Downtown Druid

Jacopo was hanging upside down from Dantes’s tree throne as a bat when he found him. Hanging from his mouth was a fat moth that was still wriggling a bit. He leapt from the throne, launched himself a few feet, and shifted into a rat in mid air, maintaining his control of the moth as he landed and continuing his meal as he got comfortable on Dantes’s shoulder. There wasn’t always much of a need for conversation between them. They could sense one another’s thoughts without effort, and feel one another’s intentions. The only time conversations were really needed were when the senses or understandings of one didn’t fully translate to the other, or one of them really needed to tell the other a joke.

Dantes climbed onto the roof through the access he had in his chambers and shifted into a pigeon, taking flight toward the docks. He didn’t have a perfect idea of where he was heading, but the feeling of rot was the strongest there, and he hoped to be able to pinpoint it better as he got closer. He did some circles over the docks, with Jacopo in tow. The streets were sparse, with only local sailors at the taverns and whorehouses that dotted them. Those few foreign ships in the docks hadn’t let their sailors take shore leave for fear of bringing the sickness onboard. The busiest part of the dock was where one leviathan hunter had docked with a recent kill, and Dantes found that the smell of its fat being rendered made him feel much hungrier as a pigeon than it had as a man.

As he did his circles, he started to get a better and better idea of where the rot he was looking for was. A series of fish processing buildings that seemed abandoned towards the south end of the docks were where he felt the strongest impression of it, the worst feeling of rot. He landed on the roof of one of them, and shifted into a rat along with Jacopo, crawling into the building where the sense of decay was enough to make their eyes water.

They moved through some narrow corridors, the smell of fish still permeated everything despite the years of disuse. They eventually saw several other rats scurrying in the same direction that they were moving. Dantes reached out to them, but his mind bounced off of theirs. He exchanged a look with Jacopo, and followed where they were going, continuing to try and contact any rats in the area. All of those in the immediate vicinity ignored him, but a few nearby heard his call and started to gather. Eventually Dantes and Jacopo reached what all of the other rats were heading toward.

Even with the stomach of a rat, Dantes felt ill. The sense of rot and sickness was thick in the air, and in the center of a large open room, was a mass of rats writhing and coiling together. Their fur was patchy, with exposed skin showing oozing lesions and pustules near bursting. Their bodies seemed to be blending together in a way that, at first, Dantes thought it was a trick of the light, but he realized that all of the rats in the writhing pile were connected to one another, joined into a horrifying mass of flesh where their pustules and scabs had melted into one another.

There was a kind of familiarity to it, and Dantes realized it looked almost like a sick mockery of the rat god he’d met so long ago. There was such an inherent sense of falsehood and evil to it that was so strong that Dantes forgot himself for a moment and found himself shifting a wand protruding from his wooden palm and a scowl on his face.

Jacopo considered suggesting caution, but he felt the same revulsion to what he was seeing as Dantes did, except even more so, as in his mind he could feel just a trace of whatever sick call had led his cousins there.

Dantes began to send his will through the wand when he was very suddenly hit by something massive and thrown into an old pile of rotted barrels that shattered from his impact. He quickly adjusted the aim of his arm toward where the blow had come from and fired off the wand he’d been readying sending out a blanket of flames.

A large spiderlike figure leapt away from the blast, but a dozen of the plague rats that had been coming toward him were instantly immolated.

Dantes pulled the pistol from his waist and held it out in front of himself, starting to bring in the rats he’d rallied outside while also starting to pull in additional vermin with his marks. He could see through Jacopo’s eyes that the figure was hanging suspended in the air in the corner. He aimed his pistol and fired.

The figure launched itself toward him, landing in the midst of the writhing flesh mass, and striking out with one of its limbs.

Dantes dodged backwards deftly, but clutched his arm as pain shot up it. At first he thought he’d been injured, then he realized the source of the pain was a leaf tattoo on his arm. He sheathed his pistol and drew a long dagger.

“Serpica. I guess hitting you half the time that I shoot isn’t the worst record.”

She raised a robed hand and all of the rats beneath her began to swarm toward him.

The rats he’d summoned arrived just in time to meet the diseased swarm, but as they fought Dantes noticed that any of the rats he’d summoned that were bitten or scratched immediately started to slow or even go completely still, their bodies weakening quickly to whatever illness had spread to the others. He scowled and sent them away, along with all of the other vermin he’d been starting to mass.

“You’re a quick learner,” said Serpica, moving closer to him.

He took a good look at her. She was still wearing a heavy black robe that covered her completely, her face hidden behind a featureless mask. From her back protruded four strange limbs that Dantes realized were made of the same kind of living wood as his hand. He hadn’t considered jamming four more branches into his back, it seemed painful.

“I’m guessing you’ve been blessed by the rat god too. That’s why I can’t control them?”

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She shrugged with her regular arms. “It’s no surprise. I’ve carried his blessing far longer than you.”

“The taint I’m feeling, the rot in this city, the disease. It’s you?” He’d suspected it might be, since his talk with Traizen those weeks ago, but hadn’t been certain. There were so many enemies in his life, it could be unwise to presume any action was a specific one of them.

“Of course one as impure as you would see purity as corruption. I’m bringing life to this city. Filling it with more than has ever been here before. When that life has burned through every soul here that is unworthy of the Mother’s gifts, it will return to nature as it should.”

Jacopo subtly moved to Dantes’s right arm, gripping his dagger with his paws.

“Well, all of that crazy shit you said at the conclave is starting to make sense now. Unfortunately, it’s still as meaningless as it was then.”

“Meaning is often lost on those without fai-”

Dantes threw Jacopo and his dagger as hard as he could toward Serpica. As he was in the air, Jacopo shifted into a man, and gripped the dagger. His body slammed into hers with enough force to make her stumble back on all four of her legs as he drove the knife into her shoulder, and then used his weight to drag the blade down across her body. He then jumped back, scowling at the smell coming off the dagger.

She screamed as blood, pus, and bile exploded from within her robe which started to fall away from where it was torn. Her body was covered in so many sores, boils, and rashes, the color of her skin was no longer possible to ascertain, nor was her race, as it seemed that all of the worst results of every disease were marked across her flesh. It was hard to believe she was even a person under all that sickness.

Dantes remembered what Traizen had told him when they’d first met. When she left, said she carried her Locus within herself. She’d made herself into a home for disease, all of those horrible ailments that spread across the battlefield that was once her locus now lived within her.

Dantes readied another wand and Jacopo moved to strike at her with the dagger, but she very suddenly became a cloud of flies, and spread throughout the room.

“I don’t have to kill you here, apostate. When my purity fills your locus, your life will end along with it.” The flies dispersed, leaving along before they could strike at them.

Those rats that had held still while Serpica spoke started to rush at Dantes and Jacopo. Dantes grimaced, and raised his wand again, sending out a blast of freezing air that sealed all of them to the ground and killed them instantly. He moved over to the writhing flesh effigy of rats and activated the spell again, freezing and killing it, if it could even have been considered alive. The taint in the air faded as it died, but didn’t leave completely. He guessed he wouldn’t be able to remove it completely unless he ended Serpica herself.

He coughed a bit, and spat some phlegm onto the ground.

He did a mental inventory of his wands as he flexed his wooden fingers. He’d upgraded from single use cheap ones to a rotation of five that he could use regularly, but if the Academy stayed sealed he’d need to do his best to preserve the charges he had left. He pinched the bridge of his nose. Merle would be a tremendous help dealing with Serpica. At this rate, he might finish his takeover of the Academy towers only to find a dead city waiting for him.

Jacopo handed Dantes his dagger back and he sheathed it. He’d need the other druids' help. If he was very lucky then Traizen had discovered some way to combat unnatural disease in his conversations with Berkilak. Fortunately, the next conclave meeting wasn’t far off.

…

Dantes landed back at the Vixen less than an hour later. He was bruised and cut from where Serpica had managed to strike him, and had a number of rat bites on his lower legs as well. His fine clothes had also been torn, he went to his bedroom to change before he entered the club and found Sevryn laying on his bed drinking some tea with honey.

She frowned as he walked in and looked him over.

“You’re hurt. Come here, sit down.”

He complied, stripping off his jacket as she poured him some water and handed it to him.

He went to take the cup, but hesitated for a moment as their fingers touched. He looked at her face, her lavender eyes for a moment, then he took the cup and had a long sip.

“Thanks, beautiful.”

“Take off your clothes.”

Dantes smiled, unbuttoning his shirt. “You’ll have to take the lead this time I’m afraid.”

She laughed, grabbing a bottle of strong liquor near the table and a handkerchief. “I take the lead every time.” she said, kneeling as she dipped the handkerchief into the bottle, then started to clean his wounds.

“Only until I take it back,” responded Dantes, ignoring the stinging of the alcohol against his cuts and bruises. He probably didn’t need his cuts cleaned, his healing was very quick, but he didn’t mind the attention.

When she was done, he put on a clean outfit and went back downstairs with her on his arm. He gave her hand a gentle kiss and let her go back to the stage to sing, then sat in his VIP booth, gesturing to the bar to have a meal brought up to him. He pulled one of his men to the side and asked him to burn the clothes he’d left on the floor in his room while he waited.

Jayk and the meal he’d been awaiting arrived at the same time.

Dantes cut into the steak that had been placed in front of him. It was blue, as he’d preferred it since he left the pit. He put the piece in his mouth and chewed it slowly.

“Anything major since earlier?”

Jayk shook his head. “We’ve started to move things the ways you’ve indicated. No major problems, but no easy wins either. The city is starting to be more proactive about the sickness. They’re paying herbalists, priests, and even adventurers to try and stop the spread. The only other thing that might be of interest to you, is that Argenta’s daughter is back.”

“Oh?” asked Dantes, taking a sip of red wine.

“Yes, she’s tried to disguise herself with a dirty jacket and her hair hidden in a hat.”

Dantes laughed. “Have her brought to me.”

Jayk nodded and left. A few bites of steak and sips of wine Later, Alby was dropped in the chair across from him by two bouncers.

“Welcome back,” said Dantes, holding up his glass in greeting.

“How did you know?”

“Your jacket’s made of silk and brand new. Smearing some dirt on it isn’t quite enough. Also, your white streak is sticking out of your hat.”

He sniffed the air.

“You’re also wearing the same perfume as last time you were here.”

She blushed a little, embarrassed she’d been seen through so easily.

“So, did you bring what you owe me?”

She gritted her teeth, but pulled out a small coinpurse and tossed it at his face. Dantes caught it and gave it a shake, confirming it was the right amount.

“Can I go now?”

Dantes nodded. “Yeah, but you’re welcome to have some dinner with me if you’d like. I can explain more about where you went wrong with your disguise. And tell you where you’ve been going wrong with your gambling as well.”

She looked at him carefully. “Why?”

“Your mother, likely for good reasons, doesn’t want you to know these things, but you’re clearly going to be doing them anyway. I like working with her. I’d prefer her not be distracted because you’ve been caught by someone less kind than me.”

She thought for a moment, and nodded. “Okay. I’ll stick around.”

Dantes held a hand up to the bar to order her a plate.