Daniel's sleep would be deep and dreamless, until another crude interruption occurred. With a bolt of thunder of the sort that might well shake someone awake, Daniel would seem to awake...

Daniel would find himself standing outside, on one of the nameless and faceless streets of Oblivion-Ulster. The storm raged above... Or at least, was trying to. The world was frozen, it seemed. Rain and hailstones were halted in midair, the clouds paused in the midst of violent tumbling, and a bolt of lightning a few blocks away stayed frozen, illuminating the entire city with a harsh but tolerable glow, its thunder lost to silence that permeated the world. Danyr was nowhere to be seen, nor was there any sign of the house they were hunkered down in...

"Daniel."

A figure would emerge several steps from a darkened alley behind Daniel, speaking quietly and calmly. The figure was tall, broad-shouldered, and stately, his skin red tinged and his face bearing a black goatee. He was dressed in a grey pinstriped suit, with a matching fedora covering his bald head, his eyes a cool and calculating yellow. His face was practically impossible to read, bearing perhaps amusement, if any emotion could be said to be there. If Daniel were to look, he would find all the coins he used to summon weapons missing...

"You are quite a persistent boy. I've seen entire crusades with less steam than yourself. And all for such a simple, noble cause. You don't know what is even happening here... You just want to save the girl you met for a brief moment, months ago now..."

The man would stand at the edge of the alleyway, casually brushing a few hailstones from in front of his face, causing them to fall normally and clack loudly on the ground...

The next time Daniel opened his eyes, he was standing in the streets of the city, a city frozen in time. It was odd, though. The way he perceived it all-- he wasn't groggy at all, and all that surrounded him, a hail-storm ridden city stopped in the midst of time, almost seemed normal, as if the city had always been like that. This was perhaps the strangest feeling at all. It wasn't that he was unimpressed, it was that he was . . . unsurprised? A tiny bit confused, but not so much that he felt absolutely abnormal.

The truth was, this all felt too much like a dream. Too much like a dream for Daniel to ever believe . . . and yet, it also felt so real, as if it were the vivid sort of dream. But it couldn't be real. It didn't feel real. It didn't feel like a dream, either. It almost felt somewhere in-between. Somewhere between Real and Unreal. Sadly, this almost perfectly described Daniel Kerington's life for the last six months.

It was as Daniel surveyed the street before him that he heard a voice from behind. His back straightened out entirely when he heard his name called. This voice did not sound familiar. It felt like it should, but it didn't. Slowly, Daniel turned to face him.

Between the two of them, the man looked far better than Daniel could even hope for right now. His clothes were all torn and tattered. He was haggard. He had the closest thing to an unkempt five-o'clock shadow that he could grow at this age. His hair was knotted, split at almost every end, and greasy. His whole body was tired from a journey that just would not end, and it all made it look as if he had dark circles under his eyes.

Daniel was a mess, and he fit right in with this city-- lost in time or not.

"She's my friend," he replied frankly, "oI protect my friends."

It was all the justification he needed. Daniel Kerington would fight an army by himself if it meant protecting one of the few friends he had in this life. He'd go to the ends of the earth if he had to-- and by now, he'd already made it from one end to the other.

"I see."

The man walked closer, brushing hailstones and rain from in front of his face and upper body, leaving an odd man-shaped hole through the precipitation. Approaching Daniel, he would slowly walk around the boy, forcing him to either keep turning or to lose sight of the man.

"You know, it would be easy to write you off as stupid. I don't believe that, though. History changes because someone was persistent, not because they were smart."

With that, he paused in front of Daniel, cocking his head as if trying to see the boy from an angle that wasn't really there at all. A slight smile crossed his face, as if he saw something that amused him.

"You know, Daniel... I'm going to let you in on a secret. A lot of people think I'm able to see the future. I'm rather uncanny at guessing what people will do. And it's not because I see the future. Rather, I see the past, and people rarely change. When I look at someone, I see parts of their past: decisions they made, experiences that shaped them... And from there, it is easy to predict what they do."

Cocking his head to the other side, he looked at Daniel, as if there was a piece missing from the boy, and he couldn't quite figure out what it was...

"You are oddly familiar to me, Daniel, but I see nothing about you beyond perhaps a year ago. Before that day you crawled into Oblivion for the first time, absolutely nothing. I don't know why, but if you told me you didn't exist before that day, I would believe it..."

Daniel was mostly silent as the man approached and continued to speak. Daniel was attentive, though he looked far from someone that could concentrate on a thing anymore. His body was all kinds of a mess after this journey (that's been mostly without a bath for the past month), but Daniel actually felt pretty mentally stable.

He followed the man with his eyes, making sure to turn around as he passed Daniel by. He did not trust this man, and judging by his appearance, the way he carried himself, and the absurdity of the situation, Daniel had absolutely no reason to, either. He listened closely as he watched the man pace, and said very little . . .

At least until the man said something especially strange.

Didn't exist? Pah!

Of course Daniel existed back then. He had all sorts of . . . deja vu in this place! So maybe he couldn't remember everything--but that woman Usurii explained to him that he was going to periodically suffer memory loss over time. Why, even she didn't know, but she saw something of a trend in his memories and concluded that like some sort of educated doctor. It made Daniel feel confident. Just because he couldn't remember something didn't mean it never happened.

Right?

"Then maybe you should gets your eyes checked?" Daniel replied. Now matter how terrible a come-back that was, Daniel was completely serious when he issued it.

"Clever. I suppose I should dignify that with a response? It's your problem, in the end. It's tough to face the future without a past."

The man paused in his walk, in front of Daniel, placing his hand on his chin thoughtfully. Daniel remained, as ever, straightforward. Yet, the boy seemed to intrigue him. As he stood, his head would seem to continually move, making it very difficult for Daniel to make eye contact without following the slow movements...

"I'm not here to teach you about yourself, in any case. I'm here with... Let's call it a deal. Or a warning. Even a threat, if you want to call it that..."

The man seemed to suddenly think of something, stepping back in a sort of theatrical way.

"I haven't introduced myself, Daniel. My name is Teron, and I am the master of this realm. The realm in which you are trespassing. And trying to steal from me, for that matter."

Teron didn't particularly upset at Daniel, maintaining the same tone of voice...

"And to tell you the truth, I don't care about the girl you're trying to rescue. Honestly, I've been keeping her because I didn't know what else to do with her. I hope you'll understand that I can't just give her to you, on principle. But, she isn't the important thing. The important things here are my machines. My agents, conscious or beastly, who get in your way, I am unconcerned with, as long as my research continues..."

Then I'll just find my past after all this is over.

Daniel recalled that woman, Usurii, offering to work on his memories in greater depth, but warned that it might take much more time than something as simple as drawing out forgotten things that happened six months ago. She estimated some possibility of weeks of work on the boy's memories to do any good for him. The reason was simple: she couldn't find any of his memories prior to six months ago, which meant they must have been buried pretty deep.

That's what Daniel liked to think, at least.

He inevitably turned down the woman's offer and simply asked for her to restore his memories of this place. For now, this place, Zera, and Danyr were the only things that mattered to Daniel. Once Zera was safe, he'd just have to go find Usurii and belately take her up on that offer.

The revelation that this man-- Teron --was the lord of this realm (and, in turn, responsible for this entire mess) was only partly a surprise. He looked like the least trustworthy person on the face of the earth, the type that might actually do something this horrible. The major surprise for Daniel wasn't quite the reveal, but the fact that Teron was so openly showing up to Daniel, rather than simply sending a lackey of some sort to deliver a message. That was a pretty common thing for these villain types, right?

Daniel's reaction of surprise was subdued by a mixture of anger and determination. He wanted to beat this guy's face in, but when he checked his pockets with a casual pat, he didn't find any of his coins.

This presented a problem . . .

Daniel narrowed his eyes at Teron. The guy had him in a pretty bad position right now. Daniel could charge him right now, but there was no telling what Teron could do. Though he was pretty good with hand to hand combat anymore, Daniel didn't trust it enough to justify this right now.

So instead he said the first thing that came to mind.

"My buddy and oI are 'ere for Zera." Daniel's accent came out thicker when he was upset. "Not your bloody scoience."

He pointed a finger at Teron accusingly.

"But oI swear to God if you've hurt 'er . . ."

Daniel wasn't thinking about it anymore, but if he was, he'd have recognized that he didn't sound like himself at all. Daniel Kerington was not a threatening young man. Disarming, maybe, but only through a naive brand of kindness. He wasn't intimidating, though. Not until he was already half-way done beating someone into submission. He wasn't socially aggressive. He wasn't seriously threatening. He barely even cursed.

". . . your bloody scoience will be the last thing you'll be worryin' about."

The way Daniel said it, it was as if he wasn't making a threat, but issuing a complete and unbreakable promise to Teron.

"What reason would I have to hurt her, or even touch her? I've done things with and to thousands of more remarkable women over the years. Besides, why would I callously damage such a project? Danyr was a much more interesting experiment, but she was the cost, of sorts."

Teron, of course, didn't explain his thoughts. That was for Daniel to figure out. He slowly walked to an archway along the side of the streets, standing in front of a door and facing Daniel. He appeared ready to break off the conversation, looking to Daniel pointedly.

"Just remember, Daniel. You heroic types are terrible at keeping your promises. I just hope you remember it when it comes time."

With that, Teron reached up and pointedly snapped his fingers. The reason for his moving to the archway became clear: at his unspoken command, the full fury of the storm raged once more. Daniel would quickly be blinded by the rain and wind, and if he was to try to catch up with Teron, the man would be gone...

And after just a few moments, Daniel would awake to a similar fate. A shutter above Daniel's sleeping spot lay open with a broken latch, allowing all the fury of the storm to enter the house. By the time Daniel awoke, he would already be half-soaked from his waist to his head. The latch itself was splintered and broken in a relatively new way...

When Daniel slowly awoke, he found himself mostly soaked to the bone. He could remember the details of a dream very clearly, but dreams were scarcely things he took all that seriously. What he did take seriously was that it was a pretty suck dream and an equally suck wake up call.

“Ugh, talk about a wet dream,” he groaned and wiped the hair out of his eyes.

What made it worse was that his head kind of hurt, now. This whole mess just didn’t get any better, did it? A man just couldn’t get any shuteye in this city, not without having weird ass dreams and getting rained on.

“Oi, Danyr!” Daniel shouted as he rubbed his head.

If that was how sleep was going to be, he just wasn’t going to have any part in that. Daniel had better things to do than have weird ass dreams and get drenched whilst trying to sleep. Might as well do something productive, instead. He stood up, yawned begrudgingly, and left the room.

“oI think oI’m done sleepin’ for the next year; oI’ll take watch for you,” Daniel uttered as he returned to where he last remembered Danyr to be sitting.

Danyr wasn't in the other room. In fact, Danyr was standing beside the doorway, hunched down behind a table and partially hidden, drawn by the sound of the broken shutter and the weather it allowed in. As Daniel walked towards the other room, likely without noticing Danyr, Danyr would reach out and grab Daniel's shoulder, forcibly turning him to face the window.

"Wait..."

Danyr spoke in a low whisper, his other hand slowly moving for his bow. Looking back outside the window, a strike of lightning would illuminate a figure in the darkness outside for just a moment, a somewhat hulken and misshapen form, similarly looking inside... As the lightning passed and the room was once more lit very dimly, the sounds of the other shutters around the house breaking could also be heard...

At first, Daniel didn't see Danyr, and he was all kinds of curious and wondering where his friend went. He was about to call out for him even louder when Danyr grabbed him and pulled him down. Danyr's ability to scare the shit out of Daniel never lost its full functionality, it seemed. He could do it always. Daniel just happened to recover a little better from it each time.

This time, he recovered awfully quick, as it seemed there was something outside that had its eye on them. Or on him. It couldn't see Danyr, right?

". . . bollocks," Daniel said under his breath.

Well, this put a damper on sleeping arrangements. Danyr's sleeping arrangements, that is. Daniel had no plans on sleeping again for months.

Just in case, Daniel started to rummage around through his pockets, searching for either some of his old coins or the new one he picked up. In his dream, he had no coins on him at all. But that was just a dream, right? He had to have something on his person right now. Probably.

Daniel's coins were all still on him; wherever he seemed to have gone in his dream, his body and possessions were appropriate to this world. Danyr, however, would quickly bolt. Daniel could probably guess why; Danyr's powers of stealth were much reduced when someone knew he was supposed to be there...

"We can't stay here. If they can get through the rain, we can, too."

Danyr wasn't sure where to go; there was more than one tower for them to go to. If they stayed there, though... It was only a matter of time. As the shadowy figure outside leapt in, it sneered at Daniel with a gnarled and twisted smile. More so than the other shade-human hybrids, this one seemed... Intelligent? And fast. And it was difficult to tell how many more there were...

Daniel leaped back as the hybrid leaped in. Well, this was a predicament. Danyr had already begun to leave, and Daniel unfortunately hadn't yet made his move to bail out.

"Roight, uh . . ."

Fight or flight, fight or flight . . . It really showed bad form when someone had to actually stop to consider the two possibilities. Fortunately, this turned out well. In the split second that Daniel went over the two possibilities, the two halves of his brain vying for physical control of his body came to a steady and reasonable negotiation: both. So Daniel reared his fist back and lunged right back at the hybrid, fully intent on shoving his fist into the hybrid's face as hard as he possibly could (which was in itself a rather speedy move; Daniel was both strong and fast. He'd have died a million times by now if he weren't), which would prompt him to turn on a dime and get the hell out of Dodge. This probably entailed bailing out of the front door shoulder first, and maybe even breaking the whole damn door down. It was, after all, a scientifically proven fact that no single bull in the universe, regardless of how irate he may be with the color red, bizarrely dressed folk jumping on his back, or utterly stupidly dressed folk dancing around him, could out-charge and overpower Daniel Kerington when in the process of running for his life.

Honestly, he could have turned and bailed without first blasting the hybrid in the face, but that guy's smirk was just irritating.

"Roight behind you!" Daniel shouted in mid-bailout.

The hybrid, if nothing else, was slightly confused by Daniel. The boy seemed awfully slow... Until he acted. That caught the shade-man by surprise. Perhaps Daniel was dim-witted at times, but his fists were at least of significant impact...

The shade-men, while fast, were fortunately light: perhaps half their bodies were essentially hollow and weightless. Daniel's punch would knock the creature into the damaged window frame, knocking the shutter off the wall, as Danyr followed Daniel out the window. The rain outside was perhaps only a bit less punishing than the shade-men. The howling wind and rain made speech difficult and sight even more difficult, while the hail and rain was annoying to endure.

"They know where we are! They're going to hunt us down... We can take the fight to them instead!"

They knew generally where the towers were, and the one from before was easy to find, especially: located on the sea, it just took going east to the sea and north to the tower...

Out of the house and onto the street, Daniel ran like hell. He kept looking back at the house, though-- kept checking on the status of the hybrids. There was no way they were getting out of this one unseen. Even if only a few saw them, that was all that was necessary to get a whole army against them . . .

There was a hefty problem to deal with, too. If it were just Daniel, he'd be able to outrun (or outskate, preferably) an army of hybrid. But Danyr? Danyr would've been run down eventually, and so would Daniel if he was slowing himself down to keep pace with his friend. In the street, they ran until they were out of the cul-de-sac, but that was about as far as they were going to go together. Danyr probably wasn't going to approve of what Daniel had in mind, but they didn't have the time to debate it right now. The only other option was carrying Danyr around, and that would've been as grand of an idea as suicide.

"I'll meet you there!" Daniel shouted loud for Danyr to hear.

And with that, he broke away from Danyr, only to dart back down the cul-de-sac-- and rather slowly, at that. As he reached into his pocket and withdrew a coin, though, it would likely be clear enough to his friend what Daniel had in mind. If Danyr was going to reach the tower safely, the hybrids needed to forget that he was around, and what better way to make them forget than present a greater threat?

Danyr, unfortunately, didn't have a chance to respond. The rain and speed at which Daniel made his decision made that impossible. As frustrating as it was for Danyr to make the decision to be a distraction. When Danyr was both trained and skilled at getting away from people and not being noticed. In a goddamn rainstorm. When Daniel was notoriously absent-minded and forgetful it. The bastard.

"Daniel!"

Danyr turned and ran after his ill-fated friend. Splitting up was the worst thing they could do at the moment...

Daniel was ahead of Danyr, however. Dashing back into fighting range of perhaps a dozen of the shade hybrids. He drew the coin representing Presmodia, but the creatures didn't wait for him to act. Within seconds of seeing him, they were upon him, slashing with such ferocity that they occasionally tore each other with their claws. In particular, the first one to see him leapt almost horizontally at Daniel's face, two arms full of claws...