Downtown Druid

Book 3 Chapter 11: Magic, I Assume

Dantes gritted his teeth as his fingers curled and tightened involuntarily from the growing pain. He stumbled off the bar stool and fell backwards onto a table. Looking at his hands he could see no actual damage, but the sensation made it feel as if his skin was sloughing off. The rest of the bar wasn’t faring much better. Jayk was vomiting as he clutched his nose, Zilly was clutching her eyes as she writhed on the bar, and Dantes saw a patron ripping at his own ears with clawed hands.

Dantes tried to focus his mind outside the sensation, he somehow pushed it down long enough to bring himself back to his feet. He stumbled to the front door, stepping over the bouncer clutching his genitals, and pushed his way outside with his shoulder, unable to bring himself to push his way out with his hands.

He’d initially thought it had been some kind of attack on the Viridian Vixen itself, but the view from the street immediately dissuaded him of that notion. He saw a guard yelling for help as he slammed his head into a nearby wall, a woman running full speed down the street screaming, and even a young orc boy doing his damnedest to yank out one of his tusks.

Then, just as suddenly as the burning sensation in his fingers had started, it began to fade. He stared at his fingers, his hands shaking from the memory of the pain, and slowly forced them to open and close until they relaxed enough to be usable again. He walked over to the young orc boy, whose eyes widened as he saw him.

Dantes grabbed him by the chin and checked on his tusk. He focused until he could see that level of life that was smaller than the eye could perceive, and willed some energy into him to heal it a bit.

“Can you make it home?”

“Y...yeah.”

“What’re you waiting for then?” Dantes stood and walked over to the guard. There was a lot of blood on his face, but he recognized him as someone his men bribed regularly. He hauled the man to his feet.

“Go into the club. We’ll clean this and bandage you up.”

Dantes repeated this for anyone directly in front of the club, then headed back inside of it. His people, without his prompting, had already worked to make sure that everyone inside was taken care of, starting with their own people and the highest paying customers of course. Dantes moved over to Jayk who was holding a pint of beer directly under his nose inhaling the smell deeply.

“Did you know that roses can smell so strongly that they make you vomit?” asked Jayk.

“Can’t say that I did.”

“Now you do.”

Dantes chuckled a bit. “Listen, I’m going to figure out what just happened, but while I do, you should signal to any of our men that were waiting on the right time to do a job, that now is the right time. I also need Zak to take our boys to go and check on all of the business under us. Got it?”

Jayk nodded his head, and pushed himself to his feet.

Dantes walked up the stairs and to his audience chamber garden. He sat on his his tree throne and closed his eyes, extending his will.

The first thing he noticed was that Jacopo was using the chaos to steal from a bakery. Dantes shot him some kudos before moving on.

He sent out pigeons, rats, and roaches across the city. It was chaos. Carts and wagons had crashed as their riders had fits. Dozens of men and women lay on the ground bleeding or screaming. The guard was trying to restore order, but their own men weren’t in a much better state than anyone else. Even in Uptown, it was chaos, with ripped silk tunics, bleeding nobles, and magisters so tangled in their robes they’d broken ribs.

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No one knew yet what had happened, they were too focused on reacting to the immediacy of it. It was only when a young dove reached the Academy towers that he realized the source of it.

A solid wall of blackness completely covered the towers. It wasn’t like shadow, or mist, it was just pure and absolute blackness. Dantes had the bird fly up and see if it could reach the top of it, but it could not. He then had the bird circle it, along with a few others, but found no gap in the blackness. Finally, he flew the dove into it, but it immediately emerged on the opposite side of the blackness, as if it had flown across all of the towers in an instant. Even through the dove Dantes could feel his fingers tingling, their connection causing him to feel that sensation of magic.

He freed the dove from his control and stood up. The Academy had been sealed somehow. He ran through a quick mental check and found that Felix wasn’t in the gambling hall, or anywhere in the city. That meant that his reliable pet mage had been sealed within the Academy as well. It didn’t take a lot of mental effort to determine who would be behind it. Merle, Orebus, Wane, and all the other Un-Collared. This had to be their work, the event they’d been planning since they’d escaped the Pit and he’d returned their magic to them.

He wasn’t sure what the end result would be, so he focused on the immediate issues. He’d need to round up any loose mages he could for his own purposes. He could start with Dario, he wasn’t a full mage, but the Academy wouldn’t be around to enforce its rules anyway. Diamond and her small crew just became some of the most important people in the city by nature of being some of the only mages remaining. He’d need to limit the use of his keys and hammers since the supply would no longer be coming from Felix. Luckily, thanks to Felix’s constant debt, Dantes had built up a very healthy supply of both objects. It would also be smart to pay a visit to Lydia’s Emporium before it got cleared out.

He paced his garden while he came up with this plan, his hands reaching out and touching the various plants around him as he did so. They reached to meet his touch.

His fingers began to tingle again, and he prepared himself for another round of pain, when very suddenly, the air in the room all seemed to be sucked into the center of it, then there was a massive popping sound and air pushed Dantes and all of the plants backward for a moment.

Wane and Felix were standing in the center of the garden. Wane was holding the older man up by the shoulders when he appeared, but very swiftly they both collapsed into a heap. Dantes jumped to them, and rolled them both onto their back as he focused himself on their smallest components and began channeling the energy from around the city to strengthen them. Felix had burns all over his left leg and his left arm was broken. Wane had a sharp cut up his face and across his left eye, several broken ribs, and a burnmark in the shape of a hand on his chest. Whatever made it had actually burned through his shirt before hitting his skin.

He still wasn’t as good at treating major injuries for others as he was for himself. He could help with minor issues like the Orc child's bleeding gums around his tusk, but for this much he had to push a lot of energy to make anything happen. The purity of the life that he channeled to them seemed to lessen the more he pushed outward. He worked on them until their breathing seemed to steady and then he stood up, a little unsteady from the effort of healing them.

He left his audience chamber and found Jayk giving orders to a few men who were quickly scampering away to handle whatever tasks he’d given them. Dantes was grateful he could delegate so much of the work to him, not that he didn’t also check on it constantly.

“Jayk, I need you to send for Hema and Clay. Wane and Felix are injured and in my garden.”

Jayk stood still for a moment as he adjusted to that information. He called over one of the bouncers and gave him the order before returning to Dantes.

“How?”

“Magic, I assume."

Jayk’s expression flattened. “Ah. They’re hurt?”

Dantes nodded, gesturing for him to follow him. Once they were in the audience chamber Jayk leaned down to look at them, grimacing at their wounds.

“So, whatever that was. It had something to do with the Academy?”

Dantes nodded. “The whole place is wrapped in some kind of dark field. I can’t access it, and I would guess that no one in it can leave.”

Jayk rubbed his chin. “That means that magic is about to be at an even higher premium than before.”

“That was the same conclusion I came to. We’re probably already spread thin, but I want you to do everything you can to take advantage of that.”

“Got it, I already have a few ideas. I’ll talk to Vera about clearing a room for those two, and get some of the boys to get something to carry them.”

Dantes nodded, and Jayk left the audience chamber.

Dantes clenched his jaw. They could take advantage of this, but now there was one less deterrent keeping Rendhold safe.

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