We open this episode with a repeat of the ending of the previous one. The imperial black ops team takes off after Balsa. She directs Chagum to run into the forest and tries to hold off the black ops team. During the fight she notices that the operatives are not using their poison darts when she comments on this, the operative she’s fighting flinches. The battle continues, and in the course the battle Balsa’s rickety spear breaks and she is badly wounded. Balsa takes off and the operatives assume that since she’s a mercenary, that she’s simply run off.
The operative who flinched when Balsa mentioned poison darts directs the other operative to get the prince while he goes after Balsa. One of the operatives successfully nabs the prince, and another operative takes care of their leader. The operatives are all very surprised at Balsa’s skill and in general believe that they have completely handled the situation because a mere mercenary is not going to try coming after them again after being wounded. (If you believe that last sentence, I have a beach house in Arizona I’d liked to sell you.)
We turn to Toya and Saya who are currently living in a boat. (It is not even a house boat. It’s like a canoe with a tarp to keep the weather off.) Toya is extremely worried for Balsa, so he and Saya go looking for Tanda who is hopefully still in town. They discover that Tanda still has business in town so they decide to wait for him. (Meanwhile, a storm rolls in.)
We turn back to one of the operatives (the one who flinched). He is carrying an unconscious Prince Chagum back to town. As the storm approaches, he stops to rest. It turns out that this particular operative is motivated by a deep sense of obligation and fondness for the young prince. At some point when they were much younger, this particular operative actually met the prince, who being an utterly sweet kid, tried to be friendly with him (much to the horror of the young prince’s handlers). The operative (whose name we learn is Jin) decides that it would be utterly horrible for the poor prince to have to die at his father’s hand and decides to do the deed himself.
Fortunately, Balsa is able to intervene before anything can happen to Chagum. Her attack manages to knock out Jin. Unfortunately, Balsa is still badly wounded. She picks up Chagum and walks into the forest.
Meanwhile, Toya and Saya are still waiting for Tanda, even though it is now raining.
When we turn back to Balsa and Chagum, we see that Chagum has woken up and Balsa looks like ten miles of bad road. When he realizes how badly off Balsa is, he convinces her to put him down so he can walk. She does so, then falls over, causing Chagum to panic a little bit. Balsa give him directions to her friend Tanda’s home and tells him to go there. (Yes, the same Tanda she doesn’t know is in town and not home at the moment.) Then she loses consciousness, which scares Chagum even more.
Chagum heads off into the night which is full of scary noises and a wolf creature the size of a horse. Meanwhile, Toya has discovered that Tanda has gone off to the health springs, so he heads off to find him. We briefly turn back to Balsa who has either been found by someone or is hallucinating, then we turn to Chagum who runs right into a body of water. He’s pulled out by a mysterious figure who turns out to be Tanda, who has arrived home after all. Chagum is able to relate that Balsa is in trouble.
We turn back to Balsa where a man wearing clothes that look like the male version of the outfit she’s wearing is fighting another warrior. Balsa barely looks conscious. The guy manages to kill the other warrior and drops to his knees, in tears. Beyond the man is a little girl who is a dead ringer for Balsa. This is how we learn that this is a very vivid hallucination Balsa is having. In the distance, we can hear Tanda shouting Balsa’s name as Balsa’s vision fades in and out.
We close the scene with Tanda rushing up to Balsa’s side as our view pulls back to take in Tanda, herself, and the ground Balsa is lying on. Then we go to credits.
In this episode, we learn a lot about Balsa’s back story and get a hint of why she had sworn to save the lives of eight people. We also see some slight parallels between Balsa’s situation and Chagum’s current one. (How much the situation is parallel we won’t find out until much further in.) The next episode will explain more about the situation and feature Tanda being deeply exasperated with Balsa. We also learn what Torogai has been up to all this time.