"Life is boring, but death, equally so."

-Philosophies of the Broken Age, by Teim Yotun

"Are you okay with that?" Lanyon asked, the question falling on deaf ears. In front of him was a pale, scrawny-looking boy with a bony frame that pushed up against his malnourished body, drifting back and forth as he sat up straight in his bed. His eyes, once full of colour, took on an eerie shade of grey, staring into nothingness. If you didn't know any better you would think he's on the verge of death. He was, at least, but now, according to the nurses, he is as healthy as a boy can be his age. The damage is no longer physical but instead, psychological. "You want to say something, Daniel?"

The boy's eyes snapped onto Lanyon, shaky and stuttering, at the mention of his name. Daniel's head was tilted ever so slightly to the side, with all the movement he could muster. He didn't understand.

"We're going to move you somewhere," Igo, recognising his confusion, began to explain, "You aren't safe in Alandriel anymore, especially in your... state right now. You're going to be living with a fraeru family, in a fishing shack in Midnight. It won't be for long, just until you get better. After that... Well, we just have to talk about it when we get to that point. Do you get it now?"

"...I guess" Daniel replied, with another blank stare. It was progress, at least. When Daniel first woke up, it was like nothing happened. Then after around one and a half weeks, he started screaming and crying in the night, which slowly leaked into the day as well. After the end of the second week, he refused to communicate at all. And after the newspaper was found in his bed, it was obvious he had remembered. Cynthia had warned Igo and Lanyon that delaying the inevitable was pointless, and by delaying it, the effects on his psyche when he finally remembers would only be worsened. He wouldn't talk or give any notice of even hearing something, but now, even if it's just a slither of his old self, he's back. "But why them?"

"The family's a good friend of Lanyon's so we know they'll take good care of you."

"I don't want to."

"Well, do you have any better alternatives?"

"Couldn't I have just stayed dead? It honestly sounds better than this." Daniel may have been stubborn or moody at times, but never to this extent. Even if Igo couldn't comprehend the severity of his changes, he was most certainly different. "I mean, why did you even bother? I was as good as dead, even now. Why did you have to save me?"

"I- We-"

"Stop," Lanyon intervened, "Maybe we should have left you to die, if this is how you've ended up."

Lanyon- no, Lucan walked up to Daniel's bed, fists clenched and quivering.

"Why don't you just get it over with then? Better now than never." Daniel said half-jokingly, shrugging and basking his gaze downwards. Because of that, Daniel didn't see Lucan reaching out to grab him by the collar, lifting him off his bed, body going limp in his grasp. "Do it then, coward." he continued, seemingly unfazed by Lucan's attack, as he spat in his face for good measure. In retaliation, Lucan began to draw back a punch, ready to knock the boy's head off his own body.

"Lucan!"

"Do it. Do it!"

"Lucan, stop!"

"You're going to that place whether you want to or not, got it?!" Lucan said, retracting his arm but maintaining a firm grip on his collar.

"..Yes" Daniel answered begrudgingly.

"And we're going now, you seem fine by my standards, anyway."

"Lucan!" Igo shouted, both the boy and the Rogue realising he hadn't been raising his voice at all before this, "You cannot let him go now, he isn't in the condition-"

"I don't care about his 'condition' or whatever you call it. We're leaving today, whether it be right this second or midnight."

"Please, son, listen to me. Give him at least another day or two to recover! Hell, even Cynthia's saying that he should rest more and you know how quick she kicks out patients after they're even remotely fine!" The room acted silent once more, the echoes of their argument gathering the attention of fellow patients and attendants rushing around. Finally, after a small eternity, Lucan released his grasp on Daniel, slumping back into his bed seemingly unimpressed. Did he really expect that he would be killed here? Not even that, he wanted to be killed!

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"I'll give him a day. If he isn't at the carriage that will come to your estate by sunrise, you bet I will drag him out of whatever bed he rests in and all the way to Midnight. Is that clear, the both of you?"

"Clear as a murky sprinnow at low tide." A phrase often used by Guild Members taking orders, although it is a bit of an oxymoron. A sprinnow has the shape of a large glass bead around a fists size with two twig-like protrusions on either end of it. At high tide, they float around the sea absorbing water and are as clear as day to see, due to the bead resembling a sealed glass container with water in. At low tide, however, they lay stranded on the sandy beach and are practically invisible to see, with the two protrusions often mistaken for two reeds or sticks. Yet, a murky sprinnow at low tide suggests that the sprinnow is completely visible and not see-through at all, or in other words, not clear at all. But in this sense, clear took on the meaning as being able to be meant, and so is clear as day, at both low tide where nothing much occurs and high tide, when the waves of the sea attack and bash at you.

"Sure, why not." And, of course, another nonchalant comment by Daniel to add. With a stiff glare at the boy, Lucan marched off, likely to either organise the carriage dates or mitigate the rumours that he is in fact the Rogue, which were rather easy to deflect not only because of the little grounds the rumours perched their little legs on but a more obvious reason: why would a lowly Silver ranked like Lanyon be one of the most powerful mortals in the world?

As quickly as Lucan left, the boy had fallen asleep, most likely overcome by the stress Lucan put on his body both mentally and physically.

"Sleep tight, Daniel, you'll need it."

* * *

Daniel awoke to another day of pained existence, expecting to find himself held up in his ward bed, contemplating whether or not he should stop eating or not. But that would be wanting something, no? Daniel doesn't need to want. Daniel just is. The soft cushioning of what he lay on seethed into every fibre of his being, highlighting areas of stiffness or hurt, making him want to sleep- No. He needed sleep. I don't want anything...

Yet what struck him as odd wasn't his own behaviour, but the fact that his bed was bouncing and moving. And unlike the dull light of the ward, golden rays seemed to stream in from vertical window slits on the sides of his room. It was a carriage! Daniel lurched up from laying on a seat at that realisation, trying at the door handles of the carriage: all locked. Daniel found himself cursing profusely as he looked out to his new landscape. From his position, he could see the rolling hills and the beggars' road he first travelled through and into Alandriel behind him winding in the hills' troughs. The carriage had broken off into another road, likely on the other side of the city, yet he shouldn't of been able to see the road if he was travelling north, and there is no road to the east not connected to the beggars road, so of course they were travelling west and on a dirt road that seemed to of been rushed and poorly made. Not many roads travelled west, of course, since who would want to go to the fraeru-

"Midnight. Damn, Midnight!" Daniel shouted. He was going to Midnight, just like Lanyon had said. Damn it all!

In front of him, the road led to a small husk of a village barely visible on the horizon. Huts, shacks and homes were sparsely spread along a thin but powerful river, its currents threatening to drag down and drown anything that lay foot in there. Anyone would be mad to try and fish there, since what kind of fish even lived in a river like that?! Of course, Daniel found his eyes settling on a small group of people hunkering around a single individual with what seemed like a fishing rod that had caught something down-stream. They pulled and heaved with all their might, fighting not only against the fish but the river itself. With a final heave, a massive person-sized fish leaped out of the river, a comically-large hook through its mouth and what seemed to be an entire cod on the end as bait. If that wasn't crazy enough that they even caught something, what they had pulled up onto land didn't even look at all like a fish, with the only indication of its amphibian nature being the fact that Daniel had just watched it being yanked from the stream it swam in. Its earthy-coloured scales were hard and even dry despite the water soaking it, forming a large crown of jagged spikes that covered the upper-half of the fish. On the underbelly, two small appendages protruded from the front, desperately working away and trying to get a grip on the land and launch itself back into the river. However, on the back end, a set of seemingly fully formed legs propped the fish up, now standing on its hind legs and running straight towards where the fishermen were now celebrating and towards the river. That fishes face even almost looked human in nature, with big bulbous eyes and a semblance of a nose where a band of gills wrapped around and into where the cheeks were supposed to sit. Its lower lip of its mouth was dangling agape revealing where it had been hooked, seemingly endless sets of teeth taking up its throat and a desperate tongue licking and trying to get a hold of the fish that sat temptingly in its mouth to swallow.

To Daniel's shock, the fishermen didn't even look surprised when it charged at them attempting to attack. He could only watch helplessly as the fish suddenly jumped up in the air and swallowed an entire fisherman whole; was what Daniel assumed he would see. In reality, the fishermen all pulled out small daggers and swords as they also began to charge the fish, their cheery attitudes melting as they began their attack. When the fish jumped onto and tried to swallow an older fisherman at the front, a younger one in the back leaped up and jabbed its sword into its underbelly which had been perfectly exposed, also taking the time to tackle the fish to the ground. The others joined in, ruthlessly stabbing and kicking at the fish. And what seemed a random attack at the fish instead transformed into a ruthless preparation of the fish as it was scaled alive and sliced upon, cutting the large amounts of meat inside into neat fillets. The spontaneous kicks were used to break the bones and spiked scales on the upper side to collect a piece of meat that had those scales on. What had Daniel just gotten himself into?!