Days Since...: Xavier: Day 853

Prologue

Upon the dirt, their feet shambled forward, each resident edged one by one into the courtyard of River’s Edge Academy. A row of Second Alliance Guards formed a wall that corralled these lines of people into the lower half of the yard, ensuring they remained impacted. Shoulders pressed to bodies. Bodies to backs. One push and they would all topple over.

Without a choice, they simply stood there—astonished faces, solemn, much thinner now than in days past. Some clasped hands in preparation. Unnerved. Silent as they looked on.

“That’s all of them!” a Guard said before sliding back inside the door to the hallway and clicking the latch, prompting the Guard across the yard to do the same.

Collectively, the people’s faces twisted to see past one another—behind them—anticipating the death of one of their own. They knew it wouldn’t be long, dreading his arrival, the realization of a broken promise—sworn words taken back.

A clink of metal and the sharp gasp of the crowd sucked the air from the opened door. The prisoner stumbled forward, led by a noose around his neck to the scaffolding that had been arranged against the southern wall. With his hands cuffed behind his back, he pulled, fought from his forced path. “Quit your struggling!” A quick jerk of the rope and his feet fell back in line.

The Guards that encircled the crowd ensured no eyes were diverted from this spectacle. Three others that escorted the man kept any sympathetic hand from him. There would be no saving this prisoner. Nothing could go wrong. Not today.

“Keep your eyes on the grazing field,” a Sentry posted in a watch tower yelled to his counterpart. “Do your job, man!”

“And miss this?” His partner scoffed. “How often does something like this happen? It’s ‘bout time we get to see some action.”

“You’re sick,” the Sentry said while turning back toward the field he had been assigned to observe.

“It’s his damned fault. Treason they said. Not sure of the details, but I don’t really care.” His overzealous eyes watched every detail unfold. “Guilty’s all I need to know.”

A stiff wind cut across the prisoner, causing his balance to waver as he stood ten feet from the ground. The metal and wood creaked as two Guards moved about the scaffolding. Their movements were deliberate and rehearsed. Their hands worked to place the rope up and then over, securing the end to a lower portion of the frame. Another rope placed then tightened around his legs. The Guards jerked hard at the rope each time the knots were made.

The two Guards brought him upright, their arms interlocked within his elbows. With his knees bent, he practically hovered in place. The black hood that wrapped the man’s face puffed outward then in as his breaths sped forth.

The crowd maintained its silence while the muffled hysteria within the hood touched upon their ears—it was unknown to them what horrors were being said.

“Let him go!”

“He doesn’t deserve it!”

“Stop!” A Soldier—an iron man—raised his rifle as if to fire, but didn’t. “It won’t be too much longer.”