some primal part of her remembered she was alive.

“Forgin’ gold, Estes! Yeah, this is exactly what I was hoping for. Thanks, Estes.”

Liza started patting down her apron, fingers hunting for her stamp and card.

Estes didn’t even flinch.

“You’re trying to what, now?”

She leaned in slightly, eyes gleaming.

“Liza, you do realize your friend paid for months of meals in advance, right?

Stop making the maths difficult and eat up.

It’s all over your face—you need it.”

Liza looked over at Mabel, one brow raised—half questioning, half resigned.

Mabel didn’t even blink. Just nodded once.

Both parts were true.

Mabel took her tray, Liza right behind.

The room buzzed with low voices, clinks, the scrape of cutlery on laminate.

They crossed between benches and settled near the end of a half-filled table—space enough to breathe, noise enough to stay background.

Both of them sat a little straighter now.

They both took a bite at the same time.

Liza made a sound halfway between a sigh and a laugh—eyes half-lidded, shoulders finally dropping.

Mabel just let her head tilt back, chewing like the world had finally remembered how to be kind.

They ate without hurry—quiet, steady, content in the way only good food could allow.

The table chatter blurred into background hum.

For a few minutes, it was exactly what they needed to be: nobody special, just two girls eating something hot.

Then a shadow leaned in over the table, warm and solid albeit a bit short.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“Liza! Mabel! I haven’t seen you girls in days! How are ya?”

Albrecht, smiling like he’d been waiting around just waiting to bump into them.

Mabel perked up mid-bite, eyes lighting as she spotted him.

She hurried to swallow, wiping at the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Oh! Miner Schmidt! Sorry, we had a long weekend and it’s now… what?”

She glanced at Liza, then back.

“Alby, what day is it actually?”

Albrecht’s smile faltered a little. He sat across from them without asking.

“Lass. It’s Wassdi. All I know is what your creepy friend told us at the pub this weekend, but I can’t make sense of the past few days.”

He took a bite of his mash—slow, like chewing gave him time to line up the words.

“Brutus doesn’t count the same anymore, and the Gildland contract vanished.”

He looked between them.

“Did you two have anything to do with it?”

Mabel leaned forward, eyes bright.

“Oh, the Gildland job? Ohhhh you’d love this one—Liza, tell him how it started!”

Liza lit up like someone had stomped the bellows.

"So you know that castle up north..."

And just like that, Deadfall had to live through the Graveins’ exploits again.

Mabel told Albrecht about the farm—how quiet it was at first, how it exploded into waves of snarling Commons and armored Enforcers.

Three girls.

Thirty Commons.

Five Enforcers.

All cleared in under twenty minutes.

A pair of black and red ears flicked.

The therian looked over, intrigued—then rose without a word and drifted closer, tray still in hand.

Liza picked up the thread.

She talked about the tower—how she gutted the base with her fists, and brought it down along with the wall behind it.

How more walls followed.

How the path behind her was all ruined stone and broken bodies.

A young miner from Albrecht’s section drifted over, wide-eyed and shameless.

“You didn’t stake them? You just crushed them!?”

Liza laughed.

“Yeah, kiddo. We’re just three people. Tryin’ to fight an army in the open? That’s suicide.

We’re not like Dad.

You’ll see how we cleaned up later.”

Eleanor let the “kiddo” comment slide.

She and Liza were close in age, but this story came first.

Mabel took over.

She described the grappling shot—how she fired clean through the machicolation, and how Gravitas reeled them up like a starving fisherman hauling line.

That’s when the goblin showed up.

Edmund drifted over from Albrecht’s table, a few other miners subtly shifting to listen closer.

“Pardon. What?” was all he managed.

He could track plenty—but magic stacked on magic, non-lethal and cooperative, short-circuited every gear in his head.

Albrecht’s eyes tracked Zina’s shift, then Edmund’s. He didn’t say anything—just settled deeper into his seat like he knew what came next.

A few miners had stopped eating entirely. One held a fork in midair like it might help him process orbital ascent via magical hardware.

Liza was fully in it now—talking with her hands, eyes wide, words coming faster.

“Yeah, and when we got to Count Sappy Butter’s room—”

she didn’t even try to correct herself—

“he tried to do the whole menacing slag routine, like ‘I, Count Sablefield—’”

She threw up finger quotes, then mimicked a pompous bow.

“I dunno what he was gonna say, but I had Mabel Ventus me into him, and the pilebunker did the rest.”

A ripple of reactions followed. A few gasps. One whistle.

And one confused miner halfway through a forkful of cabbage.

“Wait, hold on. What’s Ventus?”

Mabel didn’t miss a moment.

“Oh, it’s just a lot of wind in one spot.

Think like an explosion or a river—but no fire, no water. Just air.”

She sipped her drink.

“Fast air.”

Even Estes was invested now.

She leaned on the counter, arms dusted in flour, brows lifted.

“Shafts above, Mabel. What did the Tradesman Guild pay for a night like that?”

Liza gave a defeated shrug, stabbing the last of her mash.

“The run itself was just over thirty gold.

We got a little greedy with salvage and came back with a couple thousand.”

She took a sip, then added,

“Five hundred of it went to Eris. Not sure why she didn’t take more.”

Estes blinked.

Then just muttered,

“…Gonna have to bake more pies.”

Mabel added helpfully,

“She didn’t take more because gold’s heavy. Like, really heavy.”

Liza nodded, dead serious.

“She tried to carry all of it in one go.

Didn’t want to make a second trip.”

Estes stared.

“…Did it work?”

Liza sighed.

“She got most of it out the door. Then fell down the stairs.

Twice. I don't want to imagine hiking that boulder all the way to Night Shift in the sun.

Hope that vampire strength pays off.”

The members of Rail Crew 68 shared a look.

Even Zina paused, arms crossed, eyes narrowed like she was recalculating everything.

Only Eleanor found her voice.

She stared at Albrecht, then back at the Graveins.

“Thousands of forgin’ gold?

Boss… what is this?”

Albrecht looked over at the sisters—surrounded now, half the pub leaning in, trying to pry details loose like treasure from stone.

Liza was animated, Mabel calmly answering questions.

He glanced back at what little of his crew was with him.

Just a few faces—but all of them watching, listening, weighing.

Albrecht nodded to himself.

“This is that Gravein spirit,” he said quietly. “And we could use it on that Lord hunt we’ve been eyeing.”