Wane brought down the axe with a grunt, taking a piece of the root that was attempting to sneak into the space closer to the maw. The root bled red, and began to shrink back. On either side of Wane were other collared with axes. They’d been pruning the garden back in shifts for days, but it was still spreading, and every few days someone else wouldn’t return with the rest of the group.
Wane took a few steps away from the hungry, twisting roots, and pulled a flask from his belt. He took a long sip of water. He knew that was all he was going to be able to have for the afternoon, but gods did it feel good to feel its chill spread through him.
“Wane! Good to see you alive,” said Orebus, approaching from the tunnel behind along with three other men carrying crude axes.
“Time for a shift change?”
“That, and Merle was looking for you. Lose anyone?”
Wane shook his head. “No, it wasn’t too bad this time. Maybe the Kobolds are getting the worst of it on their side.”
“Hope not. They’ve been the only ones really helping.”
Wane looked at a root trying to be subtle by wriggling across the ceiling. “Care for a gamble?” he asked Orebus.
Orebus laughed. “You really miss that dice set you lost, eh?”
“You have no fucking idea.”
He chuckled again, his muscles rippling as he did so. “What’s the bet?”
“You and your boys will be pushed…” Wane took Blud’s old axe and carved a line near the center of the cavern they were in. “Here, by the time we relieve you again.”
Orebus scratched his chin. “What’s the bet?”
“I still have a bit of the weed that Clay gave us for protection. How about you cover my shift tomorrow if I’m wrong.”
Orebus nodded and held out his hand. “Deal.”
Wane shook the offered hand, then he and the men he’d been with began their walk back toward the Undermarket, all three of them covered in sweat and exhausted. Wane hoped he won that bet, he wanted a damn break, and unlike Merle and his closest followers, he didn’t get some sick thrill out of sore muscles and an exhausted body.
The Undermarket was packed and miserable. It had the same stench that the Maw used to have on supply drop days. As the garden had spread it had forced more and more people toward the Maw, but not quite into the Maw itself. The tree hadn’t shown any signs of eating anyone yet, but the red leaves on it matched the garden and people weren’t eager to test their luck. Not to mention the dozens of guards sitting up at the top of it with crossbows.
He walked through the tent and shack city to the old Consortium building that the Collared had taken when the majority of the small fucks hid in the deeper, smaller tunnels where they would be safe. Taking most of their supplies with them. He spared a hateful thought for Pillion who’d disappeared with them. If he hadn’t led them to the garden, if they hadn’t started that fight and spilled all that blood at once… well it was impossible to say that that’s what had started the garden’s violent spread, but the timing was certainly suspect.
The Collared guard pointed at him as he approached. “Merle is looking for you.”
Wane sighed. “Alright, alright.” He just wanted to lay down a bit, maybe thumb through the old grimoire Tel had left to him. He found himself regretting his hesitation at climbing the tree for the hundredth time since Dantes had left.
He walked through to the conference room and stepped inside. He found himself walking into the middle of a conversation between Merle, Syn, Fel-Tak, and Iron. He stood awkwardly at the door until Merle silently signaled for him to take a seat behind him.
“We will share our food supplies with those you leave behind. We can enter the garden unimpeded and gather fruit as we need. Or forage deeper in the Underprison. The garden has no interest in us…our blood offends it.” said Syn in the form of a dwarven woman in a leather vest and businesslike boots, her hair color shifting between black, gray, and purple as she spoke.
“That should help those unable to climb. The cripples, the old, the weak,” said Merle, gripping a piece of metal that he bent and unbent with each squeeze.
Iron snorted, adjusting his eyepatch with a three fingered hand. “We should just distribute that food to everyone making the climb. We’ll need the fuel more than they will here.”
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Fel-Tak smiled a sharp tooth grin. “This one wonders if you would feel the same had you lost just one more finger?”
Iron glared at him.
“The tools. The hooks, and cloaks. How are they coming?” said Merle, defusing.
Fel-Tak looked at Merle. “The color of the cloaks nearly matches the color of the tree and we have all of them we’ll be able to make. Many will need to go without.”
“And the hooks?”
“We had plenty of metal thanks to Iron in the chamberpot,” said Fel, his smile not dropping even as Iron gripped the blunderbuss at his hip.
Merle sighed. “We only have to get along until we're topside. Let’s hold off on it until then.”
Iron took his hand off the gun. “Don’t worry. Once I’m topside the first thing I’m going to do is find that Mutt that did all of this, stick my gun in his mouth and pull the trigger.”
Merle and Syn exchanged a glance.
“Alright, that’s everything I think we need to discuss. We make the climb in two days. Keep trying to get more people in on it. The more people, the harder it will be to stop us all.”
Fel-Tak nodded, and left the room, his white scales reflecting the candlelight inside as he moved. Iron followed him with a respectful nod to Merle, and a scowl to Syn.
Syn moved to close the door, changing into a long legged elf to make it take just three strides instead of five. When the door latched, she shifted into a halfling to more comfortably fit into a smaller chair next to Merle and Wane.
“You wanted to see me?” asked Wane, willing to bet that this was about Dantes.
“We had some questions for you… about Dantes.”
Well, hopefully he didn’t waste any of his luck on that internal bet. “I’ve already said everything, haven’t I? I told you what he told me about the garden, about his warning. All of it.”
“But how did you feel about what he told you?” asked Syn, leaning forward intently, her eyes shifting between red and orange in such a way that they reminded Wane of a crackling fire.
“Sad, I guess. We were about to bury Tel. I definitely got the impression he was trying to help me… help us. Like he was trying to pay off a debt to us before he left.” Wane paused. He hadn’t had time to really examine his feelings, with everything that had been happening, but he realized he didn’t hate Dantes. He had the feeling that Dantes didn’t know what would happen when he left.
Merle brought his hand to his beard and began stroking it. “What were you thinking just there?”
Wane raised his eyebrows, but told them.
“That’s what I wanted to know. Of those of us left, you knew him the best, but you still weren't aware of his abilities until his escape. If he knew the fate he was leaving us to, we would need to know, but you don’t feel he did?”
“No. Why give us those other warnings like he did? Why help us before he left the way he did, if he had it out for us? Or didn’t care?”
“Well… I trust your word.”
“I told you. Dantes didn’t know. His powers are completely new to him,” said Syn.
“Syn, no offense, but you’re not the most trustworthy person, and you’re clearly biased toward Dantes.”
Syn didn’t respond, but her eyes shifted to a stormy gray.
“I’ll heed your view on this in mind, but I’d like to speak to my man alone.”
Syn smiled and nodded, shifting into a Kobold as she left the room.
Merle sat there silently for a few moments, then he stood. “Do you know why I’m in this prison?”
“Uh… I’ve heard some rumors.”
“That I changed someone into a chicken and ate them?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that is what happened.”
Wane chuckled, before seeing Merle’s face and realizing he was completely serious. “Really?”
“Yes. We’d had an argument, we were both professors on the Academy board and I’d proposed softening the ranking exam. Changing it from a full week to just four days.”
Wane nodded. The ranking exam was the final test all students at the academy took. A full week in a room taking a series of magical exams. It was enchanted to make it so you needed no sleep, no sustenance, no physical relief, and the professors rotated constantly with different requirements. Your score determines your place in the academy or what you’d be licensed to do outside of it. Wane had performed thoroughly middling, but he’d just been glad he’d gotten through it at all. There were windows in that room, and magical nets for catching the students that jumped… the nets didn’t always work though. Four days would still be brutal, but by the fifth day it was really only a test of endurance, not actual skill or talent.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I want you to know that I don’t regret it and I thought that he tasted delicious and had served a far better purpose in my stomach than he ever had in life.”
Wane simply sat there quietly. He doubted Merle was done talking.
“What I’m trying to say is it was perfectly justified to throw me down here. Hells, most of us deserved this punishment, but we’re all going to try and make the climb in two days because it’s not about what we deserve, it’s about what we want.” Merle stood, the small chair he’d been on creaking in relief as his weight was removed from it. “Do you know what I want?”
“Another chicken?”
Merle smiled. “I want to get my people out of here, get these collars off of our necks, and cast spells again. More than that though, I want to make some changes in the city. Big changes. I think Dantes could be helpful there. A druid… their powers are unique, largely unknown even in the academy. I know we have some people that would rather see him dead…”
“You want me to persuade them.”
“That or tell me who they are so I can. Just among our own people. I don’t expect us to soften anyone elses’ hearts on the matter.”
“I can do that.”
“Good. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to see if there’s anything heavy enough outside to give me a decent workout.”
Wane nodded, and then left the building. His stomach growling from the talk of chicken. He looked out over the huddled remnants and survivors in the Pit. He’d heard how they’d talked of Dantes since he left. He was spoken of alongside names like Gideon Gallant, Tristan Two-lives and The Green Blight. He’d become a legend. Most called him Dantes the Deceiver, some called him the Climber or even the Destroyer. Only those who knew a thing or two about the world outside of Rendhold, a world where green was the dominant color instead of gray, and you were more likely to see tigers than stray cats, knew what his name should truly be. Dantes, the Druid.
END OF BOOK 1