Chapter 1: The crestfallen ax

It came about on a particularly dismal day in the kingdom with no name that a certain miscreant was being served justice on a slightly less than silver platter. It was about mid-spring and the air contained an abnormal chill and a heavy fog. The sky was blood red and small flecks of ash floated through the air. The occasional flash of yellow decorated the blue black horizon and thick rain poured down from above onto the crowd of people staring hungrily at a small prisoner awaiting his sentence. Now, the rain wasn’t normal by any means. It didn’t hydrate plants; it killed them. It was thick and gray and hot, while being bitter and horribly sour when accidently swallowed. It was sticky and oily with an odd smell indicative of rotting flesh. Several bone white trees seemed to try to shrink away from this rain, while the brown grass seemed to tremble. A skinny dog wove his way through the crowd to stand beside his master, a monk by the name of Joseph. The prisoner was a lad of 14 with black hair that was streaked with grey. His skin was unearthly pale and his eyes were so dark that they seemed to contain an inescapable abyss of blackness where no emotion or thought could be found. He shivered constantly, but this was normal for him. His name was Marko Rowanstaff, the outcast of the nameless kingdom. People had been wishing him gone since he had been born; as they suspected him of being a demon or watchman of some terrible ghostly world. He gazed around the small courtyard, not really knowing why he was here. He knew, of course, that he must have done something terrible. Not that he remembered doing it. But then, he suspected that he must have done whatever it was; why else would the towns’ folk say he had done it? It wasn’t if they would lie to him. He gave a small shrug and continued to survey his surroundings. The courtyard was in the shape of a circle, made with grey tiles crossed with black and veined with green and silver lines. The lines, though seemingly haphazard, all met in the center to form a likeness of a criminal being dealt with in some unruly fashion. The lines were changed the night after every conviction to reveal the chosen sentence. Around the courtyard were several wooden buildings: houses for questioning, torture, guards and the building that housed the judge and the various jury members. The judges house was made of stone and edged with iron, a stained glass window on the second floor portrayed his and his wife’s exact likeness. Marko nodded slightly as his gaze fell upon it. The judge then coughed to bring attention back to himself. Marko turned to him as well, his gaze boring into the judges own and causing a shudder to suddenly rack the man. The judge gained control over his thoughts and whispered something, until the crowd called for him to speak up. Marko considered the man almost sadly. He was a young man, in his early twenties. He had shoulder length brown hair and a small beard. His eyes were bright green and looked fairly intelligent. He was married and had one child, well, was expecting one any day now. He held that nervousness that soon to be fathers always seem to have. Marko nodded as the thought crossed his mind that this man was far too young to give the order for people to be killed on a daily basis. But then again, Marko knew that he knew far too little of the world to be making judgments about what job other people should have. The judge broke eye contact with him and said in a raised voice,” Reflect the sentence!” at once a light and a mirror were hoisted into place to cast a reflection of the ground into the fog, were it hung like a shadow against the eerie red sky. The image was of a kneeling figure, a figure kneeling in front of a steel block with a man standing behind him holding an ax. Marko shrugged; this was how it would be and he knew he couldn’t change it, so why bother to be bothered? The judge smiled grimly. “Marko Rowanstaff you are found guilty of the following: The murder of Epsilon Rowanstaff, treason, theft, and three accounts of battery. You will be beheaded tomorrow at sun up. Do you have anything to say?” Marko glanced at the judge and shook his head; he didn’t recall doing any of what he was going to be killed for, but he guessed that someone with as much power as the judge couldn’t possibly be wrong about something as important as this. He considered the people he knew as he was dragged back to the dungeon. There was his older brother, Gidiyn. Gidiyn was tall and tan and had dark hair and eyes. He didn’t really like Marko, but tolerated him because he knew that their parents didn’t like it when they argued. Gidiyn, Marko reflected, always seemed to know how to get things done, whether or not he had to hurt someone to do it, he could always accomplish a task. Then there was Zeta Mari Rowanstaff, Marko’s twin sister. She was as tall as Gidiyn, who was sixteen, but paler and quieter. She was one of the two people Marko got along with. There was also Bekka, the other person he got on well with. Bekka was the gatekeeper’s daughter. She had tan skin from being outside so much and her hair was the color of amber. Her green eyes always seemed to sparkle with mischief and she always understood Marko’s odd disposition even better than Zeta did. She usually wore a brown dress edged with blue and leather boots, as her father absolutely would not permit her to not wear a dress. She normally had her hair in a braid down her back, but wore it long on recreation day, a festival held every year at the sixth full moon. Marko sighed as the memory of Bekka crossed his mind. She didn’t even know that he was to be killed; she had left the town with her mother to buy supplies from the city of the high king. Marko wondered if he would be missed, at first he had thought that he would, but then again, he himself had never had anyone to miss, so he didn’t know how missing worked. He wondered for a moment whether he missed his mother and father. His father, Epsilon, had supposedly been murdered by him. Marko bit back a laugh; he guessed it would be wrong to miss someone he had killed! But his mother had vanished the day he had murdered his father, so he wasn’t sure if he should miss her. He thought maybe he should, but still couldn’t quite tell; are you supposed to miss someone if you aren’t sure if they’re dead? This was a question that puzzled him greatly, so after awhile he decided to stop wondering and just not miss his mother or father. He knew that Gidiyn wouldn’t miss him; brothers weren’t supposed to miss each other, he had been told by Gidiyn when he was three and didn’t want Gidiyn to leave and go to school on the basis that he would be missed. Zeta would have no reason to miss him either; he didn’t take care of her, Gidiyn did. Bekka, however, he didn’t know about. Would she care when she returned home to find him dead? He supposed not; it was her father and mother who took care of her. You’re only supposed to miss someone if they’re supposed to be taking care of you instead of lying dead in a grave, right? Marko wondered over this question for a moment before concluding that Bekka would miss him, because without him she would have no one to talk to. He frowned at the realization that murdering his father would cause Bekka to miss him because the law required him to die for his folly. He nodded as an idea came to him about how to mend the situation. He looked at the guard leading him to the dungeon. “Will you tell Bekka Gatekeep something for me when she returns? She needs to know that, as well as…or, rather than me, she can talk to her brother.” He would always wonder why the guard suddenly raised his eyebrows and tried to hide a smirk. He didn’t really care though, he thought as he entered the tiny cell that he would stay in for one more night; there was no one left who would miss him, so he felt completely content pondering his own death. The dungeon was a depressing place, to say the least. The walls were covered in mold and there were no windows. Rats roamed casually among the brickwork while spiders were so at ease with their prospects of catching a meal that they didn’t even bother to spin a web. It was pitch black, as no torches adorned the walls. Rows of cells decorated the walkway and seemed almost to moan in despair as their occupants cowered within. It would have been easy to escape, as the iron bars of the cells were rusted and practically falling apart. Most of the doors stood partly ajar, though not a single prisoner took advantage of the fact; purely for the reason that the dungeon did have two main assets keeping overbold prisoners in their proper places. One of these things was a fierce German shepherd Rottweiler crossbreed that most people swore was part wolf. It was a massive dog, which was one thing that had to be said about it. Really, it only took color, size, and temperament from the Rottweiler half. He had long black fur covering every inch of his muscular body, except for his ears and a patch around his eyes, those places had shorter grey fur, and the tip of his tail and his underbelly, which had the orange color of a Rottweiler. His claws were sharp enough to do horrible, tragic, simply awful damage. His intelligent silver eyes missed nothing, and he seemed to enjoy terrifying the prisoners. The other thing that kept the prisoners in their cells was the simple fact that, whether or not they were bound for death, they were less likely to die of food poisoning in jail than anywhere else they could go if free. Combined with terror of the massive dog, these prisoners were going nowhere.Marko watched for the dog, which he had lovingly named Fire-Shepherd, as the guard almost gently shoved him into the small cell he had been living in for the past few days. There he was, standing in the middle of a small room around the corner, playing with his puppies. Fire-Shepherd had wed a white border collie named affectionately Misfit for her roguish nature. Marko sighed wistfully, envying the dog with every thought he had. But then, why did he envy it? Was it because the dog wasn’t to be killed for a crime he couldn’t remember, or simply the fact that the dog was happy? Marko would never know because, as he stared for around an hour at Fire-Shepherd, a man entered the dungeon and began to inquire about one of the prisoners. Marko realized that the man was talking about him when the door opened to let the man in. It was a priest, or so it looked like. He wore a simple green tunic with a grey robe. The sleeves and collar had gold colored thread. His hair was still black and stubble decorated his chin. His eyes sparkled kindly as he smiled at Marko. “Hello lad,” he said, “I’m going to be your path to freedom.” The next day dawned with no cheer. The little pavilion was full of eager onlookers and the executioner performed displays of strength by splitting logs of various sizes with his ax. The ax was massive, Marko thought, possibly bigger than it should be. But he shrugged as it hit him that he knew too little of this sort of thing to really know how big the ax should be. There were several merchants selling their wares as annoyed people walked past them with no second thought. A news lad and his master were sketching the proceedings. People mingled and exchanged gossip of outlandish degrees about werewolf sightings and supposed elves being seen not far away. Children scampered about and squealed in excitement as a young boy started pretending to wield an ax, which was really a stick, and charged toward them with all the enthusiasm that suggested a later career. The pavilion went silent as the judge called for order and summoned the guard holding the rope to which Marko was tied. Marko sighed quietly and held the piece of paper in his left hand a little more tightly as the guard started forward. As he passed the executioner he slipped the paper into the man’s hand. The man pretended not to notice. But as Marko was hurried into position he saw the man glance down at the message on the paper. “It’s time.” Marko saw the man grin slightly and nodded to himself. Good, things are in place. The man looked up as the judge called him to his task. He shuffled his feet nervously. “Er, sir, I’ll have to get another ax, this one is dull.” The judge nodded in an annoyed way and beckoned for the executioner to select another weapon. The executioner left and returned a moment later holding another ax. The judge sighed. “All right, get on with it.” The executioner walked up to Marko and the lad was made to kneel before a wooden block. He closed his eyes, wondering why the executioner looked so crestfallen at a gesture from a man standing not far away. The thought occurred to him that something had gone wrong with the priests plan. It hardly had time to register before the ax fell.


(Feel free to post a response )

OOC: Yeah I know it is, I meant to post this in fan fiction, can someone please move this to where it's supposed to be?

OOC: I'll move it for ya', CD.

Thanks Draco, I'll post more of it later.

That's alright, it's still really good though and I can't wait to read more.