Fantasy_Atlas
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Gallows
🕑 Added 2025-05-30 05:19:53 +0000 UTCThe Stage of Repentance:
My time had finally come. Half a dozen of us stood at the gallows, awaiting the Governor and his scribe as they worked down the line. When he stopped in front of a prisoner, the scribe hastily pulled a scroll from his bundle, outlining the crimes and the prisoner's sentencing. In the courtyard, hundreds had gathered to lay witness, eagerly awaiting the pleas and begging for mercy, but even more eager to see the final, short drop.
After reading aloud the crimes of the prisoner, the Governor announced loudly "Well, what say you to your countrymen?"
No matter the plea for understanding or declarations of innocence, the prisoners' words were drowned out by the boos of the crowd, and the pelting of rotten cabbage and lettuce. The stage was set, and we were but actors carrying out a script for their entertainment.
Finally, my turn came. The Governor looked upon me with scorn. As the scribe shuffled for my scroll, he waved it aside, as my crimes were well known.
"Sedition! Patricide! Murder!" He shouted, pointing at me. The crowd, energized with malice and rancor, roared at these words. "What could someone like you possibly say to your countrymen to repent for your crimes?"
For a moment, no words came to me. But slowly my gaze rose above the angry mob, towards the statue of Irrosopus, her beautiful, kind face, holding the staff of wisdom in one hand and the sword of justice in the other. I felt an unnatural power unlike any other, almost bursting through my chest. In a voice louder than I though anyone, let alone myself could conjure, I shouted:
"Never have I seen my fellow citizens fall so short of the teachings of Irrosopus! Tell me, do you think she looks kindly upon you now?"
The crowd, initially booing and heckling, seemed to recoil at the force of my words.
"When a father and statesman can betray his country, betray his family, and when that son cannot stand to see it go further, and ends such corruption, and he is met with execution? I pray to the divines that you all can find it within yourselves to find the path back to righteousness."
The mob, clearly moved in a way no other final statement had provided, remained silent. The Governor gestured to the hangman, and in a fleeting moment, it was done.
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