Lazarus

Crossia wrote:

Many of the buildings around the market square still looked damaged, although under repair, many of those buildings were abandoned and later demolished in favor of newer ones. The buildings back then looked nothing like the ones found commonly in the city today, a lot of them looked similar to the Imperial Palace in architectural style and some in more neo-renaissance styles, most of said buildings were severely damaged by the battle which raged in the city at one point and were replaced with more brutalistic style structures. One building, however, stood out among the rest. It managed to survive the war and seemed to be in pretty good condition, it’s a restaurant called “ Okeanik Royal”, which I believe still stands today. On one of the balconies of the building, the Emperor, Yuzhnyy Korol', a sight to behold. He wore garments which one could never even imagine being able to wear, and had a crown which shined with various jewls.

Me and three of my friends at the time had come to the execution, we were curious and wished to see the man who many blamed for the Rebellion. Thousands of others attended, making it almost impossible to get a good look at Kometa Istrebitel' over the crowd. We decided to sneak into one of the abandoned buildings around the market square and get a better view from higher up, I believe it was some sort of former salon. It was quite late in the day, the sun was on the verge of beginning to set, there was a small cold breeze passing through the square. Kometa Istrebitel' sat on his knees in front of the guillotine, he seemed depressed and had given up all hope. We waited about half a hour before we heard a booming voice, it was the executioner. He spoke about Rebellion and how Kometa Istrebitel' was the primary leader of it, how he committed treason and caused the death of hundred of thousands, how he almost destroyed his own homeland. It took him twenty entire minutes to finish his speech. He then led Salak Bauer to the guillotine and put his head in the pillory. At this point I noticed something, even despite my distance from him, Kometa Istrebitel' was looking up at the Emperor, with the balcony he was suiting at being coincidentally directly across from him. It was to far to read his expression, although many photos and recordings of the event display it. He didn’t look up at the Emperor with hatred or anger, but rather acceptance, contrary to the Emperor who seemed happy about the event. Kometa Istrebitel' had once led the Rebellion against Crossia, at one point controlling almost all of the peninsula, now here he was in Voton, the one city he couldn’t conquer, being executed. With the fall of the blade, Kometa Istrebitel'‘s head fell into a basket and he was no more. “