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 west not connected to the beggars road, so of course they were travelling east and on a dirt road that seemed to of been rushed and poorly made. Not many roads travelled east, of course, since who would want to go to the Fraeru-
"Midnight. Blasted 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 it's 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 helpless 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 slice 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?!