Reaching For Stars

Death Deserved

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Burning rubies seared into the flesh of his feet, their heat burrowing into already charred bone. Dark crimson smeared across the rubies, quieting their hungry burning in a sizzling, seething curl of smoke. He watched as the smoke curled over his blackened fingers, pulling at the moisture in his skin until it cracked like desert ground, oozing blood from deep fissures.

He lowered his hand and gazed at the smoldering path before him. Flickering red eyes gazed back, their fiery glow pulsing to the slow thump of his heart. They were rubies, inlaid in blackened stone, carving a curving path like a carpet of red. A red carpet for a king. A carpet that paved the way to riches and thrones; to castles and royalty.

It rolled out before him, marking the path that must be walked. A path of blood. A path of fire. A path for a criminal. A villain. A path that was a punishment.

His eternal punishment.

His lips — hardly anything but cracked pillars to a once great arena — parted into a wry smile. Often he had wondered, often he had pondered, what punishment was worse than death? What more justice could a judge give than execution?

Once one was dead, that was it. No more lashings or brutal beatings. No more dreadful starvings or long-standing hangings. No matter how painful or drawn-out one's final moments were, when one reached death, that was it. And that was all that was needed.

Until him.

He blinked slowly and resumed his pointless stumbling. Pointless, because they led nowhere. Nowhere, but to rusty smears of his footsteps. He dragged one foot out of the smoldering ashes with a squelch and a hiss, blood seeping back into the embers in a steady flow.

And as it hung in the air — smoke curling from the charred bottom — it began to heal. Bone turned white, black receded, and rosy flesh rushed forth, frantically knitting together so when his foot touched the embers, as it had a thousand times before, it would feel the full pain of being torn apart again.

Even after all this time, it still hurt. Still burned. Still drew a ragged gasp from his lungs and stinging in his eyes. Even after decades of walking, of fighting, of suffering, it still hurt. Hurt because he was alive. Hurt because he wasn't dead. Hurt because this was his punishment.

A punishment worse than death.

He stumbled onwards, treading the red path laid before him; the path that never ended. Never ended like the fire inside of him.

The roar of the crowd shook the earth, their united cries bringing down lightning like thunder. Lightning in the form of a sentence. A sentence that burned his chest, charred his skin, choked his lungs, and decimated his feet. It breathed heat into his face and stared him down with winter eyes and shouts of condemnation.

Condemnation that echoed back to him in the snap and crackle of a wall of flames. It burned all around his carpet of blood, blue swords stabbing at the ceiling. It's light smothered the evil glow of his path. His sentence. His punishment. A punishment worse than death.

But not worse than what he had committed.

He reached a hand out to the wall of flame — the Ekra of the Crown — trembling fingers brushing the smooth surface. The surface that danced and swayed. The surface that locked him in. The surface like the stone around his neck. The one that healed him. Kept him alive. Alive so he could die. Die an eternal death.

He pulled his hand away, clutching the blue stone. This — this pain — was not worse than the death he had caused. Not worse than the lives he had taken, both innocent and guilty. Not worse than his betrayal. His lies. His thirst for blood. His love of fire. Of burning. Of death.