One True Enemy

Dark, cloudy black mist surrounds me. I can't see much and walk around aimlessly searching. I don't know what I'm looking for, but it's strangely familiar. It feels ominous. Something I should avoid and instinctively run away from.

I walk and walk for what feels like hours. Suddenly a presence appears right behind me. Fear gripped me like a black hand around my heart. I didn't want to turn around. I wanted to run. The fear stopped me. Pure seething rage is behind me. The anger that this thing emitted suffocated me as if it was choking me to death. I felt cold slender hands grip around my neck. Even without any force applied I felt death from those horrid hands.

I'm going to be eaten.
It's going to consume me.
This is my end.
Then I woke up.

Sunlight shone through the boarded up wooden windows. My heart was beating fast and my shabby brown cloth clothes were drenched in sweat. "Ugh" I murmured as I struggled to stand up while going through a mini heart attack. "Breathe Gen breathe". I count 1 on every inhalation and 2 every exhalation. Gradually, my heart returns to its resting state. Checking my surroundings, the only thing I see is beat up, broken down wood with splints, holes, and a holstered sword resting on the unstable walls of this shack.

The black leather scabbard holds my life, my sword, my revenge. I reach down and grab the scabbard tightly out of fear of losing my life. Pushing the door open reveals a field of bright green grass that extends as far as the eye can see. Trudging through the grass field with my black leather boots northwest leads me to my training grounds. Trees marked by sword slashes in every direction with fallen branches covering the burnt grass. "Ah". "I'm back home".

After easing my grip on the scabbard, my right hand grips the silver red handle. Three feet of steel on top of a circular hilt that only extends two inches from the mangled blade. Slight chips and cracks covered the worn out sword, but it carried a benign beauty sucking in whoever met its gaze.

Unsheathed with a two handed grip, right on top of left, Gen breathed in and out three times. "Remember what happened". "Remember why you hold this sword". I stood in front of a beaten up tree, recalling the eight foot man dawned in gold who took my parents' lives. Rage overcame me. "Whoosh". I swung my sword downward from right to left, then left to right. Once, twice, repeating the same two slashes until the tree started to give way. The next tree fell victim to my repeated forward stabs, while the third was practice for my vertical slash. Bright rays of sunlight soon turned to dreary moonlight.

Closing my eyes, I focused on my left hand while my right was still tightly grabbing my sword. Dawn red fire appeared and sat an inch above my light brown palm, growing into a rose like shape. Walking another hundred steps brought me to untouched grass. My left knee slowly fell to the dirt as the back of my hand began to face me and my fire burned every strand it touched. After reaching the ground, the fire spread forward a disease of death with grass turning into ash in a way that would make any environmentalist cry. "About half a mile reach". "Not good enough".

Gen returned home to the wooden shack. "Tomorrow is the day I start paying back my pain". Endo city where the king of the largest empire in history, Lund, had his secretary of affairs oversee.

A bloody journey with a known enemy and unknown enemy began with death around every corner. "Who was that in my dream?" Gen said as he closed his eyes and slept until sunlight came once more.