Slowly, his eyes opened. The darkness beyond the windows above him kept the true cruelty of the world hidden deep within, so that it never saw the light of day. Just as it had been planned, some of the condemned were never meant to see the light of day.
Whilst two adult guards carried Aquaixos — or whatever his name happened to be — he observed his own body, which felt both familiar and yet completely foreign to him.
The first thing he had noticed was the fact that he must have been born with strikingly blue skin. Another detail that did not escape his view were the two horns on his head. It was true that he couldn't see them. But just like his ears, he could simply feel them. That was why he knew they existed, without ever laying eyes on them before.
The orange jumpsuit he was wearing was more than just uncomfortable. In fact, nothing about his current situation was comfortable at all. Something was written in the centre of his chest.
He tilted his head downwards, but even from this angle he couldn't make out the letters. Nevertheless, he eventually managed it.
What he'd initially taken for letters were simply numbers. However, he didn't know the meaning of the number 4076 himself. How could he, when he didn't even know who he was?
'Who the hell am I?'
Aquaixos tried to decipher the words beneath that number. However, he didn't come anywhere near succeeding. There were two words. At least that much he realised. But the letters themselves… They were completely alien to him.
So he did something that many would consider foolish. He simply gave up.
His legs and arms were bound to the chair with iron chains, so he was unable to move them. Even his tail, which he couldn't use to fight despite its spines, was tied to the underside of the chair. The only thing he could still move was his head.
This allowed him to look left and right and notice the guards who were carrying him as they marched on. Every now and then, their gazes turned towards him. Their eyes were full of hatred. For some unknown reason, they seemed to deeply despise his very being.
Although the two did not resemble each other in their facial features, their build and even their clothing were almost identical.
A loose-fitting black coat with white patterns and silver buttons clung to their broad bodies. They wore dark hats on their long, snow-white hair. These were the same colour as the scarves around their necks, which were made from the fur of a frightening beast.
Slowly but surely, they approached the nearby staircase at the end of the row of seats. The Aziyakias occupying the seats in the row looked at him with mixed expressions. Even the prisoners, who were themselves there to await judgment, looked at him as though he were an inferior bastard who did not deserve to continue breathing the same air as them.
They were all wearing the same uniform as Aquaixos. The only difference, however, was that on the patch above their chests, there was a different set of four digits and two other, strange-looking words.
'So I'm a… prisoner. Then this must be some sort of courtroom.'
Meanwhile, the two men carrying him did not exchange a single word. On the red carpet they were constantly walking on, a strange symbol could be found on the floor every couple of steps.
However, none of these symbols were found on the ceiling or scattered across the walls of the hall. Instead, they were found solely on the carpets.
The blue crescent, from which an arrow protruded and which appeared repeatedly everywhere, with all the arrows pointing in the same direction. Towards the very centre of the room.
'Where are they carrying me?'
As the guards reached the stairs and began to descend them, Aquaixos heard soft giggles from the lower rows.
They were all whispering about no one else but him. Whenever he passed another row, the whispered chatter did not stop. The meaning of it had become clear to him. They did not want him amongst them.
This went on until, finally, an elderly person jumped up from his seat, started running and stopped in front of the guards, who were carrying a chair on which a young Aziyakia was seated.
His face was covered by a full blue beard. With no wrinkles on his face, one might say he was not that old. Yet he had already lived through roughly half his life.
With grief and unstoppable anger reflected in his eyes, he dropped to his knees. Tears streamed down his face as he struggled to utter even a simple sentence.
One of the two men he was looking at was the first to speak:
"Get out of the way. His judgment will be handed down shortly. Until then, no one has the right to interfere."
Despite the order, the man did not move a single step. Instead, he remained kneeling on the carpet as if rooted to the spot and finally collapsed in despair. But he was not speaking to the guards, but to Aquaixos himself.
"You… You monster. My son… You took him from me. How dare you still stand here, looking down on us from your high throne? Give me back my son. Have you…"
The guards let him speak until he could speak no more. From the wall behind him, a silver arrow shot out of one of the numerous openings in it. At tremendous speed, it drilled into the man's neck. Shortly afterwards, his body went limp.
The blood ran down his neck onto the carpet, mingling with its crimson colour. And the guards… They seemed to pay no attention to any of this at all and remained completely serene.
'What exactly is going on here? Apparently, I'm supposed to have killed his son... So why are my memories so hazy?'
Aquaixos' heart began to pound harder against his chest and his breathing became restless.
'Am I about to… die too?'
Countless questions remained unanswered. But there was nothing he could do about it. Who knows what would happen to him if he dared to speak.
'The man who spoke to me earlier… Who was he?'
He looked back towards the top row from which he'd been taken. But it was far too late for that. There were far too many seats missing, making it impossible for him to work out who the man's voice belonged to, and by then he was already far too far away. From where he stood, he could barely see upwards.
'I was far too busy checking everything else that I failed to pay attention to the most important details… Am I really that foolish? '
After every row they descended, another followed. This continued until they had finally reached the bottom.
The guards took a few steps before they could finally set him down. They dropped his chair onto a strange, square surface that wasn't actually part of the floor beneath it, before the two of them quickly fled from its surface.
Just like that, Aquaixos's chair shot up into the air.