Misadventures Of Two Lost Souls

Chapter 2: The Moment When Everything Went Wrong

Weeks pass, days become nights that become days again at dusk. The hours going by quickly in the city of Hammerhold. For most normal citizens, it was as it always were, calm and quiet. Yet those in the higher ranks of power knew of what was actually coming with the darkness looming over the horizon.

Alric Swiftwind, our locked up thief, spends his days looking out of the window and awaiting a chance to escape. He is going to be executed first, he's heard his guards say, but he knows he's going to have an opportunity to get away. He has people to return to. Sure, it's been a while, and who knows if they are still alive or they are dead because he wasn't there to protect them like he swore he would, and he would die too an- He's not overthinking it at all. Nope, he's not.

Hyaci Xenoia, unlike our thief, has kept on living like normal. Sure, she now also has to spend some time sitting down and making sure Alric doesn't try to escape, but that won't be for long. And in the meantime, she has someone to talk to. Even if he's just a criminal, when she does get a conversation out of him, it's not as pointless as one might think.

In truth, Hyaci doesn't have that many she can really say she knows, and it's not that Alric is an exception, just that he is somebody she has gotten to talk to more often than many. In the few weeks he's spent in here, she's learnt that red is the colour he likes the most, that he enjoys sunsets, and most remarkably, why he never takes off his red scarf.

She was sitting on the chair, three weeks after he had gotten here. He was picking at his food, trying to eat some of it, when she spoke up.

"Why are you so attached to that scarf?" It had been bugging her since she first caught him.

She saw him stiffen up, and she was ready for his silence and cold stare. I mean, why would he answer her, the one who has locked him up? A few minutes passed, and she was ready to move on without an answer.

"It was one of the two last things I had from my father." (Father, that word has always bothered Hyaci for some reason.) "I don't have too many memories of him, and this is something that used to be his." He stared out of the window as he muttered something else she couldn't quite get, and sighed.

Hyaci grimaced, it was a deeper connection than she thought. She nodded still and neither of them tried talking again that night, as Alric finished the meal and Hyaci left to go and rest.

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Five weeks passed from the moment that Alric got into the cell, and it was the first time he was leaving it today, the day of his execution. It had been found that not only he had done thievery that one afternoon, but that he had repeatedly done so for months.

Two guards entered his cell, as he stood in the middle of it one of them put handcuffs on him. He was pushed all the way outside, where there was more sand than stone. 

Another guard was standing there, waiting for the soon to be dead thief, with the executor holding a large axe in front of a stone. Hyaci, as a respected knight, was there as well to look over it.

Alric was shoved to his knees and dragged all the way to the stone. The man kept his eyes closed, his breathing even, but his body stayed tense, on guard. He was tempted to listen to what the guards around him were saying, but the only sound he could hear was the loud heartbeat coming from his own heart. Nervous was what he was, nervous and tense. He only had one shot.

He was put in front of the stone, his head over it. He was already focusing when he felt a forceful tug on the scarf. "Oi, take this thing off! I want to see how your neck bleeds!"