The recurrent public executions in Ravok were, entertainment, justice and deterrent. Entertainment for people who were inclined to find executions fun and just thought of it as another attraction, like a fight to death in The Pit. For the ones that truly craved to see revenge and justice done, the executions served as a confirmation of their own righteousness and safety and that this for sure never could happen to them. And then there were the ones who didn’t find it entertaining nor confirming, but attended the executions out of fear that and in order to receive a fear inspiring display of power. For them it was a deterrent.
Amolina Moletta belonged to the third category. She didn’t take pleasure in watching people die, she didn’t feel safe in the partly bloodthirsty crowd, and as she wasn’t extremely righteous minded she had an unsettling feeling that this could happen to her too, if she didn’t behave. She was there simply because citizens were expected to be there either they liked it or not. It was an extraordinarily important execution this time - the leader if the terrorist organization The Rising Dawn was going to die. It would be unwise to not put in an appearance. Only a fool wouldn’t have attended it.
Amolina had witnessed public executions before of course. It was the same thing as every time. She stood in the crowd in the Nitrozian Plaza, waiting helplessly, feeling anxious and depressed by the knowledge about what would soon need to watch and worried about being hurt and injured if the crowd around her would go unruly.
The crowd, she though, the crowd. Something happened when people were gathered in large crowds. The crowd seemed to get a life of it’s own, tearing people with it, like they weren’t individuals any more, just parts of a lager being made of all of them. It was like they became parts of a beast - a beast which was playful at festivities and murderous at executions, but always a beast, wild, unruly and extatic.
She knew this beast.
It - they - was her audience as well as the audience of fights in The Pit, public executions and all other events in the city. Being an actress and used to observe audiences and their reactions and tune in on the atmosphere, she saw it oddly from outside. She wasn’t part or the audience, not fully part of the crowd - instead, by habit, she stood apart from it mentally, observing it to gauge the reactions and responses.
“Down with the Rising Dawn!” was the general cry, mixed with ”Long live Rhysol!” and other similar statements. The calls and yells of Ravokians filled the plaza with quite the noise. Not far from where she stood, was a group of inebriated spectators who found the event entertaining and took pleasure in watching it like it was a theater play. They were shouting and laughing a great deal and they didn’t stop when the Black Sun man on the platform raised his hands and started to make large motions with his hands. Amolina watched them nervously.
Soon the people behind her pushed on, trying to get a better view of what was happening, not caring that they were pushing her and others forward in front of them. There was no way to make them stop, and there was no way to avoid them. Some people at had started to stumble and nearly fall, but the shouting, chanting crowd just continued forward like unstoppable.
Amolina stumbled, and for a few ticks she could already see herself go down under the wave of eager spectators. But before she fell a black-clad arm came up around her waist and pulled her back, away from the brawl, close to the owner of the arm, who was standing behind her. “Just stand back. Stay out of reach. “ There were people moving on all sides of her, bumping into her, as she was resolutely pulled several steps backwards through the throng, somewhat away from the worst turbulence. The crowd closed in front of her, like a dense wall of people.
For a few chimes the brawl seemed to be about to explode in violence. But it didn’t. The stryfers calmed the overly eager audience and people started to fall silent. The wall of people in front of her moved backwards again. It resulted in the spectators being very tightly packed together. Even if she had wished to turn around to find out who it was that had pulled her away from the brawl, there wasn’t room for her to move. And she didn’t wish to know. She wished no knowledge, no owing somebody anything, no gratitude and no consequences.
Her gaze was on the events on the platform and she didn’t speak.
Finally the crowd was settled and the first prisoner was brought forward. He was tall and proud, and strode towards the rope – the noose – without a trace of fear. Amolina watched him and for a tick or two she wondered and tried to recall : did he look familiar, had she seen him somewhere, or was this only a sudden shadow passing through her mind due to the general tension in the air ? She found herself trying to recall. It creeped her out that she was trying, as she didn’t have any connection to the prisoners on the platform.
The man on the platform was nothing else than a convicted criminal, she thought. But he stood there proudly, like he thought he was better and braver, stronger and nobler than the spectators. Like he despised them all.
Despised them.
”Down with Rhysol!” he cried as the noose was slipped over his neck, staring at the crowd. This earned him a cuff and the spectators started shouting insults at him. Amolina saw how stryfers here and there in the crowd started to tell people to be silent. A few moments later everyone was quiet again, and the executioner pulled a long lever. The man dropped, and there was a loud ‘crack’ as the rope snapped taught.
People were cheering wildly.
The dead man was pulled from the noose and moved somewhere else, whilst another member of the Rising Dawn was led forward. This one was a woman, and less willing to move. She dug her heels hard into the floor, writhing in the tight grips of two Ebonstryfe soldiers. She yelled and screamed, mostly wordlessly, but ”No!” and ”Please!” were two audible statements.
It took four of the five soldiers to drag her forward, kicking, and grab the noose… She fought and screamed in the Ebonstryfe's hold, writhing, and actually managing to hit one on the nose. However, just after the noose was slipped over her head, an odd thing happened. And then, like all others, Amolina saw the woman and the stryfers stumble backwards like something had hit them. After this the woman was silent and she seemed to go limp like a ragdoll in the solider’s arms.
Amolina felt nauseated. She couldn’t help it, no matter she realized she was squeamish, craven, weak. She could very well understand the woman’s fear and her lack of dignity when they had dragged her towards her death. Amolina felt like she too would have behaved like that, if it had been her.
A collective breath from the watchers could be heard, and everyone st
arted talking at once. The people on the platform were shouting, but so was the crowd. She heard screams, curses, laughs and wondered what had happened. The confusion was total, but slowly word was passed in the crowd and Amolina understood that an arrow had come soaring from the rim of the crowd to slam into the woman’s chest.
Thoughts rushed through her mind. Somebody had shot the woman, and so she had died with an arrow in her chest instead from being hanged. Amolina felt a weird and surreal feeling of disbelief. Possibilities and wild guesses arose .Had it been an enemy of the woman that had taken the last opportunity to mete out revenge ? Or a lover, crazy of sorrow, who had settled for sparing her the fear even if it meant she would just die another way ? Or had the act been done by somebody who just wanted to sabotage and disrupt the execution?
The noise in the upset crowd was deafening and the atmosphere had started to feel uproarious and tumultuous. For a few chimes everything seemed to be confused and disrupted. She could see the remaining prisoners look around, like they didn’t know what to expect anymore, while the dead woman’s body was pulled away.
The Ebonstryfe soldiers around the crowd started to shut the Ravokians up for the third time that day and they, had started demanding to see papers and weapons of people. It occurred to Amolina that the unknown person holding an arm around her waist and keeping her from being pushed here and there in the crowd wasn’t doing anything at all in order to help them calm people down or make them stop shouting.
Nobody asked for her papers.
It was like she was invisible where she stood in the unknown embrace.
It wasn’t possible to turn around and find out who her protective company was. Or more correctly: she didn’t want to do it. This was Ravok. There could be more than one reason for a person to wear black. There could be more than one reason for staying calm in the middle of a maelstrom. And there could be more than one reason for being left alone by citizens and Ebonstryfe alike.
The reaction pattern in her mind and in her thoughts was as good as automatized : When confronted with danger, play stupid. Wasn’t it better to not look, not speak, not try to hear anything said ? Wasn’t it better to do as usual and pretend to neither think nor be aware of things ? Wasn’t it always better to have deniability - be the one that hadn’t seen anything, not heard anything, not said or done anything, not understood ?
Ignorance, stupidity and blindness. The easy way out.
”Please, stay calm!” the Black Sun man on the platform called, raising his arms to the crowd. ”We already have people after this traitor. The execution will continue as planned!” This was received with a few reluctant nods, and the event did continue.
The last three went quietly, one willingly like the first, another stiff and fearful, and the last weeping and shaking his head. But they all faced the noose, one after the other. They were simply killed, quickly, brutally, efficiently.
She thought it was like their deaths were just quick fixed, like they weren’t important and didn’t count after the drama the two first prisoners had created. It was like it was just more of the same, not worth the executors’ attention. It was like a ritual had already come to it’s end, but as there were a few more offerings they too were taken care of, just to tidy up.
Amolina stared in sickened fascination. Intense emotions tend to trigger their opposites. Disgust can trigger fascination. Extreme fear can trigger an extatic feeling of safety. At the moment Amolina felt safe, so safe…but the safety she felt seemed threatened. The crowd was dissolving and people went separate ways again, calm now, like they too were feeling as safe as she felt, after witnessing the justice of Rhysol, in the city of Ravok, Day 4 or Winter 513 AV.
The person behind her spoke, silently. It was hardly more than a whisper in her ear, meant for nobody else than her. “Yae Varones. Day 41 at 8 bells in the evening. Dress up, wear a mask. Wait right inside the main entrance. Somebody will contact you. From there on, just follow.”
The arm around her waist was gone. She stood alone on the plaza
Amolina Moletta belonged to the third category. She didn’t take pleasure in watching people die, she didn’t feel safe in the partly bloodthirsty crowd, and as she wasn’t extremely righteous minded she had an unsettling feeling that this could happen to her too, if she didn’t behave. She was there simply because citizens were expected to be there either they liked it or not. It was an extraordinarily important execution this time - the leader if the terrorist organization The Rising Dawn was going to die. It would be unwise to not put in an appearance. Only a fool wouldn’t have attended it.
Amolina had witnessed public executions before of course. It was the same thing as every time. She stood in the crowd in the Nitrozian Plaza, waiting helplessly, feeling anxious and depressed by the knowledge about what would soon need to watch and worried about being hurt and injured if the crowd around her would go unruly.
The crowd, she though, the crowd. Something happened when people were gathered in large crowds. The crowd seemed to get a life of it’s own, tearing people with it, like they weren’t individuals any more, just parts of a lager being made of all of them. It was like they became parts of a beast - a beast which was playful at festivities and murderous at executions, but always a beast, wild, unruly and extatic.
She knew this beast.
It - they - was her audience as well as the audience of fights in The Pit, public executions and all other events in the city. Being an actress and used to observe audiences and their reactions and tune in on the atmosphere, she saw it oddly from outside. She wasn’t part or the audience, not fully part of the crowd - instead, by habit, she stood apart from it mentally, observing it to gauge the reactions and responses.
“Down with the Rising Dawn!” was the general cry, mixed with ”Long live Rhysol!” and other similar statements. The calls and yells of Ravokians filled the plaza with quite the noise. Not far from where she stood, was a group of inebriated spectators who found the event entertaining and took pleasure in watching it like it was a theater play. They were shouting and laughing a great deal and they didn’t stop when the Black Sun man on the platform raised his hands and started to make large motions with his hands. Amolina watched them nervously.
Soon the people behind her pushed on, trying to get a better view of what was happening, not caring that they were pushing her and others forward in front of them. There was no way to make them stop, and there was no way to avoid them. Some people at had started to stumble and nearly fall, but the shouting, chanting crowd just continued forward like unstoppable.
Amolina stumbled, and for a few ticks she could already see herself go down under the wave of eager spectators. But before she fell a black-clad arm came up around her waist and pulled her back, away from the brawl, close to the owner of the arm, who was standing behind her. “Just stand back. Stay out of reach. “ There were people moving on all sides of her, bumping into her, as she was resolutely pulled several steps backwards through the throng, somewhat away from the worst turbulence. The crowd closed in front of her, like a dense wall of people.
For a few chimes the brawl seemed to be about to explode in violence. But it didn’t. The stryfers calmed the overly eager audience and people started to fall silent. The wall of people in front of her moved backwards again. It resulted in the spectators being very tightly packed together. Even if she had wished to turn around to find out who it was that had pulled her away from the brawl, there wasn’t room for her to move. And she didn’t wish to know. She wished no knowledge, no owing somebody anything, no gratitude and no consequences.
Her gaze was on the events on the platform and she didn’t speak.
Finally the crowd was settled and the first prisoner was brought forward. He was tall and proud, and strode towards the rope – the noose – without a trace of fear. Amolina watched him and for a tick or two she wondered and tried to recall : did he look familiar, had she seen him somewhere, or was this only a sudden shadow passing through her mind due to the general tension in the air ? She found herself trying to recall. It creeped her out that she was trying, as she didn’t have any connection to the prisoners on the platform.
The man on the platform was nothing else than a convicted criminal, she thought. But he stood there proudly, like he thought he was better and braver, stronger and nobler than the spectators. Like he despised them all.
Despised them.
”Down with Rhysol!” he cried as the noose was slipped over his neck, staring at the crowd. This earned him a cuff and the spectators started shouting insults at him. Amolina saw how stryfers here and there in the crowd started to tell people to be silent. A few moments later everyone was quiet again, and the executioner pulled a long lever. The man dropped, and there was a loud ‘crack’ as the rope snapped taught.
People were cheering wildly.
The dead man was pulled from the noose and moved somewhere else, whilst another member of the Rising Dawn was led forward. This one was a woman, and less willing to move. She dug her heels hard into the floor, writhing in the tight grips of two Ebonstryfe soldiers. She yelled and screamed, mostly wordlessly, but ”No!” and ”Please!” were two audible statements.
It took four of the five soldiers to drag her forward, kicking, and grab the noose… She fought and screamed in the Ebonstryfe's hold, writhing, and actually managing to hit one on the nose. However, just after the noose was slipped over her head, an odd thing happened. And then, like all others, Amolina saw the woman and the stryfers stumble backwards like something had hit them. After this the woman was silent and she seemed to go limp like a ragdoll in the solider’s arms.
Amolina felt nauseated. She couldn’t help it, no matter she realized she was squeamish, craven, weak. She could very well understand the woman’s fear and her lack of dignity when they had dragged her towards her death. Amolina felt like she too would have behaved like that, if it had been her.
A collective breath from the watchers could be heard, and everyone st
arted talking at once. The people on the platform were shouting, but so was the crowd. She heard screams, curses, laughs and wondered what had happened. The confusion was total, but slowly word was passed in the crowd and Amolina understood that an arrow had come soaring from the rim of the crowd to slam into the woman’s chest.
Thoughts rushed through her mind. Somebody had shot the woman, and so she had died with an arrow in her chest instead from being hanged. Amolina felt a weird and surreal feeling of disbelief. Possibilities and wild guesses arose .Had it been an enemy of the woman that had taken the last opportunity to mete out revenge ? Or a lover, crazy of sorrow, who had settled for sparing her the fear even if it meant she would just die another way ? Or had the act been done by somebody who just wanted to sabotage and disrupt the execution?
The noise in the upset crowd was deafening and the atmosphere had started to feel uproarious and tumultuous. For a few chimes everything seemed to be confused and disrupted. She could see the remaining prisoners look around, like they didn’t know what to expect anymore, while the dead woman’s body was pulled away.
The Ebonstryfe soldiers around the crowd started to shut the Ravokians up for the third time that day and they, had started demanding to see papers and weapons of people. It occurred to Amolina that the unknown person holding an arm around her waist and keeping her from being pushed here and there in the crowd wasn’t doing anything at all in order to help them calm people down or make them stop shouting.
Nobody asked for her papers.
It was like she was invisible where she stood in the unknown embrace.
It wasn’t possible to turn around and find out who her protective company was. Or more correctly: she didn’t want to do it. This was Ravok. There could be more than one reason for a person to wear black. There could be more than one reason for staying calm in the middle of a maelstrom. And there could be more than one reason for being left alone by citizens and Ebonstryfe alike.
The reaction pattern in her mind and in her thoughts was as good as automatized : When confronted with danger, play stupid. Wasn’t it better to not look, not speak, not try to hear anything said ? Wasn’t it better to do as usual and pretend to neither think nor be aware of things ? Wasn’t it always better to have deniability - be the one that hadn’t seen anything, not heard anything, not said or done anything, not understood ?
Ignorance, stupidity and blindness. The easy way out.
”Please, stay calm!” the Black Sun man on the platform called, raising his arms to the crowd. ”We already have people after this traitor. The execution will continue as planned!” This was received with a few reluctant nods, and the event did continue.
The last three went quietly, one willingly like the first, another stiff and fearful, and the last weeping and shaking his head. But they all faced the noose, one after the other. They were simply killed, quickly, brutally, efficiently.
She thought it was like their deaths were just quick fixed, like they weren’t important and didn’t count after the drama the two first prisoners had created. It was like it was just more of the same, not worth the executors’ attention. It was like a ritual had already come to it’s end, but as there were a few more offerings they too were taken care of, just to tidy up.
Amolina stared in sickened fascination. Intense emotions tend to trigger their opposites. Disgust can trigger fascination. Extreme fear can trigger an extatic feeling of safety. At the moment Amolina felt safe, so safe…but the safety she felt seemed threatened. The crowd was dissolving and people went separate ways again, calm now, like they too were feeling as safe as she felt, after witnessing the justice of Rhysol, in the city of Ravok, Day 4 or Winter 513 AV.
The person behind her spoke, silently. It was hardly more than a whisper in her ear, meant for nobody else than her. “Yae Varones. Day 41 at 8 bells in the evening. Dress up, wear a mask. Wait right inside the main entrance. Somebody will contact you. From there on, just follow.”
The arm around her waist was gone. She stood alone on the plaza
