Chapter Text
There is no expectation that a monster should be officially informed of its impending execution. It’s an animal. A beast. There’s no point wasting the breath on it. There is no expectation that Sir Goldenloin should be descending the staircase to the maximum security dungeons deep in the belly of the Institute, the traditional hand-inked scroll in hand.
And yet, he knows he has to.
He’s been learning to have conversations he doesn’t want to since he was a child, but this isn’t another reporter or fan. Still, though, he sets his feet steady on the stone floor, takes a moment to breathe slow, and draws himself up in a way that would make his armorsmith glow with pride.
On the other side of thick iron bars, layers of reinforced blast-proof glass, and a mesh of high-voltage live wires, a scruffy teenage girl seems to sense the gravity of the occasion, and gets to her feet.
Another steadying breath, and Ambrosius unfurls the scroll.
“By order of Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin, the Institute, and the endorsement of King Maxim the Third: the Beast known by the Great Dark, Scelus quī Abscondit Umbrās, End of the Age of Innocence, Gloreth’s Monster, Nimona, is to be put to the sword before the eyes of the Kingdom on the Fourteenth day of the Sixth month forthcoming, marking the feast day of Gloreth. May she be forgiving.”
That’s it. Two sentences. No listed crimes, no conviction. The names are enough.
He rolls the scroll back up. In her cell, the girl is staring at the grimy floor, loosely holding herself by a hand on her arm. No tears, no lashing out in fear or anger, just a sense of vague, soft sadness. It would be easy to say that she’s in shock, but Ambrosius knows better than that. To him, it looks more like she’s just got confirmation of what she knew was coming long before the day she was put here. What she accepted soon after her arrest.
“Today is the ninth,” Ambrosius adds. “Five days until the feast day.”
Her eyes flick back and forth across the floor. Thinking.
“...Does the Boss know?” she mumbles.
Ambrosius swallows, trying his damn hardest to keep his voice steady. “Ballister? I’ll be informing him next.”
That’s not protocol either, but again, he knows he has to. She nods slightly, still not looking up. She takes a shaky breath in, giving him a glimpse of her oversized canines through the bars. A tiny hint of why the hell he’s doing this.
“Who’s gonna do it?”
She finally raises her gaze, but only slightly. Her eyes lock onto the golden scabbard on his hip. Without a thought from him, his arm shifts towards it, and he has to stop himself from wincing when he catches himself. There’s an uncomfortable stretch of silence as he considers his words.
“The Director of the Institute thought it would be pertinent that, given my family lineage… I should take the duty myself.”
He forces himself not to look away when she finally looks up and meets his eyes. She still hasn’t cried, but her eyes are wet and tired and sad. Part of him wishes she would be angry. That she would scream and yell and snap her teeth and fight him to the bitter bloody end. That she’d be the monster he’s trained his whole life to destroy.
Ambrosius has an awful, sinking feeling in his gut that when the fourteenth comes, this scrappy, plucky little punk won’t fight him. That he will go before the people he’s sworn his life to protect, draw his sword, and she’ll bow her head and let him kill her.
He doesn’t look away.
“May Gloreth forgive us both,” he says.