Norwegian Ice Purveyors Ltd occupied a side street a stone's throw from bustling Bond Street, though conspicuously lacking its opulent clientele.

Yvette observed the quaint advertisements parading outside - laborers clad in sandwich boards resembling comical armor, a hallmark of Victorian commerce. Steeling herself against the fishy undercurrent in the air, she pushed through the shop door.

"Your establishment's recent... reputation troubles me," Yvette began pointedly.

The clerk blanched. "Sir! Pay no heed to competitors' venomous lies—"

"Precisely!" Yvette cut him off. "Only dullards swallow such calumny. We enlightened minds judge through observation!" She launched into an impassioned defense of Norwegian ice quality, each argument met with the clerk's scribbling approval.

When deftly steering conversation toward dwindling profits, she watched desperation flicker across his weathered face. This man reeked of common stock - starched linens perfumed with cheap herbals masking dye-fixing nitrates extracted from chicken dung. No mastermind, just a wage slave with a frugal wife.

Her true objective emerged as warehouse inspection. After token resistance, the clerk relented, lured by potential aristocratic patronage.

The icehouse transported them into Niflheim's domain. Mountains of crystalline blocks stacked like dragon's hoard pierced summer's veil with wintry breath. Holding a lantern to the frozen monoliths, the clerk beamed with hometown pride until Yvette's tracker nose caught the telltale taint - not common mackerel stench, but the brackish reek of sunless abysses from Grey's accursed banquet.

"Recent shipment?" she inquired, though knowing the answer. Ten days aligned perfectly with the monstrosity's arrival. Tracing the manifest led to Trident Shipping's Heather departing imminently.

Mad dash through London's thoroughfares in a bucketing hansom revealed the cabbie's romantic delusions. She played along, though her quarry posed greater menace than any star-crossed lover.

The Thames' cancerous outflow greeted them - a bubbling midden where six million souls' effluvia gathered. Here, beneath the methane explosions and floating cadavers of last year's pleasure cruise disaster, Yvette's true hunt began.

Aboard the Heather, "Jolly Roger" seethed through his scrubbing duties. The first mate's spittle still dried on his cheek. How the Drowning God's disciple longed to drag that Viking-descended fool into the briny depths! But discipline held him - London's occult sentinels were stirring. Better flee to Nordic fjords before—

His rumination shattered as ten bone-white fingers curled over the gunwale. Something ancient and hungry had been clinging there since port, patient as the tides.

The game boards were set. Beneath the foul Thames, past the oblivious sailors, hunter and hunted both scented blood in the water.

Yvette clung to the ship's rail, breathless from her last-minute boarding.

She'd sprinted across docked vessels when port officials pointed out the departing ship, timing her leap onto Erica's hull as it inched past a neighboring brig. Now dangling above London's putrid outflows, she fought queasiness - the water steamed with slaughterhouse waste and rotting refuse. This fetid stew reminded her dim inherited memories of the "Great Stink" that once halted Parliament. If current reek indicated anything, history might soon repeat.

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The stench urged haste. Activating her stealth abilities seemed prudent when voices interrupted - "Merry Roger" and an old salt arguing about spoiled fish. She eavesdropped until the frustrated veteran left, then flipped aboard toward the cargo hold.

Below deck, the boatswain barked orders: "Scour every plank! Roger's rotting stinkfish taints our cotton cargo!" Curses and brine confirmed her suspicions, but pinpointing the killer among scattered crew remained impossible.

Options brewed: Ambush after identification, using the Nightmare Ring to disorient? Or blanket-sleep the crew now? The first tempted - catch the culprit off-guard. But the sewage stink warned: once in open sea, any sailor could escape diving. Only this polluted stretch trapped swimmers. Decision solidified.

She unleashed the Nightmare Ring. Sailors crumpled. On deck, Yvette's silenced revolver snipped rigging. Sails tumbled; windless in the filth, Erica drifted stagnant. Steamers might've complicated sabotage - blessed old tech reliability.

Reloading, she descended... unaware "Merry Roger" already stirred. The pirate sensed supernatural tampering. Hull vibrations confirmed sails down - trapped in sewage. Snatching multiple pistols, he charged upward.

They met mid-stairwell. Recognition flashed: only empowered beings stayed conscious. Guns erupted.

Yvette's three shots struck true. Two lead rounds bounced off reptilian hide; a steel core round chipped a neck scale. The pirate chuckled, plucking the slug from his cheek. Meanwhile, his blunderbuss blast should've shredded her - yet shot pattern magically outlined her silhouette, leaving her untouched.

Her necklace burned - the reliquary containing a bound "angel" redirected bullets through esoteric geometries. Blood seeped from its edges. Finite protection. Roger's belt bristled with pistols; confined corridors favored his spreadshots. She retreated topside, snapping two parting rounds.

He pursued. Open deck meant home advantage - brine empowered him. The duel's next phase would favor brutish strength over trick-shot geometries.

The salt-stained planks proved Yvette's tactical ground. She burst onto the deck first, damp wood perfect for skidding backward while loading steel-jacketed rounds with practiced hands. As her scarred opponent emerged, six-gun blazed at facial weak points - eyesockets, nostrils, any unarmored crevice.

The brigand they called Jolly Roger snarled, his bullet-riddled palm weeping crimson. This milksop needed drowning. Drawing deep breaths like a sounding whale, he loosed an ineffable resonance that reverberated through bones rather than ears. Against her will, Yvette's legs carried her toward the scum-coated railing, body bending backward over the foetid swell.

Through gritted teeth, she triggered the Damping Field - her ace against harmonics. Ambient vibrations dissolved into warmth as control flooded back. The pirate gaped. His Siren Call worked through skeletal conduction! How had this landrat countered it?

Roaring in frustration, Jolly Roger's human mask sloughed away, revealing craggy scales glittering venom-green. Cutlass held high, he charged through renewed gunfire, trusting his mucus-slicked hide against mundane steel.

Their duel became lethal ballet. Yvette's Patterned blade - legacy of some forgotten civilization - shattered his cutlass but skittered harmlessly across lubricated scales. The pirate warlock conjured tempest waves across still waters, deck heaving like drunken whaler. Yet the investigator danced through turbulence, manipulating kinetic vectors like marionette strings.

When clawed hands sought to disarm her, Yvette feigned retreat toward the harpoon cannon. Norse runes etched its cast-iron breach - a leftover from whaling days. With calculated desperation, she channeled Flame Cloak's thermal burst into the powder chamber. The barbed iron sang from its barrel, pinning the scalekin through gut with sickening crunch.

Blood bubbled at Yvette's lips as she collapsed. Energy transference exacted toll - each joule leveraged through flesh cost capillaries burst. Yet kneeling in gore, she catalogued this new threshold: 18,327 newtons sustained for 0.6 seconds before vascular rupture. Valuable data for next encounter.