The damp winter cold swelled and fused slowly into the gray and dreary stones that made up the village square. The light from the lanterns lining the street slowly fading as an ethereal fog swept over the occupants of the scene. Hanging from a rope was a pale figure. It was that of a human shaped sign which radiated a dreary aura with its weathered and dilapidated expression.
The sign wore a mask that seemed like that of a weeping demon. The grey of its face contorted into a strange smile that seemed unaware of itself being on the face of the crying apparition. The post the sign hung from was of a brown color that had a grain running through the middle as if to give the feel of old wood.
Words were carved into the white wood of the torso with deep, almost stylish engravings. The flourishing letters looked beautiful in contrast to the effigy they accompanied and the message it read.
"Here we gather for the execution of the vile demon, Arcturus."
I looked on the sign with a wavering but sharp gaze. My eyes being almost level with the grim sight. This should not have been possible as I was currently bending down. But I had in fact found myself in such a predicament that required me to be bent in half on a stage in front of an angry mass.
The shackles of wood somehow holding back the rage and sadness I felt while looking upon the grim scene playing out in front of me.
Slowly I heard a voice fade into existence as if I had been ignoring it when it had started its awful, unmelodious rant. It spoke with a certain arrogance that had a slight taste of fear and perhaps reverence behind it. The pale man to my right who the harping voice belonged to stood behind a podium made of a dark wood. A microphone pressed to his almost white lips.
"Here today we gather to witness the execution of Arcturus. Once an ally of great hope, turned into a vile demon we could not simply contain from causing great harm to the human race."
The undertones in his voice made it clear what he was trying to say, although he did a fairly decent job of hiding it. Even the people who noticed it seemed as if their fury had blinded their sensibility. I sat on my knees with the wood pressing against my skinny, malnourished, and injured neck.
Hope is a fickle but powerful thing. It can be equated to the premise of desire as they share many a similarity. Hope is an overarching emotion for humans that covers a lot of things in our pathetic consciousness. Hope blinds people from their fear and cowardice as they can put their influence behind someone or something of great power and ability to rely on. I had once been one of these pillars of hope.
But alas, hope is fickle. Once danger retreats it ugly head back into the treacherous cage it emerged from, the ones with power are no longer needed. With this, the stable figure of hope and power slowly starts to ingrain itself into the mind of others as a powerful existence. People fear power. The power others have over them makes them feal insignificant and unprotected.
This primal process leads to the churning of hope and desire into something much more potent. Fear.
Hence, here I kneel. Causing fear even in my unnoble appearance. For the people, the source of fear had to be dealt with. Thus comes new hope. The hope that turns on the one it had came from. The cycle has repeated itself many a times in human history. Never turning out quite the way people wanted.
With these thoughts in my head, I was disrupted by a mass cheer as I sensed cold, sharp metal falling quickly. Faster than a bullet in my mind but not in others. For the crowd, it was almost agonizingly slow.
In those brief moments I had a closing thought to my series of revelations.
'Hope is dead. So, fear shall reign.'
Just as the blade of the harrowing guillotine fell into contact with the soft flesh of my neck, something happened. The world seemed as if it distorted into itself, collapsing as quickly as it had been born. A bright white light flashed in my eyes. Driving away the gloomy fog and the dreary white wood of the disturbing effigy.
When the spots in my vision revealed themselves, triangle like fragments of pure white flashed past my startled eyes. Swirling as the black ceiling of a room slowly revealed itself.
"Congratulations Arcturus, another world destroyed. Seems like you still haven't learned you lesson."
Dejectedly I stammered out, "Not my fault they're not complex enough to understand and repent. You should have made them better father. And don't call me that."
The detached voice replied with great shame, "I won't send you back until you learn. You have two more days, Jesus my son. You've already been gone for one too long."