Downtown Druid

Gavain ran at a very impressive clip to the docks. Even with Dantes taking him along mainly back roads and alleys, they still reached the warehouse within the hour. Dantes’s dignity was a bit bruised by being carried the whole way, but in his withered state it definitely made things easier. Besides, Jacopo didn’t mind getting carried around all day, Dantes just needed to borrow his attitude a bit.

Dantes returned his focus to the rat he’d placed in the rafters of the warehouse earlier in the day. Things were active inside, and it looked like a massive new shipment had just been dropped off for processing.

Gavain placed Dantes back onto the ground, and raised his spear, taking a deep inhale and looking over the rough guards walking into and out of the building.

“This is the place?” He asked.

Dantes nodded emphatically. “Yes, ser. This is where they’re holding my wife and child. Many others as well.”

Gavain nodded, and looked at the warehouse. “Hmm, I suppose if I’m wrong I can always pay for the broken glass.”

“What?” asked Dantes.

Gavain didn’t answer, instead launching himself upward and toward the windows near the top of the building. There was the sound of shattering glass and a heavy thud.

Dantes shifted his focus to the rat he had inside, and moved where he believed he’d be able to avoid any stray bullets or spells, and crouched down. He’d sent the rat other than Jacopo inside for the same reason he’d just hidden. No reason to put himself or his companion at risk.

Gavain stood on a table, alone, his spear in his hand looking around at the flabbergasted gangsters, illicit goods covering the tables, and finally, he caught a glimpse of the edge of a cage at the far end of the warehouse. He raised his spear and pointed at the nearest confused man who was still holding a crate.

“Surrender, and none of you will come to harm.”

The man in front of him threw the crate at his head, and then chaos erupted.

Gavain smashed the crate with his spear, scattering the bags of dust inside and creating a cloud of white powder. He leapt down, smashing the man’s collarbone with the shaft of his spear as he landed.

He threw himself back as another man moved to tackle him, and smashed the butt of his spear into a third man that was approaching. He kicked a crate on the ground into one of them, smashing it into his head and knocking him to the ground. Gavain dove forward into more approaching guards, smashing his spear left and right.

Even from where Dantes sat outside he could hear the loud thwacks of Gavain’s spear ringing out like thunder, breaking bones and knocking guards left and right.

A gunshot rang out, sending splinters from a barrel next to Gavain into the air. Gavain began running toward the gunmen, who stood next to two other men wielding pistols. Gavain moved fluidly in a snake like formation as the other two men fired, avoiding both of their shots. He leapt ten feet into the air to where they stood and drove his speartip through the hand of the first shooter who was moving to reload, then kicked the other two from their position with a powerful sweep of his leg before smashing his head into that of the other man.

As Gavain was tearing his way through the guards and braver workers, the rest of the warehouse began to flee. The men that had been sorting goods bolted for the door, and the naked women that had been packaging dust fled, all of them being peppered by debris and splinters from the battle Gavain was having.

Dantes watched through the rat’s eyes with keen interest. It was all going very well. He’d prefer that the lower level people all got out, but he hoped that those more deeply entrenched within Mondego’s operation would be more defensive of their holdings. He had sent word to Pacha, through a note he and Jacopoc left on his desk, that there would be trouble at the warehouse and to bring men. He checked the rat he had tracking him and saw that Pacha had managed to get nearly twenty men together, and they’d be reaching the warehouse soon.

Dantes would have to get some distance to make sure he didn’t get caught up in anything. He’d have to enjoy the successful dismantling of part of Mondego’s operation from a distance. A shame, but a necessary one.

He started to move, when something that the rat in the ramparts saw caught his eye. By the slave cells, he saw the silver glint of a familiar long elvish blade. He moved the rat closer, and saw, crouched by one of the cells, Jayson, Jayk, and Zak.

“Fuuuuuck,” said Dantes out loud.

“The Shadow Cats,” said Jacopo.

Dantes quickly considered several things. They were working for Mondego, or at least for one of his captains. They might know more about what had happened in the prison. If he revealed himself to them, he’d be putting himself in danger.

“Fuck it,” he said as he began to move toward the warehouse rather than away from it.

Gavain was still fighting, smashing a man with the butt of his spear with enough force to crack his sternum and then leaping toward a man shooting off blasts of force from his hands.

Dantes reached the back side of the warehouse where the shadowcats were huddled and quickly climbed up to where the window was, his weakened body screaming at him as he did so.

Jacopo climbed up his arm and unlatched the window, then Dantes pushed it open barely managing to pull himself up high enough up to see inside. Jayson was the closest to him, having a quiet argument with the others that seemed to be a debate between fleeing, fighting, and hiding.

“Jayson!” Dantes yelled.

Jayson looked around as if unable to tell where the voice was coming from.

“Jayson!” he yelled again.

Jayson saw him and his eyes widened. “Dantes!”

“Grab this!” he said willing the branch on his arm to extend down the window and hang loose like rope as he let himself slide back down to the ground. The branch was thin, but when he felt the weight of one of the Shadow Cats on the other side of it, he started to worry less about it breaking and more about himself breaking. He gritted his teeth and held on as Jayk dropped from the other side, landing next to him and grabbing part of the branch. Zak followed behind, with Jayson being last.

“Dantes! What are you doing here!?” asked Jayson.

“I’m guessing the attack was his doing,” responded Jayk.

Dantes flicked his focus across everything he was tracking. Gavain was on his last guard, and Pacha would be there in moments.

“I don’t have time for this, just as you three don’t have time to tell me why you’re working for Mondego. We need to move.”

Dantes listened to his own command and started running, not bothering to look back to see if they were following. In his deteriorated state they quickly caught up to him, and he started to hear heavy guardsmen boots getting closer to them as Pacha ordered his men to sweep the area.

He started to slow down, and Zak looked back moving to help him.

“No, go ahead. I’ll distract them. You all keep running.”

Zak hesitated.

“Go dammit! And for the love of everything I better hear a better name than Shadow Cats when I see you next!”

Zak nodded, and started running again.

The moment he was out of sight, Dantes became a rat and scurried behind some refuse to hide and rest. Feeling just as tired in rat form as he had as himself. Jacopo breathed heavily next to him as they hid.

Dantes returned his focus to the warehouse, sending rats and roaches to follow Zak as he did so.

Gavain stood, not even panting, in the center of an absolutely destroyed warehouse. Guards groaning or bleeding were all around him, but Dantes saw only two or three that seemed to be dead. Crates and barrels had been smashed and there was still a fine mist of dust scattered through the air. Gavain did an unnecessary flip off of the table he’d been standing on and landed closer to the cages. He looked over them, seeing frightened, but otherwise unharmed men, women, and children. He raised the spear and smashed the lock to a cage in which a solitary woman had been kept.

“It’s okay. You’re free now. I’ve come to rescue you.”

“Rescue me?” asked the woman.

He held out a hand and puffed out his chest. “Yes, I am Gavain, of the adventurer’s guild, and I’ve come to free you and put an end to this dastardly enterprise.”

“Please leave,” said the woman, moving to close the gate.

Gavain’s expression went from smiling and heroic to confused. “What?”

“I sold myself into slavery. Need to keep my parents fed. They can’t work anymore, and told me they’d care for my son. If I disappear now, it won’t be long before someone’s knocking on our door for their money back.”

“That’s horrible!” said Gavain.

Dantes, still panting as a rat, was amazed at the man’s naivete, but he supposed it had worked to his benefit, so he wasn’t going to complain.

“Um, I was sold because I owe gambling debt,” said a man raising his hand from another cage. “If you could let me out, I’d appreciate it.”

“O-okay,” said Gavain, moving to that cage and breaking the lock, then moving onto the others. Though several refused to move as the first woman did, most of them were clearly grateful to have been saved.

He looked at an ugly woman with a gray mutt of a child as he let them out.

“Your husband is waiting outside. He’s who sent me to save you.”

The woman’s eyes widened. “My husband’s been dead for three years.”

Gavain raised his eyebrows. “Wait, what?”

Dantes stifled the little bit of indignation he’d felt at the assumption that woman was his wife. Even sickly as he was at the moment, he could certainly do better than that.

Just as the first man that was freed was making his way to the main entry, the guard busted in, trampling him under foot as they made their way inside and swept the area, armored and wielding metal clubs.

Pacha moved in after the rest of them, his own faceplate open as he surveyed everything, a mixed look of surprise and satisfaction on his face as he observed the various obvious contraband and recognized a number of criminals he’d encountered in the past scattered throughout the floor moaning in pain.

Gavain approached him, and gave a bow. “Welcome guards. I took care of this den of evil and sin for you. No need for a thank you. Justice is its own reward.”

Pacha took a step toward him. “You’re the adventurer, Gavain right?”

“That I am.”

“You’re under arrest for vigilantism and overstepping the authority of the adventurer’s guild.”

Gavain’s expression dropped for a third time, this time not recovering. “What?”

Dantes watched as Gavain allowed himself to be arrested and Pacha and his men tore through the warehouse. Part of him was sad to see so many valuable goods that were bound to be pocketed, destroyed, or in the case of Dust, inhaled, but it wasn’t his loss, it was Mondegos and that put a smile on his face.

He checked where the Shadow Cats had gone, finding that they were on their way deep into Midtown, where he wouldn’t be able to follow. Still, he was gratified that they didn’t seem to be headed straight to Mondego.

Once Dantes and Jacopo were feeling strong enough, they began making their way out of the docks and back toward their garden. They needed to take frequent breaks, but things sped up once Dantes was able to become human again, and walk the rest of the way.

When he reached it, he was exhausted. His strength had been returning through his connections, but he had expended more energy that he was regaining, and the deficit had grown too large. He collapsed onto his bedroll, forcing himself to stay awake just long enough to force down a small meal with Jacopo, and willed several rats and roaches to keep watch, before he passed out entirely.

…

Dantes found himself floating above the table he’d now grown extremely familiar with. The table that held the scale, now seemed to hold a massive tapestry full of patterns, and images, many of which he couldn’t fully see in the dreamlike haze that seemed to obscure everything.

The woman in green was deftly weaving golden thread through a corner of it, and Dantes saw that the rat, roach, and bat were now represented by massive and intricate patterns of thread within the tapestry, all over a background of lush green. He could see feathers in what the woman was sewing, but couldn’t distinguish anything beyond that. He also noticed a red corner on her section that, unlike the rest of it, seemed well worn, the red of it fading near to a rusty brown.

The man in blue was sewing as well, his side of the tapestry was of a distinctly dark blue that matched his cloak. The images he sewed seemed to pop far more for the contrast, with piles of gold, sultry looking women, and men of dubious character all starting to take shape on his side. Dantes thought he recognized a few of the faces, but he couldn’t quite connect them to reality. Dantes also noticed that the spool of thread wasn’t shrinking as the blue cloaked man sewed. He followed the thread he was holding and realized that it was connected to the cloak of the man in black, who was deep in conversation with the veiled woman a few meters from the table, seemingly unaware of the slowly unwinding gold thread being taken from his cloak.

As Dantes was looking over everything, he suddenly felt a chill on his neck, and a tightness in his chest. Those physical sensations contrasted sharply with the dreamlike nature of everything else, and he found himself scanning the horizon and searching for its source. In the far distance, he saw a black figure that he couldn't distinguish. There was a glint of metal in sunlight coming from him, and Dantes felt almost blinded by that reflection, even with the great distance between them. In spite of that he pushed himself to try and make out any more detail. One thing he could make out though, was the glint of a headsman’s axe.