Posts from ⚔️Serberia Auto-translated

"Life is a trial full of unthinkable crap that we endure for fleeting moments of pleasure" — the only useful thought that his now-deceased mother managed to hammer into the head of the then very young Daniel during their short period of living together.

From early childhood, the boy saw nothing bright or good in this gray world filled with filth. His mother, whose name Daniel no longer remembers (or rather does not want to remember), did nothing but beat him almost from birth (at least, it is with the beatings that his first memory of his life in this world is connected, or he wants things to be that way), starved him, and locked him up all day long in a dirty house full of mold and rats, while she herself partied in drinking establishments night after night.

The woman cared nothing for her own son and gave birth to him only by chance, having gotten pregnant from an attractive wanderer.

"He ran off at the crack of dawn, probably realizing he'd knocked me up with such a bastard as you!" — the mother once blurted out in a fit of rage, beating six-year-old Daniel yet again for disobeying her and running away from home while she was gone to beg food from kind-hearted neighbor women. "He was in such a hurry he didn't even take all his things!"

"He courted your mother so beautifully and for so long, until he learned about some of her flaws and vices," — one of the neighbors once sighed while Daniel greedily devoured a bowl of mushroom soup at her place. And the boy would have sworn there was a note of envy in the woman's voice, suggesting that his father was a far more worthy man than his mother made him out to be.

In the future, this conviction would be reinforced by other neighbor women whom seven-year-old Daniel curiously interrogated while simultaneously eating the treats they offered. And although these ladies knew little about the boy's father, they remembered him as a very pleasant and gallant exotic dark-haired man of athletic build, clearly hailing from distant lands.

Who knows, perhaps if his real father had known he had a son, he might have married the undoubtedly beautiful but also insanely deceitful and lost woman in order to raise the child under decent conditions. Or maybe he would have taken Daniel to distant lands, which would have been even better than living with such a crazy mother...

But none of that happened. And all that remained of Daniel's father was a golden bracelet adorned with precious fiery-red stones, which his mother hadn't drunk away only because of her love for fine jewelry. Who knows, maybe she didn't receive it as a gift at all, but stole it from her former lover who had given her a son? The truth will never be known to anyone, anyway.

Perhaps, had Daniel's mother been a bit more careful, the boy would have spent most of his life locked up, regularly escaping to the neighbors and simply wandering the city streets at night, begging for whatever he could get. However, by fate's will, when the lad was nearly eight, the most pivotal event occurred — and in his opinion, the best event of his life: the woman who had given the young Grimwald native life was found with her throat cut in a filthy alleyway.

No one knew the reasons why she was killed. According to the official version, she fell victim to robbers, since all the jewelry had been removed from the deceased's body (fortunately, she had enough sense not to wear the only thing Daniel considered valuable — his father's bracelet), and the area wasn't exactly prosperous either. However, malicious tongues whispered that on that day the woman had picked up a traveling merchant in a bar who was staying at an inn in the richest district of the city, and some even claimed to have seen the victim heading toward the inn on the night of her death accompanied by a potential patron.

Perhaps she quarreled with the merchant over something on the spot. Or maybe someone offered her a hefty reward to drive a knife into the heart of her new suitor... Either way, the truth can no longer be learned, since the man and his guards left the city early in the morning of the same day the local harlot's body was discovered. Not that it bothered Daniel much, who wept at the funeral not from grief, but from joy.

After his mother's death, the neighbor women took care of the boy for the first two days, having no idea what to do with him. Soon after, the lad, along with his belongings (dirty and tattered pants, a shirt he had long outgrown but had no alternative to, and a golden bracelet hidden in his pocket), ended up in the local orphanage.

Life in the shelter was by no means the worst. There, Daniel was taught to read and write, and his body and spirit were developed. Within available means, of course. They also tried to instill a love of labor in him, regularly forcing him to clean both the orphanage itself and its surroundings, cook, wash clothes, and craft various trinkets out of wood.

However, Dani's heart (as his new "brothers" and "sisters" nicknamed him) was not at all drawn to all these "entertainments." Rather, he enjoyed studying the world around him, as well as pilfering and pulling small pranks, cleverly arranging everything so that anyone would catch the blame (from a caretaker to a roommate), but never him.

The lad managed the latter precisely because he actively developed his mind. It was all too easy, for example, to steal most of the buns or cookies from the kitchen, eat a couple, hide some in his secret stash — fortunately, nobody liked going near the orphanage basement and no one knew there was a hidden passage leading there under the stairs — and toss the leftovers into someone else's bedside table while the room was empty. Those kids, in turn, upon returning, would either happily devour the accidental find without a twinge of conscience (sharing with neighbors if someone happened to be nearby when the sweets were discovered), or get scolded if the caretakers found the treats before them.

As Daniel grew older, sweets began to be replaced by material goods, so in others' drawers and under beds one could find toys, trinkets, jewelry, money, and sometimes valuable items. Much of it was acquired outside the shelter. One thing remained constant — the lad never set up those he was currently feuding with. He also occasionally "planted" items on himself to make sure no one could figure out who was behind all the mischief.

Daniel stole both by day and by night, by the way, and thanks to one such outing he managed to acquire one of the main treasures of his collection — an enchanted crossbow and bolts for it. He obtained these items, in short, in a highly unsavory manner.

Moving through the shadows of the night city, the boy overheard a rumor that a certain drunkard named Ned had won big at cards in the tavern "The Gray Bull." Tempted by the opportunity to profit, Daniel waited until this aforementioned winner stepped out onto the street happy and headed into an alleyway to relieve himself. There, the boy struck him several times on the back of the head with a homemade club fashioned from the leg of a broken chair, then disappeared with a sack full of "prizes," among which were the aforementioned crossbow and a decent supply of bolts for it. Whoever thought to put weapons on the line in a card game?..

Fortunately, like the others, this outing went completely unnoticed. Besides, the children were mostly watched only during lessons and when given assignments. Otherwise, the kids were left to their own devices, free to do whatever they pleased, which they used to the fullest.

Having not only never been caught red-handed but not even suspected of serious mischief, Daniel quickly managed to earn a reputation as an "exemplary" child, because before the adults he studied better than everyone, behaved politely enough, always observed subordination, though he sometimes allowed himself childish pranks that were forgiven him, as they were for everyone else. At the same time, the lad felt comfortable among his peers, and no one ever sought conflict with him.

Though friendship here was quite superficial for everyone. Practically all the orphans sought advantage only for themselves and tried to survive however they could. Thus, thievery was practiced not only by Daniel, who simply had enough wit and dexterity to do everything carefully and avoid getting caught, but also by other kids from the orphanage. As for the girls — many by thirteen or fourteen already considered themselves grown-ups and sneaked out evenings and nights in search of a "better life" in the arms of wealthy drunks. And those were always glad to share a coin with young cheerful beauties.

One of them stood out in Daniel's memory more than the others. When the lad was twelve, just shortly before he was taken from the orphanage, a local beauty named Mila took notice of him for some reason. Though looking back, the lad often recalled that the girl gravitated toward practically all her "brothers."

"Want 'big sister' to teach you something more interesting than those books of yours?" — the fifteen-year-old enchantress once addressed him, following Daniel into the orphanage library, where rarely anyone besides himself ever went.

"Why not?" — thought the boy, who had no expectation that after his agreement the girl would steal his first kiss and slip her hand down his pants.

Although the rite that took place in the library was not particularly desired and therefore turned out quite clumsy, thanks to those events the image of Mila became etched in the boy's mind best of all, with less than a month remaining for him to stay in that place.

One spring day, when Daniel decided to pretend to be ill in order to skip participating in the general cleanup and instead read a book on the history of Visteria, subconsciously dreaming that among the names of heroes there might be the name of his father, whom he was clearly never destined to meet.

On that very day, Baron Gungnir arrived in Grimwald accompanied by his retinue, deciding to visit the local orphanage. There, the caretakers and the elderly director, who on ordinary days preferred not to stick her nose out of her office, literally puffed and strained before the noble gentleman, trying every which way to serve him while convincing him that all the wards of their orphanage were the finest exemplary children in the vicinity.

And although that day all the Grimwald orphans tried to attract the baron's attention by asking him silly questions and telling unfunny jokes, Gungnir noticed among them only the one who practically ignored him all day. The man got the impression that this was a modest noble boy whom even illness did not stop from dedicating himself to self-improvement, let alone the fact that he made no attempt to compete with the other kids. Combined with the positive reviews from the caretakers about the child, the impression only improved.

In reality, Daniel simply considered it all clownery and generally did not seek "parental love" in any outsider, whether a simple sweet childless married couple or a wealthy nobleman. Therefore, at first he was extremely indignant and pondered ways to politely decline when he heard that Gungnir was taking him to his barony; however, soon realizing that the man essentially ran a sort of orphanage with plenty of good prospects, Daniel decided not to resist. Fortunately, if anything happened, nothing stopped him from running away.

Thus began the new daily routine of the youth, who found it much more comfortable in his new home than in the Grimwald orphanage. Yes, there was more control here, yes, he needed to show even greater hypocrisy than before, but overall, the food was better, the library for gaining useful knowledge was larger, and altogether this place, unlike everything Daniel had encountered before, resembled a home the most.

That said, one couldn't say the lad fell in love with this place and its inhabitants. Everyone here, including himself, was merely a pawn in Gungnir's incomprehensible game. All that remained was to wait for the right moment to sell them all off profitably, lest he be framed first.

The only person the lad genuinely came to respect was Matthias. Initially, the boy treated him like the others, doing his best to play the poor misunderstood orphan having such a hard life. Instead of pitying him like the rest, the man managed to fully understand Daniel's true nature. Moreover, rather than opening everyone's eyes to what a snake Gungnir had warmed at his bosom, he took it upon himself to personally teach the lad certain skills, believing he had considerable potential.

It was precisely thanks to regular time spent with Matthias that Daniel was able to reconsider his attitude toward Gungnir and those around him in general. The lad still wasn't a saint, but he no longer sought to pull pranks on those close to him, preferring to go on outings where people he knew couldn't possibly come to harm, since he didn't want to end up on the street, deprived of convenient patronage.

For the most part, the youths, upon reaching eighteen to twenty years of age, hurried to leave this place, having received an excellent start for a happy new life. But not Daniel. To this day, the lad lives on the baron's estates, playing the obedient good boy, while feeding on free grub and enjoying idleness.

Even though Daniel never found true friends in this place, he remains friendly and neutrally positive with everyone to this day. And as long as Gungnir and Matthias fulfill the roles of the father and elder brother he never had and never will have, the lad will continue his comfortable lifestyle.

Origin: Grimwald

Belief: El Isin

Items: money, an inconspicuous dark-gray hooded cloak, comfortable boots, a mace, an enchanted crossbow, crossbow bolts, light armor, a golden bracelet with red stones