Sky Prologue Part 1: Where a Hanging Changes Everything

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1918, Ainemra of the Namotto Empire, Htrae

He swung, swung, swung from the wayward branch of the gallow tree - another hanging man - buffeted by the wind to twist and turn at its commanding sigh. He was any man, his face stubbled and lined, his road clothes dirty and unkempt, just one more slandered vagabond, hunted for his inferiority and caught in the high Queen's noose.

He carried no trace of magic, no tattoo of entitlement, no storied will. No symbols of status were tattooed anywhere on his suspended person; Not even a name was inked upon his bare chest.

A wooden platform served as a stage in the middle of the village square but also as the gallow. It was a hackneyed structure with a simple crossbeam and a deadman's door held by a rusty latch that always stuck. The hangman had received his orders from on high, as it were, carried on the winds by a carrier pigeon. He had followed them through, peeling strips of skin off the silent man and leaving the Queen's brand—five horizontal lines starting at different intervals like an ascending staircase—etched into his flesh.

The prisoner's hands were tied to the beam to keep him standing as he wove in and out of consciousness. The loop of thick rough rope was placed around his neck and tightened securely by the black-hooded executioner, also the town butcher. The sentenced man held himself aloft as they untied his wrists, the Queen's mark now bleeding from his exposed chest.

He didn't carry on or swear or curse. He didn't even whisper one last word on his breath as the trap door let.

The only action the man took was to look upon the crowd, searching fervently for one set of watching golden eyes, eyes like a warm sunset reflecting light off the sea, before his final moment. His destiny was to die this day, though he was sad to leave her.

During the few previous village executions, the hangman had to get down on hands and knees and fiddle with the hitch in a most undignified manner. Sweat had poured down the open eye-holes of his mask, obscuring his vision. This time, with a swift and decisive kick of his foot, the latch opened smoothly. A snap, a jerk, and Aman Solom was dead and swinging.

With Fate's malicious laughter echoing in her Opulency's ear, the Empress had had him executed with as little regard as she could muster. Her eyes had never lain on the condemned man. Had she flayed him herself — not simply given the command from leagues away — she might have seen the lines of his face, the shape of his jaw, or even the cast of his eyes, but she still wouldn't have known him. Not yet.

By all accounts Aman Solam was unremarkable in this lifetime and was noteworthy only due to a distinct and controversial lack of magic. He was nobody to all but one, until, of course, he became somebody to so many.

It was in death his True Name was written by the Gods: Ware Liefde Se Wraak.

He became who they'd all been waiting for, the one to tip the scale of power in their favor. Around this martyr, the rebels would galvanize. His birth name would become the battle cry ripped from their bellies as they surged into war on the backs of their sweaty mounts: Aman Solam! Aman Solam! Aman Solam! Waker of the harbinger of death!

It was the loss of an unassuming villager — no hero, politician, king or wizard — that changed the fate of the world and made the divine stir. History books would rewrite his life into legend, etching him into a man larger than life itself with all the attributes of a champion, but Aman Solam had been a farmer whose sole ambition was for a life of simple comforts. He was a good, ordinary, gods-fearing man who had picked up a pitchfork when the Queen's guard had pillaged their town searching for the tainted. Those, like him, that were bereft of magic.

As the flies buzzed around his bloodied corpse, still dangling from the wooden gallows in the village square, he was an example for the every man. The threat was tacit in his mediocrity: this could be you or your neighbour, your son or your brother, your sweet child or your lover, your husband or your wife, if you dared to resist the Queen, you were born without, you had lost your magic, you were inferior or diseased. Then, you would be weeded out.

Her Opulency needed a scapegoat to pacify the terrified masses. The Tainted would be targeted whether or not they were the source of the Blight as it swept across the continent, purging her kingdoms of magic. The illness had started with only a few, but now it was growing, catching like a spark to a field fire, and so was the rampant fear.

The hanging man was chosen because he was and had always been devoid of magic. In all things he was unexceptional, unremarkable, inferior.

But for one crucial exception.

This man had known an extraordinary love.

***

Hopefully, you're still interested in reading more after this gruesome hanging! If you enjoyed reading part 1 of the prologue (ie the first of three dominos that becomes the catalyst for the main story) please vote!  Thanks.

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