All that came back to Joshua was the echo of his plea for help. None of the bodies stirred and all that could be heard was a rockslide in the distance and the rush of the blackened river. There was no birds singing or squirrels nearby, not with the stench and blight of war on the land.

The man was groaning and whimpering, his eyes looked dazed and his face was getting paler and paler. Tears and snot streamed down his face as he wept angrily, not even really noticing Joshua's approach. [b]"Th-Those blasted scoundrels! How dare they perform such a trick of sorcery against the Kingdom of Li... Damn that witch! Damn Xi Lei so that I may get my revenge!"[/b] The rest of his words were muffled as he hacked and blood spurted out over his armored chest. The light continued to dim out of his eyes as tears continued to fall, [b]"My death prevails in vain..."[/b] He whimpered, his shame pouring off of him in waves of despair. Finally he fell quiet, his struggling body going limp against Joshua's helping hand.

The man must have lost too much blood from the wound, there had been no way to save him. The body and blood were still warm and it seemed almost to seep into the bewildered man's hand. Only after a few moments did a speck of life sound from off in the near distance.

Down the river, there was a lone horse who still had an ornate saddle prepared on it's back. The horse itself must have belonged to some high official or strong cavalry man, with the gold stitches adorning the bridal and the horse's luscious mane which was only flaked with blood looked well taken care of. The horse seemed to have tried to take a drink from the lake, only to spit it out and back away frantically when the water tasted of something foul and probably poisonousness. Now the horse was sniffing around the bodies, trying to find something to eat and knocking a bottle of what seemed to be alcohol out of one of the corpse's pockets.

As the horse finally noticed Joshua, it reared up its head, eyeing the man carefully. A muffled puff of air and the horse started to get closer to him... Only to again, rear up its head, give a scared neigh and trot away, hurdling over corpses left and right. Something was a miss to scare a stallion away like that... but what?

The sounds of galloping could be heard coming from the opposite direction, many meters away was a horse moving towards Joshua fast... and had a rider on its back. The rider was dressed in a flowy robe that seemed to reach over the whole of the horse's back, his hair long as the bun had come undone. As the rider drew closer, he reached for the bow on his back and aimed an arrow at Joshua's head.