They all sat there in silence for some time, then Dantes stood, and began putting his hands under Tel’s body, attempting to lift him.

“What’re you doing?” asked Merle, though he didn’t move to stop him.

“I know a place where I can actually bury him. In real dirt. Unless you had other ideas?”

“We usually cut their heads off so that the collar can be removed, then throw them to the rats. We carve their names into the collars, and put them here.” Merle moved to a corner of his cell where the wall was covered in a piece of fabric. He gently removed it, and behind were nearly two dozen bronze collars, each of them with different names carved into them.

Dantes nodded. “I’ll bring back the collar.” He looked at Wane. “Come with me.”

Wane was sitting with his head in his hands, but managed to raise it to look at Dantes with red eyes. “What?”

“I’ll need help with the body, and I don’t trust anyone else. Come with me.”

Wane looked into the middle distance for a moment, and nodded. He moved over to the sheet that Merle had pulled aside and tore it down. Then he laid it over Tel’s corpse.

He and Dantes wrapped the body and Dantes lifted it by the feet, while Wane lifted it by the head and shoulders. They began to walk out of the cell, but Pillion stopped them, walking deliberately around Dantes to stand in front of Wane.

He reached into his pockets and pulled out two copper coins, and held them out to Wane. “Wherever you put him, bury him with these… It’s what I owed him from the last time we rolled dice.”

Wane nodded, and pocketed the coins.

They walked out of Merle’s cell, and the commotion within the Collared’s chambers began to quiet as everyone saw Tel’s corpse. As they moved, they saw furrowed brows, clenched fists, and eyes wide with fear. Tel had been a popular guy. Quick with a joke or a smile and nearly always willing to help out if someone needed it. On top of that he’d been becoming more of an authority, almost on the level of Merle’s lieutenants, due to his savvy use of his proximity to Dantes and his own growing skills at dealmaking and skullduggery.

Normally Dantes would’ve been considering all of this, trying to think of how he could influence the situation, turn it to his favor, but his mind was occupied elsewhere. Rats and roaches were being gathered and spread throughout the tunnels toward Orc territory and everywhere in between. As he and Wane moved through the tunnels to his garden, he began tracking all of the members of the Orc gang's movements. He already knew the layout of their territory from previous scouting missions, and he knew who among them were leaders or if not leaders, fulcrums on which the gang rested. As he did that with a focus on rats, he let Jacopo work through him to control the roaches, letting him focus on tracking those Orcs who were in the outskirts hunting or raiding.

Dantes had anticipated that Blud and his men would want revenge on him. He’d even considered that they may target the Collared, but had dismissed it since the two gangs had no bad blood with each other in the past. There was a way that things usually developed in the Pit in terms of violence between gangs. It started with a deal going wrong, or an insult. Then it escalated into small scale brawls. Then there was a death, and from there two paths emerged. In one they would make peace with a third gang as the mediator, and in another it was all out war. Dantes clenched his teeth. He should’ve predicted what the Orcs were up to after their attack on the dwarves. They’d had bad blood already, but an escalation that quick should’ve already tipped him off that the Orcs were willing to skip directly to cutting throats.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

He kept up the back and forth with himself the entire way through the tunnels to his garden. All while monitoring the path in front of and behind himself, moving the rats to track the orcs, and coordinating his plans with Jacopo.

Wane kept pace with him relatively easily. He was smaller than the average orc, but lifting and moving someone as light as Tel was no trouble for him. He didn’t ask where they were going, his own mind was preoccupied in a much different way from Dantes’. It wasn’t until they reached the garden that his attention shifted.

He nearly dropped Tel as they moved inside. The entire cavern was a sea of red leaves sitting completely still in the windless underground. The smell of fresh vegetation and rotted fruit hit his nostrils at nearly the same moment the sight of the garden did, and he found himself so overwhelmed that he briefly forgot his sorrow.

“What is this place?”

Dantes didn’t turn around, he couldn’t without putting Tel down. “This is my garden. This is where the fruit comes from.”

They took a few steps further inside.

“How’d you find this place?” asked Wane.

Dantes hesitated to answer for a moment. He’d played things very close to the chest so far. Only letting those he knew were doomed anyway know what he was able to do. He felt a momentary temptation to tell Wane the truth.

“I found an old book. Deep in the outskirts near Kobold territory. Most of it was faded, but I found a map and some instructions. It led me here.”

Wane frowned, which Dantes could only see because he was watching him through Jacopo’s eyes, and they reached the center of the garden, where the elven corpses had long since been consumed and overgrown. They placed Tel’s body gently on a patch of bare ground just a bit larger than his body.

Dantes gestured to the garden. “It feeds on blood. I usually give it some of my own, but it wants more than I can provide now.”

“Is that why we brought Tel here?”

Dantes nodded. “It’s one of the reasons. I also just thought he really would rather be here than picked at in a dark corner somewhere.”

Wane looked around at the trees around him and knelt to the ground where he ran his hand up the body of a red vine. “I think you’re right.” Wane flexed his hand. “I’d expect this place to be magical, but my hands and feet don’t feel chilled.”

Dantes shrugged, he himself had no idea how his druid abilities where different from mages powers, just that they were, but he didn’t mind it.

“Maybe it’s a holy place? God granted power is different. What did the journal say?”

“Just the map, and images that told me what to do.”

“Do you still have it? Maybe I could learn more.”

Dantes cursed himself. Mentioning a book of forbidden knowledge to a mage, of course he’d want to see it, no matter the circumstance he found himself in.

“It was falling apart when I found it. It crumbled to nothing a few days after I found it. I think some rats used the bits of it that were left as nesting.”

Wane’s frown remained. He clearly had more questions, but he could also tell that Dantes had no intention of giving him all the information he wanted, and standing over Tel’s corpse he couldn’t bring himself to press it. “Why did you bring me here? You could’ve carried the body yourself if you wanted to.”

Dantes made a sweeping gesture. “I’m giving this to you.”

Wane blinked. “What?”

“The garden. I was initially planning on giving it to you and Tel… I suppose in a way I still am.”

Wane folded his arms. “How are you doing it?”

Dantes raised his eyebrow. “Doing what?”

“We can skip the back and forth. I’ve been gambling with you for nearly four years. We’ve smoked together, drank together, worked together. You wouldn’t give up an asset like this for nothing unless it no longer had value to you. That means you're either planning on dying, or getting out. Considering how well you’ve attempted to ‘die’ in the past, my guess is on the latter.”

Dantes nodded. “I am planning to escape, and I’ll tell you where and when I’m planning on it. If you want to try to follow me, that’s on you.”

Wane nodded.

“Before that, I’m going after the Orcs.”

“We all are, Merle was already discussing retaliation, and bringing in what was left of the dwarves.”

“No. Alone.”

Wane chuckled incredulously. “What?”

Dantes kept his gaze steady.

“You're serious.”

“I’m going to go as soon as we’re done burying Tel. I wanted to give you one chance to let me know if there are any of them you wanted me to spare.”

Wane turned a lighter shade of green as the blood drained from his face. “You’re going to try to kill all of them?”

“At least Blud and any others I can find in their territory.”

Wane stood there silent, unsure of what to say.

“I’ll ask again. Are there any you would want me to spare?”