Downtown Druid

Gavain sat in his cell, meditating with his arms shackled above him. The whippings had ceased for nearly a week as nearly every able bodied man in Frasheid became otherwise occupied. He’d heard whispers in the halls. The slave revolt that was supposed to be quashed had won an upset battle. The soldiers they’d sent to Rendhold…

He gritted his teeth. He’d sacrificed so much to prevent that from happening. He knew he’d needed to take responsibility for the animosity he’d created. He’d even done a good thing in the midst of it, making sure that the criminal Dantes, who Pacha had told him of, was arrested. But even that…

He tried to bring his attention back to his breathing, and failed. Dantes had apparently been the one who’d scattered the Frasheid forces, which meant he’d been released, which meant that his sacrifice had been doubly for nothing.

Gavain was suffering. Suffering for doing the right thing. He’d always done the right thing, it had been easy for him. He was strong, born strong, and attained greater strength. As a child he’d strangled a wild coyote that had attacked him while he was outside with his mother. There had been mumblings that he was blessed, but the priests found no signs of that in him. He was just different. He’d taken that difference as a responsibility, that he needed to be a hero. He’d loved that, reveling in his strength, the smiles he saw on people’s faces when he saved them.

He’d devoted his victories to the god of Justice, but he’d never heard his voice. Where was Justice now? He hadn’t been fed a full meal in months. He was beaten daily. He hadn’t resisted, thinking he was doing the right thing. Thinking his suffering was nothing compared to the good he was doing. Certain of it. He strained against the manacles, hearing them groan a bit from his effort. He could still get out, but at this point he couldn’t manage to take out more than ten, fifteen guards before he was killed.

What would the point be anyway? The Adventurer’s Guild had disavowed him, no one had come to save him as he had saved so many others.

There was one reason he could think of. One that put a bit of fire back into his belly. He could make them suffer too. Those who should’ve been the ones to be tormented as he had. He could make them pay.

He strained against the chains again, and the manacles bent, and broke from the stone wall. He looked up, and saw a large form clad in blood-red armor, holding out a gauntleted hand to him. He could feel that taking that hand would be a choice. One that would mark him forever. He reached out and took it.

…

Dantes held the bag of seeds carefully in his hand, placing each one in a long row across the dirt. The explosion that had destroyed his largest garden had been a painful blow to him, but now the dirt seemed much more lively, as if the ashes of what had been there before were now acting as nourishment. As he planted the seeds throughout the garden, other men were creating a wooden platform on which the words of love would be exchanged and the sealing between Vera and Vampa would be completed. Vera didn’t have any favorite flowers, she’d received flowers of all kinds and never really cared much for them, but Vampa had a preference for elf-lilies which were a sweet smelling flower shaped very similar to elven ears. Dantes had worked with Clay to find some seeds for them. Decorations in general had wound up being up to Dantes, as he didn’t really trust anyone else to make things look the way he felt Vera deserved. Zilly had been similarly insistent on being in charge of all the food and drink for everything. It had been surprisingly easy to work with her with the common goal of making Vera and Vampa as happy with their nuptials as possible.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Syn sat against the remains of a charred tree, chewing on an apple.

“You’re certain that you and Jacopo don’t need a hand?”

Jacopo looked up from the small hold he’d dug as he was placing and shook his head at her.

“We can influence the soil and the seeds as we place them.”

“And you can’t do that if I place them? Or perhaps you don’t want me to mess anything up for your auntie?” she said with a smirk.

“Ha,” said Dantes sarcastically as he stood up. He gathered lifeforce from elsewhere in the city and began to channel into the seeds he’s placed. They all began to sprout, but he cut off the flow just before they were ready to bloom. He was planning to save that for the day of.

“We still need to discuss what you’ve been doing,” he said as he pulled a cloth from his pocket to wipe the dirt from his hands.

Syn nodded, her eyes shifting from purple to green to pink, and shifting pupils from catlike, to goatlike, to human. “I was just waiting for you to ask.”

Dantes sat, sipping from a water skin, and pouring some out for Jacopo as he sat on a bed of moss he created just for him to relax on.

“You know that changelings are arrested upon detection here, yes?”

Dantes nodded.

“That same law is followed in every other kingdom I’ve ever encountered. Changelings are to be confined or exiled wherever we go. It has been that way since we first came to the mortal plane, and unlike Elves, we arrived in separate clusters all across it. Many of us even arrived alone.”

“Where did you come from?”

“We do not know, but we do know we share ancestors with the other fey, even elves though their blood is much thinner than ours.”

Dantes nodded, staying silent so she could continue.

“I cannot blame most kingdoms for their actions. We are more dangerous than other Fey. We can take the shape of anyone, and feybind, giving us extraordinary ability to cause chaos. I can blame Rendhold though, because without changelings, it wouldn’t have been founded.”

“I’m not exactly a student of history, but I’ve never heard anything about that.”

“Few have. Though everyone can agree that Rendhold is unique. It in many ways, doesn’t make sense,” her outfit changed to that of an academy professor, except much tighter and more flattering. “It is a city that acts as a nation, that managed to secure its territory from the two neighboring kingdoms with no issue, that was founded by nobility from many different nations and had avoided conflict for a millennia. The reason for that is because of the feybinding pacts that the changelings involved in the city’s founding enacted. We made sure that the city would thrive and in return we were meant to have a place in it.”

“It is odd that our neighbors didn’t take part in the invasion at all. On either side.”

“They couldn’t. Their royal families and all the nobility within them is bound not to interfere with Rendhold. The only action they could take was allowing troops to pass through their territories unimpeded.”

“What happened?”

“Paranoia, fear, and greed. We were imprisoned, forced into bindings that limited us. Many ran, but a few of us stayed in the hopes that we could change things back to the way they should be.”

“And that’s what you’re doing now?”

She shook her head. “No. The killings in Uptown were to release old pacts, or get revenge on those who had been involved before… and a few were to help you.”

“Like the murder of that man on the war committee.”

Syn nodded. “Making Rendhold accept changelings is something I cannot do. I just wanted those of us that were trapped to be able to leave safely. Now, I just want to spend my days with you. If you’ll have me.”n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

“I hope to have you many times and in many ways, but have the other changelings already left?”

Syn smiled with a raised eyebrow. “If you want to be with more than one woman at a time, I’m sure there are less complicated options available to us.”

Dantes smiled. “No. I want to help you. I’ve already got one member of the council I know will be on my side, and I have a plan for Argenta. The others…I can figure out a way to move them onto the board for us.”

“I can’t ask you to do that.”

Dantes shook his head. “I’m not doing it just for you. Rendhold is my Locus. If we can restore whatever balance had existed between changelings and the city before, then we’ll have a group of shapeshifters that can forge pacts and are loyal to the city. I can see only benefits to that arrangement.”

“You wish to use them?”

Dantes nodded. “I wish to use every tool possible to ensure that my city isn’t invaded again. If they don’t wish to be used, it’s not as if I’ll hold them here against their will.”

Syn ran her fingers through his hair as she sat next to him. “If I had asked you to do it for me, selfishly, would you have?”

Dantes smiled at her. “Almost definitely.”