Downtown Druid

Dantes sat at his table eating breakfast as he always did. Vera and Jake sat across from him. It had only been a month since he’d defeated Serpica and the city was finally on its way to recovery. A few ships had started docking again, and the overland trade had slowly begun to trickle back in, though everything was slow to recover. Bodies were still being removed from houses as the smell of the dead began to inform those around them of their passing, but it was primarily the old, and infirm, and those who were already too far gone to recover. Midtown itself had recovered the most quickly, thanks to Dantes’s interference, and the money that flowed from his territory into those domains of the other fingers had made them all very happy with him.

“The girls are starting to get business again,” said Vera. “And food as well as drink is starting to trickle back in, allowing us to buoy our reduced supplies.”

Dantes nodded. “Let’s keep encouraging those under us to grow their own food as we did when supplies stopped flowing before. We need to maintain our strength and be prepared in case anything else comes.”

She nodded. “Aside from that, it’ll likely be slow until more Uptown people and Guilders are feeling well enough to come down here again. Decker has been enjoying his work with Clay and Hema by the way, particularly Hema,” she said with a sly grin.

Dantes smiled. “I’m glad to hear that the work agrees with him. Anything else?”

“Just gossip that I’ll save for when we have dinner.”

He smiled. “Thank you, Auntie.”

She nodded, and went downstairs to have breakfast with her girls.

Jayk finished chewing on a piece of bread before speaking. “It’s similar on our end. Goods are moving again, but slowly. The issue is that a lot of people are still holed up and not yet ready to spend. Still, we expect things to get better as the last of the sick die off. Dulles gave us a heads up on a raid on one of our dock storehouses, so we’ve cleared it out. Overall, on the business side, things are looking better.”