![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
church ch 1 (doomed but just enough)
"Ha, I really can't believe it. A whole decade without seeing an execution... Then it's almost like seeing one for the first time, huh?"
Quartermaster Henning laughs, and Claude laughs along with him, because he's learned to get good at that. Henning makes it easy, too. In the time he's had to make his stops in the city, Claude has thought him serious. Apparently that's just when he's on the clock. Off of it, with the two of them making their way from the supply warehoue to the city center, he's in much higher spirits.
Claude wishes he could say the same.
"What can I say?" he chuckles, winking. Before them, the church looms. Whenever he sees the massive building from a distance, its spires piercing the heavens, his stomach twists unpleasantly.
Hiding that reaction is also something he's gotten good at. It brings up too many terrible memories, too much scorn and harassment and dismissive glances. All except for one pair of eyes, eyes that had crinkled in joy whenever they saw him.
Claude puts those memories aside, even if his heart aches doing so. Then again, his heart always does. "I've been so busy doing my work for the church," he continues. "I mean, the Saints sure didn't take breaks when they were off clearing the world of sin, right?"
Henning laughs again. It's not a bad laugh: soft, from the heart and the lungs both. He's an honest guy, really. The unfortunate thing is that they've both ended up in this particular city.
Both of them step to the side, out of the way of a some hurrying person. In their arms are bags of food, cheap material falling apart at the seams. It's a haggard looking stranger, clothes too dirty, cheeks too hollow. Yet while he's a stranger, in this city, he's not a strange sight. Claude has seen people exactly like him more times than he can count here. Henning makes a sympathetic click of his tongue, but he doesn't help. That, too, isn't a strange sight in this city.
He's a lot more occupied with turning back to Claude, smacking a friendly hand along his back. "Well, I can see why the priests like you so much then," he chuckles, even though Claude knows he doesn't see anything. "Hard work pays off, I guess. But it's not a sin to rest now and then."
Right on cue, they're before the many smaller buildings that lead up to the church. Every bit of land inside the city walls is claustrophobic, but Claude has always found the areas there the worst of them all. The hairs on the back of his neck stand up on end, longing for road, for the feel of his horse between his thighs, for a sky he can see without being marred by the buildings of the city reaching up towards it.... He smiles. In the city walls, all he can do is smile. "Well, that's what you're doing for me, right, sir?"
"It's the least I can do." Both of them pause at the entrance of the Colosseum. It really has been such a long time since he's seen it... For the protection of the city and its people, stern faced guards carefully look over every single person that comes to the gates. There's a thick crowd tonight, which tickles at Claude's memory. The last time he attended an execution... Yeah, there had been a crowd then, too, hadn't there?
Crowds don't apply to those who directly serve the church and its needs, however. Quartermaster Henning waves over the heads of the people around them, catching the attention of a particular guard. After that, well, after that it's child's play to skip to the front of the line, past so many people waiting for entrance, until they're in the tight hallways that lead up to the seats.
Claude knows what's asked of him during times like these. As they exist into the stands proper, he huffs out a laugh and raises a hand to his eyes. "Wow, I'm feeling nostalgic!"
"It's a nice feeling, right?" Henning slings an arm around his shoulder, guiding him along. "But you'll probably have better seats than when you were just a kid."
Fluttering his eyelashes, he presses a hand to his chest daintily. "Why, Quartermaster, best seats in the house for me, your humble servant?" Another warm and friendly laugh, his shoulders shaken a little bit. Henning really does seem like a decent person, one who studiously goes over his duties and helps out those he feels are hardworkers as well. He's not evil. From what little Claude has seen of him, what more he's dug into about him, he's not evil.
It's a shame, honestly. It'd be easier to hate him if that were the case. Claude wishes he could hate more people than he does.
But life isn't that easy. He allows himself to be gathered onto the seats of the Colosseum, stone benches not exactly the most pleasant to sit on. Fortunately for Claude, he's had to sit in far worse positions when he's gone out on Church business... which is, more often times than not, hunting business. Well, there's no point complaining.
As he adjusts, he casts a keen eye over their location. They're "better seats" not because they feel better, because there's only a couple of places high above the rabble that are actually comfortable. Those seats are the ones reserved for high up priests, and they aren't going to show up for just any ol' execution.
No, these are good seats because of the location. They're not directly behind either of the entrances where executioner or criminal enter. Instead, they're right in the middle, where they can see both individuals emerge, when that eventually happens. Perhaps because Henning is well known as the church's quartermaster, people were willing to shuffle aside for them to get these seats... Right there are the front, so that they can peer over the edge of the Colosseum pit.
Well. They could peer over the edge of the pit, if not for one thing. Claude reaches forward, running his fingers against the long steel bars that are embedded in the stone. He gives a low whistle. "Wow. I don't remember these from when I was a kid."
Leaning back, utterly relaxed, Henning nods and doesn't seem too surprised. "Oh yeah, they've no doubt made a couple of changes since a decade ago," he says, pointedly nudging Claude in the ribs with his elbow. "But the executioner has gotten pretty high up more than once a couple of times, and the church thought it would be for the best if they were cautious. Well, it hasn't made any attempts recently.... I suppose it learned its lesson."
It. It, it, it. The use of the word rings in Claude's head, and he wants to ask How do you know that "it" is what the executioner wants you to use? But he doesn't say that. When he was a child, he learned quickly that the adults of the church never wanted to hear his questions. Questions implied he wasn't listening, even when he was. Questions implied that he wasn't respecting them. That he wasn't trusting them. That he was disobedient.
These things are all true, of course... it's just that Claude knows better than to say that, too. At least, he doesn't say it aloud. Instead, he asks the questions himself, and it is himself who he trusts to find the answer.
Instead, he laughs again, says some asinine thing about nostalgia and how the world moves on, but his eyes stay on the bars. They really hadn't been there when he'd been a kid. Back then, the priests and sisters had trusted that the walls were far too high for any demon to breach.
Back then, he had believed them... but not because he thought it was an impossible thing to do. He'd look down into the execution ring and seen the executioner, the so called demon, and seen how big he'd been. Back then, it had been so clear, even though he knew the creature's name was not demon. That didn't mean he couldn't see why the church, cowardly and vicious, thought to claim the creature was that.
When they're lucky, humans grow to a little over six feet tall. Most are far shorter than that; Claude knows because he's one of them. That had clearly not been the case with the demon, clearing seven feet all too easily. In Claude's memories, he had always thought the demon eight feet, ten feet, and yet, somehow simultaneously, smaller than him. It hadn't been because the demon had been far down in the execution ring, too far away to reach any of them, or, at least, it had not only been that.
It had been because... the demon had not held himself tall. He had been a ragged creature, hollow eyed, shoulders slumped. Claude had looked at him kill a human being, and yet somehow felt no fear even as his companions - other children in the church's orphanage - had yelled and screamed, terrified and delighted in different ways, each of them. Even now, Claude has to wonder at his own reaction... but he knows what he had seen.
His companions, his teachers, all of them - they had seen a soulless monster end a human life, something that would be a sin if done by human hands.
He had looked down and seen a beaten person kill in surrender and desperation.
There had been no bars, back then. His view had been wholly and completely unobstructed. As his fingers trace along lukewarm metal, they pause along grooves that mar the smooth surface. Claw marks. They don't go far, only at the base and a few inches up... but they tell a story he can imagine well.
Old memories surge up again, of soft padded hands, the brush of fur, claws pressing so delicately around the curve of his hand like he was something fragile. "I didn't know those old bones still had so much energy in them," he says, still rubbing the pad of his thumb against the claw marks. "I wonder what got him all worked up."
Around them, the seats are all filling up. Various spectators bubble with excitement for a bloody show, or exchange whispered gossip on the criminal tonight. Out of pure habit, he can't help but listen in, picking up snatches of conversation that aren't meant for him.
It's a murderer tonight. Claude has been out of the city for weeks now, as he often is and tries to be, but he picks up on the tale quick enough thanks to the wagging tongues that so eagerly fill this city. Terrible tale, a guard that lost his job due to being caught at petty theft, and who had injured his leg shortly after so that it made it all the harder for him to get a job. Cue the spending too much on spirits, too aggravated at his wife...
Terrible tale. A sad tale. Yet on the lips of those around him, it does not sound like an unfamiliar one. Claude tries to not let that observation get to him, instead looking up when he realizes that the quartermaster hasn't yet responded to his comment.
What meets his inquisitive gaze is a light smirk, and Rosarin smacks his back once again with a chuckle. "What did I tell you about things changing?" he teases. "The executioner you're thinking of died years ago, Claude! A new one was brought in, and I bet he's going to be a lot more impressive than what you remember of the last one."
His stomach drops, subconscious understanding what this might mean even before the thoughts have a chance to coagulate inside his skull. "What?" he asks, but it's too late to get an answer. The stands are full up, now, with few people want to miss one of the rare spectacles that are permitted in the city. The noise of the crowd swallows him up, and it's the sharp cry of one of the church guards that pierces through to call them all into silence. No, not silence. Prayer.
Obediently, Claude clasps his hands together and bows his head, just like every single other person in the stands this evening. That's how this always is for every major event... but for an execution? Prayer is especially important... at least in the eyes of the people, of the church.
For those in the stands, he knows that this is all in hope and belief that they will never face the same fate of the people down in the execution ring, even if they only view one of the two as a person at all. If they are devoted, if they remember their prayers, if they live what they believe to be a virtuous life... Then they will not suffer the same fate.
They will not be a mindless monster, doomed for the torturous hell that awaits them in the afterlife. They will not be a hapless victim before a ravenous "beast", a mark on their skin declaring their sin to the entire world.
The various guards, monks, and priests that watch have a different reason for this display: control. That, Claude is sure of. They watch to make sure that everyone stays obedient. They want to make this... an intimidation tactic. A threat, held up for everyone to see, in the guise of punishing the wicked, and a reason for those who should be allies to turn on one another instead.
Claude's fingers tighten imperceptibly against one another, at least to anyone who'd look. Him, he feels that painful pressure dig in, and slows his breathing. Executions.... He hates them so much. It's one of the many reasons why he long ago made himself one of the church's hunters and tradesmen. There are a lot of reasons, of course, so many he couldn't even begin to list them all.... but this is a good reason as well.
All this punishment isn't actually meant to help people, to keep them on the right path. He knows for a fact that it's not, because it never addresses the actual cause. All of this is just...
The call to prayer ends, and they all lift their heads up in unison, individuality erased for that one clear moment. Claude does his best to ignore the way that always makes him feel off-kilter, relaxing in his seat as a priest begins to give his sermon.
Well, part of it is a sermon, part of it is a judgment, both of them twisted into one sickening thing where he tries to justify why a man deserves a painful death. For this crowd, it will almost always succeed. It's a bit of a nuisance, honestly, trying to shift through the fire and brimstone, the purple prose combined with religious imagery, but Claude tries anyway. As he does so, he takes in the reactions of the crowd.
It's easy enough to see how more than a few people's gazes begin to wander off or glaze over as the preacher carries on. While they're all devout enough to pray, well, they're not really here to listen to why murder is obviously bad in a fifteen minute speech detailing the reasons why. They all feel that most of them know it's a terrible crime, which, honestly, they're probably right about. Religion isn't necessary to have people realize wanton murder is bad... at least on the base domestic level. (War is a lot trickier a conversation, Claude has found.)
Others lean forward with considerable more interest, and it's easy enough to pick them out from one another. You have the truly and painfully devout, their eyes perfectly locked onto the preacher and hands clasped together desperately. They really do drink so deeply from the poisoned well that the church claims will cleanse their many flaws... It makes his heart clench. They're different from the people who are... more like him. Those who watch the preacher, take in his words, but more because they're interested in the base facts of it all.
Well, the base fact of it all is that the man is a murderer, a path that the church claims is an innate sin with no regard for the circumstances which directed him upon it. At long last, the preacher is finished, and turns away to walk solemnly back to one of the entrances. In his position, Claude can't get a completely clear view of it, but he can get just enough to see how the gate is raised up on that entrance. Likely it's the one where the criminal is waiting.
The alternative is passing by a "demon", after all.
All around him, the crowd is stirring back into excitement again, and their words create an almost electric buzz throughout the building as a whole. This is what they all really came here for. This is the entire point of the coliseum. At his side, Henning claps a hand to his shoulder, like this isn't a spectacle celebrating a death that never need happen. "Get a good look. They managed to get their hands on a real monster, this time."
Claude can't entirely tell if Henning means the criminal who has been condemned to death, or the executioner himself. Maybe, in the eyes of the church and all those who follow it, the difference doesn't really matter. Certainly it doesn't matter right now, because the gates on both side of the arena rise open, and criminal and executioner both step into the judging light.
The criminal for tonight is exactly the kind of person Claude would think of, hearing his tale whispered all throughout the crowd as he has for the last fifteen minutes. He still looks to be in fairly good condition, all things considered.
But his injury and prison life has clearly left him in a less than fit state as he had been once upon a time. He favors one leg over the other carefully. Still, his shoulders are broad, muscles visible underneath the excess flesh of disuse. His gaze is red, no doubt the effects of both crying at his predicament and forced to go cold turkey after he was caught in the aftermath of his crime.
More eye-catching is who the condemned man is eyeing so warily, so sharply. The sight of his opponent sends the crowd into an excited frenzy. Claude is right in the midst of them, and he feels like he's drowning. How must it feel for the condemned, down there in the spotlight with the audience nothing but a darkened shadowy mass calling for his death? Almost rotting for a monster, a demon, their executioner? And worse... How must this feel for the executioner?
Because that's not a monster, nor a demon, down there in the arena. Not a demon, despite the controllers who are guiding them wearily with tattoos burning bright.
Claude wants to suck in a breath, close his eyes, curl his hands into trembling fists. Instead, he smiles, and says, "Wow."
It's what Henning is looking for, after all, and Claude lives to please. Sure enough, the quartermaster grins. "Ha, definitely better than the old one, right? Although this demon is even more vicious than the one before it," he says, looking away from Claude so that he can take in the scene down in the arena.
They are not a demon. He wants to yell those words, beg someone to understand, but he knows they won't. Maybe some of the higher ups know the truth... Actually, he knows for a fact that they know the truth, they just refuse to accept it for what it is. Yelling would accomplish nothing. So Claude swallows his emotions, like he so often has learned to do, and looks down towards the voa shackled by brilliant ropes of light as they're guided into the arena.
Most of the people in this city have never stepped far outside its walls. Claude learned that early on when he was a child in the orphanage. Once he had been able to re-earn his freedom as a person, old enough to volunteer for jobs that would take him out of the city and out into other towns, into forests and fields, it had almost been amazing to him how new everything felt again. It had been a relief to see other people not so bound by this section of the church, and he'd been glad to see others from lands beyond the church's own.
That had included the voa.
It's easy to see why people so locked away in their little city would be so frightened of them, would call them "demon" or "monster". The voa down in the arena is a perfect example of how frightening they can be. Claude long ago accepted that he'd never grow to be a particularly tall man, and that's good, he supposes, because most voa tend to rise easily over a height like his when they're fully grown.
The executioner the church has chosen is especially intimidating in this regard. From a distance, Claude can only guess at their proper height, but they easily tower over their captors by.... gods. At least three feet? Bordering on four, possibly.
They're massive, tall even for a voa, and they'd be even taller if their horns rose upwards. Instead, from within that pale mane of hair, they curve along the side of their head from their temples. An unfortunate choice, considering it only adds to their "demonic" look.
Yeah, that alone would threaten anyone, even if voa were more human. Even if they weren't covered in a layer of fur, even if they didn't have long tails, the claws that curve into too sharp points at the end of their fingers.
Even the more harmless aspects of them, like legs that are more beast-like than human with their warped shape and elongated paws, are seen by the church as evil. And they're evil because they're outside the norm. Anything outside their norm, their beliefs, is evil.
Ugh. Claude can't shake the thoughts out of his head, not when he's surrounded by people like this with an execution he's supposed to be watching, so he instead taps the outside of his thigh with a jittery finger that he doubts will be noticed much by anyone. He knew this was going to be an unpleasant experience from the very start, but this had been a chance to grow closer to yet another one of his superiors, someone higher up the foodchain. Trying to force the thoughts out of his head, he looks over the executioner again.
Their handlers, their controllers, don't dare escort them to the very center of the ring. If Claude asked any of them, he supposes he would get some answer about making things fair for sinners. One last little bit of mercy. This way, there's plenty of space between the two of them still. Space for the criminal to run, if he thinks that can ever help him, or fight, if he dares to.
After all, that's the true "mercy" allegedly behind this whole farce: if the condemned can kill their executioner, a monster with no soul, then they are given freedom. Not freedom in the city to live the life they once had, no... but some sort of freedom. A life still able to continue on.
Claude's gaze flickers to the man in question again, taking in the way his whole body tenses. If he were any closer, he's sure he could see him trembling from the rush of adrenaline no doubt filling his body, and his hand seems pretty damn tight around the fireplace poker he holds. No doubt the weapon he used to kill his wife. While he hasn't been to an execution for years and years, Claude still knows how the basics go. The whole mess is just an excuse for symbolism, and killing someone with an excuse.
On the other side, chains of light disperse around the executioner, the voa - man? Claude thinks they're a man. Voa have an even smaller sexual dimorphism than humans do, which was already pretty small to begin with, and their idea of gender is even wider than what he thinks most of the human countries consider... and humans are pretty open minded on that , at least. But around half of all Voa develop visible horns, and he thinks the majority - although not all of those that do - are male.
Claude doesn't know a lot of voa personally, honestly. He's a regular to some of them, because merchants are most successful when they have a wide customer base, but personally is different. Yet from what he knows of them...
A guy like this would be quite an attractive individual, even when he makes expressions like the one he does now: cold, dismissive, a curl of lip fortunately visible from Claude's front row seats. The short blond mane of hair around his face falls limply with the simply motion, an additional and messy shield of sorts from the rest of the world.
That's not how it should be. Claude bites down on his tongue, forces himself to stay silent and with the same smile as usual on his face. Yet still the thought persists in his head.
This is not how it should be.
This executioner, this voa so far away from his home islands, should be surrounded by his fellows. He should be able to bare his teeth in a faint smile instead of a snap and snarl towards his captors when they linger too long near him. He could be happy, and healthy, and maybe even taller than he is now, gods know the church can't be giving him the proper meals that would really let him be at his fullest. Claude could see him in some seaport town, smile at him, tease maybe-
Clearly he's not biting down on his own tongue hard enough if his brain can still wander in that direction, and Claude sighs at himself. This one, unfortunately, is a thing he actually does, and he grins when Henning glances over to him. "You know, looking at an executioner that big and tall, I feel kind of bad for the guy down there."
"Hey, don't start feeling too sympathetic for murderers," Henning says, nudging him in the side again. Yeah, the quartermaster is definitely a more relaxed guy compared to many others Claude has come to know in his life.
Some of the more strict and religious types would scold him, or be aghast that he could feel any sort of way about a criminal of any kind. Henning just thinks he's joking, in a way. Making a comment about how the criminal down in the arena doesn't have a chance on getting out of this one.
Well. That's not wrong. Claude doesn't think he's ever heard of very many people winning against the executioner of the church. That's part of the point. He can barely remember anything from his childhood, just one woman who had made it out against the old executioner.
He met her, once. He thinks she's dead, now. As he turns his attention back properly towards the arena at the glimpse of movement from the corner of his eye, he thinks about who else has survived an execution match. There was a whole thing with a kid, a few years ago, he thinks...
Grumbling erupts somewhere to the side of him, and Claude drags his mind out of the history lesson its trying to think back on. The executioner seems to understand just what kind of opponent he's facing, because there's no immediate slaughter. When Claude refocuses down into the arena, he's begun to idly circle around the condemned man... but none of his attention is on him.
Instead, he paces like a lazy predator: shoulders hunched, ears twitching with every noise (of which there are a hundred at every given time, poor guy), and tail swishing slowly behind him. But it's not the man in the arena with him who has the executioner's attention.
Claude has made a living out of - well, he's done a lot of things. But the thing which has him most known in the church, the thing he has made a living out of, a life he has to rely on, is that of a hunter. He's spent more hours than most people pray in this city just sitting still, watching, learning. Voa may look like animals to the eye of a human, but they're people as much as anyone else. Yet with this one, this executioner... All around Claude, the yelling and whining of the crowd fades away - same way rain and thunder blends together into simple white noise when he's out on the roads or in forests.
That stuff? That's inconsequential, to a mind born out of habit, born from so many hours and days and months spent in the forests and fields. The important thing is the animalistic manner in which the executioner walks - no, prowls the arena perimeter.
Claude doesn't see his face, not initially, as the executioner starts on the side of the arena that Claude is sitting on. He doesn't need to see his face. This is still a decent vantage point in which to watch him. While Claude doesn't want to be here, doesn't want to see a man die a violent death or another man be forced to commit it, he does have to be thankful that at least Henning provided him a decent seat.
From here, he can watch the exact way the executioner's ears twitch, and guess at what they react to - the swear of demon from a couple of seats away from Claude, the rattling of anxious fingernails against metal as someone watches from a front row seat all the way on the opposite side of the arena from Claude, the aggravated shuffling from some of the controllers near the executioner's gate.
Never towards the criminal, not even when he hisses something under his breath, not when the tip of the poker drags against the ground, not the grinding of anxious feet into the dirt floor that awaits someone's blood. Not an ounce of that concentrated and murderous intent is spared an ounce for the condemned. Claude's finger twitches and stills against his thigh.
It's directed towards the audience.
"Is this executioner always like this?" he asks conversationally, as one of the controllers steps forward with a frustrated sneer about her lips. Claude had been blown away by the presence of another voa trapped in this hellish role, when the group had first stepped out, so he had paid more attention to the executioner instead of any of the monks at his side.
Now, however, his gaze flicks to this one, and he takes note of the particular tattoos inked along her arms and that shows on her chest where her shirt is left open - right over her sternum. Some of hers are similar to the tattoos he himself bears, like those which form weapons, but the others...
Henning doesn't seem particularly surprised, although he is amused in an anticipatory sort of way. "Oh, a lot of the time," he says casually, as the controller down in the arena draws out a long whip of light from the brilliant glow of her ink. No controlling another living creature today for her, then. "It's not just size it has over the last one, but definitely a lot more energy, ha ha. I feel bad for the handlers, because it's never exactly hard to point at criminals, but - ohp! There it goes!"
There it goes indeed. Just the sight of the weapon, of light of any kind, has the executioner snapping in the controller's direction like a whip himself. Claude has been extremely lucky to see the occasional voa sparring lesson; he knows how fast they can be.
But it is terrifyingly clear to him now that those were just practice matches, things for health and exercise. At full and murderous speed, the executioner is a comet, a burst of ember from a fire, electricity. The controller seems used to handling him when he's like this, and even she barely manages to get out of the way in time with what Claude is pretty sure is a swear.
Her cohorts step forward, light burning off of their skin and into weapons as well. Their whips crack, just enough to dissuade the executioner. Behind them, the initial controller retreats, towards the gate again.
For a second, Claude thinks the executioner might charge right through, and his ears strain to see if he can pick out any traces of coherent Voali from the loud snarl he spits out. No Voali, if the executioner even remembers any of it anymore, and no attempted murder of church monks, either. All he does is jerk his chin upwards before turning sharply around to face what's supposed to be his actual opponent. As he does so, his tail snaps against the dirt, and a dust cloud billows up in the controllers' faces.
This time, Claude doesn't try to hide his slight laugh, and he curls one hand along his mouth as he grins. He thinks he can get away with it, in this case, although not exactly for the reason he can hear other people chuckle.
"I can see why you feel bad for the handlers now," he tells Henning, not taking his eye off of the executioner as he eyes the criminal. What Claude doesn't say is that he personally doesn't feel bad for those handlers. "You're right on the energy part of things..."
Once, he had met one of the only people who had won an execution match. Once, he had watched the old executioner fight a battle he had won. In both cases, no matter the fact that they were on opposite sides of the ring at one point in their lives, Claude had seen a familiar spirit to them.
It was the spirit of someone broken, someone who had surrendered themself to the act of continuously living but expected nothing out of that particular arrangement. In the woman's case, he supposed it was because she could not give up something she had fought so hard to keep, even if the result as an expendable and estranged church dog who could find no true solace with anyone else in her community. With the former executioner... Who knows. Claude wishes he could have had the chance to talk to him, truly talk to him.
This current executioner, the one who sizes up the condemned man dismissively, is nothing like either of them, or at least not exactly, and not here in the now. Maybe behind it all, he feels the same, but there is so much rage to dig through first that Claude can't be sure of it.
Oblivious to Claude's thoughts, the bitter nostalgia rolling through his mind, Henning continues on well enough. "Some nights, it gets really rowdy towards the handlers. The night is still young, and there are a few more executions lined up, from what I've heard. Once - it was a lass with a broken bottle who it had been sent after, right? I guess it was really ornery that night - maybe not enough meat in its dinner!" Rosarin laughs again, and Claude grins, because it's easier and better than heaving. "Tossed the bottle right at one of the controllers!"
No more time for idle conversation. After looking over the condemned man who's been patiently and quietly watching all of this with a still jittery hand, the executioner finally begins to approach him. Not charge, like he had done with the controllers, but simply... approach.
Oh, there's absolutely violent intent, Claude can tell that much. Front row privilege comes in handy once again, allowing him to see the way the executioner's claws flex at his sides, and the curl of his lip over fangs. But he's not charging. He's not unleashing his anger on the criminal.
After all the time he's clearly been forced into all of this, and he can still discern between his captors and those he's forced to kill. Somehow, that only makes Claude feel worse.
The condemned man's features are a little more difficult to make out from this distance. Not a surprise, considering he's much smaller than his opponent. Claude thinks he can make out a slight jerk and twitch of his jaw.
Maybe he was hoping that the executioner would charge at him like he did with the controllers. For a man with an old injured leg, it's easier to play patient, to dodge a sudden overpowered attack and strike at the back of someone. Claude can't tell if the executioner knows and understands this, or if he just doesn't find much need to go all out on someone already permanently injured.
Someone only a little under six feet tall versus someone far over eight. It's not exactly the best of match ups, even with the extra reach the condemned man's weapon provides him. No one seems to know that better than the man himself as he sizes up the executioner properly before he steels himself.
He ends up performing the starting move, as the executioner clearly has little interest in it, and it's also not a surprise that he tries to be clever about it. A feint - an apparent swing towards the executioner's head, only to pull back and twist further down to the much larger and easier target that is the torso.
But Claude could have told anyone from the very start that it wouldn't have worked. Not because it's not generally a good idea in a fight, because it is. Not because the man isn't a good fighter, because the way he handles the poker says otherwise. Not because Intseh are generally tougher and stronger and bigger than humans, although that's true and simply isn't always a deciding factor.
No, the reason it doesn't work is because while this might might be the condemned man's first time in the execution ring, same cannot be said of the executioner. He catches the poker as it swings towards his sides, an attempt at crumpling him to the ground. Claude's fingers twitch, wishing he had a slightly better position to see his expression. All he can see, however, is the way the executioner's entire body tenses and twists, and how he yanks the poker along.
A situation like this has no good options. Letting go of the poker means surrendering the only weapon this man is ever going to get his hands on in the execution ring. Going with it means hitting the ground and being in a vulnerable position. Either isn't great.... but in that one moment, old guard training apparently shines through, and Claude watches the man be thrown along with the poker. Behind him, he thinks he hears a long low whistle of sympathy as the man hits the ground, and the grimace on his face can be seen even from this distance.
No time to recover, however. This is apparently enough for the executioner to decide that he's sick of this nonsense, regardless on how innocent he might personally find the man before him. He whirls around, snarling again, and there's a sliver of blue - Claude feels something in his stomach clench. Something old, something he'd never really forgotten, but had simply never been at the forefront of his mind.
His attention is jerked back to the match down below. While he might be dealing with a bum leg, that's not stopping their condemned fighter from doing his damnedest. As the executioner lunges for him, he rolls out of the way, and digs the poker into the ground to help give him leverage, or a push, or whatever else he needs at any given time as he deals with the enraged and captive voa before him. Even with that show of skill, however, Claude is expecting it to be a done deal, over in only a matter of seconds.
But... it doesn't, to his surprise. For whatever reason, the condemned man manages to keep the executioner at bay. Around Claude, all the gasps and calls and occasional shrieks at particularly close calls seem so deafening as to be utterly silent. He ignores it all as best he can, searching out just what is happening between the two combatants. The executioner is healthy, quick, and strong, obviously, so he has all of that going for him. This is just one more execution match in a long string of them, Claude is sure. So what...?
He's experienced in his own way too, Claude supposes, though he doubts that the man has ever been up against a voa. Even with a disabled leg, he knows how to move around it, clearly having had to deal with it for a while now. He makes smart choices with the poker, strong attacks from what Claude can see at the distance he's at. Yet it just doesn't seem to be enough, by his estimate.
Around him, the crowd only seems to grow more animated the longer the match goes on, whether crying out in excitement or impatience or sometimes both. Claude wonders if any of them realize what's going on, if they understand that something is just a little off for this match.
Are they willing to brush aside any disparities because they see the executioner as only a beast as mindless as he surely must be soulless? Are they truly so willing to believe that a former guard is really skilled enough to handle something even they would shy away from? Claude wishes he could ask. He knows better than to do so.
All he can do, as he has done for so many years, is seek out his own answers to his own questions, and he does that by watching. It takes a little bit, but knowing that the executioner is so quick after that display earlier, with the controllers? Well, that had already told him that the executioner isn't using his full abilities. It's just a matter of figuring out why.
Claude figures it out, or at least he thinks he does, after a few minutes. It's a subtle detail, which in hindsight might explain a few things. Mainly, it explains why no one else has picked up on the disparity.
Some things can only be found if you really try to look for them. No one here - not the controllers, not the guards, not the people in the audience - are. None of them think to look, because they do not think they have to.
A part of him kind of wants to laugh about it, honestly. Prejudice really is an incredibly blinding thing. It's almost made all the more ironic by the fact that he has no doubt in his soul that the church claims that "demons" are wicked and clever things that try to tempt good and righteous humans, and yet they can't recognize actual shows of cleverness.
It's practice. The entire match is simply, for the executioner, a way to practice his fighting. Claude picks up on it because of how the executioner reacts. To a lot of things, he seems used to them, and dodges or blocks them appropriately, often with a snap of his teeth. For someone who has seen this ring for years, gone against so many of varying combat ability... it's not surprising.
Yet sometimes... sometimes his opponent surprises him. Uses a technique or moves in a certain way, and the poker slices through an arm or jabs through his legs. They don't look to be serious wounds, far as Claude can tell, but they still must hurt... Certainly the voa is bleeding a not small amount, even if not yet lethal.
But he just... doesn't care. All he does is focus on his opponent, ears twitching with every little surprise or interesting move. Maybe it's because he prioritizes the ability to learn something over his own well-being. Or maybe there's nothing about his well-being that he cares about.
Claude thinks he can understand that.
There is only so much that can apparently be learned from fighting with this particular condemned soul, unfortunately for that man. Soon, perhaps from the pain or perhaps from the impatience or any other number of reasons, the executioner snaps. Claude means this both metaphorically and literally. Baring those fearsome fangs, the executionar slams one large foot into the condemned's stomach.
Once again, the crowd goes wild. The man bounces across the ground to the middle of the arena once again, in a fight that has taken him just about the entire area of it. Desperately, he tries to push himself up again, swings the poker out -
No use. The executioner is on him in the blink of an eye. At too close a range, it's impossible to use the poker to its full potential as a weapon... and with how the executioner lunges towards the man, head down low and mouth open wide, it's definitely far too late.
All around Claude, the crowd roars, and gasps, and cheers. He thinks he can even see more than a few people hide their eyes, as though this is not exactly what they came to see: the brutal end to a man's life. Claude doesn't hide his face, his eyes. He may not have come here to see this, but he is here regardless. And so he watches.
It is the least he can do.
The executioner's mouth fits so horrifically snugly against the man's throat, teeth sinking past flesh and piercing all the arteries and muscles that lay there. This is not the first time Claude has seen a man die; often he's seen men die at much closer range than this as much as he tries to avoid it.
It's still.... so miserable to see, however. Every little bit of it. The wretched jerk and weak grasping of a dying body, eyes so wide that he nearly thinks he can see the whites of them at even this distance, so much blood dripping down in far greater quantities than anything the executioner has lost... It's terrible.
Claude almost thinks there may not be much worse to see for the rest of his night, hell, the rest of his stay, and he's already thinking of what sort of job he should take next just for an excuse to leave this city...
The executioner turns his head, still holding the man's neck inbetween his teeth, and he looks at the gathered crowd.
He looks at Claude.
Once upon a time, Khalid used to think that he hated the dining halls of his home the most. Those were the places where he was always being watched, with nowhere to escape to. Even at his young age - younger, back then - he had understood that the eyes which often gazed upon him were more malevolent than not. There hadn't been any way for him to escape understanding why, either. They envied his position, or they thought he of all people did not deserve it. Sometimes they simply thought him an easy mark for his young age and short size.
For that reason, Khalid often found himself preferring the libraries of his father, where words had been gathered from the lips of storytellers and messengers from all over their land, or the stables where he would not learn to ride for a very long time. Those places, and many others, had been his favorite places.
Nowadays, he knows better. He knows there are far worse places than he could have ever imagined, and he thinks this foreign church, with the orphanage he had been shoved into, he thinks it might be the worst he has experienced yet.
There are the major things, of course. This is not his home, because they had forcibly taken him from it. The adults here - well, he's used to adults back home thinking him a brat and a fool as well.
He's always been too clever and too curious and never really thought he should just automatically give someone his respect. That part is nothing new. Yet it is the reasoning behind it that is new, that scrapes against his skin, because not only should he give them respect and deference as a child, but as Almyran.
All of them, children who the church has laid claim to one way or another, are beneath the adults... but it does not take Khalid long to understand that he is viewed as belonging even lower than that.
What adults believe is dripped down to the children, and so he finds no sanctuary with his fellow peers, either. Those contribute to some of the minor things - or, at least, minor in comparison.
Bullying, for example, by the other children. His teachers and caretakers give him harsher punishments while turning the other way when it comes to anyone else. All of that is bad enough, but he has to deal with the imposing walls that loom over him as well, leaving him feeling perpetually trapped. It seems like everywhere he turns, there are the statues watching him with eyes that cannot see.
Also, the food is terrible almost every single day, and he hates it.
There's no way to fight this. Not when he's just one boy. So Khalid hoards, instead.
He writes down things in Almyran, all sorts of things, from the preaching that these adults impart upon him every day, to old fairy tales that he remembers hearing from his mother, tales from his father, rumors he hears around the schoolyard. He writes down journal entries detailing his day, and the things he's learned whether he's liked them or not. Carefully, he starts to ferret out what hiding places actually hide things, that the adults never think to find, and takes only the utmost care in establishing their safety before he tucks away any of his secrets.
A lot of the time, he just burns the scraps of paper in torches, or fireplaces, or by candle, until they're nothing but shriveled up pieces of ash.
Dreams are a lot safer. The church cannot touch intangible things, no matter how much he's sure they wish they could. Dominion over emotion, over thought, over one's very soul? Even at his young age, Khalid feels his mouth scrunch up at the very idea.
Still, it works out for him. As much as he practices the words with ink to paper, he practices the words as well, more often not with his tongue but his mind. More often, he thinks of how he will change everything, one day. He just has to hold out, for one day.
That would be enough, he likes to think. That would keep him going until he could escape this place, even if it would hurt, in the loneliness of such a thing. But there's good news:
He's not alone.
Carefully, Khalid glances down the hallways before he slips down the length of one in particular. There is a door that he is not supposed to go in, a door that no child is supposed to enter. He can still remember the achingly long sermon that the priest gave them in order to drill it in that it is Forbidden, capital "f".
And for the intrepid child that refuses to "rightly" listen to their elders, the door is locked. The only one who holds the key is one of the senior nuns. That's enough to deter most kids.
What Khalid's elders don't know is that the lock shows its age, if you wiggle the handle and press against the door in just the right way. Khalid doesn't know how long it's been like that, but in some ways it doesn't really matter. All that matters is that it works out for him.
It works out for his best friend in this cold and stifling place, too. The halls leading to his room go quite a ways, with the first one being long, and the next one going down, but length is really all that separates the two of them. In one way, that makes this all very simple.
On the other hand, Khalid never fails to make his steps as light and quick as possible as he hustles down the dim halls where no lanterns have been lit. A lot of the hallway above and below are used as extra storage, he thinks, and he keeps track of where every box or sack is in case he needs to duck behind something.
A lot of the adults don't go down here, and the ones that do seem to come fairly regularly. As in, three times a day when everything is going normally. Khalid likes to think he's memorized the times when they visit his best friend pretty well. He also knows that won't keep him completely safe from surprises. Best to be prepared. Just in case.
He's already had to crouch behind a box and hold his breath once before, curled up into the tightest ball he could possibly make himself as the nun had walked on by. Fortunately for him, the only looking down the adults of this church seem to engage in is when they're being smug and superior.
That they don't do so regularly is, Khalid suspects, a part of their problem.
Luck is on his side today, however. There's not the faintest whisper or scuff of another person down the hallway. Not besides the one he's down here for in the first place. While most of the hallway is dim, light can be seen towards a small spot somewhere in the middle.
It comes from a little barred window in a sturdy door, one that has a thick wooden slat in front of it that ensures the person inside won't somehow just... bust the door down. Khalid doesn't know why they have to go to such great lengths, honestly.
Dimitri has never tried to bust the door down in all the times that he's known him, after all.
The window might be higher than Khalid is tall. However, it's not higher than he can jump. Finally at the one place he can feel at ease at, Khalid crouches down for the best he can force out of his body. He's good at jumping, had to get good at it in Almyra where running was often a more sensible option in his opinion than trying to win a fight he was outnumbered in.
So he manages to leap just high enough to wrap his fingers around the bars of the little window, feet braced against wood. Against his knees, the wooden plank keeping it shut digs against him. He can hear feet against the floor even before he grins into the room with a cheery, "Hey, Dimitri!"
Already, Dimitri is running towards him, although there's not much space to run in his little room. He's good at jumping too, leaping upwards to mirror the exact same position Khalid is in. It's probably easier on his end, 'tho. No bar on the inside of the door. Dimitri's expression is stretched in a wide grin to mirror Khalid's own. "Hey, Claude!"
Claude, not Khalid. This time, it's his own choice that he had introduced himself that way to Dimitri, ages ago when he had first grown curious as to what was hidden behind the door that the adults so badly didn't want him to see.
The adults call him "Claude" because it's easier for them to say. They call him "Claude" because they find his other name filthy, even though something eternal never would be. He introduced himself as Claude to the wide eyed boy behind the bars because it had seemed safer, when he hadn't known him and everything strange to him had seemed a potential threat.
Behind the bars, Dimitri just smiles at him, and adjusts his grip on the bars so that he can hold on with just one hand. "Hands, right?" he asks, sliding his now free one through the bars. There's just barely enough room, because Dimitri is a pretty big kid, and Khalid has never thought himself particularly short.
Khalid smiles back. "Yeah, we'll hold hands today too," he tells him before he adjusts his own body in order to accept that outstretched hand. One day, he tells himself as their fingers slot neatly between one another like they're the same person.
One day, him and Dimitri will escape this place, and they'll run into wide fields and untamed forests far far away, and they'll find towns with color and smiling unmarred by superiority, and he'll turn to Dimitri and he'll tell him his real name. It's a promise Khalid makes to himself every day that he stores inside his chest, like he cradles his dreams safe in his head.
Better to think of those things than the depressing reality. Better to see the way Dimitri smiles as he tests his grip against Claude's hand in fascination of their differences.
"Were you happy today?" Dimitri asks, the words still a little clumsy and awkward in his mouth. Some of the syllables and sounds don't form quite right for him. They're mismatched to the cadence and noises that are so much more common back wherever he's from. Still, he seems happy to try, happy to mimic the noises back at Khalid when they are made to him. They've made it a game between them, pointing at things and explaining what they are, or clumsily figuring out how sentences work.
Honestly, Khalid isn't entirely sure he's getting all the words or sentence structures right. There's only so much that two children can do on their own without proper lessons. Still, he feels pretty confident regardless.
More than confident, he enjoys it. A lot of the games that are played here in the church are more physical games, and those aren't bad, not exactly. It's just that they're the kind of games that require another person, a game of two and never of one. He is still an outsider for those kinds of games, the only "one" in the classroom or the yard. Thus, those kinds of games aren't for him.
Elsewhere, him and Dimitri could make do with one another. Here, Dimitri is forced to be "one" himself; Khalid has never caught any gossip or sight of him stepping out of this room, this prison cell that masquerades as a guest room.
So they still cannot play the games other children play. All they can do is make do with this. "Make do" isn't really the right word, honestly.... because it's his favorite kind of game. A game that makes him think, and figure things out, and be with one of his favorite people in the entire world.
So, honestly, could he give any other reply to Dimitri besides squeezing his hand? "I am happy because I'm with you," he says, laugh carefully quiet. Contentment fills him Dimitri's bright smile. He doesn't think his friend quite gets the entirety of that sentence, not exactly. Still, he knows the first three words, and the last, so he figures it out well enough. Probalby "We're gonna play again today for a long time, okay?"
That one, Dimitri gets maybe half, he thinks. That's fine. It's part of the game: trying to repeat what he's said in whatever language it is that Dimitri speaks. Then, both of them fumble through it together.
There are a lot of words Khalid still doesn't know, in this language and Dimitri's... but he'll learn it all, one day. One day, they'll look up at open skies with no oppressive spires piercing up into them. One day, he'll ride a horse across vast planes, and show Dimitri how, too.
Khalid reminds himself all of this, keeps his dream close, and adds one more to it as he rubs his thumb against the side of Dimitri's fingers. Their hands are so different. In fact, both of them are so different from each other, but they are united and the same in their differences as well.
There are no other people in this entire church who are like the two of them. Probably there are no other people in this entire city, although Khalid has to admit that it's not as if he's been able to explore all of it. Perhaps if he'd had that freedom, he would have had so much more to investigate out there instead of being forced to turn his attentions inwards.
Yet a part of him feels for certain that there is no other Almyran in the city, and he would never find one. Who he has found... that's Dimitri.
No one in this city has Khalid's kind of dark curly hair, not exactly, nor the warm shade from his eyes. In that same way, no one has Dimitri's soft golden fur that tickles at Khalid's skin whenever he holds his hand. Nor do they have those large expressive ears which twitch along the side of his head.
No one has a name like Khalid has heard all his life back home in Almyra, or a name like his father's, or his many brothers. No one has a tail like Dimitri does, mostly still save for when it moves how he moves, perfectly posed to stay out of his way and mindful of the space around him.
No one has exactly Khalid's particular shade of brown skin, although he'd seen a few different shades back home, and has seen many more different ones since being taken to this city.
No one has Dimitri's blue eyes. Brilliant blue like the sky that Khalid loves so much. Bright and deep and stretching all the way around as though someone had placed pieces of the noon sky into his face when he had been born, leaving behind not a trace of black pupil or white schlera.
Blue. Brilliant. Deep. Bright. Claude has rode under that same sky so many times, now A sky untouched by anything, a sky that connects every single person in existence whether they're alive or dead.
Yet every time he had a long stretch of road or plain before him, he had looked up at it and thought of one boy in particular. That shade of blue... is what he'll always connect to him. To that boy who had always smiled so excitedly at him behind bars and reached for him every time without fail.
Dimitri looks up at his section of seats, and bites down on the man's neck.
Claude stops breathing.
Quartermaster Henning laughs, and Claude laughs along with him, because he's learned to get good at that. Henning makes it easy, too. In the time he's had to make his stops in the city, Claude has thought him serious. Apparently that's just when he's on the clock. Off of it, with the two of them making their way from the supply warehoue to the city center, he's in much higher spirits.
Claude wishes he could say the same.
"What can I say?" he chuckles, winking. Before them, the church looms. Whenever he sees the massive building from a distance, its spires piercing the heavens, his stomach twists unpleasantly.
Hiding that reaction is also something he's gotten good at. It brings up too many terrible memories, too much scorn and harassment and dismissive glances. All except for one pair of eyes, eyes that had crinkled in joy whenever they saw him.
Claude puts those memories aside, even if his heart aches doing so. Then again, his heart always does. "I've been so busy doing my work for the church," he continues. "I mean, the Saints sure didn't take breaks when they were off clearing the world of sin, right?"
Henning laughs again. It's not a bad laugh: soft, from the heart and the lungs both. He's an honest guy, really. The unfortunate thing is that they've both ended up in this particular city.
Both of them step to the side, out of the way of a some hurrying person. In their arms are bags of food, cheap material falling apart at the seams. It's a haggard looking stranger, clothes too dirty, cheeks too hollow. Yet while he's a stranger, in this city, he's not a strange sight. Claude has seen people exactly like him more times than he can count here. Henning makes a sympathetic click of his tongue, but he doesn't help. That, too, isn't a strange sight in this city.
He's a lot more occupied with turning back to Claude, smacking a friendly hand along his back. "Well, I can see why the priests like you so much then," he chuckles, even though Claude knows he doesn't see anything. "Hard work pays off, I guess. But it's not a sin to rest now and then."
Right on cue, they're before the many smaller buildings that lead up to the church. Every bit of land inside the city walls is claustrophobic, but Claude has always found the areas there the worst of them all. The hairs on the back of his neck stand up on end, longing for road, for the feel of his horse between his thighs, for a sky he can see without being marred by the buildings of the city reaching up towards it.... He smiles. In the city walls, all he can do is smile. "Well, that's what you're doing for me, right, sir?"
"It's the least I can do." Both of them pause at the entrance of the Colosseum. It really has been such a long time since he's seen it... For the protection of the city and its people, stern faced guards carefully look over every single person that comes to the gates. There's a thick crowd tonight, which tickles at Claude's memory. The last time he attended an execution... Yeah, there had been a crowd then, too, hadn't there?
Crowds don't apply to those who directly serve the church and its needs, however. Quartermaster Henning waves over the heads of the people around them, catching the attention of a particular guard. After that, well, after that it's child's play to skip to the front of the line, past so many people waiting for entrance, until they're in the tight hallways that lead up to the seats.
Claude knows what's asked of him during times like these. As they exist into the stands proper, he huffs out a laugh and raises a hand to his eyes. "Wow, I'm feeling nostalgic!"
"It's a nice feeling, right?" Henning slings an arm around his shoulder, guiding him along. "But you'll probably have better seats than when you were just a kid."
Fluttering his eyelashes, he presses a hand to his chest daintily. "Why, Quartermaster, best seats in the house for me, your humble servant?" Another warm and friendly laugh, his shoulders shaken a little bit. Henning really does seem like a decent person, one who studiously goes over his duties and helps out those he feels are hardworkers as well. He's not evil. From what little Claude has seen of him, what more he's dug into about him, he's not evil.
It's a shame, honestly. It'd be easier to hate him if that were the case. Claude wishes he could hate more people than he does.
But life isn't that easy. He allows himself to be gathered onto the seats of the Colosseum, stone benches not exactly the most pleasant to sit on. Fortunately for Claude, he's had to sit in far worse positions when he's gone out on Church business... which is, more often times than not, hunting business. Well, there's no point complaining.
As he adjusts, he casts a keen eye over their location. They're "better seats" not because they feel better, because there's only a couple of places high above the rabble that are actually comfortable. Those seats are the ones reserved for high up priests, and they aren't going to show up for just any ol' execution.
No, these are good seats because of the location. They're not directly behind either of the entrances where executioner or criminal enter. Instead, they're right in the middle, where they can see both individuals emerge, when that eventually happens. Perhaps because Henning is well known as the church's quartermaster, people were willing to shuffle aside for them to get these seats... Right there are the front, so that they can peer over the edge of the Colosseum pit.
Well. They could peer over the edge of the pit, if not for one thing. Claude reaches forward, running his fingers against the long steel bars that are embedded in the stone. He gives a low whistle. "Wow. I don't remember these from when I was a kid."
Leaning back, utterly relaxed, Henning nods and doesn't seem too surprised. "Oh yeah, they've no doubt made a couple of changes since a decade ago," he says, pointedly nudging Claude in the ribs with his elbow. "But the executioner has gotten pretty high up more than once a couple of times, and the church thought it would be for the best if they were cautious. Well, it hasn't made any attempts recently.... I suppose it learned its lesson."
It. It, it, it. The use of the word rings in Claude's head, and he wants to ask How do you know that "it" is what the executioner wants you to use? But he doesn't say that. When he was a child, he learned quickly that the adults of the church never wanted to hear his questions. Questions implied he wasn't listening, even when he was. Questions implied that he wasn't respecting them. That he wasn't trusting them. That he was disobedient.
These things are all true, of course... it's just that Claude knows better than to say that, too. At least, he doesn't say it aloud. Instead, he asks the questions himself, and it is himself who he trusts to find the answer.
Instead, he laughs again, says some asinine thing about nostalgia and how the world moves on, but his eyes stay on the bars. They really hadn't been there when he'd been a kid. Back then, the priests and sisters had trusted that the walls were far too high for any demon to breach.
Back then, he had believed them... but not because he thought it was an impossible thing to do. He'd look down into the execution ring and seen the executioner, the so called demon, and seen how big he'd been. Back then, it had been so clear, even though he knew the creature's name was not demon. That didn't mean he couldn't see why the church, cowardly and vicious, thought to claim the creature was that.
When they're lucky, humans grow to a little over six feet tall. Most are far shorter than that; Claude knows because he's one of them. That had clearly not been the case with the demon, clearing seven feet all too easily. In Claude's memories, he had always thought the demon eight feet, ten feet, and yet, somehow simultaneously, smaller than him. It hadn't been because the demon had been far down in the execution ring, too far away to reach any of them, or, at least, it had not only been that.
It had been because... the demon had not held himself tall. He had been a ragged creature, hollow eyed, shoulders slumped. Claude had looked at him kill a human being, and yet somehow felt no fear even as his companions - other children in the church's orphanage - had yelled and screamed, terrified and delighted in different ways, each of them. Even now, Claude has to wonder at his own reaction... but he knows what he had seen.
His companions, his teachers, all of them - they had seen a soulless monster end a human life, something that would be a sin if done by human hands.
He had looked down and seen a beaten person kill in surrender and desperation.
There had been no bars, back then. His view had been wholly and completely unobstructed. As his fingers trace along lukewarm metal, they pause along grooves that mar the smooth surface. Claw marks. They don't go far, only at the base and a few inches up... but they tell a story he can imagine well.
Old memories surge up again, of soft padded hands, the brush of fur, claws pressing so delicately around the curve of his hand like he was something fragile. "I didn't know those old bones still had so much energy in them," he says, still rubbing the pad of his thumb against the claw marks. "I wonder what got him all worked up."
Around them, the seats are all filling up. Various spectators bubble with excitement for a bloody show, or exchange whispered gossip on the criminal tonight. Out of pure habit, he can't help but listen in, picking up snatches of conversation that aren't meant for him.
It's a murderer tonight. Claude has been out of the city for weeks now, as he often is and tries to be, but he picks up on the tale quick enough thanks to the wagging tongues that so eagerly fill this city. Terrible tale, a guard that lost his job due to being caught at petty theft, and who had injured his leg shortly after so that it made it all the harder for him to get a job. Cue the spending too much on spirits, too aggravated at his wife...
Terrible tale. A sad tale. Yet on the lips of those around him, it does not sound like an unfamiliar one. Claude tries to not let that observation get to him, instead looking up when he realizes that the quartermaster hasn't yet responded to his comment.
What meets his inquisitive gaze is a light smirk, and Rosarin smacks his back once again with a chuckle. "What did I tell you about things changing?" he teases. "The executioner you're thinking of died years ago, Claude! A new one was brought in, and I bet he's going to be a lot more impressive than what you remember of the last one."
His stomach drops, subconscious understanding what this might mean even before the thoughts have a chance to coagulate inside his skull. "What?" he asks, but it's too late to get an answer. The stands are full up, now, with few people want to miss one of the rare spectacles that are permitted in the city. The noise of the crowd swallows him up, and it's the sharp cry of one of the church guards that pierces through to call them all into silence. No, not silence. Prayer.
Obediently, Claude clasps his hands together and bows his head, just like every single other person in the stands this evening. That's how this always is for every major event... but for an execution? Prayer is especially important... at least in the eyes of the people, of the church.
For those in the stands, he knows that this is all in hope and belief that they will never face the same fate of the people down in the execution ring, even if they only view one of the two as a person at all. If they are devoted, if they remember their prayers, if they live what they believe to be a virtuous life... Then they will not suffer the same fate.
They will not be a mindless monster, doomed for the torturous hell that awaits them in the afterlife. They will not be a hapless victim before a ravenous "beast", a mark on their skin declaring their sin to the entire world.
The various guards, monks, and priests that watch have a different reason for this display: control. That, Claude is sure of. They watch to make sure that everyone stays obedient. They want to make this... an intimidation tactic. A threat, held up for everyone to see, in the guise of punishing the wicked, and a reason for those who should be allies to turn on one another instead.
Claude's fingers tighten imperceptibly against one another, at least to anyone who'd look. Him, he feels that painful pressure dig in, and slows his breathing. Executions.... He hates them so much. It's one of the many reasons why he long ago made himself one of the church's hunters and tradesmen. There are a lot of reasons, of course, so many he couldn't even begin to list them all.... but this is a good reason as well.
All this punishment isn't actually meant to help people, to keep them on the right path. He knows for a fact that it's not, because it never addresses the actual cause. All of this is just...
The call to prayer ends, and they all lift their heads up in unison, individuality erased for that one clear moment. Claude does his best to ignore the way that always makes him feel off-kilter, relaxing in his seat as a priest begins to give his sermon.
Well, part of it is a sermon, part of it is a judgment, both of them twisted into one sickening thing where he tries to justify why a man deserves a painful death. For this crowd, it will almost always succeed. It's a bit of a nuisance, honestly, trying to shift through the fire and brimstone, the purple prose combined with religious imagery, but Claude tries anyway. As he does so, he takes in the reactions of the crowd.
It's easy enough to see how more than a few people's gazes begin to wander off or glaze over as the preacher carries on. While they're all devout enough to pray, well, they're not really here to listen to why murder is obviously bad in a fifteen minute speech detailing the reasons why. They all feel that most of them know it's a terrible crime, which, honestly, they're probably right about. Religion isn't necessary to have people realize wanton murder is bad... at least on the base domestic level. (War is a lot trickier a conversation, Claude has found.)
Others lean forward with considerable more interest, and it's easy enough to pick them out from one another. You have the truly and painfully devout, their eyes perfectly locked onto the preacher and hands clasped together desperately. They really do drink so deeply from the poisoned well that the church claims will cleanse their many flaws... It makes his heart clench. They're different from the people who are... more like him. Those who watch the preacher, take in his words, but more because they're interested in the base facts of it all.
Well, the base fact of it all is that the man is a murderer, a path that the church claims is an innate sin with no regard for the circumstances which directed him upon it. At long last, the preacher is finished, and turns away to walk solemnly back to one of the entrances. In his position, Claude can't get a completely clear view of it, but he can get just enough to see how the gate is raised up on that entrance. Likely it's the one where the criminal is waiting.
The alternative is passing by a "demon", after all.
All around him, the crowd is stirring back into excitement again, and their words create an almost electric buzz throughout the building as a whole. This is what they all really came here for. This is the entire point of the coliseum. At his side, Henning claps a hand to his shoulder, like this isn't a spectacle celebrating a death that never need happen. "Get a good look. They managed to get their hands on a real monster, this time."
Claude can't entirely tell if Henning means the criminal who has been condemned to death, or the executioner himself. Maybe, in the eyes of the church and all those who follow it, the difference doesn't really matter. Certainly it doesn't matter right now, because the gates on both side of the arena rise open, and criminal and executioner both step into the judging light.
The criminal for tonight is exactly the kind of person Claude would think of, hearing his tale whispered all throughout the crowd as he has for the last fifteen minutes. He still looks to be in fairly good condition, all things considered.
But his injury and prison life has clearly left him in a less than fit state as he had been once upon a time. He favors one leg over the other carefully. Still, his shoulders are broad, muscles visible underneath the excess flesh of disuse. His gaze is red, no doubt the effects of both crying at his predicament and forced to go cold turkey after he was caught in the aftermath of his crime.
More eye-catching is who the condemned man is eyeing so warily, so sharply. The sight of his opponent sends the crowd into an excited frenzy. Claude is right in the midst of them, and he feels like he's drowning. How must it feel for the condemned, down there in the spotlight with the audience nothing but a darkened shadowy mass calling for his death? Almost rotting for a monster, a demon, their executioner? And worse... How must this feel for the executioner?
Because that's not a monster, nor a demon, down there in the arena. Not a demon, despite the controllers who are guiding them wearily with tattoos burning bright.
Claude wants to suck in a breath, close his eyes, curl his hands into trembling fists. Instead, he smiles, and says, "Wow."
It's what Henning is looking for, after all, and Claude lives to please. Sure enough, the quartermaster grins. "Ha, definitely better than the old one, right? Although this demon is even more vicious than the one before it," he says, looking away from Claude so that he can take in the scene down in the arena.
They are not a demon. He wants to yell those words, beg someone to understand, but he knows they won't. Maybe some of the higher ups know the truth... Actually, he knows for a fact that they know the truth, they just refuse to accept it for what it is. Yelling would accomplish nothing. So Claude swallows his emotions, like he so often has learned to do, and looks down towards the voa shackled by brilliant ropes of light as they're guided into the arena.
Most of the people in this city have never stepped far outside its walls. Claude learned that early on when he was a child in the orphanage. Once he had been able to re-earn his freedom as a person, old enough to volunteer for jobs that would take him out of the city and out into other towns, into forests and fields, it had almost been amazing to him how new everything felt again. It had been a relief to see other people not so bound by this section of the church, and he'd been glad to see others from lands beyond the church's own.
That had included the voa.
It's easy to see why people so locked away in their little city would be so frightened of them, would call them "demon" or "monster". The voa down in the arena is a perfect example of how frightening they can be. Claude long ago accepted that he'd never grow to be a particularly tall man, and that's good, he supposes, because most voa tend to rise easily over a height like his when they're fully grown.
The executioner the church has chosen is especially intimidating in this regard. From a distance, Claude can only guess at their proper height, but they easily tower over their captors by.... gods. At least three feet? Bordering on four, possibly.
They're massive, tall even for a voa, and they'd be even taller if their horns rose upwards. Instead, from within that pale mane of hair, they curve along the side of their head from their temples. An unfortunate choice, considering it only adds to their "demonic" look.
Yeah, that alone would threaten anyone, even if voa were more human. Even if they weren't covered in a layer of fur, even if they didn't have long tails, the claws that curve into too sharp points at the end of their fingers.
Even the more harmless aspects of them, like legs that are more beast-like than human with their warped shape and elongated paws, are seen by the church as evil. And they're evil because they're outside the norm. Anything outside their norm, their beliefs, is evil.
Ugh. Claude can't shake the thoughts out of his head, not when he's surrounded by people like this with an execution he's supposed to be watching, so he instead taps the outside of his thigh with a jittery finger that he doubts will be noticed much by anyone. He knew this was going to be an unpleasant experience from the very start, but this had been a chance to grow closer to yet another one of his superiors, someone higher up the foodchain. Trying to force the thoughts out of his head, he looks over the executioner again.
Their handlers, their controllers, don't dare escort them to the very center of the ring. If Claude asked any of them, he supposes he would get some answer about making things fair for sinners. One last little bit of mercy. This way, there's plenty of space between the two of them still. Space for the criminal to run, if he thinks that can ever help him, or fight, if he dares to.
After all, that's the true "mercy" allegedly behind this whole farce: if the condemned can kill their executioner, a monster with no soul, then they are given freedom. Not freedom in the city to live the life they once had, no... but some sort of freedom. A life still able to continue on.
Claude's gaze flickers to the man in question again, taking in the way his whole body tenses. If he were any closer, he's sure he could see him trembling from the rush of adrenaline no doubt filling his body, and his hand seems pretty damn tight around the fireplace poker he holds. No doubt the weapon he used to kill his wife. While he hasn't been to an execution for years and years, Claude still knows how the basics go. The whole mess is just an excuse for symbolism, and killing someone with an excuse.
On the other side, chains of light disperse around the executioner, the voa - man? Claude thinks they're a man. Voa have an even smaller sexual dimorphism than humans do, which was already pretty small to begin with, and their idea of gender is even wider than what he thinks most of the human countries consider... and humans are pretty open minded on that , at least. But around half of all Voa develop visible horns, and he thinks the majority - although not all of those that do - are male.
Claude doesn't know a lot of voa personally, honestly. He's a regular to some of them, because merchants are most successful when they have a wide customer base, but personally is different. Yet from what he knows of them...
A guy like this would be quite an attractive individual, even when he makes expressions like the one he does now: cold, dismissive, a curl of lip fortunately visible from Claude's front row seats. The short blond mane of hair around his face falls limply with the simply motion, an additional and messy shield of sorts from the rest of the world.
That's not how it should be. Claude bites down on his tongue, forces himself to stay silent and with the same smile as usual on his face. Yet still the thought persists in his head.
This is not how it should be.
This executioner, this voa so far away from his home islands, should be surrounded by his fellows. He should be able to bare his teeth in a faint smile instead of a snap and snarl towards his captors when they linger too long near him. He could be happy, and healthy, and maybe even taller than he is now, gods know the church can't be giving him the proper meals that would really let him be at his fullest. Claude could see him in some seaport town, smile at him, tease maybe-
Clearly he's not biting down on his own tongue hard enough if his brain can still wander in that direction, and Claude sighs at himself. This one, unfortunately, is a thing he actually does, and he grins when Henning glances over to him. "You know, looking at an executioner that big and tall, I feel kind of bad for the guy down there."
"Hey, don't start feeling too sympathetic for murderers," Henning says, nudging him in the side again. Yeah, the quartermaster is definitely a more relaxed guy compared to many others Claude has come to know in his life.
Some of the more strict and religious types would scold him, or be aghast that he could feel any sort of way about a criminal of any kind. Henning just thinks he's joking, in a way. Making a comment about how the criminal down in the arena doesn't have a chance on getting out of this one.
Well. That's not wrong. Claude doesn't think he's ever heard of very many people winning against the executioner of the church. That's part of the point. He can barely remember anything from his childhood, just one woman who had made it out against the old executioner.
He met her, once. He thinks she's dead, now. As he turns his attention back properly towards the arena at the glimpse of movement from the corner of his eye, he thinks about who else has survived an execution match. There was a whole thing with a kid, a few years ago, he thinks...
Grumbling erupts somewhere to the side of him, and Claude drags his mind out of the history lesson its trying to think back on. The executioner seems to understand just what kind of opponent he's facing, because there's no immediate slaughter. When Claude refocuses down into the arena, he's begun to idly circle around the condemned man... but none of his attention is on him.
Instead, he paces like a lazy predator: shoulders hunched, ears twitching with every noise (of which there are a hundred at every given time, poor guy), and tail swishing slowly behind him. But it's not the man in the arena with him who has the executioner's attention.
Claude has made a living out of - well, he's done a lot of things. But the thing which has him most known in the church, the thing he has made a living out of, a life he has to rely on, is that of a hunter. He's spent more hours than most people pray in this city just sitting still, watching, learning. Voa may look like animals to the eye of a human, but they're people as much as anyone else. Yet with this one, this executioner... All around Claude, the yelling and whining of the crowd fades away - same way rain and thunder blends together into simple white noise when he's out on the roads or in forests.
That stuff? That's inconsequential, to a mind born out of habit, born from so many hours and days and months spent in the forests and fields. The important thing is the animalistic manner in which the executioner walks - no, prowls the arena perimeter.
Claude doesn't see his face, not initially, as the executioner starts on the side of the arena that Claude is sitting on. He doesn't need to see his face. This is still a decent vantage point in which to watch him. While Claude doesn't want to be here, doesn't want to see a man die a violent death or another man be forced to commit it, he does have to be thankful that at least Henning provided him a decent seat.
From here, he can watch the exact way the executioner's ears twitch, and guess at what they react to - the swear of demon from a couple of seats away from Claude, the rattling of anxious fingernails against metal as someone watches from a front row seat all the way on the opposite side of the arena from Claude, the aggravated shuffling from some of the controllers near the executioner's gate.
Never towards the criminal, not even when he hisses something under his breath, not when the tip of the poker drags against the ground, not the grinding of anxious feet into the dirt floor that awaits someone's blood. Not an ounce of that concentrated and murderous intent is spared an ounce for the condemned. Claude's finger twitches and stills against his thigh.
It's directed towards the audience.
"Is this executioner always like this?" he asks conversationally, as one of the controllers steps forward with a frustrated sneer about her lips. Claude had been blown away by the presence of another voa trapped in this hellish role, when the group had first stepped out, so he had paid more attention to the executioner instead of any of the monks at his side.
Now, however, his gaze flicks to this one, and he takes note of the particular tattoos inked along her arms and that shows on her chest where her shirt is left open - right over her sternum. Some of hers are similar to the tattoos he himself bears, like those which form weapons, but the others...
Henning doesn't seem particularly surprised, although he is amused in an anticipatory sort of way. "Oh, a lot of the time," he says casually, as the controller down in the arena draws out a long whip of light from the brilliant glow of her ink. No controlling another living creature today for her, then. "It's not just size it has over the last one, but definitely a lot more energy, ha ha. I feel bad for the handlers, because it's never exactly hard to point at criminals, but - ohp! There it goes!"
There it goes indeed. Just the sight of the weapon, of light of any kind, has the executioner snapping in the controller's direction like a whip himself. Claude has been extremely lucky to see the occasional voa sparring lesson; he knows how fast they can be.
But it is terrifyingly clear to him now that those were just practice matches, things for health and exercise. At full and murderous speed, the executioner is a comet, a burst of ember from a fire, electricity. The controller seems used to handling him when he's like this, and even she barely manages to get out of the way in time with what Claude is pretty sure is a swear.
Her cohorts step forward, light burning off of their skin and into weapons as well. Their whips crack, just enough to dissuade the executioner. Behind them, the initial controller retreats, towards the gate again.
For a second, Claude thinks the executioner might charge right through, and his ears strain to see if he can pick out any traces of coherent Voali from the loud snarl he spits out. No Voali, if the executioner even remembers any of it anymore, and no attempted murder of church monks, either. All he does is jerk his chin upwards before turning sharply around to face what's supposed to be his actual opponent. As he does so, his tail snaps against the dirt, and a dust cloud billows up in the controllers' faces.
This time, Claude doesn't try to hide his slight laugh, and he curls one hand along his mouth as he grins. He thinks he can get away with it, in this case, although not exactly for the reason he can hear other people chuckle.
"I can see why you feel bad for the handlers now," he tells Henning, not taking his eye off of the executioner as he eyes the criminal. What Claude doesn't say is that he personally doesn't feel bad for those handlers. "You're right on the energy part of things..."
Once, he had met one of the only people who had won an execution match. Once, he had watched the old executioner fight a battle he had won. In both cases, no matter the fact that they were on opposite sides of the ring at one point in their lives, Claude had seen a familiar spirit to them.
It was the spirit of someone broken, someone who had surrendered themself to the act of continuously living but expected nothing out of that particular arrangement. In the woman's case, he supposed it was because she could not give up something she had fought so hard to keep, even if the result as an expendable and estranged church dog who could find no true solace with anyone else in her community. With the former executioner... Who knows. Claude wishes he could have had the chance to talk to him, truly talk to him.
This current executioner, the one who sizes up the condemned man dismissively, is nothing like either of them, or at least not exactly, and not here in the now. Maybe behind it all, he feels the same, but there is so much rage to dig through first that Claude can't be sure of it.
Oblivious to Claude's thoughts, the bitter nostalgia rolling through his mind, Henning continues on well enough. "Some nights, it gets really rowdy towards the handlers. The night is still young, and there are a few more executions lined up, from what I've heard. Once - it was a lass with a broken bottle who it had been sent after, right? I guess it was really ornery that night - maybe not enough meat in its dinner!" Rosarin laughs again, and Claude grins, because it's easier and better than heaving. "Tossed the bottle right at one of the controllers!"
No more time for idle conversation. After looking over the condemned man who's been patiently and quietly watching all of this with a still jittery hand, the executioner finally begins to approach him. Not charge, like he had done with the controllers, but simply... approach.
Oh, there's absolutely violent intent, Claude can tell that much. Front row privilege comes in handy once again, allowing him to see the way the executioner's claws flex at his sides, and the curl of his lip over fangs. But he's not charging. He's not unleashing his anger on the criminal.
After all the time he's clearly been forced into all of this, and he can still discern between his captors and those he's forced to kill. Somehow, that only makes Claude feel worse.
The condemned man's features are a little more difficult to make out from this distance. Not a surprise, considering he's much smaller than his opponent. Claude thinks he can make out a slight jerk and twitch of his jaw.
Maybe he was hoping that the executioner would charge at him like he did with the controllers. For a man with an old injured leg, it's easier to play patient, to dodge a sudden overpowered attack and strike at the back of someone. Claude can't tell if the executioner knows and understands this, or if he just doesn't find much need to go all out on someone already permanently injured.
Someone only a little under six feet tall versus someone far over eight. It's not exactly the best of match ups, even with the extra reach the condemned man's weapon provides him. No one seems to know that better than the man himself as he sizes up the executioner properly before he steels himself.
He ends up performing the starting move, as the executioner clearly has little interest in it, and it's also not a surprise that he tries to be clever about it. A feint - an apparent swing towards the executioner's head, only to pull back and twist further down to the much larger and easier target that is the torso.
But Claude could have told anyone from the very start that it wouldn't have worked. Not because it's not generally a good idea in a fight, because it is. Not because the man isn't a good fighter, because the way he handles the poker says otherwise. Not because Intseh are generally tougher and stronger and bigger than humans, although that's true and simply isn't always a deciding factor.
No, the reason it doesn't work is because while this might might be the condemned man's first time in the execution ring, same cannot be said of the executioner. He catches the poker as it swings towards his sides, an attempt at crumpling him to the ground. Claude's fingers twitch, wishing he had a slightly better position to see his expression. All he can see, however, is the way the executioner's entire body tenses and twists, and how he yanks the poker along.
A situation like this has no good options. Letting go of the poker means surrendering the only weapon this man is ever going to get his hands on in the execution ring. Going with it means hitting the ground and being in a vulnerable position. Either isn't great.... but in that one moment, old guard training apparently shines through, and Claude watches the man be thrown along with the poker. Behind him, he thinks he hears a long low whistle of sympathy as the man hits the ground, and the grimace on his face can be seen even from this distance.
No time to recover, however. This is apparently enough for the executioner to decide that he's sick of this nonsense, regardless on how innocent he might personally find the man before him. He whirls around, snarling again, and there's a sliver of blue - Claude feels something in his stomach clench. Something old, something he'd never really forgotten, but had simply never been at the forefront of his mind.
His attention is jerked back to the match down below. While he might be dealing with a bum leg, that's not stopping their condemned fighter from doing his damnedest. As the executioner lunges for him, he rolls out of the way, and digs the poker into the ground to help give him leverage, or a push, or whatever else he needs at any given time as he deals with the enraged and captive voa before him. Even with that show of skill, however, Claude is expecting it to be a done deal, over in only a matter of seconds.
But... it doesn't, to his surprise. For whatever reason, the condemned man manages to keep the executioner at bay. Around Claude, all the gasps and calls and occasional shrieks at particularly close calls seem so deafening as to be utterly silent. He ignores it all as best he can, searching out just what is happening between the two combatants. The executioner is healthy, quick, and strong, obviously, so he has all of that going for him. This is just one more execution match in a long string of them, Claude is sure. So what...?
He's experienced in his own way too, Claude supposes, though he doubts that the man has ever been up against a voa. Even with a disabled leg, he knows how to move around it, clearly having had to deal with it for a while now. He makes smart choices with the poker, strong attacks from what Claude can see at the distance he's at. Yet it just doesn't seem to be enough, by his estimate.
Around him, the crowd only seems to grow more animated the longer the match goes on, whether crying out in excitement or impatience or sometimes both. Claude wonders if any of them realize what's going on, if they understand that something is just a little off for this match.
Are they willing to brush aside any disparities because they see the executioner as only a beast as mindless as he surely must be soulless? Are they truly so willing to believe that a former guard is really skilled enough to handle something even they would shy away from? Claude wishes he could ask. He knows better than to do so.
All he can do, as he has done for so many years, is seek out his own answers to his own questions, and he does that by watching. It takes a little bit, but knowing that the executioner is so quick after that display earlier, with the controllers? Well, that had already told him that the executioner isn't using his full abilities. It's just a matter of figuring out why.
Claude figures it out, or at least he thinks he does, after a few minutes. It's a subtle detail, which in hindsight might explain a few things. Mainly, it explains why no one else has picked up on the disparity.
Some things can only be found if you really try to look for them. No one here - not the controllers, not the guards, not the people in the audience - are. None of them think to look, because they do not think they have to.
A part of him kind of wants to laugh about it, honestly. Prejudice really is an incredibly blinding thing. It's almost made all the more ironic by the fact that he has no doubt in his soul that the church claims that "demons" are wicked and clever things that try to tempt good and righteous humans, and yet they can't recognize actual shows of cleverness.
It's practice. The entire match is simply, for the executioner, a way to practice his fighting. Claude picks up on it because of how the executioner reacts. To a lot of things, he seems used to them, and dodges or blocks them appropriately, often with a snap of his teeth. For someone who has seen this ring for years, gone against so many of varying combat ability... it's not surprising.
Yet sometimes... sometimes his opponent surprises him. Uses a technique or moves in a certain way, and the poker slices through an arm or jabs through his legs. They don't look to be serious wounds, far as Claude can tell, but they still must hurt... Certainly the voa is bleeding a not small amount, even if not yet lethal.
But he just... doesn't care. All he does is focus on his opponent, ears twitching with every little surprise or interesting move. Maybe it's because he prioritizes the ability to learn something over his own well-being. Or maybe there's nothing about his well-being that he cares about.
Claude thinks he can understand that.
There is only so much that can apparently be learned from fighting with this particular condemned soul, unfortunately for that man. Soon, perhaps from the pain or perhaps from the impatience or any other number of reasons, the executioner snaps. Claude means this both metaphorically and literally. Baring those fearsome fangs, the executionar slams one large foot into the condemned's stomach.
Once again, the crowd goes wild. The man bounces across the ground to the middle of the arena once again, in a fight that has taken him just about the entire area of it. Desperately, he tries to push himself up again, swings the poker out -
No use. The executioner is on him in the blink of an eye. At too close a range, it's impossible to use the poker to its full potential as a weapon... and with how the executioner lunges towards the man, head down low and mouth open wide, it's definitely far too late.
All around Claude, the crowd roars, and gasps, and cheers. He thinks he can even see more than a few people hide their eyes, as though this is not exactly what they came to see: the brutal end to a man's life. Claude doesn't hide his face, his eyes. He may not have come here to see this, but he is here regardless. And so he watches.
It is the least he can do.
The executioner's mouth fits so horrifically snugly against the man's throat, teeth sinking past flesh and piercing all the arteries and muscles that lay there. This is not the first time Claude has seen a man die; often he's seen men die at much closer range than this as much as he tries to avoid it.
It's still.... so miserable to see, however. Every little bit of it. The wretched jerk and weak grasping of a dying body, eyes so wide that he nearly thinks he can see the whites of them at even this distance, so much blood dripping down in far greater quantities than anything the executioner has lost... It's terrible.
Claude almost thinks there may not be much worse to see for the rest of his night, hell, the rest of his stay, and he's already thinking of what sort of job he should take next just for an excuse to leave this city...
The executioner turns his head, still holding the man's neck inbetween his teeth, and he looks at the gathered crowd.
He looks at Claude.
Once upon a time, Khalid used to think that he hated the dining halls of his home the most. Those were the places where he was always being watched, with nowhere to escape to. Even at his young age - younger, back then - he had understood that the eyes which often gazed upon him were more malevolent than not. There hadn't been any way for him to escape understanding why, either. They envied his position, or they thought he of all people did not deserve it. Sometimes they simply thought him an easy mark for his young age and short size.
For that reason, Khalid often found himself preferring the libraries of his father, where words had been gathered from the lips of storytellers and messengers from all over their land, or the stables where he would not learn to ride for a very long time. Those places, and many others, had been his favorite places.
Nowadays, he knows better. He knows there are far worse places than he could have ever imagined, and he thinks this foreign church, with the orphanage he had been shoved into, he thinks it might be the worst he has experienced yet.
There are the major things, of course. This is not his home, because they had forcibly taken him from it. The adults here - well, he's used to adults back home thinking him a brat and a fool as well.
He's always been too clever and too curious and never really thought he should just automatically give someone his respect. That part is nothing new. Yet it is the reasoning behind it that is new, that scrapes against his skin, because not only should he give them respect and deference as a child, but as Almyran.
All of them, children who the church has laid claim to one way or another, are beneath the adults... but it does not take Khalid long to understand that he is viewed as belonging even lower than that.
What adults believe is dripped down to the children, and so he finds no sanctuary with his fellow peers, either. Those contribute to some of the minor things - or, at least, minor in comparison.
Bullying, for example, by the other children. His teachers and caretakers give him harsher punishments while turning the other way when it comes to anyone else. All of that is bad enough, but he has to deal with the imposing walls that loom over him as well, leaving him feeling perpetually trapped. It seems like everywhere he turns, there are the statues watching him with eyes that cannot see.
Also, the food is terrible almost every single day, and he hates it.
There's no way to fight this. Not when he's just one boy. So Khalid hoards, instead.
He writes down things in Almyran, all sorts of things, from the preaching that these adults impart upon him every day, to old fairy tales that he remembers hearing from his mother, tales from his father, rumors he hears around the schoolyard. He writes down journal entries detailing his day, and the things he's learned whether he's liked them or not. Carefully, he starts to ferret out what hiding places actually hide things, that the adults never think to find, and takes only the utmost care in establishing their safety before he tucks away any of his secrets.
A lot of the time, he just burns the scraps of paper in torches, or fireplaces, or by candle, until they're nothing but shriveled up pieces of ash.
Dreams are a lot safer. The church cannot touch intangible things, no matter how much he's sure they wish they could. Dominion over emotion, over thought, over one's very soul? Even at his young age, Khalid feels his mouth scrunch up at the very idea.
Still, it works out for him. As much as he practices the words with ink to paper, he practices the words as well, more often not with his tongue but his mind. More often, he thinks of how he will change everything, one day. He just has to hold out, for one day.
That would be enough, he likes to think. That would keep him going until he could escape this place, even if it would hurt, in the loneliness of such a thing. But there's good news:
He's not alone.
Carefully, Khalid glances down the hallways before he slips down the length of one in particular. There is a door that he is not supposed to go in, a door that no child is supposed to enter. He can still remember the achingly long sermon that the priest gave them in order to drill it in that it is Forbidden, capital "f".
And for the intrepid child that refuses to "rightly" listen to their elders, the door is locked. The only one who holds the key is one of the senior nuns. That's enough to deter most kids.
What Khalid's elders don't know is that the lock shows its age, if you wiggle the handle and press against the door in just the right way. Khalid doesn't know how long it's been like that, but in some ways it doesn't really matter. All that matters is that it works out for him.
It works out for his best friend in this cold and stifling place, too. The halls leading to his room go quite a ways, with the first one being long, and the next one going down, but length is really all that separates the two of them. In one way, that makes this all very simple.
On the other hand, Khalid never fails to make his steps as light and quick as possible as he hustles down the dim halls where no lanterns have been lit. A lot of the hallway above and below are used as extra storage, he thinks, and he keeps track of where every box or sack is in case he needs to duck behind something.
A lot of the adults don't go down here, and the ones that do seem to come fairly regularly. As in, three times a day when everything is going normally. Khalid likes to think he's memorized the times when they visit his best friend pretty well. He also knows that won't keep him completely safe from surprises. Best to be prepared. Just in case.
He's already had to crouch behind a box and hold his breath once before, curled up into the tightest ball he could possibly make himself as the nun had walked on by. Fortunately for him, the only looking down the adults of this church seem to engage in is when they're being smug and superior.
That they don't do so regularly is, Khalid suspects, a part of their problem.
Luck is on his side today, however. There's not the faintest whisper or scuff of another person down the hallway. Not besides the one he's down here for in the first place. While most of the hallway is dim, light can be seen towards a small spot somewhere in the middle.
It comes from a little barred window in a sturdy door, one that has a thick wooden slat in front of it that ensures the person inside won't somehow just... bust the door down. Khalid doesn't know why they have to go to such great lengths, honestly.
Dimitri has never tried to bust the door down in all the times that he's known him, after all.
The window might be higher than Khalid is tall. However, it's not higher than he can jump. Finally at the one place he can feel at ease at, Khalid crouches down for the best he can force out of his body. He's good at jumping, had to get good at it in Almyra where running was often a more sensible option in his opinion than trying to win a fight he was outnumbered in.
So he manages to leap just high enough to wrap his fingers around the bars of the little window, feet braced against wood. Against his knees, the wooden plank keeping it shut digs against him. He can hear feet against the floor even before he grins into the room with a cheery, "Hey, Dimitri!"
Already, Dimitri is running towards him, although there's not much space to run in his little room. He's good at jumping too, leaping upwards to mirror the exact same position Khalid is in. It's probably easier on his end, 'tho. No bar on the inside of the door. Dimitri's expression is stretched in a wide grin to mirror Khalid's own. "Hey, Claude!"
Claude, not Khalid. This time, it's his own choice that he had introduced himself that way to Dimitri, ages ago when he had first grown curious as to what was hidden behind the door that the adults so badly didn't want him to see.
The adults call him "Claude" because it's easier for them to say. They call him "Claude" because they find his other name filthy, even though something eternal never would be. He introduced himself as Claude to the wide eyed boy behind the bars because it had seemed safer, when he hadn't known him and everything strange to him had seemed a potential threat.
Behind the bars, Dimitri just smiles at him, and adjusts his grip on the bars so that he can hold on with just one hand. "Hands, right?" he asks, sliding his now free one through the bars. There's just barely enough room, because Dimitri is a pretty big kid, and Khalid has never thought himself particularly short.
Khalid smiles back. "Yeah, we'll hold hands today too," he tells him before he adjusts his own body in order to accept that outstretched hand. One day, he tells himself as their fingers slot neatly between one another like they're the same person.
One day, him and Dimitri will escape this place, and they'll run into wide fields and untamed forests far far away, and they'll find towns with color and smiling unmarred by superiority, and he'll turn to Dimitri and he'll tell him his real name. It's a promise Khalid makes to himself every day that he stores inside his chest, like he cradles his dreams safe in his head.
Better to think of those things than the depressing reality. Better to see the way Dimitri smiles as he tests his grip against Claude's hand in fascination of their differences.
"Were you happy today?" Dimitri asks, the words still a little clumsy and awkward in his mouth. Some of the syllables and sounds don't form quite right for him. They're mismatched to the cadence and noises that are so much more common back wherever he's from. Still, he seems happy to try, happy to mimic the noises back at Khalid when they are made to him. They've made it a game between them, pointing at things and explaining what they are, or clumsily figuring out how sentences work.
Honestly, Khalid isn't entirely sure he's getting all the words or sentence structures right. There's only so much that two children can do on their own without proper lessons. Still, he feels pretty confident regardless.
More than confident, he enjoys it. A lot of the games that are played here in the church are more physical games, and those aren't bad, not exactly. It's just that they're the kind of games that require another person, a game of two and never of one. He is still an outsider for those kinds of games, the only "one" in the classroom or the yard. Thus, those kinds of games aren't for him.
Elsewhere, him and Dimitri could make do with one another. Here, Dimitri is forced to be "one" himself; Khalid has never caught any gossip or sight of him stepping out of this room, this prison cell that masquerades as a guest room.
So they still cannot play the games other children play. All they can do is make do with this. "Make do" isn't really the right word, honestly.... because it's his favorite kind of game. A game that makes him think, and figure things out, and be with one of his favorite people in the entire world.
So, honestly, could he give any other reply to Dimitri besides squeezing his hand? "I am happy because I'm with you," he says, laugh carefully quiet. Contentment fills him Dimitri's bright smile. He doesn't think his friend quite gets the entirety of that sentence, not exactly. Still, he knows the first three words, and the last, so he figures it out well enough. Probalby "We're gonna play again today for a long time, okay?"
That one, Dimitri gets maybe half, he thinks. That's fine. It's part of the game: trying to repeat what he's said in whatever language it is that Dimitri speaks. Then, both of them fumble through it together.
There are a lot of words Khalid still doesn't know, in this language and Dimitri's... but he'll learn it all, one day. One day, they'll look up at open skies with no oppressive spires piercing up into them. One day, he'll ride a horse across vast planes, and show Dimitri how, too.
Khalid reminds himself all of this, keeps his dream close, and adds one more to it as he rubs his thumb against the side of Dimitri's fingers. Their hands are so different. In fact, both of them are so different from each other, but they are united and the same in their differences as well.
There are no other people in this entire church who are like the two of them. Probably there are no other people in this entire city, although Khalid has to admit that it's not as if he's been able to explore all of it. Perhaps if he'd had that freedom, he would have had so much more to investigate out there instead of being forced to turn his attentions inwards.
Yet a part of him feels for certain that there is no other Almyran in the city, and he would never find one. Who he has found... that's Dimitri.
No one in this city has Khalid's kind of dark curly hair, not exactly, nor the warm shade from his eyes. In that same way, no one has Dimitri's soft golden fur that tickles at Khalid's skin whenever he holds his hand. Nor do they have those large expressive ears which twitch along the side of his head.
No one has a name like Khalid has heard all his life back home in Almyra, or a name like his father's, or his many brothers. No one has a tail like Dimitri does, mostly still save for when it moves how he moves, perfectly posed to stay out of his way and mindful of the space around him.
No one has exactly Khalid's particular shade of brown skin, although he'd seen a few different shades back home, and has seen many more different ones since being taken to this city.
No one has Dimitri's blue eyes. Brilliant blue like the sky that Khalid loves so much. Bright and deep and stretching all the way around as though someone had placed pieces of the noon sky into his face when he had been born, leaving behind not a trace of black pupil or white schlera.
Blue. Brilliant. Deep. Bright. Claude has rode under that same sky so many times, now A sky untouched by anything, a sky that connects every single person in existence whether they're alive or dead.
Yet every time he had a long stretch of road or plain before him, he had looked up at it and thought of one boy in particular. That shade of blue... is what he'll always connect to him. To that boy who had always smiled so excitedly at him behind bars and reached for him every time without fail.
Dimitri looks up at his section of seats, and bites down on the man's neck.
Claude stops breathing.