Outside, the terrible scratches of sound ripped from the boy's throat were finally pulled away, leaving nothing more than the echoes of the childish monstrosity that had been clawing against the door moments before. An uncomfortable silence filled in the angry space he left behind, a bloated and oppressive thing that weighed like new bruises upon the souls of the involved. Micchi clung to the inside of Dracona's arms, grateful for someone to hold onto, someone to reassure the fact that he was still real and Minori, her sweetness wilted with grief stayed near her comatose sister, just within a hand's reach. They could all feel it. Chauhn was gone and none was more aware of this fact than Clurie.

Since the moment of his birth from fire's cradle, Clurie had been attached to Chauhn, sewn into his being like he were another part of him. He knew everything that Chauhn did and he, up until recently, depended on that stability, knowing what he was doing and that he was always there. The few times before that he had been left to his own devices had either been entirely based on eagerly waiting for Chauhn's return or hesitatingly adventuring out with guilt for attempting such an endeavor of in-dependency. This day, this very hour, Clurie felt the last tethering restraints between he and him crumble into fine ash, and, when before he thought such freedom would be a blessing, he felt a betraying sense of loss in his gut, a nausea that made him double in two. He didn't like this feeling. But Chauhn, at that point, was entirely and completely gone. The Chauhn that he knew, who took joy in working hard and feeling successful, who enjoyed the little things and fell asleep every night trying to come up with new stories to entertain Clurie, the one who never boasted, but always stood in defense, shared everything he ever earned and asked for little if anything...That Chauhn was gone.

Again the heaving sobs of wretchedness crept up in little Clurie's body and he curled up into himself, slipping halfway underneath the chair he had been stationed in.

Chauhn was gone.

Thrown into the cell without his legs to land on, Chauhn tumbled into a ball on the cell's frosty floor, but, by the time that Sage had dragged him to the lowermost level, all the fight had gone out of him like a candle's light. She was able to leave and loudly slam the door shut, as if reminding him that he was now a prisoner of the Fellowship. The boy didn't fight. If anything, he fought to breathe, but why he continued doing that, he had to wonder. He laid on a seemingly shapeless mass of black, and the only color there was to that place was the slit in the door that had been opened for Sage to throw her dagger filled gaze at his broken shape.

She spoke. He listened. She left. And he was left alone, both entirely physically and mentally, somewhere in the lightless belly of the Fellowship.

But still he whispered, breathing life to at least one companion, known by the name of insanity, who shivered and glared out at the place where the light once had been like a wet leper in a oubliette.

"'N' jus' look a' you now," said the companion named insanity, from underneath a riddle of fingers and arms, "Look a' you now...Look a' us all. Look wha' the plague 'as turned us 'nto...You're jus' like me. Jus' like me...

"Bu' ahm outside 'n' you're 'n."

And this is what Chauhn reasoned with himself, ever more slowly realizing the cold encroaching into his little thin body, and realizing just what it was that was so wet on his clothes, mixed into the tears and blood.

Insanity, for a moment, quieted and the little voice of a mixed raced boy from Imisus who couldn't read but knew enough numbers to get by, woke up into the darkness and whispered,

"...Clurie?"[/b