Tuesday 16 December 2014

The Fall: 3. The Glorious Executioner

The Glorious Executioner


Three days and three nights passed away, but the king would not open the doors There was no response from the other side; everyone in court but the queen had tried to get in, yet no one's words had been answered.
It took a quarter of a moon cycle to reach an agreement with the guard; they would force the door to check that the king was alright. There was no food in the throne room, and the servants were sure that they had not brought anything into it. When they opened the door, the stink sent most people away from it.
The king's armor was still on the throne, it's gauntlet holding the lance he had used in countless battles. On the floor laid the Demacian standard he used to proudly carry, covered with the very same blood it had when the king arrived, still fresh. But there was no trace of Jarvan's body. Garen was trying to understand what had happened when a guard's shout dragged his attention.

-The king is dead!- desperately screamed the man.- A Noxian sorcery has killed our heirless king!

...

It was impossible to look better, he just couldn't. He had heard some people say that perfection can be considered bad at some circumstances. Even though he knew they were all wrong, he couldn't blame them; how the hell would they know what being perfect fell like if they were not?
He was the ideal man, the role model, the standard pattern followed by beauty itself. His long moustache waving while he walked, spinning axes in hand and ready to work. The arena called for him; he was the protagonist, he was the man everyone wanted, the man every single person wished to be; he was Draven.
The crow cheered him once he got into the yard. The first set of prisoners  were those charged with small crimes; burglars or people that were just being obnoxious when they shouldn't; that meant that they were free to run to the entrance once the glorious executioner entered the arena, earning the right to leave and live that way. There is no point in asking if any of them survived; the glorious executioner handled them all quickly, thirsting for the price he had been promised.
He, the magnificient, the only one, the unvaluable, would be the one to walk around the arena holding Xin Zhao's head with his bare hands.

...

Something woke him up. Something unexpected. He had lost the count of days and nights after the third one. The nightmare that Xin Zhao was living (¿was he really alive?) could not be compared to anything else; the days of the arena looked sweet compared to the hell he was going through.
His cell wass dark as it could be, completely black, filled with a silence that wasn't even interrupted by rats. He knew he was bleeding only because he remembered it; there was no pain to feel, and he was unable to sense any hint of odor at all.
He had been confined to the black cells of the catacombs; completely isolated, the only remain of reality he had were his memories. But Xin Zhao had never liked to remember.

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