Downtown Druid

Book 3 Chapter 51: A Damned Shame

Dantes and Jacopo, weakened, flew toward the closest of their allies to help prepare for the Viscent forces that were approaching. The nearest of them was Wane, who was waiting at the end of an alley with his inscribed stave and muttering under his breath. Dantes could feel the tips of his wings tingle as he landed behind him. He shifted into himself, and felt his fingers tingle in the same way, but stayed still so as not to interrupt whatever spellwork Wane was working on. Instead he and Jacopo kept working on cutting off and repairing the weaves of life that they were connected to. He still wasn’t able to cast his focus across the city, his range had taken a serious hit. He couldn’t check on Jacque, Vera, and Alessa across the city, nor could check on Argenta in Uptown. He was confident that Zak could keep everyone safe, though he found himself wishing he had his help on the front too. That was the problem with good people, they could only be one place at a time.

“Surprised to see you here, you okay?” said Wane, before moving back into his muttering.

“Godfrey hit my gardens. It’s very painful, but I’m working on fixing what I can now.”

Wane nodded and closed his eyes again to return to his spellcraft.

Dantes was in the middle of weaving more of the frayed threads back together when he sensed a column of Viscent soldiers approaching.

“Thirty,” he said, closing his eyes and struggling to see them through the eyes of a hiding rat. “One of them is a mage.”

Wane nodded, finally opening his eyes as he finished his spell.

“Can you take out the mage?” he asked, raising his club high. “They may be able to interrupt what I’ve set up if they’re good enough.”

“Could they really compete with an Academy mage?”

Wane smiled. “Not in anything, but combat. Their mages aren’t allowed to study anything else. Aside from a few enchanters that are basically factory workers.”

“We’ll take care of him. Can you give me one of those seeds I gave you earlier?”

Wane nodded, and pulled out a single seed from his pocket and handed it to him.

Dantes took the seed and popped it into his mouth before he shifted into a rat and ran along the edges of the buildings toward the column of men. All thirty of them wore simple black armor and wielded rifles with bayonets. They scanned the horizon carefully, and watched the rooftops as they moved. Unlike Frasheid, who’d marked their mages with colorful armbands, making them easy targets, the Viscent mages were unmarked. The only thing that made him obvious was that he was muttering under his breath, powering a defensive spell of some kind.

Dantes could feel the edges of the forcefield he’d created, but it didn’t seem to have an effect on rats, in fact the feel of it reminded him of the necklace he’d taken from Drake. He scurried into the middle of the road, spitting the seed he’d grabbed onto the ground, and ran the rest of the way across the alley. The soldiers ignored him and kept marching.

When the mage stepped over the seed, Dantes pushed his will into it. The seed sprouted, and attached itself to the mages leg without him or any of the soldiers noticing. He then had it slowly weave its way up through the mages armor until a small part of it had grown up through the man’s helmet, next to his ear.

Dantes got back to Wane.

“You should be fine now. Just give me the signal, and I’ll take out the mage.”

Wane nodded, and they stood there for several seconds while waiting for the column to reach the road they stood on.

“Now,” said Wane, placing his hands on the side of the building they were standing behind.

Dantes sent a bit more will and life into the plant that had wrapped around the mage. It formed a jagged thorn, and jammed itself through the mage’s ear and into his brain, killing him instantly.

As he fell, the rest of the column tried to react, searching around for what had killed him, but they had problems of their own.

Wane’s muscles tensed as he pressed against the wall, and the runes he’d written in chalk began to glow across the walls. They seemed to melt for a moment, as they shifted from being solid, into sand. The building flowed over the column of soldiers who screamed as it slammed into them like a tidal wave.

Several were crushed instantly, and more drowned slowly in sand. Only eight remained.

Dantes climbed up onto the sand quickly, and leapt onto the nearest of them, jamming his dagger into the man’s neck through a slit in his armor.

Jacopo leapt off his shoulder, and shifted as well, using his change in weight to slam into another soldier and drive him into the ground. He ripped the rifle from the man’s grasp and jammed the bayonet into his throat.

Wane approached another of them with his stave held high. He brought it down for an underhanded strike, and hit a man waist deep in the sand with the full force of it. The runes on it glowed and the man’s body shot from the sand and he slammed into a wall a street over.

Another of them managed to aim his rifle at Jacopo and pull the trigger, but the rifle was so jammed with sand it misfired, and exploded in his hands.

The rest of them died easily, unable to react to the combination of magic, druidic power, and martial might that the three brought to bear on them.

The men all laughed a bit at that.

Jayson shook his head a bit. “I think tomorrow, I’ll look her up. See where she went when this place closed down.”

“Good luck, but I’ll find her first,” said Tren.

“Finding her first doesn’t matter for you. You don’t have the words to get a woman like that.”

“Didn’t you just say you didn’t have a shot with her?”

Jayson smiled and shook his head. “That was before I became a war hero.”

That provoked another laugh from the men, and Jayson held up a hand, silencing them. He could hear something. He raised his hand crossbow and took cover below the windowsill. The other man all hid as well.

The column that was approaching had more than twenty men , but they were all marching five by five where the road narrowed before it reached the tavern. This was one of the roads to midtown that hadn’t been barricaded, so Jayson had figured it would be a good place to wait.

The soldiers got closer and closer, and Jayk could feel some kind of field go over him. A shield of some kind? He wasn’t sure, but he was sure that if he was inside it, he’d be able to hit the enemy. He held up a hand, and counted down. Five, four, three, two, one.

He popped out from behind the window and started firing his crossbow, the exploding bolts tearing off chunks of armor and flesh from the soldiers as they struck. The other men all fired their own weapons, not really choosing any particular target, but just firing wildly into the group of men that had chosen the wrong road to walk down.

A few of them managed to rally, and started shooting back. Tren, hefting another stone to throw, collapsed forward as a round pierced his skull. Two other men fell shortly after as the well disciplined Viscent troops reacted to the ambush.

Jayson reached into his pocket and pulled out the pouch of seeds he’d been given. He opened it, tossed it out into the street, a bullet grazing his forearm as he did so.

The moment the seeds hit the ground, they exploded outward. Dantes had given them one order. When they hit the ground, they were to grow and feed.

Jayson and the men watched as the Viscent soldiers were torn apart by the blood fed plants that Dantes had prepared. They screamed as vines strangled them and roots pierced their flesh searching for blood to drink.

“We have to move!” yelled Jayson, starting toward the side entrance with the men he had left. He only had one more pouch left. He needed to make it count.

...

Vampa held his sword in front of himself, swinging it in a quick arc and killing two men in an instant that had decided to charge him rather than firing their guns. Perhaps they were trying to be disciplined with their ammo? He was still surprised at how comfortable it felt in his hand. How long had he refused to pick it up? Four hundred years? Longer? It was all a blur as time went on for him. Other elves would drink memory tonics, or keep journals to keep their minds sharp and their memories clear, but he’d never had the patience for any of that. Memories were meant to fade, too much clogging the mind could paralyze you.

He grabbed the corpse of one of the men he slayed and held it in front of himself as he charged toward the fifteen men that remained, using him to block and deflect the bullets the dead man’s allies were shooting toward him.

He could remember why he put down the sword. He’d forgotten the faces of countless lovers, friends, but that memory remained oh so perfectly clear in his mind in spite of the years. He’d served one of the eldest houses to flee Elfland during its fall as its knight. He served them in the kingdom of Telumandi until politicking meant that they had to flee. He remembered arriving with them in Rendhold, serving them as they gained the power to become a founding family there. He remembered the deals they made with the changelings, and he remembered betraying them too. He’d outlived most of them. The generations further from Elfland lived shorter, more brutal lives. Eventually one of them released him from service. He’d given a thousand years to them, even to the point that they’d become something unrecognizable to what he once served. He cut that house down that day. Not a drop of their blood was left in Rendhold.

He threw the corpse from his sword, and it knocked two of the men down. He batted away a bayonet and smashed his gauntleted fist into a man’s face with such force that his helmet collapsed inward and stabbed into his face. He carved out a different man’s chest with his blade, leaving a trail of blood in the air that hadn’t even landed before he killed a third.

He had good memories that hadn’t faded as well, though that was because he clung so tightly to them. He could remember Zilly squeezing his hand with a serious face after she was born, he could feel Zilly’s mother hand give his one last squeeze before she passed, he could remember Vera sitting next to him at the Vixen, smiling at him as her hand walked across his shoulders.

He kicked the mage in the chest before he could finish his incantation and felt the man’s ribs give way as he did so. The last man tried to run, and he picked up one of the dead men’s rifles, aimed it, and pulled the trigger, dropping him just before he could turn the corner. With all of them dead he pulled a piece of cloth from a pouch at his side and wiped the blood and viscera from his blade. He went back to the place he’d been standing before, and settled his sword against the ground again, closing his eyes and letting his elf ears listen for the arrival of more soldiers.

...

Pacha ducked behind the barricade as another salvo of bullets struck it, sending splinters flying everywhere. He pointed at the prisoners with spears taking cover next to him.

“You five! Go through the alley connecting to main street, and cut across to flank them before the next volley!”

The men nodded wordlessly and started running full speed toward the nearest alley, not even stopping when a bullet struck the one in the lead down.

Pacha grimaced. Whatever Dantes had done to ensure those men’s loyalty terrified him, but he didn’t have time to worry about that. He had a battle to fight, and the prisoners and their absolute obedience was the only reason that they hadn’t yet fallen.

A Viscent soldier leapt down from the barricade next to Pacha, and he pushed himself up, driving his shortsword into the man’s back. He wasn’t the greatest warrior, his swordsmanship had been called ‘middling’ when he was in training, but he recognized early that there was one trait that could improve or damn a man in a life or death situation. Certainty. A man needed to be certain about his strike. Needed to take advantage of any hesitancy their enemy showed. He was feeling uncertain about a lot. Uncertain that the city would survive. Uncertain that he should’ve gone along with the Council’s plans to release Dantes and the prisoners. Uncertain that he shouldn’t have just tried to kill Argenta and all the other leeches that fed on Rendhold rather than trying to do things the right way. Uncertain that the city would survive if he did do that. Uncertain that he could even if he tried. There was only one thing he was certain of, as he barked more orders, and ducked beneath another salvo of bullets. Rendhold was his city, and Midtown had been his responsibility within it. He would not let these invaders take it.