The blood ran through the streets and the acrid smoke of the guns drifting through the alleys and courtyards. The rubbled roads filled with the detritus of urban war - chairs and couches, torn brick and mounds of mortar, and the bloodied corpses of soldiers, revolutionaries, and civilians.
The silence of the silence spoke louder than the previous month of constant combat. The city stood still, and every survivor packed the great courtyard as the great iron gates of the prison opened and spat forth a host of armed soldiers. Their uniforms showed bright with the pageantry of the revolutionary mob, and their gaunt faces showed the bitter fight which lead to this day.
Behind them a slow rumble sounded as a carriage slowly rolled forth, the shuttered horses pulled slowly into a blind world while its hooded occupants knelt shackled in its rear. The silence of so many spoke of the grandeur of the occasion and casted an eerie calm over a city which was gripped the final moments of chaos.
The center of the great square held a grand platform, not grand of vision but grand of purpose. A wooden stand standing tall above the uniformed men surrounding its structure with a terrible sight mounted to it back, a wooden frame of a door to the afterlife and the sharpened, weighted blade which would deliver its victim to the world beyond.
As the carriage drew to a stop at the foot of the cross, the prisoners stood walked slowly up the creaking stairs. As the first captive crested the top stair, the crowd began to murmur and pulsate. The silence was broken as an angry yell cross over and echoed among the many people a single cry which brought the crowd to frenzy. An incomprehensible decree which spoke only of the anger of a nation, which echoed among thousands of voices.
The man held his head high when the hood was removed and looked out at the magnitude clamoring for his head. His handsome, stoic face and the strength of his royal demeanor caused his executioners a moment of pause. He looked out over the people whom he once called his own people. Those closest to the stand felt the full gravity of their cause as they stood before his gaze.
Without emotion and without fear or pause, he stepped forward to the scaffold and took knee before the block. He looked up to the sky, his eyes going past the sharpened blade and into the endless skies toward heaven itself. He felt the courage to die fill his heart as he looked trough death to the angel which knelt before him.
It was her death which had left him disconsolate and dispirited. It had left the nation without a leader and it fell to the whims of greedy men who committed their corruption in the kings name. When the people had dragged him from his palace and paraded him through the street, he had prayed for death to be served. And now he knelt before his people, at last he would walk with her once more.
Her voice blocked out the cries of the crowd. It calmed the riot and the creak of the weighted blade. It calmed the heart of the condemned man as it spoke directly to his soul.
The blade fell, and the king was dead. Long live the king. Long love the king.