Chapter 3: The End and Beginning of His Life

When he was finally able to process what had happened he was too shocked to be scared. He disobeyed his Mothers orders and began running into the fire trying to look for any living thing he could. As he was searching he found someone. Relieved, he ran towards them to try to get answers, but what he met was not what he expected. What he saw was not something he recognized or even wanted to see. It was a strange man, a big one at that, and he was holding an ax in one hand and his mother in the other. His mother yelled at him to run right before the man was about to swing. But the man also saw the boy, let go of the woman in his hand and began running for the boy. Merlin, with what seemed like instinct, began running as fast as he could in an attempt to get away. He was looking around as he was running to find something, anything he could recognize but there was nothing but burning buildings and death. As he was looking he kept seeing the man behind him and believed he would be safe once he got into the woods; it was his best bet to survive. While the man was fast, he was faster, gaining ground every second, this gave Merlin a sense of safety. After running for several minutes he realized the man stopped following him some time ago and he collapsed from exhaustion. Laying there for how long he knew not, he decided he was safe and began making a fire. After years of learning how to survive, this challenge was overcome after a few minutes of trying. When he had gathered wood and decided the fire was self-sustaining he started to think about what had happened not too long ago. In his realization that everything he once knew was gone, he began to cry and cry and cry. What else could he do, he didn't see his father after running into the fire and his mother was on the brink of death. After about thirty minutes of crying, he regained his thoughts and began thinking about what he was going to do. He didn't know whether he could go back or not, he could live in the woods but that didn't seem like the best option. As he was thinking about what to do he heard something in the woods. He figured it was an animal but after what had happened he wasn't about to risk it, so he kept his guard on high alert. Good thing too because before he knew it five men ran out from behind the trees towards him. He quickly got up and ran as fast as he could, although he was exhausted from the chase earlier, the adrenalin in his body could have kept him running for many hours. Similar to before he was faster than these men and thought he was going to be safe. But of course, it wasn't going to be that easy, because not too long after the chase began he heard the roar of a bear, a massive one at that. The roar was so loud and the bear was so big both Merlin and the men stopped running immediately. The bear started running at a pace not even Merlin was capable of and headed straight for the five men. Of course, the men ran in the opposite direction seemingly to have completely forgotten about Merlin. He watched in amazement as the bear chased them off and right before the bear was out of sight it turned its head and looked at Merlin, but continued to chase the men. As soon as the bear turned its head back he ran again in the opposite direction.