“Kill her! Snap that witch’s neck!”
“Eep?!”
Once the fire was sparked, the minds of the people in the crowd fused together as one with rapid intensity. But maybe that was the wrong idiom to use here… Those flames had already been burning for quite some time. The spark had just turned the fire into an inferno.
This was the moment when everything would come to pass. The united mob was like a single gigantic organism. Everyone was raising their fists, calling for her death. It was as though a humongous monster had loosed an angry roar.
“W…wait! Stop this! D-don’t you fear the wrath of God?!” Panic and fear finally started to settle in on the witch’s face. Even she could no longer deny her situation. But it was already too late. The inferno was upon her.
Besides… Nobody believed in God anymore. At the very least, nobody believed in a god so stupid as to favor a witch like her.
“Shut up! If you really want to live, then do something about your country!”
“Nobody loves a witch like you!”
There was nothing she could say that wouldn’t fuel their anger further. The situation was irreversible. Her execution was set in stone.
The “kill her” chant picked up again. At this, a look of pure terror formed on Mylene’s face. Then tears spilled from her eyes.
“No… I refuse! I don’t want to die! I—I am certain that God would still forgive you if you stopped now! So please, have mercy…! I don’t want to die!” Her bitching transformed into begging for her life. It wasn’t out of nerve but out of desperation. The anguished cries of a common idiot who couldn’t grasp what was happening.
“Too little, too late! Where were you when the Duchess Melissa begged for mercy?!”
“Just who ripped up our petition and laughed in the faces of the people who begged you to spare Duchess Melissa’s life?!”
“If you can truly make miracles, then bring Duchess Melissa back from the dead!”
What’s lost will never return. And we’d lost so many things before this point. Spilled blood meant lost life. The final bell had tolled, extinguishing everything from this evil queen…and everything in her kingdom.
The anger of her people had reached its apex. Not a single one of them was on her side. Mylene’s face went pale with the grim truth.
“N-nooo!!! Wait… Don’t! Please, don’t do this! Somebody help me! Anybody! Oh God…oh God!”
Still, what a horrible way to go out.
I always thought anything was fair game when it came to winning a fight. Because as a magicless plebeian, I had very few choices. But…I at least wanted to have a say in how I died.
The way Mylene said anybody was proof that she had nobody to rely on. Not even her god would come to save a Gift like her. She was alone in the universe. I would not pity her, though. She’d brought it all on herself. It’s just… I wouldn’t want to go like that. I spat.
Ending her swiftly would be the merciful thing to do. Not that a witch like her deserved mercy. I wanted to vomit when I thought about how Adan and my other good comrades had died in the pursuit of seeing this hideous sight.
Maybe I was one of the people who wished for her death. Cued by the abrupt mood shift in the crowd, the executioner holding Mylene’s rope placed a foot on the steps of the gallows.
But that’s when it happened.
“Huh…?”
Out of nowhere, an arrow struck the side of the executioner’s head. Soon after, a terrifying number of arrows covered the air like a blanket. I used an already-expired onlooker as a shield as the shots fell.
What the hell was happening? I tried to make sense of the chaos, but no answers came. My best guess was that it wasn’t Eltania’s soldiers who were firing. To them, magic was something to be flaunted and exploited, an excuse to halt progress in other areas. But these arrows were the handiwork of a nation who didn’t over-rely on magic. An army who used whatever tool was best for the job.
It was an onslaught from a shrewder breed of warrior.
But when the rain of arrows finally let up, one of the rebel soldiers who had miraculously escaped cried out, “C-Colorne! It’s Colorne! Their soldiers are here!”
Barely a second later, soldiers in jet-black armor flooded the execution site, banners depicting an ebony lion flying high.
“Ah… Motherfucker…,” I cursed, gasping for air as I stabbed the Colornian soldiers spilling into the plaza. With the sheer number of enemy troops that were flooding the area, only a few of us were left standing. Everyone else here was a corpse or a Colornian soldier.
The messenger had cried out at the moment of Mylene’s execution to inform us of Colorne’s invasion. Whether they had planned it that way or they just happened to be at the right place at the right time, that much was unknown. But if nothing else, the moment was poignant enough to make the people who were there believe in the existence of God.
The invasion was timed so miraculously it seemed as if it was a rescue operation for the evil Queen Mylene. It was enough to strike despair into the broken hearts of the people who had fought for so long against their own monarch.
A few mercenaries still remained in the rebel army… But they were so scant in number that you could count them. And I was one of them. My employer was gone. Without my money, I had no reason to protect this kingdom. And yet, for some reason, I hadn’t chosen to run away.
The Colornian soldiers closed in on us, locking in the area. Soon, I wouldn’t have time to think anymore.
“Graaaah!!!” I just let my muscle memory take over, swinging my sword at the wave of enemies crashing into me.
“The fool, he’s fighting us without magic?!” one of the enemy soldiers sneered as I charged at him head-on.
I ignored him and kept charging. A blade pointed at me, red light gathering at its tip…and shot fire seconds later.
“A double suicide, Envil? Fucking brilliant,” I muttered under my breath as I ducked and kept running through.
The giant flames hid me from my opponent. I didn’t even flinch under its scorching heat as I slipped into my opening and jabbed my sword up through his jaw.