Seersucker

Book 3 Ch 31: He was Rendhold, and Renhold was Him

Even with Serpica dead, the fight didn’t end immediately. The druids still had to kill a dozen of the horribly flesh-beasts that she’d created, ending whatever cruel suffering had bound them together in such a sickening way.

When Dantes was done killing the last of him with a stake-like finger from his wooden hand, he turned his attention to everyone else. Fern was clutching her twin, Ivy, to her chest weeping openly as she rocked the body back and forth. Her and her sister’s falc...

Book 3 Ch 30: I Have Seen Suffering

“Looks to me more like a dead rotting leviathan with a madwoman standing in front of it,” responded Dantes as he took inventory of everything around them to prepare the best wand and strategy for that moment.

“Dantes is right Serpica. You must see how mad all of this is,” said Traizen, his voice anguished. He looked around with a look of anger and disgust on his face. “You are using the gifts that she gave you to corrupt the Mother’s children. To act against her will. The su...

Book 3 Ch 29: Welcome to the Fall

The druids all sat in a circle in the audience chamber with their eyes closed. The other druids and their companions wove their senses together and tethered themselves to Dantes, entangling with his own perceptions like vines wrapping around a tree as they reached toward the sun. The sensation was deeply uncomfortable for Dantes. His mind and his senses were his own, and he didn’t much enjoy sharing either of them. Still, he forced himself to be open, slowly peeling back the fingers he had ...

Book 3 Ch 28: We Are Very Dangerous

Dantes sat and ate with one hand while he rocked a sleeping Jacque in the other. He speared a piece of fish and carefully brought it to his mouth. It was just them in the booth. There were plenty of people who could’ve sat with them of course. The kitchen and bar had only Dantes, his men, and Vera and her girls to serve. The girls themselves had no clients. The Vixen was basically empty. The only reason most people even showed up was out of a sense of loyalty, or because they knew Dantes co...

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Book 3 Ch 27: You're My Favorite Date

Dantes stood in the antechamber of Argenta’s manor, looking down at the shivering dwarf that had been laid there. It was a massive, well lit space, filled with marble and black stone. He’d spent most of the previous evening playing cards with Alby and trying to get what information about Argenta and Gren out her that he could. All he’d managed to glean is that she didn’t think there was anything unusual about regularly seeing a demon, he was surly, and her mother controlled him with a...

Book 3 Ch 26: You're Shameless

Dantes sat on a couch next to Diamond, inhaling deeply from one of the smoke filled tubes that extended from the device in the center of the table that he’d been told was a gnomish invention called a hookah. The smoke was rich and flavorful, leaving his mouth feeling a bit like he’d eaten something that made sparks in his mouth. He blew out the smoke into the air, and looked across at the other Fingers.

Fritz was blitzed out of his mind on something or another, and seemed very inter...

Book 3 Ch 25: Keep a lady on her toes

Dantes found himself standing in a wide open field filled with high, green grass. The sun was at its highest point in the sky, but a cool breeze kept him from feeling too warm. A single tree stood a few yards to his right, but it cast no shadow.

He took a few deep breaths when he heard something rushing toward him. He turned just in time to see an enormous furry form slam into him. He was knocked to the ground and saw a massive maw above him, lined with sharp teeth. It opened, an...

Book 3 Ch 24: Jacque should meet his uncle

Dantes and Jacopo flew to the old tree that they always used to tree-walk themselves to the Viridian Expanse.  He coughed a bit as they landed and shifted, but he managed to force it down.The moon was high and full in the sky, and Dantes could feel its light filling him with strength as they moved. The old tree and the area around it had started to sprout new life in the last few months. Tough weeds grew through the concrete, mushrooms spread in moist places where the rain collected, and...

Book 3 Ch 23: I don't have to kill you here

Jacopo was hanging upside down from Dantes’s tree throne as a bat when he found him. Hanging from his mouth was a fat moth that was still wriggling a bit. He leapt from the throne, launched himself a few feet, and shifted into a rat in mid air, maintaining his control of the moth as he landed and continuing his meal as he got comfortable on Dantes’s shoulder. There wasn’t always much of a need for conversation between them. They could sense one another’s thoughts without effort, and f...

Book 3 Ch 22: How Are You? Bad

Dantes awoke for the tenth night in a row holding his hand to his throat, sweat covering his sheets. Sevryn didn’t even wake up this time, she’d grown used to his difficulty sleeping, and he’d told her many times just to get rest herself at this point. He ran a finger gently across her outline and crawled out of bed. Luckily, this time he’d awoken only a little bit before dawn, his exhaustion had made it difficult to awaken from even nightmares.

He coughed, and poured himself a ...

Book 3 Ch 21: He Couldn't Show Weakness

Dantes landed on the rooftop of the Vixen shortly after. He and Jacopo had flown hard to get there as quickly as possible, but didn’t stop to catch their breath. Dantes left his audience chamber and headed for his VIP booth where Jayk was meeting with Zak, Fandal, Daisy, and Sand. He realized he couldn’t hear what they were saying as he approached and saw that Wane was sitting nearby as well. He raised a mug of ale and gave a solemn nod of greeting that Dantes returned.

He walked cl...

Book 3 Ch 20: But You'll Own Me

Dantes walked the streets of Uptown carefully, which actually meant boldly strutting like a peacock. He wanted it to appear as if he belonged to avoid the suspicion of the increased guard presence there. The murders had slowed down a bit, but when the usually untouchable nobility started to fall to blades in the night, they tended to take it very hard for a long time. He didn’t relish traveling to Uptown himself, but felt he was the best person for this particular job. Jayk was solid, but h...

Book 3 Ch 19: You Can Keep the Extra Blankets

Dantes sat in his tree-throne staring through the glass ceiling to look at the clear night sky. The stars were clear and bright, as was the moon. Without the Academy to light the streetlights, the view of the sky was much clearer than usual. He checked on his operations that ran in the middle of the night. He saw one of his dealers getting roughed up by a few drunks at the docks. He sent a few bats to attack their faces and give his man time to escape. A guard patrol holding torches was about...

Book 3 Ch 18: No Such Thing as Doom, No Such Thing as Fate

Godfrey stood there for a moment with his calm smile. He was holding a thin rapier in one hand as he looked at Dantes, Gren, and Jacopo. His eyes lingered the longest on Jacopo, but when he spoke it was to Gren.

“So little mist, your master has chosen to make another move? I can tell you now that it doesn’t matter. With or without me pulling the strings Rendhold is doomed to fall. I just moved to make that fall as spectacular as possible.”

Gren flickered a bit. “No such th...

Book 3 Ch 17: You Don't Need to Flex

Dantes spent the next two weeks consolidating his power. He took personal visits to his gardens to tend them. He went to each of the shopkeepers that paid up to him and paid them personal visits with no expectation of payments. He personally intervened in a number of jobs his men were undertaking, began to work on his pigeon dust delivery plan with a few of his smarter dealers, and closely monitored his steady acquisition of the Gatemen’s territory. While he did all of this, he maintained h...

Book 3 Ch 16: I'm Better Qualified

Jacopo refused to listen to Dantes. He lunged at the nearest of the disobedient rats and tore into him with tooth and claw. The others attempted to tear him off of him, but Jacopo didn’t relent until he swallowed his victim’s throat along with a draught of blood. He then kicked off of that one and leapt onto the second, turning himself into a man as he did so, the weight of him causing that rat’s spine to snap as he became man sized. He grabbed at the last two, killing one of them by sl...

Book 3 Ch 15: Get out of there

Dantes arrived back at his club at the deepest part of the night. There were still a few people gambling, trying their best to avoid going home to explain their losses to their husbands and wives. A few men near passing out from drink were still soldiering on as they poured glass after glass down their gullets. Almost all of Vera’s girls had cleared out, having found their last clients for the evening.

He noticed all of this and collated it in that same part of his hindbrain that he u...

Book 3 Ch 14: Learn or die

Dantes and Murk arrived at the Conclave in the center of the Veridian Expanse together. It was already late evening by the time they arrived, and everyone else was already sitting around a fire and eating a meal that smelled like a hearty mix of game and freshly foraged vegetables.

Traizen put down his bowl and approached them with his arms wide, wrapping both of them into an embrace. Jacopo had to quickly adjust where he was sitting in order to avoid the elf’s pale muscular arms.

Book 3 Ch 13: Blood Covered Muzzle

It wasn’t difficult to see what had happened. A group in the woods that looked so rough, he didn’t have any personal experience, but he could tell that they were of a kind with him. Bandits, rather than thieves. A distinction that was only to indicate that one group struck from shadows in the woods, and another from shadows in an alley. Same god as far as he knew, though he had a feeling he favored those of Dantes’s ilk more. The bandits had somehow captured Musk’s partner, the she-wo...

Book 3 Ch 12: Where the Fuck am I?

Dantes sipped water rather than wine as he sat in his living throne monitoring what was happening across the city since the Academy had been sealed. The chaos had largely ended, and now that the news had spread every faction represented in the city was doing its best to consolidate what they had, or take advantage of the situation. The city was dark that night. Mage students who had only just started heading out to light the streets had become a hot commodity and were whisked away to Uptown. ...

Book 3 Ch 11: Magic, I Assume

Dantes gritted his teeth as his fingers curled and tightened involuntarily from the growing pain. He stumbled off the bar stool and fell backwards into a table. Looking at his hands he could see no actual damage, but the sensation made it feel as if his skin was sloughing off. The rest of the bar wasn’t faring much better. Jayk was vomiting as he clutched his nose, Zilly was clutching her eyes as she writhed on the bar, and Dantes saw a patron ripping at his ears with clawed hands.  2024-09-24 12:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post

Book 3 Ch 10: Quarter Dead

Dantes landed back at the club by early afternoon. Jacopo chose to keep flying for a while, diving toward a man walking by with a bit of bread and ripping a chunk off of it before he continued to fly away. Dantes walked down from the roof and into his mossy audience chamber. He took a few moments to check on the status of his gardens, to feel the life flowing from him and make minor adjustments he felt he needed. He’d need to make a personal trip to his largest garden soon. 

He w...

Book 3 Ch 9: She's a Legend

Dantes looked at the crystal sitting in Argenta’s palm, pulsing with energy as it recorded everything he did. It was a clever initiation. The guard could be bribed, manipulated, or avoided relatively easily once you reached a certain level of criminal success within Rendhold. There were only a few things that could bring them knocking on your doors once you reached that level. Fucking with the guard, pissing off the wrong members of the nobility, and verifiable murder. That last one was dif...

Book 3 Ch 8: I Have Spawned Thousands

Dantes awoke the same time he always did. Sevryn was sleeping peacefully next to him, her jewelry glinting in the morning sunlight that poured in through the window. She’d kept it on all night. He’d liked that, it had made the room sound like it was raining coins.

He silently left the bed and began going through his morning routine. He exercised in his garden, joined this time by Jacopo. They chased one another and sparred. Jacopo always had the advantage of strength, but Dantes was...

Book 3 Ch 7: Aside From the Obvious?

Dantes arrived back at his club as business was hitting its peak for the evening. He cut past the crowd waiting to enter, and the bouncer gave him a respectful nod as he walked inside. He made his way to the bar, where Zilly was slinging drinks quickly, but she stopped what she was doing to go to him. The other patrons didn’t complain, they knew who was meant to be served first.

She looked at him questioningly.

“Some of that crab soup if there’s any left, and that bottle of ...

Book 3 Ch 6: Don't Make an Enemy of Me

Dantes landed as a pigeon deep in Gatemen territory at the southwest gate and walked along the cobblestone and concrete paths caked in mud from the day's travelers, and their mounts, entering the city. There was still a bit of sun in the sky, but it would be evening soon. He rolled his neck a bit and heard a few cracks as he did so. The pigeon form was still new, and sometimes the transition out of it left him feeling a bit achy. He walked openly through the middle of the street. This wasn’...

Book 3 Ch 5: Good Work Today

Vampa, who stood more than a foot taller than Dantes, nodded silently at his question. He was wearing an undershirt and trousers held up by suspenders , his thick black boots were well worn, and had a few drops of red along the heel that didn’t take a scholar to identify. It was the most dressed he’d ever seen him.

They started walking up the road, the two black hounds in tow. The crowd parted before them, with a number of men and women offering them respectful nods as they moved. 2024-09-10 12:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post

Book 3 Ch 4: Two-Legs and Their Problems

Dantes was floating above the table at which sat the man in dark blue and the woman in green. They had ceased their sewing of the tapestry and had since then began to play a number of different games with one another. He'd seem them throw dice, shuffle cards, and even stack sheep vertebrae. They didn't play for stakes, but instead seemed to be practicing something. There were two empty seats always at their table, but so far he'd not seen any other gods in them. Away from the table, closer t...

Book 3 Ch 3: Jacopo is Uniquely Motivating

While Jayk took care of the cleanup, Dantes walked behind the meeting chamber and into his private chambers. The halls were simple, with a thick crimson rug in the center, and art along the walls that he’d favored, lots of windows for light, and plants growing both in those windows and inside them. He kept it elegant and simple, with a little help from his aunt and her girls. He moved past his bedroom, he didn’t like to sleep until the club closed for the night, and moved toward the study...