บท 2: Sentenced
Lokus grunted as he was shoved roughly to the ground, pain shooting through his bloodied knees as the exposed flesh smacked against the wood of the platform.
The man in black armor gestured again, and chains flew up from the floor, locking around Lokus' wrists and ankles before retracting and restricting him to the uncomfortable kneeling position he landed in.
Lokus' yellow eyes peered out through the bangs of his shaggy brown hair, squinting in the brightness of the sunlight. He hadn't realized it at the time, but based on how hungry he felt, he had probably been in that cell for a few days.
To his side was a man in raggedy brown pants similar to his own, likewise missing a tunic and shoes.
His forehead was as red and bloodied and Lokus' knees, and the way he thrashed against his bindings, and frothed at the mouth indicated a level of depraved insanity that was only matched by his crazed eyes that darted about as if chasing invisible demons.
Lokus recognized him from earlier, when the armored man had taken him along after picking up Lokus. He was the man who had been screaming, and judging by the blood that flowed down his face even now, he had taken to bashing his head against a wall to drive out whatever nightmares he suffered from.
The armored man restrained him the same way he did Lokus, before moving in somewhere behind them.
Lokus' gaze turned to the crowd in front of them.
Due to the platform he kneeled on, he had a good view of each and every one of their faces, just as they could see his. They were deathly quiet, with nary a whisper passing between them as they waited for the event to start.
They didn't have to wait long.
Behind Lokus, the commanding voice of the armored man swept over the crowd, announcing the purpose of this gathering.
"Citizens of this fair city," the man said, his tone as harsh and cold as a blizzard. "The two men before you are guilty of a heinous crime. They have the very thing that we abhor, an irredeemable trait that taints their very blood.
"They have… Goetian affinities."
That sent a wave of shocked murmurs through the crowd, and the faces of them all, which had previously ranged from things like pity to scorn and even indifference, at once changed to a deep disgust.
It was like they were looking at the world's rankest pile of shit, and those closer to the front shuffled backward a few steps as if to get away from the two.
'A Goetian affinity…?' Lokus wondered. Did this have anything to do with his Frost affinity? Why was it so reviled? Didn't he have a say in this?!
"The punishment for this transgression is the same it has been since time immemorial," the armored man continued, a SHING sounding as he drew his sword from its scabbard. "Banishment to the Aldark, where these foul affinities originated."
'The Aldark?' Lokus' eyes widened. That was something he knew of.
The Aldark was hell. Not in a metaphorical sense, but literal hell. It was said that in the Aldark, demons roamed freely, and the souls of humanity's worst would be condemned to an eternity of being little more than food for these monstrous demons after death.
The steel blade of the armored man's sword pressed against Lokus' neck, and he couldn't help but gulp as he felt it prick his skin and draw a small bead of blood.
Were they… going to kill him? Is that what this "banishment" was? This was nothing more than an execution.
But to Lokus' surprise, after drawing blood, the sword pulled away from his neck. Seconds later, after the armored man did the same with the deranged lunatic next to Lokus, he heard the distinctive sound of it sliding back into its sheath.
The armored man strode back into view, holding in his gauntleted hand a small burlap back from which he sprinkled a greenish powder. He didn't stop until a circle surrounded both of the prisoners, and then he took out a small vial and poured it into grooves in the wood Lokus hadn't noticed before.
Arcane sigils, carved into the wood of the platform, were made apparent as a blackish-blue, luminescent liquid filled the grooves. The light coming off of them was visible even in the midday sun, and combined with the sigils to give off a soothing air.
It did little to still the frantic pounding of Lokus' heart.
He could hardly wrap his head around it. What had he done to be sentenced to such a fate?
As the sigils slowly winked to life, glowing with a light entirely independent of the liquid that filled them, the man with the bloody forehead increased his thrashing, bucking like a wild beast as foam dripped out of his mouth and inhuman snarls left his lips.
One by one, the armored man set two identical sets of items in front of them that seemed random at first glance: a stem of thyme, a lock of reddish fur that might have been hair, a small black feather with its tip dipped in the blood the armored man had taken from one of them, a fistful of dirt, and finally, a block of wood stripped of its bark.
The armored man kneeled in front of the thrashing man first, picking up the thyme and the fur-hair and entwining the second around the first.
A deep, bellowing scream came from the thrashing man as tears streamed down his cheeks, and his wrists dripped with blood as he broke his skin against the shackles in his attempts to break free.
But the armored man calmly carried on, setting the fur-wrapped thyme aside and picking up the feather and the block of wood.
"Please, no!" the man screamed. "I don't want to go there! They'll eat my breath and tear out my thoughts! Leave me be! Free me!"
"The judgment has been handed down," the armored man said coldly.
The tip of the feather glided against the wood as he wrote an inscription of sorts on it. All the while, the prisoner screamed plead after plead, each one a glimpse into his utterly demented mind.
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