A Dream no more

The village was completely destroyed. It had all happened so fast. One moment everything had seemed peaceful. The other moment buildings were set on fire and peasants were being killed. The few able men had tried to defend against the raid but untrained in combat arts as they were, they posed no threat to the hardened invaders. Before Ulfric knew, the whole place had been burned down for resisting the invasion. Dead everywhere. Rice fields abandoned to nature. Men and women alike, slain. Ulfric left behind with a deep wound. His own family slaughtered.

As his wound was getting the better of him, the man laid down in defeat. Light headed, his strength leaving him. Watching the darkening sky as the last of the cries died out and the bandits hauled in their newly found food in triumph. Consciousness drifting away to embrace the dark cold nothing. Everything he had build up with his own hands went up in flames. Everything he had loved wholeheartedly laid dead in their burning home, despair and the sense of being entirely powerless overtaking him.

No 'seven samurai' story of noble strangers fending off evil. Where were the guards anyway?

The Land of Birds had always been low on traditional guards. It was a peaceful land that hardly knew any strife or war. Perhaps that was exactly the reason why these bandits had raided it in the first place. Unprotected, utopian. The feeling of harmony had made their weapons dull and left their minds with little reasons to practice the arts of combat. And now the small villages suffered the consequences. Unprotected and unopposed, bandits had free reign. They raided one peaceful place after another, taking the food and sake for themselves. Slaying the men and, if they were lucky, the women alike. Children were left to fend for themselves, slain or taken with them to serve unknown purposes.

Ulfric would have loved stopping them. Beating them all up one by one. But what did a cartographer as himself know of combat? Even with that little bit of mysterious power he held over the Bear Spirit, he was ultimately but a single man against a horde of bandits. He had taken two down with his bare fists but the others had not fallen for his surprising strength. A blade had made short work of him, cutting across his chest and leaving a large wound. Leaving Ulfric to die by himself as he believed no doctor could come to his rescue. His mistake. Despite the pain and the nearing darkness that came with the loss of his blood, the Bear Spirit within him refused to let him die so easily. His body was stronger than that of any normal man. He could feel that mysterious power flow through him and strengthen him. Even now, Bear Spirit had not left him. Even now the Guardian watched over him. Ulfric would not die just yet.

But he would succumb to darkness.

By the time Ulfric woke, the raiders had left. The fire had died out, leaving nothing but the sour smell of burned wood and flesh. The whole village in ruins. Not a living soul to be seen. The blood on his body had dried up, leaving a lengthy scar and a biting pain there where the cut had happened. He felt drained. And alone. The Bear Spirit had clearly left him. But it had left him alive. Rising to his feet, Ulfric wondered to what purpose he was to be the only survivor of his village. To execute revenge? To rebuild his village? No answers came to him. Brown eyes overlooked the destroyed area as his shoulders burdened the indescribable loss of so much familiarity and the sensation of having his soul be ripped out of his chest. Not even a solid blow to the stomach or the treason of a good friend could rival the empty sensation of having 24 years be burned to ash. Ulfric ran a trembling hand through his hair, feeling his mind drift away as if to turn away from this reality.

He had to find his family. His wife, his child.

But it was dark. No street light, nor candle to light the way ahead. The way back home. Weakened by the lack of chakra and the wound, he stumbled forward. Step by step. Good thing he knew where he was and how the village looked like after all the years he had lived there. But the road back home was still far away and he had no immediate means to illuminate the blinding darkness that was the night sky. A dim light shed by near-new moon revealed only so much. Just enough to see the layout of the streets and the silhouettes of burned down buildings. It'd have to do. A long trek in where time felt like it had stretched itself into infinity occurred. Countless times Ulfric stumbled over a body or a stray piece of a house's wall, making the trip even more of a nightmare. And he could only go so fast.

An eternity seemed to have passed by the time Ulfric reached the remains of his house. The door had fallen out of its hinges. The wood that made its frame had been consumed by the fire. What hadn't turned black in its enduring stand had crumbled and turned to ash. Quietly calling out the names of his family, only the silence of the night replied. And when he found the remains of a woman clutching a child to her chest, he knew the worst of his fears had become the most morbid of truths - they had burned up alive. Now truly feeling abandoned by Spirit and Life alike, Ulfric fell to his knees and cried out in agony.

An early sun peeked over the world when Ulfric laid the last stone that marked the graves of his wife and child. Leaning on the spade, eyes burdened by pain were fixated on the final resting place of the most precious people in his life. His heart's quietude was accompanied with a silence which hung heavily around the destroyed village; the wind passing by to brush aside some of the ash that remained of houses and corpses alike. A quiet reminder to the cartographer that there was nothing left for him here. No family to grow old with. No friends to have a good time. No village to watch out for. The Land of Birds, despite its bountiful gaian riches, had nothing more to offer to the man. The Valley of Dreams was empty.

Leaving the lands in search for something new was the best option at this point. A lone man was often left alone. He'd have to live from the land, moving along the road with nothing but what little gear he had scraped together from the remains. An old, sooty chain mail from the smithies, a trench knife from the hunter's, a couple of luckily preserved scrolls and utensils from the local chemist's. It wasn't much but it'd have to do. He knew how to live a sober life, build things up by hand and if his natural talent for drawing hadn't left him he could make a living by sketching and designing. It'd take him some time to get the hang of it all, but other than moping around in a village full of ash there was little else to set his sights on.

Lifting his eyes towards the horizon and the rising sun, he felt no warmth from the giant globe of vibrating red before him. It felt exactly the way he felt inside. A red glare towards those bandits who had taken everything from him, holstering the potential for immeasurable wrath. He didn't have the means at this point in time to make them pay for it, but he certainly would not forget them. Their names, their faces, their styles. Everything his senses had registered. He'd extort all information about the faces that lacked a name. He'd break their will until they spilled all about their plans, their camps, their strategies. And he'd remember all of it until his desire for vengeance had been quenched. Until every of their members had shed their blood.

"This, I promise. Vengeance will be ours. Your death will be avenged, no matter what it costs me.", he whispered towards the grave of his wife and kid. As if they'd hear his words and help him remind his promise along the road. Just the foolish hope of a raving man torn to pieces by rage and pain. A man balancing between the embrace of eternal darkness and digging his way out of the mess towards the light.

A man who had nothing more to lose.