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.