After a long time Balin woke up. He doesn’t know how long he was knocked out nor what happened, but he felt weak and cold. So cold. He could barely lift his head, but he had to stand up, he had to move. When he tried to move his right arm, nothing happened. He didn’t know what happened, but he saw red, red everywhere. He knew it was blood. A lot of it was probably his. He tried to stand up again. His left arm didn’t move. It was still broken. But his right arm didn’t move either. He painfully turned his head around and through the sand and dirt he saw it. A big rock buried it. He realized why he couldn’t feel anything from it. It was squashed and dead. Balin didn’t even have the energy to get angry. He was just so tired and cold. Balin knew he was dying. He tried to move his head so that he could see upwards. It was still dark only the only light source was the moon. He didn’t know if Dilan or anyone else made it, but it was quiet. Then his eyes started to close again. Balin was just so tired. But he couldn’t afford to lose conscience. He knew that he wouldn’t ever regain it. When he heard a voice inside of his head

“Well you have experienced a terrible fate, haven’t you?”

Despite having his eyes closed Balin was able to see a man in front of him. He wasn’t very big and seemed to float on his belly looking down at Balin as if he were barely more than an interesting bug.

“The people that you paid to save you and your people didn’t come and now.”

The man sat up on an invisible chair.

“Everyone that you tried to protect is dead and you are dying. Buried under a small hill of rubble with his arm crushed and countless wound bleeding all over the place.”

The man paused.

“Come on say something!”

“Safe me!”

Answered Balin in pain.

“I can’t hear you.”

“Safe me!”

Yelled Balin into the darkness of his mind and the night.

“Safe you? Well I could do that but tell me! What would you do if I saved you? What would you use your second shot at life at? Answer fast! Unlike you I have all the time in the world.”

Answered the man in Balin’s head. Sounding cocky, like a person who was trying to convince him to do something bad. Balin took a painful breath and answered.

“Revenge.”

“Louder!”

“I will slaughter everyone. Every single one who didn’t deliver. Who didn’t come despite having the responsibility to do so!”

Yelled Balin in his head.

“Revenge huh. That sounds like fun. Alright, I will save you. But are you ready to give your very humanity for your revenge? We will see. Do not disappoint me!”

The man picked up some dirt from the abyss that both he and Balin were in and rubbed it all over the areas where in the real world Balin was hurt and immediately Balin felt better. His left arm didn’t hurt anymore, and he started to feel warm again. But as his pains disappeared his ability to think started to come back and he started to question to the man.

“Who are you? Are you the grim reaper? Am I dead? And what happened to the others? Please tell me!”

The man looked disinterested at his arm and casually responded.

“Guess we still have some time until you are fixed again, so I might as well. My name is Epidex-curs, but you can call me Epidex and I ain’t quite the grim reaper but close enough. And no, you are not dead. You weren’t quite dead yet and with others I assume you meant everyone in the village correct? Well they are all dead. Every single one was slaughtered by the Lesorses.”

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“All of them?”

“All of them. The villagers, the mercenaries even your cousin Dilan. They all fought bravely but it wasn’t enough.”

“They”

Balin was shut down by Epidex.

“Look I would love to keep talking with you, but I have things to do and you should wake up. After all, you have gotten a second chance to have your revenge.”

Balin woke up again. His body was aching and itching but it didn’t hurt anymore. The sun was burning on his head and he was finally able to see things clearly again. He had to stand up. So, he tried to push himself up again. This time with more success. His left arm wasn’t broken anymore, and his right arm easily shook the rock of and he pushed himself up. He was woozy and looked at his arms. His right arm looked weird. It was as brown as the ground itself. The arm moved but Balin didn’t feel anything from it. That remembered Balin of that exchange he had in his head. Was that real? It had to be since his arms were working again. Well his right arm was now brown but still. Wait if that just happened then that means that everyone was dead. Balin shook his head towards the direction where the villagers should be hiding and ran to the town hall. On the way he saw dozens of cadavers a lot of them were of Lesorses. Balin fell over one landing head first into a dead monster. It started to smell. The smell of death was everywhere and Balin just noticed. As he stood up again he looked to his right. He saw the house that the mercenaries tried to secure. The entrance door was broken open and next to it were the leftovers of a man. Since he wore armor Balin assumed it was one of the mercenaries who tried to defend the door, but it was so badly damaged that he couldn’t figure out which one of the mercenaries it was. Balin walked the rest of the way afraid of what he will find once he reaches the town hall. When he arrived, there was barely a building left. Most of the walls were destroyed up to the point where the roof crashed down. There was no way that anyone could have survived this. This was when Balins legs gave up. He would have yelled out his frustrations but there was barely any liquid inside of him anymore. He felt sick and would have vomited if he could. All of this was for nothing. The deaths of his comrades wasted, the mercenary’s life wasted, the hundreds of hours that he and Dilan spent training wasted. There was no one left for him. Balin was alone. He wasn’t really thinking anything, nor did he feel much. Neither pain nor sadness. Balin didn’t know how long he just stood there. When suddenly he felt hungry. Slowly he trotted too his parents’ home searching for something to eat. The house wasn’t raided by the monsters. Probably since there was no meat stored in it, since even a faint smell would have attracted the monsters. That was also the reason most other buildings were left mostly untouched. The small village in the river valley has become a ghost town. Balin started to feel worse at the mere thought. It became clear. He was going to leave the ruins of the village and never come back. After eating some stale bread Balin started to collect things that might become useful a bag, a knife and some miscellaneous things but most importantly money. He didn’t know how long he would be travelling but until he had avenged his people he wouldn’t return, he owed them at least that much. Balin’s next stop was at the inn. The ground floor was ravaged by the monsters, but the upstairs were left mostly alone. The reason he broke into the inn was because that was where the brave mercenaries were staying. They obviously had many things that were necessary for traveling, like maps and good clothing. He even found the journal of one of them, it was Annas the mage but Balin didn’t read it. It was one of her personal items and he had no right to investigate it. Instead he grabbed it and some other clearly personal items that he could find and put them into his bag for later. It took a few minutes but Balin finally found what he was looking for a road map. Balin rarely travelled outside the village so he didn’t own one and he didn’t feel like it was right to go back to the fort. In fact, Balin didn’t want to stay in the village longer then necessary since he felt guilty and ashamed over being the only survivor. So, after scavenging everything that he felt was useful Balin left first the inn and then the village river downwards without even looking back once.

After walking for a half an hour Balin reached a small abandoned monastery. It was empty for months since the last priest who lived there died at the start of winter and he wasn’t replaced yet by the church. In the back of it there was a small graveyard with a shack. Inside the shack there was a spade that Balin needed. So, he tried to open it. It was locked. Frustrated Balin punched the door with his right hand and surprisingly he was able to punch through it without feeling pain. Balin was surprised until he remembered that this wasn’t his arm anymore. Whatever Epidex did with it, it made the arm super strong. But Balin didn’t have any time to wonder what his arm was, he had something to do. So, he grabbed the spade and dug a hole next to the biggest gravestone that he could find. It wasn’t a great or deep hole. But deep enough so that he could bury the personal items of the mercenaries and something that he took with him from home. It was his father’s favorite carving knife. Balin thought back to the many cold nights when his father was carving things and telling him stories of back in the day. Those were some nice nostalgic times. Balin buried the items and made a small prayer. It was late in the afternoon when he left the graveyard to search for the first target of his revenge, the Gaus group.