The distrust between druids and cities was mutual. Settled folk held a not-unreasonable fear of the shapeshifting wild men beyond their walls. Many a butcher or pelt-trader lay awake at night with the same anxiety - that one day they would be on the wrong end of a druid's polymorph, and then the shoe would be on the other hoof, so to speak, and it would be them hanging from a hook in a store window, or their skin draped around a noblewoman's neck.

Cold iron talismans, said to protect against druidic magic, did a roaring trade.

Since the Empire had absorbed Drachenel, the town now boasted every modern convenience of civilization. Heated public baths. A bustling slave market. And no druids. The gatehouse scrutinised new arrivals for druidmarks, those distinctive traits that stayed with each druid throughout their forms, be it a specific tail, ears or hooves, regardless of how much they might try to shapeshift them away. Anyone who looked suspiciously non-human was slapped in a cold iron collar on entry.

One snowy evening, a wagon with the sign 'Travelling Tinctures' pulled some distance from the walls. The guard was too distracted, tugging on a merchant's particularly goaty-looking beard, to notice a sparrow with feline ears flit out of the wagon and over the walls, where it landed in a shadowed corner of the slave market. There, the druid resumed his human form and drew a hood quickly over his four ears.

“And they have the gall to call me barbaric,” he muttered, glancing at the humans in cages.

Slavery was an ugly business, an evil with no equivalent in the animal kingdom. Still, when he left with his purchase an hour later, the slaveress had assured him that her bargains were literally a steal, and that she would soon be going out of business if she kept giving them away at these prices, which assured the druid that he was doing his part to sabotage the industry from within.

In a quiet alley, he pulled the man close and began to unbuckle the collar.

“Now,” the druid said, “the saleswoman tells me you’re an intelligent fellow, so here’s the arrangement. I am a travelling healer, a potion seller. But the Imperial yoke and these blasted things-" He tapped his uppermost, pointed ears. "-is making it ever harder to sell my wares. No druids allowed, you see. But animals can run free. In many ways, they have more rights than I do."

The man blinked in confusion as the druid fastened the collar around his own neck.

“That’s what I’m buying you for,” the druid continued. “You play the physician. Meanwhile your mindless slave takes her time 'fetching' the potions in the back. Understood?”

As the druid began to shapeshift, terror overcame comprehension on the slave's face. The druid rolled his eyes.

"Look, it's quite simple. I just need somebody to hold my leash while I work."