AN: A bit of a shorter chapter this time around, but it's all getting us lined up for the shitstorm- uhm... excitement of Chapter 13.

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Shadows danced with the flickering light cast onto the large, rough-hewn stone blocks that built up the walls of the catacombs. A musty smell somewhere between parchment and death inundated the air, causing most of their party to cover their mouths and noses with whatever cloth they had at hand.

To Six, though, it smelled like home. Even after three years away from the dry, cob-webbed tunnels, the scent was as familiar to her as that of cooked rice.

It was hard to believe it had been that long since she'd set foot under the city. She was fourteen when she'd managed to slink into the darkness of the tunnels, fifteen when she'd finally found a way out of the city. Now, halfway through July and on the cusp of her eighteenth birthday, she was back.

She honestly thought she'd have felt angry or anxious about being back in Inner Seoul. Or even nostalgic as she revisited the city of her youth. Instead, she felt an odd sense of indifference. It may have smelt like home, but it didn't feel like home. Home was the Jeon's country estate, wrapped in silken sheets and pressed to Yoongi's side.

Shaking the thoughts from her brain, she held her torch higher over her head and surveyed the passages that radiated out from her current position. Behind her, she heard the impatient shifting of the others, the officers eager to get through the eerie, quiet underground to their destination.

"How much further is it?" Hoseok demanded when she paused again to study a fork in the passage.

"Not much," she murmured back, glancing at him with barely concealed annoyance. "Although if you keep asking me that, I'll take the long way."

"This entire place feels like the long way." Another silver head appeared next to Hoseok's. The young man, a former handler known as Yesung, squinted down the passageway that Six had been inspecting. "I can't believe all this is under here."

He held up a sheet of paper tacked to a small plank of wood and quickly sketched out the fork with a charcoal pencil, adding it to the map he was making. It had been his idea to chart it out as they went and Six was grateful he'd taken on the task. Yoongi would finally have his gods-be-damned map and she'd no longer be responsible for supplying it.

"You've never been to the city," she stated with a shrug once the man lowered his board. The former handler had lived his whole life on the Jeon estate, working for the family at the country pens before they were destroyed.

"A lot of the city folk don't realize this place exists, either." Yoongi joined them, touching the small of Six's back. "Which way?"

The young woman licked her lips and glanced between the two potential directions. She closed her eyes and brought up her mental map. She had been right that she would remember better when actually in the catacombs but there were still fuzzy sections; areas she couldn't quite recall after three years away.

"We go right."

The four of them proceeded down the path she indicated. Whenever a new passage branched off theirs, they would stop just long enough for Six to confirm her bearings and Yesung to make a note on his map. Time lost all meaning in the subterranean hallways but Six was pretty sure it only took them an additional half hour to reach the end of the path. Literally.

"It's a dead end!" Hoseok pushed past Six and ran his hand over the rough stones in front of them. He swore before turning to glare at her. "Which turn was the wrong one?"

Six resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Instead she handed her torch to Yesung and joined Hoseok at the stone wall that blocked their path. "None of them. We're here." She pointed upward. It was difficult to see in the flicking torchlight but the very top of the wall didn't quite reach the ceiling.

It took a little finagling to get all four of them up the wall and over to the other side with their torches intact and no one burnt. Once on the far side, Six took a moment to brush the dust off her clothing while the men inspected their new surroundings, torches held high above their heads.

They stood in a small, square chamber filled with stacks of wooden crates and ceramic vessels. A heavy-looking wooden door stood closed on the far side. As they were still underground, there were no windows in the room.

"Where are we?" Hoseok's voice was barely above a whisper. She glanced over at him, watching the light reflect in his eyes.

"Pen storeroom," she supplied, prying the lid off one of the crates. It was filled with thin blankets.

"Are the pens through there, then?" Yesung pointed toward the door with his torch and Six nodded.

"These catacombs are remnants of the old city, before the Kim Empire took control." She put the lid quietly back in place. "When the pens were built, the nobles just re-used the space already dug out by their ancestors. Those walls," she waved at the one they had so recently shimmied over, "were never meant to be permanent, in case they wanted to expand. That's why they don't go all the way up."

She moved to the door and pressed her ear against the jamb. "Every pen has storerooms between the cells and the rest of the catacombs as a sort of buffer between the tunnels and the slave rooms."

"How do you know all this?" Yesung joined her at the door, holding the torch out as if that would help her listen. The sentiment was appreciated, even if the action was pointless.

"Alchemist Heechul told me after I explained to him how I'd gotten into the catacombs."

"How did he know all that?" Yesung wondered.

"You would need to ask him that." Yoongi waved the older man back from the door, taking his place next to Six. "But good luck getting a straight answer."

"Can we just go through the damn door now?" Hoseok glanced back at the dark space above the wall. "I don't want to waste any more time. We need to confirm this is the right place and start moving the weapons. We only have two days before the festival."

Six nodded and stepped back from the door just enough to grip the handle. If she'd led them to the correct pen, it should have been unlocked. She held her breath as she turned it.  The door swung open on silent hinges and she exhaled in relief.

They were met with a hallway filled with lit sconces and flanked by iron-barred rooms: slave cells. Six felt a prickle run up her back at the sight but pushed it away. She thought she heard a small noise from Hoseok but ignored it. She could bet he was just as uncomfortable when faced with the cells as she was and, despite not particularly liking him, she felt a sense of solidarity with him in that moment.

"About time you lot got here." A figure emerged from one of the cells, brushing his dark hair back from his forehead with one hand. His other hand lay casually on the whip attached to his belt. Six felt a stab of panic: she didn't recognize this man and he was dressed as a city handler.

"The catacombs are vast." Yoongi stepped forward, reaching a hand toward the stranger. They clasped their hands briefly before exchanging words in the Noble tongue that Six didn't understand.

She caught Hoseok's eye, raising her eyebrows at him. He gave her a barely perceptible shrug; apparently, he didn't speak any more Noble than she did. Most slaves knew a handful of terms from overhearing their owners use them but very few knew enough to hold a conversation. It was more surprising that the handler Yoongi spoke to knew as much as he did.  A glance at the bewildered expression on Yesung's face showed their self-proclaimed map-maker was as lost as they were.

"You all can relax," Yoongi's lazy tone met Six's ears and she looked back at him. "He checks out; he's with us."

"Lee Donghae." The handler held his hand out toward Hoseok, then Yesung in turn. He paused when he gazed down at Six. His brows pinched as he took in her face. "Where are you from?"

"Nam Hanbin pens," she replied tersely, not liking how he was scrutinizing her features.

"Not what I meant," he muttered, finally reaching out to shake her hand. "You just look like one of mine."

There was a pause after she let go of his hand. "What do you mean 'one of yours'?"

"I'm a handler with Jang Jiseok. We've got a kid in there that..." he made a vague gesture toward her face. "Not as pronounced, but..." He shrugged. "Doesn't matter. We'll have time later for introductions when you get them out of here."

"Them?" Six pressed.

"He has a brother." Donghae turned to Yoongi, cutting the conversation short before Six had the chance to ask any more questions. "Come on, I'll show you to your troops. They're settled in the other blocks with our city group, getting to know their comrades; you guys had the bad luck to come out in the one cell block we didn't need to use."

As they moved down the hallway toward the rest of the Jeon's city pens, Six tried to keep her excitement in check. Her stomach leapt and twittered, and she had to bite her bottom lip to keep a giddy smile from slipping onto her face.

Somewhere in one of the vast pens of the Slave Quarter was a boy that looked like her. Her mother was the only other person she'd ever seen that shared her foreign features. If this boy was from her people, what else did he share with her besides a physical resemblance?

She needed to talk to Yoongi about the possibility of another slave with magic. She didn't know who her people were but if she had the ability to throw lightning, maybe this boy could do it, too. She'd bring it up when they got back to the Jeon's city estate. She didn't want to derail them from the current task, and she wasn't quite sure she wanted to say something about it in front of the Jang handler. Yoongi may have trusted him but Six needed to see more before she'd let that kind of information casually slip.

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AN: A note on how I'm handling the names in this book (i.e.: Birth-names vs stage names vs nicknames).

As this is intended to be an epic fantasy, I told myself I would be using strictly birth-names and applicable nicknames for any real person I drag into this. You've probably noticed I use Jeongguk instead of Jungkook. The former is his birth-name while the latter is a stage-name.

In the case of Hoseok, I kept his nickname of Hobi as it makes linguistic sense. Using Suga as a nickname for Yoongi doesn't make sense in the context of the story, nor can it be linguistically explained. Using Jin as a nickname for Seokjin also makes sense (and I hope I wouldn't need to explain why!)

All that said, I made an exception in this chapter for one of the characters, and for a really good reason.

Everyone, please welcome to the book Yesung, vocalist for Super Junior! (I don't know why they started to invade this fic, but the SJ boys are arriving in force XD Yesung makes the 4th SJ man to make an appearance.)  He's the guy in the picture at the top of this chapter.

Yesung is not his birth-name. His birth-name is Kim Jonghoon. I feel a little bad about breaking my own rule about using everyone's real names in this fic, but I have a really good reason for making Yesung the exception. The poor guy has the unfortunate luck of sharing a first name with Choi Jonghoon.

Choi Jonghoon was the leader of the Kpop group F.T. Island, and he is currently serving out his 5-year jail sentence for bribery, illegally distribution of sex tapes, filming women without their permission, and, the most important one, motherfucking rape.

"But I've never heard of any of these people!" I hear some of you say.

That doesn't really surprise me. I'm 35. Super Junior is from my generation (although they are still active); they're all around my age, give or take a couple years here or there. Many younger readers are most likely not familiar with SJ (other than maybe Heechul. For those who don't know him, do you remember when Namjoon cuts the onion with Jin's help on Weekly Idol? He was one of the hosts during that episode.  This guy, the blond kissing Jimin on the cheek:

ANYWAY. I digress.

The ultimate reason I am using Yesung's stage name is because I don't want anyone unfamiliar with non-BTS groups to Google "Jonghoon" when they see me use the name and wonder why the ever living fuck I'm including a convicted rapist in the story, because Googling Jonghoon will immediately bring up Choi Jonghoon, not Kim Jonghoon.