Downtown Druid

Dantes looked out over the no-man’s land that surrounded the Pit as he rode in a caged wagon protected by more than two dozen guards. It was a wild, overgrown area filled with all manner of vermin and strays. He wondered idly why he’d never considered focusing on building a garden within it. It seemed like a stupid waste. Was it because he had been avoiding thinking about the Pit? That seemed the likeliest answer, but it was foolish of him to waste all that prime green space. It was something he’d have to start amending.

The wagon reached the edge of the Maw and came to a lurching stop. It wasn’t the usual time to drop new prisoners and supplies into the Pit, but they’d made an exception for him. It made him feel so very special.

The guards moved warily to get him out of the cage, but Dantes simply took off his manacles and leg locks, and pushed it open himself. He’d idly picked all of the locks during the trip, it was a pleasant way to keep his hands busy.

The guards all jumped as he stepped out, and several raised crossbows to aim at him, but he held up his hands, and Pacha gestured for them to lower them, approaching Dantes with his sword and gesturing for him to start moving, which he did with no complaint.

“Do you feel bad for Gavain?” Dantes asked as they moved. Gavain and Pacha had separated after Dantes had been locked in the wagon. Taken by different guards to be held until he was given up to Frasheid.

Pacha shook his head. “That man lives with no regrets. Exists only for Justice. I don’t feel bad for him, I feel envious.”

Dantes shrugged. “I feel bad for him. Considering what Frasheid does to its slaves,I can’t imagine what they’re planning to do to Gavain.”

Pacha’s expression hardened and he kept pushing Dantes forward until they were near the edge of the Pit.

Security at the Maw had changed a lot since Dantes had escaped, or rather because of Dantes’s escape. There was a wooden fence surrounding the maw, ten feet from the lip of it where men with crossbows stood watch. The guard presence in general had doubled. Dantes guessed that most of them were happy for the job, the jail itself may be difficult to manage, but watching the Maw? That was easy work for a lazy guardsman.

Dantes reached the platform from which men were thrown into the Pit, and a young mage approached him, muttering under his breath for a few moments.

Dantes felt his fingers start to tingle as the feather fall spell began to affect him, then the mage leaned close and slipped a knife into his pocket.

“My sister works at the Vixen. Thank you for healing her and my mother,” said the mage, working the sentence into his arcane mutterings.

Dantes slipped it back into the mage’s pocket. “I won’t need it, but I’ll remember you gave it to me.”

The mage nodded and stepped back.

Dantes stepped forward, and looked down into the pit. Where there had once been only sand, now a massive stump sat in the center of it where Dantes had grown his Mother’s Reach and escaped the prison. Around it, nearly a hundred men were gathered, looking up at Dantes and the guards.

With his enhanced hearing, Dantes could hear two of the guards talking behind him.

“It’s odd how quiet they are.”

“Aye. They should be hooting and hollering about what they’re going to be doing to him when he lands.”

“It’s damned unsettling.”

Pacha approached again with his sword drawn. “Are you going to step in yourself, or are we going to throw you?”

Dantes looked back at him and smiled for a moment before stepping off the edge. He fixed the cuff of his jacket as he descended, and looked down as a half dozen men climbed up onto the stump and stood near where he was about to land, all of the others gathered there kept their distance.

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Dantes landed and the men closest to him bowed their heads a bit. Dantes clasped the nearest one, a half-orc half-elf, on the shoulder.

“Aurelio. It’s good to see you. Your wife asked me to give you her love.”

“Thank you, sir. I appreciate you making sure she’s taken care of.”

Dantes nodded. “You didn’t give anyone else up, stayed true to your word. Loyalty means you and yours will be set for life.”

He nodded again.

“Let’s head to the Undermarket, shall we? I’d like to see how things have changed.”

Aurelio nodded, and he and the other men fell in on either side of Dantes as he walked.

The rest of the crowd stared at him as he walked off the stump, muttering. Some of them sounded afraid, other’s angry, but none of them tried anything. None even dared to take a step toward him. The few that met his gaze nodded at him respectfully, and Dantes noted who they were as he walked.

The Underprison was dark, the halls narrow, and the atmosphere oppressive, but things were very different for him from the last time he’d been there. His senses were stronger, for one. He could hear and sense everything around him, even with his eyes closed. The sounds bouncing off the narrow walls let him detect everything with ease. He also began to gather rats, just as he had before, having them watch his back as he weaved his way through all of the murderers, rapists and thieves that surrounded him.

The Undermarket was busy, as it always was, and Dantes made his way for the Which Wench, where he found Celeste standing at the entrance, in the skin of a beautiful human woman wearing nothing at all, whose hair was long enough to conceal all of the most enticing places.

“Two-name No-name! I’d heard you’d be joining us again soon.”

Dantes blinked, seeing her briefly shift into a white creature with too long limbs and pitch black eyes, but he ignored that.

“For just a little while.”

“Confidence. Syn always liked that about you.”

He jerked his neck to make his men fan out and watch his back as he leaned closer to Celeste. He didn’t need them to watch his back, but he didn’t want them listening in.

“Why are you still here? I thought with Syn's release she was going to free all of you?”

Celeste nodded. “Many of us did leave, but some are bound in different ways, more complex ones that can’t be figured out easily. Some that were freed have stayed.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “We have nowhere else to go. The world above us hates us. No nation welcomes us as they do other Fey. Here we’re safe, we have one another, we can live as we want and shift as we will.”

Dantes nodded, absorbing that information, feeling a little saddened by it. The one thing he counted on Rendhold for, was for it to be home. Parts of it may have hated him, or spat on him, but other parts absorbed him without a second thought, as if he’d always belonged. He couldn’t imagine not feeling that bare minimum of acceptance anywhere he went, or feeling so desperate for a place to exist that the Pit would be his choice. “I’ll be back later to roll some dice like old times if you’re up for it.”

“I’m up for that and so much more,” she said, batting her eyelashes at him.

He chuckled and started to walk away, heading toward the exit, the men followed him warily.

“Dantes, sir. The Consortium has gotten all the items you requested from them, including the room with a real bed. Do you want to see them?”

Dantes shook his head. “No, that’s all for show, and to have a place to rest and store things during the day. You all can use the room to sleep if you’d like.”

“Where will you be?”

Dantes looked at him. “Back at the Vixen, sleeping in the arms of my woman with a bellyful of freshly cooked food.”

Aurelio blinked at him, not understanding.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be bringing you and the other men back food as well. On top of whatever else you might want.”

Aurelio looked at the others, but none seemed comfortable asking the obvious question.

“Don’t worry, it’ll become clear shortly.”

They walked through winding and narrow paths until the sounds of the more active part of the Underprison faded and only their own footsteps and breathing could be heard. They eventually reached a wide open chamber with high ceilings and a dirt floor. It was smaller than the last chamber he’d started a garden in, but this one only needed to grow one thing.

He took a seed from his pocket, and tossed it into the air once before catching it. He extended one of the fingers on his wooden hand into a sharp thorn, and pricked his thumb on his right hand. He then let several drops of blood drip onto the seed. He motioned for all of the other men to back away as he moved to the center of the room, and buried the seed.

He sent his will into it, and connected it to all of the other lifeforce in the city through himself.

“Grow.”

The little seed listened. First its roots began to spread through the ground, then a sprout sprung through the dirt, then a sapling, and soon after that a tree taller and wider than Dantes sat in the chamber, blood red leaves springing from it in a thick canopy above their heads.

Dantes placed his hand on the trunk of it, feeling the life flowing through it and how it connected to the rest of the city. He followed those connections until he found what he was looking for, then he released that tight hold he held on himself.

He pushed through the tree in the Pit, and walked out into his audience chamber, where a half naked Sevryn sat in his throne holding a bottle of wine with two glasses dangling from her other hand and looking over her shoulder.

“I’ve missed you, Dantes.”

“I know. It’s truly tragic when the law tears people apart for so long.”

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