Downtown Druid

Book 2 Chapter 9: Grinning Down at Them

Dantes watched incredulously, checking with the rats at the Vixen for just a moment. Things seemed to be going as they usually did, with a few early morning sailors pairing off with the girls. The goons seemed to have switched to watching things in shifts, with the one on the rooftop taking a nap, and the girl in the alley now inside for a drink.

He looked around. He was basically boxed in, and pushing his way out would draw a lot of attention to himself, so he resigned himself to watch the fight and turned his full attention to the pit. The four mercenaries on one side were a diverse group. There was a woman in the back with a bow, a man in front wielding a two handed warhammer, another man with a spear, and a woman with a long thin blade. They were all armored, and while he didnt recognize the markings he was fairly certain they were highly ranked members of different mercenary organizations, and they were also in the adventurers guild ranked wolf which he remembered being relatively high up as well. It was common for the mercs to work as adventurers between wars, kept the gold flowing.

The solitary man was shirtless and covered with sinewy muscle. His hair was long and light brown. He was human, as far as he could tell, but as pretty as an elf with a smile that seemed to reflect the sun directly into Dantes eyes. If Dantes had looked like him he wouldve started working at the, Magnificent Stallion in uptown and lived a good full life following his mothers career path. He found himself rooting for the other four combatants.

Before the fighting started, the handsome man with the staff raised it high. I offer the effort of this fight in the name of the God of Justice.

Dantes stifled a laugh, his inner cynicism not allowing him to take the statement seriously. He was surprised however when the statement was met by a cheer from the rest of the crowd. He turned his attention to listening to what people were saying around him.

-cant believe hes here. Last I heard he was dragonslaying in Viscent

-Hes wanted in Frasheid for freeing that slave caravan-

- no way he killed a demon. Id believe the minotaur, but a demon? Thats crazy-

His sunspear is supposed to be able to harm even spirits-

Whys he here?

-cant be the prison break. It just happened. Hed have had to cross the continent in almost no time at all.

Dantes raised an eyebrow and appraised the man again. There were those in the city that gossipped about this adventurer or that, but it had never had much appeal to him. Mondego had liked to play at adventurer as a kid, since he saw so many of them when he went to his fathers shop in the guild district, but Dantes had been busy picking pockets.

A horn blew, and the fight began. Dantes expected the man with the staff to be on the defensive at first, but was surprised when instead he launched himself forward at the man with the warhammer, thrusting the tip of his staff at his face. The man with the warhammer managed to just barely move his head out of the way of the strike, but the staff quickly slammed into the side of his head, the speed of the strike causing the staff to actually bend before it snapped into place against the mans face causing his head to spin toward the ground and his body along with it.

The man with the spear moved to strike in unison with the woman wielding the rapier, and just as their strikes were about to hit the man with the staff he seemed to vanish, before they realized hed thrust his staff into the ground and was standing on the tip of it, grinning down at them.

The bow-woman let an arrow fly at him and he caught it with one hand before purposely falling from the tip of the staff toward the spearmen, getting under his guard, and shoving the feathered end of the arrow up his nose, before tossing him to the ground with an open-handed push.

Stolen story; please report.

The man went to retrieve his staff, and the woman with the rapier began to strike wildly at him with a dozen thrusts, while the bow-woman began to loose arrows more liberally at him.

He stayed calm, a smile on his face, as he dodged strike after strike. He somehow did so without giving any ground, moving only as much as he needed to to avoid their attacks.

As the spearmen began to stand, he somehow batted away the rapier by hitting it with the flat of his hand. The force of that nearly spun the woman around, and when she regained her footing he had his staff which he brought down on her wrist, disarming her.

The spearmen launched himself at him, and they did some brief exchange of blows which the staff wielder fought off with only one hand on his weapon. Finally, as if growing a bit bored of the display, he drove the tip of the staff into the spearmans gut, caught the spear as the man began to lose consciousness, and flung it with such force that when it caught the bow-womans hood it threw her back into the far wall and embedded itself there, the force of it seeming to knock her unconscious.

Dantes let out a breath. He hadnt realized he had been holding it as he watched the fight. It couldnt have lasted more than two minutes. Dantes had seen and been in a number of fights in his life. He knew he wasnt a good up-front fighter. In his group that had always been more Mondegos role, as the biggest of them, but he didnt think of himself as bad at fighting. Hed certainly won more than hed lost. That man was on a different level though. Even the men and women hed just defeated alone would have slaughtered Dantes in seconds and Dantes got the impression that the man couldve fought them ten more times without breaking a sweat. He mustve had something divine or magical to him, but that was also beyond Dantes ability to gauge.

The man, now the last one standing in the pit, raised up his staff and the crowd erupted into applause and cheers.

Gavain! Gavain! Gavain! Gavain!

His curiosity satisfied, and the crowd breaking up, Dantes began to make his way out of the arena and back out onto the street to search for the headquarters of the Hells Forgotten. He hadnt understood the appeal of Adventurers as a kid, but if hed seen someone like Gavain, there was a good chance he wouldve followed a different path. He couldve been disarming traps, and picking locks for treasure in a dungeon rather than to steal from someone else. Though, he supposed, you were stealing either way. Once just seemed more acceptable to the average person for some reason. Maybe because liches and dragons werent considered owners of what they had.

Whatever the case he wondered what it would cost to hire muscle like Gavain for a job. He had praised the God of Justice, but at the same time he was a member of the Adventurers guild, which meant money had to mean something to him. Having that kind of power to throw at Mondegos operation was immensely appealing to him, but he doubted the practicality of it. Besides, its a difficult thing to control something that strong. He could be deprived of the personal revenge he wanted if he sent someone like Gavain after him.

Dantes eventually made it to the edge of the Guild district, and it was there he finally found what he was looking for. The Hells Forgotten, building was an old warehouse that had clearly been converted. In front of it were a number of rough looking men and women covered in scars and wearing weapons on their backs or at their sides. Dantes considered asking them about the underground arena he was looking for, but reconsidered, instead pushing out his senses until he found a number of roaches crawling around in a large open space underground. He moved toward where he sensed them and saw a seemingly abandoned building with a man leaning against a wall outside half asleep.

Dantes didnt bother talking to him, instead slipping past him and finding a stairway leading down almost immediately inside the building. The wooden steps quickly changed to stone and Dantes realized he was in some closed off portion of the ruins beneath the city. It opened up and he saw a large pit in which a large elven man was striking a wooden post covered in rope. The force of his blows caused it to shudder, and the speed with which he attacked made him appear almost as a blur. He was a flurry of elbows and knees, but he stopped after a particularly strong blow that caused the post to make a loud cracking sound.

With the man still, Dantes got a better look at him. He was broad and muscular, with a number of scars and burns across his body. His head was shaved, a rare thing for an elf, and his ears ended in horizontal lines where theyd seemingly been cut. One of those ears twitched as Dantes decided to make his footsteps loud enough to be heard.

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