THE EXECUTION OF... ANTONIA DELUAR
The whole courtroom fell silent. People who were once arguing against one another turned their heads to face their final verdict. Nia would bow her head. Whether it was in shame, or the fact that she had been caught out was unbeknownst to the crowd of students. A sudden clicking noise could be heard, and everyone turned their attention towards Monotus, who was happily tapping his feet against the surface he was perched on.
The panel that was a few feet away behind Nia’s trial stand opened up, a large chain with an even larger hand on the end of it extended from within it’s depths. Just as quickly as it shot out, it grabbed a hold of Nia, tightening its grip as to not allow any restraint from the acrobat. The chain began to withdraw back to where it came from, taking Nia into what was a blindingly bright white corridor. She couldn’t see much, due to the alarming speed she was being dragged at. The other students tried to see where she had gone, but nothing could be seen except the white corridor that Nia had just passed through.
The hand soon reached its stop, throwing the girl into a dark room. She couldn’t make out what was around her, or what wasn’t around her. She tried to take a step forward, and as she did so, two bright spotlights hit her, causing her to take a few steps backwards. As she did so, one of her feet slipped, almost as though she had run out of floor to step on. As she collected her bearings and regained her balance, the rest of the lights came on, and Nia realised at once where she was.
She was standing atop a very, very tall balance beam. And by very tall, it was around forty feet high. So if she were to fall, it would bring a nasty end to her. She looked across the balance beam to see how far ahead it would be to reach the other side. A good 800 metres. About the length of a running event in the olympics. So Monotus had done his research. He hovered above Nia, almost making her lose her balance as he startled her, telling her exactly what she had to do.
“Well then Nia. You’ve got a crowd to impress. Just make it to the other side~ Goooood luck!” And with that he fluttered up to perch himself nearby. Suddenly the sound of cheering and clapping in background made this feel like a real olympic event. Timidly she took a few steps forward, and as she did so, something shot at her, causing her on instinct to handstand on the balance beam to try and get away from it. However, a sickening sound of something protruding through her leg as she performed the movement, followed by the feeling of something warm dripping down from the thing and an agonising pain ricocheting up her entire body, caused the girl to scream out in pain. She was stuck in the position of the handstand, but just about managed to look up to find that a spike had shot out of a nearby wall and stuck itself in her leg. It soon retracted, and she found herself unable to stand, and she could, it wouldn’t have been for very long. Desperately, she began to crawl across the balance beam, dragging her bloodied leg behind her, since it had been rendered useless at this point. More spikes shot towards her, and sadly for her, she couldn’t get away fast enough. She had been piercing through her shoulder, through her stomach, her right arm and left thigh. She found herself no longer on the balance beam, and instead hovering in mid-air being supported by only the spikes. In another act of desperation, Nia shakily reached out, touching the spike at her stomach, as if it was going to end the pain that flared through her body. In the final moments that she could lay her gaze upon the other students, she locked her gaze with one in particular. Marco Edwards. She couldn’t say much without coughing up blood, so she’d just have to stick with an apologetic look about her. Just as she felt ready to say something, the spikes let go of her, and she was dropped forty feet below.
Before she hit the floor however, a small, glass box was put in place of her fall. It was much too small to fit a human body in straight away, but also barely big enough to fit a contortionist inside. Nia fell inside the box, and two large, metallic hands, smaller but similar to the ones that brought her into the execution chamber, shot out of the walls, grabbed onto Nia, and began to contort her body, in order to fit her inside this box. The forcefulness of being unwillingly contorted, coupled with the already agonising pain she was in, wouldn’t allow her to hold back yelling in brutal agony. At the sheer force of a body doing what not even a contortionist could do, bones began to jutt out of certain joints, the whole sight looking rather appalling. Her tears began mixing with blood, as amazingly she was still alive in the box, which made the whole thing almost terrifying for those watching. She pressed a bloodied hand against the glass of the box, hoping that she could be relieved of this torture soon, or at least this was just a dream.
But this was the brutal, despair inducing reality of it all.
The hands picked up the glass box, taking Nia to what was a giant incinerator. The opened the latch and flames burst out of it, causing the students watching to flinch back in horror, if they hadn’t already. Then, the box was thrown in the flames, the last thing the students saw of Nia was the bloody look of pain and torture. The flames died down, and everything fell into a deep, deep silence.