THE BOY:
As we walked into the room,
We saw no one inside.
The room was barren of any light,
Not even from the night sky.
Suddenly the doors slammed shut
And panic began to arise!
Then we saw the foreign light
As the building was engulfed in flames!

The men attempted to break down the door,
But their efforts were in vein.
Others tried to break through the windows and run,
But men with spears awaited and skewered them all!
The ceiling begins to collapse,
And through the smoke I see
A hole showing the faint moonlight.
I knew it was the only way.
I raise myself upon a pillar, which burns my skin away.
But through the flames I crawl out the hole
And alone, I escape.

Collapsing in pain and exhaustion under the cover of a nearby forest canopy, he watches helplessly as the towering inferno consumes the hall and everyone within.

Of what the fate of the man
Whose life is dismantled thus by death’s accost?
Of what the agony of the mind that reflects
Upon all which was lost?

A crippling despair eclipses man’s worth.
We reap what we sow, by friend or by foe.
If mercy exists in hell or on earth,
May you never know this ballad of woe.

To stand alone upon the precipse
Of the vast and endless night.
To plunge into the depths that
Hasten the mind to think there were not light
With grief stricken heart he bids a farewell
As time mends the blow, its ebb and its flow.
If mercy exists, on earth or in hell,
May you never know this ballad of woe.

He stands not to be swallowed by the darkness but to rise with new resolve.

Of what the fate of the man who even when
All the world round him dissolve,
Stands not to be swallowed by the darkness but
To rise with new resolve?

With courage unbound he ascends the pit,
And sorrow subsides as hope takes its stead.
The darkness absolves as he now commits
To not turning back, but moving ahead.
With courage unbound he ascends the pit,
And sorrow subsides as hope takes its stead.
The darkness absolves as he now commits
To not turning back, but moving ahead.

If mercy exists, may you never know this ballad of woe.


Awaking from the throes of exhaustion and pain-induced delirium, he finds that many hours have passed. With the setting sun, he happens upon a steed of his kinsmen slain. Bereft with anger and driven by vengeance, he rides into the night.