Chapter 4: Route 1. Science and Culture

What should I do? Judging by the noises outside, my peaceful life is no more. Bandits or some men of some wicked lord just attacked my village. I could take a look, but what purpose would that serve? I would just be discovered and killed. I never felt more glad that I was in the bathroom at that time.

And this act, this one act, caused the diverging of the timelines and restricted my path for the future. I walked over to the door and peeked outside.

It was a nightmare. There was fire everywhere again, just like on my birthday. And dead bodies strewn across the village, with armour and without, their blood pouring into the dirt roads. Men, women and children, none were spared from this carnage, and een farm animals lay strewn on the roads, their guts spilling out.

My eyes widened and I trembled. And that's all that it took. The door opened a fraction more and I was noticed. Six big, burly men holding rusty swords looked up and saw me. No doubt in their hurry, they had forgotten to clean out the orphanage. I froze, while I was almost certain there was nobody in the orphanage behind me, I couldn't be sure, hence the 'almost'. Had I just doomed one of my carers to rape and death?

But what could I do? I was only a little kid. I didn't even have a weapon with which to defend myself. I was no master of the sword or unarmed combat, unlike what I had fooled myself to believe. Indeed, even with all my modern knowledge I was next to useless, particularly as the modern world which I had lived in focused mostly on cooperation, not any individual achievement. And where would I have found a sword to practise with. So no matter which way you looked at it, I was utterly, royally screwed.

So I did the only thing I could. I ran, I ran past the orphanage, I ran past my past carers, I ran past all the people I had ever known, I ran past everything, dooming everyone else to a dreadful fate. I flew past the trees in the forest losing my dream of preventing people's death, for it can;t be done. In the end, I was just too much of a coward. I wasn't brave, like those heroes in the storybooks. I was a coward, and I would remember this moment for the rest of my life, a scar that will never heal.

Dimly, I was aware of the cries of the dead and the whistle of the crossbow bolts as they past me, too close for comfort, and the laughing of men at my running, but I didn't care. Survive, survive, survive. My body screamed, and my mind was only too eager to obey. I looked back at the bandits one more time, etching their faces into memory. I shall one day kill them all just like Caesar did. I will avenge my family of this life and maybe that will bring me peace.

I was wet, I was soaked. The rain came pouring down, hours after the village had left my sight. I went west, just I had planned when I was in the orphanage, but I was lost. I had no idea where I was. And indeed, no idea where I had started from as well. I could just see miles of trees in all directions. I was hungry, I was sick with grief, and quite literally, with a cold. My 8 year old body was almost completely drained of energy, not even enough to stand. So I sat and waited, waited for death to come. I would not be able to avenge my caretakers.

"I'm sorry," I whispered to the sky, to the god that sent me here, "I'm sorry that I wasn't able to do anything in this life. I failed everyone, even the ones I could have defended, I'm just a coward…" I broke down, the fear of death is too much for anyone to take, much less a man who is still influenced by a young child's mind.

But there was no answer, God had not answered, maybe he just didn't care, or maybe he didn't exist.

And there I died, for the second time in my rebirth.

[Forge of Empires Installation module booting up!]