Downtown Druid - Chapter 48: Meet me in the Maw

Dantes and Jacopo crawled through the tunnels, leading a horde of rats and roaches. Dantes had almost no difficulty adjusting to being a rat, but in spite of that he had a bit of trouble keeping up as Jacopo led them through the quickest and most efficient route to Orc territory. It was what amounted to nighttime in the Pit, and the majority of the Orcs were asleep, though around ten had gone on a hunt for beasts with Blud. He had tracked them until they were too far away to make a difference in what was about to happen.

They exited not at the entrance to the orcish territory, but rather slightly behind it. Four orcs stood at the entrance, alert and ready for any counterattack that the collared or dwarves might be planning to mount. Dantes ignored them, spreading out his four or six legged allies across the space. It was difficult, controlling this many, and his favor was burning up quickly, but he had plenty for what he was planning.

He moved through the territory toward the first of his targets. His visits to the Orc gang had been infrequent, but he’d been scouting them since they’re increase in aggression and so it was familiar to him. In one corner a giant spider and kobold had been butchered for their meat and distributed to the gang, bloodstains and the smell of rot telling the story clearly. Toward the center of it was a pit of coarse sand dyed red and mixed with shards of tooth and bone. Their fighting pit, where those of them waiting for the recruiters to pay a visit, trained for their chance to take up the mantle of the Green Blight, and possibly fight well enough to escape. There were decorations and trophies scattered all throughout the space, as well as discarded weapons and tools littering different corners.

On the surface, back in Rendhold, Dantes had known Orcs that were bookish scholars, Elves that were thuggish brutes, and gnomes with no head for numbers, but in the pit they all seemed to devolve into whatever the most common idea of themselves was. Then again, they were all criminals, that may have had more to do with it.

Dantes reached a trio of sleeping Orcs in an offshoot cave. He shifted back into his usual shape, the pain from it making him soundlessly wince. He looked at their sleeping faces, checking for a scared ear, a flower tattoo, or a neck with a healing spider bite. He found none, these weren’t the orcs Wane had asked him to spare. He drew his dagger, having traded his rapier with Jayson for a more practical weapon shortly after his meeting with Wane. He moved silently, finding doing so to be easier than it ever had been before, and knelt just behind the largest of the three’s head. He covered the Orcs mouth and slit his throat in a single smooth motion.

When it was done, he frowned for a moment, watching the blood drain from him as the light left his eyes. Dantes had killed before. He’d killed in Rendhold, even before he’d ended up in the Pit. It wasn’t usually his first choice of solution, but he’d never hesitated to resort to it when it was necessary or even just easier. Still, he’d never done it so calmly as he just had. The way he’d drawn the dagger across the man’s throat had felt almost… matter of fact.

He looked at Jacopo, who was keeping an eye on the other two Orcs. Jacopo had developed a taste for revenge through Dantes, but Dantes had discounted how Jacopo may be influencing him. Their connection wasn’t a one way street, he knew that, but he hadn’t considered how they’d affect one another in the long term. This kind of practical and relaxed killing was new to him, but from the feelings and impressions he received from Jacopo, that was how he performed most of his violence.

He let out a breath, he didn’t have time to think through it, and even if he did it wouldn’t change what he was there to do. He moved to the next of them, and then the third. Once they were all dead he took the Mother’s Reach seed from his coat pocket, feeling it radiate power from the daily dose of his blood he’d been giving it, and held it up to each of the orc’s necks, letting their blood flow over and be absorbed by it.

Hold

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He sent that command to it, and could feel burning frustration shoot back at him. The seed wanted nothing more than to grow, to sink its roots and spread its branches, but Dantes wouldn’t let it and it raged harder and harder as blood continued to fill it with potential and vitality. With the Orc’s blood added to it, it actually began to radiate real heat along with the pulsing and vibrating it had already been doing. It was like the beating heart of a roaring sun.

Dantes shifted back into ratform, checking each of the other locations he was tracking and moving to the next one. He could move almost silently as a man, but as a rat even if he wasn’t silent no one would find it suspicious that he was walking around. He visited four more groups of sleeping orcs, some in pairs, some thirds, and in one case five. Each time he repeated the same process, slashing throats one by one, gathering their blood into the seed, and then returning to ratform to go to the next group, all while using his allies to monitor where they all were and what they were doing. He reached the main sleeping quarters last. There he located the three that Wane had asked him to spare, and he marked them in his mind. He returned to his normal self, and crept to the closest of them. He raised his dagger in preparation, when an orc in the center of the group suddenly sat up, turning to his side and vomiting foul bile that reeked of alcohol onto another of the orcs.

Suddenly, the orcs were all waking up, and while he himself was distracted, the orc he was holding the dagger over awoke, and screamed.

Dantes cursed, and quickly plunged the dagger into his throat, killing him. The other orcs all began to stand and move toward him. Many of them instinctually grabbing weapons they slept with. He could see through the other rats that the four guards were heading his way too. He considered turning back into a rat and scurrying away, but then the memories of burying Tel’s corpse, removing his head and collar, the feeling of his finger in his coat pocket, all of it hit his mind like an explosion.

He held the dagger up defensively as the orcs approached, raised his left hand, and snapped his finger. The sound echoed across the cavern, even above the warcries, for just a moment, and then the thousands of roaches that were hanging from the roof of the cavern, all dropped down at the same time.

The orc’s warcries turned to screams as the roaches swarmed across their bodies, into their clothes, and even their open mouths. Dantes surged forward in the confusion, his knife finding orc after orc in the struggle, dropping them one by one, while others were suffocated by the concentrated effort of thousands of roaches.

The four guards arrived, and found themselves confused and horrified by the scene before them. Their discipline kicked in quickly though, and they located and charged toward Dantes.

That’s when Dantes ordered the rats to join the fray.

Before the guards had reached him, they were swarmed by rats and roaches as their companions had been, and just as they had, they dropped their weapons, falling to the ground and tearing handfuls of roaches, and whole rats from themselves, but they couldn’t do so faster than the vermin could be replaced.

Dantes moved quickly, watching as the gold in his roach and ratmarks rapidly dwindled. He moved from Orc to Orc, avoiding their flailing and doing his best to mortally wound them before moving on to the next one. It wasn’t a grand battle, or an even brawl. It was an ugly execution.

When it was done all, but two of the orcs were dead. They’d either suffocated under the press of fur and chitin, or Dantes had finished them himself with his dagger, which even though it was of fine elven make, had grown dull and chipped to near unusability. He leaned against a wall and panted heavily. With what little favor he had left he checked on Blud’s location. He was on his way back, but Dantes still had time.

He moved from Orc to Orc, checking them for small valuables and coin, and let the rats and roaches he’d been controlling do as they wanted with the bodies hoping to restore at least some of the favor he’d lost. He directed them away from the two he’d spared for Wane. He’d accidentally killed Dune, the one with the scarred ear, in the fray. He felt a tinge of guilt at that, but there was nothing he could do about it now.

Once he was done looting the bodies, netting almost thirty copper, a couple silver, and a silver ring, he fed the Mother’s Reach seed on last time. After that, he took the orc closest to the exit, and spilled some of his blood onto his hands. He then walked to the entrance and wrote a short message for Blud, after which he took out a tea light and lit it underneath the message, to shine clear light on it.

“Meet me in the Maw,” – Dantes

He nodded at his handiwork, and he and Jacopo walked into the tunnels, covered in bloodstains with the seed pulsing with power and heat by their hearts.