Aftermath

[Arithon]

To the casual eye the streets of the city are cleaner, brighter, free for the first time in many days of the dark breezes and mouldering evil of recent times. Citizens stroll along shady avenues conversing quietly, all is well.

In the aftermath of Shakira's fall, every tongue is busy with talk of sorcery and necromancy, swords and spears and the rise or fall of this or that notable. Little notice is given to the slowly stabilizing level of crime and graft in the meaner quarters.

Here a butcher is efficiently shaken down for protection money, there a blacksmith found dead in an apparent robbery. Nothing overt, nothing to claim the headlines. But slowly, systematically, the reins of power are gathered, into whose hands it cannot be told, even in the dank underground lairs of the lords of wickedness, great and small.