Chapter 17

"Had it been fear for prejudicial death at the blazing breath of a Dragon? Or had it been ignorance to love a fellow human? What cause sealed the mouths of the people to remain silent at the sight of the Execution of a young child?

The root was that every man's covenant with fear for his own life pends being broken."

~

Western Cliffs of Shillingston,

Verging over the Eastern Banks of the Prussian Farriage Sea,

Kingdom of Tristendyre,

Tempestuous Eve of the first Phriday of the Second month,

XXI Year of Regency

"My reflections have been succeeded by the conclusion that I am at peace for my family had sensed my unbeknownst whereabouts and have strove for me despite the impending of consuming flames."

Imogen had been comforted at hearing those words from the old friend she'd made a few hours prior to her execution.

It had been curious why his life was being spared, for he seemed fragile and desolate with no benefits, but now, she truly knew reasons there-for.

After the Arch-Eccleissor and Regent Jehoram had arrived at the cell, Devland had demanded, of Oreius Zephaniah, information regarding a Queen Sable and her orientations. It had seemed as if he was the sole fount that possessed the secret and they could not afford to strike him with death until the needed details had been extracted.

She remembered further, of the elderly man's private words to her about the pearls of wisdom he'd wished to bestow her with, before the conversation had been suspended at the men's arrival. Imogen wondered if such was of the information they'd sought of him, which he'd wished to impart to her.

Although, she did not know of what benefit these details were to the men, there was one thing she was aware of: that no great springs of insight were of value now, whilst she was being led to her death.

Her eyes were covered in swathes and her hands were shackled behind her. There were the large, heavy and cold manacles that bound her ankles as she was forced to take her steps uphill until they faced the cliffs wherefrom she would be cast down into the body of the Prussian Farriage Sea.

Her heart had overcome the feelings of spirit and tension, although she could feel the unsettling surge in the pits of her stomach. She could hear the seething crowds, though her vision was blindfolded.

The rains were ruthlessly pouring down and thunders roaring, as though dragons were warring beyond the visible heavens, and flashes of blinding lightning.

There had been days when she was younger in psyche, where the judgement of the spectators and the curiosity of all things beneath the skies were of importance.

However, in the aging of her soul from the dawn of this morning, until the hour of her death, she understood how profoundly these various things were negligibly of any merit at all.

At hand, her concerns of much deeper significance were unendurable:

Death was foreign. Despite all the years and all the lives that she had beheld parting this world, it was always a spectacle she could never truly gain mastery of. It was an exotic realm through which no man was guided; an unknown everlasting.

All of these words may strive to conquer, whether singly or allied, but fail in depths of famine for meaning, to describe the absolute sensation or magnitude or concept of what facing the portal of death truly seemed to be.

Per-haps, this is the way it is meant to be, for these are vernaculars of men on earth, and none the language of beyond this life.

The one hand upon which a mortal could rest his trust, when he takes flight into the unknown, when the rope is severed and his boat commences its voyage overseas, –that one hand is a hand bearing Scars of Love.

A shivering and lost soul could take refuge, whilst leaping forth from the brink of the dominion of Life to beyond, by reclining in the hopes of the Creator God, the Author and the End.

Imogen calmly surveyed the vista of her life: there were various wonderful people and places, service and help given and taken, there was her beloved Lady Minerva and there was Jehu who had possibly died last night and she may see him and maybe the family that had been taken from her when she was merely an infant.

In flesh, though, her fears were beginning to escalate with the voice of the deriding crowds.

It wasn't reposing into the embrace of Death that she feared, but the process of drowning, freezing, swallowing water, hopelessly searching for help and hold, or worse: surviving for too long in the duration before the touch of death. The prospect of prolonged sufferings terrified her.

In a wild case of being spared the agony of enduring this death, she would greatly be glad; but those would be false hopes feeding on her strength when they do not come to pass.

The single hope she had, like a faint candle's fire in the darkness and storms was that she had not seen the Being that arrived when one was drawing their final breath of life.

She heard the Regent's voice command order, which was followed by a shrill silence from the people. The winds and seas and the rainstorm, however, raged ferociously on, as though boasting their arrogance over how much greater forces these ruling men could not restrain.

Humans were such conceited creatures, priding themselves to be powerful, when a mild nudge of the earth could annihilate an entire race, or the perpetual rains could engulf and drink the life of every mortal, had it not been for the mercy of a promise-keeping God.

As the men began to read the Order of the Execution in its ordained decorum, her eyes were relieved of the blindfold. Her sight suffered the ripples of darkness dispersing after the constricting blinds were loosed.

She turned to see the people behind, the Regent and the Arch-Eccleissor to her left and the classes of disciplined columns of Castle Elders and Chiefs standing by her right, where her eyes searched for Minerva's face, but to no avail.

Imogen felt warm waters stream down her face: tears in the disguise of rainwater. The damsel barely listened to the proceedings but heaved in hopelessness. There was one last wish: to see her Lady Minerva and even that was not granted.

What had she trespassed to endure such gruesome fate? What was her fault that she did not even deserve her final wish before death to be granted her?

She lifted her eyes to the heavens that poured their mourning. And just then, she saw him staring at her from his perch over beyond. It was He that always visited to escort the harvested souls of mortals.

It was He that was Death.

The ornamental hourglass in his hand had only few grains left to drop. The smirk on his face vanished before he flew down the heights of the cliffs as if he intended to await her fall at the surface of the great Prussian Farriage Sea, her waiting grave.

~