Downtown Druid

Dantes sat in his tree-throne staring through the glass ceiling to look at the clear night sky. The stars were clear and bright, as was the moon. Without the Academy to light the streetlights, the view of the sky was much more striking than usual. He checked on his operations that ran in the middle of the night. He saw one of his dealers getting roughed up by a few drunks at the docks. He sent a few bats to leap at their faces and give his man time to escape. A guard patrol holding torches was about to turn down a street in which he had a robbery ongoing, so he put one hundred rats in their path and had them simply stare at the patrol, their eyes glinting in torchlight. The patrol decided to take a different route.

He stretched and yawned. Sleep hadn’t been coming easily to him as of late. Whatever god held the axe to his throat in his dreams had seen to that. He still occasionally had nights where no dreams touched him, but even from those he often found himself waking in a cold sweat, clutching his own neck. Sevryn had been nice enough to offer him a multitude of ways to help put him back to sleep, and he’d taken her up on them, but this night when he awoke she was no longer in his bed. That was fine, she had her own life and business, he was just happy to enjoy her company at night when he could, both at the dinner table and in his bed.

The sickness that had been gnawing at the edges of the city had started to spread more. It was still only at the outskirts, outside the gates, but the Council and the House of Lords had quickly made the decision to seal the main gates from outsiders not bringing in goods. Luckily, Tak had been able to adjust his operations to compensate for that, but if things continued it was quite possible that the city would be closed down altogether. Eventually there wouldn’t be any traders willing to risk travel for fear of the sickness anyway. Dantes’s larger concern was the docks. If things got bad enough to seal the gates, then the docks might be next, with no traders willing to risk docking in a plagueridden city and that meant the majority of his income and operations would be done for. He’d been mitigating that weakness since he took over operations. Stockpiling goods, creating other methods of revenue, strengthening his hold on Midtown, but it would be a very painful thing to have to endure.

Dantes stood and walked over to one of the large black dogs lounging in the moss, coughing a bit. He scratched him behind the ears. Shortly after, the second one lumbered over and laid down closer, so he scratched that one behind the ears as well.

He sensed some movement, and heard sounds in his apartments.

“Come on, boys,” he said to the dogs as he brought himself to his feet and started to walk toward the sound, quickly finding its source as the extra rooms toward the back of the apartment. He heard some people stumbling in the dark for a few moments before light started to shine under the door he was approaching.

He opened the door to see Wane and Felix sitting up in their beds squinting and rubbing their faces. There was a small orb of light floating in the middle of the room casting light around it.

“Felix! Wane! Good to see that you’re both awake.”

“I feel like kobold shit that’s been drying in the sun,” said Wane, rolling around his jaw as he inspected his surroundings.

“Trust me, you look worse than you feel,” responded Dantes. They did look rough. A week in bed recovering from wounds while unconscious didn’t exactly give one a healthy glow. Clay and Hema had managed to feed them some kind of gruel, and keep them hydrated while treating them, but that wasn’t a great long term solution. Felix, who was already long and lanky, was now looking skeletal.

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Dantes moved to pour each of them a cup of water from a nearby pitcher. Felix could barely hold the cup, but he managed a small sip and a nod of thanks before laying back down in the bed. He wasn’t asleep, but seemed to not have the energy to talk.

“The kitchen will be open in a couple hours. I’ll have them make you both something easy to get down, then I’ll send the girls to get you some books, or anything else you need to stay entertained… maybe some dice and a deck of cards.”

Wane chuckled a bit at that. He was stretching his fingers and bending his legs in the bed. He grimaced as he did so, but he clearly wanted to make sure everything still worked as he remembered it. One of the dogs leapt up into his bed and he patted its side. The other leapt into Felix’s causing him to grunt, but he also managed to rest a hand on the dog in spite of his exhaustion.

“The Academy is still sealed?”

“Yes,” responded Dantes, waiting for an explanation he felt he was owed after they teleported into his garden.

Wane scowled. “I should still be there. Gods dammit.”

Dantes waited silently.

Wane glanced sideways at him, quickly catching what he was waiting for. “The sealing, it was what Merle and the rest of us had been planning since we got out.” He leaned against the headboard. “We met with old contacts, prepared the spell, gathered our strength, and found a battery for it. You helped with that last part actually.”

“Why? Why did you seal it?”

“To take control. To force the change the Academy needs. By the time the seal comes down, either Merle will control the academy, or he’ll be dead.”

“What makes you think he’ll be able to maintain control after that? The city won’t just let him run the Academy. One of the members of the council is the head of the Academy. I highly doubt he’ll just roll over.”

Wane laughed. “Oh, he definitely won’t just roll over. He’s the one that did this to Felix and me.”

Dantes pushed off from the wall he’d been leaning on. “Kline is within the seal?”

Wane nodded a look of confusion on his face. “Yes. We made certain that he would be.”

Dantes made his expression neutral again. He hadn’t heard that. It wasn’t even a rumor. That meant that it was being hidden, and hidden well if he hadn’t heard of it. He didn’t monitor the council’s comings and goings, but they were common knowledge. Was Argenta the one hiding it? She had to know. Was it hidden so that she could continue to project Rendhold's strength?

“You didn’t answer my question though. How do you expect things to go once the seal has dropped? How could you possibly take things over with no pushback?”

Wane gave a wry smile. “With magic.”

Dantes shook his head, and looked to Felix. “And you were working with them as well?”

Felix groaned in such a way to indicate the negative.

“He didn’t want anything to do with it. I asked Merle to let me talk to you to see if we could pressure him into it, but he asked me to hold off. He sent both of us here after Kline managed to hit us with that spell. He did it just before the seal was completely up. I’m guessing…he’d been planning it. Maybe not for us specifically, but for any of the Collared that were hurt before things were closed off. He must’ve wanted them sent to you.”

That made sense, he had a good relationship with Merle and the Collared. Merle would also understand that he’d see the value in having control of some of the few free mages and would make whatever investment was needed to help them.

“Do you have any idea when the seal will be lifted?”

“Merle and Orebus can drop it if they feel that they’ve accomplished the mission. Otherwise it’ll last until the battery burns out.”

“How long will that take?”

Wane shrugged. “Could be months. Could be weeks. Hard to say. The spell was crafted very efficiently and the initial drawing of the veil was powered by all of us, but with how much magic is being thrown around in there it’s hard to say how everything will interact.”

“What is the battery? You said I had a hand in getting it.”

“It’s our old friend, Pillion.”

Dantes frowned, mentally adjusting what he’d thought of as the Collared’s capacity for cruelty. He shrugged.

“Well, I’m happy to take care of both of you here. We need to keep it quiet though. Most of the loose mages have been scooped up by Uptown or the guard. They’re not even lighting the streets anymore.” He started to walk toward the door. “Get some more rest. I’ll have the kitchen send up that food I promised and I’ll make sure that you’re taken care of.” He looked at the pair of comfortable dogs on the beds. “You can keep the extra blankets.”

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