Dantes looked over the rats arranged before him. They ranged from black to white, with a few having the same brown coloration as Jacopo. Some were large and well fed, others slim and starved. All of them primarily focused on him aside from a few glances around the cavern.

He focused on a corner of the chamber.

Move

They obliged, all scrambling there without a second thought, moving over one another like a shifting pool of liquid fur. He checked the mark on his arm again and while the black line had widened, it was still slimmer than a fingernail. He experimented a bit more, dividing the rats into separate groups, having some of them harvest the fruit from the trees that were ready to be eaten, while he had the rest attack a nest of roaches he’d noticed on his way into his budding plant nursery. As he did this, he watched how each action impacted the gold mark on his wrist. The less complicated actions, single word orders to move, had little impact, while complex requests cost more. Even having the rats attack something cost him little, unless he ordered them to do it in a specific way. When he was done experimenting he still had three fourths of his mark filled with gold.

He pointed to the pile of fruit and roach corpses that the rats had put into a pile for him.

“That’s for you.” The rats, freed from his control when he made the gesture, tore into the pile of food with gusto, and Dantes watched as the gold mark refilled ever so slightly. He looked at Jacopo, who was perched on a rock next to him.

“Could you go and get one of the mirror shards out of our cave for me?”

“Where are…” Jacopo cut off for a moment, and Dantes could feel the connection between them quiver for a moment.

“Nevermind.” He hopped off of the rock and scurried away.

While he was gone, Dantes pricked a finger on one of his tusks and squeezed a drop of blood onto the root bed of each of his plants, noticing as he did so that the roots were starting to break through the stone that surrounded them, causing it to crumble even more than it had already. When he was done he could feel the plants' satisfaction, as well as the rats who, after eating, had begun scurrying around the room, some of them leaving, some copulating, and a few climbing into the blood red leaves to have a nap with a full stomach.

Jacopo came back with a single mirror shard.

He took it from him and frowned. “I’m going to need to cut you with this.”

“What?”

“I need to make sure that rat blood works on it too, or doesn’t work I suppose depending on how you define ‘work’ in this case.”

“The rest of your meat.”

“What?”

“I’ll do it for the rest of your meat.”

“Your GOD told me we were bound at the soul and you’re still going to extort me? I just promised you all the fruit that tree will produce!”

“No fruit yet.”

“I’ll just make one of the other rats do it.”

“Hrm… one piece of meat.”

“Fine.” Dantes nodded and looked for a sparse corner. “The rest of you need to stay clear while I do this!” He yelled at the remaining rats, who scurried into further dark corners. He squatted above Jacopo, pricking his flank with the glass shard. He waited for a drop to hit it, and once it did it immediately began to glow red. He stood and threw the shard before ducking down, covering Jacopo beneath him. There was an explosion and some pieces of stone and dirt peppered him. When it was done he stood up and looked at the destruction. It was the same, if not larger, than the explosion that had occurred when he’d used his own blood. With eleven left, he should have plenty of firepower to take care of at least one of his problems. After that, he could start to build.

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His gears turned as he stood and brushed himself off. He could try to get the rats to deliver the mirror shards directly, simply drop them bloody on top of the elf leadership while they were sleeping. With them gone he’d have some cover and be able to turn his attention to things beyond survival. That didn’t feel like enough though. He wanted them to know it was him. He wanted everyone to know not to fuck with him, and that meant facing them directly. Well, ‘directly’ was a strong word. Close enough that they knew it was him, and the rest of the Pit would too.

He went back to his cave, Jacopo in his jacket, and took a moment to care for his plants before he turned right back around and left. He began taking the winding path through the passages, still testing his new abilities as he did so. He noticed that the gold hadn’t faded at all when Jacopo had bled for him, which meant that whatever happened between them didn’t count beyond the bounds of their own relationship. He also reached out to feel the rats in the walls, along with which he detected the various roaches, molds, and fungi that thrived within the pit. The rats burned brighter now, more clearly. He could feel their thoughts and feelings more easily, and also had an innate sense that he could summon them toward himself at will. He wondered if he would be able to develop that ability with other animals as well. Rats were the creatures he most often encountered, but being able to control roaches, or cats, or the wild dogs that roamed the alleys above, or even the slimes that occasionally bubbled out of the sewers. Could he curry their favor as well? Meet their gods and receive their blessing?

He sent his attention out to five of them, and gave them simple orders. Asking them to go to the Undermarket, and King territory. As they diverted themselves from their previous destinations, he imagined in his mind a line between himself and them. He kept his focus on that line as they got further away from him, and with a small effort he was able to switch his attention between them, get a general impression of them and where they were, and see what they saw. It was disorienting, so he just focused on maintaining the line. He would put his full attention back on them once he was certain they were where he wanted them.

He reached his destination, the entrance to the Collared’s piece of the Pit. The guard that day was Wane.

Wane’s eyes widened as he saw him. “Dantes! What are you doing here? You should’ve found the deepest hole you could and buried yourself in it. Reivare already had it in for you and then you steal one of their mirrors and try to sell it to the dwarves?” He shook his head. “I don’t think now is the time to have a little visit and gamble.”

“I appreciate the warning, but I’m not just here to gamble. I need to meet with Merle.”

“Merle? Listen man, he can’t help you. You know the Collared can’t afford to protect someone against the Kings.”

“I’m not looking for protection.” He sighed. “I’ve given up. I’m out of options. I can’t buy protection, they won’t stop looking for me. I want Merle to contact them for me, let them know I’ll turn myself in if they grant me a quick death.”

Wane’s expression dropped, and one of his eyebrows raised. “Really?”

Dantes nodded, they’d gambled together many times, and he was certain that Wane couldn’t tell that he was lying.

Wane sighed. “Okay. I’ll take you to him. Come on.” He gestured with his head for Dantes to follow.

Dantes knew where Merle was of course, but there was a process, a ritual to this kind of thing. Merle lived in the largest of the cells in Collared territory, as was his right as their leader. He had held that position for a long time, in fact as Dantes had been told, he’d been the one who banded the Collared together in the first place, more than fifty years ago. Up until that point, they’d been divided by race, old gang affiliation or left to survive on their own.

Dantes got a number of looks as he followed Wane through the winding passages, and past the pipes carrying fresh water throughout the cells. He was grateful that he didn’t see Tel, he had no desire to see the sad expression on his face that he’d left him with last time they’d spoken.

Wane led him into Merle’s room and they stepped inside. The walls of it were completely covered in alchemical formulae, cryptic writing in what looked like elvish script, strange diagrams, lists of ingredients, and a number of other things written too small for Dantes to recognize. Merle was laying on a bench of stone. He had a long metal rod across his chest, gripped by both of his hands. On either end of the rod was a massive square block. They stood there in silence watching as he slowly brought the bar to his chest, then lifted it up, then repeated the motion five more times. When he was done he tossed the bar down and it hit the ground with a heavy thud.

Merle sat up and fixed them with a look. Dantes had always found his appearance disconcerting. He had a long white beard, and a heavily wrinkled face, both showing his advanced age, but after his neck the effects of aging seemed to have ceased. His muscles would make most Orcs jealous, Wane who was by no means small for his race, was roughly half as wide as Merle was. Merle had started to exercise when he’d first arrived in the Pit to compensate for his lack of magic, and had somehow gotten even bigger even in his old age. He kept his mind and body sharp, and it was the threat of violence that he, and those Collared that had adopted his training as their own, posed that gave the Collared what little power they had.

He grabbed a pair of delicate glasses and placed them onto his face, squinting. He smiled the kind of smile only a wizened old wizard could.

“Well Wane, I see you’ve learned a bit of necromancy. Been a while since I’ve seen a dead man walking.”