My father walked slightly ahead of me. It was almost a march. A couple of guards walked behind me. They were not smiling and I was sure that they were there less for ceremonial reasons than to prod me along if I was reluctant to follow.

Somehow in the long walk, house servants had time to divert my father and me into a side room, where we were quickly changed into more presentable clothing. My hair was even combed out and perfume was sprayed over my body to hide the stench from being bedridden for the last few days. My nostrils told me that I smelled like vomit festooned with rose petals and lilacs, which through some strange serendipity exactly matched my mood.

The servants worked quickly and efficiently under the watching eye of my father. I had never really noticed it before, mostly because this was the longest I’d been around him since the day of my birth, but everything the servants did under my father’s watchful eye, the did furtively and with a hidden element of fear. Like prey animals caged in the same room with a predator that maybe has eaten recently, but might also be looking for a quick snack.

When we were presentable, my father continued our march, and I could tell we were walking towards the main courtyard.

From the position of the sun that beat down mercilessly hot, I could tell that it was around two o'clock, but a cool breeze was blowing in off nearby Mt. Fragment carrying the cooling taste of snow from its peak. Any other time this would have been a beautiful day. I looked down and to my left and saw the city spread out under the plateau and the harbor and ocean beyond it. There were sails — merchants, warships, adventurers, and maybe even pirates — coming to port to trade for goods, or make repairs, or simply as a stop on a journey through the countryside.

Then I turned back to the courtyard.

In front of me, there was a crowd of about 500 people, waiting expectantly. Some were looking at my father and I. Some were looking at the marble block on a raised dais in the center. Some were chatting quietly with their neighbors.

My father made his way to the podium. The crowd parted for us. I wanted to make a comparison to Moses parting the Red Sea, but I knew my father would lead no-one to any promised land.

From the platform, I could see that there were guards surrounding it. Keeping the riffraff away, I guess. The guards who had been trailing behind us stood with us on the central stage. I could see a newly constructed gallows with four nooses over by the wall to the right of me.

And then, my heart fell. Four oxen were being led to the four gates which opened in each of the cardinal directions. There was an Oxen in the North Gate. An Oxen in the South Gate. And another two in the East and West gates respectively.

Guards tied ropes to a special device that went around the Oxen’s center mass and then threaded them through loops up above the crowd where they were tied securely to manacles lying by the marble cube that I was standing next to.

The fanfare of a distant trumpet rose and the crowd parted again. Another group of guards came out from the same door to the manor-house that my father and I had just come out of. I did not recognize any of these guards. Looking closer I saw that they wore the insignia and house colors of a different noble family than my own, and the same colors as the guards who surrounded the platform I was standing on. Followed closely behind them was a distinguished looking man with deep grey hair and the scarred rugged face of someone who spent more time outdoors than living in comfort. He was wearing the ceremonial robes that I now recognized were those of the Inquisitors.

When the man got to the dais, he looked at my father and said: “Harrion, this is certainly a massive fuck up.”

“It couldn’t be helped Magistra, the boy thought he was doing the right thing,” my Father said, “and he has been disciplined for it.”

“In my day, your boy would be joining them on the scaffold. You are getting soft.”

“It is still your day. I considered it. I considered it several times. If he’d shown any sign of breaking I would have gutted him myself. But the boy has too much potential,” my father said.

The man who I considered to be Magistra looked me over. “Hmmm…. There are still plenty of opportunities to weed him out.

“Boy,” Magistra said, “Fuck up again, and I won’t be as kind and merciful as your father has been. I have my eye on you now. Before you had some leeway, now you have none.

My father said, “Let’s get this over with. As enjoyable as it is to threaten the boy, I am tired of this foreplay, and longing for the main event. Why stretch this thing out when there are other more important things to stretch out.”

Magistra laughed, “That is in incredibly bad taste. But I like it. Gallows humor. Who would have thought you would have had it in you Harrion.”

“Just a little something Cereus said to me a year ago, that I thought you’d enjoy.”

Magistra said, “I do. Next time I see Cereus, I will have to compliment him. He does make the best witticisms.” He paused again, then called out “Bring out the prisoners.”

A new group came out of from the manor door being led by even more guards this time. There were five people. The man I recognized as the Potter I had visited with my father’s advisor the other day. Following him was a woman in tears, a boy who was I assumed was around 14 or 15 years old, another boy who was around five or six years old. Lastly, with her hands tied in front of her, I sort of recognized the girl I had seen in the Pottery shop that day who had spoken, however briefly, in English.

The next thing that struck me was that all five people were being marched towards where I was standing completely naked. Each one of them was crying, and they all looked like they had been tortured. The man and girl had a defeated look in their eyes. The woman was talking to herself and occasionally laughing at her own jokes, and the two boys simply looked lost.

Lastly, I noticed that the once blond girl, who had accidentally spoken English, the “Twice-Lived” had had every hair on her body shaved off. There was nothing on her head, nothing on her eyebrows, nothing on her young maidenhood. Nothing that is except open wounds crawling with fly larvae and a few obviously broken bones — though none that could stop her from walking.

The guards marched the tiny family to the podium. My father and Magistra assisted in securing the girl to the block of marble and then manacling her arms and legs to the shackles that were tied to the oxen. The guards led the rest of the family, the wife, and husband and two boys to the gallows and placed nooses around each of their necks.

As the noose went around the older of the two boy’s neck, he urinated involuntarily and part of the stream of piss splashed on one of the guards I did not know.

“The little shit pissed on me.” The guard said, and with a mailed fist, wound up and drove a punch into the crying boy’s throat. The boy, barely a teenager, tried to cry out in pain but could only gargle, his knees buckled but since he was bound by the noose around his neck, he could not fall to the ground, and so he dangled there — face changing color from red to blue — as the rest of the guards and my father and the other Inquisitor Magistra laughed and watched.

The boy tried frantically to right himself, then he started twitching, and then after a while, he stopped.

Magistra walked to the front of the crowd. He raised a hand…

“We are gathered here today on this dark day to witness the end of a sin against all of humankind. It is known that walking among us are beings so vile, so filthy, that the utter subjugation and destruction of our way of life is the only thing that they wish for. This is known.

“In the normal way of things, we have checks and ways to root out this scourge. It has gotten to the point that when one of these Twice-Lived does appear, the damage they do is minimal. They go about their lives until we find them, and then we are swift in our destruction.”

“However this time something different happened. This time, the sins of the Twice-Lived were allowed to spread. The filth of someone who should never have been born was allowed to pollute and destroy this good family.”

“It is possible that Master Potter Tabor is innocent. It is possible that the sins of the one he thought was his daughter did not pollute him, corrupting his body and leading his thoughts to evil. We will never know this.

“Because instead of doing the right thing and reporting a Twice-Lived living among us, as was his duty, Master Potter took his family and chose to try and flee. Though who he thought would be stupid enough to take in a Twice-Lived is a mystery, that keeps me up at night.

“So there he stands, good citizens. There you see the once Master Potter and his family. Stripped of everything that makes them human. Like a beast the wait there, waiting to be put down. And yet, even though they will die, there is a lesson here for those of you wise enough to learn it. So, to you, good citizens, look. This is what happens when you knowingly shelter and try to provide succor to a Twice-Lived.”

My Father then walked over the girl who had been lashed to the Marble block. He grabbed her head and forced her to look at her family, though I wasn’t sure if she was good enough in her mind to see them. “Say goodbye to your family. You were the evil that brought them to this, so you should watch them die.” A tiny fleck of drool trickled down her mouth and onto the marble block.

Magistra turned to my Father, “So do you wish to have the honors.”

“The boy caused this mess, it is only fitting he should,” my Father said.

Magistra walked over to me. He bent down until he was at my height. “You are a pretty little boy, aren’t you. So here’s what I want you to do, I when I point at you I want you to yell out “Now” as loud as you can. You can do that, can’t you? Your father will be angry with you if you make a mistake again, and he can be a cruel, cruel man, but maybe if you mess up again he will let me play with you first, and I do like pretty little boys.”

Magistra addressed the crowd, “First goes the family that dared shelter a Twice-Lived. Let them die, to move on, and not be born again.”

The inquisitor pointed at me and I yelled “Now” and drop gates on the gallows beneath each member of the families’ feet opened up, and their feet fell out from under them, in the most part breaking their necks. During the whole thing, my father held the girl chained to the marble block’s head, his thumbs forcing her eyelids open.

When Magistra was sure the family was dead, he spoke to the crowd again, “Then the girl who dared to be born for the second time, from which hellish she claimed under torture was called Denn-veer Collar-ado.” He pointed at me, and I said “Now” almost quietly.

“Louder.” Said my Father with anger in his voice. Magistra was smiling longingly at me.

“Now,” I said at the top of my voice.

The oxen began slowly walking, inch by inch. Slowly over the minutes, any slack that was in the rope joining girl to the beasts was made taut. Then the girl began to scream. Her head began to roll back and forth and her torso began to flail up and down, but she was chained to the block and did not have far she could go.

She began to scream in English

“Our father, who art in Heaven,

Hallowed be thy, name.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,

On Earth…”

She would have gone on, but Magistra walked over and pried her mouth open and with a swift and practiced move of his dagger, cut out her tongue.

“Sometimes they like to try to speak their unclean filth, to pollute us as they die.” He remarked to my father.

My father said, “I’ve seen it before.”

“I’m sure you have.”

Blood had filled the girl’s mouth, and even as the ox trudged slowly away, she was drowning in her own bodily fluids. The sight of it was unbearable. I kept thinking “I have to do something. I have to do something. How do I end this pain? How do I end her pain.” One and over and over again.

Then it happened. A flash as violet-blue as the sunburst from my chest, filling the courtyard suddenly, before settling on the girl. I recognized the Magic rune for “No” the joining Rune and the Rune for “Pain”. It came from me, but it was nothing that I did, but the girl suddenly relaxed as if she had just swallowed an Oxycodone capsule the size of Delaware. I felt weak, almost as if all the energy had been vacuumed out of me.

My father’s anger was boundless though, and he raised his hand to strike me, but Magistra stopped him.

“It was spontaneous. I see what you mean by showing promise. How old were you when you manifested that strongly. Twenty? Twenty-two?” Magistra said, “I remember when I did. I was Nineteen and was considered a prodigy. Keep an eye on the boy. He will be a benefit to our order with a bit of seasoning.”

My father growled “He ruined the ceremony. He should be punished. The girl feels nothing anymore. The best part is watching her suffer.”

“By all means punish him. But it was spontaneous. He had no control over it. I remember being young. I vaguely remember having emotions and feelings. They are simply childish things you will have to teach him to leave behind as he grows up. So punish him, but train him. And keep an eye on him too. We do have ways to weed out the unworthy, though right now, this is not one of those times.”

I stopped listening. One of the girl’s arms had just popped out of her socket, but she didn’t care. She was in her own little world and felt nothing.

From across the city, a small little bird that sort of looked like a North American Robin flew over the crowd. Like a miracle, it landed on the girl’s head and looked at me quizzically. I had never seen something that reminded me so much of home. The state bird of Wisconsin was (when it still existed) the Robin, and I felt a strange sense of deja-vu as the bird and I shared a glance.

Then the bird twisted its head, it stopped looking at me our connection lost, and in that moment of perfect clarity pecked out the girl’s eyeball.

My father said. “Foul carrion eaters.” I don’t know where he got the rock from, but he threw it, barely missing the pseudo Robin, but hitting the girl, killing her, and we both watched as the bird flew away carrying that bit of my innocence that it had scavenged.